Many Voices, One Church

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

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

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

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

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.

___________________________________

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

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.

__________________________

. . . 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

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.

____________________________

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

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

.
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

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.