“Falling Away”

By Mary Lynn Murphy


I was a “Cradle Catholic” . . . born, raised, fully sacramentalized, and educated in the Roman Catholic tradition from kindergarten through college.

I am one of those (perhaps few?) former Catholics with entirely fond memories of my Catholic upbringing in South Minneapolis, circa 1950. Admittedly, during that era, the Sisters of St. Joseph could scare the living daylights out of us when they got riled up. But to me, they seemed to be generally fair if we “minded our Ps and Qs.” They managed to efficiently educate overflowing classrooms of 50 students, in settings that felt safe and were frequently fun! Make no mistake about it, the sisters threw the greatest Christmas parties of all time! There were decorated Christmas trees and Advent wreaths hung with ribbons and candles. Advent calendars trimmed the window panes, full of promise and hidden surprises, set off by hand made paper snow flakes of varying sizes. There were Secret Santas, gobs of candy, and Christmas carolling until our throats became hoarse. The sisters pulled out all of the stops to celebrate the highly anticipated “birth of the dear baby Jesus.”

And there were other things to love . . . the comforting prayers and rituals, the sense of community; the girls’ basketball team, coached by beloved Fr. Burns!; the music, ( I ADORED choir and chant!); the mysteriousness; the sisters’ clear sense of justice that hooked me to the plight of society’s underdogs. And of course, my mother was a dyed in the wool Irish Catholic, so I probably absorbed her affection for all things Catholic by the time I could walk or talk. Even now, grade school days are the hoarded treasures of long ago memories.

By high school, though, despite enjoying a fairly sophisticated women’s educational environment (Convent of the Visitation), Catholic admonishments regarding sexuality took on a disturbing light. The birth control ban wreaked havoc in the lives of my parents and other Catholic families. (My outspoken father never hesitated to speak volumes about that and related topics!) Like my father, I was not a lover of authority in the first place, and Church authoritarianism began to grate on me at exactly that time. But I remained dutiful until college – when I began to take my first hesitant steps beyond the Church door.

I attended a Sacred Heart college, and The Madames of the Sacred Heart were brilliant and lovely women. My Theology Professor, Mr. Herrigas, was likewise a brilliant and lovely man, but I just didn’t believe him when he apologetically conceded that indeed, Roman Catholicism must be viewed as the only legitimate path to eternal life. He was a sharp young guy who must have choked on such concepts, but intellectual freedom never struck me as a strong feature of Catholicism, so I took it with a grain of salt, and moved happily through my college years.

It was just that all of that heady stuff seemed irrelevant to the galvanizing opportunities my college provided to engage social justice and community service in the 1960s. Thursday nights were spent in South Chicago, connecting with activist families of the civil rights movement, and in tutoring grade school kids. Sundays were spent with special needs poverty kids. It was a time when change felt possible, and gave us all hope. Over time, the Mass and all of the Moral Theology/Philosophy conversations simply lost meaning for me in an ambiguous day-to-day world, while activism was something I could get a hold of.

Then the Women’s Movement materialized, and my Catholic outlook dimmed another watt or two. While in truth, the “Sexual Revolution” looked like fool’s gold to me, the equal rights message I perceived in it was right up my alley, but at odds with what I was hearing at church. Meanwhile, my Catholic professors railed against the likes of Betty Friedan, while I gradually embraced her revolutionary point of view. One notable Moral Philosophy assignment was to write an essay about her ground breaking book. The mandatory topic, incredibly, was “Why the Feminine Mystique would lead to the downfall of American society”!

One step followed the other until I found myself slip-sliding away from the whole spectrum of Catholic thought. In truth, mine might have been a tenuous Church connection to begin with, because as an adult, I never recall any discernible sense of “belonging” to the faith communities I encountered. Rather than feeling inspired by compulsory giving programs, pancake breakfasts, and interminable sermons steeped in judgment, I felt disturbed and disappointed. Whatever happened to the “least of our brethren”? Was it really all just about “sexual sin?” Sunday mornings at the park, or along the river, felt much more uplifting. (I remember attending more than a few uproarious Sunday morning “Church services” in parks along the river with college friends and relatives, while our parents trooped off to earlier Masses. Those are some of my fondest Sunday memories!)

My nebulous Catholicity continued for the next several years until, by some mysterious alchemy, I was appointed, as a young mother in my mid 30s, to Archbishop Roach’s Urban Affairs Commission. This appointment may have been the result of my affiliation with the Women’s Institute for Social Change, a respected, though slightly radical group at that much more radical time in history. Regardless, one thing led to another, and years later, during more conservative times, I wound up on the board of Cretin-Derham Hall ( in the early 90s) where my children went to high school. The opportunity to be a progressive public voice appealed to me. So I continued to loosely define myself as Catholic . . . a Catholic, like most others I knew, who did as they pleased about birth control, Mass attendance, etc.

Unfortunately, like so many other self described feminists at that time, I acquiesced in the face of Church sexism toward women. It wasn’t until years later, when I realized that I had a gay offspring , that I “tuned in” much more closely to the Church’s teachings on the status of women and homosexuality. Church language and policies related to homosexuality actually startled me. They seemed consciously and intentionally cruel. It was then that my instinct for social justice transitioned into flat out activism. I launched headlong into gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) support work with the secular organization PFLAG, and eventually with the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM). That work sustained me, and has, I hope, made some identifiable changes in church and society. But I became increasingly impatient with and disgusted by unrelenting Church homophobia. The description of “exiled Catholic” began to feel more appropriate for me.

Even that title seemed a bit chummy as our new archbishop, John Nienstedt, swung into gear about a year ago. I was surprisingly unprepared for his emotionally detached righteousness in regard to Catholicity in general and homosexuality in particular. Knowing that he was probably dispatched by Rome to diffuse our activist community should have toughened me, but it didn’t. The specter of this man as the future of the local Doctrinal Church began to settle in my bones. Any affiliation with him and his Church-sanctioned language began to feel like marriage to an abusive husband for a person like me, an activist for gay rights.

The last straw came in September, at the John Ireland Speaker Series at St. Thomas University which featured the “Scholar in Residence” at the St Paul Seminary. The speaker disgorged an hour’s worth of what I considered to be right wing demagoguery with regard to human sexuality. Her comparison of gay relationships to heterosexual incest was appalling to me. Astonishingly, the woman was warmly received by a large crowd of religious, lay persons and students. It dawned on me then that as a Seminary dignitary, this woman represents not just the present, but the near future of academia in Catholic higher education. It also became clear to me that as a feminist and an activist in the secular GLBT support community, any affiliation with the word Catholic, as it is commonly understood in regard to Church treatment of women and gays, undermines my credibility and integrity.

Today it is hard for anyone to deny that the train is leaving the station with regard to women and gays in contemporary America. And I am on that train. For me there will be no more debating medieval churchly mindsets about the evils of homosexuality, female ordination, or reproductive freedom – which will be an enormous relief . In all honesty, at least in terms of my adult years, I concede that my love of Church may have dissipated long ago, through a steady process of disillusionment. I may have hung around just to say NO to its policies. (Part of my activism has been to role model resistance when I believe it is called for.) Oddly, even my devout, non activist mother drifted slowly away over the years. She was detached from religion by the time she lay dying at age 53. “I’m square with God,” she told me. “No need for the priests.”

Beyond that, I have lost hope for any kind of productive or functional relationship between the pastoral and the doctrinal Church in my life time, though I credit those who choose to stay and persistently question. They take the incremental approach to change, and some day they may very well succeed. They honor themselves and their communities with the path they have chosen. My path, however, is diverging. I have decided to officially move on, to the delight of my immediate family! I will continue to seek and express spirituality in the alternative places I always have – in the parks, along the rivers, among friends and fellow activists. And I will be at peace with my final status as “non Catholic.” Some may call that “falling away.” But for me, it feels like growing up.

The Gay Catholic Insurgency

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By Brian McNeill

In a fascinating book I am reading that compares the Soviet Union in its death throes to the current economic and political situation in the United States, I found the follow quote. The author is describing the lessons the Red Army learned in Chechnya and Afghanistan.

"A military effort alone can never defeat a popular insurgency. The insurgents never have to win, they just have to continue to fight. In fighting them, the military is forced to fight the people of the country, and by perpetuating a state of war it continually thwarts its stated purpose, which is to establish peace. There is no room for victory in this scenario, but only for an ever-widening spiral of murder, hatred and shame."

- Reinventing Collapse, Demitry Orlov (p.40)

We cannot exactly equate the situation of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (glbt) Catholics with that of the insurgents of Afghanistan in the 1980s, or Chechnya in the 1990s. However, I think we benefit from thinking of ourselves as insurgents confronting a huge, monolithic adversary. Most gay Catholics who stay in the Church prefer to think of themselves as the loyal opposition rather than insurgents, but during the last twenty years it is clear that the hierarchy does not view us that way. Some might abjure the idea of being in a fight with Church authorities, but I would like to suggest that is exactly where we are. Since the publication of then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1986 “Halloween Letter,” which first described us as “objectively disordered,” and “oriented towards an intrinsic moral evil,” we have been treated as the enemy.

If, in the above quote, we substitute “church authorities” for “military,” and “the Catholic faithful” for “the people of the country,” our current situation begins to come into clearer focus. The above quote would then read as follows:

The church authorities can never defeat a truly grassroots movement of the faithful. We, the glbt insurgents, never need to win, we just have to continue to fight. In fighting against us, the hierarchy is fighting its own people, which thwarts its stated purpose of proclaiming the Gospel, and creating the Reign of God. They will never win as long as we continue our efforts. The harder they fight us, the more they alienate the Catholic faithful and reveal themselves as hypocrites.

I reached these conclusions after a recent, brief exchange with Fr. Thomas J. Kessler, the Director of Pastoral Formation at the St Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

Fr. Kessler presided at the 9:30 Mass at my parish, Holy Rosary, the first Sunday in August of last year. The Dominican, Brother Kevin, introduced him to the congregation as “an important guy” at the seminary. In light of our unsuccessful efforts to begin a dialogue with the seminary authorities in 2006, I asked to speak with Fr. Kessler after Mass, and he obliged.

I introduced myself as the president of Dignity Twin Cities and the organizer of the Rainbow Sash. He had never heard of Dignity. When I explained that Dignity is a group of glbt Catholics, and that I am a gay Catholic man in a committed relationship, his immediate initial response was, “You are sinners!” and there is nothing to talk about. I pointed out there is a great deal to talk about on a pastoral level since there are glbt Catholics at most Masses in most parishes everyday. I said that Dignity and the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities would like to have a formal dialogue with the seminary about pastoral, not doctrinal issues. There is no need to discuss doctrinal issues because the doctrine is completely clear, but there are glbt Catholics in the pews each Sunday who reject that doctrine, and his priests need to understand their lives and their issues.

At this point, realizing I was taking him somewhere he did not want to go, Fr. Kessler began pulling out the excuses. I could see the wheels spinning, and the thought foremost in his brain, “How do I get rid of this guy?” He said I was like a Jehovah Witness who recently cornered him for the purpose of trying to convert him. I replied that he was dealing with baptized Catholics who show up in church each Sunday just as I had showed up at Holy Rosary. He then tried to dismiss me as an “activist,” obsessed with an issue not important to anyone else. He said he was too busy. He said he was not authorized to initiate the kind of dialogue I was requesting; only the rector could do that. Finally, he said that gay Catholics are not really a minority group like African Americans or Latinos, and therefore do not deserve a dialogue. I ended the discussion by saying I would send the rector, Fr. Aloysius Callaghan, and him, a follow-up letter.

After formally requesting a dialogue once again with the seminary staff, my letter to Fr. Kessler and Fr. Callaghan included the following quote from the November 14, 2006, document issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care.”

It is important that Church ministers listen to the experiences, needs, and hopes of the person with a homosexual inclination [sic] to whom and with whom they minister. Dialogue provides an exchange of information, and also communicates a respect for the innate dignity of other persons and a respect for their consciences.

In his reply to my letter, Fr. Kessler assured me that he instructs “the seminarians entrusted to my care” to treat all people in a Christ-like manner. However, unlike Christ, rather than take responsibility for initiating a dialogue, he continued with his bureaucratic dodge and concluded by saying that “any further communications should be directed to Monsignor Aloysius R. Callaghan.”

As I write to Fr. Callaghan, I do not hold any illusions about the possibility of the archdiocese engaging the Catholic glbt community in a serious dialogue through the seminary staff, where such a pastoral dialogue clearly belongs. Their counter-insurgency tactic is to ignore us, call us sinners, and hope that we will go away. Many of us have gone away, for reasons I, who tire of the struggle from time to time, completely understand.

The insurgency / war metaphor for our effort is not completely apt, because what we are doing, fundamentally, is loving, not fighting, on. The priests and bishops are our brothers. Some honestly believe the Church teaching, and some know it is seriously in error. Either way, the Gospel calls us to teach them the truth of our lives, even if they have locked themselves in a dungeon of false theology and thrown away the key.

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

Stop in the Name of Discriminatory Ideology!

By Michael Bayly

On Monday, October 20, 2008, some friends and I attended the Archbishop Ireland Memorial Lecture Series at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. This series is a program of the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, and the October 20 lecture featured Janet Smith (pictured at right), the Saint Paul Seminary’s “first scholar in residence.”

The seminary’s website has little information on Janet Smith’s educational credentials, and as Paula Ruddy discovered when researching a recent article for The Progressive Catholic Voice, an internet search fails to reveal where Dr. Smith went to school or received her training.* Promotional material for Dr. Smith’s talk on the seminary’s website simply says that she “holds the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit” and that she’s the author of Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later and Contraception: Why Not.

Elsewhere on the website of the University of St. Thomas, Dr. Smith is described as an “ethicist” and the author of Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader. Her latest book is on bioethics and is entitled Life Issues, Medical Choices, Questions and Answers for Catholics.

This same site notes that: “Smith has taught at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Dallas, where she received the Haggar Teaching Award. She also received the Pro-Life Person of the Year from the Diocese of Dallas and the Cardinal Wright Award from the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. Smith is serving a second term as a consultor to the Pontifical Council on the Family. More than a million copies of her talk, Contraception: Why Not have been distributed.”


Perplexing

I must admit that I find the lack of available information about Smith’s qualifications as a scholar to be perplexing. After Smith’s talk I spoke to a high-ranking faculty member of the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. Incredibly, he was unable to tell me in what area Smith’s doctoral studies had been.

“Classics,” he offered uncertainly, “maybe philosophy.”

He was clearly embarrassed by his lack of knowledge concerning his institution’s “scholar in residence” and so asked that his name not be used in anything I wrote about Smith’s presentation.

Disappointed but undeterred by his response, I posed a follow-up question: Would the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity ever consider hosting someone like Margaret Farley, Daniel Helminiak, or Joan Timmerman – renowned Catholic scholars who intelligently and respectfully critique and challenge the Church’s sexual theology? He said that the works of such people are covered “in the classroom,” but that for a public lecture, such as the Archbishop Ireland Memorial Lecture Series, only someone who supports church teaching is acceptable.


Cheerleader

So what of Janet Smith herself and the talk she gave as “scholar in residence”?

Well, as I mentioned to the seminary faculty member with whom I conversed, I didn’t detect very much scholarship in her presentation. Rather, she simply expounded upon the sexual theology contained in a number of writings by Pope John Paul II. Indeed, she came across as more of a cheerleader for the late pope and his “Theology of the Body” than an original thinker in the field of either theology or ethics.

Most of the slides in her Powerpoint presentation contained a holy card-type image of John Paul II in the top right hand corner. Honestly, I was half expecting Smith to blow a kiss to this picture of the pope at some point during her presentation!

Her talk had the rather ridiculous title, “Stop in the Name of Love! – John Paul II on Transforming Sexual Desire.” Who would have thought the late pontiff was a Motown fan! Seriously, though, Smith herself conceded that the title of her presentation was not of her choosing. Which, when you think about it, is rather odd: a visiting scholar in residence can’t choose the title of her own public presentation?

In reiterating the sexual theology of John Paul II, Smith reminded those in attendance that the sexual urge is “fundamentally selfish and must be transformed into something fundamentally unselfish, which is love.”

Gay love, however, doesn’t make the grade.

No, for Janet Smith, love must fit a certain understanding of “objective reality” – Pope John Paul II’s understanding!

Accordingly, the “selfish” sexual desire of humans must be transformed into an expression of sexual love that can only be heterosexual (one man, one woman in the state of sacramental marriage) and must always be open to new life, understood solely in terms of procreation.

Thus an “ideal” is lifted up as “objective reality,” and any and all acts that do not correspond with this “reality” are viewed as bad and wrong. Contraceptive sex and gay sex were offered by Smith as examples of such acts. Furthermore, if a person finds fulfillment and/or enjoyment through these acts, then it means he/she is delusional as only acts that correspond with “objective reality” can rationally be appreciated and enjoyed.


A closed system

Of course the question has to be asked: Whose experiences, whose reality, is being observed and utilized to inform this understanding of “objective reality”? Smith acknowledges that John Paul II based his views on reality on human experience, yet judging from the narrow theology that resulted, the pope seems to have been very selective with regard to the experiences of humanity that he chose to observe and utilize so as to shape his vision of “objective reality.”

Not surprisingly, the failure of Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” to speak meaningfully to and for people and the non-reception of Humanae Vitae (which he vigorously defended throughout his pontificate) are readily seen by the vast majority of Catholics to be the result of the institutional church’s dismal failure to integrate into its thinking and teaching the corporate body of Christians’ experience and wisdom regarding sexuality. And once one recognizes this failure, then the pope’s and Janet Smith’s “objective reality” can be seen for what it really is: a discriminatory ideology; a closed system of ideas and beliefs that starts with a premise already inside the system. For the architects and guardians of such a system, no experiences, insights, and questions that arise beyond the system can be tolerated. Indeed, they are routinely condemned and actively discriminated against.

This is because experiences beyond their view of “objective reality” are viewed as acts outside the laws of nature, as acts that are shameful, embarrassing, wrong, and the result of humanity’s fallen state. Yet theologian Joan Timmerman has proposed that perhaps it is “the hubris of those who would pretend to be gods that would lead them to be ashamed and embarrassed at being sexual.”

For Timmerman, “rejection of the sexual and attempts to exclude it (‘outlaw’ it) are symptoms of the fallen condition.”

In her insightful essay, “Thoughts While Reading Over the Bishops’ Shoulders,” Timmerman notes that:

When outlawed in such fashion, the “lower” nature gets its own back by behaving lawlessly. This is lust. But lust is produced by shame, not vice versa. The disorder, that which leads to unacceptable acts, is not sexual orientation but contempt for the sexual.

“Sloppy and false”

A priest who heard Smith speak at Archbishop Nienstedt’s August 28 “marriage study day,” told me that he found her arguments “sloppy and false.” I’d have to say that, after listening to her speak last week, I found her arguments to be also naive and her worldview bordering on the superstitious.

According to Smith, the Holy Spirit chose Karol Wojtyla so that as Pope John Paul II he would “courageously defend” Humanae Vitae. She finds evidence for such a contention in the fact that John Paul II noted that this controversial document was “central to the whole magisterium” of his pontificate. And Smith is clearly dedicated to continuing the pope’s vigorous defense of Humanae Vitae, a defending that she frames in terms of “spiritual warfare.” Again, she draws from events in the pope’s life to justify this claim: apparently on the day in 1981 when the attempt was made on Pope John Paul II life, he was to open a Commission on Marriage and the Family. Satan himself was trying to “take out” the pope, according to Smith, and prevent him from his life’s mission of defending and promoting Humanae Vitae.

I also gathered that, for Smith, the accounts of creation that we find in Genesis are literally true. Furthermore, it’s objectively true that “sex leads to babies,” and that “God made human sexuality so that He can get more souls into Heaven.” Accordingly, Smith maintains that if people would just think of every sexual act as an invitation from God to create a new soul, then they would “govern” their sexual behavior appropriately, i.e., in accordance with the “objective reality” that “sex leads to babies.” Not surprisingly, “expanding the circle of love,” for Smith, seems to be always and only about procreation.


Alternative perspectives

Contrast this “sex=babies” perspective with how actual theologians – Catholic and Protestant – understand and talk about the purpose of human sexuality. For instance, in their book, The Wisdom of the Body: Making Sense of Our Sexuality, Evelyn and James Whitehead “draw out and make public the sense of the faithful about Christians and their sexuality.” Accordingly, they note that the “truth” about sexuality is that the life of Jesus challenges all, married and unmarried, to “a more than genital love, a larger than biological family, a fruitfulness that goes beyond fecundity.”

Donald G. Hanway, author of A Theology of Gay and Lesbian Inclusion, similarly observes that:

[Sex] is not just about maintaining the species, but about reaching out in relationship. Sex and spirit are not opposites: they are part of one yearning toward wholeness. . . . Sex is bound up with important developmental and maintenance needs such as caring, self-expression, self-esteem, and human connection at multiple levels. In terms of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, sex encompasses the spiritual as well as the physical, and it ranges from simple relief of tension to higher levels such as love, esteem, aesthetic appreciation, and self-actualization. . . . Sex makes use of all our human capacities: tenderness, strength, imagination, the use of all our senses, and our use of symbols. It calls forth not just our lowest impulses but also our highest impulses such as generosity and the desire to lose ourselves in another.

Theologian Daniel Helminiak, in discussing natural law and human sexuality notes that:

To be sure, procreation is an inherent aspect of sexuality. But there is more to sex than that, especially when we look at sex in human beings. Procreation is an animal function. In humans sex is taken up into a new array of purposes. Human sex involves emotional bonding and the dreams and promises of lovers. That is to say, beyond the physical, human sex also involves the psychological and the spiritual. (I see “dreams and promises,” or ideals, and beliefs and ethics – all ways of suggesting meaning and value – as spiritual matters.) So having sex (physical) seduces lovers (emotional) into dreaming dreams and making promises (spiritual). The trend of sex is toward higher things. And since the spiritual dimension of human sexual sharing is the highest and most significant, it is what determines the unique nature of human sexuality, so it is what must be preserved in every case. Not procreation, but genuine care and loving are the non-negotiables of human sex.

Margaret Farley draws similar conclusions, though she cautions against the ease by which love can be sentimentalized and thus distorted if it does not presuppose justice as its more inclusive framework. In his review of her award-winning book, Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, Paul Capetz notes the following of Farley’s conclusions:

Love, which is the most appropriate context for the embodied expression of sexuality, requires justice as its sine qua non. While love, as the cherishing of another human being, goes beyond justice, love must never leave justice behind. From within this revised ethical framework wherein love informed by justice is the supreme moral norm for evaluating the appropriateness of sexual relations, traditional prohibitions against homosexuality can no longer be sustained. At the same time, however, consensual and committed relations between persons of the same gender are beholden to the same moral criterion of just love as are heterosexual relations.

And then there’s the wise and beautiful reflections on sexuality offered by theologian and poet, David Weiss:

Sexuality is indeed intended to be procreative, to give life; but our own prejudice – perhaps our desire to stem the flow of God’s creative energy into the world – has led us to understand this in a narrow, biological fashion. But truly, to find ourselves partnered in longing love with another person is to find that we have company in the work of caring for creation. Whether you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or straight – whether you are celibate or sexually active, single or in a relationship – one truth that we hear in the biblical creation account is that human beings were created to tend the Garden, to guide creation’s bounty and to tend its scarcity in ways that promote the flourishing of all. That’s why we’re here. The joy that we know sexually in our bodies is there, at least in part, to lure us into the holy act of caring for all that is embodied, for all the ecological diversity that reflects God’s rampant desire for incarnation.

We don’t need a partner to do this. But if in our partnerships we fail to look outward and tend to the corner of creation around us – whether that is children or other humans, animals or ecosystems, or simply our household resources – if our love for another person does not spill out into these areas, we have missed something of the presence of God. God is always engaged in the care of life, especially among the vulnerable. And no one need shrink from the expectation that Christian sexual love should be procreative. Lived well, it always is.

I wonder if Janet Smith has read and reflected upon these wonderfully expansive theological perspectives on the gift of human sexuality?

Then again, how would it be possible for her closed system of ideas and beliefs to access them? It can’t, and so Smith remains adamant that our experiences are only valid and helpful in shaping our lives and our understanding of sex if they match what, in reality, is a discriminatory ideology – one which through its highly selective observations, insists that the sole primary function of sex is procreation.

In such an understanding, Smith reduces the male sex drive to physicality and the female’s to sentimentality (the character of Madame Bovary was her example of female sexuality). In doing so she entirely leaves out the context of need for human intimacy, union, and release that can occur respectfully and lovingly between a man and a woman, between a man and a man, and between a woman and a woman who have not committed themselves to anything other than the act itself. They might have a desire for permanent monogamous relationship, even children, but impermanent relationship may be all that is possible for them in the moment. That does not make the moment any the less good. The good that they experience, if it is a good experience, is in itself an “objective reality.” It may not be “ideal” or even “special” but it can still be true.


Sensus fidelium

Of course, the idea that it’s God’s will that each and every sexual act must be open to biological procreation is a core teaching within the sexual theology of Roman Catholicism. It’s a teaching (and theology), however, that clearly has been rejected by the sensus fidelium, the Spirit-inspired beliefs of the faithful. Smith herself acknowledged that over 95% of Catholic couples reject Humanae Vitae.

However, she dismisses such rejection as “dissent” (understood solely as something negative – as if faithful dissent doesn’t have a legitimate place in Catholicism!) and/or the fact that people “haven’t actually read Humanae Vitae.” Furthermore, all those dissenters aren’t really part of the sensus fidelium, according to Smith. Only those who are good practicing Catholics, those who already agree with what the Church teaches, are included in the “sense of the faithful.” Yes, it’s that closed system again – one that by necessity requires circular logic such as this. But as my priest friend notes, it’s logic that is “sloppy and false.”

Smith’s talk was full of such specious arguments. She also had the rather annoying and, quite frankly, insulting habit of flipping to an altogether different example when attempting to respond to a specific question or situation. For instance, she equated one audience member’s act of contraceptive sex with his wife to him having an affair with his secretary! She also compared my friend’s support for her gay son and his same-sex relationship to supporting someone having sex with his/her sibling! See what I mean by “insulting”? But, again, when people operate within a closed system of ideas and beliefs, I don’t think it’s that surprising to hear them react to new data in ways that are irrational, discriminatory, and hurtful to those of us outside their closed system.


A loving God

As incredulous and disappointed as I was by much of what Janet Smith had to say, I realized later that she really does believe she’s defending and promoting a way of thinking about human sexuality that will bring right-relationship and happiness to people’s lives. In other words, like John Paul II, Smith sincerely believes that she’s presenting a certain understanding of human sexuality that, if adhered to, will ensure that people are treated lovingly and respectfully.

We thus have something in common: I too want people to be treated lovingly and respectfully. Yet in espousing the understanding on sexuality that Smith does, there’s a clear lack of respect for gay people – and indeed straight people whose experience don’t match the “objective reality” defined and articulated by John Paul II.

There’s also a stubborn resistance to see that gay relationships can and do ensure that individuals are treated lovingly and respectfully. Indeed, for many a gay person, the relationship with his/her significant other may have been the first time they experienced such love and respect. Calling such experiences “delusional” is not helpful, loving, or respectful.

Personally, I do not want to be so attached to a certain understanding of “objective reality” that I fail to perceive, acknowledge, and respond to the transforming presence of God in the lives and relationships of others. I also lament that the theology that emerges from such a rigidly prescribed perspective on reality is always an impoverished and ultimately stagnate attempt at honoring both our living God and our living Catholic tradition. Sadly, it would appear that just such a theology is being promoted at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

Smith concluded her presentation by discussing the role of prayer in one’s spiritual life. The most necessary prayer, she said, is “any that reminds us that God is a loving God.” What a pity, I thought, that she is closed to the experience of this “loving God” in the lives and relationships of gay people, indeed to anyone whose experiences take them beyond what she (or rather, Pope John Paul II) narrowly define as “objective reality.”

There may well be “objective reality” but I believe we as humans are still in the process of being guided by our loving God in recognizing, appreciating, and celebrating the full extent of its beauty and complexity. And the only way such guidance is mediated is through our subjective experiences. Even scripture and tradition emerge from and are filtered through human experience. Therefore, to say that we can learn nothing about reality, about God, and/or about what it means to be human from the loving lives and relationships of gay people seems to many of us evidence not of truth but of hubris.


How sweet it is . . .

Here’s a closing thought: Perhaps the title of Janet’s next scholarly project and subsequent presentation could reference not the Supreme’s “Stop in the Name of Love,” but another classic Motown song, Marvin Gaye’s “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)” – with the “you” encompassing all who have given and received love, all who have flourished and allowed their beloved to flourish through and within their shared and loving sexual relationship.

Now I realize that it would definitely be a departure for Dr. Smith in terms of her current area of expertise, but I believe she’s capable of finding within herself all that is required to step out and join in trustingly and joyfully exploring and expanding the frontiers of our understanding of God. Such exploring and expansion takes place within the context of a pilgrim Church - a Church open to new questions and possibilities, and one that is still very much on the journey.

And perhaps this journey is teaching us that it’s not so much our sexual desire that needs to be transformed but our hearts and minds so that we can perceive and celebrate God beyond our existing ways of viewing and understanding the presence of love in the lives and relationships around us.

How sweet it is indeed!


Michael Bayly is the executive coordinator of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities and the editor of The Progressive Catholic Voice. This article was first published on his weblog, The Wild Reed in October 2008.


* A subsequent search of the Internet, after both the publication of Paula’s article in The Progressive Catholic Voice and this article at The Wild Reed, found Dr. Smith’s credentials listed on the website of Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, the seminary where she has an appointment on the faculty. These credentials are as follows:

Dr. Janet E. Smith: B.A., M.A., Ph.D., School of Theology, Fr. Michael J. McGivney Chair in Life Ethics, Professor of Moral Theology. B.A. (Classics), Grinnell College, 1972; M.A. (Classical Languages), University of North Carolina, 1975. Ph.D., (Classical Languages), University of Toronto, 1982. At SHMS 2001–

Dialoguing with the Bishop

Archbishop John C. Nienstedt writes a column in The Catholic Spirit entitled “In God’s Good Time.” As the editorial team of The Progressive Catholic Voice, we take his public statements as an opportunity to discuss his views with him.


Dear Archbishop Nienstedt:

Your column in The Catholic Spirit, December 17, 2008, entitled “Natural Law, Marriage, and the Holy Family” has left us wondering if we have any commonality in reason or language. We seem to think and speak in two different worlds.

You divide moral law into five categories: eternal, natural, revealed, ecclesiastical and civil, designating the last two as emanating from human reason. We take that to mean that church laws and civil laws are made by human beings who decide, based on their current knowledge, what rules and procedures best serve people’s interests. We are with you so far. We know that church laws and civil laws change with the times and cultures of people who make them. You say the ends to be served are “human happiness and fulfillment.” We agree with that too.

You then write four paragraphs about “natural” law. It is “written on our hearts.” “This law of our hearts guides the consciences of men and women in knowing right from wrong….” It is “perceived by reason.” But then you say that, although natural law is written on our hearts, not all of us can access it because of sin. How do we know who has accessed it correctly? How is accessing the law written on our hearts different from questioning conventional ideas of right and wrong in the light of Gospel principles and making reasoned judgments? How are eternal law, revealed law, and natural law related to civil law? We need a lot more light on these points.

From those confusing observations, you plunge directly into universal conclusions about marriage based on all the categories of law you mentioned above. Despite the lack of reason in presenting it, your central conclusion is about civil law and it is crystal clear. You believe that civil law should not recognize any form of marriage other than the union of one man and one woman for the purpose of procreation of children, and, therefore, civil law should not recognize same-gender marriage.

If your conclusions are, as you say, based on natural law, shouldn’t they be explainable by reasoning? Don’t you have to give reasons why the form of marriage the Catholic magisterium recognizes as sacramental should be the only one that civil law recognizes? Why should physical complementarity be the only factor in a society’s decision to recognize civil marriage?

The civil society is comprised of many groups of people who hold different theologies of marriage. Why should they agree to be governed by the theology of the Roman Catholic magisterium?

What are the “misguided notions of inclusiveness” that you mention as the basis of people’s desire to change civil marriage laws to include same-gender partners? Are they notions of equal protection under the law established in our Constitution? Are they Gospel notions of love of neighbor, including people whose sexual orientation is different from the mainstream? Those are the two bases for inclusiveness that we are aware of and that we value. In what way are they “misguided”?

You argue that the one man/one woman form of marriage should be maintained because in the past “society in its collective wisdom has established” that form in civil law. Are you then willing to defer to the collective wisdom of society to fashion future civil marriage laws?

Were the priests and deacons who attended the two “marriage study days” satisfied with the reasoning presented to them? Did you give them an opportunity to question you? You may have convinced them, on your authority, that they should preach against same-gender civil rights, but you have further alienated many Catholics who are asking you not just for reasonable moral guidance, not just for good citizenship in a pluralistic society, but also for sensitivity to the Gospel message.

Our disagreement leaves open the question of whose sinfulness prevents them from reasoning clearly about the natural law or discerning the Christian revelation in the matter of same-gender sex and partnering. Is it ours or yours? We are open to your telling us it is ours, but, since it is a matter of natural law, we can’t take it on your authority. The questions have to be answered reasonably.

Sincerely,

The Editorial Team of The Progressive Catholic Voice:

Michael Bayly
Mary Beckfeld
David McCaffrey
Rick Notch
Paula Ruddy

The Fight of Their Lives

.

Archbishop Nienstedt rallies the priests & deacons
of the archdiocese to “fight” against same-sex marriage
at the state and national level.

By Paula Ruddy


Would you have pictured a meeting of the archdiocesan priests and deacons with their new archbishop as a genial get-together of the brotherhood? There would be lots of affable greeting, talking and laughing before they settled down to a serious exchange of views about the announced topic, the sacrament of marriage. They would be serious because some research shows that as many as one in five Catholic marriages end in divorce.

According to our sources, the meeting on marriage scheduled by Archbishop John C. Nienstedt for August 28, 2008, at St John the Baptist Parish in New Brighton had been announced as just such an opportunity for priests and deacons to get together for discussion in between the every two-year presbyterate meetings that are customary in the Archdiocese. About 200 priests and deacons attended.

Instead of being about sacramental marriage, however, the meeting was almost entirely about homosexuality and same-sex civil marriage. There were four speakers to present the well-known moral position of the Roman Catholic Church on same-gender sex and partnering.

Instead of discussion, there was a Q&A period during which priests were asked to write their questions and submit them to the speakers. The opportunity to talk to one another was limited, as one priest put it, to asking: “How’s your chicken sandwich?” At the end, according to our sources, the Archbishop told the priests to ready themselves for the fight of their lives against legal recognition of same-sex partnerships.

Several of the priests and deacons we spoke to expressed dismay at having been misled about the subject matter of the meeting and the lack of opportunity for discussion. Two were reported to have left in disappointment. One said he felt like he had been “duped.” One priest said, “I was embarrassed to hear what we were hearing and to sit together with my priest friends and do nothing. But it just didn’t feel like anything we could say or do would make a difference.”

To obtain information on the meeting agenda, we called Dennis McGrath, Archdiocesan Communications Director. He said no information was available through his office. We got the following information from printed materials the speakers at the meeting provided to clergy in attendance and from the internet.

The first speaker was Dr. Janet E. Smith, guest lecturer at the St Paul Seminary during the current term, and a professor of moral theology at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan. She is a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family. A search of the internet does not reveal where Dr. Smith went to school or received her training.

Our sources said Dr. Smith’s presentation had been announced as “Marriage from the Perspective of Canon Law.” Her handout, however, was entitled, “The Natural Law Argument Against Homosexual ‘Unions’.” In an attempt to define what is “human,” Dr. Smith wrote that humanity is characterized by “living in community, seeking knowledge (art, music, sports), and worshipping God.” Humans live “in a rational way.” Examples were “eating in a rational way (plates, utensils); having sex in a rational way (married).” Inexplicably, she also noted that “Everyone is disordered sexually; chastity is a challenge for everyone.”

Other speakers were Dr. John C. Cavadini, Reverend Michael Prieur, and Professor Teresa S. Collett.

John C. Cavadini is Associate Professor of Theology, and Chair of the Theology Department at the Unversity of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana. He received his B.A. in 1975 from Wesleyan University; an M.A. in 1979 from Marquette University; and his Ph.D.in 1988 from Yale University. Dr. Cavadini’s lecture was entitled “Marriage from the Perspective of Church.” Contacted by phone, Dr. Cavadini said he did not have a written copy of the lecture.

Fr. Michael Prieur, who graduated from St. Peter’s Seminary, London, Ontario, in 1965, obtained his Doctorate in Theology from the Pontificio Ateneo di S. Anselmo in Rome in 1969. As a professor of Moral and Sacramental Theology at St. Peter’s Seminary for over thirty-five years, he has specialized in Bioethics, the Sacrament of Marriage, and the Art of the Confessor. He is Coordinator of the Permanent Deacon Program for the Diocese of London.

Fr. Prieur’s subject was “The Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Issue in Canada: What Happened?” Fr. Prieur warned against allowing the issue of legalizing homosexual unions as civil marriages to be framed in “rights” language. That is what happened in Canada, he said, and it led to some lower courts holding that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms required recognition of same sex civil marriage.

The relevant passage in the Charter reads: “Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. (Section 15 (1)) The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was embedded in the Canadian Constitution in 1982, replacing a Bill of Rights which had been a federal statute since 1960.

After the lower court decisions, instead of appealing, the Canadian government drafted a bill, which the Supreme Court ruled was constitutional, and the Parliament passed. On July 20, 2005, Royal Assent was given to the Civil Marriage Act and it became the law of Canada. It reads: “Marriage, for civil purposes, is the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others.” The Act also “recognizes that officials of religious groups are free to refuse to perform marriages that are not in accordance with their religious beliefs.”

The problem with framing the question in “rights” language, according to Fr. Prieur, is that it “totally bypasses looking at the institution of marriage in any ontological sense, rooted in the ‘givens’ of creation and objective reality.” He did not specify why the government of Canada should view civil marriage in sacramental terms.

In addition to bypassing the sacramental aspects, Fr. Prieur wrote that “rights” based civil marriage bypasses the question of the “common good.” In separating “love” from “procreation,” the primary purpose of marriage, the best interests of children, is overlooked. Fr. Prieur sees the equal protection of same sex civil marriage as possibly resulting in many evils – discrimination against heterosexual marriage, the blurring of all objective differences in relationships, the increase of illness due to anal intercourse and consequent law suits against the government, and the state’s inability to determine criteria for consummation. All of these arguments weigh in on the side of prohibiting same sex civil marriage for the common good in Fr. Prieur’s view.

To avoid the negative consequences to the common good in the US, Fr. Prieur advised the priests to use the media, and to stand up strongly against legalizing same-gender civil marriage. “We may need simply to say: ‘Our teaching about marriage as being between a man and a woman is inherent in creation itself. This is the way God made marriage. It is unchangeable by human beings. And this teaching is on the level of the Creed. This is a teaching for which I am willing to die’.” Emphasis his.

Teresa S. Collett, Professor of Law at the University of St Thomas Law School, gave a presentation, entitled “Marriage & Government, An Uneasy Union.” Professor Collett earned her B.A. at the University of Oklahoma and her J.D. at the University of Oklahoma College of Law.

In her power-point talk, Professor Collett showed the gradual decline of sexual morality from the Middle Ages, when marriage was a matter for ecclesiastical courts, to the present, when civil governments set the criteria for civil marriage. She cited statistics on the “cultural erosion of civil marriage,” including no-fault divorce, creation of legal rights for cohabitants, acceptance of out of wedlock births, and legal recognition of same-sex unions.” The rest of her presentation was on the history of the legal struggle for GLBT rights in the US and particularly in Minnesota. She warned that in 2008 “nineteen state legislators sponsored a bill to include marriage within the Minnesota Human rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and to delete the prohibition of state recognition of marriages between persons of the same sex.”

The bills she may be referring to are Senate File 3880, authored by Senator John Marty, and House File 4248, authored by Representative Phyllis Kahn, providing for gender-neutral marriage laws. The Senate bill is entitled “Marriage and Family Protection Act.” Under the “Legislative Findings” section, the bills declare that the state has an interest in encouraging stable relationships regardless of the gender or sexual orientation of the partners and the entire community benefits when couples undertake the mutual obligations of marriage. The bills also specify that religious institutions are not required to solemnize such marriages.

If anyone has more or more accurate information on this initiative of the Archbishop to influence civil law and would be willing to share with the laity, we would appreciate hearing from you. Email us at progressivecatholicvoice@gmail.com.

Paula Ruddy is a founding member of The Progressive Catholic Voice.

Reflections on World Youth Day

By Margaret and Gordon Bayly


World Youth Day activities have concluded and it’s time to reflect. In keeping with the WYD theme, may we all receive guidance from the Holy Spirit and be a Light to the World.

There are so many thoughts crowding our minds.

The increased workload for clergy, religious and pastoral assistants – the generosity of volunteers and host families – the massive organization – the joyous and prayerful behavior of the pilgrims – the great TV coverage which gave us beautiful images and kept us informed – the understanding of the general public and the disappointment with the few who felt the need to protest in a disrespectful manner.

We must admit we have always found it difficult to equate Jesus with the fine robes worn by the Pope, cardinals and bishops.

We were impressed by the Pope’s heartfelt apology to the sexual abuse victims but sorry he wasn’t able to emphasize that when confronted initially with the scandal of sexual abuse there was a lack of leadership from the highest levels of the Church (including Rome). For some victims their cases were mishandled. An opportunity for additional healing was prevented when the Pope spoke to the Church’s selected victims and excluded the Broken Rites group and Anthony and Christine Foster. What model of Church are we presenting to our young pilgrims?

On a positive note, the Church is alive and well with regard to some social justice issues. We pay tribute to the many wonderful groups and individuals who are achieving great results.

Dissent in the Church is obvious. Parishioners are expressing their views in many and varied ways.

In the past, it was accepted that we should always approach Communion with reverence – now it is dictated that we must incorporate a bow – yet another rule to adhere to. Is this really necessary? This may be viewed as a trivial matter but many are ignoring the request.

According to the Powers that Be, the Eucharist should be denied to those who practice artificial birth control, are divorced and living in defacto relationships or irregular marriage situations, due to not gaining an annulment. Yet many of these parishioners disregard this ruling and present themselves for Communion.

For clergy and religious there is always the fear of being reprimanded if they offer advice that is contrary to the hierarchy. They must encounter many hurt and confused people who feel alienated from their faith family.

The following we cannot understand: the Catholic Church can accept and ordain a married Anglican minister but will not consider reviewing celibacy issues for its own priests. Also, leadership roles for women are not open for discussion. We should always pose the question, “What would Jesus do?”

Our middle son, Michael, is Catholic, compassionate, caring, and gay. The USA is home for him. He gained his Masters in Theology from the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota and is employed as an educator and events coordinator by the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM). He is a wonderful advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and their families.

We have come to accept that homosexuality is not a “lifestyle” that people choose; it is an “orientation” you are born with. The terminology that the Vatican uses to describe homosexuality is so distressing for us. Examples include “intrinsically evil,” and “objectively disordered.” Unfortunately, such terms fuel homophobia. Yes, it does exist!

There are many gay Catholics who desire to be accepted for who they are. We love equally, Michael and his two straight brothers. They fill us with pride and joy. Our family continues to embrace and support Michael. We have been questioned by some as to whether or not we should do this as it is contrary to Church teaching. Being “out” parents of a gay Catholic child is challenging and frustrating!

In a recent Diocesan article an Auxiliary Bishop stated “that coming to Communion is not a matter of ‘Come As You Are’ – a most misleading hymn.” To read this filled us with sadness as this hymn is a favorite of ours.

The following appeared as part of a reflection written by Michael and describes how this “misleading hymn” sustained him as he came to terms with his sexuality: “Yet, still the words of that hymn from my childhood stayed with me – like a warm, indestructible light flickering deep within. It restored my hope, and perhaps even saved my life.”

We continue to pray that those in power within the Catholic Church will consider acceptance and understanding towards those who are considered not worthy to receive the Eucharist. For some, the waiting time is over. The feeling of rejection can result in their faith journey following another path. Sadly, for others, dealing with not being welcome at the Lord’s table means a loss of faith.

Our Catholic teaching tells us there will be a Judgment Day. Preoccupation with the hereafter should not distract us from the here and now. Unfortunately some lose sight of the many good deeds and social justice issues that require attention in our daily lives.

In closing, we wish to share a quote from a dear friend, “Didn’t Jesus have some strong words for authoritarian people who were known to judge others by adherence to the letter of the law rather than by the love within their hearts?”

Gordon and Margaret Bayly are the parents of Progressive Catholic Voice editor Michael Bayly. They live in Port Macquarie, Australia, and their commentary was first published by CatholicaAustralia.com.

Does Christianity Have a Monopoly on Salvation?

By Eleazer S. Fernandez


A Note from the Editorial Team: Dr. Eleazar S. Fernandez, sheds light on the relativity of religious truth claims. We think readers who have always questioned the idea that “salvation” can be exclusive for Catholics or Christians will be particularly interested. Our thanks to Dr. Fernandez for allowing us to publish his article and our thanks to Jim Moudry, Minneapolis, for bringing it to our attention.

Dr. Fernandez, Professor of Constructive Theology at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, New Brighton, MN, presented the following address at the Evangelical-Liberal Dialogue, November 8, 2007.


I find it a challenge to answer our question, “Does Christianity have a monopoly on salvation?” on at least two counts. First, it presupposes a shared understanding of what salvation is. This in itself is a complex and controversial topic. Our understanding of salvation will in some ways inform how we respond to the question before us. Since I do not have much time to dwell on this topic and would like to proceed as quickly as possible to the issue of the Christian monopoly on salvation, I can only offer a terse and limited account. I speak of salvation as the liberation, healing, and reconciliation of the whole creation both within history (as we know it) and beyond, which, from the Christian lens, is the work of God in Christ through, but not limited to, the particularity of Jesus. Second, it is a challenge to answer our question from a liberal or a progressive Christian perspective because there is no single voice that can fully represent the complexities and nuances of the whole liberal/progressive theological spectrum. Even Friedrich Schleiermacher who is considered the father of modern liberal theology, is, for many, not really liberal enough in relation to the issue. Schleiermacher continues to put Christianity at the peak of humanity’s religious evolution while relegating other religions to the lower rung. (1) Moreover, from the point of view of postcolonial discourse, his hierarchy of religions is infected by the virus of Euro-centrism. (2) Nonetheless, there are main tenets that characterize the liberal theological position that we can name and articulate.

At the heart of the liberal tradition is a protest against an external authority that claims to be the sole possessor of a divinely-mandated truth and which imposes this truth claim to the rest of humanity. Failure to accept this truth, it is argued, is not only to go against the divinely ordained earthly authority but also to go against God, the consequence of which is eternal damnation in hell where the damned will damned will be weeping and gnashing their teeth. “How about those who do not have teeth,” I jokingly asked a friend. His answer was quick and swift: “Don’t worry brother, God will provide.” The liberal theological tradition exposes the historical character of the external authority’s truth-claim, particularly its alliance with oppressive power. It subverts heteronomous discourse by locating its historical origin and pointing to human beings as active interpreting subjects. With human beings as active interpreting subjects, truth is not only historicized, it is also pluralized.

What does this critique of religious truth-claim mean in relation to how liberal or progressive Christians take account of the Christian claim vis-à-vis the claim of other religions? What does this mean in relation to Christ’s saving act in Jesus? Does Christianity have a monopoly on salvation?

First, from a historical and hermeneutical point of view, liberal or progressive Christianity affirms that as historical creatures we do not see reality from the point of view of eternity (sub specie aeternitatis), but only through our limited socio-historical and geographical location. Historical beings that we are, what we see is a part and not the totality of reality. If our perception is limited by our historicity and circumscribed by our relationship with the world around us, then we should not close ourselves to other dimensions of the total reality or to other expressions of truth that our neighbors may see and experience. We should not be threatened when our neighbors affirm something as true, because his or her truth affirmation does not necessarily cancel out what we deeply hold as true. The Nobel Prize physicist Neils Bohr puts it well: “The opposite of a true statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth can be another profound truth. (3)

When we apply this insight to Christianity and the question of salvation, I say that what we know of God and God’s salvific acts in the world is limited to our historical window—the Christian window. This is not bad in itself. In fact, we see only because we see through a particular window. Not only is it impossible for a single human being to see through all the windows: there is no way of seeing apart from our particular window. This Christian window may become our Christian box -- our prison cell -- if we do not embrace it consciously and take account of it critically. When we are conscious and critical of our Christian window, we know that even the way we have framed our topic -- “Does Christianity have a monopoly on salvation?” -- is already set within the Christian framework. Believers from other religious traditions may not even want to play our Christian game—the game of salvation.

Second, from the theological-mystical point of view, not only is our knowledge of God limited and historically conditioned, but God is also the Ultimate Mystery. Moreover, the Ultimate Mystery is not only ineluctably ineffable; at the heart of the Ultimate Mystery is plurality. We can discern the Ultimate Mystery’s ontological plurality in the manifold particularities. To confine the Ultimate Mystery to one particular expression is to misunderstand what is at the heart of the Ultimate Mystery: the mystery of plurality — a plurality that at the same time does not deny the mystery of unity. (4) I have underscored ontological plurality as central to the Ultimate Mystery to counter embedded habits of thinking that reduce, swallow or melt the many into one. (5) In a society with a long history of devouring and melting the many into one, there is more reason to worry that the discourse on oneness with regard to the Ultimate Mystery maybe a religious projection of political hegemony. Instead of thinking in numbers and starting to count (In matters of Ultimate Mystery, he or she “who begins to count, begins to err,” says Augustine), we must see the other side of plurality not in terms of oneness (mono) but of the unity and the connection of the many. (6)

Third, from an ethical and practical point of view, liberal or progressive Christianity not only affirms that our knowledge is limited and that plurality is at the heart of the Ultimate Reality. It also affirms that the building of a just, humane, and sustainable world demands openness to the claims of other religious believers and to what their religious praxis can contribute into our common life, particularly to our shared well-being. Openness to the truth-claims of others and testing them in light of their contribution to greater well-being reminds me of Aristotle’s notion of phronesis (practical wisdom). Practical wisdom knows that something is “true” because of its “good” effects. If the “true” is the “good,” then the true is discernible in the “good” that a person does or what a “good person” does. (7) In short, a particular religious expression that claims monopoly of the absolute truth is, I believe, violating that truth-claim when it undermines mutual respect and when it harms the other. Monopolistic claims and imposition of truth claims are contrary to the nature of truth. Such actions devour people in the name of the sacred truth.

Where does this openness to the salvific claims of other religions lead to? Does it relativize or water down the Christian claim? How does it take account of the particular and decisive claim of the Christian faith? What is it going to say about the mandate to evangelize the whole world of the good news of Jesus Christ? Are liberal or progressive Christians destined to a wishy-washy or mushy kind of relativism and non-engaging niceness or tolerance, which fits very well into our individualistic-privatistic culture? My answer is a resounding No.

The best liberal or progressive Christian theological position overcomes religious schizophrenia and integrates the insights of scientific, historical, cultural, and literary studies as well as the nature and language of religious commitment. The liberal or progressive Christian does not crucify his or her intellect even as she or he continues to be a committed Christian. The de-absolutizing and relativizing perspective of historical studies and comparative religion is affirmed and valued by a liberal or progressive Christian. Relativity is the nature of all historical and religious institutions. One cannot escape from it. But an astute liberal or progressive Christian interpreter of religious traditions does not confuse or equate historical relativity with relativism. In fact, relativism is a contradiction to the spirit of the liberal tradition, because relativism is absolutism in disguise. In its subtle form, it is repressive tolerance.

What I affirm as a Christian who is an inheritor of the liberal or progressive tradition is not relativism but relationality. Relativity does not only mean being “limited” but also of being “potentially relatable” to other truth claims. (8) Relationality does not ask us to abdicate faith commitment through one religious medium, such as Christianity, but affirms it in the context of relationship with other claims. In fact, our day-to-day lives call us to make commitments in the context in which what we see is only through a mirror dimly—only through the relative and the particular and amidst competing claims. When the particular presents to us in the form of competing claims that demand our wholehearted commitment, we know that we are confronted to make a choice that is beyond the trivial, such as a choice between different kinds of doughnuts (old fashioned, honey glazed, cream and strawberry doughnuts, etc.), but a serious one. I cannot deny that there are other claims, but in committing myself to a particular claim it has made a claim on my life and it demands my total commitment. This is particularly true of the claim of Christ in Jesus.

As a Christian, the Christ who calls and demands my total commitment has become fully particular in Jesus. It is through this particularity that Christ’s saving work in Jesus has become a reality. If I may pair the word “only” with the word “salvation,” I say that it is “only” through the particular that we are “saved.” To use the syntax of the famous exclusivist dictum, “outside of the particular there is no salvation.” God loves particularities, lots of them. Yes, God saves through the particularity of Christ in Jesus, but God’s saving act in Christ is not limited to this particularity, and this particularity does not exhaust God’s saving acts through other particularities. This is at the core of what we call the incarnation. Incarnation means that the Divine has assumed the fullness of humanity, not that a particular humanity has taken on the totality of the Divine. (9) To make a particular assume the totality of the Divine is not an expression of Christian faithfulness but an act of betrayal. It is to fall into what the Christian tradition calls idolatry. Idolatry makes God a prisoner of a particular. To limit God’s saving act in Christ through Jesus is to imprison God, which is often done in the name of Christian faithfulness.

This may help us understand the creative tension between the particularity and decisiveness of the Christian claim in relation to Christian openness. I suggest that we see Christ in Jesus as a prototype (breakthrough figure) and not as an archetype figure. Unfortunately, the prevailing mindset of many well-intentioned Christians is that of Jesus as an archetype. If I may use a more mundane language, to construe Jesus as an archetype is to image Jesus like a cookie-cutter or a pasta-maker, which is to assume a cookie-cutter or pasta-maker mentality. In the pasta-maker mentality, the present as well as the future are strangulated and cut to fit the past. Similarly, threatened by the freedom of the Holy Spirit, the pasta-maker mindset abducts and imprisons the Spirit. The guardians of the pasta-maker mindset have the Spirit (Sophia) controlled and subordinated by the Son. The filioque controversy is an account of the history of the subordination of the Spirit. The subordination of the Spirit by the Son has been disastrous. The Son, through the Church, has imprisoned the Spirit and has limited its creative saving work by making the Christian container the only correct container of God’s grace.

It is, however, a different matter when we think of Jesus as a prototype. While archetype thinking equates Christ’s particularity in Jesus with exclusivity (a way of thinking among fundamentalist Christians), prototype thinking sees Christ’s particularity in Jesus as openness to other particularities. While archetype thinking confuses Christian faithfulness with exclusivity, prototype thinking holds in creative balance faithfulness and openness. Jesus the prototype allows freedom of movement of the Spirit, and it does not call Christians to live in the past; rather, it calls Christians to live creatively in the present. Jesus the prototype--God’s breakthrough figure--is not threatened by the freedom of the Spirit, but celebrates the novel and creative work of the Spirit to bring about salvation both within the confines of Christianity as well as beyond its walls and even beyond the work of Christ in Jesus. This does not mean that the Spirit contradicts the work of Christ in Jesus, but this does not confine the Spirit either. The Spirit’s freedom is in line with the work of Christ in Jesus. Put differently, we are open to others and to the work of the Spirit in others because we are faithful to the work of Christ in Jesus. John Cobb, Jr. puts it this way: “We must show that we are open to the other because we are truly faithful to our heritage.” (10)

Christian faithfulness is not a contradiction to Christian openness. Jesus construed as a prototype – God’s breakthrough figure – offers that possibility for liberal Christians. Liberal Christians can and must affirm that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), but in affirming this they affirm the way who is open to other ways. Put differently, to affirm that Jesus is the way is to be led to the way that is open to other ways and other paths. The way of Jesus is the way that is open to the presence of the Spirit who is doing its creative and saving work even beyond the historical deeds of Jesus. The way of the open Jesus is the way of the one who is truly but not the only nor the totality of the incarnation of the Divine.

Liberal or progressive Christian faithfulness walks in light of this understanding. Wholehearted commitment to the way of Jesus does not require that he be the only and the totality but that he be truly and fully an embodiment of God’s saving work. Truly is indispensable or essential to experiencing the saving work of Christ in Jesus and to faithful discipleship, but this is not the case with solely or only. Throughout the ages, faithful Christians have committed themselves to Jesus not because of their belief that he is the only or the exclusive manifestation of God’s saving grace, but because they have experienced him as the true, indispensable, universal and decisive manifestation of the Divine. (11) Yes, true religious experience—an experience that strikes at the core of one’s being—cannot be true only for me; it has to be true for others as well. (12) But the truth and universality of the Christian truth-claim does not demand the elimination of other truth-claims; neither does the recognition of other truth-claims require that one must water down the universal validity of the Christian truth-claim.

Wholehearted commitment may express in words that demand absolute devotion, but it should not be confused with arrogant exclusivism. The absolute language that comes from an experience of God’s saving power and which calls us to witness is not the language of comparison, but the language of commitment and devotion. Words and phrases such as “one and only” and “no other name” belong to the language of devotion (love language) and what scholars call performative or call to action language. (13) In the transformation of a common language to a language of devotion a slippage from a to the happens or that a has become the. (14) When something at stake is of ultimate significance, there is no other language short of the absolute language of commitment. No other language can make people leave what they have and make great sacrifices short of the absolute language of commitment. The absolute language of commitment and devotion is not, however, synonymous with exclusivism, which fundamentalist Christians confuse. Rather, it is a language of commitment in the face of other claims, and it is a language that finds a creative balance between faithfulness and openness.

Indeed, one can be both faithful and open to the claims of others and to the saving work of God in other religious faiths. Rather than be sad, we should be feasting and dancing that God is at work not only in us and through us but also beyond us Christians. The central point of the Christian Story is not God’s exclusivity but God’s radical love and hospitality. Liberal or progressive Christians must proclaim God’s radical saving hospitality whenever and wherever Christian exclusivism is present; liberal Christians must witness to God’s radical comma where exclusivism has put a period. Moreover, liberal or progressive Christians must proclaim God’s radical openness with the passion and excitement of an exclamation point! Thanks to God’s liberality, we have a God in Christ who saves through the many particularities!


Notes

1. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1989).

2. See Kwok Pui-Lan, Post-Colonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 186-208.

3. Neils Bohr, cited in Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998), 62.

4. Raimundo Panikkar, “The Jordan, the Tiber, and the Ganges: Three Kairological Moments of Christic Self-Consciousness,” in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, ed. John Hick and Paul Knitter (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Press, 1987), 109.

5. Cf. S. Mark Heim, Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1995); also see, Paul Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2002), 192-202.

6. Panikkar, “The Jordan, the Tiber, and the Ganges: Three Kairological Moments of Christic Self-Consciousness, in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, 111.

7. Paul Knitter, One Earth, Many Religions: Multifaith Dialogue and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1995), 82.

8. John B. Cobb, Jr., Transforming Christianity and the World: A Way Beyond Absolutism and Relativism, edited and introduced by Paul Knitter (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1999), 6.

9. See Paul Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Press, 1996), 73; also Edward Schillebeckx, The Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 164-168.

10. Cobb, Jr., Transforming Christianity and the World: A Way beyond Absolutism and Relativism, 60.

11. Marcus Borg, “Jesus and Buddhism: A Christian View,” in Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk About Buddha, ed. Rita Gross and Terry Muck (New York and London: Continuum, 2000), 80. Also, Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility, 72.

12. Michael Polanyi cited in Daniel Maguire, The Moral Core of Judaism and Christianity: Reclaiming the Revolution (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1993), 63.

13. Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility, 70.

14. John Dominic Crossan, “Exclusivity and Particularity,” in Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha, 86.

The Fear Factor

By Mary Lynn Murphy


Over the past year or so, I have noticed an increasing climate of fear among liberal Catholics in our local archdiocese. Perhaps it is a trickle down effect from Pope Benedict’s tenure, or more likely, a reaction to the arrival of the new archbishop, John Nienstedt. In addition to Nienstedt’s very conservative record, his opening salvos and recent initiatives have been undeniably aggressive for a new guy in town. Add to that Archbishop Flynn’s termination of the 9:00 a.m. Sunday liturgy at St. Stephen’s parish, and both of the bishops’ sudden support for the Tridentine Mass (i.e., the return to the Latin Mass) and the so-called “new evangelization,” and you get a pretty grim picture from the liberal point of view.

Liberal employees of Catholic institutions are feeling especially vulnerable. The whole scenario seems slightly reminiscent of the McCarthy era of American history. People have become more cautious and self-censoring. They worry not just about job loss, but about the loss of established liturgies and their communities of worship. They whisper among themselves and look over their shoulders.

I have posed to them the straight forward question: “What specifically are you afraid of?” Their answers have startled me:

“If we are perceived to be questioning Catholics by admission counselors, we fear our children will not be accepted into Catholic high schools.”

“Conservative parents of my high school students closely monitor my assignments. In fact, I have eliminated several books from my reading list. I fear if I appear too liberal, my principal might be pressured by parents or higher-ups to fire me.”

“As an aging priest, I fear I could lose my parish or my pension if I appear to be too supportive of GLBT persons.”

“I am old. I have no money. If I were expelled from my religious order for opposing the archbishop, I would have nowhere to go.”

“For speaking my conscience, I fear I could be excommunicated, with no Catholic burial when I die.”

“I work in food services at a Catholic university. I was shocked to see that Catholic LGBT support groups are not allowed on campus. But I would never mention it because I need my job.”

“At Catholic universities, free speech and students always suffer when professors routinely self-censor. But self-censor I do because in this job market I have no options.”

“Even respectful, thoughtful discussion of certain topics is off the table at Catholic high schools, which is so frustrating to most of us students. We really need to talk freely about issues we face – like reproductive freedom or homosexuality.”

As appalled as I am at such heartbreaking responses, I had immediate questions of my own:

Are Catholics in the pew aware of the fear factor? If they are aware of it, does it worry them?

What is the fundamental nature of a Catholic hierarchy that would intimidate its own people, or a church system that would tolerate intimidation?

What is the intended purpose of intimidation in any faith community?

Do individual Catholics or entire faith communities believe they have the human right to resist intimidation? If faith communities resisted intimidation, what might be the outcome? What would it take to make a faith community finally resist intimidation?

Is it worth imagining or designing an intimidation-free faith community that is all inclusive?

I have some answers of my own, but perhaps you, our readers, would like to respond to these questions, or share reflections of your own about the fear factor. We welcome your comments – anonymous or otherwise, just let us know.


Mary Lynn Murphy is the president of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM), the coordinator of Catholic Rainbow Parents, and a co-founder of The Progressive Catholic Voice.

A Big Picture Framework of a History of Christianity

By Terry Dosh

As a church historian, I find Karl Rahner’s three-epoch theory of Christian history very helpful – and hopeful – in understanding the huge changes taking place in today’s church.

Rahner, the preeminent Catholic theologian of the 20th century, delivered these remarks in 1979 at age 75 while reflecting on the impact of Vatican II in the long schema of the history of Christianity.

Theologically speaking, he sees this history as divided into three epochs. Chronologically, an epoch can be a very limited time period, or a very expansive time period. The transition between epochs marks significant shifts.

The first epoch is the short period of Jewish Christianity from the time of Christ until the late first century. Christianity is heavily indebted to the Jewish ethos and culture in its beginning years. For example, the liturgy of the word in the celebration of the Eucharist is rooted in the Jewish liturgy of the word.

The first Christians were all originally Jews who lived in a Greek-speaking Roman Empire. The shift from the first epoch to the second is marked by a deep cultural shift from Judaism to Hellenism in the empire.

The second epoch goes from the late first century up to 1950. Obviously this covers a lot of ground: Constantine, Charlemagne, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Reformation, the Enlightenment, a variety of revolutions – scientific, industrial, agricultural, political (American, French, Russian) and two World Wars.

The four characteristics of epoch two are: a Eurocentric church; a centralized governance; monocultural (Latin, Roman, Mediterranean); and patriarchal, that is, a top-down pyramidal line of authority. There are many appropriate subdivisions in this epoch, as noted above, but the overarching characteristics remain valid for the entire epoch.

The third epoch is the period in which the major sphere of the Church’s life is not just Europe, but, in fact, the entire world. It began about 1950 but made itself observable officially at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). So we are just at the beginning of epoch three.

The four characteristics of epoch three are: World-Church; a decentralized mode of governance, as shown in the various regional groups of bishops promoting their regional churches; a pluriformity of cultures as manifested in the hundreds of vernacular languages in the contemporary Eucharistic liturgy worldwide; feminist, that is, a series of concentric circles (pope, bishops, priests, the rest of the baptized) wherein each circle serves the other circles in an egalitarian, reciprocal way.

This term feminist is not Rahner’s as such, but rather that of John Glaser who uses the term to counter the term patriarchal of epoch two.

Admittedly, this three-epoch theory is a grand schema and is open to many questions and comments. But I have found it quite helpful in reflecting on the half century since Vatican II. The four characteristics of epoch three give me a sense of hope whenever I observe some current Vatican officials and some local clerics still functioning from an epoch two model.

I believe that the epoch three view of history is with us. This lifts my spirits as I keep moving along, trying to make this vision of history a reality.

At 77, I experienced the first 30 years of my life in epoch two, where my parents spent most of their lives. But the last 47 years are happily in epoch three, where our two sons and their families have spent their entire lives.

As a ‘middlelescent’ living in the swing generation between my parents and my sons, I see that my task is to translate the values that made my parents wholesome and holy to my children and grandchildren who only know the third epoch. Quite a joyful challenge.

Terry Dosh is a married priest, a co-founder of CORPUS, and the editor of “Bread Rising,” a newsletter on Church reform.

Why I Stay

By Mary Beckfeld


In a letter to her family, Mary Beckfeld explains why she loves the Catholic Church enough to stay.


To my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren:

Some of you repeatedly ask: “Mom, why do you stay in a church that discriminates against you?” I know I haven’t answered you satisfactorily, but in this letter I am going to attempt to do just that.

I stay because this is the church of my parents, my grandparents, and my ancestors. This is the church that fed and nourished me as a young child. The Jesus stories, the sacramental preparations, partaking in the sacraments, even the liturgies that exclude me as a woman, have formed and made me who I am today.

As an adult, I have come to appreciate that the church that Jesus came to establish is bigger than the one I was raised in, and much more inclusive than what I was led to believe. I have come to accept the fact that if my life is fully dedicated to the God who loves me, I must first recognize God in everyone I encounter: family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers on the street. I must also recognize God’s wonderful work in all of creation. I accept that if I fail to see God in all of creation, I fail to see God. This is a powerful concept for me, the former throw away queen.

I love the church. I stay because I have found a community within the church where I am always welcome and always loved. This community is comprised of my friends in the diaconate program, the CSJ community, and those involved with CPCSM, Catholic Rainbow Parents, and The Progressive Catholic Voice.

I despise and resent what some in positions of authority are doing to the church. Yet I stay because this church is my history, my story. In particular, I have been shaped by my experiences in the diaconate program. If I left, I would be leaving a part of myself that was formed by my ancestors. I stay because the church of Jesus Christ is who I am – warts and all.

I stay because the sacraments and all they represent mean so much to me. I stay because the gift of faith is my strength in times of sorrow, struggle, and loneliness. I stay because this church is still home – warts and all.

Hopefully, this letter answers some of your questions and will help strengthen your resolve to stay in a church that is not always welcoming. I encourage you to find a community within the church, as I have done; a community where you feel welcomed and loved.

Love you all as God loves you!

Mom


Mary Beckfeld is a founding member of the Catholic Rainbow Parents and of the editorial team of The Progressive Catholic Voice.