"Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P."

Week of February 1, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            One of the fast-diminishing number of theological giants died on December 23rd Edward Schillebeeckx, a Flemish Dominican priest, was 95 years old.

            Unlike Karl Rahner, S.J. (d. 1984) and Yves Congar, O.P. (d. 1995), for example, the bulk of Edward Schillebeeckx’s major work was done after rather than before or during the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). 

            Professor Lieven Boeve, the president emeritus of the European Society for Catholic Theology, of which Schillebeeckx was a member, wrote a brief statement of appreciation following the announcement of the Dominican theologian’s death.

            He referred to Professor Schillebeeckx, without any exaggeration, as one of the most important theologians of the post-conciliar period, singling out his efforts to engage the Christian tradition in dialogue with modern secular culture and society.

            Boeve noted that Schillebeeckx’s insights were the result of a long intellectual journey.  He first studied philosophy and theology at the Dominican houses of study in Ghent and Leuven (Louvain). 

            The formation, however, was typical of the times, which is to say that it was largely neo-Thomistic and classical, although Schillebeeckx did come into contact with phenomenology, a philosophical movement that was especially popular in northern Europe, and the writings of one of its leading figures, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (d. 1961). 

            His most direct philosophical influence, however, was his mentor and fellow Dominican, Dominic DePetter.

            One of Schillebeeckx’s best-known books, Christ the Sacrament of Encounter with God (1960; English-language edition, 1963), was strongly influenced by phenomenology and also by the principle of sacramentality in Thomas Aquinas, which was the topic of his doctoral dissertation in 1952.

            It was during his post-graduate research in Paris, where he studied at Le Saulchoir and the Sorbonne from 1945, that he came into close contact with Yves Congar and another accomplished Dominican theologian, Marie-Dominique Chenu, both of whom left a lasting impression on the young theologian.  Schillebeeckx learned, especially from Chenu, how to understand the development of Tradition within the context of history.

            He became professor of theology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen in 1958, a position he continued to hold until his retirement in 1983.  His major works were many, including Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (ET, 1979) and Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord (ET, 1980).

            Unfortunately, the Vatican contributed a number of distractions from his theological work in the form of at least three investigations by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith--in 1968, 1979, and 1984, each of which ended without any condemnation.

            In 1982 he became the only theologian ever to be awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contributions to European culture.

            In her excellent statement of appreciation in the January 18th issue of America magazine, Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P., a devoted friend, fellow Dominican, and master of Schillebeeckx’s work, and a valued friend and colleague of my own at the University of Notre Dame, reported on Schillebeeckx’s final message to his theological colleagues at a symposium held in his honor in Leuven in December, 2008.

            That message was “Extra mundum nulla salus”–“There is no salvation outside the world.”  It was a conviction, Professor Hilkert noted, that “captures the love of the world and the ‘grace-optimism’ that characterized [his] life’s work....”

            From the earliest to his latest books, she wrote, Schillebeeckx “helped readers grasp the core sacramental insight disclosed by the Incarnation: The mystery of God is to be encountered in human life and creation.”

            For Schillebeeckx, “the creative and saving presence of God’s grace” becomes manifest “wherever human persons minister to one another, especially to the neighbor in need.  Human love is an embodiment, a sacrament, of God’s love.”  He called these experiences “fragments of salvation.” 

            This sacramental view of the world and of the Church’s role within the world were, according to Mary Catherine Hilkert, at the heart of Schillebeeckx’s writing, preaching, and teaching for over seven decades, just as they were central to the vision of the Second Vatican Council, where he served as an adviser to Cardinal Bernard Alfrink and the other Dutch bishops.  He served in the same capacity at the Dutch Pastoral Council immediately after Vatican II.

            Even in moments like our own, Hilkert observed, Schillebeeckx reminded his readers that “God is new each moment,” and that wherever injustice occurs, whether in the world at large or in the Church itself, the Spirit is actively at work, prompting resistance, hope, courage, and change.

            We can make Professor Hilkert’s final prayer our own: “May this gifted theologian and preacher of the Gospel now enjoy the fullness of life that he once described as ‘God’s eternal surprise’.”

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

01/25/10

"Saints and Today’s Church"

Week of January 25, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            This coming Saturday, the 30th of January, is the day of death of one of the 20th century’s spiritual giants.  He has never been canonized, however, nor even put on the canonical track leading to canonization.

            This individual, though not a Christian, was, in the literal meaning of the word, a martyr (or “witness”)  for peace and reconciliation.  He was a Hindu holy man and modern pioneer of non-violent resistance, who inspired many others, including the American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., to follow this same path against all odds.

            His name is Mohandas Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1948 by a young Hindu fanatic.

            An Apostolic Delegate to the United States once praised Gandhi as a “naturally Christian” person.  To be sure, the Vatican’s representative intended his remark as a compliment to Gandhi, but in fact it was not.

            The assumption was, and still is, among many Christians that only Christians can live a highly moral, even saintly, life.  Whatever is good and holy in the world must be claimed somehow by the Church.

            All else is a form of “anonymous Christianity,” one of the few insights of the great theologian Karl Rahner, S.J., that happily never caught on.

            If Gandhi’s life taught us anything, it is that God’s presence, which is the basis of all holiness, is not limited to any religious community, including the Church. 

            God is the loving Creator and Redeemer of all humanity.  The Holy Spirit blows wherever the Spirit wills.  Grace is offered to everyone.

            January 30th also marks the entrance into eternal glory of Joseph Columba Marmion, Irish-born abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Maredsous in Belgium from 1901 until his death in 1923.

            Abbot Marmion was one of the most influential spiritual writers and spiritual directors of the early 20th century.  His was a Catholic spirituality that was well ahead of its time, rooted in the Bible and the liturgy of the Church and centered on the mystery of Christ.

            Marmion’s major works included Christ: the Life of the Soul and Christ in His Mysteries.  He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on September 3, 2000, the same day on which Pope John XXIII was also beatified.

            On January 31st the Church celebrates the feast of John Bosco, who died in 1888 and who is best known for his pastoral and educational work with boys and young men.  Today, unfortunately, his special ministry to boys might have raised suspicions about him, so much have the times changed because of the sex-abuse scandal in the priesthood.

            Don Bosco was the founder of the Society of St. Francis de Sales, more commonly known as the Salesian order.  It is a religious community that some would say has exercised a significant, even excessive, influence in the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

            The current Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, is a Salesian.  He was formerly then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s number-two man in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).  When Bertone left to become Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Ratzinger named another Salesian, Archbishop Angelo Amato, to replace him.

            There have been in recent years at least seven Salesian cardinals, including Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, known for his progressive views on social justice issues and much talked about as a possible Third-World candidate for the papacy in 2005.  But he was also a controversial figure for having denounced the U.S. media’s focus on the sexual-abuse scandal in the Catholic priesthood.

            There are also some 116 Salesian bishops–far more than any other religious order in the Church.  In addition, fifteen Salesians occupy policy-level Vatican positions and twenty-four others serve as consultors or as members of various Vatican academies and commissions.

            In 2004 Pope John Paul II broke with a centuries-old tradition and appointed a woman, a Salesian nun, as under-secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life–the same Congregation that is currently conducting a “visitation” of U.S. religious communities of women.

            According to reports, some 40,000 mourners filed past Don Bosco’s body as it lay in state, and it was said that virtually the whole population of Turin lined the streets of the city as the funeral cortege passed.

            On a lighter note, February 1st is the feast of Brigid of Kildare, one of the patron saints of Ireland.  Among her legendary, and stereotypically Irish, exploits were distributing butter (a sign of prosperity in Irish culture) to the poor and changing bathwater into beer to satisfy the thirst of priests who were visiting her monastery.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

01/18/10

"Nelson Mandela and Leadership"

Week of January 18, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            Clint Eastwood’s latest film “Invictus” (Latin, “Unconquered”) stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, the former President of South Africa who served 27 years as a political prisoner in that country, and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar, the captain of the national rugby team that Mandela used–successfully--as a means to bring the racially-divided nation together.

            During his long years of incarceration, Mandela studied his Afrikaner enemies, not only learning their language but understanding the role that sports, especially rugby, played in their psyche. 

            Their national team, known as Springbok, was beloved by the whites and despised by the black population, to whom it had become a symbol of their oppression by the Afrikaner government.

            When Mandela’s supporters (modern political terminology would call them his “base”) demanded that the team be dismantled, renamed, and their colors and logo banned, Mandela balked, against the advice of some of his closest black advisers.

            To follow the will of his base, he believed, would only confirm the fears of the Afrikaner minority that Mandela’s election in May of 1994 would initiate a period of revenge and recrimination.  He wished instead to pursue a program of forgiveness and reconciliation. 

            Enlisting the team’s captain to his side, Mandela challenged Pienaar to turn his team’s losing ways around and to bring his players, as any good leader should, to exceed their present expectations.

            The film, Newsweek critic David Ansen wrote in the November 25th issue, is about “strategic inspiration.” 

            “We witness a politician at the top of his game,” Ansen observed.  “Freeman’s wily Mandela is a master of charm and soft-spoken gravitas.”  It is a film, Ansen noted, that is “such a soul-searching story–one that would be hard to believe if it were fiction.  The wonder of Invictus is that it actually went down this way.”

            But it is not only Nelson Mandela who is shown exercising effective leadership.  The captain of the Springboks is also adept at leadership.  Even after his meeting with Mandela in the presidential office, Pienaar doesn’t force anything on his teammates.

            He asks that they learn the lyrics of their new national anthem.  When many of them strongly object, he doesn’t force the issue.  He makes it clear, however, that he will be learning it.

            He works his team hard, and leads by showing himself as willing as the others to follow the new work-ethic. 

            Based on John Carlin’s book The Human Factor: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed the World, the film is set just after apartheid had ended in South Africa and during Mandela’s first term in office.

            Invictus explores, as noted above, how the political prisoner-turned-president used the 1995 Rugby World Cup, which pitted the Springboks against New Zealand, as a means of bringing blacks and whites together after decades of violence and mistrust.

            Before a mixed home-crowd, South Africa won the match and the World Cup.

            But the purpose of this weekly column is not to provide movie reviews, or book reviews either, unless there is some connection with church-related matters.  In this case, there is.

            The Catholic Church (and other Churches and ecclesial communities within the Body of Christ) is in the midst of a period of internal tensions and divisions.  What the Catholic Church needs now, more than ever, is the kind of enlightened, unifying leadership that was exhibited so powerfully by President Nelson Mandela, and to a lesser extent by Francois Pienaar, the captain of South Africa’s national rugby team.

            Instead, too many of our bishops–although certainly not the majority–function in ways that are directly opposed to Mandela’s example. 

            The names of these high-profile bishops are known to anyone who is more than casually aware of Catholic developments. 

            These bishops trade in recrimination and self-righteous moralizing, looking upon Catholics, especially those in public office, who don’t agree 100% with their particular approach to pastoral issue as “bad Catholics,” who should not receive Holy Communion and who should even think seriously of leaving the Church. 

            As if the third of Catholics who have already left the Church isn’t enough!

            Unfortunately, the Vatican itself has also exercised a form of leadership that is directly opposed to Mandela’s.  The current “visitation” (read: “investigation”) of communities of religious women in the United States, and the “doctrinal assessment” (read: “harassment”) of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents 95% of these communities, are the most dramatic cases in point.

            If Nelson Mandela had followed the example of the Vatican or that of many of our bishops, South Africa would still be a divided nation today, with blacks and whites at each other’s throats.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

01/11/10

"Week of Prayer for Christian Unity"

Week of January 11, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            This column has called attention for a number of years (the first time in 1969) to the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  This ecumenical program, observed annually between January 18 and January 25, was originally proposed in 1908 by an Anglican (later Roman Catholic), Paul Wattson, as a “Church unity octave.”

            Wattson’s initial idea was broadened in 1935 by Abbé Paul Couturier to become a Universal Week of Prayer for Unity.  Since 1966 the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity has been a joint project of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Faith & Order Commission of the World Council of Churches.

            The Week of Prayer provides an annual benchmark against which to measure ecumenical progress–or lack thereof.  Some observers have been describing the recent ecumenical movement as in a state of “drift.”  Relations remain warm between and among individual separated Christians, but there has been little forward movement between and among Churches and ecclesial communities.

            This year, however, the column turns its attention to a different kind of church-unity problem--not to the state of ecumenical relations within the entire Body of Christ, but to the stresses and strains on unity that exist within individual Churches, namely, the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, of which The Episcopal Church in the United States is third of U.S. Catholics have left the Catholic Church.  Some have joined other Churches, but most have simply slipped from active membership in the Catholic Church to become part of a group once described as “lapsed Catholics.” 

            This means that about 10% of all Americans today are former Catholics.  It has been estimated that, if these ex-Catholics were to constitute a denomination unto themselves, they would be the second largest religious body in the United States–after the Catholic Church itself.

            It should be noted in passing that the major losses suffered by the Catholic Church in recent years have been largely offset by the new immigrant population, mostly from Latin America.  In addition, over two percent of the population has joined the Catholic Church within the same time-period.

            But how has the pastoral leadership of the Catholic Church responded to this acutely serious problem? 

            To the extent that the bishops have reacted at all, they seem to believe that disaffected Catholics are simply “bad Catholics,” who cannot accept the morally demanding teachings of their Church.

            Some bishops convey the impression that the Church’s official teachings on contraception, divorce-and-remarriage, homosexuality, the ordination of women, and obligatory celibacy for priests are so clear and compelling that only a person of bad will could possibly disagree with them.

            And yet there are many committed, well-educated, still-practicing Catholics, including many priests and religious a significant part.

            In late February, 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a major survey that found that nearly a women, who do disagree with these teachings, in whole or in part. 

            And how does the Church’s pastoral leadership respond to those with questions?  In the case of priests, they are ruled ineligible for appointment as diocesan bishops.  In the case of nuns, they are subjected to a “visitation” that is a thinly veiled investigation, and the leadership of 95% of their communities is subjected to a “doctrinal assessment.”

            The Pew study also found that young Catholics, ages 18-29, are much more likely than older Catholics to say that they are not affiliated with any particular religion.  If these generational patterns persist, the survey warns, recent declines in the numbers of native-born Catholics and growth in the size of the unaffiliated population are likely to continue.

            Whatever the case, the situation calls for bolder and more imaginative pastoral initiatives than have heretofore been proposed or tried.

            Unless the Catholic Church is the strongest and most committed participant in the ecumenical movement, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity can have only a limited effect.

            As for Catholicism’s Anglican sisters and brothers in the Body of Christ, their Communion is currently rent with deep divisions over the issue of homosexuality, especially in the episcopate.  It is the gravest pastoral problem on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s plate.

            Anglicanism has traditionally seen itself a bridge within the divided Body of Christ.  But, again, if the Anglican Communion is itself torn by internal division, how can it serve the full Body of Christ as an effective bridge between the Catholic Church and the broad community of Protestant denominations?

            Those committed to the restoration of Christian unity should be deeply concerned about these developments within Catholicism and Anglicanism.

            The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is an appropriate time to act upon these concerns.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

01/04/10

"Two Saints: Minor and Major"

Week of January 4, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            This coming weekend the Church in England observes the feast day of one who is known by few Catholics in the United States and Canada, namely, Adrian of Canterbury, while the Churches of the East, as well as Benedictines and Cistercians in the West, celebrate that of an emerging major figure in the history of theology, Gregory of Nyssa, one of the three Cappadocian Fathers (along with his older brother, Basil the Great, and Gregory Nazianzen).

            What follows is drawn largely from my Lives of the Saints: From Mary and St. Francis of Assisi to John XXIII and Mother Teresa (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001).

            Adrian was an African by birth who died early in the 8th century.  He was abbot of the monastery of Sts. Peter and Paul in Canterbury (later named in honor of St. Augustine of Canterbury). 

            Under Adrian’s leadership and that of Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, the monastery became a major center of learning, producing a number of future bishops and archbishops.  Adrian himself taught at the monastery for some 40 years.

            After his death on January 9th, probably in 710, he was buried inside the monastery.  Almost four centuries later, during a period of reconstruction, his body was discovered to be “incorrupt and fragrant,” a traditional sign of sanctity. 

            His tomb subsequently became associated with various miracles of healing, and his feast was added to liturgical calendars in England.  However, it was never listed on the General Roman Calendar.

            Gregory of Nyssa, on the other hand, lived in the 4th century.  He was born in Caesarea and studied in Athens, first in rhetoric and later, under the influence of Gregory Nazianzen, in theology. 

            He was ordained a priest around the year 362 at a time when celibacy was not a requirement.  It is not clear whether he remained with his wife, or whether she had died or entered a monastic community.

            Gregory himself spent the first few years of his priesthood in the monastic community founded by his brother Basil.  Gregory felt that life in a monastic community was the ideal venue for the development of Christian spirituality, and his writings were regarded as having had a lasting impact on the growth of monasticism in the East.

            Under pressure from Basil, Gregory accepted election as bishop of Nyssa in 371.  At the time, the diocese was little more than a remote outpost near Armenia, where Arianism (the heresy that had denied the divinity of Christ and was condemned at the Council of Nicaea in 325) was still strong. 

            Indeed, he encountered fierce opposition from the local Arians, who accused him of embezzling funds and of irregularities in his election.  He was later arrested by the governor of Pontus, but subsequently escaped from captivity.  However, he was not restored to his see until 378.

            It is said that Gregory was more skilled as a thinker and writer than as an administrator, which means in plain language that he was generally unsuccessful as a bishop.

            The year after he returned to Nyssa, his brother Basil died.  Almost as if Basil had been a hindrance to him, Gregory thereafter became an important ecclesiastical figure and a productive theologian, authoring a number of works in defense of Nicene orthodoxy. 

            The significance of his writings was not fully appreciated, however, until the second half of the 20th century when several leading scholars rediscovered them.

            The Emperor Theodosius thought highly enough of Gregory to send him on missions to counteract Arianism in Palestine and Arabia, and also to invite him to play an important role in the Council of Constantinople in 381, the council that defined the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Gregory would preach the funeral oration for the council’s first president, Melitius of Antioch.

            Like Adrian of Canterbury, Gregory of Nyssa’s name does not appear on the General Roman Calendar, but, as noted above, his feast is celebrated in the East on January 10th and he is also commemorated on the Benedictine and Cistercian liturgical calendars.

            If, according to the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (nn. 49-51), saints are not only intercessors who address our personal needs but examples of Christian holiness, there are perhaps only a limited number of Christians who will look to Adrian of Canterbury and Gregory of Nyssa for inspiration.

            But they can be moral and spiritual guides for students, especially of theology, for professors, again especially of theology, and for those holding positions of leadership at whatever level of church life.

            Both saints remind us of what the Church’s mission is all about and motivate us to pursue it as faithfully as they did.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

12/28/09

"The Vatican and Dissident Anglicans"

Week of December 28, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            I have thus far refrained from commenting on the recent Vatican initiative regarding Anglicans who wish to become Roman Catholics.  I did not think that we have given the initiative time for the dust to settle.  In my opinion, that situation remains.

            Some things, however, are already clear.  First, it was an act of insensitivity on the part of certain Vatican officials that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, was not given adequate notice of the initiative. 

            One wonders, therefore, why he consented to appear in a joint press conference with the new Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, to greet the news. 

            Archbishop Williams subsequently met briefly with Pope Benedict XVI in November–a meeting that had been scheduled prior to the announcement of the initiative–at which meeting the subject of the initiative reportedly did arise. 

            The conversation between the two religious leaders was described as frank, but cordial.  Indeed, so cordial was the meeting that the Pope gifted the Archbishop of Canterbury with a pectoral cross--an implicit, even if unintended, recognition that Rowan Williams possesses valid episcopal orders.

            The gesture was reminiscent of Pope John Paul II’s gift in 1996 of a gold pectoral cross to Rowan Williams’s predecessor, Archbishop George Carey (now Lord Carey), on the occasion of the 1400th anniversary of Pope Gregory the Great’s sending of a group of monks, under the leadership of Augustine of Canterbury, to re-Christianize Briton.

            We can refer to these as “mixed signals,” since the official stance of the Catholic Church toward Anglican Orders remains that of Pope Leo XIII, given in his famous papal bull Apostolicae curae (“Of apostolic concern”) 100 years earlier, namely, that Anglican ordinations to the priesthood, and especially to the episcopate, are “absolutely null and utterly void.”

            Indeed, in a commentary issued in 1998 by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Leo XIII’s decree was cited as an example of a “definitive” pronouncement, closely connected with revelation itself.

            Was John Paul II implicitly denying that century’s-old teaching?  Was Benedict XVI doing the same?

            As we look more closely at the Apostolic Constitution Anglicorum coetibus (“On groups of Anglicans”) and the accompanying norms released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one is struck not only by its canonical and pastoral complexity, but also by its ecumenical potential.

            If the Catholic Church is prepared to foster reunion with a small portion of the Anglican Communion with such a bold initiative, why could it not do the same for other churches and ecclesial communities in the Body of Christ? 

            Why could not all churches and ecclesial communities currently separated from full communion with the Catholic Church enter into that communion without sacrificing their own distinctive traditions–liturgical, sacramental, spiritual, theological, and canonical?

            In that case, we could have a Presbyterian community in full communion with the Catholic Church without sacrificing or jettisoning any of their most cherished traditions.  The same might apply to Lutherans, Methodists, and so on.

            To be sure, these arrangements, like the recent Vatican outreach to certain Anglicans, would be complicated and require a lot of ecclesiastical fine-tuning over many years.  But that could very well be the harbinger of ecumenical things to come.       

            What is also clear from the Apostolic Constitution is that the Vatican was not somehow “poaching” on Anglican territory.  The very first paragraph points out that groups of Anglicans have “repeatedly and insistently” petitioned to be received into full Catholic communion “individually as well as corporately.”

            Moreover, since 1980 there has existed a Pastoral Provision, also known as the Anglican Use, whereby Anglican priests (inappropriately called “ministers” in this latest Vatican document) who wish to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church and who are eligible for ordination to the Catholic priesthood may be dispensed from the discipline of clerical celibacy.

            The Apostolic Constitution provides the ecclesiastical means for full communion that is corporate, and in that sense seems to go beyond the terms of the Pastoral Provision.

            Finally, to settle the question of whether former Catholic priests who subsequently became Anglicans might exercise their priesthood in the new Anglican Ordinariates, the Complimentary Norms definitively answer that in the negative (see article 6, §2).

            There are many more items that one might address in the Apostolic Constitution and Complimentary Norms, but readers should study those documents for themselves.  They are available on the Vatican Web site and published in Origins (vol. 39, no. 24, 11/19/09).     

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

"A New Year’s Meditation"

Week of December 21, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            Some 35 years ago my New Year’s column was on the “Hopeful Promise of Newness.” It noted how often the word “new” is used in modern advertising.  New and improved anything is announced with appropriate flourish.

            Political parties look for new faces.  Fashion designers dream up new styles.  Architects develop new forms.  Athletes attempt to set new records.  Journalists search for new angles.  Many conversations begin with the casual greeting, “What’s new?” 

            Indeed, the news itself fills key moments of the day: reading the paper at breakfast (or checking the news on one’s cell phone or other electronic device), listening to the car radio on the way to work, watching the local, network, or cable news throughout the evening.

            There are few holidays more popular with adults than New Year’s and few moments more dramatic that the midnight passage from one year to the next, heralded by party hats, horns, orchestras, dancing, and, of course, the slowly falling illuminated ball from atop the old New York Times building in Times Square.

            This fascination with the new is rooted in an innate sense that the new gives promise of something better than the old.  The human spirit is suffused with the hope that tomorrow can be better than today.

            Few of us readily concede that we have reached the limit of our possibilities, except perhaps those who are close to death and ready for it.

            It was this basic human instinct of hope that Jesus Christ touched by his preaching of the “Good News” of salvation.  That is what the word “gospel” means.

            Jesus came to announce a “new covenant” (Hebrews 12:24), to give us a “new commandment” to love one another (John 13:34), to offer us the possibility of becoming “a new creation” (Galatians 6:15), a “new self” (Colossians 3:10), with a “new heart” and a “new spirit” (Ezekiel 18:31), called to live in the “newness of life” (Romans 6:4), and to serve in the “newness of the spirit” (7:6).

            “Behold, I make all things new!” (Revelation 21:5) is the stunning promise of the Christ-figure.  Those who heed the Word shall enter the “new Jerusalem” (21:2) and dwell in a “new heaven” and a “new earth” (21:1; Isaiah 65:17).

            While this may be empty poetry for many, these words of promise are at the core of Christian faith, “the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

            How we and the Church at large translate that hope into language that is intelligible, and how we and the Church communicate it in a manner that is compelling and persuasive, are challenges that are never fully addressed this side of the Second Coming of Christ.

            But we are never exempted from making the effort, and the beginning of a new year is as suitable a time as any to be reminded of that and to recommit ourselves to the task.

             Often that determination to turn over a new leaf in life and to rededicate ourselves to our highest ideals takes the form of New Year’s resolutions.

            The “realist” insists that such resolutions are made to be broken.  On the other hand, resolutions do serve a purpose.  They help to define our hopes, whether about ourselves, our family and friends, our Church, or the world around us.

            But resolutions are also an implicit admission that we and the objects of our resolutions are not what we and they ought to be.

            Thus, conscientious religious educators may resolve to explore more deeply the Catholic tradition they are called to impart, but never simply to equate fidelity to that tradition with an uncritical loyalty to the pastoral leaders of the Church and their specific interpretations of every aspect of that tradition.

            Thoughtful Catholics in one of the major professions may make similar resolutions to raise their own understanding of faith to a level commensurate with the intellectual competence expected in their respective occupations, but again never uncritically.

            Pastors and all priests and deacons may resolve never to deliver a homily without adequate preparation, and in the meantime to deepen their own understanding of the faith through more reading and even occasional course-work.

            Religious women, who ought never to forget that the success of the Church’s ongoing mission has depended in such large measure on their own continued commitment to, and engagement in, the life of the Christian community, must resolve always to be mindful of the extensive support and gratitude they enjoy from the great majority of the Church’s membership, notwithstanding Vatican “visitations” and “doctrinal assessments.”

            As this new year begins, each of us should resolve never to lose hope.  

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

12/14/09

"A Christmas Meditation for 2009"

Week of December 14, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            An annual column at Christmas always runs the risk of lapsing into boiler-plate rhetoric.  It is the time of the year when people are supposed to have warmth in their hearts and a generous spirit to match.

            But this is not a happy time for many families, even in once-prosperous lands.  Although there are tentative signs of an economic recovery, at least in comparison with last fall, unemployment continues at a high rate and young people are finding that even seasonal jobs are scarce.

            Two common elements of the feast of Christmas are lights and gift-giving.  Some people may have to cut back on traditional lighting to save on their electric bills, but the real pinch will be felt in gift-giving, especially for one’s family.

            Charles Dickens famously wrote that it is at Christmas that want is most keenly felt.  To be sure, he was writing in the context of a newly industrialized England in the 19th century, but his observation is not without relevance for our own time and place.

            This Christmas offers those who have not been negatively affected by the economic downturn an opportunity to practice Christian discipleship anew.

            When the war in Iraq was launched several years ago, there was no realistic call for sacrifice.  Indeed, the only “sacrifice” that then-President George W. Bush mentioned was that we should all go shopping.

            Older readers will recall the real sacrifices that were endured during the Second World War when there were no cars to buy, ration buttons for such products as butter and sugar, stickers on car windows for the purchase of rationed gasoline, paper and tire drives, blackouts, wooden parts on buses and trolley cars as replacements for steel needed in the war effort, the draft in full vigor, and gold stars in a neighbor’s window, announcing the grim news of the death of a son in battle.

            In today’s economic climate, the last thing a committed Christian should be tempted to say is: “I’m up, pull up the ladder.”

            We are, after all, our sister’s and our brother’s keeper.  We have an obligation to reach out to those in need, especially at this time of the year when, as Dickens put in his A Christmas Carol, want is most keenly felt.

            Too much of the rhetoric about health-care reform one reads nowadays in newspapers and magazines or sees in advocacy ads on television seems to appeal to our baser instincts rather than our generous impulses.  We are warned that doing something about the millions of uninsured will cost too much or perhaps jeopardize the economic security that many already have–or assume they have.

            By contrast, we sing carols at Christmas that appeal to our better spirits.  We extol the Prince of Peace and the display of good will toward all. 

            Others, however, remind us of the need to walk the walk rather than only of talking the talk.  Christianity is a faith that demands the former.  It is, as the worldwide Jesuit community proclaimed several years ago, “a faith that does justice.”

             This column has previously focused on loneliness as “the dark underside of Christmas merriment....Loneliness and bitterness grow like weeds overnight in the Christmas patch because Christmas is, at root, about relationships, communities, homecomings....”

            In a time of economic downturn such values as these are placed at serious risk.

            A later Christmas column wrote of “family reunions, but not for the homeless...of special feasting, but not for the hungry...of lavish gift-giving, but not for the poor.”

            Another column pointed out that the giving of gifts at Christmas affords us all an opportunity to practice what Christ urged us to do–but not at Christmas time alone.  What we do for others at Christmas is supposed to set the tone for all twelve months of the year.

            At Christmas we celebrate the Prince of Peace, but more than one recent Pope has reminded us that peace is the work of justice.  Unfortunately, when justice knocks at our parish, school, or diocesan doors, it too often receives about as warm a welcome as Mary and Joseph received at the inn at Bethlehem.

            Each Christmas we hear familiar biblical readings, are heartened by familiar sanctuary decorations, and sing familiar carols.  But we are always at a slightly different stage of our lives each year, and so is our country.

            Christmas itself does not change.  It is we who change, and the nation and the world in which we live.

            That is why we have an opportunity to practice Christian discipleship anew–this year and every year after it.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

12/07/09

"The State of the Catholic Church"

Week of December 7, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            If anyone wonders why the Catholic Church presents such a different face to the world and to the Body of Christ today in comparison with the world and the Church of the 1960s and 1970s, we need look no further than the extraordinarily abbreviated pontificate of John Paul I.

            To appreciate the significance of that brief pontificate, the eleventh shortest in the history of the Church, one must have some sense of the mark left by John Paul I’s predecessor, Paul VI.

            Although Humanae vitae, the birth-control encyclical, cast a dark shadow over his entire 15-year pontificate, the Pope had many other pastoral achievements to his credit before and after the release of that document in July, 1968.

            In that year he instituted the annual observance of the World Day of Peace, which is still celebrated on January 1st, and in 1970 elevated both St. Teresa of Ávila and St. Catherine of Siena to the status of Doctors of the Church, the first women to be so recognized.

            He fixed the retirement age for priests and bishops at 75 and decreed that cardinals over the age of 80 should not participate in papal elections, and he also determined that the maximum number of cardinal-electors could not exceed 120.

            Pope Paul VI convened and presided over four international synods of bishops and continued John XXIII’s example of enlarging and internationalizing the College of Cardinals.

            In the last year of his life, he was profoundly shaken by the kidnapping and murder of his close friend, Aldo Moro, former prime minister of Italy.  Indeed, Paul VI’s last public appearance was to preside at Moro’s funeral in the basilica of St. John Lateran, the Pope’s cathedral church.

            Paul VI died of a heart attack at Castel Gandolfo on August 6, 1978, the feast of the Transfiguration.  He had planned his own funeral.  His coffin was at ground level, surmounted not by the papal tiara nor even by a miter or stole, but by the open book of the Gospels  that fluttered in the light breeze across St. Peter’s Square.     

            His successor was the Patriarch of Venice, Albino Luciani, who was the first Pope to take a double name, to honor, he said, the Pope (John XXIII) who had ordained him a bishop and who preceded him as Patriarch of Venice, and the Pope (Paul VI) who had named him a cardinal.

            In his remarks just before he gave the traditional Sunday blessing from the window of the Apostolic Palace (it was August 27th, the day after his election), he pointed out to the enthusiastic crowds below in St. Peter’s Square, “Be sure of this: I do not have the wisdom of heart of Pope John.  I do not have the preparation and culture of Pope Paul.”

            John Paul I was not only the first Pope to take a double name; he was also the first Pope in more than a thousand years to refuse to be crowned with the triple tiara. 

            Late in the evening of September 28th, John Paul I died of a heart attack while reading in bed.  The Romans had taken such a liking to this humble, smiling Pope that they reacted more emotionally to his death than they had to Pope Paul VI’s only two months earlier.

            The cardinal-electors rushed back to Rome in virtual shock, determined to elect someone with the necessary physical vigor to bear the burdens of the office.

            The assumption was that the new Pope would be another Italian, as had been the case for the past four centuries and a half.  The leading candidate, Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, archbishop of Florence, had spent many years in the Roman Curia and, in the process, had made some enemies.  There was also some resentment of the key part he had played in the election of John Paul I.

            Although Cardinal Benelli received the most votes on the early ballots, he could not reach the required two-thirds necessary for election and his support began to wane.  The cardinals then turned to the 76-year-old Cardinal Carlo Columbo, archbishop of Milan, but he announced that he would not accept election. 

            This left the Italians without a viable candidate, and so for the first time since 1522 they elected a non-Italian, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland, who took the name John Paul II.

            Although he would do many good things in the 26 ½ years he occupied the office, John Paul II’s appointments to, and within, the hierarchy were not among them.

            And that is the main reason why the Catholic Church is experiencing such difficulty today.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

11/30/09

"Advent, 2009"

Week of November 30, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            The First Sunday of Advent, which we celebrated earlier this week, marked the beginning of the Church’s liturgical year, which, of course, makes no sense to most people who are satisfied that the new year begins on January 1.

            But that is only the case where the Gregorian calendar, traditionally attributed to Gregory XIII (pope from 1572-85), is normative.  In fact, Christians, who had followed the Julian calendar until 1582, used to celebrate New Year’s Day on March 25, the feast of the Annunciation.

            For the Chinese and other Asian communities, New Year’s Day has a changeable date, falling somewhere between January 10 and February 19.  This year the Lunar New Year begins on Sunday, February 14.

            The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) is also a moveable holiday, observed sometime in September or early October.  This past fall it was celebrated beginning at sundown on Friday, September 18, and continuing on Saturday, the 19th.

            The Church’s First Sunday of Advent usually occurs in late November, as it did this year, but it can fall as late as December 2nd.  When that happens, as it last did in 2006, the Fourth Sunday of Advent is also Christmas Eve.

            Advent, as this column pointed out in 2006, has never had the same spiritual drawing-power as its sister season of Lent.  What both seasons have in common, however, is that they are periods of spiritual preparation for major feasts: Christmas and Easter respectively.

            Advent, which is derived from a Latin word which means “a coming toward (or near),” focuses the Church’s attention on the three comings of Christ: in the past at his birth at Bethlehem, in the present, especially in his presence in the community gathered for the Eucharist and in the sacrament itself, and in the future, at his Second Coming.

            We need no special reminder during Advent of the feast that celebrates the Lord’s initial coming at Bethlehem.  We are given ample advance notice of the approach of Christmas in commercial advertising, which used to begin in earnest after Thanksgiving but now begins after Halloween, in seasonal music on radio and television, and in the multiple lights and decorations that appear on our houses and streets, and in malls and department stores.

            We do believe in the Second Coming as well as Christmas, but only notionally, that is, as an idea that has little or no meaningful connection with our everyday experience.

            It is the coming of Christ in the present that is the most spiritually engaging of the three comings we celebrate in Advent. 

            The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy pointed out that, when Catholics gather for the Eucharist, Christ is present in the worshiping community itself, in the Word that is proclaimed, in the persons of the various ministers, and uniquely in the sacrament of Holy Communion (n. 7).

            Christ also comes to us in the present even apart from the Eucharist, through what this column once referred to as “the stable door of ordinary human experience.”

            Advent is a time, therefore, for redirecting our sense of expectation of the Lord’s three comings away from “out there” to “right here.”

            We are reminded of this in the series of classic questions posed to the Lord in the parable of the sheep and the goats, “When did we see you hungry and feed you...?” (Matthew 25:37).

            But Advent also reminds us that we are “coming toward” a richer and fuller future, when Christ will come again to make all things new.  Seen from a different angle, there is also a “coming toward” on God’s part, which is why our most fitting Advent attitude is one of hopeful expectation.

            “The message of Advent,” this column previously declared, “is that the blessings of the Kingdom will ‘come toward’ us only to the extent that we ‘come toward’ those most in need of our love and support.”

            For this reason the primary spiritual challenge of the Advent season is to redirect our sense of expectation, particularly of Christ’s Second Coming, from “out there” to “right here,” in our ordinary daily experience when and where we encounter the neighbor or community of neighbors in need.

            Indeed, Christ is to be found more often there, in these ordinary circumstances of life, than in the Church’s creeds, codes, and cults.

            It is a lesson to be learned in Advent this year and every year, when the Church bids us to begin anew along the path of Christian discipleship.           

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

"Ministerial Religious Life: Concluding Reflections"

Week of November 23, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            This week’s column offers some concluding reflections on Sister Sandra Schneiders’ exceedingly important four-page article, “The past and future of ministerial religious life,” in the October 2nd issue of the National Catholic Reporter. 

            Sandra Schneiders has been for many years associated with the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California, as professor of New Testament Studies and Christian Spirituality, and is a member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Monroe, Michigan, often identified simply as the IHMs.

            Her article is required reading for anyone concerned, on one side or the other, about the Vatican’s “visitation” of U.S. religious communities of women or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s “doctrinal assessment” of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, more commonly known as the LCWR.

            Sandra Schneiders points out that there are two kinds of religious life: the monastic, which emphasizes habit, enclosure, and horarium (a daily schedule that includes shared meals, work, and prayer), and the ministerial, which subordinates (not necessarily eliminates) all three to the service of others.

            Too many Catholics, including some who hold high-ranking ecclesiastical office, assume that there is only one kind of authentic religious life, namely, the monastic.  This is why they place such emphasis on some distinctive religious habit, or dress, on living and praying in community, and on following a regular schedule in the convent.

            The situation in religious life has changed, however, not just in the past few decades, but for the past four centuries.  It is only recently that these changes have been noticed, and some Catholics are disturbed by them.

            Unfortunately, some of those who have been most critical of the changes in religious life, from the monastic to the ministerial, are unaware of the biblical and historical foundations for these changes.

            The pre-Easter Jesus, Sandra Schneiders points out in her article, had many kinds of disciples.  Some, like Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany (Luke 10:38-42; John 11:5) were householders who followed Jesus within the context of family life.

            Others, like Zacchaeus (Luke 19:2-9) or the royal official in John 4:46-54, followed him by just and generous involvement in secular occupations.

            “But there was one rather small group of women and men (Luke 8:1-3) whom Jesus called to abandon everything...to be in his company on a 24/7 basis, to take on in real time his itinerant form of life, to participate in his daily full-time ministry of announcing the Gospel in word and deed..., and after the Resurrection to continue, full-time, his lifestyle and ministry even unto the laying down of their lives....”

            Some members of this small itinerant group included Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, Susanna, James and John, and later people like Paul and Barnabas. 

            “This is the group, the form of discipleship” Sister Sandra Schneiders writes, “that supplies the primary biblical model for ministerial religious life.”

            Jesus did not call many to this form of discipleship, of which there were and are many forms, and no one of which is superior to any other.

            Jesus celebrated with his itinerant band of disciples, but also with other friends outside this group.  “In short,” Sandra Schneiders observes, “Jesus’ personal choice was a mixed life of prayer, both communal and solitary, and intense ministerial action in the public sphere...to women and men equally.”

            “Jesus” she points out, “was an itinerant minister.  He was not a member of a monastic community....”  He did not wear distinctive clothing, had no fixed residence, and did not follow a pre-determined daily routine of work and prayer.

            “Anyone examining the life of ministerial religious women in the United States today,” she writes, “should have no difficulty recognizing their choice of and commitment to the pattern of life to which Jesus called his original band of itinerant disciples.”

            These women, she continues, are “deeply committed to the egalitarian, nonauthoritarian, collegial exercise of authority and practice of obedience that Jesus inaugurated among his original band,” but unfortunately this is not the style of leadership that characterizes much of the Church today.

            Despite many negative developments, such as the “visitation” of religious communities of women and the “doctrinal assessment” of the LCWR, “religious know what they are called to, [and] what they are trying to live.  While it may not always be clear how to do it, most are quite clear that denaturing their life is not the answer.”

            Jesus promised his special disciples a “hundredfold in this life, persecution, and finally eternal life (Mark 10:29-30).”

            His promise shall certainly be fulfilled, no matter how many obstacles are placed in its way, even within the Church itself.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

11/16/09

"Thanksgiving, 2009"

Week of November 16, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            My traditional Thanksgiving column this year is devoted, in thanksgiving, to one of the Catholic Church’s greatest assets, namely, the extraordinary contributions over so many years of religious women to the Church’s missionary, ministerial, and spiritual life.

            Sister Sandra Schneiders’ excellent article on ministerial religious life in the October 2nd issue of the National Catholic Reporter situates that contribution in its proper biblical and historical contexts.

            As she points out, it was not until 1900 that noncloistered apostolic congregations of women were formally recognized as an authentic form of religious life.  Pope Leo XIII did this.

            However, Sandra Schneiders is emphatic in her insistence that this papal decision did not create a new form of religious life.

            “It was,” she writes, “the public recognition of a fait accompli, namely, that over the course of nearly 400 years a new form of women’s religious life had emerged and its validity, already long recognized by the people of God and by civil governments...[only] required acknowledgment by the institutional church.”

            However, for fifty years thereafter women religious actually lived a kind of hybrid life; that is, they maintained “virtually the whole of monastic life at home and a full-time ministerial life in their apostolates.”

            Some Catholics were at least vaguely familiar with that hybrid life; most were completely unaware of it.

            The typical nonstop 17-hour-day (from 5 a.m. until 10 at night) in the pre-Vatican II convent required the nuns, “dressed at all times in the restrictive fluting and pleats, floor-length gowns, starched wimples and veiled headdresses of 17th- or 18th-century peasants or nobles,” to struggle to fit in daily Mass (sometimes followed by Benediction), meditation, devotional exercises (such as the Rosary and Stations of the Cross), some form of the Divine Office, spiritual reading from assigned books, daily manual work assignments inside the convent, three meals in common, often in silence, and an hour of “recreation,” which usually included handwork or mending, schoolwork, or parish and community tasks.

            On the same day, the nuns prepared classes and carried a full day’s professional schedule in school, hospital, or other Catholic institutions.

            “In short,” Sandra Schneiders points out, “they carried all the burdens of monastic life with none of the leisure for personal prayer, lectio divina [meditative reading of Sacred Scripture], genuine community life, or ordinary recreation of monastics, and all the burdens of the apostolate without the professional preparation or privileges enjoyed by the clergy.”

            She puts that double-life in a formula: “‘monastics at home’ and ‘apostles abroad’.”

            It was Pope Pius XII who launched the process of renewal that would be taken up by the Second Vatican Council more than a decade later.

            As Catholic educational institutions staffed by sisters multiplied rapidly in the 1950s, the Pope urged religious superiors to begin the modernization of their congregations, including the abolition of outmoded customs, the modification of habits, and increased attention to the professional education of the sisters.

            At the subsequent ecumenical council Cardinal Leo-Jozef Suenens of Belgium vigorously promoted the renewal of women’s religious life.  Vatican II itself urged these communities to return to their biblical roots and their founding charisms, and to develop a greater measure of engagement with the modern world.

            Women religious responded with energy and enthusiasm. In a period of “barely 40 years they fairly well bridged the historical gap between their early modern European origins and postmodern American ecclesial and cultural reality.”

            Some Catholics were taken aback by what they interpreted as the speed of the renewal, but in actuality the development of non-monastic ministerial religious life for women had been underway for nearly four centuries.

            The council mandated a renewal chapter (or assembly) for virtually all congregations, at which their constitutions were revised and subsequently approved by the Vatican.          

            Where the old constitutions had placed primary emphasis on the monastic side of religious life and only secondary emphasis on the ministerial, the revised constitutions defined religious life as having “a single, integrated end.”

            The most immediately visible, though hardly the most important, change was in the habit.  After a period of experimentation, most renewed congregations successfully made the transition to simple contemporary dress appropriate to the now quite varied situations in their ministerial lives.

            “If the habit was the emotional flash point of renewal,” Sandra Schneiders writes, “the broadening and full commitment to ministry” was the “spiritual substance at the heart of renewal.”

            We should not trust the judgment of anyone for whom the habit issue is more important than the issue of ministry.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

11/02/09

"The Papacy: A Canonical Problem"

Week of November 2, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            Over nine years ago one of the Catholic Church’s finest canon lawyers, Father James Provost, a professor at The Catholic University of America, published an exceedingly important article in America magazine, “What If the Pope Became Disabled?” (7/30/00).

            Father Provost died a month later at the age of 60.  Unfortunately, his urgent words of advice in that article have still not been acted upon.

            He had pointed out that the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law makes no provision for the situation in which a Pope becomes completely disabled, by lapsing into a coma, for example.  The concern had become progressively acute as then-Pope John Paul II began to manifest signs of severe physical frailty.

            John Paul II died before the problem became full-blown, but the current Pope, Benedict XVI, is over 82, although in relatively good health.  But there is still no canonical provision to deal with the kind of situation that worried Father Provost and many others in the Catholic Church.

            I did a column on the subject just two months after Father Provost’s death, pointing out that of all the questions the media usually posed about John Paul II’s legacy, there was never any expressed concern about the Pope’s “inexplicable failure to provide for his own succession (and for that of any other pope) in the case of physical and/or mental incapacity.”

            “In this new age of advanced medical technology,” the column continued, “it is a fact that people can be kept alive long past the time when they can function in any meaningfully human manner.”

            At the time, former President Ronald Reagan, who had left office in January 1989, was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s Disease.  One could only have imagined the chaos that would have ensued within the U. S. Government and the world community generally if Mr. Reagan had still been President and there were no constitutional provisions, such as now exist in the 25th Amendment, for the legal transfer of authority.

            But that is the very risk to which the Catholic Church continues to be exposed today.  Father Provost had referred to this glaring canonical deficiency as a “serious vacuum in the church’s constitutional law.”

            Most recently, Jesuit Father Peter Schineller, associate editor of America, raised this question once again in an article entitled, “Power Vacuum?  Canon law and the continuity of papal leadership” (10/12/09).

            Father Schineller put forward the kinds of questions that few people want to talk about openly, particularly those close to the Pope.  What if the Pope were to fall and “sustain brain damage, fall into a comatose state, suffer from advanced Alzheimer’s or otherwise become enfeebled or impeded....?”

            Father Schineller noted that it would be possible for the Pope to remain comatose “for years.”  In that case, no new dioceses could be created and no bishops appointed.  In other words, much of the work of the Church would grind to a halt.

            “The shocking fact,” Father Schineller observed, “is that currently there are no provisions in canon law to cover such exigencies, no way to replace the pope if he is impeded while living.”

            The present Code of Canon Law declares that in such a situation “nothing is to be innovated in the governance of the universal Church; however, special laws enacted for these circumstances are to be observed” (canon 335).

            The problem is that such special laws have neither been enacted nor promulgated.  The situation today under the 82-year-old Benedict XVI is exactly the same as it was under his predecessor, John Paul II, who died in after several years of obviously deteriorating health

            “Many hope,” Father Schineller continued, “that Pope Benedict has prepared written instructions on what to do were he ever to become incompetent (instructions that also include advance medical directives).  But it is not known for certain that he has done so.” 

            And even if he has, there might still be unresolved canonical questions that would be subject to varied interpretations.

            Father Schineller acknowledged in his own article that America had raised similar concerns in previous years, and cited Father Provost’s article in particular. 

            However, he did not leave his readers without a suggestion, drawn from the experience of his own Jesuit Order.  Should a superior general become incapacitated, four general assistants are elected and it devolves upon them to determine if a replacement is in order.

            If so, a general congregation is called by the temporary vicar general, and a new head of the Order is elected.

            There are surely other possible remedies, but some canonical  solution is called for–the sooner, the better.         

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222April 2005 at age 84,

"All Saints–2009"

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            The feast of All Saints will be celebrated this coming Sunday.  I was surprised that I had devoted only three columns to this feast, and those in the years 1994, 1996, and 2002.  I am retrieving some of their main points in this week’s column with the hope that they might be of enduring value, both theologically and spiritually.

            The 1994 column began: “The feast of All Saints, on November 1, provides an annual reminder that there are many more saints in heaven than the relatively few who have been officially recognized by the Church.

            “For every St. Francis of Assisi or St. Rose of Lima there are thousands of unknown and long forgotten mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors, co-workers, nurses, teachers, manual laborers, and other individuals in various kinds of occupations who lived holy lives that were consistent with the values of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

            “Although each is in eternal glory, none of their names is attached to a liturgical feast, a parish church, a pious society, or any other ecclesiastical institution.  The catch-all feast that we celebrate next week is all the recognition they're ever going to receive from the Church.”

            However, the Church does not canonize saints simply to honor them, or, what is even farther from the mark, to honor their religious orders.

            “The Church makes saints in order to provide a steady, ever renewable stream of exemplars, or sacraments, of Christ, lest our following of Christ be reduced to some kind of abstract, intellectual exercise.

            “Saints help us understand what the Gospel demands of us as disciples of Christ.  Saints also help us understand the nature and purpose of the Church.

            “If the Church only canonized priests and nuns, for example, it would be teaching a seriously faulty message: namely, that the ideal Christian is a celibate, unlike the 95 percent who marry and raise families.

            “Unfortunately, the great majority of those whom the Church has canonized–and continues to canonize–are celibate priests and nuns.”

            Two years later, I pointed out that “in this modern age it would be highly unlikely for a married person of truly heroic virtue to be canonized unless, upon the death of their spouse, she or he founded or entered a religious order.

            “There are three reasons for this imbalance between celibate and married canonized saints: the first two are financial and political, the third is theological.

            “It costs a great deal of money to move a canonization forward over the course of many years, and, therefore, one needs the backing of a large and powerful organization, usually a religious order, not only to provide the necessary financial resources but also to have the Vatican take the petition seriously.

            “But money and influence alone do not account for the disproportionate number of celibate clergy and religious on the official list of saints.  The theological factor has always been the crucial one.

            “For centuries many church leaders, theologians, and spiritual writers regarded marriage (and the sexual intimacy that is intrinsic to it) as the lesser of two evils.  It is ‘better to marry than to burn,’ St. Paul insisted (1 Corinthians 7:9).”

            After St. Paul, the theology of marriage went from bad to worse.  Thus, the “Fathers of the Church, particularly St. Augustine, laid the groundwork for the medieval view of marriage as ‘a lawful remedy for concupiscence.’  For Augustine marriage had no other purpose than to produce children.  Sexual desires are the unfortunate effects of Original Sin, and Original Sin itself is transmitted through the sexual union of husband and wife.”

            The Second Vatican Council began the slow process of putting things right, but it has been almost 45 years since its adjournment and the Church continues to canonize a disproportionate number of priests and nuns.

            “The theology that underlies our annual feast of All Saints,” I wrote in 2002, “is aptly expressed in the council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: ‘In the lives of those companions of ours who are more perfectly transformed into the image of Christ, God shows, vividly, to humanity his presence and his face.
            “‘He speaks to us in them and offers us a sign of his Kingdom, to which we are powerfully attracted, so great a cloud of witness are we given and such an affirmation of the truth of the Gospel’.”  The quotation is from article 50.
            “What is true of saints is true of the Church,” the column concluded. “It is a communion of saints and, as such, ‘a light to the nations’.”

            These reflections, I believe, remain valid today. 

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

10/19/09

"The Crisis in Anglicanism Revisited"

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            At the end of May of this year I did a column on “The Crisis in Anglicanism,” prompted by an important address given in Houston, Texas, by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord George Carey.           

            Lord Carey had argued the point that, because of the divisions created within the worldwide Anglican Communion by the ordination in 2003 of Canon V. Gene Robinson, an openly partnered gay, as the incoming bishop of New Hampshire, it is no longer clear that the unity of the Anglican Communion is entirely consistent with Anglicanism’s traditional regard for local ecclesiastical autonomy.

            It seemed to Archbishop Carey that the autonomy of The Episcopal Church in the United States, which has generally supported Bishop Robinson’s controversial ordination, is now working at cross purposes with the demands for unity in the Anglican Communion as a whole.

            At its General Convention this past July, The Episcopal Church passed two resolutions: one that affirmed that the office of bishop is open to all qualified candidates, including gays and lesbians, partnered or not, and the other that opened the door to future blessings of same-sex unions.

            Both resolutions have been interpreted as being against the spirit, if not the letter, of the Anglican Communion’s official doctrinal stance and pastoral policy on these matters.  As a result many Anglicans have wondered how The Episcopal Church’s actions are consistent with its stated desire to remain in full communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury and worldwide Anglicanism.

            Toward the end of July, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, released a statement, “Communion, Covenant and the Anglican Future,” which consisted of his reflections on the actions taken at The Episcopal Church’s General Convention (for the full text of Archbishop Williams’s statement, see Origins, 9/3/09).

            In his statement, the Archbishop of Canterbury challenged the view that the issue of the public blessing of same-sex unions is a matter of civil liberties, human dignity, or freedom of conscience.  He insisted that the biblical evidence and the longstanding tradition of the Church stand in opposition to the practice. 

            At the same time, he described prejudice and violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons as “sinful and disgraceful.”

            Archbishop Williams also challenged the view that the autonomy of a local church, namely, The Episcopal Church, can, for all practical purposes, ignore the judgment of the Anglican Communion as a whole.  He cited the “venerable principle” that “what affects the communion of all should be decided by all.”

            Otherwise, the archbishop argued, the Anglican Communion would have to be reconceived as “an essentially loose federation of local bodies with a cultural history in common, rather than a theologically coherent ‘community of Christian communities’.”

            Archbishop Williams suggested that a “two-tier” or “two-track” model might be necessary to witness to the common Anglican heritage. 

            Most of the Anglican provinces would choose to be full partners in the Communion, but those local communities, such as The Episcopal Church, that choose the second track would not fully participate in the official activities of the Anglican Communion, but would continue to cooperate in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion.

            On the first of September a small group of Episcopal bishops who are very much in the minority on these matters had a meeting in London with the Archbishop of Canterbury to present their side of the argument.  The bishops are heads of the dioceses of Albany, Dallas, North Dakota, Northern Indiana, South Carolina, West Texas, and Western Louisiana. 

            Archbishop Williams was careful not to issue a public statement following the meeting in support of one side or the other, although his sentiments are evidently with those opposed to the ordinations of openly gay and lesbian individuals to the priesthood and the episcopate and the public blessing of same-sex unions.  The statement referred to above makes that clear.

            The seven bishops who met with Rowan Williams also made it clear that they wished to remain “constituent members of both the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church.”

            In their own statement they expressed support of the Anglican Communion Covenant and urged bishops, priests, deacons, and laypersons of The Episcopal Church who support the adoption of the Covenant to do so publicly.

            This current dispute within the Anglican Communion may not be of much interest to many Roman Catholics, but the issues involved in the controversy affect both Churches.

            The tensions between central authority and local autonomy exist in Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism alike, but in different ways.  We need to learn from one another’s problems and experiences in dealing with these tensions.

            We cannot simply ignore them.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

10/12/09

"Cardinal Mahony at Notre Dame"

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, spoke recently at the University of Notre Dame on the topic, “Fostering the Baptismal Priesthood in the Year for Priests.” 

            He departed from his prepared text at the outset, referring to Notre Dame as “the premier Catholic university” in America.  His standing-room-only audience gratefully applauded.

            The cardinal’s gracious gesture came relatively soon after some 80 fellow bishops–a minority, to be sure, but a large one--had publicly criticized the university for inviting the President of the United States to deliver this past May’s Commencement address and to receive an honorary degree.

            Indeed, Cardinal Mahony’s very appearance at Notre Dame served as a message, not only to the university but to the Catholic Church at large, that he and the majority of U. S. bishops did not agree with the criticisms mounted by that large minority of bishops.

            In doing so, Cardinal Mahony took a more indirect approach than had been taken a month earlier by Archbishop Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe, in an interview with Tom Roberts, editor at large of the National Catholic Reporter (“Bishop decries ‘combative tactics’ of a minority of U. S. Bishops,” 8/12/09).

            Archbishop Sheehan pointed out that he had told his fellow bishops at their June meeting that more can be accomplished through collaboration and seeking common ground than through confrontation–something he had learned from the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.

            He cited his own experience in discussions with New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson.  In part because of these discussions, the Governor reversed his long-standing support for the death penalty.  “We need to be building bridges, not burning them,” the archbishop insisted.

            Asked if there were any other bishops who agreed with him, Archbishop Sheehan replied, “Of course, the majority.”

            Indeed, there has been a persistent rumor that the papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, privately chastised the bishops for the actions of some, lest the Catholic Church in America be regarded as politically partisan.

            There is a stark contrast between the behavior of the minority of U. S. bishops with the posture adopted by the Pope and the Vatican generally.  President Obama was received cordially by Benedict XVI in early July, less than two months after the Notre Dame graduation.

            In the same month the Pope made the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, an honorary canon of St. John Lateran basilica, even though Mr. Sarkozy is pro-abortion rights, pro-gay marriage, and married invalidly to an actress.

            Suffice it to say, Cardinal Mahony gave an excellent presentation at Notre Dame that emphasized the sacrament of Baptism that binds everyone in the Church–laity, religious, and clergy alike–as the basis of our common priesthood.  One hopes that the complete text will be published soon.

            For those who would like to probe the cardinal’s thinking on the subject more deeply, I would strongly recommend his pastoral letter on ministry, “As I Have Done for You,” written in collaboration with his priests and lay ministers and published in Origins nine years ago (5/4/00).

            The letter insisted, as did the cardinal’s remarks at Notre Dame, that an emphasis on the priesthood of all believers is not a “stopgap measure.”  Even if there were once again an abundance of vocations to the ordained priesthood, “there would still remain the need for cultivating, developing and sustaining the full flourishing of ministries that we have witnessed in the church since the Second Vatican Council.”

            Unfortunately, the cardinal pointed out, it has taken the grave shortage of priests to awaken the Church to an appreciation of the great variety and value of its lay ministers. 

            “Both ordained and baptismal priesthoods share in this one priesthood [of Christ]....What emerges from the Second Vatican Council is a clear theology of the laity rooted in an understanding of the church as the people of God, in the universal call to holiness and in an appreciation of the diversity of the nature of the church both hierarchical and charismatic.”

            Following the lead given by Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Caritas in veritate (Love in truth), and connecting its concerns with this Year for Priests, Cardinal Mahony noted in his Notre Dame address that “the ordained priest best serves his people by promoting their royal priesthood.....”

            The priest is not to focus only on his own spiritual life or the uniqueness of his ministry, “but on how...he might teach and guide, assist and encourage his parishioners.....”

            Pastorally important words from an important pastoral leader.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

10/05/09

"Health Care Reform"

Week of October 5, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            It is highly unlikely that, by the time this week’s column appears, any piece of legislation on health-care reform will have passed both houses of Congress and been signed into law by the President. 

            The point and purpose of this week’s column, however, is not to advocate in favor of one or another proposed bill, but to make sure that Catholics and other interested readers know what the official teaching of the Catholic Church is--not on any of the specific proposals, but on the key moral elements of any reform of the health-care system in the United States.

            Bishop William Murphy, head of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, and chair of the U. S. Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, gave the essence of the Church’s position in a letter to members of Congress, dated July 17, an excerpt of which was cited in an editorial in the National Catholic Reporter, “The right to health care” (9/18/09):

            “Reform efforts must begin with the principle that decent health care is not a privilege, but a right and a requirement to protect the life and dignity of every person....The bishops’ conference believes health care reform should be truly universal and it should be genuinely affordable” (italics in original).

            The teaching that health care is a right rather than a privilege was articulated by Pope John XXIII in his encyclical, Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth), published less than two months before his death on June 3, 1963.

            The Pope began that encyclical with a list of rights, the first set of which pertained to the right to life and a worthy standard of living.  Included in these rights were the right to “food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest and finally the necessary social services” (n. 11; my italics).

            Pope John Paul II included health insurance in a list of “the rights of workers,” alongside social security, pensions, and compensation in the case of accidents, in his own encyclical, Centesimus Annus (The Hundreth Year), n. 15, on the centenary of Pope Leo XIII’s landmark encyclical, Rerum Novarum (Of New Things), which had been published in 1891.

            Among the major thrusts of John Paul II’s encyclical were its concern for the poor and its explicit endorsement of the so-called “preferential option for the poor” (n. 11).  Thus, when we are reminded that there are almost 50 million Americans without health insurance, and that some 30 million of these are children, we can begin to appreciate the moral urgency of health-care reform.

            But there are many Americans–Catholics included–who are satisfied with their own private insurance plans (in spite of continually rising premiums) or with their Government-run Medicare or Medicaid.  They oppose health-care reform because they worry that it will somehow put at risk what they currently have.

            Therefore, when it comes to providing universal health insurance, they balk.  They ask, why should our tax dollars go to support people (many of whom are African-American and Hispanic-American) who, in their minds, are responsible for their own health care?

            There may be operating here a kind of Social Darwinism (“God helps those who help themselves”) that is directly at odds with Catholic social teaching and the demands of the Gospel itself.  It is a mentality encapsulated in the crack, “I’m up, pull up the ladder.”

            A CathoJustice for All” (1986): nn. 86, 90, 103, 191, 212, 230, 247, and 286.

            In the same bishops’ annual Labor Day statement released early last month, Bishop Murphy wrote on their behalf: “The Catholic bishops continue to work for health care that is accessible, affordable and respects the life and dignity of every human being from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.” 

            Indeed, he continued, “Health care is an essential good for every human person.  In a society like ours, no one should lack access to decent health care.”

            Accordingly, he urged every Catholic “to join the bishops in advocating for health care reform that is truly universal and protects human life at every stage of development” (Origins, 9/17/09).

            The Catechism of the Catholic Church had also supported health care for those without access to it: “Concern for the health of its citizens requires that society help in the attainment of living-conditions that allow them to grow and reach maturity: food and clothing, housing, health care, basic education, employment, and social assistance” (n. 2288, my italics).

            Official Catholic teaching on this issue is not in question.  Catholic attitudes are.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222lic has only to note the many references to health care in the U. S. Bishops’ pastoral letter, “Economic

"Senator Kennedy’s Funeral"

Week of September 28, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            There is a Latin phrase in the Easter Vigil liturgy, “O felix culpa” (“O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”–from the Easter Proclamation, also known as the Exultet, from its first word, “Rejoice”).

            In clerical circles at least, the expression “felix culpa” has frequently been used to describe an unfortunate event or circumstance that has a good, though unintended or unexpected, consequence.

            The venomous (and I choose that adjective deliberately) reaction to Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s presence at Senator Edward Kennedy’s funeral in Boston on August 29th was just such a development–a “felix culpa,” or “happy fault.”  I’ll explain why in a moment.

            There is no one in the United States hierarchy with greater impeccable anti-abortion credentials than the Archbishop of Boston.  But it is also true of Cardinal O’Malley that he has good pastoral judgment.

            Thus, during the 2004 election campaign when some American bishops were threatening to deny Holy Communion to the other Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry, who also happened to be that year’s Democratic candidate for President of the United States, Senator Kerry’s own bishop, Cardinal O’Malley, did not follow suit.

            If any bishop might have denied Senator Kerry Communion because of his pro-choice (not pro-abortion) votes in the U. S. Senate, it was surely the Cardinal-Archbishop of Boston.  But he chose not to make such a threat or hand down such an order to his priests.

            In other words, Cardinal O’Malley showed then, as he did again by attending Senator Kennedy’s funeral, that it is possible to be vigorously anti-abortion while at the same time exercising pastoral prudence.

            Why, then, did I describe the harsh reaction to the Cardinal’s presence at the Kennedy funeral last month as a “felix culpa,” or “happy fault”?

            Because it showed good, conservative bishops like Cardinal O’Malley just how extreme and even fanatical some Catholics can be, and are, in the anti-abortion cause. 

            We here at the University of Notre Dame saw that extremism in action in connection with our graduation ceremony in May, when the likes of Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, and Alan Keyes, Barack Obama’s opponent in the 2004 Senate race in Illinois, led the on-campus protests.

            The event proved to be a triumphant success and a dramatic repudiation of the 80-odd bishops (not including Cardinal O’Malley, by the way) who had publicly protested the university’s selection of President Obama as its Commencement speaker and recipient of an honorary doctorate. 

            One archbishop, Michael Sheehan, of Santa Fe, New Mexico, recently went on record in criticism of the “loud tactics” of some of his fellow bishops.  (See his interview with Tom Roberts in the National Catholic Reporter, “Bishop decries ‘combative tactics’ of a minority of U. S. bishops,” 8/26/09.) 

            There is a persistent rumor that Archbishop Pietro Sambi, papal nuncio to the United States, had also privately criticized those bishops at a recent meeting of the Conference, and that he has given the green light to other bishops, like Archbishop Sheehan, to speak out on the issue.

            Some of the nastiest rhetoric from the anti-abortion forces in the Catholic Church has come, however, from lay people, and it was directed most recently at surely one of the least likely targets in the entire Catholic community, namely, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston. 

            According to The Boston Globe, the archdiocese received “hundreds of phone calls and e-mails,” in addition to negative comments by bloggers and some anti-abortion organizations which took the Cardinal to task for participating in the Kennedy funeral.  One of his sharpest critics was Raymond Arroyo, anchor and news director on Mother Angelica’s Eternal Word Television Network.

            The Cardinal responded to this criticism on his own blog, excerpts of which were published in the Globe (Michael Paulson, “O’Malley defends role at Kennedy rites,” 9/3/09).

            He warned against “harsh judgments” and attributing “the worst motives” to people with whom Catholics have disagreements, saying “these attitudes and practices do irreparable damage to the communion of the Church.”

            “If any cause is motivated by judgment, anger or vindictiveness,” he continued, “it will be doomed to marginalization and failure.”

            And to those who argued that Senator Kennedy did not merit a Catholic funeral because of his support for abortion rights, the Cardinal wrote: “In the strongest terms I disagree with that position.”

            “We will not change hearts by turning away from people in their time of need and when they are experiencing grief and loss,” he added.  “Our proclamation of the truth is hindered when we are divided and fighting with each other.”

            Sound words from Cardinal O’Malley. 

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

09/21/09

"Reversing the Liturgical Field"

Week of September 21, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            Some readers may have thought last week’s column on the “Year for Priests” unduly pessimistic about the present state of the Catholic Church.  To the contrary, one of latest developments inside the Vatican only underscores the point of that column.

            According to a report late last month by Andrea Tornelli in the Italian daily, Il Giornale, the Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Antonio Ca?izares Llovera, met with Pope Benedict XVI on April 4th (the fact that we have a precise date is significant) to present a list of proposed changes to the liturgical norms for the celebration of the Eucharist.

            The proposals were said to have been formally approved at a meeting of the Congregation in March, and were designed to “restore a greater sense of the sacred” to the celebration of Mass.

            Among the proposals that had been approved by the Congregation in March and presented to the Pope early the next month were calls to end the practices of receiving Communion in the hand and having the priest celebrate Mass facing the congregation.

            Once the story was leaked to the press, however, there were denials (of sorts) from the Vatican.  Undoubtedly, Vatican officials were miffed by the leak and a statement was issued by the deputy director of the Vatican Press Office, Passionist Father Ciro Benedettini, that said only that “for the time being there are no institutional proposals for a modification of the liturgical books used at present.”

            Some Vatican observers predict that the delay may last as much as a year, or until the matter quiets down.

            But what is clear is that something is in the works and is entirely consistent with what Roman sources have been hearing for some time about the Pope’s desire to return gradually to Communion on the tongue as the normative practice.  At the same time, the Pope knows full well that such a highly controversial reversal of current practice could never be accomplished in an instant.

            The practice of Communion in the hand was originally granted by the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship on May 29, 1969 (before it was combined with the Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments by Pope Paul VI in 1975), in response to requests from various episcopal conferences, including that of the United States, and with the explicit approval of Paul VI.

            Lest anyone question Pope Benedict XVI’s personal preference in this matter, it should be pointed out that, beginning on the feast of Corpus Christ last year, those receiving Communion from the Pope must do so only on the tongue.  He has also expressed support for restoring the practice of the priest’s celebrating Mass “facing the East,” which means in plain English with his back to the people.

            Given the possibility that such reversals (sometimes referred to as a “reform of the reform”) will eventually be mandated, one can only imagine the confusion, frustration, and anger that many priests and lay people will experience.

            Today, if individual Catholics choose to receive the sacrament on the tongue, they are free to do so.  Eucharistic ministers–priests and lay people alike--respect their wishes.  The great majority, however, prefer to receive Communion in the hand and continue to do so.

            But this proposal, if enacted, would actually prevent Catholics from making that choice for themselves.  They would be denied the option, approved by Pope Paul VI, that has been available to them for the past 40 years, namely, to receive Communion in the hand or on the tongue.

            The so-called “John Paul II priests” would very likely be happy with such a reversal of practice and would ostentatiously deny giving Communion to those with outstretched hands.  However, many other priests, whether old enough to have been shaped by Vatican II or not, would ignore the mandate and continue to distribute Communion in the hand to those who requested it.

            What would happen as a result of this tug-of-war at Communion time?  Would some bishops threaten priests with suspension?  If so, how many priests would expose themselves to such a penalty?  If the numbers were large, how would the Church be able to compensate for the additional decline in the number of available priests?

            Mandating the celebration of Mass with the priest’s back to the congregation might pose an even greater problem, except in churches built before Vatican II and still with main altars facing the rear wall.  But such churches are probably in the minority today.  The architectural problems would be exceeded only by the pastoral dislocations.

            May none of this come to pass.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

09/14/09

"Year for Priests"

Week of September 14, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            Pope Benedict XVI declared this a “Year for Priests,” beginning on June 19th, the feast of the Sacred Heart, and ending next June with an international gathering of priests in Rome.  The Pope named St. Jean Vianney, the Curé d’Ars, as universal patron of priests to mark the 150th anniversary of his death.

            As part of the year-long observance there will be an international priests’ retreat in Ars, France, sponsored by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, from September 27th to October 3rd, and a symposium on the “faithfulness” of priests at The Catholic University of America on October 6th and 7th.

            Undoubtedly, the pious thing for most priests to do is to get fully into the spirit of this “Year for Priests” and for lay people to renew their appreciation for the good work that so many priests have done and continue to do in the life of the Church.

            But there is a more realistic dimension to this “Year for Priests,” and it is one that never sees the light of day in most of the diocesan papers in the United States and Canada because bishops will not permit any discordant opinions to be expressed.

            One such voice, that of a priest ordained almost 40 years, has expressed the views of fellow priests–not all, perhaps not even most, but definitely many. 

            Apart from this week’s column, his views and theirs have heretofore not been heard, much less taken into serious account by the Vatican or by many bishops in this “Year for Priests.”

            My priest-correspondent has identified ten issues that priests need help in facing–help that will not be forthcoming at symposia on the “faithfulness” of priests, nor at international retreats in France.

            1. The shortage of diocesan priests cannot be addressed by band-aid solutions, like inviting priests from foreign countries to engage in sacramental ministry in dioceses with sharply declining numbers of domestic vocations.  There needs to be a public discussion, involving priests themselves, concerning obligatory celibacy and its pastoral ramifications.       

            2. Many priests do not perceive themselves to be close collaborators with their bishops, as Vatican II envisioned them to be (Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, n. 7).  Too few bishops reach out to their priests to ask for their honest opinions about anything that seriously affects the life of the Church and the priesthood.

            3. Many diocesan priests still feel betrayed by their bishops with the passage in 2002 of the Dallas Charter.  Priests who have been accused by anyone of any sexual impropriety whatever with minors have been summarily removed from the active ministry.  At the same time, no bishop, other than one cardinal-archbishop, has been forced to resign because of his mishandling of the sexual-abuse scandal.

            4. There is a growing rift between so-called “Vatican II priests” and so-called “John Paul II priests,” which is painfully evident in some dioceses when priests gather for the Eucharist at retreats and other diocesan events.

            5. There is a concomitant return to clericalism in the priesthood, involving not only a fascination with cassocks and birettas and a preference for antiquated vestments and devotions, but also a negative, censorious tone to preaching and a cavalier dismissal of consultative structures that are supposed to be in place in every parish.  

            6. At the same time, the Vatican and the bishops have failed to address concerns raised by the disproportionate number of gays in seminaries and the priesthood, including also the hierarchy.  It is the elephant in the living room, as pointed out almost ten years ago in Father Donald Cozzens’s The Changing Face of the Priesthood.   Yet how many priests’ retreats and clergy conferences have used that book as a basis for discussion? 

            7. There has been a substantial attrition of Catholics–women, gays and lesbians, divorced people, critics of official teachings on sexuality and reproduction--from active membership in the Church, to the point where fully one-tenth of the U.S. population now consists of ex-Catholics.  What is being done about it?

            8. Resigned priests are treated like traitors.  To be sure, some bishops welcome them back at clergy reunions, but others boycott such gatherings as a sign of their contempt.

            9. Appointments to the hierarchy since the pontificate of Paul VI have been of a certain type.  Those who do not fit the official profile are excluded from consideration or are harassed by Vatican officials if they are already bishops.

            10. So many senior priests say to their friends, “I can’t wait for retirement.”  Why this sense of discouragement over the present state of the Church, bordering sometimes on hopelessness?

            Alternate thoughts for this “Year for Priests.”    

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

09/07/09

"Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration"

Week of September 7, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            There was a front-page story in The Boston Globe last month signaling the return of perpetual eucharistic adoration to Boston.

            In the 1940s a group of cloistered nuns began the practice of eucharistic adoration at St. Clement’s Shrine, a former Universalist church that had been purchased by the archdiocese of Boston to accommodate the overflow crowds from St. Cecelia’s parish in the Back Bay section of the city.

            Soon there was a nocturnal adoration society formed.  However, in the 1960s, with changes in the Catholic Church and in the neighborhood, the practice of perpetual adoration at St. Clement’s Shrine died out–only to be restored this year.

            The Globe article provoked a few comments from readers some of whom are convinced of the paper’s anti-Catholic bias.  Letter-writers criticized the reporter’s constant reference to the consecrated eucharistic host as a “wafer.”

            They also faulted him for failing to recognize the important doctrinal and theological difference between Christ’s “sacramental” presence in the Eucharist and a “literal” presence, that in centuries past gave rise to charges of cannibalism against Catholics.

            I happen to know the Globe reporter, Michael Paulson, and have been interviewed by him many times over the years.  Although Paulson is an excellent reporter, he would never claim to be a theologian, but neither is he anti-Catholic.  If there were any lapses in his article, they were made unintentionally and certainly without malice.

            It was unfortunate, to be sure, that he constantly referred to the eucharistic host as a “wafer,” “consecrated” or not.  However, the distinction between a “wafer” and a “host,” that some letter-writers were quick to insist upon, would be lost on non-Catholics (the Globe reporter himself is not a Christian), and indeed on most Catholics as well.

            The constant use of the word “wafer” did lead some readers to conclude that the practice of eucharistic adoration is nothing less than a form of idolatry.  How else explain why someone would sit or kneel hour after hour in adoration of a simple “wafer”?  

            It was also unfortunate that Paulson described the Catholic belief in the Real Presence (a technical theological and doctrinal term that did not appear in the story) as a “literal” transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus during Mass.  The transformation (the medieval word was “transubstantiation”) is sacramental, not literal or physical.

            In other words, the bread and the wine retain the properties of bread and wine.  They look like bread and wine and taste like bread and wine, but Catholics (and many other Christians as well) believe that the bread and wine have been sacramentally changed into the body and blood of Christ.

            Thus, the bread and wine may still appear to be bread and wine, but in the course of the Eucharistic Prayer (formerly called the Canon of the Mass) they have been changed sacramentally, not literally or physically, into the body and blood of Christ.  Paulson did quote Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley correctly on the “sacramental presence of Christ” in the Eucharist.

            It should be pointed out that the Church has always condemned devotional excesses that contradicted its official teachings.  One of those excesses was the mistaken belief that, if the host were scratched, it would bleed. 

            Another excess that unfortunately perdured into the mid-20th century in some parishes was the practice of putting the consecrated host “to bed” following Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and accompanied by the singing of  “Good Night Sweet Jesus,” as the church lights were turned off, one by one from the back of the church to the front.    

            The practice of eucharistic adoration began in the 12th century, when the Real Presence of Christ was widely rejected by heretics or misunderstood by poorly educated Catholics.  The Church saw eucharistic adoration as a way of reaffirming its faith in the Real Presence and of promoting renewed devotion to it.

            However, as time went on, eucharistic devotions, including adoration, drifted further and further away from their liturgical grounding in the Mass itself.

            Notwithstanding Pope Benedict XVI’s personal endorsement of eucharistic adoration and the sporadic restoration of the practice in the archdiocese of Boston and elsewhere, it is difficult to speak favorably about the devotion today.

            Now that most Catholics are literate and even well-educated, the Mass is in the language of the people (i.e, the vernacular), and its rituals are relatively easy to understand and follow, there is little or no need for extraneous eucharistic devotions.  The Mass itself provides all that a Catholic needs sacramentally and spiritually.

            Eucharistic adoration, perpetual or not, is a doctrinal, theological, and spiritual step backward, not forward.      

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

08/31/09

"Labor Day, 2009"

Week of August 31, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            Just before every Labor Day weekend in the United States and Canada, this column devotes its full attention to the general issue of justice in the Catholic Church and to the particular situation of ecclesial ministers and other church employees in parishes, dioceses, schools, hospitals, and similar Catholic institutions.

            There are observations made in last year’s column and in 2006 that I believe need to be repeated this year. 

            I noted last year that I receive fewer complaints of violations of justice, not because such violations no longer exist, but because so many of those who once worked for the Church no longer do so, and a depressingly large number of those are probably less active in the Church or no longer active at all.

            This relative silence might also mean that church employees may not know to whom to complain, or believe that registering a complaint would not do any good anyway.  And so they keep their heads down, and do their work as best they can, hoping against hope that they will not be fired, particularly if their livelihood depends upon their having the job. 

            But there is another important factor that may explain the feelings of demoralization among some of the Church’s ecclesial ministers and other employees. 

            I wrote last year that “the hierarchical population has changed dramatically since the 1980s. The conservatism of many of the priests who were appointed as bishops during the previous pontificate was not confined to their theology or their unquestioning loyalty to the Holy See. 

            “Opposition to key elements of Catholic social teaching was supposedly as much a  disqualifier for episcopal appointment as one’s openness to the ordination of women, optional celibacy for priests, and/or the reconsideration of the Church’s official teaching on contraception.

            “But at least some of these John Paul II bishops believe that abortion is a moral issue that ‘trumps’ all others, including social justice, war and peace, the environment, and such traditional Catholic teachings as the right to unionize. In this context, the word ‘trumps’ effectively means that these other issues are really of no moral account. 

            “Such bishops have no qualms about opposing political candidates who are pro-choice (not pro-abortion), and also no qualms about supporting candidates who voted for the war in Iraq and support tax policies that unduly favor the wealthiest of citizens.” [This happened again in the 2008 Presidential campaign.] 

            “For such bishops, the word ‘liberal’ has about the same negative ring to it as ‘pervert.’ They believe that Catholicism and liberalism are incompatible.”  And they treat ecclesial ministers accordingly, if they think that the label “liberal” also applies to them. 

            I referred in my Labor Day column in 2006 to a document issued several months earlier by the U.S. Catholic bishops entitled, “Co-workers in the Vineyard of the Lord” (Origins, 12/1/05), self-described as a “pastoral and theological reflection on the reality of lay ministry.” 

            I compared that document with an earlier document on ministry, “As I Have Done for You,” published with the input and authorization of Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles (see Origins, 5/4/00). 

            “To be sure,” I wrote, “there is much good material in ‘Co-workers in the Vineyard of the Lord’....”  Thus, it attributed much of the advance in the Church’s understanding of ministry to a “rediscovery” of the theology of Baptism and the consequent recognition that “ministry is not just for the ordained.” 

            Like “Co-workers,” the Los Angeles document “defined and described lay ecclesial ministry within the broader concept of ministry itself. While acknowledging the distinctive ministry of the ordained, it cautioned against viewing the ordained as ‘above’ or ‘apart from’ the Church rather than ‘in’ the Church. When the Church gathers for Eucharistic worship, it is the whole Church -- head and members -- that celebrates, not just the priest.

            “The Los Angeles document, which was the product of much antecedent consultation and collaboration within the archdiocese, was explicit in identifying hard pastoral cases for examination and discussion. ‘Co-workers,’ on the other hand, tends to avoid specific examples of problems frequently encountered by lay ecclesial ministers at the parish and diocesan levels. 

            “There is only a glancing reference in ‘Co-workers’ to the Church’s need to treat its ‘committed and skilled workers...fairly.’ At the same time, it is emphatic in pointing out that every diocese is free to develop its own personnel policies -- or to have none at all. 

            “Many lay ecclesial ministers know from unhappy personal experience that pastors and bishops do not always practice what the Church officially teaches about justice for the Church’s own employees, be they in formal ministry or not.” 

            Some thoughts for Labor Day, 2009.   

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

08/24/09

"President Obama and the Vatican"

Week of August 24, 2009

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

            While most of the attention was focused on President Barack Obama’s audience with Pope Benedict XVI on July 10, there was an important bit of news in a column published the day before in Commonweal’s on-line edition. 

            The article, written by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, a Catholic layman who often addresses issues related to religion and politics, was entitled, “Does Obama Have a Friend in the Vatican?”

            Dionne noted that, when President Obama had his audience with Pope Benedict XVI, just three days after the release of the Pope’s new social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”), there were no right-wing Catholic demonstrators upbraiding the Pope, as they did outside and inside the University of Notre Dame’s graduation exercises this past May.

            Nor, one might add, was there any single-engine, propeller-driven plane flying overhead with an anti-abortion message and picture.

            “The disjunction between Vatican attitudes toward Obama and those of the most conservative forces inside the American Catholic Church has been obvious from the moment Obama won election,” Dionne wrote.

            “The conservative minority among the bishops [which, however, has grown in recent years] as well as political activists on the Catholic right have insisted on judging the president only on the basis of his support for legal abortion and stem cell research.

            “But the Vatican clearly views Obama through a broader prism,” Dionne continued.  And then some extraordinary bit of  news: “Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the papal nuncio in Washington, has privately warned American bishops that harsh attacks on Obama threaten to make the church look partisan.”

            Not giving readers time to catch their breath, Dionne continued: “The Vatican press has been largely sympathetic to Obama, and in a recent article, Cardinal Georges Cottier, who was the theologian of the papal household under Pope John Paul II, praised Obama’s ‘humble realism’ on abortion and went so far as to compare the president’s approach to that of St. Thomas Aquinas.”

            This is not to say that President Obama and Pope Benedict XVI are in full agreement on all moral issues, such as abortion, contraception, or embryonic stem-cell research.

            “But the pope and many of his advisers,” Dionne observed, “also see Obama as a potential ally on such questions as development in the Third World, their shared approach to a quest for peace in the Middle East, and the opening of a dialogue with Islam.”

            Dionne noted that the Vatican’s more benign attitude toward President Obama and the generally positive reaction to his Notre Dame Commencement address have “at least temporarily quelled the vocal opposition to the president among more conservative American bishops.”

            At the same time, other bishops, representing the majority of the U.S. hierarchy, have been working closely with the new Administration on health care reform, immigration, and climate change legislation.

            Dionne suggests–and I am in full agreement with him–that the Pope’s new encyclical shows that President Obama is in accord with most of Catholic social teaching. 

            Indeed, Barack Obama is more in accord with that teaching and with the substantial message of Caritas in Veritate than the many politically conservative Catholics who berated the University of Notre Dame and its president, Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, for inviting Obama to deliver this year’s graduation address and receive an honorary degree.

            And it is why, Dionne concluded, the Pope “is far more inclined to work with the man in the White House” than American conservatives are.

            In an earlier piece in the Jesuit weekly America (on-line, 5/25/09), Georgetown church historian John O’Malley, S.J., drew a similar comparison between President Obama and the Second Vatican Council, referring to Obama as “a Vatican II president.”

            Citing a few of Barack Obama’s speeches, but focusing particularly on the address he gave at Notre Dame, Father O’Malley noted specifically President Obama’s call “for civility, for the end of name-calling, and for a willingness to work together to deal with our common problems, including abortion, rather than a stand-off determination to impose one’s principles without reckoning what the cost to the common good might be.”

            Such an approach, John O’Malley insisted, is just what Vatican II called for when it changed the way that the Catholic Church does business in its relationships with its own members, with other Christians, with other religions, and with the world community at large.

            Although the Pope himself seems to be largely open to that style, too many of the bishops and curial officials whom he continues to appoint are not.

            Perhaps they need a collective papal audience to help them absorb that new style which Vatican II brought to the Catholic Church more than four decades ago.

This essay is provided by the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.  Please share it with a friend.  We welcome your comments and contributions.  Let us know if you wish to be added to our mailing list.  Our new website that includes these essays and Roger Karban’s commentaries on the Sunday Scripture readings is www.fosilonline.com.    Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222