The Progressive Catholic Voice

The Unconscionable Consequences of Conscience Exemptions

2012-01-27T13:26:00.000-08:00

By Jamie L. Manson

Edito's Note: This article was first published January 25 by the National Catholic Reporter.

Of all of the reactions that I've read to the Department of Health and Human Service's refusal to change the rules on contraception coverage, I've noticed that few commentators have referred to the formal name of the government mandate the bishops are fighting.

The provision is called the Affordable Care Act. This new law is intended to ensure the just treatment of women and couples who cannot afford adequate medical treatment when it comes to contraceptives and who want to raise families in a safe, responsible manner.

This act is a promising attempt to prevent unwanted pregnancies and offers perhaps the most ethical and realistic approach to reducing the abortion rate.

The bishops' reaction was characterized by increasingly typical cries of victimization and hysteria. This self-pity only further diminishes the seriousness with which U.S. Catholics take the hierarchy. The sad truth is, if the numbers of Catholics leaving the church are any indication, most Catholics in the United States probably see the hierarchy more as victimizers than victimized.

Some have labeled this decision as President Barack Obama's attack on Catholics, echoing the inflammatory, paranoid spin bishops are putting on any government decision that doesn't go their way lately. This decision is not an attack on Catholics, but rather a groundbreaking move to protect women and to guarantee them greater access to adequate, affordable health care.

The decision demonstrates that protecting women's health, safety and freedom is part of the common good. In this way, it reflects a key element of Catholic social justice teaching: promotion of the common good and protection of individual freedom.

Although the hierarchy has historically argued otherwise, the conscience of an individual Catholic laywoman or layman is not ipso facto inferior to the conscience of any bishop. As David DeCosse argued so articulately in NCR earlier this week, the model of conscience used by most bishops "emphasizes obedience, law, and hierarchical authority and thus departs from the Catholic tradition's close linkage of conscience, practical reason, and freedom."

The decision affirms the Catholic principle of the "primacy of conscience." According to the Catechism, "A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his [sic] conscience" (No. 1790). Informing the conscience is a "life long task" (No. 1784) and "To this purpose, man [sic] strives to interpret the data of experience and the signs of the times assisted by the virtue of prudence, by the advice of competent people, and by the help of the Holy Spirit and his [sic] gifts" (No. 1788).

Lay Catholics will be permitted to exert their practical reason and freedom of conscience to choose, in an informed way, the medical practices and treatments that are healthiest for them and their families.

The hierarchy claims that this decision will force Catholics to either obey the law or violate their consciences. But whose consciences will be violated? According to the Guttmacher Institute, 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women (and, by association, their male partners) have used some form of contraception.

Perhaps Obama has learned, as many Catholic laypeople have, that the definition of the Catholic church encompasses far more people than the hierarchy. The church includes laypeople, theologians and ethicists who have, with good reason, rejected this doctrine. The majority of the church has refused to receive this teaching. Perhaps Obama saw, as many of us do, the bishops' actions as an attempt to legislate beliefs that they cannot get their own people to obey.

In making this decision, the president represented the needs of the people and protected the civil rights of women and workers. This includes not only Catholic women and men, but also the many non-Catholics who are employed by organizations affiliated with the Catholic church. These workers will no longer be subjugated to a church teaching that, compared with other religious tradition, is rather extreme. Even conservative evangelicals do not object to the use of contraception within marriage.

Once women are allowed access to oral contraceptives, the hierarchy will be able to honor an overlooked provision in the church's teaching. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 14 percent of women use oral contraceptives for purposes other than birth control. That is more than one in 10 prescriptions. According to Humanae Vitae, women can take the pill for medical purposes. For decades, the church has prevented these women from receiving essential medical treatment and has therefore acted contrary to its own doctrine.

When an employee obtains a prescription for the pill, the hierarchy does not know whether the purpose is medical or contraceptive. They assume, of course, that the pill is used for contraception. By allowing the hierarchy this exemption, the government would have allowed the church to continue to make decisions about their employees' private, sexual lives.

If the bishops had been allowed that power, then they should have had exerted equal power in refusing to pay for prescriptions for Viagara, Cialis and other sexual performance drugs for men. They should have demanded the right to know how men would use these drugs. Are they using the drugs with their wives? Girlfriends? Mistresses? Would the church ever intrude on heterosexual men and their personal sexual lives in this way?

Perhaps the most important accomplishment achieved through this decision is the government's refusal to create a precedent for religious organizations to get a pass from obeying civil rights laws. A few decades ago, individuals and organizations whose religious beliefs opposed desegregation wanted to be exempt from the Civil Rights Act. We can all look back in gratitude that the government refused their request.

If the bishops had gotten their way, it would have opened up a Pandora's box in which any religious group could claim exemptions from obeying a multitude of laws on religious grounds. I have little doubt that part of what propelled this fight was the bishops' desire to set a precedent on which they could base their refusal to provide benefits to employees in same-sex marriages and civil unions.

The fact is, Catholic hospitals, universities and social service agencies take in millions of dollars in federal and state grants every year. They should be accountable to the same civil rights laws given to other agencies that receive the same funding.

Some Catholic leaders have argued that, in order to meet the "narrow" exemption requirement, hospitals, schools, universities and social service agencies that do not want to comply with this new law will be forced to seriously reduce the number of people they employ and serve.

If this should happen, it might be one of the worst cases of the church's honoring one teaching at the expense of dozens of others.

For more than a century, Catholic social justice teaching has argued for the rights of workers, especially the right to adequate medical benefits. More than a dozen church documents teach the preferential option for the poor, workplace justice, the protection of women's rights, the primacy of the person and the common good.

There is only one teaching on contraception. It is a teaching that disregards the findings of the Majority Report of the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control. It is a teaching that has also been rejected by the sensus fidelium.

Nevertheless, as leaders of Catholic institutions spend the next year adjusting to this new law, Catholic organizations will still contemplate turning away the sick, the poor, the orphan and others in need because they do not want to obey the civil rights laws set by the government that funds them. They are entertaining the possibility of violating dozens of social justice teachings in order to keep a hard line on a rule that almost no one accepts or follows.

Jamie L. Manson received her Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School, where she studied Catholic theology and sexual ethics. Her columns for NCR earned her a first prize Catholic Press Association award for Best Column/Regular Commentary in 2010.

Quote of the Day

2012-01-21T15:30:00.000-08:00

I don't like that Archbishop John Nienstedt is threatening to punish priests who openly disagree with him over a constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between one man and one woman ("Priests Told Not to Voice Dissent," Star Tribune, January 15).

In a few weeks, I'll be 85. I'm a charter member of my church. I raised four children, all of whom attended Catholic schools. I've been active and engaged in my church all of my adult life.

That the archbishop would threaten the careers of priests who have devoted their lives to social justice is unconscionable.

If a fraction of this effort was put into weeding out the priests who had abused young children, we wouldn't have had the huge scandals and cover-ups or so many lives ruined by abuse.

I know that in speaking out about the archbishop's heavy-handed behavior, I risk alienating friends and family. But I must speak out.

This issue isn't a gay-rights issue – it's a human-rights issue.

– Beverly Sullivan
Letter to the Editor
Star Tribune
January 21, 2012

Recommended Off-site Link:
Archbishop in Minnesota Opposes Marriage Equality, Dissent in Equal Measure – Editorial (CommonDreams.org, January 17, 2012).

See also the previous PCV post:
Archbishop Nienstedt's Marriage Amendment Message to Priests: "The Stakes Could Not Be Higher"

Archbishop Nienstedt's Marriage Amendment Message to Priests: "The Stakes Could Not Be Higher"

2012-01-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

Note: The following letter from Archbishop John Niensedt has come to the attention of the editorial board of The Progressive Catholic Voice. Originally published in Archdiocesan Updates (Volume 34, Number 12, December 2011), it is addressed to the priests and deacons of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis.

We believe it is important to republish this communique as the central issue it addresses, i.e., the hierarchy's support of the "marriage amendment" to the Minnesota Constitution, is one that many Catholics in the Archdiocese feel strongly about. Also, we at The Progressive Catholic Voice believe it is important to model a way of being church that is open, honest, transparent and participatory. We welcome your feedback to both our sharing of the Archbishop's letter and its contents.

__________________________________________

Dear Fathers and Deacons,

At our recent Clergy Study Day on October 19, I gave the following talk. I offer it here again for those who were not in attendance.

My dear brothers, I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that in this movement to protect and defend the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman we are faced with one of the greatest challenges of our times. None of us can deny that the institution of marriage and family life are unraveling before our very eyes due to no-fault divorce, wide-spread cohabitation and promiscuous sexual activity. The end game of those who oppose the marriage amendment that we support is not just to secure certain benefits for a particular minority, but, I believe, to eliminate the need for marriage altogether. This can only lead to continued destabilizing the family unit itself. Both those realities will happen if marriage is redefined or, perhaps better put, “undefined.” Today we can say with clarity what the natural reality of marriage is. That may not be possible in years to come if we fail to be successful now. As I see it, we have this one chance as Minnesotans to make things right. The stakes could not be higher.

We did not choose this challenge nor do any of us relish the confrontation it will bring, but neither can we remain silent in order to get along. We must witness to the truth so as to realize the common good of our society. While the greatest good is surely life with God in heaven, we must, in truth, seek to foster the good here on earth. And we are not the first to confront this task, our brothers in California, Maine, Hawaii among others, have all taken up this defense and have been successful in doing so.

In doing so, we must never vilify or caricaturize those who argue otherwise. Indeed, we must acknowledge that all men and women are God’s sons and daughters. But it is this very truth and the fact that the truth is one and bears no contradiction that the Church and her ministers must witness here and now.

It is my expectation that all the priests and deacons in this Archdiocese will support this venture and cooperate with us in the important efforts that lie ahead. The gravity of this struggle, and the radical consequences of inaction propels me to place a solemn charge upon you all — on your ordination day, you made a promise to promote and defend all that the Church teaches. I call upon that promise in this effort to defend marriage. There ought not be open dissension on this issue. If any have personal reservations, I do not wish that they be shared publicly. If anyone believes in conscience that he cannot cooperate, I want him to contact me directly and I will plan to respond personally.

I see our united effort as a part of the New Evangelization, that of building a new culture for marriage. You know, this effort to pass a constitutional amendment is not an end in itself. We began a year ago to host 25 seminars across the Archdiocese to explain why marriage is what it is and why we believe in it.

Presently, I have appointed teams of a priest and a married couple to go into each of our Catholic high schools to address the topic of marriage.

I want the focus here to be a positive one — let’s celebrate the reality of what God designed from the beginning as affirmed in the first chapter of Genesis and that Jesus reaffirmed in the 19th chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel.

I am actively raising funds to assist in this educational endeavor. And if you and your parish wish to benefit from these programs, please let me know.

I thank you for your support. I count on your prayer. Be assured you have the same from me. Together, let us turn to our Blessed Mother — mother of all families, Mother of the Church and patroness of the new evangelization. Through her maternal intercession, our Lady will secure for us that which is needed most in these days — protection, wisdom and peace through the grace of her Son and Savior, Jesus Christ.

May God bless us all.

With every good wish, I remain

Fraternally yours in Christ,

The Most Reverend John C. Nienstedt

Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

Food for Thought

2012-01-03T15:04:00.000-08:00

The following comments from the website of the National Catholic Reporter were originally posted in response to Richard McBrien's January 2 article concerning Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., "Bishop Ponders Reasons Americans Leave Catholic Church.

___________________________

[The bishops need] to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking through the people of God and through the ongoing development of culture around the world. To listen to others beyond the Vatican and the Chancery offices might actually open some eyes, some minds, and some hearts. When the only people you actually engage in conversation are all like minded – it is easy to assume you have all of the answers – but the reality is in this setting, we don't even have the questions. All too often, we as a church act much like the old Baltimore Catechism – here are the questions and answers and that's all that you need to know; just pray, pay and obey and then wrap yourself in the mindset of Pius X and Leo XIII - and build high walls around yourself. I might be amazing to follow the dictate of Jesus who told his disciples – "Pay attention" "Don't be afraid" Pay attention.

– Charles Bolser

In my view, Charles, you are correct. Since this is a communal structure of the People of God, it is up to us to redefine, reconceptualize, and rethink the old idea of 'church.' What is needed is a Council of the People of God; certainly NOT a Vatican Council. Rather than running around in a panic trying to put out fires (clericalism, chauvinism, sexism, homophobia, sexual abuse, coverups, financial fraud, dogmatism, legalism, an environment of fear and negativity, etc.), we need to understand that the Spirit is giving us this opportunity to start over: this will be the fruit of the Council of the People of God. It is so obvious that the old system does not work anymore; before we lose another generation, it is time to begin the REFORMATION and RETHINKING while there are still a few believers left! Fear not, the Spirit will direct us to seize this opportunity to grow again in a vision of Christianity that was with our founder. After so many centuries of secular imperial structure and hierarchy that we have accepted along the way, we will be able to return to a community of believers and abandon all the detritus that has accumulated with the old system thus freeing us to live in peace and joy.

– Rome Watcher

There really are a variety of reasons. One acquaintance of mine left to pursue a call to ordination. She really did not have a choice – obviously. Another acquaintance stopped going to Mass after strong opposition by Catholic bishops to gay marriage laws, like the one in New York, even though these laws do not force religious bodies to change their teachings on marriage. Still another acquaintance, who is divorced from an abusive husband, is an active member of her parish but feels disrespected.

There is another group of Catholics who have not formally left the church, but who rarely participate in the life of their parishes. They do not have strong feelings against the church, but they appear to see going to Mass as just another nice activity which they have little time for in the midst of busy lives. How do committed Catholics respond to these brothers and sisters?

– SBeth

[Richard McBrien's article] makes good sense save the one element which bothers me most. Through our baptism we are members of the church. I fail to understand the basis for any statement declaring who has left the church. What exactly do they mean by 'left'. Do they mean some of us do not attend? Perhaps they mean do not contribute? Put another way it could well be that many true belivers are convinced that they have been abandoned by an ecclesial structure which has become very unchristian in its rigidity, inflexibility, and adamant rejection of Vatican II. One only has to study the Papacy from say the 13th to the 16th century to see that as an
institution it does not have a glorious or holy past. Apostolic succession would be impossible to trace through the schisms and the multiple claimants to the papacy. Yet, the current structure in its absolute claims is closer to the period of the Medicis and the Borgias than the open window created by Vatican II. Many of use see no sensse in even bothering to try to have a voice. The only thing I have to offer is that we are members of the church, we have not left, the body of Christ is wounded and there is no sign of healing from the top. The arrogance is stifling. . . .

– TomC

Recommended Off-site Link:
A Bishop Ponders the Catholic Exodus – Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, January 3, 2012).

See also the previous PCV posts:
Creating a Liberating Church (Part 1)
Creating a Liberating Church (Part 2)
Creating a Liberating Church (Part 3)
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission

The Divine is Greater Than Our Dogmas

2011-12-26T08:08:00.000-08:00

By Angie O'Gorman

Editor's Note: This commentary was first published December 22 by the National Catholic Reporter.

A few years ago during a Sunday homily, a Catholic priest in Australia preached to his congregation that the most dangerous place on Earth was a woman’s womb. I know what he was trying to get at, however poor his attempt, however misplaced his intentions, however misogynist his worldview. A terrible sadness rose in me when I heard about this, and a great anger. But why does this come to my mind now as I begin to reflect on the coming Christmas Mass at dawn?

The other image that comes is Bethlehem as it exists today in occupied Palestine, a war zone.

In between these two images I sit immobilized by what we have done to the Incarnation, by the total denial of God among us that now defines how we live with each other and the creation from within which we come.

Did it matter at all, that birth under the stars, that birth in an animal stall when a woman’s womb was good enough for Jesus? Are we so mythologized to the uniqueness of the scene that we miss the message? Do we think that Jesus was the only baby born that night to poor parents sheltering in a barn? Do we think Mary and Joseph were unique in their mixture of joy and pain and worry at the birth of their son? None of it was unique. It was normal. That’s the point. The Divine in our life is normal. It is normative. It is how things are. That is what matters, God is here, participating. What we celebrate at Christmas merely gives us eyes to see it. Words to describe it.

In Jesus’ native Aramaic the concept we know as heaven has an imminent quality. According to scholar Neil Douglas-Klotz, the Aramaic carries the image of “light and sound shining through all creation.” There is not a sense of above and beyond as in the English word heaven. But we already know this. Generations of Catholics learned that God is everywhere, omnipotent and omnipresent; then we stuck the Divine up in heaven and that was that.

Christmas can help us readjust, help us see the Divine more transparently in life, in places where we would least expect. A barn, for example, a baby. The Incarnation we celebrate at Christmas is a call, our belief in it a commitment, to seek awareness of the Divine free of the impediments of culture, class or even catechism. That process calls for a degree of openness most of us rarely embrace or even know as possible. Yet I have a feeling the Divine is so imminent, so within the essence of things, that it is only a matter of learned blindness that keeps us from seeing. It is not something natural to us to be so dense. We can do better. We can break through.

May the incarnation dawn in us this Christmas . . . May we awaken into a broader and deeper awareness of God present, especially in those on whom we project our own partial truths and worst fears. May we remember the Divine is greater than our comfortable categories and dogmas, is greater, dare we admit it, than ourselves. And in that light, may we remember that our enemies are not God’s enemies, and welcome the grace to stop inflaming the conflicts we decry and disowning the victims we create.

Quote of the Day

2011-12-24T07:54:00.000-08:00

Christmas marks the birth of the world's greatest peacemaker and nonviolent resister. His coming is told in political language. We hear of a kingdom that will have no end, of his lordship, of glory to God and peace on earth.

Notice, for example, that the angels do not sing, "Glory to Rome! Glory to America! Glory to empire! War on earth to all those not in the empire's good favor!" Sometimes, the culture of war would have us believe that's the Christmas message.

But no. The angels speak of glory to God, the reign of a peaceful child, the coming of peace on Earth. To celebrate Christmas is to take sides against war, poverty and empire. If we adopt the politics of Christmas, we will welcome that peaceful child and his gift of peace, which means we will join his ongoing campaign of nonviolent resistance to war and empire, his ongoing holy occupy movement.

With the nonviolent Jesus, we are saved from war, empire and death. We have been given a way out of the world's violence through his creative nonviolence, steadfast resistance, active peacemaking and universal love. And we have been taught how to live in love, grace and prayer.

As we relearn the politics of Christmas, may we recommit ourselves to his work for peace so that we can do our part in the upcoming year to help end war, poverty and injustice. Then maybe we will be able to join the heavenly multitude and sing with angelic harmony, "Glory to the God of peace!"

– John Dear
"Christmas and the End of the War in Iraq"
National Catholic Reporter
December 20, 2011

NOTE: John Dear's new book, Lazarus, Come Forth!, has just been published by Orbis Books. It explores Jesus as the God of life, calling humanity (in the symbol of the dead Lazarus) out of the tombs of the culture of war and death. This book and other recent books, including Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings; Put Down Your Sword and A Persistent Peace, are available from Amazon.com. For more information, go to John Dear's website.

The PCV wishes all its readers
a joyful and peaceful Christmas!

See also the previous PCV posts:
Finding Christ at Christmas
Is Christmas Christian?

Image: Simon Dewey.

Quote of the Day

2011-12-18T21:48:00.000-08:00

In an effort to promote passage of the marriage amendment to the state's Constitution, Archbishop John Nienstedt wants area Catholics to recite a special prayer during mass.

Just last week, a priest in our archdiocese was convicted of criminal sexual misconduct. Despite having the same information as the jury that convicted him, the archbishop assigned him to a parish 40 miles away from his supervision.

In addition, the archbishop responded to the courageous victim's concerns over the placement, according to the trial testimony, with the hurtful words, "trust your shepherds." Mass always begins with a penitential rite.

I would propose a prayer at the start of archdiocesan masses asking forgiveness for these failings.

– The Rev. Michael Tegeder
Letter to the Editor
Star Tribune
December 18, 2011

Recommended Off-site Link:
A Prayer for Archbishop Nienstedt – Sensus Fidelium (December 17, 2011).

See also the previous PCV posts:
Pastor Mike Tegeder Challenges Archbishop Nienstedt's "Bullying Behavior"
One Courageous Parish Priest
Local Catholic Priest Speaks Out on the MN Bishops' Anti-Gay DVD Controversy

Pope Benedict's Peace Message Calls for Wealth Redistribution

2011-12-18T09:56:00.000-08:00

By Francis X. Rocca

Editor's Note: This article was first published December 16, 2011, by Religion News Service.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) – Noting a "rising sense of frustration" at the worldwide economic recession, Pope Benedict XVI said that a more just and peaceful world requires "adequate mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth."

The pope's words appeared in his message for the World Day of Peace, released on Friday (Dec. 16) at the Vatican.

The message laments that "some currents of modern culture, built upon rationalist and individualist economic principles, have cut off the concept of justice from its transcendent roots, detaching it from charity and solidarity."

Authentic education, Benedict writes, teaches the proper use of freedom with "respect for oneself and others, including those whose way of being and living differs greatly from one's own."

Peace-making requires education not only in the values of compassion and solidarity, but in the importance of wealth redistribution, the "promotion of growth, cooperation for development and conflict resolution," Benedict writes.

The pope also calls on political leaders to "ensure that no one is ever denied access to education."

The message was presented on Friday by officials of the Vatican's Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace. The same body published a controversial document in October blaming the world's economic and financial crisis on an "economic liberalism that spurns rules and controls," and calling for global regulation of the financial industry and the international money supply.

See also the previous PCV posts:
From Jesus' Socialism to Capitalistic Christianity
Occupy Advent and the Vatican: A Revolution of Hope

Recommended Off-site Links:
Church Teaching, Occupy Wall Street Agree, Vatican Officials Say – Cindy Wooden (National Catholic Reporter, October 24, 2011).
New Vatican Document: Good News for Poor, Bad News for Tea Party – Daniel C. Maguire (Religion Dispatches, October 25, 2011).

Female Priests Push Catholic Boundaries

2011-12-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

By Rose French

Editor's Note: This article was first published December 10, 2011, by the Star Tribune (Minneapolis).

Dressed in a priestly white robe and green stole, Monique Venne lifted communion bread before an altar – defying centuries of Catholic Church law.

Despite promises of excommunication from the Vatican, she and six other women in Minnesota say they are legitimate, ordained Catholic priests, fit to celebrate the mass. They trace their status through a line of ordained women bishops back to anonymous male bishops in Europe.

"We love the church, but we see this great wrong," said Venne, 54, who co-founded Compassion of Christ Church, a Minneapolis congregation that just celebrated its first anniversary. "Not allowing women to be at the altar is a denigration of their dignity. We want the church to be the best it can be. If one leaves, one cannot effect change. So we're pushing boundaries."

Minnesota has emerged as a hotbed for the growing movement to ordain women as priests, with the highest per-capita number of female Catholic priests in the nation, according to the organization Roman Catholic Womenpriests. Women priests are working in the Twin Cities, Red Wing, Winona, Clear Lake and soon St. Cloud. The group claims about 70 women priests in the United States and more than 100 worldwide.

Several Protestant denominations have allowed women to be ordained ministers for decades. But the [Roman] Catholic Church views an all-male priesthood as unchangeable, "based on the example of Jesus, who, even though he had revered relationships with women who were his disciples, chose only men to be his apostles," said Dennis McGrath, spokesman for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

"Women who claim to have been ordained Catholic priests in fact have no relationship to the [Roman] Catholic Church because their ordination is not valid," he said.

Dozens of congregations

An increasing number of Catholics disagree with the church on this. In a poll last year by the New York Times and CBS, 59 percent of U.S. Catholics favored letting women become priests, with 33 percent opposed.

That's encouraging news for Roman Catholic Womenpriests, founded nearly nine years ago in Europe. It began after seven women were ordained aboard a ship on the Danube River by three male bishops. The group claims their ordinations are valid because they conform within the bounds of "apostolic succession."

"I do believe we are connecting through the original church, which started with the apostles," said Regina Nicolosi, 69, of Red Wing, who became bishop for Womenpriests' Midwest region in 2009.

Dozens of U.S. congregations are being led by women priests, a movement many Catholics view as a means to solving the church's problem of declining numbers of male priests. Roman Catholic Womenpriests is the first group to claim "apostolic succession," said Marian Ronan, associate professor at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.

The church sees that as a threat to its authority, Ronan said.

The Vatican issued a pronouncement in 2008 that women who sought ordination and bishops who ordained them would be excommunicated. Last year, the Vatican also labeled female ordination a delictum gravius, or grave crime.

Venne says women who work on church staffs also face the likelihood of getting fired for becoming priests. Male priests who support them can't do so publicly because they risk their retirement pensions if they are excommunicated.

Proponents of female ordination argue, however, the New Testament and early Christian art show women as priests and in other leadership roles.

'I feel like it's a nationality'

Asked why they insist on remaining Catholic when they could be welcomed as ministers in other denominations, the women say, in so many words, it's their religion, too.

"I'm as much Catholic, – I feel like it's a nationality, – as I am English, German and Polish," said Linda Wilcox, 64, who felt called to become a priest after working in the St. Paul library system for nearly 35 years. She is one of four women priests at Compassion of Christ.

Women priests in Minnesota come from a variety of backgrounds: chaplain, librarian, even meteorologist. A significant number are married and have children, another forbidden activity by the church, which calls for its priests to be celibate.

Like many women who've joined the ranks of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, Nicolosi has a master's degree in theology.

Venne and other women at Compassion of Christ recall "playing mass" when they were children and pretending to be priests. As young girls, they felt rejected that they could not be altar servers, let alone priests.

"At the core of my being I knew that couldn't be," said Judith McKloskey, 65, of Eden Prairie. "Jesus included everybody." For years at her parish church, Pax Christi, she served as a lay preacher and ran a national association for lay ministry. She was ordained in 2007.

Venne, of Burnsville, the former meteorologist, was in a Bible study group with McKloskey and decided to pursue the priesthood after participating in her ordination. Venne was ordained in June.

"I felt as though I was fulfilling what God wanted me to do," she said. "It was something I'd been called to since I was in fourth grade and because the way the Catholic Church was structured, I wasn't able to recognize it until years later. I couldn't even be an altar server in those days."

Nicolosi was helping her husband train to become a deacon in 1980 when she realized she "had a call, too. I experienced the injustice of doing the entire training and being totally qualified but not being able to be ordained."

Answer to priest shortage?

Compassion of Christ is a small congregation, with only about 15 to 20 people attending regularly. One is Pauline Cahalan, 66, a lifelong Catholic who started going a year ago.

"Basically there's just something missing with the fact that there's this philosophy or rules that say the Holy Spirit only inspires men to be priests," Cahalan said. "And that if a woman gets that calling ... they're supposed to ignore it and deny it. That just doesn't make sense to me.

"We have such a shortage of priests. To me this is one of the answers ... that we would recognize the vocations when the Holy Spirit calls women and let them become priests."

In Minnesota, the movement is expanding. One of the four priests leading Compassion of Christ, Mary Smith, will leave at the end of the year to become the full-time pastor at a new congregation in St. Cloud.

The four women say a significant reason why they buck Catholic Church convention is because they were inspired by seeing other women celebrating mass. Now they're paying it forward.

"I hope the women priests can help fire the imagination of young women in the church today, that this is a possibility," Wilcox said. "We are equal."

See also the previous PCV posts:
Ordination of Women in Minneapolis Reflects Emerging Renewal of Priesthood and Church
Roy Bourgeois: "The Exclusion of Women from the Priesthood is a Grave Injustice"
Roman Catholic Women Priests: Differing Perspectives
Ministry, Not Maleness, is the Theological Starting Point for the Priest

Recommended Off-site Links:
“We Are All the Rock”: An Interview with Roman Catholic Womanpriest Judith McKloskey – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, August 4, 2008).
A Woman Priest Reflects on Her 10-year Anniversary – Jamie L. Manson (National Catholic Reporter, December 7, 2011).

Out of Step With the Flock: Bishops Far Behind on Birth Control Issues

2011-12-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

By Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

Editor's Note: This commentary was first published December 9, 2011, by The Atlantic.

Even though 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women
use birth control during their reproductive years,
the U.S. bishops are fighting it.

Last month, the Vatican issued a clarion call to all people of conscience. It wasn't about contraception or masturbation or gay marriage or any of the other aspects of peoples' love lives have drawn religious ire through the ages. Instead, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace stepped forward to question the morality of a global economic system that relentlessly enriches a privileged few while the rest of humanity struggles to keep their heads above water.

The council reaffirmed the notion highlighted in Pope Benedict XVI's 2009 encyclical on the economy, arguing that open markets – usually the engines of prosperity – can foster poverty and inequality when unscrupulously exploited for selfish ends. As a counterbalance, the council called for international standards and safeguards to stem the world's worsening inequities in the concentration of wealth.

With millions of Americans looking for jobs and struggling in this economy, you might expect the nation's Catholic bishops to join the Vatican's quest to level the economic playing field. However, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have other priorities. They are consumed just now with the subject of birth control. The bishops' leadership is unhappy about a new national policy that includes birth control under preventive health care: a designation that requires new health plans to cover it in full, without the co-payments and deductibles that keep many women from using it effectively. This policy, which was adopted last summer and goes into effect next August, is both laudable and common-sense.

With yesterday, the 8th day of December, marking the Feast of the Immaculate Conception – which refers to Mary's being conceived free of original sin, not the conception of Jesus – it would be wise of the bishops to realize that the conception of Mary by her human parents, Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, is a reminder that woman are people of conscience and can decide for themselves when it is best to conceive. In fact, birth control use is universal, even among Catholic women: 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use birth control during their reproductive years.

Yet the more conservative bishops don't approve. So they're working with congressional Republicans to undermine this new benefit. If they succeed, millions of women – Catholic and non-Catholic alike – will miss out on the promise of the new health care law.

At issue is the health insurance that religiously-aligned employers sponsor for their workers. When health officials adopted the new birth control policy, they made an exception for "religious employers," giving them an exemption from this benefit. That concession, granted over the objection of health advocates, recognizes a narrowly defined refusal provision.

But that wasn't enough for the bishops' conference and their congressional allies. They now want the exemption expanded to cover not only "religious employers" but also the thousands of hospitals, schools, universities, and service organizations that are affiliated with religious organizations. The USCCB's demands are undermined by the fact that many of these Catholic entities currently offer birth control coverage through the health plans they offer employees. This larger exception would do nothing to protect religious freedom. But it would deny a benefit to a whole class of workers – including hundreds of thousands of non-Catholics – who want it, need it, and are legally entitled to it.

The bishops' ploy is yet another indication of how out of step they are with their flock. In the mid-1960s, Pope Paul VI authorized a commission to make recommendations about the use of birth control. The laypeople on the commission voted 60-4 for change, while the clerics voted 9 to 6. Despite the majority of both clerics and laypeople in favor of change, Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, argued that this change would undermine Church authority, because it would look like the Church could not discern eternal truths.

Well, Catholic theologians, priests, and laity did discern truths, and it is the Church's authority that was undermined. Wojtyle wrote, "To change our position would mean that we should concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant Churches." Why, more than 40 years later, do bishops need to lobby Congress to get us Catholics to do what they want? Shouldn't they be able to persuade us on their own? The fact that they can't is a tribute to their own impotence.

As a woman and a lifelong Catholic, I sometimes marvel that faith can flourish despite the hierarchy's not infrequent disdain for the faithful – particularly the women faithful. Over the past century, birth control has improved women's health, enhanced children's prospects, and helped lift millions of families out of poverty. It would be difficult to find any other single issue that most Catholic women could agree on, much less the 98 percent who have thoughtfully concluded that they must do what they can to prevent unintended pregnancies.

The head bishops not only don't respect that judgment by members of the opposite sex, they have chosen to engage in supreme doublespeak by choosing to cite "freedom of conscience" as a justification for denying women their own freedom of conscience in resolving this intensely personal issue for themselves.

Considering how the Church has treated women throughout history, I would have hoped that today's bishops would make a special effort to listen to our concerns. After all, St Augustine, one of the great doctors of the Church, argued that women were not made in the image of God, and another renowned theologian, Thomas Aquinas, defined women as "misbegotten males." Pope John Paul II, in an effort to apologize for our history, wrote that women have two vocations: virgin and mother. He forgot president, prime minister, or priest.

Church-affiliated institutions employ millions of non-Catholics who signed on to earn a paycheck. Their choice of employer shouldn't determine whether they can plan their families. The new federal policy doesn't require anyone to use birth control, nor does it force any employer to dispense contraceptives. It's part of a larger effort to reform health care and ensure that cost doesn't deprive people of basic health services. Under the new national policy, the one percent of American women who never use birth control will be just as free as they are today to avoid it. The other 99 percent will gain access to a service that far too many still lack. By any reasonable definition, the policy benefits everyone.

Besides being ethically dubious, the USCCB's demands lack any legal justification. In exempting religiously affiliated employers from the mandate to cover contraceptives, the federal government adopted the same standard that many states already use. By that standard, a "religious employer" is one with a religious mission, a religious workforce, and a religious clientele. If the bishops' conference succeeds in rewriting that definition, millions of non-Catholic workers will lose a vital health service for themselves and their dependents.

It would also flout the will of the people. Americans want health insurance that guarantees basic care for all, and they agree overwhelmingly that birth control is part of basic care. In a Hart Research survey, 71 percent of voters agreed that health plans should cover birth control at no cost. Among Catholic women, the margin of support was 77 percent.

The most ideological of the U.S. bishops would do well to heed not only their more clear-sighted Vatican superiors but also the wisdom of so many women. That is, they could redirect the energy they waste obsessing about sex toward helping defeat the corrosive effects on tens of millions of Americans and their children of poverty, lack of health insurance, and unemployment.

Funny how the right often calls us "cafeteria Catholics," and yet here, rather than choosing to deal with the whole body of Catholic teaching, they are themselves obsessed with what we could call "pelvic politics" – and in the process shrinking the broad teaching of the Church to a few, narrow concerns.

From 1995 to 2003, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend served as Maryland's first woman lieutenant governor. She now works in finance in Washington.

"Your Heart Will Be Deeply Moved by What You Hear"

2011-12-08T11:36:00.000-08:00

In an open letter published in today's Star Tribune, Retired Lutheran Bishop Herbert W. Chilstrom tells the Roman Catholic Bishops of Minnesota that they are making a "significant mistake" in backing the so-called marriage protection amendment. He also challenges them to take the time to meet with and listen to gay and lesbian persons.

"Hear as they tell you what it means to be a child of God and a faithful member of your church, persons who happen to be gay or lesbian through no choice of their own," Chilstrom writes. "I can promise you, based on my experience, that your heart will be deeply moved by what you hear."

Bishop Chilstrom's letter is reprinted in its entirety below.

___________________________

To My Brothers – The Catholic Bishops of Minnesota:

In 1976 I was elected a Lutheran bishop in Minnesota – one of seven such Lutheran leaders in the state. Over the next years one of the highlights of my time in office was the annual noon-to-noon retreat with our eight Catholic counterparts in the state.

The bond that developed between us was deep and respectful. We shared our differences; we celebrated our likenesses. My friendship with Archbishop John Roach and Bishop Raymond Lucker, in particular, is a blessing I will treasure as long as I live.

May I share a word with all of you who now lead the Roman Catholic community of faith in Minnesota?

First, I would go to the wall to defend your right to work for the adoption of the so-called marriage protection amendment. Having said that, I must tell you that I believe you are making a significant mistake.

Over my 35 years as an active and retired bishop I have come to know hundreds of gay and lesbian persons. I have yet to meet even one who is opposed to the marriage of one man and one woman. After all, they are the daughters and sons of such unions.

What they cannot understand is why church leaders would oppose their fundamental desire and right to be in partnership with someone they love and respect who happens to be of the same gender and sexual orientation. They don't understand why they should not enjoy all the rights and privileges their straight counterparts take for granted.

More than a half century ago Father Francis Gilligan spoke out for equality for African American citizens of Minnesota. Though many argued on the basis of the Bible that these neighbors were inferior to others, Gilligan fought tirelessly for justice for these brothers and sisters.

In our generation homosexual persons are subject to the same discrimination. Their detractors often use the Bible and tradition as weapons of choice.

Is it not time for religious leaders, walking in the footsteps of Father Gilligan, to do the same for another minority, neighbors who are as responsible as our African American sisters and brothers?

I also suggest that you ask yourselves an important question: If the amendment is passed, will it make one particle of difference in our common culture in Minnesota? I don't think so.

Responsible lesbian and gay persons will continue to seek companionship with those they love. This law will only work to drive many of them deeper into closets of anonymity.

Instead, why not welcome them into our communities of faith where they can work side by side with us as equal partners?

Let me put out a challenge to each of you brothers. Invite 15 gay and lesbian persons from your respective areas, one at a time, to spend two hours with you.

Thirty hours are a pittance compared to the time you are investing to promote adoption of the marriage amendment. Use the time, not for confession, but to listen to them describe what it is like to live in our culture in Minnesota.

Hear as they tell you what it means to be a child of God and a faithful member of your church, persons who happen to be gay or lesbian through no choice of their own. I can promise you, based on my experience, that your heart will be deeply moved by what you hear.

When you have finished your time with these sisters and brothers in Christ, spend a quiet hour reflecting on a single question: "As I understand the heart of my Savior Jesus, how would he treat these sons and daughters of my church?"

Herbert W. Chilstrom is former presiding bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Related Off-site Links:
Mary Bednarowski on the Power of Our Stories – The Wild Reed (April 19, 2007).
A Head and Heart Response to the Catholic Hierarchy's Opposition to Marriage Equality – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, November 23, 2011).
In the Struggle for Marriage Equality, MN Catholics are Making a Difference by Changing Hearts and Minds – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, May 26, 2011).
The Minneapolis (and Online) Premiere of Catholics for Marriage Equality – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, October 17, 2011).

Occupy Advent and the Vatican: A Revolution of Hope

2011-12-06T21:44:00.000-08:00

By Alex Mikulich

Editor's Note: This commentary was first published December 6 by The National Catholic Reporter.

We live in a moment of economic, social, moral and spiritual impasse. Wondrous technological achievements fail to assuage our possessive individualism, fail to end extreme poverty, fail to cultivate life-giving connections between the rich and poor peoples of the earth, and fail to nurture our universal rootedness in the earth's ecosystems.

Scandals in almost every major societal institution erode public trust and any sense of our shared responsibility for each other. Technological prowess advanced through wars and multiple capitalist practices fail to care for the most vulnerable among us as they wreak ecological devastation and threaten the very existence of our planet.

Left to our own idolatry, the result is more of the same – insatiable consumer desire, increasing cynicism, politics and economics driven by the self-interest of the powerful against the common good, and the "presumptive" resort to violence as the solution to conflict.

In this time of global and national decline, economically, socially and morally, how do we take up the spiritual task of waiting this Advent? For what or whom do we hope in this season of longing?

As I prepare for Advent in this time of impasse, I suggest reflection upon the unlikely congruence of two divergent resources: the Occupy movement and the Vatican's recent statement on global financial reform, "Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority."

In the words of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the authoritative office within the Vatican with the highest responsibility for Catholic social teaching, "the gap between ethical training and technical preparation needs to be filled by highlighting in a particular way the perpetual synergy between the two levels of practical doing (praxis) and of boundless human striving (poiesis)."

That is a theologically sophisticated way of emphasizing the need both to integrate spirituality and ethics, individually and collectively, and restore the primacy of spirituality and ethics over capitalism and finance.

How do we begin this work in Advent?

The Occupy movement practices a way of waiting and listening I find instructive for this Advent in this moment of societal breakdown. Each word and phrase spoken by every speaker is repeated, chorus-like, by the group. It is a way Occupiers slow down the pace of conversation to attend and listen to each other's voices. It is also a way that Occupiers give priority to voices of those previously unheard or marginalized. As they listen to each other, Occupiers seek to hear the voices of those who have not spoken or have not been heard.

I am struck by the wisdom of this Occupy practice for Advent in the way that it calls us to wait and listen, wait and attend, wait and be with one another in the midst of societal breakdown. It is a way of attending to what the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace calls the depths of "human striving" for enduring goods of love, peace and justice.

In the Occupy movement, if we listen and attend to the voices of the people, we hear diverse voices crying out for a different way of living, a different way of being in the world that values every voice, liberates every voice and joins every voice in the common work of mutual uplift, healing and new life.

Both the Occupy movement through this practice and the Vatican through its recent statement on global financial reform compel us to reflect on the need for a contemplative orientation that listens and embodies the cries of the oppressed, and their cries for freedom, for work, for liberation and for new life in God.

Advent calls us to the spiritual labor of waiting and listening to each other, to those who are in any way oppressed and to our deepest longings for love, connection, new life and God.

Yet such waiting as reorientation to the truly good is no easy task, for it demands "anguish and suffering," as the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace puts it, as we struggle for love and justice in the midst of societal sinfulness and decline.

This spiritual labor of waiting and listening, I suggest, invites people of faith to open ourselves to our shared vulnerability with all people and to our loss of meaning and empty imagination in the midst of societal moral and spiritual decline.

Precisely at this seeming "deadendness," abandonment and emptiness, I wonder if God might be calling us to experience transformed desire, personally and collectively, for new vision, love, courage and hope that renews life across the face of the earth. Might there be a miracle of transformation in the midst of emptiness and poverty?

As the contemplative Constance FitzGerald suggests, the miracle is that contemplative cries from people and the earth are "no longer silent and invisible, but rather prophetic and revolutionary."

This is where the Occupy movement and the Vatican most closely converge. Both call us to wait and listen. If we attend and listen to the groans within ourselves, from peoples everywhere and from the earth, we may yet hear the cry of new life and a new creation. When will we groan with all peoples and the earth for God? In waiting and listening to these groans, may we find the Spirit yearning within us for the manger where the revolution of hope and love is born.

Alex Mikulich is research fellow at the Jesuit Social Research Institute, Loyola University New Orleans. He is co-author of The Scandal of White Complicity in U.S. Hyper-Incarceration: A Nonviolent Spirituality of White Resistance (Forthcoming from Palgrave MacMillan in 2012).

Belgium Catholics Issue Reform Manifesto

2011-12-02T20:08:00.000-08:00

By John A. Dick

Editor's Note: This article was first published December 2, 2011, by The National Catholic Reporter.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – The week before the start of Advent, four Flemish priests issued a church reform manifesto that called for allowing the appointment of laypeople as parish pastors, liturgical leaders and preachers, and for the ordination of married men and women as priests.

By the week's end more than 4,000 of publicly active Catholics had signed on to the "Believers Speak Out" manifesto. By Dec. 1, the number of signers had reached 6,000.

Among the supporters are hundreds of priests, educators, academics and professional Catholics. Two prominent supporters are former rectors of the Catholic University of Leuven, Roger Dillemans and Marc Vervenne.

"These are not 'protest people.' They are people of faith. They are raising their voices. They hope their bishops are listening," said Fr. John Dekimpe, one of four priests who launched the manifesto.

"Some people are fearful about approaching church leadership," said the priest, who lives in Kortrijk. "Is this being a dissident? I don't think so. The Belgian church is a disaster. If we don't do something, the exodus of those leaving the church will just never stop. ... I really want the bishops to reflect deeply about the growing discontent of so many believers."

Among the manifesto's demands, made "in solidarity with fellow believers in Austria, Ireland and many other countries," are that:

• Parish leadership be entrusted to trained laypeople;

• Communion services be held even if no priest is available;

• Laypeople be allowed to preach;

• Divorced people be allowed to receive Communion;

• As quickly as possible, both married men and women be admitted to the priesthood.

So far there has been no official reaction from Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard, the Catholic primate of Belgium, any of the other Belgium bishops, or the Vatican. Privately, and off the record, one Belgian bishop has applauded the manifesto.

Jürgen Mettepenningen, a Leuven theologian and former press officer for Léonard, told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen that he hopes the manifesto can lead to a well-thought-out church reform. "When I reflect on what I have written and said over the past years, I can only say that the spirit of the manifesto is the very same spirit in which I have been trying to work to make the church more credible: true to the faith."

Last year, after reports of abuse rocked the Belgian church, an independent commission discovered sexual abuse in most Catholic dioceses and all church-run boarding schools and religious orders. The commission said 475 cases of abuse had been reported to it between January and June this year.

In one of the more prominent cases, Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe was forced to resign after admitting to years of abusing his nephew. In April of this year, he told Belgian television that he had molested another nephew and that it had all started "as a game."

The full text of the manifesto, "Believers Speak Out":

Parishes without a priest, Eucharist at inappropriate hours, worship without Communion: that really should not be! What is delaying the needed church reform? We, Flemish believers, ask our bishops to the break the impasse in which we are locked. We do this in solidarity with fellow believers in Austria, Ireland and many other countries, with all who insist on vital church reform.

We simply do not understand why the leadership in our local communities (e.g., parishes) is not entrusted to men or women, married or unmarried, professionals or volunteers, who already have the necessary training. We need dedicated pastors!

We do not understand why these our fellow believers cannot preside at Sunday liturgical celebrations. In every active community we need liturgical ministers!

We do not understand why, in communities where no priest is available, a Word service cannot also include a Communion service.

We do not understand why skilled laypeople and well-formed religious educators cannot preach. We need the word of God!

We do not understand why those believers who, with very good will, have remarried after a divorce must be denied Communion. They should be welcomed as worthy believers. Fortunately, there are some places where this is happening.

We also demand that, as quickly as possible, both married men and women be admitted to the priesthood. We, people of faith, desperately need them now!

John A. Dick, an American historical theologian, has lived in Belgium for 30 years. He is currently visiting professor of Religion in American Society at the University of Ghent. This report includes some information from Catholic News Service.

See also the previous PCV posts:
Council of the Baptized Launched in Minneapolis-St. Paul
American Catholic Council Issues "Declaration for Reform and Renewal"
Hans Küng Says Only Radical Reforms Can Save the Catholic Church
Hans Küng on Church Reform: "The Base Must Gather Its Strength and Make Itself Heard"
It's Critical That Catholics Find Their Voice
Let Our Voices Be Heard!
Austrian Cardinal Roils the Vatican
A Church in Flux
Urgent Tasks for Church Renewal
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission
The Independent Spirit and "Divisible Unity" of the Modern Church
Creating a Liberating Church (Part 1)
Creating a Liberating Church (Part 2)
Creating a Liberating Church (Part 3)
Colleen Kochivar-Baker on "Why We Stay"

Image: Bruges, Belgium (2005) – Michael Bayly.

Quote of the Day

2011-11-30T12:19:00.000-08:00

. . . I happen to find the Latin mass beautiful, and at first I seemed to object less to the new changes than most Catholics I know. I attend Spanish language mass from time to time. In that liturgy, we already use phrasing similar to that the New Old Missal introduces. The Vatican is not nearly so interested, however, in the accuracy of the translation of the mass as it is in dragging today's vernacular mass back in time. They want the 1962 mass with all the trimmings. This new translation business is a tasty treat for the lockstep sheep and papist throwbacks.

Though I seem to be alone in it, I don't mind having to use (the new) "consubstantial" in the Nicene Creed. "Consubstantial" – it's so, so Latin, I almost like it. There is, however, good reason not to like this kind of change. Daunting Latinate terms like "consubstantial" are tools in the grift. When the boys in the Vatican want our money, they remind us that all are welcome – no theology knowledge needed. But when people in the pews challenge man-made doctrine, the men in miters are all too quick to remind us that our lack of advanced degrees from the Pontifical Gregorian University might leave us less than qualified to challenge the Holy See on any Catholic matter.

The average Catholic is too busy living a life to familiarize him or herself with the specifics of each papal encyclical, each tenet of dogma and the many voluminous, seminal Roman Catholic theological texts – and the Magisterium likes it that way. Ecclesiastical jargon makes the bishops look like they have the inside line on God. Hence the current pope's fervor for evangelization in the developing world: Hungry, illiterate people make good converts.

The New Old Missal matter works well as a diversionary tactic. Its well-timed fanfare shifts attention away from a pontificate mired in perversion. It is easier to sit at the long table in a gown parsing the Filioque than it is to sit at that same table and discuss the ordination of women, the Vatican's culpability in spreading HIV and AIDS in the developing world, and its own spiritual cancer in the form of bishop-facilitated child rape. . . .

– Michele Somerville
"The Truth Behind the Godawful New (Old) Roman Catholic Missal"
The Huffington Post
November 29, 2011

Related Off-site Link:
The Best Priestly Review of the New Translation – Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, November 29, 2011).

See also the previous PCV post:
Yesterday's Language: The New Words of the Catholic Mass

Yesterday's Language: The New Words of the Catholic Mass

2011-11-26T14:16:00.000-08:00

.
By Gail Ramshaw

Editor's Note: This article was first published August 22, 2011 by The Christian Century.

Because I affirm the unity of the body of Christ, I consider that the health of one arm affects the entire body. Thus I am either strengthened or weakened by the worship style of other Christians. For decades I've worked as a lay Lutheran toward making the words of Christian worship communally approved, biblically inspired, theologically alive and masterfully crafted. Given these convictions, I say with sadness that the new English translation of the Roman Catholic Order of Mass, mandated by the Vatican to be inaugurated this Advent, wounds not only many of my Catholic friends but also me.

Let me apply these four goals not only to the forthcoming Roman Catholic rite but also to texts used by many Protestant churches.

Words communally approved: Communal approval, as I see it, is achieved by means of a decadelong process involving open questionnaires, diverse committees, scholarly input, theological scrutiny, trial rites, genuine review, prudent revision, a concluding convention vote and denominationally supported education. Yet the new Roman Order of Mass has been smashed down upon the heads of dozens of eminent and skilled wordsmiths who since 1966 have labored to translate the Latin rite into English. The promised communal process was replaced by hierarchical control. Nobody claims that the words of the newly authorized translation are communally approved.

In countless Protestant churches also one finds that the staff or a single minister will compose texts for Sunday. Worshipers are expected to speak with their whole heart words that they have never laid eyes on.

Any new worship text embodies some reform agenda. Was the agenda communally approved? The 2001 Vatican document "Liturgiam Authenticam" describes some of the Roman agenda—and far from being communally affirmed, the Vatican's literalist theory of translation has been criticized by many linguists. Furthermore, much of the Vatican agenda is an unspoken conservative rejection of some recent theological and liturgical developments, a counterreform that recalls the Council of Trent.

And then I wonder: have those ministers who construct their own liturgies clearly articulated their several agendas, and do at least their congregations approve these directions?

How wide is the envisioned Christian community? Much 20th-century liturgical renewal resulted from ecumenical cooperation in which different traditions learned from each other and collaborated on common projects. I am particularly saddened that the new Roman translation reflects a recent Vatican decision to heighten its denominational distinctiveness by rejecting use of ecumenical translations of shared texts such as the Lord's Prayer and the creeds.

Yet all Christians should be concerned when their narrow denominational identity or preferred personal piety outshouts an emerging ecumenical consensus. I think, for example, of those Protestants who, tediously repeating what the 16th-century Reformers said about the medieval Roman canon, refuse to pray a biblically rich Great Thanksgiving at the eucharistic table, even though a century of ecumenical scholarship concurs that eucharistia, the "thanksgiving," is best served by a substantial prayer in which God is praised for the Earth, for centuries of the beloved stories of salvation, for the meal of Christ's body and for the continuous infusion of the Holy Spirit.

Words biblically inspired: That Christians assemble around the word of God as found in a perpetually retranslated Bible raises many issues. Which biblical terminology is necessary for the proclamation of the mystery of Christ? In each language, which words and images best express that biblical vocabulary? How much biblical literacy ought we expect of worshipers? When is a biblical reference inaccessible and thus merely mystifying?

The new Roman translation of the prayer before communion, "Lord, I am not worthy," now adds "that you should enter under my roof." The text assumes that worshipers know the story of the centurion in Luke 7. The intent is noble, the educational task enormous.

In the new Roman rite, the second option for the eucharistic prayer asks the Spirit to be sent down "like the dewfall." In the Hebrew scriptures, I count more than a dozen instances of dew as a metaphor for divine blessings (e.g., Hosea 14:5). Yet I doubt that most of the students I taught at a Catholic university know what "dewfall" is or, since their terrain does not rely on dew for fertility, would find it a powerful image of divine transformation.

And how do all of us cast, for example, the New Testament imagery of becoming slaves of Christ, beyond softening the noun to servants? And have we enriched our liturgy with the countless images for God and the sacraments that we can borrow from the Psalms?

Is the Bible rendered so as to support denominational preferences? Maintaining a traditional translation can inhibit responsibly attending to biblical meaning. That the Catholic Church continues to cast the words of institution in the future tense—"which will be given up for you," "which will be poured out for you"—exemplifies this tendency.

For a Protestant example of this resistance, consider that seminaries have long taught that the Lord's Prayer is a plea for the coming of God's kingdom, and thus the translation "lead us not into temptation" misrepresents the eschatological intention of Matthew's and Luke's reference to the "time of trial" (NRSV), the "final test" (NAB). So why have so few Protestants adopted the more biblically faithful 1988 English Language Liturgical Consultation translation of the Lord's Prayer, which pleads "save us from the time of trial"?

Words theologically alive: In the new Roman text, the theology expressed in the original Latin is the approved belief, and its hierarchical depiction of the church and the Earth is maintained. In a reactionary move, the rubric "the sign of communion is more complete when given under both kinds" is to become "if any are present who are to receive Holy Communion under both kinds. . . ." The response to "the Lord be with you" is now to be rendered "and with your spirit," a change that has been defended as appropriately referring to a higher "spirit" conferred on the clergy at ordination. But is it theologically helpful to be reminded of ecclesiastical status at the time when we greet one another in the Risen Christ?

All of us must inquire which century governs our worship. Have the theological gains of the 20th century entered our Sunday speech? Why do preachers who in a postmodern time accept scholarly proposals about the origin of the New Testament preach as if the Gospels are audiotapes of Jesus' ministry?

Words masterfully crafted: Most worship includes various levels of language: elevated, colloquial and somewhere between. With my national church, I maintain that each of these levels of contemporary speech can be shaped to convey the gospel. But in the new Roman translation, the rhetorical style of complex Latinate sentences suggests that masterful English cannot carry the mystery. Perhaps those who craft liturgical texts are often tempted to resurrect the archaic: I recall that the translators of the King James Version of the Bible decided to continue use of thou-thine-thee, even though it was passing out of colloquial use, because they judged that words which sounded laden with piety would lull users into acceptance.

The new Roman Order of Mass is a compendium of the antiquated. Important nouns (e.g., Priest, Order of Bishops, Martyrs) are capitalized, while unimportant nouns (e.g., deacon, people) are not. Common titles (e.g., opening prayer, censer) are replaced with traditional sacral terms (e.g., collect prayer, thurible). The church is a she. The word soul shows up repeatedly. (I enjoyed asking my students whether they had a soul—most said yes—and if they had one, what it was—big blank.) Does not the choice of archaisms suggest that God is essentially old-fashioned? In the 21st century, what do we mean when we speak about "souls"? The incarnation says to me that our daily speech can carry the presence of God, but perhaps we prefer hiding in our grandmother's attic chest.

For me, the linguistic nadir in the Roman rite is the wording at the cup: Jesus "took this precious chalice in his holy and venerable hands." Of this, I ask, what is the referent? Of precious, I think of Gollum, or worse yet, Precious Moments. Of chalice, I say that although it is a possible translation of the Latin calix, even Indiana Jones could distinguish the cup from a chalice. Of venerable, the dictionary agrees with me that the English word connotes age. I cannot fathom how this phrasing could have been proposed, let alone approved and required.

This lamentable new rite does not represent liturgical language that is communally acceptable, biblically accurate, theologically helpful or linguistically masterful, and it has impelled some Catholic liturgical scholars to conclude that, well, actually, words don't really matter all that much. This strikes me as a counsel of despair, the sad cry of faithful worshipers who feel themselves helpless. I hope that this sense of resignation is not contagious but that all of us, in our varied Christian assemblies, will tirelessly address these issues, toward the continuously renewed vibrancy of our liturgical language.

Gail Ramshaw has written widely on liturgical language. Her book Treasures Old and New discusses images in the lectionary readings.

Related Off-site Links:
Catholics Facing Changes in Liturgy – Rose French (Star Tribune, November 22, 2011).
Making Do With a Faulty Translation – National Catholic Reporter (November 23, 2011).
Latin Whiz, 16, Finds New Liturgy Language Lacking – Robert McClory (National Catholic Reporter, November 2, 2011).
The New Translation Makes a Mess of the Trinity – Joseph S. O'Leary (June 16, 2011).
Those Horrible New Translations Proceed on Their Merry Way – Joseph S. O'Leary (June 12, 2011)
The Coming American Schism – Phyllis Zagano (National Catholic Reporter, July 20, 2011).
Why Let Bishops Drive Us From the Church We Love? – Brian Cahill (National Catholic Reporter, May 2, 2011).
Irish Priests Want New Missal Postponed – Sarah MacDonald (National Catholic Reporter, February 4, 2011).
Liturgist Says He Has Had Enough – Thomas C. Fox (National Catholic Reporter, February 4, 2011).

When Is Dissent Not Just Dissent?

2011-11-23T07:15:00.000-08:00

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By Robert McClory

Editor's Note: The following article was first published November 17, 2011 by the National Catholic Reporter.

The recent, very thorough survey of American Catholics, whose results were featured in the Oct. 28-Nov. 10 NCR, revealed no overwhelming shifts in belief and practice since the first such survey in 1987. The latest figures reinforce the fact that a substantial number of Catholics are convinced they can be in good standing with the church without adhering to church teachings on various issues, including weekly Mass attendance and remarriage after divorce. More than half the respondents in the survey consider "not very important" Catholic positions opposing abortion, same-sex marriage and requiring a celibate male clergy.

Bishops, priests and other church leaders have been viewing similar results for years now without throwing up their arms and declaring panic. Their easy and obvious response is that the surveys are polluted by the number of lax Catholics, half-Catholics, and pseudo-Catholics affected by the winds of secularism, relativism and individualism howling through American culture. Obviously, they say, this is dissent, this is disobedience.

There can be some truth there, but I would like to suggest that we may be dealing with something else -- something you are not likely to hear mentioned by your bishop or your parish priest. It is the "non-reception" of certain church teachings. And that is not just a less blunt term for dissent. Non-reception holds a respectable place in Catholic teaching among theologians (and very likely among many bishops if they were not so fearful of saying what they think).

According to Jesuit Fr. Ladislas Orsy, writing in the Encyclopedia of Catholicism, church law, like ordinary human law, has two stages. First, it is formulated by the lawgiver and promulgated or brought to the attention of the subjects. In the second stage, those who become aware of the law must try to understand it as they "encounter it in their concrete, particular and personal situations." They must then "form a critical judgment about the law either by affirming it through steady obedience or by bringing to the legislator's notice the difficulties the law may generate."

But what if the subjects, having presented their difficulties, are rebuffed by the legislator or are simply ignored? In that case, the second stage is incomplete and the law has no real effect. It's a little like the tree falling in the forest when there is no one around to see it or hear it fall.

Discussing Vatican II, Benedictine Bishop B.C. Butler acknowledged that if a teaching "failed in the end to enjoy reception on the part of the church, this would prove it had not met the requirements" for enforcement. And in 1969, the theologian Joseph Ratzinger (currently Pope Benedict VI) spoke about even infallibly proposed teachings: "Where there is neither consensus on the part of the universal church nor clear testimony in the sources, no binding decision is possible. If such a decision were formally made, it would lack the necessary conditions and the question of the decision's legitimacy would have to be examined." What Butler and Benedict are getting at is the very real possibility of legitimate non-reception.

Is that what these surveys are telling us over and over again? It would be out of the question, I think, to attribute all non-reception to the presence of irresponsible pseudo-Catholics in the survey responses. The latest American Catholic survey is helpful here, since it carefully distinguishes in some areas the responses of highly committed, moderately committed and low-committed Catholics. The highly committed are described as far more likely than other groups to affirm the importance of the sacraments, the core beliefs of the church, the church's apostolic tradition and its social justice teachings. They also tend to rely heavily on Vatican teaching authority and to emphasize church teaching regarding sexual behavior. Simply put, these are "cream-of-the crop" Catholics.

Yet according to the survey results this year, almost half of these loyal believers say you can be a good Catholic without adhering to church law on divorce and remarriage, on living together without a valid marriage, on attending Mass weekly. And 60 percent of this highly committed flock says you can be a good Catholic without following church teaching on contraception. It would seem then that many dedicated Catholics are trying to develop an informed conscience and have concluded they may disagree with official teaching in good faith in some cases. At least implicitly, they recognize that the two-stage characteristic of authentic teaching means a law not received by the greater church lacks the force of obligation. Call it dissent, if you will, or call it non-reception. It is what's quietly happening in today's American church.

See also the previous PCV posts:
Gerald Arbuckle on the "Critical Role of Dissent"
Dissent: Lessons from Slavery
Nicholas Lash on Dissent and Disagreement
Richard Gaillardetz on the Need to "Wrestle with the Tradition"
Civil Discourse. In Church?

Recommended Off-site Links:
Robert McClory on a Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent (Part 1) – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, June 10, 2008).
Robert McClory on a Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent (Part 2) – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, July 8, 2008).

Image: Michael Bayly.

Both Sides Expect Obama to Side with Bishops on Contraception Coverage

2011-11-22T18:52:00.000-08:00

By Sarah Posner

Editor's Note: This article was first published November 22, 2011 by ReligionDispatches.org.

Democrats for Life, which lost most of the members of its caucus in the Blue Dog wipeout of the 2010 midterms, is out with a statement about the Obama Administration's impending decision on whether to expand the exemption from birth control coverage for employer-sponsored insurance plans. If the Administration does the Bishops' bidding, employers could choose to exclude from insurance coverage the free contraception, mandated by HHS guidelines issued under the Affordable Care Act, based on "religious conscience," even if the employer isn't a church.

DFL executive director Kristen Day issued a statement predicting that the administration would indeed decide to expand the exemption, so that even nominally religious employers could refuse to cover contraceptives. Note the confidence, from her statement:

The Administration has no intention of forcing Catholic institutions to provide insurance coverage for services that are directly in opposition to their moral beliefs. It does not make any sense from a public policy perspective and it certainly is not smart politically to alienate Catholic voters.

Remarkably, DFL offers not one sitting member of Congress for comment on this issue. Instead, it offers former Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper (who was defeated in 2010) and former Congressman Bart Stupak, author of the notorious Stupak amendment, who chose not to run again in 2010. Presumably these two are offered to testify to what they believed they were voting for in the ACA ("conscience" protections), but it certainly is telling that there isn't an actual sitting member of Congress offered to comment on DFL's behalf.

But pro-choice advocates worry that Day's confidence (however out of step her views are with rank-and-file Catholics) is well-placed. They say they expect imminent action from the Obama Administration to broaden the exemption beyond churches and other houses of worship. That action could come as early as tomorrow.

David Nolan, a spokesperson for Catholics for Choice, told me today, "Obama's definitely listening to the bishops. The bishops seem to have significant sway over the administration, which can be seen by the fact Archbishop Dolan met with [Obama] last week and came out alleging that he felt much more at ease with what was going on after the meeting. Which seems to suggest that Obama made lots of conciliatory noises to the archbishop." The archbishop, Nolan emphasized, does not represent American Catholics, but rather is "the leader of 271 active bishops, and that's who he represents."

Catholics for Choice has launched a campaign urging its supporters to call the White House and express that "Catholics overwhelmingly reject the bishops’ views on contraception" and that it "is discriminatory to deny these women and men access to this important provision simply because the institution where they work or the school they attend is religiously affiliated." The ACLU has launched a similar campaign, arguing that religious freedom "does not mean that we get to impose those beliefs on others."

"There is absolutely no reason to expand this exception," said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, policy counsel for the ACLU. "There's certainly no legal reason for it to be changed. The current rule doesn’t infringe on anyone’s religious liberty as a matter of law."

As with the fight over the Stupak amendment, the Bishops' concerns took precedence over those of rank-and-file Catholics, and certainly over those of non-Catholics. Stupak insisted, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the law was insufficient to prevent federal tax dollars from funding abortions. (The Hyde Amendment already does so.) As a result, he and the Bishops fought for an amendment that would result in restricting abortion coverage in the private insurance market, in their quest to restrict non-existent taxpayer funding of abortion coverage. After what they insisted was an inadequate restriction on abortion coverage eventually passed in the final bill, anti-choice groups vowed to redouble their efforts. The opposition to birth control coverage is just one of their targets.

The Bishops are attempting to box Obama into a corner by making this an issue of "religious conscience," a strategy in line with their new campaign to frame others' rights as an infringement of their religious liberty. If they don't prevail, it will be just one more reason, in their minds, that their religion is being "neutered" — the term Dolan used just last week.

But if Obama does allow them to declare victory, it will set a dangerous precedent for the "religious liberty" claims of certain religious figures to stand in the way of people who do not share their religion, and in this case, even their co-religionists who challenge the leadership's orthodoxy. Like Catholic women over the age of 18 who are just as likely to have used contraception as the general population. All 98% of them.

Quote of the Day

2011-11-20T15:12:00.000-08:00

John Allen is very good at squeezing some lemonade out of lemons. Unfortunately even he cannot hide the fact that the current Vatican regime as articulated by Pope Benedict is really asking us to meekly accept their total control while calling it liberation. The Vatican defines what it means by individual conversion, and has no problems exerting it's authority when Catholics don't convert in the exact Vatican way. This Vatican will also talk endlessly about clergy staying out of politics until it finds a clergyman who is willing to rule a country in the way the Vatican wants a country ruled. Then it's OK for a clergyman to be overtly political.

Benedict's Vatican will talk about a preferential option for the poor, but his hierarchy is perfectly willing to leave that preferential option up to the vagaries of individual conversion and conscience. This is one of the few places we Catholics are free to exercise individual conscience. Of course this kind of exercising does keep the Calvinistic wealthy Catholic fully in the fold and donating to a given Bishop's latest cathedral building project. Sometimes the preferential option for the poor means building a massive church in which the poor can vicariously feel the riches in heaven which await them in exchange for their temporal suffering. This kind of thing is precisely why Allen writes that Benedict insists the supernatural realm is the deepest and most 'real' level of existence. Not to mention it's also the one for which we have no 'real' evidence and is there for ripe for authority to define for us – and keep external to us, when Jesus repeatedly said that realm was inside us.

That 'inside us' thing sure does seem to be the one concept Jesus taught that our leadership likes to ignore. Of course if the kingdom is inside us, we don't have much use for the external kingdom that calls for Vatican elucidation or clerical mediation. Can't be havin' that. . . .

– Colleen Kochivar-Baker
"John Allen On Pope Benedict's Lonely Liberation Theology"
Enlightened Catholicism
November 20, 2011

Catholic Bishops Assault Health and Common Sense

2011-11-16T05:49:00.000-08:00

By Scott Dibble

Editor's Note: This op-ed was first published November 15 in the Star Tribune (Minneapolis).

A new, forceful campaign from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, pushing an extremist ideological agenda against literally every single form of birth control, family planning services and women's health care, has come to light in Congress.

During a hearing of the Subcommittee on Health, Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., made clear that he will push to overturn a recent decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that ensures that health plans cover birth control.

At the behest of the bishops, Pitts ignores the fact that millions of women and families would greatly benefit from better access to affordable birth control, in keeping with the widely agreed need for crucial preventative services across the board -- key to better public health and to reining in costs.

This is just the latest in a broad campaign by the bishops to impose their narrow religious views onto the laws of our country (and to enrich themselves with taxpayer dollars for the programs and institutions they run at the same time).

They very nearly brought down health care reform in its entirety over a contrived abortion controversy. More recently, they were the prime movers behind a bill that permits hospitals to refuse emergency care to women in need of life-saving reproductive health services.

The Catholic bishops' efforts blatantly undermine religious freedom in our country. Official Catholic positions say that abortion is impermissible even in cases of rape and incest; that stem cell research to help cure and treat debilitating illnesses is unacceptable, and that all artificial contraception and sterilization methods, including birth-control pills, vasectomies and condoms, are a violation.

As a Catholic, I know that all of the recent attacks by the Catholic hierarchy on birth control and women's safety are completely out of step with most Americans' views on contraception, including Catholics'.

Birth-control use is nearly universal in the United States: Ninety-nine percent of sexually active women will have used birth control at some point in their lives, including 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women.

Seventy-one percent of American voters, including 77 percent of Catholic women voters and 72 percent of Republican women, support access to birth control without copays.

And as a lawmaker, I know the American people want their legislators to be focused on creating jobs and fixing our economy -- not on attacking women's access to basic health care.

In fact, ensuring that health plans will cover contraceptives with no copays is especially important in these economic times. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control found that more than half of women reported delaying or even forgoing health care entirely because of economic barriers.

Access to affordable birth control helps millions of women prevent unintended pregnancy every year. Numerous studies, including recommendations by the respected Institute of Medicine, demonstrate that birth-control use improves maternal health.

Our lawmakers should be focused on keeping people healthy, not on obstructing access to health care in service to powerful religious interests.

Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, is a member of the Minnesota Senate.

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NOTE: Sen. Scott Dibble and his husband Richard feature in Catholics for Marriage Equality MN's recent video series in support of marriage equality.

To view all five "video vignettes" in the Catholics for Marriage Equality series, click here.

BREAKING NEWS

2011-11-14T19:54:00.000-08:00

At the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' General Assembly today, Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis was elected chairman of the Committee on Doctrine in a 126-111 vote over Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester, Massachusetts.

For more information, click here.

See also the previous PCV posts:
Just Say "Nien" to Nienstedt
"We, Together, Are the Church": A Response to Archbishop Nienstedt
"All Voices Must Be Heard": A Response to Archbishop Nienstedt
Talking About Disconnects: One Response to Archbishop Nienstedt’s Letter of July 18, 2011
The Consensus of the Faithful as the Voice of the Infallible Church

Many Voices, One Church

2011-11-13T15:52:00.000-08:00

Note: Continuing with our series that recognizes and celebrates the contribution of lay preachers within the local church of St. Paul-Minneapolis, the PCV shares the following homily for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

For an introduction to this series, click here. To avoid possible negative consequences, names of preachers and parishes are not disclosed in this series.

_______________________

This Sunday’s Gospel offers a familiar parable, often called the Parable of the Talents. In this story, a householder goes on a long journey and entrusts his wealth to three servants. To the first servant, he gives five bags of gold, to the second two bags, and to the third servant he gives one bag of gold. It is important to realize that each bag of gold was tremendously valuable; each was worth approximately seventeen years of labor. We are talking BIG values!

The first two servants invested and doubled their money. When the householder returned, he was very happy and rewarded them both. The third servant, however, had been afraid. He buried the bag of gold to keep it safe. When this servant returned the single bag of gold, the household became very angry at the servant’s failure to increase his wealth. The householder threw the third servant out into the darkness where there was wailing and grinding of teeth.

This Gospel is problematic. First of all, it does not reflect the forgiveness or compassion that we would expect of Jesus. Secondly, this parable certainly does not reflect a model of economic justice that we have come to associate with Jesus. In this story the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Scholars do address these problems if you want to learn more.

The problem that I would like to focus on today deals with how I usually hear this parable interpreted. We often hear that the bags of gold, or sometimes called talents, symbolize our giftedness. The admonition is to use our giftedness well. If we do, God will be pleased with us, and we will have joy in heaven. This sets up a dynamic of reward and punishment. With this dynamic, we can, through our actions, earn God’s favor, or we can lose it. This presents a major problem. It portrays God’s love as very conditional! That is not the God of the Gospel that so many of us have come to know and experience.

With all the problems in this Gospel, one wonders where is the Good News? What’s our take-away for today? As we listen carefully to the Gospel, we might notice a refrain which is repeated by the householder. When he is pleased with the first servant, he says, “Come and share in my joy.” Again with the second servant, he says, “Come and share in my joy.” Perhaps this invitation is not pointing out how we can get to heaven. Perhaps this invitation is in the present tense. Perhaps we are being invited to invest our “bags of gold” right here and now, and that’s how we will know joy.

The first question to consider then is: what is our “bag of gold”? More than simply our talents or giftedness, I believe this refers to the fullness of who we are. Each of us has a divine spark at our core, the glory of God living within each of us. This invitation is to live from that glory. That is how we will share in God’s joy, right here and now.

Unfortunately, that isn’t easy. Most of us have been taught to contain ourselves. We are boxed in by expectations all around us from our families, schools, jobs, Church, society, and even from ourselves. And we’re quite comfortable inside our boxes. We are good people; we do good things. Moving outside of our boxes causes discomfort, even fear. Living as a Christian, however, and answering the call to discipleship cannot leave us safe within our boxes. We cannot remain unchanged. Today’s Gospel, which I do see as a call to discipleship, calls us past our comfort zone and beyond our fears.

But fear is a big stumbling block. The words of Marianne Williamson can help us put our fear into perspective:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world…. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. (From A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson)

What does this mean for us, this living the glory of God within us? The first thing it means is we must let go of fear. We cannot hold onto our divine spark by hiding it, by burying it inside. This glory shines when we live fully, take risks, and put ourselves out there. We cannot play small; we cannot stay neutral. For example, we may be called to step up and name injustices, just as Jesus did. We may be called to reach out and touch the “untouchables,” just as Jesus did. We may be called to let go of our resentments and forgive, just as Jesus did.

This may not sound like joy. If fact, it is hard work, it’s painful, and often it’s risky. Yet, isn’t it true that when we have lived like this, lived from that divine spark, we have known on some level that we are participating on God’s glory? We are experiencing it? There is our joy! To serve the world with the absolute fullness of who we are – BIG, like bags of gold!

Just as this invitation to share joy applies to us as individuals, it also applies to our Church community – at all levels: our parish, the Archdiocese, and the worldwide Church. Our Church community cannot minimize the divine sparks found in ALL of us. Let me give an example where the Church has failed at this.

The first reading today is from Proverbs. It is a twenty-two verse poem describing the ideal woman. The Church has cut out fourteen verses. This is not unusual; cutting is done routinely to make readings more manageable. What is telling, however, is which verses were kept and which are on the cutting room floor. The verses that Catholics will hear today describe the ideal woman in terms of her domestic abilities and by what value she brings to her husband. What the Church has left out is that she also takes part in business ventures, invests in real estate, and goes out into the world where she is successful. The Church has cut out verses that acclaim her strength, her wisdom, and her dignity.

The official version, which Catholics are hearing today, puts women in a box. We are encouraged to limit ourselves to this ideal. Aspects of women that don’t fit this ideal should be buried. This is not right! This is not what the Gospel calls us to do.

What if the Church community really answered the invitation of this Gospel? What if the Church community nurtured women – and men and children – into the fullness of who they are? What if the Church community embraced LGBT persons in the fullness of their humanity, which includes their sexuality? What if the Church community encouraged theologians, clergy, and all the faithful to dare ask the hard questions, to discuss and debate, to listen and engage, and to seek the truth together?

Wouldn’t our Church then more fully manifest the glory of God? And wouldn’t our Church share more deeply in God’s joy?

Today’s Gospel invites us to share in God’s joy. We must ask ourselves, both individually and communally, “Where are we playing it safe, playing small?” and “What must we do to live fully from our bags of gold, from our divine spark?” To the extent that we can live from the glory of God that is within us, the glory that is powerful beyond measure, then we can participate in God’s life right here and right now, and we can share in God’s joy. And that is Good News.

Just Say "Nein" to Nienstedt

2011-11-12T10:11:00.000-08:00

By Sean Michael Winters

Editor's Note: This article was first published November 11 by The National Catholic Reporter.

Next week, at the annual USCCB Plenary meeting, the bishops will select several new committee chairs. One of those committees, the Committee on Doctrine, is an especially delicate assignment. Even a man with as clear and careful a mind as Cardinal Donald Wuerl has found himself in the midst of controversy as chair of the Doctrine Committee. Sometimes controversy is unavoidable, to be sure, but it serves the best interests of the Church when such controversies are handled by bishops, like Wuerl, who are known for their thoughtfulness.

In the event, one of the two nominees, Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul, Minnesota, has a long track record of indelicacy. Nienstedt first landed on my radar screen when, in 2006, while serving as the Bishop of New Ulm, he wrote a column in his diocesan newspaper urging his flock not to attend the movie Brokeback Mountain. Nienstedt wrote of the movie, “The story is about two lonely cowboys herding sheep up on a mountain range. One night after a drinking binge, one man makes a pass at the other and within seconds the latter mounts the former in an act of wanton anal sex.” I must say that I never in all my years expected to read the phrase “wanton anal sex” in my diocesan newspaper. In my experience, diocesan newspapers tend to be read by an older, largely female, demographic. Did they really need to read that phrase?

The episode was not Nienstedt’s first indelicate act as bishop of New Ulm. He denounced the writings of his predecessor who had recently died. Bishop Raymond Lucker had begun working on a book when illness overtook him and he entrusted the completion of the work to a friend. Lucker, who had served as the bishop of New Ulm for twenty-five years, died in 2001, the same year Nienstedt became bishop of New Ulm. When the book was published in 2003, Nienstedt urged Catholics not to read it, said it did not adequately reflect Church Teaching. Nienstedt wrote that the book “challenges the church’s own understanding of herself as being authoritatively charged under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to teach in the name of Jesus on matters of faith and morals.” Nienstedt referred the text to the USCCB Doctrine Committee. The Committee engaged a theologian to review the book, who concluded that while there were some passages that were “ambiguous” and “lacking nuance,” the book did not contain “grave errors.”

I did not read the book and have no intention of doing so. But, it seems odd to me to try to defend the teaching authority of the bishops by throwing one of them under the bus. And, it is simply bad form. When bishops take the helm of a new diocese and they re-arrange all the pastors, or fire the entire chancery staff, or condemn their predecessor as theologically suspect, these acts cause consternation among the faithful. They get whiplash. “It was a really unnecessary and deep insult to a man who had recently died, a man who had given his life to the church,” my colleague Tom Roberts commented at the time.

Since arriving in St. Paul, Neinstedt has certainly not avoided more controversy, most especially in his decision to manufacture and distribute 400,000 DVDs instructing Catholics on why they must oppose same-sex marriage. To be clear, I share the bishops’ concern that marriage is such a foundational institution of our society, we should treat it with great care. And, as a smart legal mind explained to me, marriage is, in legal terms, like throwing on an electric switch: the electricity runs everywhere. Marriage law touches many other legal (and social) issues. For example, the Church not only has the right, the Church is right to insist that it should not be coerced into extending same-sex partner benefits to those in unions which the Church can’t approve. But, in those instances, rather than mount an expensive DVD campaign, why not opt for the Levada Solution, adopted in the mid-1990s, to resolve the issue. Then-Archbishop, now Cardinal, Levada negotiated a solution with the San Francisco government allowing employees at Catholic social service agencies that contracted with the government to name anyone they wanted to receive their share of benefits, provided they were legally domiciled together. So, you could name a cousin who was out of work and staying at your place, or an invalid uncle who lived with you. They Church achieved a signature social policy objective, extending health care benefits, without compromising its principles.

That was the mid-1990s but, in fact, the defense of traditional marriage in this culture went out the door with the advent of no-fault divorce. The push for gay marriage is not as grave a threat to what the Church means by marriage as is the tsunami of divorces in the past several decades. The Church should not acquiesce in the assault on traditional marriage to be sure. But, I confess that I am disturbed that we mount these expensive campaigns against gay marriage but do not mount such campaigns to defend programs that aid the poor. In 2010, Archbishop Nienstedt announced a parish re-structuring that shuttered 21 parishes. Is it really more important to spend limited resources fighting gay marriage than it is to keep our parishes open? Our schools?

We might say of Archbishop Nienstedt what Winston Churchill once said of John Foster Dulles: He is the only bull I know who carries his own china closet with him.

I do not have a vote next Monday, which we can all agree is a good thing! But, if I did, I think I would be looking for someone with better judgment and more prudence than Archbishop Nienstedt to lead a committee charged with guarding the precious treasures which are the Church’s doctrines.

Related Off-site Links:
Progressive Perspectives on Archbishop Nienstedt's Anti-Gay Activism – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, October 19, 2011).
Minnesota Pastor Challenges Nienstedt's DVD Campaign – Tom Roberts (National Catholic Reporter, October 5, 2010).
Thoughts on Archbishop Nienstedt – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, May 20, 2008).
Fate of the Faithful – Tim Gihring (Minnesota Monthy, May 2008).
300+ People Vigil at the Cathedral in Solidarity with LGBT Catholics – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, December 2, 2007).
Future Archbishop's Compassion Stops Short When It Comes to Gays – Nick Coleman (Star Tribune, November 27, 2007).
Interesting Times Ahead – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, November 16, 2007).
Coadjutor Archbishop Nienstedt's "Learning Curve" – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, May 4, 2007).

Seeming Parallels Abound in Penn State, Catholic Church Abuse Scandals

2011-11-10T23:33:00.000-08:00

By Dan Gilgoff

Editor's Note: This article was first published November 10, 2011, on CNN.com's Belief Blog.

Both are managed by male dominated-hierarchies. Both are revered by millions of people. And both allegedly dealt with accusations of sexual abuse of children internally, without going to law enforcement authorities.

To many victims’ advocates, commentators and others, the parallels between this week’s allegations about how Penn State dealt with reports of sex abuse and decade-old revelations about sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church are uncanny.

“It is really a striking and almost identical factual pattern that has emerged in the Catholic Church cases and at Penn State,” says Jeffrey Anderson [pictured at right], a lawyer who has represented hundreds of American abuse victims in lawsuits against the Catholic Church.

“The only difference is that two people have been fired at Penn State who were in revered positions,” says Anderson. “That’s in contrast to every diocese in the U.S where a cover-up has been revealed.

“Not one bishop, archbishop or cardinal has been fired or disciplined.”

Anderson is referring to Wednesday’s firing of Penn State President Graham Spanier and head football coach Joe Paterno, days after former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was charged with abusing eight boys, including in a Penn State locker room.

Two top Penn State university officials who were allegedly told about the abuse and declined to notify authorities have been charged with perjury and with failure to report suspected abuse.

Anderson says both the alleged abuse by a Penn State coach and the institution’s apparent response mirrors the abuse scandal in the Catholic church.

“In both cases, very trusted and revered male offenders used their positions and their care, cunning and trust they enjoy not only to access the victim but to keep those around him from speaking out,” says Anderson.

Prosecutors have alleged that Sandusky used a charity he founded for troubled youth to help lure victims, allegedly engaged in fondling, oral sex and anal sex with young boys over more than 10 years.

Many of those outraged by the allegations against Penn State, including that Paterno had reportedly been told about the abuse but declined to notify authorities, have pointed a finger at what they say was the school’s and its football program’s commitment to maintaining a sterling public image, drawing parallels to the church.

“Both institutions are big and powerful and hierarchical and have very carefully crafted public reputations that they value,” says David Clohessy, national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “There’s an obsession with an institution’s image over children’s safety.”

Clohessy says news of the Penn State scandal has triggered a wave of calls and e-mails to him from victims who say the new revelations evoke their experiences with priest abuse.

He and others allege that an aura of righteousness surrounding Penn State football, an object of worship in State College, Pennsylvania, and the Catholic Church helped fortify them against accusations of abuse in their midst.

“When we idolize any institution or individual, it’s unhealthy,” says Clohessy. “We almost invite them to act like they're above the law.”

Anderson says a related parallel between the Penn State and Catholic Church scandals is the existence of hierarchies that apparently allowed personnel to report abuse allegations up a chain of command without higher-ups taking decisive action.

“It’s not because they’re bad men or want kids to be harmed,” said Anderson, speculating about the motives of top officials at Penn State and the church who allegedly kept quiet about abuse allegations, “but because they want to preserve the reputation of the institutions.”

Anderson is licensed to practice in Pennsylvania but would not say whether he is representing any of Sandusky's alleged victims, saying he would want to respect their confidentiality if he was.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which represents the American Roman Catholic hierarchy, declined to respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Many abuse victims applauded Penn State for firing top officials and criticized the Roman Catholic Church for not taking similarly dramatic action.

“What happened at Penn State tonight is a lesson to officials of the Catholic Church,” said Robert M. Hoatson, who leads a New Jersey group that assists abuse victims, in a statement after Wednesday night’s firings at Penn State. “The only just solution to the clergy abuse scandal of the Catholic Church is the wholesale removal of bishops.”

Church experts say Penn State’s decision to fire its president and its football coach reflect more of a top-down approach to personnel than in the Catholic Church, where issues are expected to be resolved locally, at the diocesan level.

“The American model of accountability drove the decision on Paterno, which is that ‘accountability’ means losing your job,” says John Allen, CNN’s chief Vatican analyst. “Whereas the Roman model tends to shape decisions on bishops, where ‘accountability’ means staying put and cleaning up your own mess.”

Still, some Vatican watchers say the church sex abuse crisis has helped shaped Penn State’s reaction to last weekend’s indictment.

“The Catholic Church's experience with this has raised public awareness, which probably helps to explain the swift reaction in this case,” says Francis X. Rocca, who covers the Vatican for the Religion News Service.

“It is a lot harder than it was 10 years ago,” he says, “for administrators to argue that they didn't understand the gravity of the problem or thought it could be dealt with internally.”

Dan Gilgoff is CNN's Belief Blog Co-Editor.

Related Off-site Links:
Local Attorney Helping in Penn State Sex Scandal – Esme Murphy (CBS Minnesota.com, November 9, 2011).
Penn State Scandal: Putting Kids First – Jeffrey R. Anderson (November 9, 2011).
Abuse and Cover-Up: Penn State's Catholic-Like Scandal – Tom Roberts (National Catholic Reporter, November 10, 2011).
Penn State Rioters On the Wrong Side of Sexual Abuse – Editorial (Star Tribune, November 10, 2011).

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

East Side, West Side: Opposing Views of the Good

2011-11-08T13:42:00.000-08:00

By Paula Ruddy

While some Catholics were gathered at the Soul Conference at St. Catherine University Saturday morning talking about the grandeur of God in the universe and the ethics of saving the planet, on the other side of town others were gathered at Our Lady of Grace Church in Edina talking about the evils of same-sex marriage.

The bishops of Minnesota sponsored the talks in Edina. Angela Pfister, ethics professor from Notre Dane, and Jason Adkins, Executive Director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference spoke for the bishops.

The bishops framed their case as a right and a duty for them to speak about a societal decline in morals. Anthony Picarello Jr., general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is reported by MPR to have said: "You need to have bishops teaching the faithful and proclaiming to the world in order to transform the culture out of which these bad thing arise. I think it took about 40 years for us to end up in the predicament we're in. It's probably going to take that time or longer to get out of the predicament. But you got to start somewhere."

We have no quarrel with the bishops about their right and duty to oppose evil. We have different views on what is evil. The bishops are looking at the last 40 years and seeing a decline, a predicament we have got ourselves into. We are looking at the last 400+ years and seeing that growing predicament—one the Catholic Church has helped to create. The predicament is a culture of domination of nature, forced ideology, denial of the feminine. The Soul Conference, focusing on human zest for life, the evolutionary humanization of sex and the loving care of children, each other, and creation, inspired a trust in humans to listen to the God within, to live with rather than in domination of nature.

The evils the bishops see are real: increasing failures of marriage, break down of family, dysfunction, addiction. Are these caused by gays and lesbians wanting to get married? Are they caused by gays and lesbians wanting equal civil rights? Are these desires of gays and lesbians part of the evil scene at all?

We believe same-sex marriage equality is a good thing—long overdue for the flourishing of citizens with same gender sexual orientation and for the flourishing of our society. It is one of the ways out of our evil predicament—along with equality and inclusion of many other kinds.

The view from the East side of town is a vision about God immanent in creation and leading its evolution toward union with Spirit. The world is a good place. It is a very Catholic view.

At Home in the Universe: Reflections on the 2011 Soul Conference

2011-11-07T13:35:00.000-08:00

Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality's annual Soul Conference took place at the Carondolet Center in St. Paul, MN, on Saturday, November 5. Following are three attendee's reflections on this year's gathering.

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We humans, aware of ourselves as experiencing subjects, are the heart and mind of the universe. We are the universe becoming aware of its self. From the primal flaring forth of energy and matter (Brian Swimme’s term for the Big Bang) billions of years ago, the matter that makes up everything including our bodies exploded in space. And within all matter, in increasing degrees of interiority, the “within of things” drives evolution toward ever greater complexity and differentiation to the emergence of dreaming, thinking, communicating creatures on this exquisitely conditioned third rock from the sun, the planet Earth. The odds against it almost infinite. This interior principle of discernment pushing development forward produced a “communion of subjectivity,” a universe of connectedness.

The premier of the film Journey of the Universe played to a full house at Jeanne d”Arc auditorium at St. Catherine’s University on Friday evening, November 4. Filmed in the Greek island of Samos, the story of cosmogenesis was narrated by Brian Swimme, scripted by him and Mary Evelyn Tucker, and presented by Tucker and her husband John Grim, a graduate of St. John’s in Collegeville, 1968. Tucker and Grim have dual appointments in the schools of divinity and forestry and environmental studies at Yale University. It was co-sponsored by Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality and the Masters in Theology Program at St. Catherine University.

On Saturday morning, the 18th Annual Wisdom Ways Soul Conference continued with Tucker and Grim talking about the film’s genesis. Thomas Berry, (1914-2009) mentor to both Tucker and Grim and author of The New Story, was a cultural historian, student and friend of the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) whose work inspires the view of purpose-driven evolutionary processes. Berry identified himself as growing out of the farmland of North Carolina — the meadow across the stream. His vision was that ethics and politics should nurture that meadow.

This one-with-the-earth sensibility inspires Tucker and Grim to seek their own authenticity, and suggest that others do too, in relation to a “meadow”, a place where the person feels her/himself to be at home, empowered as an agent in the universe. Berry once reminded Grim what Virgil said to Dante: “I crown and mitre you Lord of yourself.” As an ethical and political agent, each of us has to grow in consciousness of our earth connectedness and make choices that nurture the “meadow.”

The filmmakers’ purpose is to share a vision of the human race as organically and spiritually one with the ecological systems of the earth so that we and future generations will work to reverse the devastation overcrowding and spiritual alienation have caused—polluted water, extinction of animal species, deforestation. The litany of ecological disasters is well known, but the vision to inspire cultural change is still weak. Therefore, the film focuses on inspiration and less on the devastation. The film, a book by the same authors, and a study curriculum based on both, are available on the website www.journeyoftheuniverse.com. You can commit to the Earth Charter at www.earthcharter.org. Mary Evelyn Tucker was on the drafting committee and is on the Council for the Earth Charter Initiative.

The bit about ethics and politics having to nurture the meadow hit home with me. We need a cultural transformation – a realignment of minds and hearts—to bring us home in the universe so we can understand and heal the biosphere. There seems to be an ever increasing number of people who are conscious of the divine “within of things,” people whose zest for life, whose selfhood radiate freedom, equality, justice and loving-care. All the institutions (read economic systems, educational systems, justice systems) whose policies and practices do not nurture the meadow will have to undertake intentional transformation or be torn with conflict.

Can we look to our churches? Institutional churches are in the business of cultural transformation. When I told Mary Evelyn Tucker that I belong to a group called Catholic Coalition for Church Reform and that I believe the incarnational, global, Roman Catholic Church could restore the planet if it transformed itself, she hugged me and said, “It would help if the Pope wrote an encyclical.” And it would help if every bishop would turn to his people and ask, “What do we need to do to serve the expanding consciousness of the people for the preservation and restoration of the planet?” Since we are, along with the bishops, the Roman Catholic Church, I guess we have to “crown and mitre” ourselves, and set about the task of raising our own consciousness.

– Paula Ruddy

Two thoughts emerged from the conference for me. One is "the within"of living things and the other is "direction." We are living in a time of struggle. Our two major institutions, the church and the state, are experiencing division and the consequent tensions. The divisions are deep and wide accompanied with a lack of mutual understanding, tolerance, and cooperation. One word that best describes our struggle is direction. We seem to have lost a sense of direction.

Yet there is the fact that all living things have a within and a without. The within drives the life force (élan vital) towards an outcome (entelechy). For example, the caterpillar spins a cocoon for itself and emerges as a butterfly. This process applies to the union of the sperm and egg that evolves into a living body. In nature the within of a living thing has direction which does not end in the emergence of the without. That stage also has a within which is evolving. It now takes on the dimension of duration. The process of becoming a butterfly or a living body may have a limited duration; however, the within of that living thing continues to function so that this "living force" continues its direction to the next outcome.

We have empirical evidence for this seemingly slow process in the human species. We have fossils of very early life forms that demonstrate this slow duration, and we have remains of species that predate our own but are fundamental to our species. We have remains of homo erectus, homo faber, and Neanderthal hominids that are a part of our story. This is an example of our "within" that has evolved over thousands of years of duration. We have been led to believe that this process has reached its final outcome in our species, homo sapiens sapiens, because of our Newtonian, static view of our world. Our present stage in our species is what we have become, not what we are evolving into.

The cosmos is dynamic not static. It is in a continual state of expansion, and we have evidence for this today. The world in which we live and the species we enjoy are evolving and have an inner direction, a within.

The Buddha taught us 2500 years ago that all is "dukha," all is struggle. The struggle we experience is intense and seemingly without direction; however, when we take the long view of our story and the story of the universe we do see direction. What we do not see clearly is the outcome, and for us that is extremely uncomfortable.

– Donald Conroy

I came away from the Soul Conference, featuring the film Journey of the Universe and its co-producers Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, enthused and hopeful for our planet and for the reality of unfolding spiritual awakening on this expanding universe. Brian Swimme narrates with spectacular filming the unfolding universe from the beginning of time where the galaxies were sent in motion creating an expanding universe. He invites us to be “guided by wonder.” Guided by wonder, wow! To be touched by the magnificence of this universe as science points to its discoveries of patterns and processes that touch all of earth’s diverse inhabitants and draw us into amazement of the self organizing processes that impact our evolution. The film points to a pulsating, alive universe that we are intricately connected within our own evolution where our acts also affects its evolution.

Tucker and Grim reflected on their work and expressed gratitude to Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry for their profound influence on their work. They related the importance of: 1) Perspective – an awareness of the complexities and evolution of the earth and its inhabitants that has been discovered by science, 2) Purpose – questioning where do we get our grounding and what attracts or allures us in activating our self organizing processes, 3) Prayer – touched and in communion with the cosmic consciousness of Christ in all creation and the Logos of our reality and 4) Participation – our involvement in engaging in creating the Divine milieu.

A key point was how union requires differentiation in order to be known and how over time simple processes become complex. We also were reminded to “sit up straight,” to engage and be awake to this unfolding reality. We live in very complex and diverse times where we all are essential to this unfolding.

Science and theology provide portals to our human existence. Their inter-relationship is becoming more and more conscious. We are becoming increasingly aware of the ecological crisis that threatens life as we have known it. We also are in a period where the political realities are often locked in polarizations with potentially devastating consequences. Our churches have been one of the conduits where Wisdom and the hunger for Truth have been passed through the ages as well as guides to how we live our lives. They have also been containers of prejudice and fragmentation of truth creating distortions which foment war and human suffering. May we as a people of this amazing and diverse universe, gathered in our communities of church, be humble enough to listen to the teachings of the Cosmic Christ and listen to what are our self organizing processes and what they can be so that we emerge as a church at this stage of our evolution immersed in the union of Love.

– Karin Grosscup

Church's Leadership Has Strayed from Gospel

2011-11-05T14:59:00.000-07:00

By Bishop Thomas Gumbleton

Following are excerpts from a recent homily given by Bishop Thomas Gumbleton at Lynn University Campus Ministry Chapel, Boca Raton, Forida.

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. . . We're used to thinking of Jesus as being mild, gentle, compassionate, always reaching out to those who are the most vulnerable, welcoming sinners, publicans, but [in today's reading (Matthew 23:1-12)] we see the Prophet.

In fact, if you go on just a little bit further than this 23rd chapter of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus begins to cry out, "Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites." That's not a word we usually think of as coming from Jesus, calling the religious leaders of his day hypocrites. He goes on in passage after passage, verse after verse, calling them hypocrites. It's very much like Malachi in our first lesson tonight who challenged those priests of Malachi's time.

They weren't serving the people. They were serving themselves, and so God, through Malachi, said, "You're cursed." Jesus is speaking along these lines tonight. One thing we have to be careful of, though, is when we hear this 23rd chapter of Matthew's Gospel, we have to be careful not to think it's a passage that is condemning the Jewish people. Over the centuries, this chapter has been used as a basis for anti-Semitism in our Christian community, but it really isn't. Matthew wrote around the year 80.

What he's writing, he's drawing from what is about one or two verses in the Gospel of Mark, and he expands on it. He's speaking now to a community that has been gathered around the word and the sacrament of the Eucharist for almost 50 years now. That community, a Christian community, these words are being addressed to them. It's because they have fallen away. Do you remember the first part of the Acts of the Apostles, how the early Christian community is described as brothers and sisters?

They come together and go to the temple to pray together. They live in a community where everybody shares whatever he or she has so that no one is in need among them. It's a beautiful community of disciples of Jesus, all of whom are equal. Brothers and sisters sharing together, following Jesus deeply and carefully. Now they've begun to bring about separations, a kind of a clericalism has come into the Church. Those who are the religious leaders want to have special places, want to have special titles, want to wear special kinds of garments, and Matthew is saying that's all wrong.

That's not the way Jesus wanted it. You're brothers and sisters. You're equal to one another. So Matthew is trying to draw them back to the way of Jesus and the way they first were. Now it isn't just Matthew's community that God is speaking to through this word. It's our community, too, our community today because God's word is a living word. It still speaks, even now. When we look about our Church -- I say this with sadness, but it's true, I think – we have a lack of really good leadership in our Church.

I think once more, there's a little bit too much clericalism where we try to separate the clergy and laity. Only the clergy can come up on this side of the altar, not lay people and especially not women. I notice you don't pay much attention to that, so thank God, but it's happening in our Church. We're trying to set up those divisions again. There is a lack of leadership, I think, when you realize that in our country, 30 million people have walked away from the Catholic community. That's 10 percent of the U.S. population, 30 million people who were Catholic say, "I don't bother anymore."

What do our leaders do about it? They hardly avert it. They pay no attention. We ought to be reaching out, calling them back. But even more, our leadership in the Church has been terribly flawed, and I think we all know what the main reason is. It's that whole sex abuse crisis: that it happened in the first place and continues to happen, sadly enough. Our leaders covered it up, protected the perpetrators and continued to move them around from parish to parish where it would happen again.

That's a terrible loss to our Church, and the credibility of the bishops is very much diminished because we have this terrible failure. So when Jesus is speaking in the Gospel today to those leaders of the community of Matthew, he's also speaking to our leaders and to all of us, because first of all, of course, the leadership of our Church we pray will change and become more alert to what's really happening in our Church, asking why people are leaving and trying to open the Church up so they'll feel welcome again, rather than protect a perpetrator of abuse.

. . . Jesus says to them very powerfully, "Look, among the Gentiles," that is, the Roman occupiers of the Holy Land at the time, "Those who are in positions of authority lord it over the others. It's a very hierarchical structured authority system where those at the top lord it over or dominate the others, but among you it cannot be that way. The one who is to be the greatest must be the servant," or the word is even "slave," of all the rest. If we're really going to follow Jesus, if we're going to really make our community come alive once more, and if we're going to be like Paul said to the Church at Thessalonica, "A Church that makes other people realize that God is living in our midst," then we have to become servants of each other within our community, but also servants in the world around us.

We're living in a world where there is extraordinary, extreme economic disparity. Archbishop Romero used to say in El Salvador, "So few have so much. So many have so little." That's not right. We have to look at what's going on around us, and recognize that there is so much that is not right. It's your job and my job as disciples of Jesus to become the servants of one another, to make sure no one is lacking as it was in the first Christian community. It's a very strong and powerful challenge that God's word gives to us today.

If we listen deeply, let that word enter into our minds first of all, but then down into our hearts to change us, then we can once more truly become a community of disciples of Jesus who will hear the word of God as the word that it is, the divine word of God, penetrating deeply into our minds and our hearts, and as we prayed at the beginning, that we'll have the strength to live that word, to carry it out, and we will become once more a community of disciples of Jesus that will bring amazement to others when they see how we love one another and carry out the words that God has proclaimed in our midst.

To read Bishop Gumbleton's homily in its entirety, click here.

Related Off-site Links:
Vatican Moved Quickly to Punish Gumbleton – Zoe Ryan (National Catholic Reporter, November 5, 2011).
Bishop Gumbleton: A Priesthood Set Apart and Above Others is Not the Way of Jesus – The Wild Reed (September 28, 2009).
Bishop Gumbleton: It Isn’t the Church You’re Being Asked to Say Yes To . . . It’s Jesus – The Wild Reed (August 31, 2009).

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Why Religious Fundamentalism Can’t Last

2011-11-03T12:26:00.000-07:00

By Christian Piatt

Editor’s Note: Author Christian Piatt recently responded to two questions regarding postmodernism and its effects on theology and the church. These responses were first published October 29, 2011 on The Huffington Post.

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What do you think about the emerging church movement?

First, I think [it is] rightly identifie[d] . . . as a movement [as it is] more viral in nature than any particular institution would tend to propagate a set of ideals. . . .[E]merging church, as an idea, is a natural byproduct of postmodern culture. In short, postmodernism challenges the more dichotomous, black-and-white, either-or thinking of modernism. Postmodernism suggests that the dualistic attitudes of modernism, which began as early as the Enlightenment, paint an overly simplistic picture of reality. In the United States in particular, postmodernism has found voice as our culture becomes increasingly pluralistic and those lines we believed were clear before begin to blur.

As for the emerging church movement, I see this as a natural response to postmodern thought. Though our understanding of what exactly emerging church is varies by individual (typically postmodern, isn't it?), there are a handful of general attributes that I see as defining what emerging church is:

A value of community over institutional membership.

An emphasis on service-based ministry over traditional evangelism for the sake of conversion.

A call to live out ministry in the cultural context where you find yourself, rather than expecting the community to come to you through the institutional church.

A focus on trying to live as Christ lived and taught, rather than propping up church dogma, doctrine or any one particular statement of faith.

As for defining emerging church beyond this, I find it hard to do. Some claim it's a predominantly liberal movement, and in so much as one defines "liberal" as downplaying the importance of institutional and doctrinal authority, I suppose that's accurate. But I know social conservatives and progressives who identify as part of the emerging church movement, along with agnostics and evangelicals.

Emerging church does not promote a specific Christology or set of theological ideals, as this would be contrary to the very concept from which it came. This doesn't mean that, on occasion, some folks won't try to co-opt the emerging church label on behalf of their own particular agenda, but such labels end up falling away.

Isn't postmodernism giving way to a kind of hyper-modernism?

I think this is an astute observation, especially with the growing visibility of such people as John Piper and Mark Driscoll. However, my short answer to his question would be "no."

I think that any time a new worldview begins to take hold, there will be some degree of push-back from those entrenched in the prior way of seeing things. This is especially true for individuals and institutions that stand to benefit from things staying the way they are. In this case, religious fundamentalism – whether from the right or left – depends on a more dichotomous, either-or way of thinking. So any alternative to this understanding of the world is considered a threat.

Although more fundamentalist, doctrinal and/or dogmatic approaches to religion may be more vocal in their reaction to postmodernism and the emerging church, this does not necessarily mean that they are gaining popular momentum. On the contrary, as a more people understand the world in pluralistic, fluid (some might argue relativistic) terms, such vocal opposition seems increasingly out of step with reality. As technology allows us to exchange ideas and experiences more easily and rapidly, and as our communities reflect an increasingly heterogeneous face, efforts to draw clear lines and define life with absolute, monolithic clarity simply begin to lose credibility.

So in short, though there are "hyper-modern" advocates who would have us believe that postmodernism and the emerging church are merely the passing fad of the moment, a longer-term, broader perspective reinforces the idea that we cannot simply go back to old ways of thinking when the world around us is so much more integrated, fluid and diverse than ever before in history.

Such changes simply can't be undone, despite the vocal cries for a return to the ways of the past. You can't un-open the box.

Christian Piatt is an author, editor, speaker, musician and spoken word artist. He co-founded Milagro Christian Church in Pueblo, Colorado with his wife, Rev. Amy Piatt, in 2004. Christian is the creator and editor of Banned Questions About The Bible and Banned Questions About Jesus. For more information about Christian, visit www.christianpiatt.com.

Challenging the Old Boys Network in the Vatican

2011-10-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

By Bill Quigley

Editor's Note: This article was first published October 24 at CommonDreams.org. Minnesotan readers may find the author's report on recent events in Rome of particular interest as it mentions Twin Cities-based biblical scholar, theologian and archeologist Dorothy Irvin.

We never thought it would end up on a hard wooden bench inside a police station in Piazza Cavour. Maryknoll priest Fr. Roy Bourgeois, young Erin Saiz Hannah of Women’s Ordination Conference in the US and Miriam Duignan from Womenpriests.org from the UK were sitting there when my wife and I arrived. They were being detained by the Rome police.

It started when the Rome police spotted the three women in long white church liturgical garments robes, the man in a roman collar dressed all in black, and their supporters walking several blocks down the middle of Via della Conciliazione directly towards the Vatican, the headquarters of the institutional Roman Catholic Church and the Basilica of St. Peter.

The group sang Alleluias and carried a long purple banner, "Ordain Catholic Women," a big red and white banner proclaiming "God is Calling Women To Be Priests" (in English and Italian), and a black and white Call to Action banner

The group wanted to deliver a petition, printed on pink paper, signed by more than 15,000 people who asked the Vatican not to expel Fr. Roy Bourgeois, 72, from the church for saying that women are called to be priests in the church. Fr. Roy faces expulsion from his Catholic community, Maryknoll, for refusing to recant his belief that women can and should be allowed to become priests. Bourgeois, a decorated Vietnam veteran, has been a faithful member of the Catholic missionary group, Maryknoll, for 44 years. For twenty years, he has worked with School of Americas Watch in the US, a group of thousands who challenge the role of the US military in training human rights abusers among Latin American militaries. Along with the petition was a list of hundreds of priests who asked that Fr. Roy not be expelled just for speaking out about a matter of conscience.

As the tour buses and other traffic veered around the marchers, pedestrians on the street cheered. The huge dome of St. Peter’s Basilica dominates the area which is thronged with pilgrims and tourists, and saturated with souvenir shops and vendors selling religious medals, holy cards, statues, refrigerator magnets, flags, and postcards.

The police presence quickly outnumbered the group and stopped them as they tried to enter Vatican Square.

Protests were not allowed in the Vatican said the police. But we are here to deliver a petition, the group responded. But you are carrying signs said the police. We can put the signs down responded the group. But the women are dressed like priests and that is a protest the police insisted. But we are legitimately ordained priests they told the authorities.

After much back and forth with Vatican authorities the police said Fr. Roy could go into Vatican Square because he was a real priest. When Fr. Roy insisted all the priests, men and women, should be allowed to enter, an undercover policeman violently grabbed the banners away from those peacefully holding them and the authorities arrested Fr. Roy, Erin Saiz Hannah who the police decided organized the event, and Miriam Duignan, who was acting as the translator.

Erin and Miriam were jammed into a police car and with lights flashing and sirens blasting were taken away. Fr. Roy was taken away in another police car.

After several hours’ detention inside the Rome police station, the three were released after they signed statements promising to return to Italy if the investigating magistrate decided to try them on the charges of protesting without a permit. The banners were seized as evidence and not returned.

As the three were released from police custody to cheers from the rest of the group gathered outside the police station, the group insisted the petitions must still be delivered. Ultimately they were delivered to high ranking church official who promised to consider them.

So, who were these people?

Three of women who marched alongside Fr. Roy in priestly garb are members of Roman Catholic Women Priests, an international group of more than a hundred ordained Catholic women priests, deacons and bishops from the US, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Latvia, Scotland, South Africa, and Switzerland. Priests Ree Hudson from St. Louis, and Janice Sevre Duszynska a priest and Deacon Donna Rougeux of Kentucky marched.

The organizers of the march were Women’s Ordination Conference, Call to Action and the international Womenpriests.org. Erin Saiz Hanna and Kate Conmy were there representing Women’s Ordination Conference, a group of thousands of Roman Catholics in the US who have been advocating for women priests since 1974. Nicole Sotelo and others from Call to Action, a 25,000 member organization of Catholic lay people, religious, clergy and bishops working for justice inside and outside the Catholic Church, were present. Therese Koturbash and Miriam Duignan from Canada and the UK represented Womenpriests.org a website in 26 languages with more than 1.5 million visitors annually. Dorothy Irvin, a world renowned biblical scholar, theologian and archeologist shared historical and archeological support for the presence of women priests in the early church. Others who needed to remain anonymous to retain their jobs joined is as well.

The group ended their Roman pilgrimage with a simple rooftop liturgy presided over by the women priests. Bread and wine were shared as people sang “Here I am, Lord.” In the background, the sun was setting both on the great dome of St. Peter’s Basilica and the men inside who think only they run the institutional church.

Bill Quigley is Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He is a Katrina survivor and has been active in human rights in Haiti for years. He volunteers with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and the Bureau de Avocats Internationaux (BAI) in Port au Prince. Contact Bill at quigley77@gmail.com

Council of the Baptized Launched in Minneapolis-St. Paul

2011-10-24T14:40:00.000-07:00

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History was made in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis when 19 men and women accepted commissions as members of the first lay-organized Council of the Baptized in the archdiocese.

The commissioning ceremony, which took place Saturday, Oct. 22, at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in St. Paul, set a precedent as the first organization of its kind for the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. The Council’s mission is to hear the voices of the faithful throughout the archdiocese and to be the vehicle of communication among them and with hierarchical leadership. The Council’s purpose is to strengthen the Catholic community to carry on the mission of the Church in the world.

Nineteen women and men answered the community’s summons to leadership to serve the first two year term on the Council. By archdiocesan quadrant, they are: Dan DeWan, Tom Hallberg, Becky Leuer, and Mary Beth Stein from the Northeast quadrant; Michael Anderson, Bob DeNardo, Paul Mandell and Brent Vanderlinden from the Southeast quadrant; Don Conroy, Carol Larsen, and Mary Jane Santele from the Northwest quadrant; Nancy Gotto, Karin Grosscup, Lyn Yount, and Amy Zabransky from the Southwest quadrant; and Rosemary Desmond, David Jasper, Joan Mitchell, and Lisa Vanderlinden, members at large.

The call to leadership in the Council came from the approximately 400 Catholics at the Synod of the Baptized on September 17, 2011. From the 214 nominations, these nineteen people responded yes to the call. The Council’s charter provides for sixteen members representing quadrants of the Archdiocese and five members at large. The Council has one opening in the Northwest quadrant and one opening in the membership at large.

Synod participants are working on thirty-two proposals for position papers and programs that they will bring to the Council for endorsement and publication. Teams are meeting in homes to prepare position papers on subjects such as the need for lay preaching, the need for communication with youth and alienated Catholics, the need to welcome all to the Eucharistic table. The people will make their voices heard on their concerns of conscience through the Council of the Baptized.

Following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and at its direction, many dioceses established Pastoral Councils. They were advisory to the bishop of the diocese, composed of lay people, and enjoyed varying degrees of influence depending on the bishop. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis had a Pastoral Council until the 1980’s when it was disbanded. The Council of the Baptized established today is entirely lay organized and has no official authorization but is consistent with church canon law:

According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which [the laity] possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons. (Canon 212 §3)

Also, Christian faithful, either as lay persons alone or in an association with clerics, may organize in "a common endeavor to foster a more perfect life to promote public worship or Christian doctrine, or to exercise other works of the apostolate . . ." (Canon 298 §1)

In that spirit and in concert with church law, the Council of the Baptized invites participation from all the faithful and dialogue with the hierarchical leadership in the spirit of Vatican II.

The Council’s organization was sponsored by the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR), but it is now an independent organization with its own leadership and purposes.

Images: Kathryn Warneke.

A Church in Flux

2011-10-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

Thomas P. Rausch reviews
The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity
Ed. by Michael J. Lacey
& Francis Oakley
(Oxford University Press, 2011)

Editor's Note: This review was first published October 24, 2011 in America Magazine.

At the heart of the crisis of authority in modern Catholicism is the lack of connection between the authority claimed by the magisterium in questions of conscience and belief and what the faithful are willing to accept. And the gap continues to widen. Modern Catholics, at least in North America and Europe, insist on their ability to think for themselves, even if Vatican officials, members of the hierarchy and even many of those preparing for the priesthood continue to presume a world of deference to their authority that no longer exists.

This is the thesis of the present volume, edited by Michael Lacey and Francis Oakley. Their purpose is to contribute to an intra-Catholic dialogue. To illustrate this they have assembled an excellent collection of essays, sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California.

The first essays provide some historical background. Oakley returns to the argument he sketched in an earlier volume; he maintains that the conciliarist constitutionalism of the councils of Constance (1414-18) and Basel (1431-49), recognizing the rights of bishops in extraordinary cases over popes, endured in universities and religious orders down to the latter half of the 19th century, in spite of the defeat of the conciliarist party at Basel. He sees its later rejection not as doctrinal development but as a radically discontinuous change in the church’s self-understanding. Lacey traces Leo XIII’s arguments against liberalism and popular sovereignty, concerned as he was to defend the unity of throne and altar as the modern democratic nation-state was emerging. Joseph Komonchak gives a nuanced interpretation of Pope Benedict’s 2005 address to the Roman Curia, contrasting a “hermeneutics of discontinuity or rupture” with “the hermeneutics of reform.” He sees Benedict’s aim as defending a “continuity of principles,” to persuade traditionalists like the followers of Archbishop Lefebvre of the legitimacy of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.

The second section looks at various theological, canonical and philosophical issues. Francis Sullivan, raising the question of how particular traditions might differ from authentic embodiments of the Tradition, traces developments that effectively reversed longstanding positions, using slavery, religious liberty, salvation outside the church and capital punishment (undergoing change) as examples. His conclusion is that some longstanding traditions are really human traditions, not authentic expressions of the word of God.

Using a concept from Charles Taylor, John Beal argues that canon law is still embedded in a “baroque social imaginary,” for it provides for no separation of powers, while bishops and pastors are accountable only to their superiors, not to those they serve. Gerard Mannion’s article on the magisterium suggests that “dissent” in a church that leaves little room for genuine debate, discussion and the lived experience of people and blurs gradations in teaching authority is another name for having the courage of one’s convictions or doubts.

Lisa Sowle Cahill shows how Catholic moral theology since Vatican II has become more biblically based and focused on relations, more integrated with social ethics and done by lay theologians as well as clergy. Cathleen Kaveny calls for a renewal of the casuistical tradition in Catholic theology—that is, an effort to integrate principles and rules with particular factual circumstances in regard to particular cases. She laments the lack of a common formation for Catholic moralists today such as once was provided for priests being trained to hear confessions. Charles Taylor, writing on magisterial authority, regrets that too often authority transgresses the contingency of moral judgments or falsely sacralizes simplistic readings of the natural law or historically based conceptions of gender, using homosexuality or women’s ordination as examples. He also calls for a greater respect for the “enigmatic,” reminding his readers that the prophetic spirit cannot be confined to one hierarchical level.

The final section addresses practical questions. The sociologist William D’Antonio and his associates argue from their surveys that the Catholic Church in the United States has become virtually a voluntary association, with Catholics increasingly finding authority in their individual consciences. In a fascinating article that traces the pre-history of the birth control controversy, Leslie Tentler shows how confessors, particularly after 1965, were largely responsible for this new emphasis on conscience. Uncomfortable with church teaching against birth control, they encouraged married penitents to follow their consciences, with a resulting decline in the number of penitents and a loss of authority for confessors, particularly in sexual matters. As an educated laity became increasingly autonomous morally, the church drifted into irrelevancy.

Finally Katarina Schuth, O.S.F., who has long studied trends in the formation of priests, paints a disheartening picture of the relations between priests and parishioners in the future. She outlines the differences between older priests, who see themselves as “servant leaders,” ready to collaborate with the laity and lay ministers, and younger priests and seminarians, often called “John Paul II priests,” who subscribe to a cultic model of priesthood, stressing separateness, an ontological difference from the laity and an ecclesiology less related to Vatican II. With the shortage of priests, these younger priests no longer face a long apprenticeship before becoming pastors; many are made pastors within three years or less of ordination. The influx of seminarians today from other countries (about 25 percent), many with weak academic backgrounds, has led to adjustments in seminary curricula. Furthermore, perhaps one-third of seminarians have experienced a “reconversion.” Unfamiliar with parish life, many tend to be inflexible, overly scrupulous and fearful.

The book, with its balanced and scholarly essays, represents a sober assessment of contemporary Catholicism. In his epilogue, Oakley notes four common themes: the deepening divisions over the interpretation of Vatican II and between clergy and laity; an “ecclesiological monophysitism” that stresses the unchanging divine dimension of the church at the expense of the confusion, variability and sinfulness that accompanies its embodied existence; the fact of change, everywhere apparent but too often unacknowledged; and the efforts of authority to impose all-or-nothing teachings on the faithful. This is a book that should be widely read by bishops as well as theologians.

Thomas P. Rausch, S.J., is the T. Marie Chilton Professor of Catholic Theology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.

Quote of the Day

2011-10-10T19:15:00.000-07:00

. . . The reasons to use both [bread and wine at Communion] are many. First of all, it plants us firmly in the Jewish roots of the liturgy. A good article on this can be found here. Second, it reconnects us, as Vatican II attempted to do, to the whole rich history of the early Church. For the first thousand years, Christians received under both species. This is not to say that they had any less respect for the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Tertullian notes in the 3rd century: ” The possibility of letting either our cup or our bread fall to the ground makes us painfully anxious.” Yet that did not prevent the reception under both species. It was more the effect of the Gregorian Reforms of the 11th century that created a more rigid class distinction between priest and assembly than any theology that began restricting the reception of the Eucharist to one species.

This leads directly to my second concern [about Bishop Olmsted's withdrawing permission to give communion wine to the laity except under certain limited conditions]. Why are seminarians singled out for special reception of both species? This only fosters the documented growing trend among young priests to shy away from lay collaboration in their ministry. The seminarian has no special place in the congregation. He is another member of the common priesthood of the faithful who offers along with the priest the sacrifice of Christ on the altar. Singling him out is particularly dangerous. More than half of the laity in recent polls say that priests don’t want them to be leaders, but only followers. The laity want to help their priests. They want to be a part of the parish and participate in its functions. They want an active part in the liturgy. Yet there is a decreasing interest among young priests to collaborate with the laity in their parishes, possibly out of a renewed emphasis in many seminaries on the “cultic” identity of a priest. The danger of the new guidelines is to reinforce that tendency and to downplay the common priesthood of the faithful at Mass.

– Nathan O'Halloran, SJ
"Liturgical Minimalism in Phoenix"
Whosoever Desires
September 23, 2011

Related Off-site Link:
The Case in Phoenix – Rita Ferrone (Commonweal, October 6, 2011).

Dissent: Lessons from Slavery

2011-10-10T18:20:00.000-07:00

By Robert McClory

Editor's Note: This commentary was first published October 10, 2011, by the National Catholic Reporter.

In a blog posted Sept. 21, "Can We Talk?", I wondered if it might be possible to have a civil debate on the troublesome hot topic of dissent from church teaching. Is dissent ever legitimate or is it not? I carefully read the many responses, which displayed a range of thinking on the subject. For a few, there was no need to talk. And I quote:

“Religion is intrinsically totalitarian...”
“Most modern dissent was caused by Vatican II which never was needed...”
“There is orthodoxy and [there is] Heterodoxy...”

For others discussion would be ideal but it cannot happen:

“No on ever changes his/her mind… based on another’s point of view...”
“I have no problem but it is useless.”
“People talk but do not listen...”

The majority however found the concept intriguing:

“Yes, I have hoped for that...”
“I am totally supportive...”
“I pray the Holy Spirit will lead us in the right direction...”

So I’m encouraged to proceed, adopting two excellent suggestions from readers. First, we are talking here about “dialogue,” not debate. And second, ideas will be presented with the caveat, “Of course I could be wrong.”

As a discussion starter, I think both conservatives and liberals can agree that some church teachings at various times can and have changed over the centuries. And we can talk about this without specifying what levels of teaching may be altered or what may not be altered.

It’s pretty obvious that change is a phenomenon of the Christian experience. As an example, consider the subject of slavery. It is not one of the current hot buttons but has a long been a subject of discussion and analysis in the Catholic Church.

One of the most penetrating accounts of slavery’s history can be found in the first 119 pages of A Church That Can and Cannot Change by John T. Noonan, Jr., a respected Catholic intellectual and veteran judge on the federal circuit court of appeals for the ninth district. In a highly readable style, Noonan shows how the church, along with the rest of Western civilization, openly tolerated and often supported slavery for some 1,800 years before coming to a complete change of heart and mind.

At issue, writes Noonan, was the “intrinsic character of a relationship in which one person bought, sold, mortgaged and transferred another person without regard to that person’s will or education or vocation, in which the one owned is a chattel of the owner.”

That slavery was acceptable in God’s sight seemed self-evident to the Jews based on the law handed down at Mt. Sinai. As recorded in Leviticus, God tells his people, “The slave and the slave girl shall come from the nations round about you…. They may become your property and you may leave them to your sons after you; you may use them as slaves permanently.”

Despite the radical equality of all preached by Paul in the New Testament --
“In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, man nor woman” -- Paul tolerated slavery. He urged masters to stop “bullying” their slaves and encouraged slaves to “obey your masters” -- yet he never criticized slavery as an institution.

Nor, it seems, did Jesus, who healed the slave of a centurion, yet did not comment critically on the status of slaves in this case or elsewhere.

Throughout the centuries, popes, bishops and theologians called on slaveholders to treat their slaves charitably and not abuse them. There was no suggestion that slaves were less than human.

Slaves could become Christians, and they did. Slaves like Felicity, Blandina and Vitale are among honored saints and martyrs in the church. In the seventh century Pope Gregory the Great owned slaves himself, and on one occasion was so impressed with the noble faces and obvious intelligence of some young pagan slaves he encountered that he wanted to go to their native land, England, and convert their relatives and friends to Christianity. That was his goal, not the elimination of the slave trade itself.

Some fathers of the church like Gregory of Nyssa were troubled by slavery, seeing it as a sin of pride and contrary to human nature. They chided slave owners for their arrogance but none was an advocate of abolition.

Even as Christianity emerged as the glue that held Western Europe together in the second millennium, the practice of slavery continued to flourish.

Writes Noonan: “No pope or general council laid down as law that Catholic Christians might not lawfully enslave [even] Catholic Christians defeated in battle along with their wives and children.”

Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval theologian, held that slavery was “a corporeal condition” created by “human reason for the utility of human life.” No vocabulary to confess the sin of slave owning or trading can be found in the writings of Aquinas or other moral teachers. Much attention was paid to offenses such as theft, robbery, adultery, fornication, incest and rape.

“No word,” writes Noonan, “designated as an offense the owning of another person.” In fact, anyone who assisted a slave in running away from his master committed a sin, according to Catholic teaching of the time, because he was cooperating in stealing the master’s property.

Very gradually an awakening occurred. A singular break with tradition took place in the 13th century when the city of Bologna bought all the slaves within its jurisdiction and set them free. The action was widely discussed and celebrated. However, no other city followed Bologna’s example.

With the discovery of the New World, popes and kings worked in cooperation to oversee the slave trade. For example, Pope Nicholas V in the 16th century granted to the king of Portugal “full and free faculty” to “conquer, crush, pacify and subjugate” the population of Guinea and “to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”

Yet, increased attention to the slave trade brought forth for the first time prophetic voices, like that of Bartolome de Las Casas, a Spanish Dominican priest who accompanied Columbus on one of his journeys. He wrote about the cruelty he observed and concluded that “Christ granted no power to apostle or preacher of the faith to force the unwilling” to obey and no power… to seize their possessions and enslave them.”

Las Casas is often remembered for his debate with the renowned theologian Sepulvida in 1550. One by one he took apart the arguments for waging war and enslaving Indians, finding them “completely absurd.” The prominent theologian Thomas Cajetan, also a Dominican, declared, “On a living human being, so long as he is held in slavery, violence is continually inflicted.”

Popes at last began to speak out against the wholesale enslavement of Africans and Native Americans but still stopped short of pronouncing slavery itself immoral and forbidden.

By the 19th century, the moral justification of slavery was in retreat, though its practice continued in the United States and elsewhere. The first official papal condemnation came in an encyclical by Gregory XVI in 1863. He said the faithful should be “dissuaded” from the “inhuman traffic” in “blacks or any other kind of persons.”

The pope did not explain why it took so long for the church take a stand, nor did he ground the condemnation on the natural law or the liberating message of the Gospel. Some quibbling followed. John England, bishop of Georgia and the Carolinas and the leading prelate in the U.S., argued that the pope spoke only against the international slave trade, not against slavery itself.

Nevertheless, the handwriting was on the wall. By the 20th century there was no more arguing. The Second Vatican Council listed slavery as “especially contrary to the honor of the creator.”

It was left to Pope John Paul II to put a stamp of finality on the discussion. In his 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor, he spoke of certain acts that are incapable of being ordered to God, that are always and everywhere intrinsically evil. Among these he listed slavery along with genocide, homicide and abortion. There can never, ever, said the pope, be an excuse for such actions.

So what has all this got to do with dissent? I think slavery illustrates clearly that something gravely evil can for long periods of time be viewed as not at all evil by the leaders, the experts and vast numbers of the laity. This blindness to slavery persisted age after age for some 1,800 years.

How can it be that something so obvious to us -- the evil in essentially denying basic rights to another human being -- was perceived as not evil at all or only dimly so for such a period?

Noonan says part of the answer may be that the leading Christians -- popes, bishops, theologians -- had little or no personal experience with slavery. They did not see first-hand how it degraded and crippled the human body and spirit.

Of course no one asked the slaves what they thought. So the leaders wrote and spoke about slavery rationally and from above, fashioning horrible accommodations that made sense only when presented at a safe distance from real life. The history of slavery tells us that there was something essential in the Gospel message that had to be teased out, its implications drawn out slowly over a long time and with great difficulty.

And I have to wonder if our ancestors in the faith missed this elephant in the living room, the question what else may we still be missing?

Of course I could be wrong, but that’s where dissent comes in. It is closely related to change. The institution of slavery survived for so long because few thought there was anything to dissent about. Only when voices were finally raised did the church as a whole remove its blinders.

This doesn’t prove all dissent is good, only that sometimes it is -- sometimes even necessary. I believe the tension in a particular issue between dissenters and those who choose not to dissent can be healthy and productive if both sides are respectful and agree that loud diatribes and silent stalemates are useless.

Catholicism’s culture wars have gone on long enough. What do you think?

See also the previous PCV posts:
Gerald Arbuckle on the "Critical Role of Dissent"
Nicholas Lash on Dissent and Disagreement
Civil Discourse. In Church?

Recommended Off-site Links:
Robert McClory on a Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent (Part 1) – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, June 10, 2008).
Robert McClory on a Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent (Part 2) – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, July 8, 2008).

What is “Marriage Itself”?

2011-09-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

By Paula Ruddy

The Minnesota Roman Catholic bishops are playing fast and loose with reason in their statement opposing Catholics for Marriage Equality MN. The bishops’ press release is quoted in the Catholic Spirit of September 29.

The bishops: Be afraid. Change makes the sky fall. If the State allows same-gender civil marriage, “marriage itself” will be undermined. The bishops lead with the fear card.

The person desperately seeking reason: What is “marriage itself”? Are the bishops telling me there is an essence labeled “marriage” existing somewhere and all actual marriages should be patterned on it? Or have they taken an idea of marriage from the many conceptions that humans have constructed over the centuries, called it “marriage itself” and attributed it to Jesus. Are they saying that if I want to be a member of the Catholic Church I must never question that construction or think about any other?

As a person living in the post-modern Western culture, I have learned to find the meaning of words like “marriage” in looking at actual marriages. If I try to construct an idea of what marriage is that way, I find there is no such thing as “marriage itself.” There are many kinds of marriages. There are different marriage laws the world over. There are actually gays and lesbians who are in permanent mutually caring relationships and caring for children just like heterosexuals. Wow, the bishops are sure confusing me.

If the bishops mean that “marriage itself” is the Church’s conception of sacramental marriage, why should it be undermined if the civil law of marriage changes? Hasn’t the Roman Catholic Church lived for many generations in the U.S. with the distinction between civil marriage, according to State law, and sacramental marriage, according to the law of the Church? If Catholics are well-taught by the bishops and value the Church’s conception of sacramental marriage, why would civil laws allowing same-gender marriage undermine their values?

But that is precisely the problem. Catholics are not listening to the Church’s teaching. The bishops see that U.S. Catholics increasingly value equality, freedom, and democracy in governance, which are not part of Roman Catholic culture. They see that Catholics have stopped valuing Church teaching on co-habitation, contraception, divorce, same-gender marriage, and even abortion, influenced by the thinking of mainstream civil society.

I do not doubt that the Minnesota bishops want a morally good and stable society in this state. But their strategy to accomplish it is misguided. Instead of trusting all people of the state, including Catholics, to want the same morally good and stable society they want, they say stuff like this:

It is the responsibility of the bishops in communion with the pope to uphold the truth as well as encourage and support all Catholics who are trying to live their baptismal promise of believing and trusting in our one, Catholic and apostolic faith. This is especially true in the area of marriage and sexuality, where the universal moral law and Gospel values are constantly under attack in American law and culture.

Good grief. Because they have failed in their responsibility to protect Catholics from the values of U.S. “law and culture,” the bishops now want the people of Minnesota to amend their state constitution to enforce the bishops’ views to help them keep the flock in check.

It would be so much more helpful if the Minnesota bishops first of all realized that truth is discovered by taking the life world seriously. The love of truth requires some humility and modesty. Can we alone have it? How do we arrive at it? The bishops would then speak to the people, inquiring of them what they experience and what they think, reasoning with them within the frame of reference of twenty-first century reflective adults. That is what Catholics for Marriage Equality MN is asking of them.

The Minnesota bishops could watch the video newly produced by Catholics for Marriage Equality MN, the trailer of which can be viewed here. On the video they will see adult, permanent gay and lesbian partners and parents of gays and lesbians talk about their experience of faith and their relationship to the Roman Catholic Church. They will hear about the harm the Church’s insistence on its position causes. Then they should respond feelingly and reasonably. And let the Holy Spirit do the work.

Related Off-site Links:
Local Catholics Premier Video Series on Faith, Family and Marriage – The Wild Reed (September 26, 2011).
Archdiocese Says Marriage Equality Group That "Seeks to Confuse Catholics" Must Be Avoided – Andy Birkey (Minnesota Independent, September 30, 2011).
New Video Adds to Gay Marriage Debate Among Catholics – Lauren Radomski (KSTP, September 29, 2011).

Image: Michael Bayly.

Hans Küng on Church Reform: "The Base Must Gather Its Strength and Make Itself Heard"

2011-09-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

On the eve of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Germany, renowned Catholic theologian Hans Küng (pictured at right) spoke with Der Spiegel about the increasing bureaucratic banality of the Catholic Church and the need for reform.

Following are excerpts from Der Spiegel's two-part conversation with Küng.

____________________________

Der Spiegel: You and Benedict are traveling along two different paths. You want to reform the Church to keep it alive. The pope is trying to seal off the Church from the outside world and increasingly restrict it to a conservative core, which may possibly survive.

Küng: Indeed. In the past, the Roman system was compared with the communist system, one in which one person had all the say. Today I wonder if we are not perhaps in a phase of “Putinization” of the Catholic Church. Of course I don’t want to compare the Holy Father, as a person, with the unholy Russian statesman. But there are many structural and political similarities. Putin also inherited a legacy of democratic reforms. But he did everything he could to reverse them. In the Church, we had the Council, which initiated renewal and ecumenical understanding. Even pessimists couldn’t have imagined that such setbacks were possible after that. The Polish pope’s restoration policy, beginning in the 1980s, made it possible for the like-minded head of the highly secretive Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), once known as the Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition — and it’s still an inquisition, despite its new name — to be elected pope.

Der Spiegel: That’s an audacious comparison.

Küng: It shouldn’t, of course, be overstretched. But unfortunately, even as we acknowledge the positive things, the negative developments that are taking place cannot be overlooked. Practically speaking, both Ratzinger and Putin placed their former associates in key positions and sidelined those they didn’t like. One could also draw other parallels: the disempowerment of the Russian parliament and the Vatican Synod of Bishops; the degradation of Russian provincial governors and of Catholic bishops to make them nothing but recipients of orders; a conformist “nomenclature”; and a resistance to real reforms.

Der Spiegel: What would be the treatment?

Küng: The base must gather its strength and make itself heard, so that the system can no longer circumvent it. . . .

Der Spiegel: More than a year ago, you wrote an open letter to all bishops in the world, in which you offered a detailed explanation of your criticism of the pope and the Roman system. What was the response?

Küng: There are about 5,000 bishops in the world, but none of them dared to comment publicly. This clearly shows that something isn’t right. But if you talk to individual bishops, you often hear: “What you describe is fundamentally true, but nothing can be done about it.” It would be wonderful if a prominent bishop would just say: “This cannot go on. We cannot sacrifice the entire Church to please the Roman bureaucrats.” But so far no one has had the courage to do so. The ideal situation, in my view, would be a coalition of reformist theologians, lay people and pastors open to reform, and bishops prepared to support reform. Of course they would come into conflict with Rome, but they would have to endure that, in a spirit of critical loyalty.

Der Spiegel: That’s what led to the Reformation 500 years ago. But at the time, the Roman system was incapable of understanding the criticism from within the ranks.

Küng: After 500 years, we are surprised that the popes and bishops of the day did not realize that a reform was necessary. Luther didn’t want to divide the Church, but the pope and the bishops were blind. It seems that a similar situation applies today.

. . . Der Spiegel: You don't just want to reduce the power of the pope. You are also calling for an end to celibacy, you want women to be ordained as priests and you want the Church to lift its ban on birth control. Catholics loyal to the pope say that these elements are part of the core values of the Catholic Church. If you peel all of this away, how much of the Church is left?

Küng: What remains is the same Catholic Church that used to exist -- and which was better. I'm not saying that the papacy should be abolished. But we need offices that serve the congregations, and we need the kind of papacy that was practiced by John XXIII. He didn't seek to dominate. Instead, he simply demonstrated that he was there for everyone, including other churches. He laid the groundwork for the Council and a new dawning of ecumenical Christianity. He allowed a new church to come alive.

To read the complete interview, click here.

Recommended Off-site Links:
Vatican II: Lost and Betrayed – Giovanni Franzoni (via Iglesia Descalza, September 19, 2011).
Fr. Hans Küng On Benedict's Trip To Germany – Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, September 22, 2011).
Church "Needs to Undergo Revolution" – Marie Crowe (The Independent, August 28, 2011).

See also the previous PCV posts:
Hans Küng Says Only Radical Reform Can Save the Catholic Church
A Meeting with Hans Küng
A Priest's Call for a Catholic Reformation
Encouragement for Those Disappointed with the Church
A Tradition Worth Returning To
Creating a Liberating Church (Part 1)
Creating a Liberating Church (Part 2)
Creating a Liberating Church (Part 3)
Urgent Tasks for Church Renewal
"All Voices Must Be Heard": A Response to Archbishop Nienstedt
It's Critical That Catholics Find Their Voice
Let Our Voices Be Heard!

A Tradition Worth Returning To

2011-09-15T22:27:00.000-07:00

By Michael J. Bayly

Recently on 60 Minutes, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan called for a return to orthodoxy and tradition within the Roman Catholic Church. Judging from recent events, some might conclude that this “return” is in full swing. We see Catholics excommunicated for simply voicing support for female ordination; girl altar servers banned; certain theologians declared “a curse and affliction upon the church,” and parents supportive of their gay and lesbian children being viewed as cooperating in evil.

Exclusion appears to be the hallmark of this “return to tradition,” along with the clerical leadership’s condemnation of “relativism” – the allowing of wider cultural trends or developments to inform and shape church teachings and practices. Yet, ironically, the exclusionary, so-called “traditional” attitudes and practices being championed by members of the church hierarchy are themselves relative to past historical and cultural developments. Specifically, they are relative to the church’s embracing of the imperial trappings of empire in the fourth century and the Vatican’s later appropriation of absolute monarchy in the seventeenth century. Such accommodations to exclusionary political systems and hierarchical structures have obscured the radical egalitarianism that Jesus lived and taught and which actually reflects the earliest and deepest tradition of the Catholic faith.

We see all of this being played out in our own local church. Recently Archbishop John Nienstedt cautioned the priests and the Catholic faithful of the “threat to unity” posed by a local coalition of Catholics gathering for its second annual “Synod of the Baptized” on September 17 at the DoubleTree Hilton in Bloomington. The event, expected to draw over 500 reform-minded Catholics, will feature a keynote address by theologian Anthony Padovano on the role of conscience in the work of church reform.

“Making Our Voices Heard” is the title of the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform’s 2011 synod. It is a title purposely chosen by organizers in response to many Catholic lay people’s experience of not having their voices heard on matters of church teaching and practice that impact their lives. A new initiative, the Council of the Baptized, will be launched at the synod. Its members will act as representatives of the lay Catholic community in developing policies, practices, and church administrative structures that will serve the Gospel message of justice, inclusion and compassion. It is envisioned that the Council will work collaboratively with the ordained leadership of the Archdiocese. Yet according to the archbishop, the only baptized members of the church that can respond to the issues and concerns raised by the Council are the bishops. The implication is that all others must be quiet and simply obey. Some even declare that this is the traditional role of the laity.

Organizers of Synod 2011, however, draw on church history and teaching to support a very different role of the laity – one that makes a claim for active participation by all in every aspect of church life. Such participation was a deeply valued and practiced tradition of the early church and reflects the belief that the consensus of the Christian people indicates the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the church. Cardinal John Henry Newman highlighted this belief in the nineteenth century when he noted that church authority needs to take into account “the opinion of the laity on subjects in which the laity are especially concerned."

The Catholic Coalition for Church Reform also draws inspiration and support from the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, where it was taught that church teachings develop through the contemplation and study made not just by members of the hierarchy, but by believers’ “intimate understanding” of things they experience. (Dei Verbum, 8)

Thus contrary to Archbishop Nienstedt’s recent condemnation of the “Making Our Voices Heard” synod as “an affront to the hierarchical ordering of the church,” organizers insist that they are in no way denigrating the proper role and authority of the bishops and the Pope. Rather, we are emphasizing and claiming the traditional Catholic role of the laity. For many Catholics, it is to this earliest and inclusive tradition, free of the exclusionary attitudes and practices that developed later, that the church needs to return if it is to faithfully embody the presence of Jesus in the world.

Quote of the Day

2011-09-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

In the 28th chapter of Matthew's Gospel, we begin to have Jesus instruct us on what it really means to be a disciple of His.

Now before [that] passage . . . Jesus said to the disciples, "If you want to be My disciple, you must be like a little child." He took a child and He put them right in the midst of the disciples. He said, "Unless you become like this little child, you can't enter into the Reign of God."

He wasn't speaking about the innocence of the child. We all have that sense of how beautiful and innocent a tiny baby is, and we rejoice in that. He was talking about the fact that in His time, especially under the Roman occupation, children had no rights. They were powerless.

So if you wanted to be a disciple of Jesus, you have to begin to be ready to give up any idea of domination over another.

We must do that individually. In our relationships there has to be total mutuality if we're going to be friends. In a marriage relationship, there has to be mutuality, not one dominating another.

That's very hard to do, but Jesus says that's what we have to do if we're going to be his disciples: give up this sense of power. We have to do that individually, but don't you think it would be important also for us as a community, as a nation, not to think that we dominate the world, that we have the largest army and spend the most on military equipment, forces and training than any other country in the world. Why?

Disciples of Jesus don't need weapons. They don't drive for power. It's a hard lesson, but Jesus says the other way to do it is through love.

That's the first thing He tells us, "If you want to be My disciple, you must be one who is willing to be powerless," like Jesus who said, "I, when I am lifted up," and He meant on the cross, totally powerless, "I will draw all people to Myself."

He never coerces. He never uses force or power. He draws by what Pope John Paul used to call the fascinating power of love. That's all.

That's hard, but that's part of being a disciple of Jesus.

— Bishop Thomas Gumbleton
"Love Fulfills the Whole Law"
The National Catholic Reporter
September 8, 2011

See also the previous PCV post:
Love and Rules

Love and Rules

2011-09-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

By Florence Steichen

‘Animosity divides factions’ leapt out at me in the brochure for the Synod of the Baptized. One of the main reasons for this sad, stark statement is our different approaches to rules. Think how often progressive Catholics are accused of breaking rules.

We celebrate Liturgy with unauthorized presiders and homilists, inclusive language, and creative Eucharistic prayers with some prescribed words missing. We worship this way not to be rebellious, bur rather to express who we are as a community and who we are trying to become — faithful disciples of Jesus our brother.

We look to the Gospels and see that they are full of instances in which Jesus broke/transcended a rule to show his compassion for suffering people.

Jesus healed on the Sabbath: the woman bent over for 18 years, the man born blind, and the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethsaida. He reminded his questioners that they loose their animals on the Sabbath, and the Sabbath is made for people, not the other way around.

The scribes and Pharisees who knew and kept the rules put Jesus to the test. “Teacher, this woman was taken in the act of adultery. Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. What do you say?” After the elders had left because no one was without sin to cast a stone, Jesus told the woman, “neither do I condemn you; go on your way ...”

Many of the parables give the same message: compassion goes beyond rules. The Good Samaritan was praised for tending to the needs of the injured traveler, rather than the Priest and Levite who passed by so as not to risk ritual impurity and be unfit for temple worship.

Jesus himself touched lepers, breaking the purity code. When he was criticized for not washing his hands before he ate, Jesus responded that what goes into a person does not make one unclean, but what comes out of the heart.

The father of the prodigal son broke rules. He was NOT to run after his son, but to await him in the village center and denounce him publicly. The elder brother who had never disobeyed his father’s commands could not summon enough love to welcome his brother back and celebrate as his father entreated him.

One of my favorites is the judgment scene in Matt. 25 in which the blessed who will be welcomed into the kin-dom are those who fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, sheltered the homeless, visited the sick and imprisoned. Not a word about those who observed the rules.

As we support one another on our journey, let us be heartened by Jesus’ answer to the question about which is the greatest commandment.

“You shall love the lord your God with your whole heart and soul, mind and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments the whole law and prophets depend.”

John of the Cross summed it up: “In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.”

Image: "Compassionate Christ" by John Giuliani.

A Pie for Peace: Tenth Anniversary of 9/11 Chance to Reflect, Bake, Resist

2011-09-11T00:02:00.000-07:00

By Frida Berrigan

Editor's Note: This article was first published September 9, 2011, by WagingNonviolence.org.

September 11, 2001 was my friend Diana’s 30th birthday. I planned on meeting her at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station after work. Instead I walked across the Manhattan Bridge in a cloud of ash and crumbled concrete, looking back at the hole in the skyline. We all walked across the bridge. It was packed with people wearing business suits and sweatpants. I remember seeing a man on a bicycle riding towards Manhattan with a camera slung over his neck. “You’re going the wrong way,” I wanted to shout. Who takes pictures at a time like this? I remember there was a man in a yarmulke handing out bottles of cold water as we left the bridge on the Brooklyn side. I was so grateful.

I was uninjured. I had an apartment in Windsor Terrace that I was walking towards, but that sense of uncertainty—what will the future hold? What will change? When will I go back to work?—loomed large.

In the days that followed, I saw the best of America in New York City—my home. Real mourning, deep soul-searching, amazing altruism and self-sacrifice, and vigorous but respectful debate about why this tragedy happened.

“Our grief is not a cry for war.” That was the slogan that emerged in those days and it reverberated through my city—a truly international metropolis. The citizens of more than 80 nations were killed when the towers fell. Undocumented immigrants, homeless people, white shoe lawyers, seven figure corporate executives, emergency responders all died.

This was not an act of war against the United States, this was a crime against humanity and it should be dealt with thusly. These assertions—borne out of our collective experience of tragedy—were felt as deeply as the ash from the “pile” that burrowed into our pores and clogged our lungs and contaminated every surface of our homes and offices. These assertions were informed by a new group that coalesced in those early days after September 11, 2001 called September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. Men and women who lost loved ones in the Trade Towers, the Pentagon, and the airplanes on that day, men and women who rejected the Bush administration’s thundering drumbeat of war and vengeance. They were inspired by Doctor Martin Luther King’s observation that “wars are poor chisels for carving peaceful tomorrows.”

And there has been little hope of a peaceful tomorrow in the ten years that followed George W. Bush’s declaration of war and the bombardment that began on October 7, 2001.

After 9/11, I threw myself into the peace movement with new vigor. If Rita Lasar and David Potorti and Colleen Kelly and Amber Amundson—members of Peaceful Tomorrows who lost close members of their families on 9/11—could turn their grief into peace-making and reconciliation, than I—who lost no one—could too.

Each anniversary that has followed, I have made a point of walking home from work, walking across the Manhattan Bridge and recalling the fear and anxiety and uncertainty that I felt that day. Reminding myself of the nearly 3,000 people who died—most of whom died in my city, recalling as many of their names as I could . . . Bill Kelly, Jim Potorti, Abe Zelmanowitz, Craig Amundson; reminding myself too of all those who have died (and continue to die) in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Guantanamo and elsewhere as the war on terror metastasized into a global war.

Each anniversary I have been part of peace vigils, civil disobedience actions, candlelight vigils. One year we did a 24 hour vigil in Washington Square Park and the next morning did a die-in in Union Square. Another year we held a reading of the names of 9/11 victims and Afghan war victims in front of the military recruiters office in Times Square. I wrote essays and analysis and reflections about 9/11 and beyond.

This year is different. This will be the first year I will not walk across the Manhattan Bridge, the first year I will not work in Manhattan and live in Brooklyn. I moved to New London, Connecticut last November and I will not rally or demonstrate or vigil this year. I will not attend any of the countless 9/11 Tributes and Memorials and Conferences and Art Shows and Demonstrations planned for this weekend.

Instead, I will make a pie.

It sounds funny, I know. After almost a decade of activism on this specific date, I will mix flour and butter and salt and roll out dough. I will pick pears from my community garden plot a few blocks away. I’ll peel and core them. After I cut them up and mix them with cinnamon, nutmeg (we are the nutmeg state), brown sugar, lemon juice and black pepper (my own secret—oops—ingredient), I’ll assemble fruit and dough into a pie and let it bake.

As I do all of this, I’ll consider the “Pies for Peace” meditation written by Reverend Carolyn Patierno of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Congregation, where my husband and I go for services (not as often as we’d like).

From the garden, to the kitchen, through our hands, to the table . . .

May we hold close the ways that we are connected to the land and to all sentient beings.

The feast we make with the pies we bake,

May they nourish what is bitter with what is sweet.

Let there be love. Let there be plenty. Let there be peace.

And let it begin with us.

Shalom. Amen. Blessed be.

Reverend Carolyn came up with Pies for Peace, to “remind us that however humble our effort we are all responsible for building a new world,” and asks “What better day to recommit ourselves than September 11, 2011?” I will also think of my friend Diana, now living in Los Angeles and celebrating her 40th birthday this weekend. I hope she eats oysters.

This is all so much more modest than lying down in the street or vigiling while standing upright. But, it feels right for me as I mark my first September 11 as a non-New Yorker. “Let there be love. Let there be plenty. Let there be peace” and let it begin with me.

"We, Together, Are the Church": A Response to Archbishop Nienstedt

2011-09-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

Chuck Pilon responds to Archbishop John C. Nienstedt's
July 18 letter in which he cautions the priests of the Archdiocese
and the Catholic faithful against attending the Catholic Coalition
for Church Reform's September 17 Synod of the Baptized.

I wish you well, Archbishop Nienstedt. You are a man dedicated to the Church – the institutional, Roman Catholic version of Church.

Based on my understanding of Church as clarified by the Second Vatican Council, in my opinion, Archbishop, in your way and your style of being a bishop you have betrayed the Catholic Church – which is to say you have betrayed us, the People of God – ordinary people, baptized into the Body of Christ.

The Church you envision does not square (again, in my opinion) with the second Reading for the (Cycle A this year) second Sunday after Easter, the Acts of the Apostles 2:42-47. There we find the simplest description of the community of followers – call it Church to make it simple – a community of followers established by Jesus of Nazareth through his teaching, his way of life and his death and resurrection.

We, together, are the Church – neither you alone, with your episcopal call and charism, nor we alone, with our Baptism into Christ and our call to the kind of lives lived and told of in that short passage from the Acts of the Apostles.

I encourage you to find ways to live and work together within the People of God – people made so, not through consecration as a bishop, as you were, but through Baptism into Christ, our teacher, our model for life, who paid the price for his teaching and his way of life, the one Jesus of Nazareth.

– Charles J. Pilon
Author, Waiting for Mozart:
A Novel about Church People Caught in Conflict
www.waitingformozart.com

Save the Date!

2011-09-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

You are invited to the premiere of a new video series . . .

Catholics for Marriage Equality

LGBT Catholics and their loved ones
share stories of faith, marriage and family

5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, September 29, 2011

Riverview Theater
3800 42nd Ave. S., Minneapolis

Catholics for Marriage Equality MN, in collaboration with filmmaker Aleshia Mueller of Reel Nomad Productions, has created a series of five compelling vignettes of faith, marriage and family from the perspective of LGBT Catholics and supportive family members.

Produced in response to the ongoing efforts to amend the Minnesota State Constitution to ban civil marriage rights for same-sex couples, this work invites people to seek and discern the face of God in the lives and relationships it presents, and to prayerfully reflect upon the impact of the proposed “marriage amendment” on these lives and relationships.

All are welcome to attend the premiere of Catholics for Marriage Equality on Thursday, September 29, 2011, at the Riverview Theater (3800 42nd Ave. S., Minneapolis, 55406). Doors open at 5:00 p.m. A discussion will follow the 5:30 screening. Admission is free. Donations are welcome as this event serves as a major fundraiser for Catholics for Marriage Equality MN.

NOTE: A trailer for Catholics for Marriage Equality will soon be available for viewing at www.c4me.org.

Fallen 9/11 Priest Emerges as An Icon for Gay Catholics

2011-09-01T07:17:00.000-07:00

By Daniel Burke

NOTE: This article was first published August 25, 2011, by Religious News Service.

When All Saints Church sought to signal its hospitality to gays and lesbians, the Catholic parish in Syracuse, N.Y., turned to a well-known image from the 9/11 attacks: five firefighters carrying a body from the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

The body belonged to the Rev. Mychal Judge, a Franciscan fire chaplain who rushed to the burning buildings and was killed by falling debris. Later, a half-hidden secret emerged about the gallant priest: he was gay.

All Saints hopes the statue will demonstrate that the parish, following Judge’s lead, is committed to closing the chasms between rich and poor, black and white, gay and straight, said the Rev. Fred Daley, the church’s pastor.

Moreover, Daley said, the monument will memorialize a man who, like many gays and lesbians, struggled to fit into a church that considers homosexual desires “an intrinsic moral evil” and seeks to prohibit gay men from becoming priests.

“Here’s a gay person who was committed to celibacy, flourishing in the priesthood. It breaks so many stereotypes that people have,” said Daley, who came out as gay himself in 2004.“For young gay people in particular, how good it is that Mychal Judge can be a role model for them.”

Of 9/11’s myriad effects on American life, among the more surprising is the emergence of a New York City Fire Department chaplain as a gay icon—a hero bordering on sainthood to scores of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics.

A gay civil rights group has produced a documentary called Saint of 9/11; gay activists hold vigils on the anniversary of his death; statues and icons of the sandal-shod Franciscan crop up nationwide; and his example has been employed to oppose Vatican policies that bar men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” from the priesthood.

The gay Catholic pundit Andrew Sullivan has called Judge’s death an “emblem of service and holiness and courage,” and argued that, by the Vatican’s logic, the priest “should never have been ordained.”

Researchers estimate that thousands of gay priests like Judge serve the church while remaining faithful to their vows of celibacy. Only a few, however, have publicly revealed their sexual orientation, leaving a dearth of positive role models for gay Catholics, Daley said.

The Rev. James Martin, culture editor of the Jesuit magazine America, said some Catholics are uncomfortable with Judge’s sexual orientation.

“But why should they be? For all we know, he lived a perfectly celibate life,” Martin said. “He lived as the Catechism asked him to live and kept his ordination promises. Gay, straight or somewhere in between, he’s a hero. If you rush into a burning building to minister to people, while knowing that you might die, that’s true holiness.”

Omitting any mention of Judge’s sexuality, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has used Judge’s heroic life and death for its own ends: in promotional materials encouraging men to join priesthood.

“One’s orientation should never dominate one’s ministry as a priest,” said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the bishops. “Clearly, it did not dominate the ministry of Father Judge, who by all reports was held in high esteem by many, especially by the fire department he served so well.”

Charismatic and witty, Judge made legions of friends and admirers during his 68 years—from President Clinton to homeless addicts. His funeral was packed with conservative Catholics, politicians, firefighters, recovering alcoholics and gay activists, recalls friend Brendan Fay.

“He had a strange way of weaving his way through communities that could barely tolerate each other,” said Fay, a gay rights activist in New York.

Some of those friends now bristle at the focus on the Franciscan’s sexual orientation.

“How come any time anyone talks about Mychal Judge they only want to talk about that subject?” asked Dennis Lynch, a lawyer in Nyack, N.Y., who worked with Judge on reconciling Catholic and Protestant factions in Northern Ireland.

Lynch has denied that Judge was gay and argued that gay activists “hijacked the truth” to “advance a particular cause.”

“I think the last thing Father Mike would want as his legacy would be for people to debate his sexual orientation,” Lynch said.

Journal entries published in a The Book of Mychal, a 2008 biography, show Judge struggling with the secretiveness his sexual orientation sometimes required. “I thought of my gay self and how the people I meet never get to know me fully,” he wrote.

The priest bent church rules by joining the gay Catholic group Dignity and allowing it to meet in his Franciscan-run parish. He counseled gay couples and the parents of gay children, according to Fay, and began ministering to AIDS victims during the 1980s, when the disease was considered a gay scourge.

But even some of the Judge’s closest friends didn’t know he was gay, said David Fullam, whose firehouse sat across the street from the Franciscan friary. The former firefighter wears a bracelet emblazoned with Judge’s name and donated $240 recently to All Saints’ monument fund.

“We knew that he ministered to the AIDS population and the gay population,” Fullam said. “He was very inclusive.” While some firefighters were taken aback when they learned that Judge was gay after his death, they would have accepted him regardless, he said.

“We didn’t care if he was gay or straight,” Fullam said. “We loved him.”

Quote of the Day

2011-08-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

Christ set up a community, not a hierarchy, and that is the priesthood and church we must go back to.

That church was a humble church, it was a servant church; we need a different culture of authority. We need a culture of authority which facilitates people because the real energy now will come from lay people, not clerics. And I think where the renewal will begin will be with the lay people facilitating them as equals, their priesthood as well as the ordained priesthood.

– Fr. Harry Bohan
Quoted in Marie Crowe's article,
"Church 'Needs to Undergo Revolution'"
The Independent (Ireland)
August 28, 2011

Hermeneutics as Weapon

2011-08-28T22:55:00.000-07:00

By Robert McClory

Note: This commentary was first published August 26, 2011, by the National Catholic Reporter.

Beware of hermeneutics! It’s a $25 Greek word, referring to the god Hermes, considered the inventor of language and speech, and it deals with the principles of interpretation used in examining the meaning of texts. In theological and philosophical circles, hermeneutics has a long, relatively polite history as scholars probed the writings of masters and came up with diverse (though not necessarily contradictory) meanings based on their hermeneutic perspective. Picture a formal dissertation with two scholars dissecting from different points of view a proposition (preferably in Latin) from Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, while a more or less rapt audience of students looks on.

That was then, this is now.

For hermeneutics as used by growing numbers of the hierarchy has become a blunt instrument insofar as the interpretation of Vatican II is concerned. Pope Benedict really got the ball rolling in his less-than-cheery pre-Christmas speech to the members of the Vatican curia in 2005. A large part of the difficulty in implementing the council, he said, stems from the fact “that two contrary hermeneutics came face-to-face and quarreled with each other.” The first is the hermeneutic of reform, which the pope also describes as the hermeneutic “of renewal in the continuity of the one subject – church – which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying people of God.”

The second, which he calls “the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture,” is based “on a false concept of the church and hence of the council, as if the former were from man alone and the latter a sort of constituent assembly.” This hermeneutic, he said, “has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and is also one trend of modern theology.” The false interpretation caused confusion, he explained, while “the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit.”

This is hardly an invitation to discussion and dialogue. When one hermeneutic is set against another – the correct vs. the incorrect, the right vs. the wrong, the one based on what “the Lord has given” us vs. the one based on “man alone,” there's no possibility of moving ahead. Classic hermeneutecists, I think, would be appalled.

This peculiar dichotomy was further explained in a 2009 speech Cardinal Franc Rode delivered before some 600 clerics and religious at Stonehill College in Massachusetts. He was at the time the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. His talk was directed specifically at women religious, and it is Rode who initiated the controversial Vatican investigation of U.S. religious orders. “The hermeneutics of rupture has dominated the attempts at renewal of religious life,” he said, and much of his talk dealt with how the “aggiornamento,” the updating called for by the council, had been overtaken by a “pseudo-aggiornamento,” a “naturalism which involved the radical centering of man on himself, the rejection of the supernatural and the supremacy of a climate of radical subjectivism.”

The cardinal admitted that the language of the council document on religious life recommended ideas hitherto unheard of in church documents: “adaptation to the demands of the apostolate,” “adjusting their way of life to modern needs,” expressing “poverty in new forms,” in obedience “superiors should gladly listen to their subjects,” “suitable instruction …in the currents and attitudes and thought prevalent in social life today.” But such innovations must be tempered and qualified, said Rode, by other guidelines in the document which stress the more traditional, ascetic, demanding and holier aspects of religious life.

Rode said his remarks applied not only to religious but to all Catholics who have allowed their faith to become distorted by allegiance to the hermeneutic of rupture: “In our day the prevailing climate of agnosticism, relativism and subjectivism is frequently taken as having a normative value that belongs by right to the word of God. We must energetically oppose reformers who contend that the church must abandon her claims to absolute truth, must allow dissent from her own doctrines, and must be governed according to the principles of a liberal democracy.”

In the final talk at the conference, Robert Morlino, bishop of Madison, Wis., said it’s a matter of teaching Catholics to speak properly. “Many if not most ... have learned the language of the discontinuity hermeneutic," he said. “And in order to learn the language Pope John Paul the Great and Pope Benedict are trying to teach us they have to unlearn the language that they have learned.”

Indeed, Vatican II did teach a new language, and most Catholics welcomed it. But it has little resemblance to the language Morlino wants us to learn. In his book, What Happened at Vatican II, historian John O’Malley vividly contrasts the pre-Vatican II emphasis on church teaching with the new emphasis the council had introduced. The shift, he said, was “from commands to invitation, from laws to ideals, from definition to mystery, from threats to persuasion, from coercion to conscience, from monologue to dialogue, from ruling to serving, from withdrawn to integrated, from vertical to horizontal, from exclusion to inclusion, from hostility to friendship, from rivalry to partnership, from suspicion to trust . . . from fault finding to appreciation . . . from behavior modification to inner appropriation.”

Turn that paragraph around, and you will see the direction in which the church as institution is being moved today: from invitations to commands, from persuasion to threats, from conscience to coercion, from trust to suspicion, from inclusion to exclusion, etc. etc.

New developments ranging from the excommunication of anyone assisting at a woman’s ordination, to the forced resignation of a bishop who even speaks about the subject, to the exclusion of girl servers in some parishes or dioceses, to a surprise assault by a bishops’ doctrine committee on the book of an eminent theologian, to the suggestion by the executive director of that committee that some theologians today are “a curse and affliction upon the church” – these are the direct results we can expect from an exaggerated, extremist misuse of a “hermeneutics of continuity” to quash all discussion.

It’s not only discussion that’s getting quashed. In this coordinated campaign from above, it’s Vatican II that is being reduced to a false caricature of itself and its achievements dismissed as aberrations that must be corrected.

– Robert McClory
National Catholic Reporter
August 26, 2011

Recommended Off-site Link:
Hermeneutics of Discontinuity? – Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, August 28, 2011).
Robert McClory on a Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent – The Wild Reed (June 10, 2008).

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

What the Pope Could Have Done to Feel More Welcome

2011-08-23T15:26:00.000-07:00

By Ken Briggs

Editor's Note: This commentary was first published August 23 by the National Catholic Reporter.

Not long ago, Spanish Catholics were among the staunchest opponents of much of what Vatican II proposed to renew the church.

Last week the Spanish people, most of them probably still Catholic in some sense, took to the streets to protest the cost of Pope Benedict's visit to the World Youth Day festivities – an estimated $72 million.

Not long ago, the public would have no doubt given silent support to a papal visit regardless of cost. Catholicism was the state religion, a partner in governing with Gen. Franco, a guarantor of the old order under-girded by unquestionable certainties. It had given birth to Opus Dei and rejected freedom of religious conscience.

Today, under democratic rule and economic disaster, a sizable portion of the Spanish public denounced the cost of the pope's visit as scandalous in the face of more pressing social needs. Spain has an overall unemployment rate of 21 percent; 46 percent of young people are without jobs.

It's ironic, of course, that the church's youth festival should be activated in this climate of youth misfortune. Most protesters seemed to agree that there was something terribly wrong with this picture.

Backers of the pope's visit argue that the week-long event will bring in more than $200 million in tourist money. Where those revenues end up is another question entirely. Profits don't trickle down or generally contribute to lasting economic progress.

The hostility sparked by the visit has cast a shadow over the entire event. A quarter century from now, the marchers in the streets are likely to be remembered more than the orderly crowd of Youth Day attendees, for better or worse. The point is that the Vatican harmed itself by insisting on going ahead with an event that contradicted its own social justice teaching.

They could have avoided it altogether by taking a page from those teachings. Imagine if the Pope had offered to cover the Spanish government's trip expenses and set up a fund specifically to help relieve the poor and unemployed. Even giving a healthy fraction of those expenses would have been in keeping with the church's own call for sacrifice and compassion.

Such a move, done sincerely and with conviction, could have turned a disaster into a sign of hope, that the church meant what it said and heard the appeals of the needy.

During his papacy, Benedict has been in tension with the Spanish government and decried what he sees as its secularism. Spain allows gay marriage, has relaxed abortion regulations and discontinued required religious education in public schools. To the pope, this is breaking faith with its Catholic heritage.

But reaching out to help those who disagree would be even more meaningful and noteworthy. There is nothing to indicate that the pope was less willing to respond to the protesters because they were dissenters. But whatever the reason, Benedict and his advisers made a regrettable decision with negative consequences that could last a long time.

Related Off-site Links:
World Youth Day – Money and Mana – Cathleen Kaveny (Commonweal, August 23, 2011).
Why Was There Very Little Mentioned About the Resurrection at WYD? – Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, August 21, 2011).

Big Deal or No Big Deal?

2011-08-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

By Paula Ruddy
Catholic Coalition for Church Reform

Something happened this past weekend, not a big deal on a global scale of injustices, but it got to me. This is what happened:

Back in June, a group of parishioners from a lovely suburban Catholic parish invited CCCR to facilitate a Listening Session at one of their bimonthly meetings, an August Saturday morning adult gathering. People deeply concerned with being the Church in the world. Committed people, well educated and reflective people.

CCCR readily agreed. Four Listening Session facilitators met with the group’s planner, had a conversation with one of the liaisons to staff, cleared calendars, printed handouts, got ready. This was a great opportunity to hear what these people, committed to living the life of the spirit, were thinking. It was an opportunity to plan with them for responsible action in our local church — for its mission and survival.

You guessed it. The call came on Wednesday before the Saturday gathering. The parish told its members they could not hold the meeting in the church building. The group meets there regularly but on this occasion they were not welcome in their own church. You know the hassle that then ensued — between work schedules, emailing and calling people, trying to get the sense of what the group wanted to do, trying to make a respectful decision. Bottom line -- the group decided to cancel.

CCCR respects the group’s decision. They are free and responsible adults following their consciences. They too may be disappointed and saddened by the action of their parish. We empathize with that. They don’t want to jeopardize the possibility of meeting on their own church property in the future.

Who made the decision for the parish to put the kibosh on this meeting and why? Was it the pastor? He is reportedly out of town. A staff member? Yes, it was reportedly a staff member, citing the technicality that the group had not reserved one of the available rooms as well as Archdiocesan disapproval of CCCR.

And why is CCCR non-grata? We want to discuss the “magisterial teachings” of the Church.

This is a tiny incident. I hear people responding: No big deal. Get over it! Coalition members have been shut out of church property for years — CTA, CPCSM, Dignity, Roman Catholic Womenpriests, anyone who asks a question. You should have expected it, should have moved the meeting elsewhere in the first place. Don’t make a fuss about it for such a small number of people. The parishioners have to pick their battles. We have to be strategic. That wouldn’t happen in my parish, thank God!

Okay, I can get over it, but is it really no big deal? Institutional support for the human need to question, to think, to understand and make sense of the world and our mission in it is an absolute necessity, not a luxury. If you are lucky, you may get this need met in your parish, but it is starved in our local church, the Archdiocese. It is a need particularly strong in young people and in the Vatican II generation. The church may be able to survive the dwindling and death of the old folks who were awakened by Vatican II, but can it survive the departure of the young who get no support for their awakening minds? Authoritative fiats from the “magisterium” do not satisfy the questioning mind.

CCCR calls for pastoral leadership at the archdiocesan level for the sake of the Church’s mission, leadership that cares for human needs. We need a robust culture of reflective, imaginative, nuanced moral reasoning. I suppose that is, inevitably, threatening. But we are on minimal life support here, and it is a very big deal.

We can’t wait around for the Archbishop’s approval. The Council of the Baptized, to be launched at Synod 2011 on September 17, is our attempt to provide for ourselves a unified, reflective and deliberative discernment of the sense of the faithful in our local church. Come and help. Go to www.cccrmn.org.

Urgent Tasks for Church Renewal

2011-08-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

A review by Peter Phan of

Wake Up Lazarus: On Catholic Renewal

by Pierre Hegy

iUniverse Press, 2011

Editor's Note: This review was first published August 3, 2011, in The National Catholic Reporter.

Let me state up front and categorically: This is by any standard the best book on church renewal I’ve read, especially on renewal for the Roman Catholic church. Pierre Hegy, who has a doctorate from the University of Paris, with his thesis on authority in the Catholic church after the Second Vatican Council, is professor emeritus of sociology at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., and the founder of a highly successful book review website. His earlier publications deal with post-Vatican II Catholicism and feminist thought. This volume is part of Hegy’s ongoing research on the contemporary Catholic church.

The book’s provocative title refers, of course, to the Johannine account of the resurrection of Lazarus, but its immediate origin is traced to “Operation Lazarus,” started by Fr. Peter Chiara. Chiara, pastor of St. Mary Church in East Islip, N.Y., decided in the early 1970s to revive his parish. Personal letters were sent to all the 6,400 families with “The church is dead” on the envelope. “Operation Lazarus” called for four evening discussions on how to resurrect the church. About 1,200 people showed up every evening. They were divided into groups to discuss what should be done, especially in the areas of religious education, the liturgy and service to the poor. They wanted to have more input on what the parish should do. Twenty people were elected to serve as an advisory group. Unfortunately, shortly afterward Chiara got sick and ceased to be pastor of the parish. (He died in October 2010.) The parish revival seems not to have a long-lasting effect. In 2007 Mass attendance was again very low.

The Lazarus metaphor is particularly apt for the current state of the Roman Catholic church in the West, including the American Catholic church. As a social institution it is moribund if not dead. Like Lazarus, however, it can be revived, not by a divine miracle and fiat, or “cheap grace,” but only through long-term and thoroughgoing church renewal -- certainly not by restoration, or “the reform of the reform.” But how to bring about this Catholic church renewal? It is here that Hegy’s book makes its unique contribution.

Most current writings advocating church reforms remain at the abstract theological level, at times with pious invocations of the Holy Spirit as the agent of change. While ecclesiology and pneumatology still furnish the foundations for church renewal, they need to be informed by accurate and up-to-date social data. With vast expertise in what he calls “pastoral sociology,” Hegy provides, in the first three chapters, the “inconvenient statistics” (the title of chapter one); and the three main reasons why Christianity in general (chapter two) and the U.S. Catholic church in particular (chapter three) are experiencing a catastrophic decline.

Surveys document beyond doubt the precipitous loss of membership in mainline churches and the rapid growth of conservative evangelical churches. Some 10 percent of Americans are former Catholics; one-third of Americans born Catholic have left the church -- and almost half of these former Catholics joined Protestant, mostly evangelical, churches. The book is replete with tables and statistics, but readers should not be daunted by them. Hegy supplies lucid and helpful summaries of the findings, and persons (like me) with scant knowledge of sociology can easily understand them.

Of greater importance are the factors that Hegy derives from sociological surveys to account for the spiritual decline of U.S. Christianity in general and of the U.S. Catholic church in particular. These factors will not be music to either conservative or liberal ears. They include the retreat of Christian churches from the public square, their losing battle against omnipresent consumerism, and their failure to transmit religious and moral values amid cafeteria-style religion. The Catholic church in particular suffers from church-centeredness rather than Christ-centeredness, a deficient sacramental theology and practice with focus on the external elements, ritualism, a decline in popular devotions, an emphasis on the Eucharist as sacrifice rather than as community celebration, and the lack of a Catholic subculture.

If these are the reasons for the decline of the Catholic church, then, Hegy argues, “renewal is much more than the reformation of church structures and changes in priestly ordination. ... To the extent that the post-Vatican II liberal agenda concentrated on these two items, it failed and has little future -- which does not make the reform of church structures any less desirable. Clearly what is needed is spiritual (i.e., evangelical) renewal, not just structural reform.” On the other hand, Hegy gives little comfort to conservatives, since his prescriptions for church renewal are diametrically opposed to their restorationist agenda that insists on loyalty and obedience to the hierarchy, especially the pope, and total orthodoxy.

Hegy provides snapshots into two flourishing American Christian communities, one a nondenominational church, the other a Catholic parish. The vitality of the first church, with the pseudonym of “the Bayville Community Church,” is part of the Fellowship of Christian Assemblies. It is built on “neither doctrinal innovation nor charismatic communities ... but on assiduous prayer and a sense of mission.” The Catholic parish is “St. Mary Star of Hope,” a pseudonym for a parish in the suburb of Chicago, with 3,800 families and only one resident priest. It is a laity-driven parish, with all ministries carried out by the laity. Its vibrancy derives from its structure as “a community of communities” consisting of “scores of small Christian communities meeting weekly” and as “a community of ministries.” (The chapter describing the history and life of St. Mary’s is worth its pages in gold!)

On the basis of these sociological studies, Hegy proposes a long-term plan for renewing the Catholic church. He first reviews various church reform programs, from the 1992 document of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops titled “Go and Make Disciples: A National Plan and Strategy for Catholic Evangelization in the United States” to the RENEW movement. He examines the evangelical “purpose-driven church” founded by Rick Warren in Saddleback Valley, Calif., with its emphasis on missions, and the Willow Creek Community Church founded by Bill Hybels in a Chicago suburb, with its emphasis on Christ-centeredness and spiritual growth.

From these reform initiatives Hegy lists six urgent tasks that comprise his church renewal plan:

• End the exodus of young Catholics and the non-transmission of values;

• Propose paths of spiritual growth rather than ideological programs;

• Devise concrete ways for the church to be in the world but not of the world, using new forms of renunciation, rejecting consumerism, and countercultural ways of life;

• Act as a servant church rather than a power structure;

• Support a moral culture rather than a moral theology;

• Develop a celebration of sacraments as moments of spiritual transformation of the individual and the community rather than rites of passage.

A tall order indeed, but how to achieve it?

In his important, challenging, and insightful closing chapter, Hegy lays out in great detail the three steps of his plan for church renewal.

There are detailed proposals on how to make passive attendees at Sunday Mass (including the priest himself!) into active participants in the celebration of the Eucharist, from beginning to end, in every single part of the Mass. Next come proposals on how to transform the active Mass attendees into involved members of the local church or parish through the four forms of ministry communities -- worship, service, formation and missions. Here, Hegy offers extremely rich insights into the role of the choir (not performance but facilitating prayer), religious education (not information but community formation), devotions (not private piety but structured forms of discipleship), and eucharistic spirituality. The final step is leading the involved members into totally committed discipleship, especially through spiritual growth and missionary/evangelizing activities.

If you have no time to read the entire book, read at least Pages 231-275, every single one of them, slowly and meditatively, and let Hegy’s ideas and proposals sink in. You need not agree with his every thought and proposal, but do take them extremely seriously; the very life of the Catholic church may well depend on them.

Fr. Peter C. Phan is the inaugural holder of the Ignacio Ellacuria Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University in Washington.

Encouragment for Those Disappointed with the Church

2011-08-15T14:28:00.000-07:00

By Leonardo Boff

Editor's Note: This article was first published August 13, 2011, on Leonardo Boff's website.

There is great disappointment with the institutional Catholic Church. A double emigration is happening: one is exterior, persons who simply leave the Church, and the other is interior, those who remain in the Church but who no longer feel that she is their spiritual home. They continue believing, in spite of the Church.

It’s not for nothing. The present pope has taken some radical initiatives that have divided the ecclesiastic body. He chose a path of confrontation with two important episcopacies, the German and the French, when he introduced the Latin Mass. He articulated an obscure reconciliation with the Church of the followers of Lebfrevre; gutted the principal renewal institutions of Vatican Council II, especially ecumenism, absurdly denying the title of "Church" to those Churches that are not Catholic or Orthodox. When he was a Cardinal he was gravely permissive with pedophiles, and his concern with AIDS borders the inhumane.

The present Catholic Church is submerged in a rigorous winter. The social base that supports the antiquated model of the present pope is comprised of conservative groups, more interested in the media, in the logic of the market, than in proposing an adequate response to the present grave problems. They offer a "lexotan-Christianity" good for pacifying anxious consciences, but alienated from the suffering humanity.

It is urgent that we animate these Christians about to emigrate with what is essential in Christianity. It certainly is not the Church, that was never the object of the preaching of Jesus. He announced a dream, the Kingdom of God, in contraposition to the Kingdom of Caesar; the Kingdom of God that represents an absolute revolution in relationships, from the individual to the divine and the cosmic.

Christianity appeared in history primarily as a movement and as the way of Christ. It predates its grounding in the four Gospels and in the doctrines. The character of a spiritual path means a type of Christianity that has its own course. It generally lives on the edge and, at times, at a critical distance from the official institution. But it is born and nourished by the permanent fascination with the figure, and the liberating and spiritual message of Jesus of Nazareth. Initially deemed the "heresy of the Nazarenes" (Acts 24,5) or simply, a "heresy" (Acts 28,22) in the sense of a "very small group," Christianity was acquiring autonomy until its followers, according to The Acts of The Apostles (11,36), were called, "Christians."

The movement of Jesus is certainly the most vigorous force of Christianity, stronger than the Churches, because it is neither bounded by institutions, nor is it a prisoner of doctrines and dogmas, founded in a specific cultural background. It is composed of all types of people, from the most varied cultures and traditions, even agnostics and atheists who let themselves be touched by the courageous figure of Jesus, by the dream he announced, a Kingdom of love and liberty, by his ethic of unconditional love, especially for the poor and the oppressed, and by the way he assumed the human drama, amidst humiliation, torture and his execution on the cross. Jesus offered an image of God so intimate and life-friendly that it is difficult to disregard, even by those who do not believe in God. Many people say, "if there is a God, it has to be like the God of Jesus."

This Christianity as a spiritual path is what really counts. However, from being a movement it soon became a religious institution, with several forms of organization. In its bosom were developed different interpretations of the figure of Jesus, that were transformed into doctrines, and gathered into the official Gospels. The Churches, when they assumed institutional character, established criteria of belonging and of exclusion, doctrines such as identity reference and their own rites of celebration. Sociology, and not theology, explains that phenomenon. The institution always exists in tension with the spiritual path. The ideal is that they develop together, but that is rare. The most important, in any case, is the spiritual path. This has a future and animates the meaning of life.

The problem of the Roman Catholic Church is her claim of being the only true one. The correct approach is for all the Churches to recognize each other, because they reveal different and complementary dimensions of the message of the Nazarene. What is important is for Christianity to maintain its character as a spiritual path. That can sustain so many Christian men and women in the face of the mediocrity and irrelevancy into which the present Catholic Church has fallen.

From Jesus' Socialism to Capitalistic Christianity

2011-08-14T06:15:00.000-07:00

By Gregory Paul

Editor's Note: This commentary was first published August 12, 2011, by The Washington Post.

A truly strange thing has happened to American Christianity. A set of profound contradictions have developed within modern conservative Christianity, big and telling inconsistencies that have long slipped under the radar of public knowledge, and are only now beginning to be explicitly noted by critics of the religious and economic right.

Here is what is peculiar. Many conservative Christians, mostly Protestant but also a number of Catholics, have come to believe and proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated, union busting, minimal taxes especially for wealthy investors, plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations. And many of these Christian capitalists are ardent followers of Ayn Rand, who was one of – and many of whose followers are – the most hard-line anti-Christian atheist/s you can get. Meanwhile many Christians who support the capitalist policies associated with social Darwinistic strenuously denounce Darwin’s evolutionary science because it supposedly leads to, well, social Darwinism!

Meanwhile atheists, secularists and evolutionist are denounced as inventing the egalitarian evils of anti-socially Darwinistic socialism and communism. It’s such a weird stew of incongruities that it sets one’s head spinning. Social researchers like myself ask, how did these internal conflict come about? And why are not liberals and progressives doing the logical thing and taking full advantage of the inconsistencies of right wing libertarianism by loudly exposing the contradictions?

To understand why the pro-capitalist stance of many modern religious conservatives is at odds with Christian doctrine we need to start with the Gospels.

Jesus is no free marketeer. Improving one’s earthly financial circumstances is not nearly as critical as preparing for the end times that will arrive at any minute. He does offer substantial encouragement for the poor, and warns the wealthy that they are in grave danger of blowing their prospects of reaching paradise, as per the metaphor of a rich person entering heaven being as difficult as a camel passing through the eye of the needle (a narrow passageway designed to hinder intruders). This caution makes sense: sociological research is confirming that the more securely prosperous individuals and societies are, the more likely they are to lose the faith. A basic point of core Christian doctrine is that the wealthy have no more access to heaven than anyone else (and in fact may have less), offering hope to the impoverished rejected by cults that court the elites. This remains true in Catholicism, in which being poor does not constitute evidence of a personal deficiency, and church authorities decry the excesses of unrestrained capital at the expense of social justice.

But to understand just how non-capitalistic Christianity is supposed to be we turn to the first chapter after the gospels, Acts, which describes the events of the early church. Chapters 2 and 4 state that all “the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. . . . No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. . . . There were no needy persons among them. From time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.”

Now folks, that’s outright socialism of the type described millennia later by Marx – who likely got the general idea from the gospels.

The pro-capitalist Christians who are aware of these passages wave them away even though it is the only explicit description of Christian economics in the Bible.

To get just how central collectivism is to Christian canon, consider that the Bible contains the first description of socialism in history. Anti-socialist Christians also claim that the Biblical version was voluntary. Aside from it being obvious that the biblical version of God was not the anti-socialist Christian capitalists commonly proclaim he was, some dark passages in Acts indicate how deeply pro-socialist the New Testament deity is. Chapter 5 details how when a church member fails to turn over all his property to the church “he fell down and died,” when his wife later did the same “she fell down . . . and died. . . . Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.”

Dear readers, does this not sound like a form of terror-enforced-communism imposed by a God who thinks that Christians who fail to join the collective are worthy of death? Not only is socialism a Christian invention, so is its extreme communistic variant. The claim by many Christians that Christ hates socialism is untrue, while no explicit description of capitalism is found in the Bible – not surprising because it had not yet evolved.

So how did so much of Christianity come to reject socialism? That is not hard to figure out. In the early Protestant Netherlands, Switzerland and England capital became the dominant economic driver. Of course members of a religion want to think that God approves of what they are up to. So many (but not all) Protestants began to cherry pick those Biblical passages that could be massaged to seemingly support laissez-faire markets while pretty much ignoring those that clearly don’t. This works because, as surveys show, most Christians don’t actually read the bulk of the Bible, and people are mentally skilled at dismissing the awkward passages they do come across. Christians really took the theory that God is pro-capital to its extreme in what has be come the least socialistic and most Jesus-following of the advanced democracies, the USA, where many see the nation as an exceptional, God blessed “Shining City on the Hill” they think stands as the exemplar of Godly capitalism to the world.

In Puritan doctrine only the few destined for heaven can enjoy earthly wealth – that’s why there aren’t many rich folks – and poverty is the widespread sign of being destined for hell. But Puritanism was too dour for most Americans, so the notion that God wants his many followers to become as well-heeled as possible really took off with the emergence of the celebratory, self help oriented evangelical and Pentecostal Prosperity Christianity that the likes of Amy McPherson began to promote at the same time the modern corporate-consumer culture arose after the First World War.

The intellectual foundations for the alliance between capital and God were laid after the Second World War by Catholic William Buckley, who, like some others contrived to maneuver around their churches’ skepticism about mercantile interests, worked to convert frugal church goers into materialistic consumers who spend their Sundays watching spectator sports and charging up interest loaded debt at the mall.

Back in the 1800s the non-theist Herbert Spencer adapted the evolutionary science developed by Darwin into what has become known as social Darwinism – even though the biologist had little interest in socioeconomic issues, as well as a live and let live attitude about religion. It was Spencer who coined the term “survival of the fittest” that Darwin worked into later editions of his biology texts. Many Christians – logically concerned at the threat that a naturalistic explanation of human origins posed for popular belief in a supernatural creator – reacted by blaming harsh Darwinian biology for creating the similarly harsh “Darwinian” socioeconomics that they saw as responsible for the ills of the modern world.

At the same time socialists and communists were adapting those aspects of evolutionary science that they liked (a god-free origin of our world) while rejecting those they did not (the anti-egalitarianism integral to survival of the fittest free markets caused Marx and Engels to denounce evolution as a “bitter satire” on man and nature, and Stalin would ban pre-deterministic genetics for contradicting the blank slate theory of communism). While the communists drove the reasonable concept of social equality into the ground, Ayn Rand did the same with individual liberty. Because she hated the teeniest expression of socialism, and because the concept was in the archaic Bible long before some non-theists decided it was the wave of the future, she promoted an anti-Christian, pro-evolution atheism so extreme that even most atheists including myself reject her claim to have philosophically absolutely disproved the existence of any god. But many influential conservative Christians have embraced her expressly atheistic theory of Objectivism that in her books such as The Virtue of Selfishness, they propose that government must be shrunk to a bare minimum so socially Darwinist that it dances with anarchy. Only then can entrepreneurial greed have the free run that liberty demands. Hence Rand’s more nobly titled Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are required reading for the staff of Paul Ryan.

Reagan’s economic advisor, Milton Friedman, was an anti-religious Objectivist Rand devotee. So is Alan Greenspan. Skeptics Penn and Teller and Michael Shermer are atheistic libertarians. In the Randian hyper-materialistic world those who are on the financial make are the exalted makers, the impoverished that accept tax payer assistance are parasitic takers who need to fend for themselves. A radical modernist ideology in greater antithesis to the traditional scriptural favoring of the poor over the rich can hardly be imagined. Yet the economics of the plutocratic Republican Party that embraces the Christian, anti-Darwinist creationist right are essentially those of the uberatheist, anti-creationist, Darwin-adoring Christianity-loathing Ayn Rand. So we have Christian creationists like Jay Richards writing books titled Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem. Can a stranger amalgam of opposing opinions be devised?

What I do not get from a sociological perspective is why – rather than letting the right avoid being called out for decade after decade – progressives from pious to atheist (most being liberals) as well as the mainstream news media have not been exposing the fascinating incoherence of the right wing’s anti-Darwinian biology, pro-Darwinian economics? Logically Stewart, Maddow, Olbermann, Maher et al. should on a regular basis challenge Christian libertarians on how Palin, Bachmann, Coulter, Beck, Limbaugh, Gingrich et al. can reject as ungodly evil the hard line socialism that is explicitly enforced by their God in the Bible they profess to read and believe? And how can those libertarians who manage to be devout Christians fawn over Ayn Rand whose entire philosophy is a condemnation of Christian doctrine? Also that O’Reilly and Bennett explain how they can continue to be in opposition to their pope who issued the newest encyclical reaffirming the churches opposition to libertarian economics. And ask if a person opposes evolution because it leads to ungodly societal chaos then how can the same person endorse the economics that most closely replicate biological evolution? It does not make practical sense for progressives to fail to use the deep, hypocritical conflicts that mar the right to try to split the movement at its weakest links. The right cannot reply in kind because progressives are less internally conflicted; although liberals too range from devout to atheist they share a secular sense of social tolerance, concur that the gospels are economically progressive, and agree that organisms have evolved over deep time.

In educational terms mainstream press coverage of the issue would be a public service giving the public the information it needs to decide whether or not current conservatism is fatally disingenuous. In a Washington Post column liberal Catholic E. J. Dionne Jr. got things rolling by pointing out that the Rand whose books so many Christian conservatives treat as scripture was a flaming atheist.

It’s a start.

And why are progressives not regularly putting forward the fast growing body of technical research proving that it is the most secular, liberal democracies that are enjoying the overall best socioeconomic circumstances in history, including lower rates of homicide, incarceration, juvenile and adult mortality, STD infections, abortion, teen pregnancy, mental illness, illicit drug use, and so on compared to the more libertarian USA, and superior levels of economic security, upward mobility and education?

And finally, if you don’t like socialism and communism stop blaming atheists and other secularists for concocting egalitarian collectivism backed by fear of death. It got its start long ago in the Good Book.

Gregory Paul is an independent researcher in sociology and evolution. He wrote this article for washingtonpost.com/onfaith.

Image: "Last Supper" by Bohdan Piasecki (1998).

Richard McBrien on the Church as the People of God

2011-08-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

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Theologian, priest, and National Catholic Reporter columnist Richard McBrien is currently publishing a series of articles highlighting and exploring the "major ecclesiological themes or principles" proclaimed at the Second Vatican Council. McBrien embarked on this endeavor in response to what he and many other Catholics see as the ignoring and even dismantling by the church's clerical leadership of the reforms achieved at the Council .

"This dismantling effort is revealed," writes McBrien, "in the changing of the texts of the Mass and the other sacraments (often referred to as the 'reform of the reform') beginning on the First Sunday of Advent, and in the appointment of bishops deemed unquestionably loyal to the Holy See, especially on issues such as contraception, the ordination of women, and obligatory clerical celibacy."

Following is the second installment of Mc'Brien's series on Vatican II, first published in the NCR on July 25, 2011, and focused on the Vatican II theme of the Church as the People of God. (Note: To read the entire series, click here.)

________________________________

Vatican II Themes: The People of God

By Richard McBrien

National Catholic Reporter
July 25, 2011

Who or what is the church? It is first and foremost people. It is also an institution. But it is primarily a community. The church is us.

A major ecclesiological principle adopted by the Second Vatican Council is embodied in its teaching that the church is the whole People of God.

In other words, the church is not only the hierarchy, the clergy, and/or members of religious communities. It is the whole community of the baptized.

And that community is marked by a rich diversity of gender, class, education, social status, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and culture. It includes saints and sinners alike.

One of the council's most important affirmations, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, known by its Latin title as Lumen gentium, declared that charisms, or gifts of the Holy Spirit, are available to all the faithful, "of every rank" (n. 12).

We find the People-of-God principle realized, although with varying degrees of success, in parish councils, in base communities, in the multiplication of ministries, and particularly in ministries associated with the liturgy, education and social justice.

The church that has entered the 21st century and the Third Christian Millennium is a church in which an increasing number of its members, laywomen and laymen alike, are ministerially involved.

One does not need any scientific surveys to verify what is obvious to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, namely, that the great majority of parish ministers today are women, and this is likely to remain so into the indefinite future.

At the same time, the alienation of many Catholic women from the official church remains one of its most serious pastoral challenges. The highly publicized failure of the U.S. Catholic bishops more than a decade ago to produce an acceptable pastoral letter on women, after nine years of effort, only underscored the problem.

More recently, Bishop William Morris of the Australian diocese of Toowoomba was removed from the leadership of his diocese because he had suggested in an earlier pastoral letter that, in light of the severity of the vocations crisis, the church would have to be "much more open towards other options for ensuring that Eucharist may be celebrated." These options included the ordination of women to the priesthood.

According to Morris, the letter from Pope Benedict XVI cited this very point as the principal grounds for his removal. The pope declared that women's ordination was now a closed issue because Pope John Paul II had definitively, that is, infallibly, pronounced on the subject in his 1994 statement Ordinatio sacerdotalis ("Priestly ordination"). Therein, John Paul II insisted that the Church was not authorized to ordain women as priests.

We are now in a kind of patchwork stage, having changed Mass schedules to permit fewer priests to celebrate more Masses on a given weekend, while closing or merging parishes.

Many Catholics worry about the lowering of standards in seminaries, the ignoring of the results of psychological testing (if there is any) or the reports of pastoral supervisors, many of whom are women. These reports concern the pastoral performance and personal qualities of candidates for the priesthood.

Importing priests from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe is not the answer. On the contrary, it sometimes generates new problems to be added to the old.

If the People of God are to be effectively served in the coming decades, the church will have to be "much more open," as Morris suggested, to ordaining married men to the priesthood, welcoming back resigned priests to active ministry, and ordaining women, married or single.

Social scientists like the late Dean Hoge of The Catholic University of America and the late Richard Schoenherr of the University of Wisconsin have in the past strongly recommended such changes, insisting that they would end the current vocations shortage in the Catholic church.

Others, however, seem convinced that the problem will somehow go away through prayer and fasting, or by purging seminaries of dissident theologians and homosexuals, or by more inventive techniques of making personal contact with prospective candidates for the priesthood.

More than 20 years ago, Eugene Kennedy, the psychologist and prolific writer, addressed this topic in a memorable article in America magazine titled, "The Problem with No Name." He wrote: ". . . the male-bonded culture of clerical life is in ruins because it is a vestige of the great days of privilege, not because people lack interest in ministry" (4/23/88).

Calling the church the People of God, as the council did, means that we all have responsibility for its life and mission, especially at a time when its leadership sometimes functions as an obstacle rather than a facilitator.

© 2011 Richard P. McBrien. All rights reserved. Fr. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.

See also the previous PCV posts:
The Consensus of the Faithful as the Voice of the Infallible Church
Acclaimed Church Historian Marvin O'Connell to Discuss Cardinal Newman
"All Voices Must Be Heard": A Response to Archbishop Nienstedt
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission

Quote of the Day

2011-08-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Not long after the Irish government's report on the [clergy sex abuse crisis in the] Cloyne diocese smashed into the public eye, the Irish Prime Minister delivered an eloquent speech before the Irish Parliament in which he decried "the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism . . . the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day."

. . . Psychologists say when you assault a narcissist's inflated ego, you'll be belittled, mocked, even laughed at. The narcissist will sneer: Who are you to criticize the "superior" individual? Who are you to criticize the "powerful" one? Who are you to criticize the church?

From country to country we've seen a constant devaluation of the accusers. For the most part, official reactions have been wholly self-referential. Like a true narcissist, the church reacts as the offended party, and questions the truth of every statement. If you muddle through the weeds of some depositions you'll find a lot of "gaslighting" – denials, presenting of false information – all aimed at destroying the accusers' perceptions of reality. Both hypersensitive and incapable of empathy, the narcissist only argues his private truth.

Yes, it is enough to drive you crazy. Aren't professional ministers supposed to be "other directed"? What is "church" about? I keep thinking they're doing things in alphabetical order, and "golf" comes before "Gospel."

The fact is, the Vatican is looking more and more like the dysfunctional, disconnected, elitist and, yes, narcissistic operation the Prime Minister says it is.

– Phyllis Zagano
"Ireland, the Vatican and Clerical Narcissism"
National Catholic Reporter
August 3, 2011

Quote of the Day

2011-08-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

. . . [T]he current critical reaction to the Vatican in places like deeply Catholic Ireland [may well be] a manifestation of a longstanding and very powerful desire among faithful Catholics to see the papacy finally do what it’s meant to do, according to the gospels. And that’s to serve. Not to dominate. Not to rule. Not to issue orders and condemnations.

To serve. To serve as Jesus served. To serve the unity of the body of Christ with a papacy embodying the ideal of service that Jesus bequeathed as the supreme ideal for those who seek to exercise leadership in the Christian community: to be the servus servorum Christi.

Maybe the “sharks” circling in the water aren’t smelling blood. And maybe they’re not sharks at all. Maybe they’re actually faithful Catholics who are delighted to see the imperial structures of a papacy modeled more on the values of Caesar than those of Christ crumbling before our eyes.

Crumbling because it has behaved in imperial ways rather than embodying Christ’s ideal of service. . . .

– William D. Lindsey
"John Allen on Vatican Critics as Sharks Out for Blood:
That’s One Way of Looking at It"
The Open Tabernacle
July 31, 2011

Recommended Off-site Link:
Vatican II Themes: The Church as Servant – Richard McBrien (National Catholic Reporter, August 1, 2011).
Bishop Gumbleton: A Priesthood Set Apart and Above Others is Not the Way of Jesus – The Wild Reed (September 28, 2009).

Image: Ford Madox Brown.

Diana Culbertson to Speak at CCCR's "Evening in the Park" Fundraiser

2011-07-28T06:10:00.000-07:00

An important announcement from the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR)

Due to an emergency situation involving one of her community members, Christine Schenk, Executive Director of FutureChurch, is unable to join us as keynote speaker at our August 2 "Evening in the Park" fundraiser at Lake Elmo Park Reserve.

The fundraiser will go forward, however, as we are happy to announce that Diana Culbertson, O.P. (pictured at right), has agreed to be our keynote speaker for the evening.

For the past two years Diana has served on the FutureChurch Board of Trustees as a member of its Strategic Issues Committee. She also helps edit FutureChurch publications and is a well-respected lecturer, speaker and author. (To read her homily for the Feast of Mary Magdalene, click here.)

We look forward to seeing you at our August 2 fundraiser, the details of which are below -- as is more information about Diana's credentials and accomplishments.

______________________________

Join us for an "Evening in the Park" Fundraiser with

Diana Culbertson, O.P.

Date: Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Time: 6:30 p.m.

Place: Park Pavilion at the Lake Elmo Park Reserve (South Shelter),
Washington County Parks, MN.

For map and directions, see below.

Diana Culbertson, O.P., is professor emeritus at Kent State University. She received her Ph.D., in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, N.C., and a M.A. in Theology from Aquinas Institute in St. Louis, MO.

She is a former president of the International Colloquium on Violence and Religion. Her publications include The Poetics of Revelation: Recognition and the Narrative Tradition, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop: Selected Writings, and Invisible Light: Poems about God.

Diana has lectured and published extensively and is currently an editor and writer at the Center for Learning in Villa Maria, PA. She recently served as the vicaress (vice-president) of her religious congregation, the Sisters of St. Dominic of Akron, OH. She is presently a member of the Dominican Sisters of Peace, founded in 2009 as a union of seven religious congregations.

Diana has served on the FutureChurch Board of Trustees for two years as a member of the Strategic Issues Committee and helps edit FutureChurch publications.

The Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR) is sponsoring this event as a major fundraiser for its Synod of the Baptized (“Making Our Voices Heard”), scheduled for September 17, 2011.

If you are unable to attend but would like to make a tax-deductible donation, make your check payable to CCCR and mail to:

CCCR, 2080 Edgcumbe Road, St. Paul, MN 55116

Please Note: Refreshments will be served. Seating is at picnic tables. Feel free to bring a lawn chair if that would be more comfortable. This site has been reserved for the day, so feel free to arrive early and enjoy the park. There is no car fee for entering the park.

You may reserve seats on a bus that will leave from South Minneapolis for the evening. Call Paula at 612-379-1043 for reservations and more information.

Map and Directions

1515 Keats Ave. N.
Lake Elmo, MN 55042
651-430-8370

Located 1 mile north of Interstate 94 and 2.5 miles east of Interstate 694 at the intersection of County Road 19(Keats Avenue North) and County Road 10 (10th Street North) in the City of Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

Directions

• From Interstate 94, take exit 151 or County Road 19. Follow County Road 19 to the north for one mile to County Road 10. Cross County Road 10 and proceed into the park.

• From Interstate 694, take exit 57 or County Road 10 (10th Street North). Follow County Road 10 east for 2.6 miles. Turn left (north) into the park.

• From State Highway 5 in downtown Lake Elmo, follow County Road 17 south for 2.5 miles to County Road 10 (10th Street North). Turn right (west) on County Road 10 for one mile. Turn right (north) into the park.

Teachings of the Church

2011-07-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

Surely if there ever was a perfect catch-all phrase, it is "teachings-of-the-Church." It includes everything from defined dogmas, items in the Apostle's Creed, 1752 Canon laws, opinions of the Pope (like steam locomotives are the work of the devil), every one of the 2865 items in the Catechism, to the thoughts of cranky old bishops like Burke and Molino.

It has become a universal cliché of the hierarchy to discourage dissent. Falling into the same catch-all basket of against "The Teachings of the Church" are those who disagree with pre-Vatican II liturgical norms and language, contraception, mandatory celibacy for priests, collective bargaining, just war and torture, women's ordination, slavery, same sex unions, the resurrection of Jesus, the nature of the Trinity, and if God really exists. Note that some "Teachings of the Church" are slippery, time-bound, and culturally-colored.

At stake here is the power and authority, originating from the community of the Church and appropriated by unelected leaders to set the rules for who is in and who is out. By voting a certain way, you could be considered "out" according to "The Teachings of the Church". By not behaving/believing according to the bishop's instruction, you are obviously against the Teaching of the Church.

Some (bishops?) believe good teaching is the attempt to influence, even coerce, the faithful into believing what is being taught. But the criteria for effective teaching involves, rather, if the teaching makes sense and is received by the faithful.

If you do not accept that all contraception is sinful, or legalizing same-sex unions are wrong, or only men can be ordained, or contributors should have a say in how their money is spent and who should be responsible, or the language of prayer should be strange or contorted, or bishops should tell us how to vote, you are dissenting against "the teachings of the Church".

Without careful and intelligent scrutiny, accepting every "teaching of the Church" is similar to checking the box "I agree" to observe every privacy/usage rule for downloading new software/upgrades.

Study the reasoning behind Church teachings, consult and observe how your Catholic community receives them, and judge for yourself.

Follow your own well-formed conscience, as fallible as it may be.

Who is going to save the church?
Not the bishops, not the priest and religious.
It is up to you the people. You have the minds,
the eyes, the ears to save Her.

-- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Written and distributed by the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC).

Notes on the Magisterium

2011-07-27T19:37:00.000-07:00

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By Carol Larsen

The Archdiocese is taking note of CCCR. In the July 21 issue of the Catholic Spirit we are given valuable free publicity, and also a warning in the name of the “universal Roman Catholic Church.” It directs all of the faithful to believe and abide by the “magisterial teachings” of the Church. (By the way, “Magisterial teachings” is a redundancy, since the meaning of the Latin word for teacher is magister).

Church history is replete with examples of church teachings which have been overturned by science. The most egregious example, perhaps: the church taught for centuries that the Earth was the center of the universe and threatened Galileo with severe penalties for believing the evidence of science and his own eyes.

In more mundane matters, we were told for ages that eating meat on Fridays was a mortal sin.

We were told that divorce was forbidden, but if you could convince some board to give you an annulment, you could marry again with the blessing of the Church. If not, you were barred from the sacraments, whether you remarried or not, according to many bishops and pastors, though not all. This inconsistency has pretty much made a laughing stock of our beloved church in the eyes of our Protestant brethren. It's not hard to see why.

Many of us had communal penance in our parishes for a decade or more: now we are told that we must return again to the confessional box. So, which was was right, according to the magisterium?

The word “magisterium” has a foreign and intimidating aura about it. It frightens the easily cowed into doing, or not doing, things out of fear of their souls being lost. However, the American Catholic has, in large numbers, overcome that fear with common sense — in the matter of birth control, for instance. We lag behind in our use of artificial contraception by 2% as compared to our Protestant brethren. In fact, many of our Protestant brethren used to be Catholics, due in large part to the unreasonable strain put on their marriages by the doctrine that “every sexual act must be open to new life.” This doctrine is in direct opposition, in my view, to the good of the planet, and cannot much longer stand. The Church will soon come under attack if it continues to insist on this dangerous philosophical stand. It is surprising that the United Nations has not come out against it more forcefully in view of the population growth, particularly in Africa and South America. The doctrine is no longer tenable in the modern world, although sexual restraint is still a moral virtue, easier for some than for others.

Of course, the Archbishop is also concerned that we are interested in seeing to it that women are allowed to be accepted as pastors and priests in our parishes. Many women have already been ordained validly but in secret by certain bishops. Yet they are not allowed to serve in traditional priestly roles. The reason usually given against women priests has to do with the fact that all the Apostles were male. This is no more than an excuse to maintain male dominance. Consider the type of life that the Apostles were required to lead in order to spread the Gospel two thousand years ago, and you will see that a women in those days would have had a hard time surviving the rigors of life on the road, not to mention that women's roles were very restricted, as they still are in many third-world countries today. In the developed world today, however, we have women leading several democracies. Would you like to explain to them why they are not fit to lead?

If our priests were allowed to marry, the stand of the Church on the foregoing issues of human life would be dead in the water, as the intellectualism that permeates so much of church doctrine in these matters would be largely replaced with humanity, understanding, compassion and common sense. Many Catholics do not realize that, for the first 1000 years after Christ, priests were indeed allowed to marry. The reason that changed had little to do with spirituality and a lot to do with money and property, which the Church did not want to pass into the hands of wives and children of priests after they died.

These are some of the issues that worry the Archbishop and which he would prefer not to be brought up for discussion. We are instructed to “shun any contrary doctrines” and embrace fully the doctrines of the magisterium. We are to have no part in the way the church is governed. Apparently it is none of our business. This attitude is in direct conflict with Vatican II, which states that we have a right and a duty to help guide our church in the right path. The saints — including clerics, nuns, and members of the laity — have always done this through the centuries. It is not always “top down,” and Vatican II was quite emphatic about this principle, although it has been degraded to a large degree by subsequent Popes since the beloved John XXIII, who wanted to “open the windows” and let fresh air in!

We must help that spirit to succeed, for the love of the Church, which is us! We need to reclaim the spirit of Jesus and urge our leaders to do the same for the sake of life on this planet and, as we hope, in the next world as well. The Lord would expect no less of us. Courage!

Click here to register for Synod 2011.

See also the previous PCV posts:
"All Voices Must Be Heard": A Response to Archbishop Nienstedt
Archbishop Nienstedt's July 18 Letter
Talking About Disconnects: One Response to Archbishop Nienstedt
The Consensus of the Faithful as the Voice of the Infallible Church
Acclaimed Church Historian Marvin O'Connell to Discuss Cardinal Newman
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission
Richard Gaillardetz on the Need to "Wrestle with the Tradition"
Nicholas Lash on Dissent and Disagreement
Communicating With Leadership
It's Critical That Catholics Find Their Voice
Let Our Voices Be Heard!

"All Voices Must Be Heard": A Response to Archbishop Nienstedt

2011-07-25T18:30:00.000-07:00

James Moudry responds to Archbishop John C. Nienstedt's
July 18 letter in which he cautions the priests of the Archdiocese
and the Catholic faithful against attending the Catholic Coalition
for Church Reform's September 17 Synod of the Baptized.

As a member of the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR) I was pleased that the Archbishop recognizes that “some of the aspirations” held by CCCR and other groups are “valid.” It has always been our intention to be faithful Catholics and to be, in the Archbishop’s words “a prophetic sign in and for the world, to promote justice and reconciliation in the Church, and to facilitate courageous and honest dialogue.”

Furthermore, we agree with him when he says that “it is the bishops, in communion with the Roman Pontiff, that have the responsibility to respond to the issues raised by CCCR.” Our concern is with how to get these issues raised, heard and understood in all sectors of the church. Without in any way denigrating the proper role and authority of the bishops and the Pope, we wish to raise up the correlative roles of the baptized faithful and the theological community in discerning the authentic meaning of the Christian life. These latter two voices are part of the Catholic tradition. Church history shows the necessity of listening to this sense of the baptized faithful in matters of church doctrine and discipline because God’s Spirit is present and speaking in them, too. The same holds true for the Catholic theological community. All voices must be heard. It is not the Catholic tradition that the official magisterial voice alone exhausts the conversation.

Our experience as baptized Catholics is that our voice on many matters of church teaching and discipline has not truly been heard. Yet God’s Spirit is leading the Church through the voice and experience of the people, too. For that reason we continue to meet, pray, reflect, speak out and act. For that reason we have scheduled the “Synod of the Baptized” for September 17, 2011 to make our voices heard. We hope that our Church can honestly listen and honor our experience as part of how God is guiding the Church.

Click here to register for Synod 2011.

See also the previous PCV posts:
Archbishop Nienstedt's July 18 Letter
Talking About Disconnects: One Response to Archbishop Nienstedt
The Consensus of the Faithful as the Voice of the Infallible Church
Acclaimed Church Historian Marvin O'Connell to Discuss Cardinal Newman
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission
Richard Gaillardetz on the Need to "Wrestle with the Tradition"
Nicholas Lash on Dissent and Disagreement
Communicating With Leadership
It's Critical That Catholics Find Their Voice
Let Our Voices Be Heard!

Talking About Disconnects: One Response to Archbishop Nienstedt’s Letter of July 18

2011-07-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

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By Paula Ruddy

It has come to the attention of the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform that Archbishop John C. Nienstedt has written a letter dated July 18 to the priests of the Archdiocese cautioning them, as well as the Catholic faithful, “against participating . . . or otherwise supporting the CCCR and its efforts.” You can read the letter here.

CCCR’s efforts consist in Listening Sessions throughout the archdiocese and the launching of a Council of the Baptized at Synod 2011 on September 17. A fundraiser for these efforts is scheduled for August 2 at Lake Elmo Park Reserve.

The purpose of all our efforts is to be active participants in the mission of the Church which we take to be growth in the Christ life as individuals and as a community with the responsibility to manifest that life to the world. Our responsibility is direct service to and in the world, but it is also to help create an institutional Church culture that is a sacrament of the Gospel in the world.

The Archbishop is correct that we are trying to create a “structure of authority within the Church.” The Council of the Baptized is intended to be a structure to discern the sense of the faithful and to communicate it to each other and to our ordained leaders. We claim authority from our baptisms and from our lived experience of the faith. We have something to contribute. Our contribution does not “stand against” the authority of the bishops, the pope, the constitutions of Vatican II. Rather, we think we are also authorized by our tradition to think and to speak.

The Archbishop affirms our aspirations as valid: “to be a prophetic sign in and for the world, to promote justice and reconciliation in the Church, and to facilitate courageous and honest dialogue.” Then he makes it very clear that it is the responsibility of bishops and the pope to “to respond to the issues raised by the CCCR.”

How can the issues be raised if we are to sit down and be quiet as well as to be shunned by our pastors in the Archdiocese and by our brothers and sisters in the Church?

The Archbishop seems to think that the issues and the answers are all pre-existing, enshrined in crystal clear, logically and experientially unquestionable writings of a pope in communion with all bishops somewhere in the abstract. No discussion necessary.

We, however, think that the experience of faith is individual and communal and grows through communication and in specific contexts. What a community believes is a continuous process of communication among the faithful — all of us together — people who live the life, theologians, and the ordained leadership whose job it is to listen, articulate, and teach.

How can we reassure the Archbishop that we want to work with him?

Click here to register for Synod 2011.

Archbishop Nienstedt Cautions Priests of the Archdiocese Against Attending CCCR's 2011 Synod of the Baptized

2011-07-24T20:16:00.000-07:00

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Editor's Note: The following letter was sent July 18, 2011, by Archbishop John C. Nienstedt to the priests of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis. The links in the text of this letter have been added.

____________________________

Reverend and dear Fathers,

I recently received a letter from the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR), informing me of the upcoming activities that they have scheduled in this Archdiocese. You will recall that an official announcement regarding this group was published last year.

According to this letter, the group has scheduled a second ‘synod,’ to be held on September 17, 2011, at the Sheraton Hotel in Bloomington. In preparation for this event, CCCR is sponsoring ‘Council of the Baptized Listening sessions’ at various locations in the Twin Cities, as well as having a fundraiser at Lake Elmo Park Reserve. Based on previous communications from the CCCR, and having reviewed the materials provided on these events, I have a number of concerns and wish to caution you, as well as the Catholic faithful of this Archdiocese, against participating in these events or otherwise supporting the CCCR and its efforts.

Given my sacred responsibilities as catechist and defender of the faith, I especially wish to caution those who may consider attending one or more events that the invited speakers at both the fundraising event and the ‘synod’ hold positions contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Christine Schenk is the Executive Director of FutureChurch, a group that ‘respect[s] the leading of the Spirit and primacy of conscience of women seeking to obey their priestly call outside the present canons of the Church (1), and actively promotes optional celibacy and an ‘inclusive’ priesthood. Anthony Padovano, whose theological writings have questioned the physical resurrection of Jesus, the virgin birth of Jesus, the perpetual virginity of Mary, and the need for an ordained priest to celebrate a valid Mass, was President of CORPUS (National Association for Married Priests) and Vice President of the International Federation of Married Priests (2). He has also been active in promoting an ‘ecumenical alliance’ of various schismatic groups.

This is not to suggest that some of the aspirations of those affiliated with these groups are not valid. On the contrary, I believe all Catholics share the desire to be a prophetic sign in and for the world, to promote justice and reconciliation in the Church, and to facilitate courageous and honest dialogue. However, it is the bishops, in communion with the Roman Pontiff, that have the responsibility to respond to the issues raised by the CCCR, and to do so in a way that reflects the mind of Christ and the Church. Furthermore, one of the practical effects of the CCCR and its activities is the creation of a counter-structure of authority within the Church that stands against the teachings of the Catholic faith on the authority of the bishops, the Holy Father, and the divine constitution of the Church as articulated by the Second Vatican Council. My grave fear is that faithful Catholics who may attend these events will receive confusing and inaccurate information about the teaching of the Church, and thereby be led astray.

I ask that you join me in praying for the unity of the Church, and for an outpouring of the infinite love that she embodies.

With every good wish, I remain,

Fraternally yours in Christ,

The Most Reverend John C. Nienstedt
Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

(1) FutureChurch Statement on the Canonical Warning Issued to Fr. Roy Bourgeois, 3/31/2011.
(2) Documentation from the writings of Dr. Padvano can be supplied.

See also the previous PCV posts:
Launching a Council of the Baptized in St. Paul-Minneapolis
Twin Cities Coalition for Church Reform Has High Hopes
Negative Experience of Contrast: Synod and Council As Liberation
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission

A Homily for the Feast of Mary Magdalene

2011-07-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

By Diana Culbertson, OP

July 22, 2011

Sisters and Brothers:

We are the bearers of a great tradition. The word that we have just heard is ours to pass on — to proclaim. On this night we have heard an astounding story — one that we must tell over and over again, to the next generation and the one after that. This word is particularly precious because it came to us so late in the tradition. And because the real Mary Magdalene was mysteriously dissolved into a sinful woman — unnamed in the Lucan text — or into Mary of Bethany in an earlier part of the Gospel. Now that we can all read the texts, which was not possible in earlier ages, and retrace the biblical traditions, we can re-discover this remarkable person.

When the event of Resurrection was related, it came to the first generation of Christians in multiple versions. St. Paul was told that "Cephas" was the first to see the Risen Christ. Mark wrote that a group of women were the first to see the Risen Christ, but they were afraid and not believed. As Luke writes, "this story of theirs seemed like nonsense" — all that business about a vision of angels. As a biblical scholar has recently pointed out, the writer does not say that the women were not believable, simply that they were not believed. (Why are we not surprised?). Luke mentioned that the Lord had appeared to "Simon." But we don't know how that happened. It was third hand evidence — or, as we might argue in a court — hearsay. Then, at the end of the first century, decades after the death of Paul, the Community of the Beloved Disciple told their story. The writer — or the scribe unknown to us — offered to the Christian community their understanding of the Lord in whom they believed, their understanding of the meaning of discipleship, and especially the meaning of love — the love of the Lord for us, our love for one another. It is this love that impels us to attend to the story of Easter morning. Let us look again.

It was still dark. She peered into the darkness, experiencing grief so profound that she didn't realize that angels were speaking to her or that the one she was looking for was, in fact, present. Then she heard her name. The words of Jesus, however, must have been deeply disturbing. Is this what she wanted to hear? Is this what we want to hear?

Jesus said to her: "Stop clinging to me" ("Let go!"). Could any word have been more disturbing. "Let go."

And then, "Go."

We can reflect on her awareness of what was happening. Everything she had thought about for three days — and for years before that, and now in the darkness — was dissolved and re-arranged. From this moment on nothing would ever be the same. "Let go," said Jesus to her. And so must we all — "let go." Let go of the Jesus we think we understand, the Jesus we think we know so well. Can the church – the community of believers — ever know completely, ever really know, the Jesus we proclaim with such confidence? What does he say to those who have found him, to those whom he calls by name?

"Go." (This is not always what we want to do.)

"Go to my brothers and sisters (Adelphoi can mean brothers, can mean sisters — and here Jesus is referring to the Christian community.) "Go to my brothers and sisters" (not apostles in this text, my brothers and sisters).

"Go to the community and tell them 'My Father is your Father. My God is your God.'" He does not say, "Go to Peter and the Apostles and tell them to take over, there is work to be done."

And Mary of Magdala delivered the message: the technical apostolic proclamation: "I have seen the Lord." The Lord. This is the message of every Christian witness: "I have seen the Lord."

"I have seen who Jesus is for us. I have seen him alive and present to us. I have seen the Lord."

And who is permitted to utter this proclamation? All who have sought the Lord, all who have found him alive in their midst, all who have heard his voice. All who have been sent.

"Go to my brothers and sisters." Let go of the Jesus who is constricted by your preconceptions, let go of the Jesus whom you thought you understood. Leave the tomb. The world is not as dark as it seems. Listen again to the words of angels: "He is not lifeless. He is not among the dead. He is alive and near you. He has sent you to his brothers and sisters — all of them, wherever they gather – formally and informally, sometimes in fear, sometimes within their own darkness, sometimes convinced that they already know all about him and that there is nothing more to learn.

Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of those who have to abandon preconceptions, abandon old ideas, let go of fear, let go of despair, and forget the idea that nothing will change. When Mary of Magdala saw the Lord, everything in the world changed . . . and is still changing. Nothing will ever be the same. Jesus is alive and still with us.

And he is unpredictable. He sends us where we may not want to go. He sends us an unpredictable protector and advocate, a source of wisdom and strength who surprises us with unpredictable gifts of courage and hope.

No one can still the voices of those who have been sent — those who have seen the Lord. No one can stop us from telling the world. His Father is our Father. His Mother is our Mother. His God is our God. We are his brothers and sisters. He is with us — now and forever. He will never leave us. We know, we know . . . because we also have seen the Lord.

Mary of Magdala, lover, disciple, friend, apostle, preacher, guide to the Order of Preachers, pray for us.