The Other Side of the Catholic Tradition

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By Matthew Fox


Editor's Note: This commentary was first published June 14 in The Washington Post.


People who came of age in the past 40 years have known only one version of the Roman Catholic Church—a version of an iron-fisted ideology that first John Paul II and then Benedict XVI have enforced in the process of condemning condoms, birth control, liberation theology, creation spirituality, women, gays, the “secular world” and much more. World-over the hierarchy are being criticized for coddling pedophile priests and bishops while denouncing theologians and others who bring ideas to an age-old tradition.

All these thoughts and more emerged last weekend at an event in Detroit sponsored by progressive Catholic groups networking as the “American Catholic Council.” So opposed to the event was Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron, that the priest who was to lead the final Mass was told the day before that if he did so he would be laicized. At the last minute a Canadian priest was shipped in to lead the Mass for the American Catholic Council of 2000 participants including representatives from similar groups in Europe and Australia.

In twelfth century Germany, the Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen, healer, scientist, composer and author of 10 books, awakened popes and abbots alike, firing off letters like this one to Pope Anastasius IV: “O man, you who sit on the papal throne, you despise God when you don’t hurl from yourself the evil but even worse, embrace it and kiss it by silently tolerating corrupt men. . .And you, O Rome, are like one in the throes of death. You will be so shaken that the strength of your feet, the feet on which you now stand, will disappear. For you don’t love the King's daughter, justice.”

Thomas Aquinas, who followed a century after Hildegard, wrote commentaries on 10 works by the greatest scientist of his day, Aristotle, even though the pope had forbidden Christians to study Aristotle. So controversial was Aquinas in his day that the king of France had to call out his troops to surround the convent where Aquinas lived to protect him from Christians aroused by fundamentalist clergy. For Aquinas, “revelation comes in two books—the Bible and Nature” and “a mistake about nature results in a mistake about God.”

Aquinas insisted that one is always responsible to one’s conscience, more than to any other authority. (Indeed, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. cites Aquinas on this point in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail.) Aquinas was condemned by church authorities three times after he died but eventually was declared a saint.

Another Dominican, Meister Eckhart, is probably the greatest mystic the West has produced. His writings abound with depth, humor, paradox and challenges to establishment Christianity. For example, he declares, “I pray God to rid me of God.” He emphasizes what contemporary Biblical scholars are saying, that Christ is found not just in Jesus but in all of us. Eckhart says, “What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the son of God 1,400 years ago and I do not do so in my time and my person and my culture?” Eckhart was condemned by Pope John XXII a week after he died. It was reading Eckhart that converted Thomas Merton from a dualistic monk of the 1950’s to a prophetic mystic of the 60‘s.

Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit mystic and scientist who was banished from his home country to China early in the 20th century by church authorities, but who found plenty of scientific and mystical work to delve into in his exile. He spent his life researching the deeper meanings of science and spirituality and, being forbidden to publish most of his works in his life time, he left his books in the hands of a lay woman who got them published after he died.

Pope John XXIII’s Second Vatican Council of the early 1960’s has been called the “greatest religious event of the twentieth century.” Sadly, the papacy of John Paul II turned its back on its principles, including the courageous response of Latin American Liberation Theology that supported the poor and oppressed in direct expression of Gospel values. Further, contrary to the spirit and law of Vatican II, a modern day Inquisition was launched with Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) as chief inquisitor. One can argue that in squelching the Vatican Council, the Vatican has been in schism for 40 years since traditionally Councils trump popes, popes don’t trump Councils.

Can the Catholic Church resurrect from its self-dug grave and experience another renaissance in giving great souls and ideas to the world? As I point out in my recent book, The Pope’s War, if an angry lay movement rises up and launches Lay councils instead of Vatican councils, and moves to deconstruct the church as we know it and reconstruct it on the authentic principles of Jesus’ spirit and teaching, surely something wonderful and needed could occur. The Detroit gathering, the archbishop not withstanding, seemed to be such a launch.

Matthew Fox is author of 29 books on spirituality and culture of which the most recent are The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved and Christian Mystics. He was a member of the Dominican Order for 34 years until Cardinal Ratzinger expelled him in 1993. He now operates as an Episcopal priest in the diocese of Northern California.

Hans Küng Urges Peaceful Revolution Against Roman Absolutism

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By Jerry Filteau


Editor's Note: This article was first published June 11, 2011, in the National Catholic Reporter.


DETROIT – Famed theologian Fr. Hans Küng has called for a “peaceful” revolution by world Catholics against the absolutism of papal power.

He made the call in a video message June 10, the first evening of a conference in Detroit of the American Catholic Council.

“I think few people realize how powerful the pope is,” Küng said, likening papal power today to the absolute power of French monarchs that the French people revolted against in 1789.

“We have to change an absolutist system without the French Revolution,” he said. “We have to have peaceful change.”

Küng, who was perhaps the most famous of the theological experts at the Second Vatican Council nearly 50 years ago, was born in Switzerland but spent most of his life teaching at the University of Tubingen, Germany.

Now 83, Küng is ecumenical professor emeritus at Tubingen and rarely travels for health reasons, so his message to the ACC was delivered in the form of a half-hour videotaped interview with American theologian Anthony T. Padovano, conducted last year at Küng’s home. [Note: Padovano will be the keynote speaker at the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform's September 17 Synod of the Baptized: "Making Our Voices Heard."]

John Hushon, co-chairman of the ACC, said the conference, being held June 10-12 at Detroit’s Cobo Hall had more than 1,800 registered participants, from at least 44 states and 13 foreign countries.

In the interview with Küng, played on two giant screens in one of the convention center’s main rooms, the theologian predicted change in the church despite resistance from Rome. Vatican II “was a great success, but only 50 percent, he said.

On the one hand, he said, many reforms were realized, including renewal in the liturgy, a new appreciation of Scripture, and other significant changes such as recognition of the importance of the laity and the local church and various changes in church discipline.

“Unfortunately the council was not allowed to speak about the question of celibacy, about the question of birth control and contraception. Of course, ordination of women was far away from all the discussions,” he said.

“Many documents of the council are ambivalent documents because the Rome machinery – the Roman Curia – was able to stop any movement of reform, to stop it not completely, but half way.”

“What also I did not expect,” he added, was “that we could have such a restoration movement as under the Polish pope, and the German pope now.”

When asked what reasons he had for hope of reform in the church today, he answered that hope today is “sometimes a little difficult” in the face of a restorationist hierarchy, but “the world is moving on, going ahead, with or without the church” and “I believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ is stronger than the hierarchy.”

Referring to current crises in the church – clerical sexual abuse of minors, the shortage of priests, alienation of women and youth – he said, “Humanity learns most by suffering” – whether in the church or in the recent U.S. economic crisis. Even though many economists and others saw the economic meltdown coming, “it was not possible to have a law in Congress before the catastrophe,” he said.

He said he thinks at least some Vatican officials are similarly recognizing that change is needed in the church.

“If we do not learn now, we have to suffer more – more priests will be leaving, more parishes will be without pastors, more churches will be empty” and more young people and women will leave the church or dissociate internally from it, he said. “All these are indications, I think, that we have to change now.”

Chief sponsors the American Catholic Council are three independent Catholic groups seeking changes in the church: Voice of the Faithful, CORPUS and FutureChurch.

Hushon said when the ACC was formed three years ago it sought to create a “big tent dialogue among all” sectors of the U.S. church, independent of partisan or ideological lines, but “group after group, bishop after archbishop, said no, or ignored us.”

The divide was highlighted last October when Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit warned his priests and people against participating in the ACC conference.

It was exacerbated further June 3 when Vigneron threatened to laicize any priest or deacon who participated in the ACC closing liturgy Pentecost Sunday, June 12, saying, “There are good reasons for believing forbidden concelebration will take place by the laity and with those not in full communion with the church.”

In a pre-meeting exchange with NCR Hushon denied the claim and documented it with correspondence in which the ACC told the archdiocese that “there will be only one presider, a priest in good standing.”

The ACC chose Cobo Hall as its venue because this year is the 35th anniversary of the bicentennial Call to Action conference, a national gathering of Catholic laity sponsored by the U.S. bishops, was held there, with Detroit’s Cardinal John Dearden as presider and host.

The 1976 conference, despite its flaws, has been credited with providing groundwork for and impetus to the bishops’ economic and peace pastorals in the 1980s as well as greater attention to racism, minorities, family life, people with disabilities, respect for human life and a wide range of other pastoral and social justice initiatives developed nationally or in dioceses in the ensuing years.

Jerry Filteau, NCR Washington correspondent, is covering the Detroit meeting. Watch NCRonline.org for updates.


See also the previous PCV posts:
Hans Küng Says Only Radical Reforms Can Save the Catholic Church
Catholics Speak Out in Nationwide Listening Sessions
American Catholic Council to Convene in Detroit in June
Reflections on an Ordination Golden Anniversary
Launching a Council of the Baptized in St. Paul and Minneapolis
Listening Sessions Underway in the St. Paul-Minneapolis Local Church

Recommended Off-site Links:
The American Catholic Council: Küng Starts Things Off But I Write About Fox – Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, June 11, 2011).
American Catholic Council, Detroit – First Impressions – Brian Coyne (Catholica Forum, June 11, 2011).
The American Catholic Conference – A Place Where No Roman Catholic is Allowed to Go – Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, June 7, 2011).

Learning from the Elders

By Brian McNeill


On December 28, 2010, the Star Tribune opinion page carried a moving piece by American Indian journalist Tim Giago, “Wounded Knee: These Memories Won’t be Buried.” December 29, 2010 was the 120th anniversary of the Wounded Knee massacre. In his article Mr Giago recounts the history of the incident, and how it has reverberated in the American Indian community in the 120 years since. Over 150 American Indian warriors, women, and children are buried in the mass grave at the site. He includes a paragraph from the Aberdeen , South Dakota, Saturday Pioneer, written five days after the incident that argues that “in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.” The editor who wrote these words was L. Frank Baum, who ten years later wrote The Wizard of Oz.

The online version of this story logged 34 comments, about half of them antagonistic to Tim Giago, saying that he and American Indians should “get over it.” Many of these clearly resented being reminded of the incident, and countered with notes on the slaughter of whites in the Sioux Uprising of 1862 in Minnesota. The other half came to his defense by acknowledging the horror of what occurred, but many of these too said, a little less aggressively, that it is time to move on.

Tim Giago’s piece has stuck with me for the last few months because it informs, in a way, my recent experience on Sunday mornings as a gay Catholic. I am in no way comparing the treatment of gay Catholics to the genocide of the American Indians during the last 500 years. I do not excuse myself or my European ancestors for what we have done. Like many, I am haunted by this horror, and carry it with me as I go about my day in Minneapolis, where I have many encounters with American Indians each week. We cannot undo the past, but, if nothing else, simple humanity requires that we remember it. The Star Tribune is to be commended on this count for publishing Tim Giago’s piece.

No, the link between Wounded Knee and my Sunday morning experience as a gay Catholic is not a one-to-one comparison on horrors endured by my people, here the lgbt Catholic community, versus those suffered by American Indians. No the link is emotional and political.

As most reading this will know, in 1987 Archbishop John Roach and The Newman Center Community at the University of Minnesota refused to renew the lease of Dignity Twin Cities at The Newman Center because we would not agree to recently reformulated Roman Catholic teaching that stated, among other things, that homosexuality is an “objective disorder.” Since then Dignity Twin Cities has been graciously hosted by Lutheran, Episcopal, and now a Methodist community. We have become a pilgrim people, meeting in exile from our Catholic tradition.

As we move through middle age, many lgbt Catholics have found it difficult to remain in the Church. Each of us has had to struggle to determine how we would remain in, if at all, or if we would simply leave. I have chosen to stay, but on my own terms. The main issue of me is to not be closeted while attending Mass. I have taken the Rainbow Sash experience of being visibly gay at Mass and while receiving the Eucharist and applied it to Sunday Mass. For the last two years I have worn my Dignity Twin Cities t-shirt to Mass at the new Newman Center at the University of Minnesota; new because it was merged with St Lawrence Parish in southeast Minneapolis ten years ago. The t-shirt has our Dignity Twin Cities logo on the front, and on the back, just below my neck, I have stenciled in black magic marker the word “GAY.”

When I started this Sunday practice, I thought that my t-shirt might provoke some interest from the students who attend Mass with me. They all look like they are in their early twenties, meaning they were not even born when Dignity Twin Cities was booted out of the “old” Newman Center.

That is not the reaction I received. No one said anything. Not one innocent inquiry. Not one cutting comment. Nothing. The pastor said he lost the parish registration card I filled out in January 2009, so I didn’t even make it onto the parish mailing list. I attended two after-Mass workshops on sexuality and spoke up about the gay issue, but no response from anyone. I volunteered for meal prep for the homeless, wearing the t-shirt, but nada. I hung around after Mass for coffee and doughnuts. Schmoozed about growing tomatoes and other weather related time wasters, but not one question about Dignity Twin Cities or being a gay Catholic.

Perhaps I was too transparently an old fool angling for attention, but it is hard to say when no one talks to you. No one until a very kind woman went out of her way to introduce herself, her husband, and some of her parish friends.

The emotional link to Wounded Knee and the American Indians is the invisibility; the experience of the dominant culture ignoring you at best and at worst wanting you to shut up and go away. The political link to Wounded Knee and the American Indians is the unwillingness of those in the dominant culture to take on your issue. I was hoping, unrealistically, that maybe some students would be interested in the history of Dignity at The Newman Center and then come and join us. After two years at St Lawrence Newman Center at the University of Minnesota it is abundantly clear that the injustice I feel so keenly means absolutely nothing to just about anyone else there. It was something that happened 23 years ago to a group of people. No one got hurt. So what!

It seems to me that you cannot sit in a pew in any church on any Sunday morning and say to yourself, “So what!” about either Wounded Knee or gay Catholics. The prejudice against the American Indians voiced in the comments to Tim Giago and the injustice endured by lgbt Catholics is ongoing. It took me two years to realize what most American Indians could have told me in a minute. I was naïve to think that in a place where the congregation regularly sings about God’s justice, that someone would care about an ongoing injustice initiated in that very community in 1987.

So one more time I come around to it: being gay is a blessing. If I were not gay I would not have any idea of what it might feel like to be an American Indian living in Minnesota in 2011. If sometimes I am sad, it is part of the same sadness I see in the eyes of Native Americans that must be sourced in the knowledge that, through no fault of their own, part of their reality is scarred by the hypocrisy of the Christians who robbed and slaughtered their ancestors, took them from their parents, sent them to boarding schools where they could not speak their native language, and even 120 years later still want them to shut up about it.


Brian McNeill is the president of Dignity Twin Cities and the convener of the Rainbow Sash Alliance.


See also the previous PCV posts:
Archbishop Nienstedt Responds to Rainbow Sash Alliance
Catholics Call for Repentance of Sin of Heterosexism
The Gay Catholic Insurgency

Archbishop Nienstedt: Budgeting with Common Good in Mind

Editors' Note: Despite our disagreement at times with Archbishop John Nienstedt, we appreciate his latest Catholic Spirit column in which he urges the Minnesota Legislature to consider and advocate for those who are most negatively impacted by our economic system. Following is this particular column by the Archbishop.


As I sit down to write this article, our state House and Senate stand ready to pass a budget for next year that the governor is sure to veto. The same kind of impasse is also being experienced in Washington, D.C., with no less willingness on the part of legislators to reach agreement on the fiscal year 2012 federal budget.

Obviously, both sides of the aisle face very difficult choices about how to balance needs and resources as well as how to allocate burdens and sacrifices. It is absolutely necessary for our nation to address the long-term impact of deficits on the health and stability of the economy, but how we do that is equally important.


Principles to follow

The “common good” would include such considerations as: fulfilling the demands of justice and moral obligations to future generations, controlling future debt and deficits, and protecting the lives and dignity of those who are poor and vulnerable.

Catholic moral teachings inspire the following principles that should serve as a guide for our input in discussing difficult budgetary decisions:

1) Human life and dignity: Every budget decision should be assessed as to whether or not it protects or threatens human life and the dignity of persons;

2) Priority for the poor: A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” brothers and sisters (Matthew 25). The needs of the hungry, the homeless, the disabled and the unemployed should be primary in our considerations;

3) The common good: Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all members of our society, especially families who struggle to live with dignity during difficult economic times.

Armed with these principles, we must seek to find a just framework for a budget that does not rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons. Those of us who are able must be willing to make shared sacrifices, including the raising of adequate revenues to pay our bills, eliminating unnecessary military expenses, and addressing in a fair, effective and realistic way the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs.

On the other hand, those who receive benefits from the commonwealth must not forget their responsibility to society in return.


Doing better

I encourage our readers to study the present issues in light of the principles set forth by our Catholic faith, and then to contact their elected representatives on both the state and federal levels, encouraging them to craft budgets that are just and fair, especially to the most vulnerable among us.

In a meeting this week with Tim Marx, our new archdiocesan CEO of Catholic Charities, I learned of another compelling reason for not fixing the budget on the backs of the poor — which is that habitual and widespread poverty is bad fiscal policy and bad economic policy.

A failure to address the basic needs in housing, food, health care as well as the need for children to begin life with a healthy start will, in the long-run, require more costs in services as well as result in reduced productivity.

I know we can do better. I pray that all parties can come together to make the right decisions to steer us on a course, as a state and as a nation, of which we can all be proud.

God love you!


Archbishop John C. Nienstedt is the 11th Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. View the Archbishop's full bio and calendar.

What is "Mainstream" Catholicism?

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By Carol Ann Larsen


No doubt most of us progressives would resist the term "mainstream" in describing ourselves. So who is the mainstream Catholic these days? For instance, is the so-called "cafeteria Catholic" considered mainstream? Take the issue of birth control. We Catholics practice artificial contraception/sterilization at about 2% less than our Protestant counterparts in the US. Does this make 92% of us mainstream? Does the mainstream Catholic want his priest to be able to marry? Women to be able to be ordained? How is "mainstream" to be defined in 2011? It seems to me that the traditionalists among us who are happy to take orders from the Roman Curia and the Holy Father without question are in the minority.

Unfortunately for the Church and for them as well, the young are voting with their feet in huge numbers. They do not protest, they simply leave. Who is responsible for this? Of course, our first impulse is to blame an overreaching and dictatorial hierarchy. But where is the sense of responsibility in the laity?

According to Vatican II, we have the right and the duty to shape our church, not merely to "pray, pay and obey" as our parents used to say. This overreach of the prelates of the Church took centuries to develop, and seems to be nearly impossible to reverse to a state more closely resembling the early church. Thankfully, there are Catholics working for reform who will attend the first ever meeting of the American Catholic Council in Detroit during Pentecost weekend, 2011.

These reform-minded people should resist being labeled as a disgruntled minority, or worse yet, a bunch of cranks, and claim their rightful status as, indeed, mainstream Catholics who love the Church that Christ founded and refuse to be marginalized. There is strength in numbers and our numbers will grow if we can convince ourselves and others that we have nothing to fear and a renewed and inclusive Church to gain.

Catholics Speak Out in Nationwide Listening Sessions

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Editor's Note: The following is a media release from the American Catholic Council.


A key component of the inaugural convening of the American Catholic Council, to unfold in Detroit on Pentecost Weekend June 10-12, will be the release of a report on nearly 100 local and regional Listening Sessions across the country over the past 18 months.

These sessions have taken place in diverse settings, from parish halls and living rooms, to hotel conference rooms and retreat centers. Each has been an occasion where the faithful have had the opportunity to dialogue and listen to the promptings of the Spirit as they prayerfully considered fundamental questions about the future of the Catholic Church. Many gathered out of a sense of urgency and a shared sense of responsibility to build a better Church, and one grounded in the vision and promise of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

The overwhelming issue echoed throughout Listening Sessions is the hierarchy's unwillingness to enter into dialogue with the laity about real issues which affect the lives and faith of real people in the church. From the perspective of the vast majority of participants in these listening sessions, the hierarchy is increasingly remote, disengaged and irrelevant to the faith lives of rank and file Catholics. This suggests a fundamental crisis of leadership in an increasingly dysfunctional institutional Church. Many see this failure to engage the diversity of the faithful as undermining the promise of a more inclusive Church that is central to the reforms called for by Vatican II. It is increasingly evident that the primary focus of the ACC when it convenes in Detroit will be to address issues of leadership, governance and structural reform.

These dialogues were informed by three fundamental tenets drawn from the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Vatican II).

• As baptized Catholics, all the faithful share in the ministry of Jesus, the Christ;

• Because all of us are the Church, the common sense of faithful Catholics (sensus fidelium) is a legitimate agent of the Holy Spirit and serves to inform Church practice and teaching, in tandem with Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium;

• As adult Catholics, we are called to nurture an informed conscience that is the final arbiter of our actions.

Preliminary data demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of participants in the listening sessions love the church and do not wish to leave the church like the 30 million who have left in recent years. Many are greatly concerned that the spirit of Vatican II has been repressed.

The 2011 Detroit Council celebrates the upcoming 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council convened by Pope John XXIII and seeks to reinvigorate the Council's reforms, which have been increasingly downplayed in recent years. These include openness to all peoples and cultures, collegial and responsible decision-making, the primacy of a well-formed conscience, and sincere ecumenism.

The ACC Listening Session process also recalls two years of similar sessions leading up to an historic gathering convened in Detroit in 1976 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to implement Vatican II. Honoring the U.S Bicentennial year, that event 35 years ago recognized that many reforms called for by Vatican II mirrored foundational American principles of freedom of conscience, individual rights, and democratic practices, thus encouraging increased involvement of the laity in Church governance.


To register for the June 10-12 American Catholic Council, click here.

For program brochure, click here.


See also the previous PCV post:
American Catholic Council to Convene in Detroit in June

Hans Küng Says Only Radical Reforms Can Save the Catholic Church

By Anli Serfontein


Editor's Note: This article was first published May 8, 2011 by ENInews.


The Catholic Church is seriously, possibly terminally ill and only an honest diagnosis and radical therapy will cure it, one of the sharpest critics of Pope Benedict XVI, the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Küng, has written.

Speaking at a sold-out event in the Literaturhaus (Literary Centre) in Munich on 2 May 2011, Küng, who is a former colleague of the pope at the University of Tubingen, introduced his new book, Ist die Kirche noch zu retten? (Can the Church Still Be Saved?).

Küng argues that the malady of the church goes beyond recent sexual abuse scandals. According to him, the church's resistance to reform, its secrecy, lack of transparency and misogyny are at the heart of the problem.

He said that the Catholic church in the United States has lost one-third of its membership."The American Catholic church never asked why," he said."Any other institution that has lost a third of its members would want to know why." He also said that 80 per cent of German bishops would welcome reforms.

Küng is one of today's most outspoken Catholic theologians. Because he questioned the infallibility of the pope in 1971, he had his 'missio canonica', the license needed to teach Roman Catholic theology, withdrawn. Thereafter, he became professor of ecumenical theology in Tubingen. He remains a Catholic priest.

He told the mostly elderly audience in the Diocese of Munich and Freising, the former diocese of Benedict XVI, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, "I would have preferred not to write this book. It is not pleasant to dedicate such a critical publication to the church that has remained my church."

He said he had hoped that Benedict would find a way forward in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) which in the early sixties reformed the church in a number of ways, such as the celebration of Mass in local languages instead of Latin.

However, Pope Benedict has distanced himself from Vatican II and "failed in the face of the worldwide sexual abuse by clergy," King said. Benedict is "in essence a person for medieval liturgy, theology and a medieval church constitution."

Referring to the celibacy debate that arose after the sexual abuse cases, Küng said, "the Roman Catholic church survived for the first thousand years without celibacy." He is strongly in favour of allowing priests and bishops to marry.

Küng compared the changes needed in the Catholic church to the democratic changes taking place in the Arab world."When will in our church the youth take to the street? That is our problem; we have no young people anymore," he said to laughter from the 350 people present.

At the end of the book Küng returns to the question: "Can the church still be saved?" He said he has not lost his vision of a church that would meet the expectations of millions of Christians, but certain conditions have to be met. In their reforms, this Church should show Christian radicalism, constancy and coherency, he said.

"I have not given up the hope that it will survive," Küng ended, to applause.

Daniel Berrigan: A Lifetime of Peace Activism

By Deena Guzder


Editor's Note: This article was first published May 9 by CommonDreams.org.


Jingoistic crowds erupted with frat-boy glee shortly after President Barack Obama announced the extrajudicial assassination of Osama Bin Laden earlier this month. After all, America’s public enemy Numero Uno – our own veritable Darth Vadar – had lost what the mainstream media depicts as a Manichean battle ten years in the making. The lone voices in the wilderness that dared to point out the covert operation violated elementary norms of international law were quickly dismissed as “fanatics”.

According to prevailing wisdom in the United States today, the best way to eradicate the world of a hateful ideology is by deploying 80 commandos on the home of an unarmed suspect and murdering him on the spot. Yet, we already see the entirely predictable consequences of the Osama bin Laden raid. In Portland, Maine, a mosque was defaced just hours after the news broke of bin Laden’s death. The graffiti read, "Osama Today, Islam tomorow" [sic]. Less than a week later, any misconception that the so-called Global War on Terror was winding down was dispelled when a drone attack killed at least eight people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan. Meanwhile Secretary of State Hillary Clinton disingenuously conflated al-Qaeda with the Taliban and, with bellicose bravado, declared the U.S. would continue its war in Afghanistan. And, in Pakistan, hundreds of Jamaat-ud-Dawa activists prayed in Karachi for their new martyr: Osama bin Laden.

Many great minds have questioned the logic of retributive violence, but perhaps none as persistently and unwaveringly as Father Daniel Berrigan. Today, the lifelong social justice activist and renegade Jesuit priest turns 90 years old. At a time when self-proclaimed Christian politicians espouse a Tea Party-inspired theology of xenophobia and vengeance, Berrigan is a rare soul that continues tirelessly opposing violence in its many forms.

Along with his late brother Phillip, he has publicly opposed aid to alleged anti-Communist forces in Southeast Asia, the use of American forces in Grenada, the installation of Pershing missiles in West Germany, aid to the Contras in Nicaragua, intervention in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, the Cold War, and the Gulf War. Berrigan also vocally opposed the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.[1] For Berrigan, Christianity is a counter-cultural practice directly at odds with the prevailing national culture of retributive justice. Arrested more times than he can count – but “fewer than I should have been,” Berrigan says – he has spent over half a century digging mock graves on the Pentagon’s front lawn, pouring vials of his own blood on Capitol Hill, vandalizing army airplanes, hammering on nuclear nosecones, turning his back on judges during his sentencing hearings, staging hunger strikes in prisons, undergoing strip searches for educating his fellow inmates, and standing in court on charges ranging from “criminal mischief” to “destruction of government property” to, most egregiously, “failure to quit.” [2] Berrigan fears moral suicide over physical death and regards moral autonomy as more liberating than physical freedom.

Last year, after badgering members of the Catholic Worker community across the country, I tracked down America’s most famous living priest. When I arrived at Berrigan’s Lower West Side friary in Manhattan, I half expected to find a Bible-toting warrior, but on that clement morning, I walked into the friary’s cozy hallway to find a slightly hunched elderly man with a meek smile and skin crinkled like aluminum foil. Greeting me with the softest, gentlest “hello” that I’ve heard since my first day at Montessori school, Father Berrigan clasped my hand and led me into his tastefully decorated office.

The walls of his office showcased posters of freedom fighters such as Mahatma Gandhi, a child’s drawing of a circus clown, and framed quilts of butterflies. Among his impressive collection of books are volumes by his longtime heroes: Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and Thomas Merton [pictured above right with Berrigan in 1965]. Just shy of his ninetieth birthday, Berrigan spoke with me for an hour and a half, patiently answering my many questions and stopping only twice or so to cough.

Berrigan told me of surviving a Depression-era boyhood, an abusive father, and countless wars to emerge with a startlingly simple message: stop the violence. If Berrigan had lived during slavery, he would have fought with the abolitionists, but he would not have joined John Brown in leading violent slave insurrections. Even at the height of his Vietnam antiwar activism – or, as his detractors would say, the height of his arrogance – Berrigan never condoned violence. A tape-recorded message to the Weatherman Underground, attributed to Berrigan in 1971, pleads with the militant group to return to nonviolence, warning,: “No principle is worth the sacrifice of a single human being.”

In a world still wracked by violence, Berrigan’s peace testimony remains largely unheard and his pacifist views are too often dismissed as naïve. As we celebrate his lifelong commitment to social justice activism on his birthday, may we remember his startlingly clear message that violence is not the answer even when it’s seems most tempting and most justified. As Berrigan and so many others have noted, our convictions matter most when they’re tested on the crucible of life – not when they are easy, safe, and fashionable. If we believe in a world in which international law triumphs over unilateral action; mercy triumphs over vengeance; and clemency over sacrifice then Berrigan’s lifelong testimony teaches us that there are no exceptions.


Notes

[1] Joe Sabia, “The Cornell Catholic Community is in Crisis,” Cornell Daily Sun. September 23, 2003

[2] For more see Gary Smith, “Peace Warriors,” The Washington Post Magazine, June 5, 1988, W22. June 5, 1988.


Deena Guzder is an independent journalist who has reported on human rights issues across the globe. She is the author of Divine Rebels: American Christian Activists for Social Justice (Chicago Review Press, 2011), which includes a profile of Daniel Berrigan. Please visit her website, here.

Quote of the Day

Well-informed U.S. Catholics are acutely aware of the arrogance, paternalism, flawed logic, inflammatory rhetoric, failure of personal accountability, and lack of pastoral sensitivity of many of our church leaders.

The U.S. bishops have set the tone with their continued denial of the wholesale rejection of church teaching on contraception; their clumsy, heavy-handed, ineffective attempt to influence national health care legislation; their opposition to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians; and their condemnation of the work of theologian St. Joseph Sr. Elizabeth Johnson without even meeting with her.

. . . The history of the official church has been one of conflict, corruption, violence and scandal, but if we are believers, we know that as much as we would like to, we cannot separate the institution from the community of the faithful.

But we can pray, and we can trust in the Holy Spirit that our church leaders will come to realize they have lost their teaching voice and will come to discern, consulting with the community of the faithful, how their legitimate authority can be exercised far more effectively and pastorally.

As we pray, we might appreciate that those of us who resist the “hard-liners” are as imperfect and broken as they appear to be. Their words and actions may have greater impact than ours, but why should we expect them to be different from us, and why should we allow their imperfections and brokenness deprive us from something so life-giving, so grace-filled, so sanctifying?

And we can speak out. All the silent bishops who do not agree with the approach of these church leaders can speak out. All the bishops and priests and religious who do not accept church teaching on contraception can speak out. All who believe that women should be priests can speak out. All who believe celibacy is a gift, not a mandate, can speak out. All who understand and accept the reality of homosexual orientation can speak out.

We are the people of God. We are called to be prophetic voices. . . .

– Brian Cahill
"Why Let Bishops Drive Us from the Church We Love?"
National Catholic Reporter
May 2, 2011

See also the previous PCV posts:
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission
It's Critical That Catholics Find Their Voice
The Consensus of the Faithful as the Voice of the Infallible Church
Richard Gaillardetz on the Need to "Wrestle with the Tradition"
Communicating with Leadership
Let Our Voices Be Heard!

American Catholic Council to Convene in Detroit in June

By Jerry Filteau


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


The American Catholic Council, a reform group formed in Washington in September 2008, plans to hold its first national conference in Detroit June 10-12. The organization has already drawn fire from the hierarchy for parts of its platform.

Last October, Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron cautioned local Catholics not to attend the conference and ordered local parishes, schools and other Catholic institutions not to sponsor or host any of the preparatory listening sessions leading up to the conference.

In a media advisory, the archdiocese called the planned conference a “misguided effort” that proposes goals “largely in opposition to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council” and “distorts the true spirit of Vatican II.”

Among organizations that banded together to form the American Catholic Council are: Voice of the Faithful, an international lay organization started in Boston in the wake of the clergy sex abuse scandal in order to promote greater transparency and accountability in the church; FutureChurch, a Cleveland-based Catholic group, headed by St. Joseph Sr. Christine Schenk, that advocates expanding ordained ministry to women and married men; and CORPUS, an organization of married priests seeking an end to mandatory celibacy for Catholic priests in the Latin church.

Featured speakers at the June gathering in Detroit are to include:

* Famed Swiss-born theologian Fr. Hans Küng, ecumenical professor emeritus at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Since 1979, Küng has been barred from teaching as a Catholic theologian. Advance notices say that depending on his health, he may address the group only by a pre-taped video.

* Sr. Joan Chittister, former prioress of the Benedictine Abbey of Erie, Pa., a noted author and an NCR columnist who has often criticized church positions on a wide range of issues.

* Anthony Padovano, a theologian, author, former priest and former CORPUS president, who has long advocated the abolition of mandatory celibacy in the Latin church and other changes in church practice.

* James Carroll, a Boston Globe columnist, former priest, and award-winning author whose 2009 book, Practicing Catholic, is sharply critical of the papacy of Benedict XVI.

* Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and former lieutenant governor of Maryland.

* Jeannette Rodriguez, chair of theology and religious studies at Seattle University and author of several works on Hispanic theology. Rodriguez also serves on the NCR board of directors.

In preparatory work for the Detroit conference, the American Catholic Council has held numerous listening sessions around the country and has drafted a “Catholic Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.” It says in part that every Catholic has the right to:

* Develop an informed conscience and to act in accord with it.

* Participate in a faith community” and have “responsible pastoral care.

* Proclaim the Gospel and to respond to the community’s call to ministerial leadership.

* Freedom of expression and the freedom to dissent.

* A voice in the selection of leaders and in the manner in which governance and decision-making are exercised.

* Summon and speak in assemblies where diverse voices can be heard.

“Church leaders,” it says, “shall respect the rights and responsibilities of the baptized and their faith communities.”

“One must not be told that one becomes a Catholic at the cost of being less an American,” the preamble to the Catholic Bill of Rights and Responsibilities says. “We cannot declare that fundamental rights have no place in the church of Christ.

“We often hear that the ‘church is not a democracy,’ ” it adds. “This is not true: Ecumenical councils, papal elections and the election of religious superiors occur regularly. The first ecumenical council in 325 [in Nicea] declared that no priest was validly ordained unless the community made the selection. Popes and bishops were chosen by the people at large. Fundamentally, Catholic doctrine maintains that the Spirit is given to all and that baptism makes every Catholic equal.”

On its web site the council describes itself as “a movement bringing together a network of individuals, organizations and communities to consider the state and future of our church.”

“We believe our church is at a turning point in its history,” it adds. “We recall the promise of the Second Vatican Council for a renaissance of the roles and responsibilities of all the baptized through a radically inclusive and engaged relationship between the church and the world. We respond to the spirit of Vatican II by summoning the baptized together to demonstrate our re-commitment.”

Among other presenters at the June gathering, to be held at Detroit’s Cobo Hall Convention Center, are Loretto Sr. Jeannine Gramick, a co-founder of New Ways Ministry and longtime advocate of fuller Catholic ministry to the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender-questioning community; Leonard Swidler, professor of Catholic thought and interreligious dialogue at Temple University in Philadelphia and a founder of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church; Diana Hayes, a leading African-American Catholic theologian; Jesuit Fr. James Hug and Dominican Sr. Maria Riley of Center of Concern, a Jesuit-founded social justice think tank; Barbara Blaine and David Clohessy, leaders of the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests; and Jason Berry, whose NCR writings on clergy sexual abuse of minors have helped change the way the church approaches that issue.

For complete details, visit: www.americancatholiccouncil.org.


Jerry Filteau is NCR Washington correspondent. He plans to cover the Detroit American Catholic Council conference for NCR and to write about pre-conference developments in coming weeks.


See also the previous PCV posts:
Launching a Council of the Baptized in St. Paul and Minneapolis
Listening Sessions Underway in the St. Paul-Minneapolis Local Church
CCCR's Action Plan for 2011
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission