08/30/10

 

"Labor Day, 2010"

Week of August 30, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            I keep hoping that one of these years the U.S. Catholic Bishops will issue a Labor Day statement that focuses on the Church’s own responsibility to practice what it preaches and teaches about social justice and human rights. 

            Such a statement would ground its message in the theology of sacramentality, that is, in the Church’s call to be a credible sign and instrument of God’s presence and saving activity on behalf of the whole world.

            The time has come when the bishops need to stop addressing other agencies and institutions in society on their obligations, and begin turning the klieg lights on the Church itself. 

            As Pope Paul VI reminded us in his 1975 apostolic exhortation, Evangelii nuntiandi (“Of proclaiming the Gospel”), it is the essence of the Church’s mission to evangelize, but the Church must begin “by being evangelized itself” (n. 15).

            In the same document, the pope pointed out that people listen “more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if [they do] listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”

            “It is therefore primarily by her conduct and by her life that the Church will evangelize the world,” Paul VI continued, “in other words, by her living witness of fidelity to the Lord Jesus–the witness of poverty and detachment, of freedom in the face of the powers of this world, in short, the witness of sanctity” (n. 41).

            Pope Paul VI understood and embraced the principle of sacramentality.  It is high time, some 35 years later, that our bishops did as well.

            One of the obstacles is that the U.S. hierarchy has changed so much under Pope John Paul II and now Pope Benedict XVI.

            Some readers might recall the claim that was persuasively made, back in the 1940s and 1950s, that most American bishops came from households where the breadwinner was an ordinary workingman.

            This meant that the bishops of those years were more likely to view social and political issues from the viewpoint of those on the lower end of the economic ladder.  They were more readily disposed to support the rights of workers than the interests of their corporate employers.

            Yesterday’s bishops would have gone to bat, so to speak, for the right of workers–many of whom were Catholic–to form labor unions.  Some assigned priests in their dioceses to run labor schools to instruct Catholic workers on the Church’s social teachings and to identify the rights they possess in the market-place.

            Today’s bishops, however, are not only more theologically conservative than their counterparts in the 1940s and 1950s; they are also more politically conservative.

            It is no accident that, in recent presidential elections, many bishops (and cardinals) have clearly sided with the Republican candidates over the Democratic candidates.  For such bishops the litmus test is the abortion issue.  They are critical of the late Cardinal Bernardin’s consistent-ethic-of-life approach.

            Officials of the Republican Party are, of course, delighted.  They were delighted when the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed President Barack Obama’s health-care reform legislation this year, and they were delighted when some 80 bishops openly criticized the University of Notre Dame last year for having the President of the United States as its commencement speaker and for having conferred on him an honorary degree.

            One archbishop, who must remain anonymous, subsequently acknowledged to a mutual friend the great pressure he had been under–from operatives of the Republican Party–to add his name to the then-growing list of episcopal critics of Notre Dame and President Obama.  He did not succumb.

             This dramatic change in the composition of the U.S. hierarchy may explain, at least in part, why there is now a critical mass of bishops who take refuge behind their lawyers in opposing efforts by their lay employees in schools and hospitals to form labor unions–just as they took refuge behind their lawyers in fighting settlements of sexual-abuse cases brought against the diocese because of the predatory behavior of some of its priests.

            On this Labor Day, 2010, many Catholics look to their bishops to follow in the footsteps of the late Pope Paul VI and explicitly acknowledge, as he did, that the Church can never be a compelling teacher of morality unless it practices what it preaches to others.

            The principle of sacramentality is of urgent importance today.  The Church must embody in its own life those teachings that are central to Catholic social doctrine. 

            It can begin not only by recognizing, but also by strongly supporting, the efforts of its own employees to secure the rights that the Church itself insists belong to all workers, of whatever race, color, or religion they may be.

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.   

Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

 

08/23/10

"Pope John Paul II"

Week of August 23, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            When Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, then archbishop of Cracow, was elected pope in October, 1978, he was convinced that he had received a providential mission to lead the Church into the Third Christian Millennium.

            He also viewed his election as compensation for Polish sufferings during the 19^th century and then again under the Nazis and the Communists in the 20^th. 

            It was his belief that he had a special responsibility to bring the insights and values of the suffering Church of the East to the comfortable churches of the West, and to bring an end to what he and other conservative cardinals regarded as the postconciliar drift of the Church.  Whether intended or not, this was a pointed criticism of Paul VI.

            John Paul II’s conviction was in striking contrast to Pope Paul VI’s more humble self-assessment, namely, that he had been called to the papacy to “suffer something for the Church so that it will be clear that it is the Lord, and not anyone else, who guides and saves it.”

            Throughout John Paul II’s pontificate the contrast between his style of being pope and Paul VI’s became clearer almost by the day.  John Paul II never questioned the validity of his convictions; Paul VI was constantly afflicted with feelings of self-doubt.

            Both styles had their strengths and drawbacks.  John Paul II was always strong-willed and firm in the exercise of his papal authority.  But at the same time he gave many the impression that he had a stubborn personality and that he was impatient with anyone who dared to differ with him.

            Paul VI, on the other hand, too often gave the appearance of being a hand-wringer, someone who was convinced that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  On the other hand, he had a sympathetic, compassionate heart.  He never wanted to crush anyone under foot.

            Perhaps an even better comparison could be made between John Paul II and Pius XII.  Unlike Pius XII, who was aloof, austere, and aristocratic in bearing, John Paul II was earthy and blunt, and very much at home in the limelight.

            The two popes, however, also had much in common, including their profound, yet sentimental, devotion to the Blessed Mother.  Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption in 1950 and declared a Marian Year in 1954.  John Paul II wrote a major encyclical on Mary and declared a Marian Year as well in 1987.

            Both popes were also severe with theologians, mainly through the hard-line prefects of their respective doctrinal congregations–the Holy Office under Cardinal Ottaviani, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Cardinal Ratzinger.

            Both popes were prolific in their official writings.  Pius XII published over 30 encyclicals, while John Paul II produced 14 such letters.

            What they also had in common, finally, were their relatively lengthy pontificates.  Pius XII was in office over 19 years; John Paul II, over 26.

            As a result many young Catholics grew up in the 1940s and 1950s knowing only Pius XII as their pope, while many Catholics of the 1980s and 1990s grew to young adulthood knowing only John Paul II as their pope.  For such Catholics there was only one way of being pope: Pius XII’s or John Paul II’s.

            When the final assessment of John Paul II’s long pontificate is rendered, it is likely that historians will notice the sharp contrast between the pope’s major successes on the extra-ecclesial front and his equally major failures on the intra-ecclesial front.

            His “foreign policy,” as it were, was marked by achievements in his outreach to Jews in particular, but also to other non-Christian religions as well.  His controversial gathering of many religious leaders to pray together for world peace in Assisi in 1986 was surely one of the high-water marks of his pontificate.

            So, too, were his efforts on behalf of rapprochement with the Communist world, of which he was so personally familiar from his years in his native Poland, to which he made nine trips as pope.

            His governance of the Church itself yielded a far different record.  He revoked Hans Küng’s status as a Catholic theologian and disciplined other major theologians as well, including the Dutch Dominican, Edward Schillebeeckx, the Brazilian Franciscan, Leonardo Boff, and the American moral theologian, Charles Curran.

            His appointments to the hierarchy followed such a relentlessly conservative pattern that he was able to transform the hierarchy for generations to come. 

            But no blot on his domestic record looms larger than his failure to address the enormity of the sexual-abuse crisis in the priesthood.  Sadly, he was in denial from the start.  

 

 

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.   

Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

08/16/10

 

"Pope Paul VI"

Week of August 16, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            Pope Paul VI is a mixed figure in modern papal history.  Conservative Catholics, who would ordinarily be favorable to just about every pope because of the central place the papacy occupies in the life of the Church, have reviled his memory, comparing him in a highly unfavorable way with their favorite pope of all time, John Paul II, whom they now refer to as John Paul the Great.

            More objective commentators contrast the two popes’ styles.  John Paul II rarely, if ever, had a doubt about the validity of his opinions, while Paul VI was almost always in doubt.  And this state of doubt often got him into trouble.

            Indeed, Pope John XXIII, who had placed Archbishop Montini at the top of his first batch of cardinals, referred to his eventual successor as a “Hamlet,” of “To be or not to be” fame.

            At the Second Vatican Council, for example, Montini, now Pope Paul VI, refused to honor the wishes of the assembled bishops, including the influential Cardinal Suenens of Belgium, who urged him to declare John XXIIII a saint then and there.  The pope resisted the proposal because he thought that it would reflect badly on his own mentor, Pius XII.

            Instead he announced the initiation of procedures looking toward the canonization of both John XXIII and Pius XII.  We now know how ill-conceived that linkage was.  John XXIII has since been beatified, but Pius XII’s cause continues to languish.

            Paul VI was also so worried about the concerns of the defeated minority regarding the council’s teaching on collegiality that he authorized an “Explanatory Note” to be appended to the third chapter of the council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (also known by its Latin title, Lumen gentium) to reassure the conservatives that nothing in the document detracted from the supreme authority of the pope.

            The conservatives were ecstatic.  Cardinal Siri of Genoa spoke for many of them: “Everything is all right!  The Holy Spirit has entered the council....The pope has dug in his heels....”

            By contrast, the progressive majority of council fathers went home after the third session thoroughly discouraged and demoralized. 

            On the last day of the session, wrote John O’Malley, S.J., in his book, What Happened at Vatican II, “Paul’s face was grim as he was carried out of the basilica through row upon row of bishops, who applauded perfunctorily or, in some cases, not at all....No one doubted that the week [known to many as “black week”] had seriously damaged the relationship between the pope and the assembly.”

            Just three-and-a-half years later, Paul VI would ignore the recommendations of his own Papal Birth-Control Commission and reaffirmed the Church’s official teaching that birth control by artificial means was always a mortal sin. 

            Many believe that the pope had been frightened into this stance by representatives of the minority view, who had warned him that, if he changed the teaching on contraception, the credibility of the papal magisterium itself would collapse. 

            And so it did, but not because he changed the teaching but because he failed to change it!

            So taken aback by the unfavorable reaction to his encyclical on birth control, Humanae vitae, that Paul VI never published another encyclical during the ten years remaining in his pontificate.

            Unfortunately, his “Hamlet” ways continued well into his pontificate.  Nine years after his election Paul VI wrote: “Perhaps the Lord called me to this service not because I have any aptitude for it, or so I can govern and save the Church in its present difficulties, but so I can suffer something for the Church so that it will be clear that it is the Lord, and not anyone else, who guides and saves it.”

            And yet Paul VI proved also to be a good pope, if not an outstanding one.  He continued the Second Vatican Council begun by his predecessor, John XXIII, carried forward the revision of Canon Law, and worked tirelessly for the promotion of peace and justice in the world as well as the unity of the Church.

            But he had the unhappy task of trying to implement the reforms wrought by Vatican II, especially those pertaining to the liturgy, without provoking a schism within the Catholic Church.

            He established several postconciliar commissions and authorized the use of the vernacular in the Mass and the sacraments.  He approved a new Order of the Mass in 1969, infuriating conservatives who mistakenly thought that the Missal of Pius V could never be replaced.

            Paul VI would have been appalled by John Paul II’s and Benedict XVI’s approval of two separate liturgical rites in the Roman Catholic Church.    

 

 

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.    Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

 

08/09/10

"Pope John XXIII"

Week of August 9, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            I began writing this weekly column in early July, 1966.  It was long before all of my undergraduate students and all but a handful of my graduate students were born.

            In that first year, the week of November 4^th to be exact, I did a column on the theology of revelation and how Pope John XXIII, who had died three-and-a-half years earlier, had embodied that theology in his own life and ministry.

            The column described the late pope as “one of the most dramatic and most effective revelation-events of our time.”

            What is a revelation-event and how do individual persons become an expression of it?

            A revelation-event is any happening by which God becomes a tangible reality in the lives of ordinary people.

            St. Paul gave us the basic formula: “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).  In other words, Christ must find concrete expression in others if he is to be understood and embraced.

            But even a great saint like Paul is far removed from us.  Pope John XXIII is more meaningful than St. Paul for those who lived through the Second Vatican Council and the years following it.

            “Imitate John, and you shall imitate Christ,” I wrote.  “Imitate his spirit of warmth and love, his openness to all peoples, of every race, nation, religious belief and non-belief.  Imitate his concern for the humble and the neglected, for the ‘cast-offs’ of our society.  Imitate his spirit of resignation to God’s will in the face of suffering and certain death.”

            “Why is it,” I asked, “that the life and ministry of Pope John XXIII struck such a responsive chord in the hearts of all mankind, believer and non-believer alike?....Why is it that people...were touched by the example of the Good Shepherd visiting the sick, the orphans, and those in prison?  Why is it that people...found inspiration and hope in the sickness and suffering and dying of John XXIII?”

            “The contemporary theology of revelation,” the column concluded, “is eminently pastoral and practical. [We] must be ever more sensitive to the presence of God in the people and in the reality around [us].”  Pope John XXIII was such a person.

            Nowhere was the Second Vatican Council’s purpose articulated more clearly or more forcefully than in the opening address of the pope who convened it.

            This council, Pope John XXIII insisted, was not being held to condemn errors in the Church or in the world at large, as Pope Pius IX had done in his Syllabus of Errors in 1864, or as Pope Pius X had done in his anti-Modernist decree of 1907, or as Pope Pius XII had done in his encyclical Humani generis in 1950.

            “The post-French Revolution Pian Church had reached the end of its line,” my column for the week of November 5, 1982, pointed out.

            “The Church was now summoned by a new, positive, hoped-filled voice of leadership to correlate the Church’s ‘sacred patrimony of truth’, as Pope John XXIII called it, with ‘the new conditions and new forms of life introduced into the modern world which have opened new avenues to the Catholic apostolate’.”   

            “The substance of the ancient doctrine...is one thing,” the pope declared, “and the way in which it is presented is another.”

            This was not the time for negativism and condemnations, he warned, even as he was surrounded by “prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand....”

            “That grand Johannine vision still lives in the Church,” I wrote in that column more than 28 years ago.  It lives on “in the hearts and minds of [many] of its active members....”

            I reminded readers in my column for the week of August 21, 2000, that John XXIII is “widely regarded as the most beloved pope in history.”  Indeed, many of the bishops at Vatican II had petitioned Pope Paul VI to proclaim John a saint then and there.

            But because Paul VI was concerned about the feelings of the council’s defeated minority, he declined to do so.  Instead, he announced that John XXIII’s cause for canonization would be linked with that of Paul VI’s own mentor, Pope Pius XII–an idea, as we now know, that was doomed from the start.

            When John XXIII died on the evening of June 3, 1963, virtually the whole world mourned.  Even the Union Jack was lowered to half-mast in the bitterly divided city of Belfast.

            In the early Church John XXIII would have been proclaimed a saint by popular demand.

            The pity is that many younger Catholics today never knew him.

 

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.    Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

08/02/10

08/02/10

"Popes of the 20^th Century"

Week of August 2, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            When I was a lot younger, we assumed that all popes, with the exception of the infamous Alexander VI, were great popes, like the ones who reigned during the 20^th century. 

            Leo XIII, who died in 1903 after a 25-year pontificate, was known to us as the author of the landmark social encyclical, Rerum novarum, in 1891.  We didn’t know much else about him, particularly his ten encyclicals on the Rosary, his efforts to recover the Papal States, or his declaration in 1896 that Anglican orders were “absolutely null and utterly void.”

            We knew that Pope Pius X was a canonized saint, but what we didn’t know was that he had waged an often cruel campaign against Catholic theologians, biblical scholars, and church historians, lumping them all under the umbrella of Modernism–a campaign from which the Catholic Church did not begin to recover until the pontificate of John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council a half-century later.

            We also knew nothing of the pope’s refusal in 1910 to grant an audience to ex-President Theodore Roosevelt because Mr. Roosevelt was scheduled to speak at the Methodist church in Rome, or his disapproval of trade unions that were not exclusively Catholic.

            We heard little or nothing about one of the 20^th century’s truly good popes, Benedict XV.  Although his pontificate was overshadowed by the First World War, during which he was vilified by both sides, it was Pope Benedict who called a halt to the internecine warfare within the Church that had raged throughout the reign of his predecessor, Pius X.

            Needless to say, we were not informed that the Muslim Turks had erected a statue to Benedict XV in Istanbul that hailed him as “the great pope of the world tragedy...the benefactor of all people, irrespective of nationality or religion.” 

            I recall the papal blessing on my grandmother’s dining room wall that my priest-uncle had obtained for her.  It had a photo of Pope Pius XI on it, from whom the blessing was derived.

            I knew nothing, however, of Pius XI’s obsessive fear of Communism, so intense, in fact, that he had signed agreements or concordats with two of the most notorious Fascist leaders of the time, Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Germany’s Adolf Hitler, and gave his full support to another, Spain’s Francisco Franco.

            Neither did we know much about his encyclical Mortalium animos in 1928 that forbade any Catholic involvement in ecumenical conferences.  But, of course, that policy represented the conventional wisdom of the Catholic Church at the time.  Protestants were heretics, and any form of cooperation with them implicitly gave aid and comfort to the enemy.

            On the other hand, those of us in Catholic schools, and especially in seminaries, had known of, and extolled, Pius XI’s social encyclical, Quadragesimo anno, issued in 1931, on the fortieth anniversary of Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum. 

            It was in that encyclical that the pope introduced one of Catholic social thought’s most important principles, the principle of subsidiarity, which holds that nothing is to be done by a higher agency that can be done as well, if not better, by a lower agency.

            In recent years Catholic theologians have applied this principle to the Church itself in order to challenge the growing trend toward recentralization of authority in the Vatican.

            The pope of my youth was Pius XII.  Catholics assumed that, soon after his death, he would be canonized a saint, so deeply ingrained by then was the intimate connection between the papacy and sanctity.

            We knew nothing, of course, of the strong influence that Sister Pascalina played in Pius XII’s pontificate, so strong, in fact, that she had cardinals quaking in their watered silk, so strong indeed that she earned the nickname, La Popessa.

            And so resented was her influence that, immediately after Pius XII’s death, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Domenico Tardini, expelled Sister Pascalina from the papal apartment and sent her into the piazza to hail a taxi. 

            We also knew nothing of the controversy that would becloud the memory of Pius XII and remove him, at least for now, from consideration for eventual canonization, namely, his alleged silence during the Holocaust of the Second World War period when six million Jews were sent to their deaths by the Nazis.

            At the same time, we sensed that Pius XII prepared the way for Pope John XXIII and Vatican II with his two encyclicals in 1943, Divino afflante Spiritu, on the renewal of Catholic biblical studies, and Mystici Corporis, on the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, and in 1947, Mediator Dei, which promoted liturgical renewal. 

 

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.   

Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

 

07/26/10

"Auxiliary Bishops Frozen in Place"

Week of July 26, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            It was recently announced that Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of my friend Peter Rosazza as auxiliary bishop of my home Archdiocese of Hartford, having reached the retirement age of 75.

            The announcement served as a reminder of the auxiliary bishops, most of whom were appointed by Pope Paul VI while Archbishop Jean Jadot served as Apostolic Delegate to the United States (1974-80), who were frozen in place after Jadot’s resignation was quickly accepted by Pope John Paul II in June of 1980. 

            By “frozen in place,” I mean that, unlike many other auxiliary bishops in the John Paul II era, they were never appointed to head a diocese of their own.  They retired and, in some cases, died as auxiliary bishops.

            This is yet another aspect of the dramatic change in the composition of the U.S. hierarchy under the previous pope and now also under his successor, Benedict XVI, who came into the papacy soon after the death of John Paul II in April, 2005. 

            (For my earlier column on this subject, see “U.S. Bishops From a Better Time,” published in most of my syndicated outlets during the week of June 7, 2010.)

            This week’s column, like the one on diocesan bishops of the past, may include names whom some readers are convinced should not be on the list, while there may be other names whom some readers are convinced should be on the list.

            As in the earlier column, the names of the auxiliary bishops are given in the alphabetical order of the dioceses in which they served.  There are ten in all.

            Francis Murphy was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore under Archbishop William Borders in 1976, Borders having succeeded Cardinal Lawrence Shehan in 1974.  It was the death of Archbishop Borders at age 96 that provided the catalyst for my earlier column on the good-to-outstanding bishops of the 1960s and 1970s, under Popes John XXIII and Paul VI.

            Bishop Murphy died of cancer at the relatively young age of 66, after having served as Vicar General of the archdiocese, being directly involved in interfaith dialogue, and being an active presence in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, especially among its younger members.

            Joseph Sullivan is one of two exceptions on this list of ten auxiliary bishops.  He was appointed auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn under Bishop Francis Mugavero less than four months after Archbishop Jadot was relieved of his duties as Apostolic Delegate. 

            Bishop Sullivan was a nationally recognized leader in Catholic social services and headed Catholic Charities in Brooklyn.

            Thomas Gumbleton was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit in 1968 under Cardinal John Dearden, served as Vicar General of the archdiocese, and became a national figure in founding Pax Christi, and in supporting women’s ordination and gay rights.

            Joseph Schoenherr was also appointed an auxiliary bishop of Detroit in 1968.  He died in 2007.

            Robert Morneau was appointed auxiliary bishop of Green Bay in 1978 under Bishop Aloysius Wycislo and has distinguished himself with his many writings and lectures on spirituality.

            Peter Rosazza was named auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Hartford under Archbishop John Whealon in 1978, headed the apostolate to the Spanish-speaking, and was one of the five bishops who drafted the pastoral letter on the U.S. economy in 1986.

            George Wirz was appointed auxiliary bishop of Madison under Bishop Cletus O’Donnell in 1977 and was described by one local newspaper as “one of the most beloved priests” in the diocese.

            Richard Sklba was appointed auxiliary bishop of Milwaukee under Archbishop Rembert Weakland in 1979, but the two men had to go to Rome to plead Father Sklba’s case because he had been a member of the Catholic Biblical Association committee that reported to Pope Paul VI in 1976 that there is nothing in the New Testament to prevent the Church from ordaining women to the priesthood.

            Emil Wcela was appointed auxiliary bishop of Rockville Centre under Bishop John McGann in 1988.  Like Bishop Sklba, Bishop Wcela is a biblical scholar.

            And, finally, Thomas Costello was appointed auxiliary bishop of Syracuse under Bishop Frank Harrison in 1978.  He, too, was exceedingly popular in his diocese.

            The U.S. hierarchy and the Church it serves would have been enriched if these auxiliary bishops had been given dioceses of their own. 

 

*     *     *     *     *     *

            Another friend of mine died in early July at age 91.  Father Joseph Murphy never became a bishop, but he was one of the finest and most respected priests in the Archdiocese of Hartford.  May his name long be remembered and his ministry cherished as a model for priests everywhere.

 

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.   

Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

07/19/10

"The Bishops and Ecclesiology"

Week of July 19, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            The feud, if it might be called that, between the Catholic Health Association (CHA) and the U.S. Catholic bishops over the health-care reform legislation that has already been passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Obama, is the subject of this week’s column.

            The CHA supported the legislation and the bishops opposed it, and continue to do so.

            An interesting wrinkle in the dispute has recently developed.  According to an interview with John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), claims that the dispute also involves ecclesiology.

            What is at issue, Cardinal George said, is the bishops’ right and duty not only to teach moral principles (for example, that all life is sacred, and therefore abortion is always immoral), but also to apply those principles to specific pieces of legislation (whether the health-care reform legislation permits funding for abortions or not).

            According to the Catholic News Agency (CNA), which partners with Mother Angelica’s Eternal Word Television Network, Cardinal George accused the CHA at the recent bishops’ meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida, of having created a “parallel magisterium” to the bishops.

            Helen Osman, Secretary of Communications for the USCCB, charged that quotations attributed to Cardinal George were “just wrong” and “just plain dishonest.”  The CNA, however, posted an item the same day (June 21), saying that the agency “stands by its report,” and asserting that it had been corroborated by “several bishops.”

            The core ecclesiological principle at issue here, according to Cardinal George’s interview, is “about the nature of the church itself, one that has to concern the bishops”–namely, who speaks for the Church on faith and morals?

            “The bishops have to protect their role in governing the church,” Cardinal George said.

            Sister Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity and president of the CHA, insisted that “We did not differ [with the bishops] on the moral question, or the teaching authority of the bishops.”

            Cardinal George, however, isn’t so sure.  “This may be a narrow disagreement,” he told John Allen, “but it has exposed a very large principle.”

            The principle is ecclesiological, John Allen wrote, “Who speaks for the church on matters of faith and morals, including how morality is translated into law?”

            “If the bishops have a right and duty to teach that killing the unborn is immoral, they also have to teach that laws which permit and fund abortion are immoral,” Cardinal George insisted.  “It seems that what some people are saying is that the bishops can’t, or shouldn’t, speak to the moral content of the law, that we should remain on the level of abstract principles.”

            The CHA’s way of framing the dispute, however, drew support from Father Bryan Hehir, a Harvard ethicist who also serves as the secretary for health care and social services for the Archdiocese of Boston, is the former head of Catholic Charities USA, and is a former long-time official of the USCCB.

            “There was a foundation for the different judgements made about the bill [by the bishops and the CHA],” Father Hehir said.  “It was not about being inside or outside the permissible range of Catholic moral tradition.”

            Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Florida, a member of CHA’s Board of Trustees, made an important point about the dispute, noting that religious women, who constitute much of the leadership of Catholic health care in the United States, are currently the subject of an Apostolic Visitation initiated by the Vatican. 

            “I think religious women are on the receiving end of what they perceive, at least, as a lot of negative reactions by church authority,” Bishop Lynch told John Allen.  “That’s a climate we have to recognize.”

            Bishop Lynch also differed implicitly with Cardinal George’s ecclesiology.  Although associated with the USCCB since 1972, “I have never before heard the theory that we enjoy the same primacy of respect for legislative interpretation as we do for interpretation of the moral law.  I think this theory needs to be debated and discussed by the body of bishops.”

            Criticism of Cardinal George’s ecclesiology also came from Commonweal magazine (6/18/10).  “It has long been the position of the USCCB that, while bishops must provide moral guidance, lay Catholics are fully competent to make decisions in the public sphere, whether in the workplace or in politics.”

            This column joins with Father Bryan Hehir, Bishop Robert Lynch, Commonweal, and others in support of the CHA and its president, Sister Carol Keehan. 

            Ecclesiology is indeed at issue here, but not the ecclesiology espoused by the USCCB’s president.

 

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.   

Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

07/12/10

"The U.S. Bishops and the Health-Care Reform Bill"

Week of July 12, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            It is a mystery why the U.S. Catholic bishops continue to oppose the health-care reform legislation that has already passed both houses of Congress and been signed into law by the President. 

            The White House’s and the nation’s attention has long since moved to other matters, not least the tragic oil spill and loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico.

            For a time, a handful of Democrats in the House of Representatives, led by Congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan, threatened to derail passage of the legislation because of language in the bill that they charged would pay for abortions.  Mr. Stupak insisted that his position was the same as that taken by the Catholic bishops.

            When President Obama issued an executive order making it clear that nothing in the bill would violate the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited the use of federal funds to pay for abortions, Congressman Stupak and his small band of allies relented and expressed support for the legislation.

            The bishops, however, did not change their opposition to the bill, and some of them accused Congressman Stupak of caving in to political pressure, if not also to a form of treachery.

            There is an article in the June 4^th issue of Commonweal that argues that the bishops have misunderstood the health-care legislation and that their continued, if not also moot, opposition to the bill adds unnecessarily to the confusion surrounding the legislation.

            The article, “Episcopal Oversight,” is by Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, a professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law.

            Professor Jost finds the bishops to be in error on three counts.

            First, the bishops repeat their earlier claims that under the new legislation federal funds will be used to subsidize health plans that cover abortions.  But section 1303(b)(2) of the legislation, entitled “Prohibition of the use of federal funds,” states clearly that the premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions available under the legislation cannot be used by any health plan to pay for an abortion under the Hyde Amendment.

            If there are private premiums, they must be kept in a separate account, and that account must be audited by the states.  Given the added costs of administering these separate funds, Professor Jost points out, “it is likely that insurers will have little interest in offering such plans.”

            Second, the bishops claim that appropriations for community health centers (CHCs) under the new health-care reform legislation can be used to pay for elective abortions.  This claim, Professor Jost argues, “ignores the plain facts that (1) regulations governing CHCs prohibit them from providing abortions not permitted by the Hyde Amendment...and (2) the funds appropriated for CHCs under section 10503 are not paid directly and separately to CHCs.”

            On the contrary, these funds are covered by the Hyde Amendment, and the President’s executive order reaffirms the force of that Amendment.

            Moreover, although the bishops express concern that “a long line of federal court decisions” could be interpreted as allowing funding for abortions, they have not been able cite a single federal court decision that has ordered the funding of abortions prohibited by a federal regulation and an executive order.

            Third, the bishops claim that the conscience provisions of the health-care reform legislation are inadequate.  However, under the newly-passed and signed legislation, federal funds cannot be used to pay for abortions and the consciences of health-care providers are protected.

            In a subsequent “clarifying statement,” the bishops’ conference acknowledged that the new legislation, which the conference continues to oppose, “expands health-care coverage, implements many needed reforms, and provides welcome support to parenting women and adoptive families,” and moves toward the Catholic Church’s goal of universal access to health care.

            The act extends coverage for dependents up to the age of twenty-six, provides tax credits for small businesses that insure their employees, and high-risk-pool coverage for uninsured Americans with pre-existing conditions.

            In 2014, Medicaid expansion and health-insurance subsidies will go into effect, insuring millions more Americans, many of whom would die without care.

            Professor Jost concludes: “Public polling repeatedly reveals that Americans are confused about what the health-reform legislation does.  The legislation is long and complicated, and some misunderstanding of the bill is inevitable.

            “It is unfortunate, however, that this confusion continues to be fed by mischaracterizations of the legislation by the USCCB” [the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops].

            It is often said that the making of laws is similar to the making of sausage.  Unlike the bishops, however, Congressman Bart Stupak viewed the process up close, as a direct legislative participant.

            He was satisfied with the changes; why aren’t the bishops? 

 

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.   

Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

07/05/10

"Conference on Exorcism"

Week of July 5, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            Many years ago, when The National Catholic Reporter was a young newspaper, it ran a feature in the left-hand column of page one that highlighted embarrassingly dumb items that had recently appeared in parish bulletins and other ecclesiastical documents.

            If that feature were still active, I would have an entry to submit.

            In a letter dated May 18 of this year and addressed to “Eminences” and “Excellencies” of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, self-described as “Bishop Designate of Springfield in Illinois,” announced that the USCCB Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance, of which Bishop Paprocki is chairman, is sponsoring a special Conference on the Liturgical and Pastoral Practice of Exorcism, to be held in Baltimore in early November, just before the USCCB’s semi-annual meeting.

            Those with a deep interest in Catholic issues will recognize immediately how pertinent and even urgent this conference will be, given the present state of the Church and the world, what with the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the tragic oil spill and loss of eleven lives in the Gulf of Mexico.

            For those less engaged in religious matters, an exorcism is an act by which an evil spirit is expelled from a person who is demonically possessed.  The act also has a less dramatic function in the baptism of adults: when candidates are enrolled in the order of catechumens; during the period of the catechumenate itself; and during the three “scrutinies,” which take place on the third, fourth, and fifth Sundays of Lent, prior to the catechumens’ baptism at the Easter Vigil.

            The letter from Bishop Paprocki advises that “The conference is open to bishops and those priests or officials whom a bishop wishes to designate to attend,” including those whom bishops have authorized to perform exorcisms, evidently apart from the sacrament of Baptism. 

            However, there is one session open only to bishops.  One can only speculate what sort of topics will be addressed in this closed session.

            “The conference will address not only the theological and scriptural foundations of the Rite of Exorcism,” the letter continues, “but it will also provide the necessary, practical insights into the many liturgical, canonical and pastoral issues associated with exorcisms and the Church’s battle [sic] against the demonic presence in the world and the lives of the Christian faithful.”

            The fact that the conference will be less concerned with the baptismal aspects of exorcism than its more “Hollywood” dimensions is made clear by the schedule of events. 

            The first afternoon session will focus on “the phenomenon of evil in contemporary culture; and responses and resources available to address the presence of evil, particularly through the use of exorcism.”  No mention of Baptism here.

            In the evening there will be a discussion of cases and responses “from a practical standpoint.”  As opposed to a theoretical standpoint?

            On the second morning, there will be a “detailed presentation of the practice and use of the rites associated with exorcism [and these rites, again, will apparently have nothing to do with the sacrament of Baptism], strategies for pastoral care [how to deal with those possessed by the Devil?], and an examination of other phenomena related to the presence of evil” [what these “other phenomena” might be is evidently left to the imaginations of the conference attendees].

            The session designated for bishops only (in italics), on the second afternoon of the two-day conference, will present and discuss “matters of special interest to bishops related to the phenomenon of evil and the use of the Rite of Exorcism.” 

            One wonders if this session will address the scandal of sexual abuse of children and other young people by priests and the subsequent cover-up of such crimes by bishops themselves, their intimidation of victims and their families, their hiding behind lawyers, and their irresponsible movement of predatory priests from assignment to assignment, without any warning to potential victims or even to pastors.

            Bishops will undoubtedly be relieved to learn that there is no registration fee for those who wish to attend only this second afternoon session.

            Bishop Paprocki hopes that many bishops and their designated officials will participate in this “important” conference.  Those who need further assistance can contact a lay employee in the committee office or another staff person, a relatively young monsignor with a highly unclerical first name.  He may be a fine person who will eventually be appointed a bishop himself. 

            The priest who sent me a copy of this letter wrote across the top, in capital letters, “CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? IN 2010.”

            His question was rhetorical, of course.

 

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.   

Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

             

  03/15/10

03/15/10

"Sandra Schneiders on Religious Life – II"

Week of March 15, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            Sandra Schneiders, a Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and professor of New Testament Studies and Christian Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, California, has recently published an extensive study of Religious Life as a prophetic life form in the National Catholic Reporter’s on-line edition (January 4-8).

            This week’s and last week’s columns highlight the major points of that substantial article.

            !  The 1950s type of Religious Life, “for which some Catholics nostalgically pine, is actually a relatively recent, short-lived, and somewhat anomalous phenomenon.” 

            Twentieth-century American nuns, dressed in 18th-century European garb, “bore very little resemblance to their pioneer forebears,” some of whom lived in log cabins, braved the bitter winters of the great plains or the scorching heat of the southwest, and traveled by boat, covered wagon, on horseback, by steam engine, and on foot.

            “They nursed on the battlefields, on shipboard, and among the victims of epidemics.  They founded schools for native Americans, Blacks, and the Appalachian poor and were admitting to their schools and hospitals people of color well before it was legal.  They ministered to soldiers and miners and railway workers, to women of ‘ill repute’ and addicts and criminals, and to the orphans whom such populations inevitably leave in their wake.”  The Sisters rarely made any distinction between Catholics and non-Catholics. 

            !  It was during and after the great wave of immigrants from Catholic countries, beginning in the 1820s, that Religious Life was increasingly standardized and domesticated.  Sisters became an institutional work-force supplying free or very cheap labor for the hierarchy and local clergy, while observing the residential lifestyle of a semi-cloistered monastery.

            !  Contemporary ministerial Religious Life, which emerged from the dissolution of this immigrant Catholicism, resembles more the early ministerial Religious Life of the late-17th and 18th centuries in Europe, and the 18th and early-19th centuries in the New World.

            !  As she pointed out in her 4-page article in the NCR last October 2nd, Sandra Schneiders identifies three major changes that the post-Vatican II renewal brought about in ministerial Religious Life. 

            In lifestyle, there were changes in habit, housing, and horarium (that is, the carefully scripted schedule for prayer and other activities inside the convent). “As religious adjusted their lifestyles to facilitate their expanded involvement in more diversified and individualized ministries they naturally took control of such lifestyle issues into their own hands.”

            These changes also affected the way Religious lived in community.  They began following in earnest the council’s People of God ecclesiology, stepping “out of the pyramidal structure that had controlled their lives up to that point.”  This led to egalitarianism within the community, a collegial form of governance, team-leadership, dialogue and discernment, subsidiarity, and a “non-coercive exercise of authority.” 

            All of this represented not change for change’s sake, but an enhancement of the Sisters’ ministries and prophetic vocation.  Religious thereby subverted “the domination system of the patriarchal Church by incarnating in their community life an alternative not only to patriarchy but to all forms of coercion-based exercise of power.”

            These changes in lifestyle and community life were internal to Religious Life.  A third change–in ministry–that was also brought about during the post-conciliar renewal affected the Church beyond Religious Life.

            “Sisters were now ministering in prisons, with undocumented immigrants, in inner city shelters, on Capitol Hill, in spirituality centers open to all faiths or none, with the homeless, with torture victims, with the dying who were alienated from the Church, and in myriad other situations in which there were no easy answers and the stakes for real people were as high as they were for the woman taken in adultery to whom Jesus proclaimed the Reign of God as compassion redefining justice.”

            The exercise of these ministries often placed Sisters at odds with ecclesiastical authorities, who, appealing to “obedience,” sought to control such activities.  (Sister Schneiders cites the episode in Acts 5:19-42 as a model of what real obedience means.)

            !  Unfortunately, we are now in a period of retrenchment from Vatican II in which two visions of the Church find themselves “running, one forward and one backward, on parallel ecclesiological tracks”: the council’s People of God ecclesiology and the hierarchical ecclesiology that was dominant before the council and since the Council of Trent in the 16th century.

            Religious women happen to be caught in the ecclesiological crossfire.  The Vatican’s efforts to “rein in” women Religious (but not men Religious) have to be seen always in this context.

            Those who implicitly regard Vatican II as a terrible mistake support these efforts.  Those who regard the council as a “new Pentecost” support the Sisters.

 

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.    Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

03/08/10

"Sandra Schneiders on Religious Life"

Week of March 8, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            Sandra Schneiders is a Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (known to many as the “IHMs”) and professor of New Testament Studies and Christian Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, in Berkeley, California. 

            She has written extensively on Religious Life, not only in the National Catholic Reporter, but in her projected three-volume work on Religious Life in the new millennium.  The first two volumes were published by Paulist Press in 2000 and 2001 respectively.  She is currently working on the third volume.

            Professor Schneiders recently published on-line in the NCR an extensive study of Religious Life as a prophetic life form.  It ran in five installments from January 4th through the 8th.  She had previously published a four-page article on Religious Life in the NCR’s October 2nd issue, and this column subsequently summarized its major points.

            Her most recent article is difficult to summarize, but I shall try to do so in this week’s and next week’s columns.  To make the effort as easy to follow as possible, I will simply list some of Sister Schneiders’s main points, whether directly or in paraphrase.

            !  Religious life is a prophetic life form, as Pope John Paul II acknowledged in Vita Consecrata, a post-synodal apostolic exhortation published in 1996.  As such, it is based entirely on Jesus’ own prophetic ministry, which called for the end of all domination systems, where power is exercised by the few over the many.

            !  The current struggle between some in the Vatican and the overwhelming majority of religious communities of women is really a power struggle between those who favor the renewal and reforms promoted by the Second Vatican Council and those who do not.  Women’s Religious Life is “being used as a symbolic scapegoat” in this confrontation.

            !  Sisters are a particularly important target because of their sheer numbers and influence.  They are also “the largest, best organized, most geographically ubiquitous, most ministerially diversified, and therefore probably most effective promoters of the vision of Vatican II.”  As such, the Sisters are “the greatest source of hope” for many Catholics, and the “most serious danger” to “the real (that is, pre-conciliar) Church,” which others are trying to restore.

            !  The current investigation of religious communities is confined to communities of women.  Male religious communities have declined in numbers just as steeply as women’s, but the males are not being investigated.  Why is this so?

            !  Religious Life is also “a charismatic life form, called into existence by the Holy Spirit,” which means that its members “live corporately the prophetic charism in the Church.”  Religious communities, therefore, are not “a work force gathering recruits for ecclesiastical projects,” nor is their mission or their particular ministries determined by the hierarchy.

            !  As for the “shortage” of vocations to Religious Life, “No Congregation ‘needs’ more members than are actually called to it by God....The purpose of the life is not to perpetuate particular Congregations nor to staff Church institutions; it is to live intensely the witness to the Gospel to which the Congregation is called and for as long as it is called.” 

            !  Canon 586, for example, expressly forbids the intrusion by ecclesiastical authorities into the internal affairs of religious communities.  They have “a rightful autonomy of life, especially of governance.”

            !  Ministerial innovation by a religious community is not a mark of “instability or infidelity to its originating charism.  Such innovation belongs to the nature of the vocation as prophetic rather than institutional.”

            !  The good news of the Kingdom, or Reign, of God applies to the here-and-now, and those who proclaim that good news do so in a compassionate, not judgmental, manner, just as Jesus himself acted when he confronted the religious authorities in defense of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11).  Thus, the “ministry of religious to people suffering insoluble conflicts of conscience or caught in impossible life situations, is not rebellion or insubordination but a carefully discerned and courageous fidelity to their primary ministerial vocation: to mediate the good news of God’s compassion and justice to people in concrete conditions.”

            !  Sisters are not clerics.  Their “non-clerical status...has extremely important implications for their prophetic ministry of which many in the Church are unaware or about which they are ill-informed.”  A cleric makes a promise of obedience to his ecclesiastical superior and his successors.  Religious do not.  They make vows to God alone, in the presence of their superiors, to lead the Religious Life.  “In the concrete, this means that religious, unlike the clergy, are not agents of the institutional Church as Jesus was not an agent of institutional Judaism.”

 

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.    Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

 

03/01/10

"David Tracy on God"

Week of March 1, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            David Gibson, author of The Coming Catholic Church (HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), has written an excellent piece on the American Catholic theologian David Tracy in the January 29th issue of Commonweal.  It is entitled “God Obsessed: David Tracy’s Theological Quest.”

            Although I have not seen him in several years, I have always regarded David Tracy as a friend, having first met him many years ago when I was doing doctoral studies in Rome during the Second Vatican Council and he was a seminarian (for the diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut) at the North American College.

            Given its subject, Gibson’s Commonweal article is remarkably clear and can serve as a useful introduction to David Tracy for those who are understandably uncertain or even unaware of who he is.  I say “understandably” because Tracy hasn’t published a major book in some twenty years, and his theological work has, for the most part, not found its way onto the Vatican’s radar screen.

            Why not?  Because as one adviser to the U.S. Catholic bishops put it back in the 1980s, like many others the Vatican cannot fathom what Tracy is saying.  His writings have never touched upon such toxic subjects as church authority or sexual morality, and so have not been regarded as controversial or dangerous to the faith.

            At the time, the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine was investigating another U.S. Catholic theologian, who was warned by at least a couple of bishop-members of the committee that his problem was that, unlike Tracy, he wrote too clearly.  People could actually understand what he was driving at.

            According to David Gibson’s article, this frequently mentioned observation about Tracy’s dense writing style elicits a “wounded” reaction from him.  “I don’t think I’m that obscure,” he insists.

            But the main point of the Commonweal article is to focus on the central issue not only for Tracy’s theology but for all of theology, namely, the problem of God and of the possibility of belief in God.

            Although now retired from his long-time teaching position at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, Tracy is working on his so-called “Big Book,” a projected multi-volume treatise on God, which Gibson refers to as “the most celebrated case of delayed publication in theology today.”

            Tracy has consistently followed a “method of critical correlation.”  It is a slight modification of the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich’s (d. 1965) “method of correlation.”  Tracy wishes to maintain a dialectical balance between the demands of the Christian tradition and the questions posed by what he calls the postmodern world. 

            Some of Tracy’s critics have erroneously charged that he yields ground on the demands of the Christian tradition in favor of the concerns expressed by the world of science.

            But Tracy insists that his yet-unpublished book about the problem of God “has taken him more deeply into the Christian tradition and more extensively into other religious traditions.” 

            For him, the “overwhelming issue” facing us today is “massive global suffering.”  Consequently, he has come to focus less on the “analogical imagination” (the title of his 1981 book) than on the inaccessibility of God.

            David Gibson describes Tracy as “riveted by the silence of God.”  The problem his fellow theologians have created, Tracy believes, is that too many of them have “an obsession with content,” with the result that the content “has drowned out the silence.”  Making doctrine central to theology has been “disastrous,” he declares.

            He is convinced that “theologians must reestablish the connection between spirituality and theology that was severed by medieval Scholasticism.”

            Before Vatican II, Tracy points out, “Spirituality became something you do after you do your theology.”  I can testify from personal experience that this was, in fact, the operative assumption of much pre-conciliar seminary theology.

            Theology, he continues, “is not about supplying answers that cannot be questioned,” but rather is judged by “the questions it asks.”  In the final analysis, theology is a work of mysticism rather than of logic.

            What, then, is the “take-away” from David Gibson’s article?

            That Catholic theology must always pay adequate attention to both the Christian tradition and the questions posed by the so-called postmodern world.

            That Catholic theology must be  attentive to massive global suffering, even though it will only deepen our sense of the inaccessibility of God.

            That Catholic theology, as Tracy himself insists, must be “riveted” by the silence of God, and not speak, write, or act as if we have a direct, static-free pipeline to God and to the divine will.

            And that Catholic theology must always ground itself in an authentic spirituality, not its many counterfeits, which are simply expressions of an arid, lifeless devotionalism.

 

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.    Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

 

02/22/10

"Reclaiming Catholicism"

Week of February 22, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            There is a new book out, entitled Reclaiming Catholicism (Orbis Books) and edited by my friend and former colleague at Boston College, Thomas Groome, chair of its Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry, and by Michael Daley, religion teacher at St. Xavier High in Cincinnati.

            Perhaps the book will help younger Catholics to better understand and appreciate Catholicism’s roots in the pre-Vatican II era, and older Catholics to recall the spiritual assets that contributed to their own religious formation.

            Individual books, however, usually have limited impact, and I suspect that Reclaiming Catholicism will be no exception.

            Nevertheless, one hopes that younger and older Catholics alike will find something of value in this one.

            A sampling of the contributors and their entries yields such a hope: “Studying the Bible, Then and Now,” by Sr. Diane Bergant, C.S.A.; “The Humbling of the Priesthood,” by Fr. Donald Cozzens; “The Pre-Vatican II Church and Women,” by Susan Ross; and “Sin: ‘Don’t Lose All That Old-Time Catholic Guilt,’” by Fr. Charles Curran.

            There are also entries on major Catholic personalities of the pre-Vatican II period: John Courtney Murray, S.J., Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., Thomas Merton, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Msgr. John Tracy Ellis, Mary Perkins Ryan, Sr. Marie Augusta Neal, S.N.D., Dorothy Day, Sr. Mary Luke Tobin, S.L., and Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., who, like some others, straddles both sides of the conciliar divide.

            There are also entries on the Baltimore Catechism, Catholic schools, contraception, Confession, the Rosary, and even the Legion of Decency.

            Full disclosure: I contributed two entries to the collection.  The first is on the Church, before and after Vatican II, and the second is on Fr. Hesburgh, president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, where I continue to teach.

            I believe that the book’s appearance is timely, if for no other reason than that it might prove helpful to Catholics who are currently discouraged and demoralized about the state of their Church.

            By way of example, I received two e-mails in the past few days alone that reflect the pain suffered needlessly by so many good Catholics.  I say “needlessly” because, with a higher quality of leadership, especially at the episcopal level, many of the Church’s problems would not exist.

            A few weeks ago, prompted by the newly-released film “Invictus,” this column pointed to the example of Nelson Mandela, elected to the presidency of South Africa after spending the greater part of 27 years as a political prisoner in that country.

            Rather than seize the opportunity to “get even” with his long-time tormentors in the Afrikaner-dominated government, Mandela used the reins of power to heal his nation’s divisions and bring whites and blacks together.

            That is the challenge of real leadership: to unite rather than to divide, to make a fractured country into a community. 

            It only requires a short step to apply the lessons of Mandela’s leadership in South Africa to papal and episcopal leadership in the Catholic Church.

            Enlightened leadership was exercised in the relatively brief pontificate of John XXIII, and it was also exercised by so many of the bishops of the same time and since: Bernard Alfrink of The Netherlands, Leo-Jozef Suenens of Belgium, Joseph Bernardin of Chicago–to cite only three examples.     

             Why did the high promise of the Second Vatican Council give way to the doldrums experienced by so many active and committed Catholics today?

            One e-mail correspondent informed me that he had resigned from his parish council and that he and his wife had decided to leave the parish to which they had belonged for many years to take up membership in a downtown parish effectively staffed by a religious community.

            When my correspondent lectored for the last time at his long-time parish, his judgment, he said, was confirmed.  The new associate pastor preached what my correspondent considered a divisive homily that derided the religious education of the past 30-40 years and denounced what he called “cafeteria” Catholics.

            It was, in the judgment of this demoralized Catholic, “a poorly veiled condemnation of Vatican II.”  It was something to which he wanted to be subjected no longer.

            The second e-mail came from a fellow priest, who was appalled by a statement attributed to one of our bishops as he joined other bishops in opposing same-sex civil unions legislation.

            The bishop asserted that “not all discrimination is unjust.  Some is quite justified because it is based on reality and truth”–namely, that gays and lesbians are nothing more than perverts, who deserve no protection from the law?

            If Nelson Mandela had followed the example of some of our priests and bishops, one wonders where South Africa would be today.

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.    Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

02/15/10

 

"The New Roman Missal"

Week of February 15, 2010

ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By Rev. Richard P. McBrien

 

            Father Michael Ryan has been pastor of St. James Cathedral in Seattle since 1988.  His recent article in America magazine, “What If We Said, ‘Wait’?: The case for a grass-roots review of the new Roman Missal” (December 14, 2009), has evoked a heavy and largely positive response.  By the latter part of January, well over 12,000 people had submitted signatures in support of Father Ryan’s efforts.

            In a letter dated December 3rd, Father Ryan shared some of the background and motivation for his America article.

            “For some time, as I’ve followed...the bishops’ debates, read many of the new texts, discussed them with brother priests, and visited about them with people in the pews, I’ve become aware of how difficult it’s going to be to ‘sell’ ordinary, faithful, good Catholics on the new, Latinized translations of the Missal.  And with good reason because some of them are so bad and the principles underlying the translations are so questionable.

            “And that’s not all.  I’m more than troubled when I realize that it’s almost exclusively the pastors of this country who will be saddled with the task of getting people to understand why they are getting new translations and why the translations will be better than what they’re used to: better for their prayer life and better for the Church.  To put it as succinctly as possible, if I haven’t been able to sell myself on this, how will I ever successfully sell it to the people I served!”

            At the beginning of his article Father Ryan recalls, as a seminarian at the North American College in Rome, that he was in St. Peter’s Square in early December 1963 when Pope Paul VI and his brother bishops presented the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which the Second Vatican Council had just approved and which the Pope officially promulgated.

            The constitution had passed overwhelmingly: 2,147 to 4.  It was not the product of a small group of “hijackers” who had somehow won over a bare majority of unsuspecting council fathers.  On the contrary, the constitution had virtually unanimous support.

            “Not in my wildest dreams,” Father Ryan writes, “would it have occurred to me then that I would live to witness what seems more and more like the systematic dismantling of the great vision of the council’s decree.  But I have.  We Catholics have.”

            He thinks that the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has “raised rubricism to an art form.”  He also references the so-called Tridentine Mass, recently reinstated in spite of the fact that Pope Paul VI explicitly mandated that there not be two separate liturgies in the Roman Rite.

            Father Ryan sees the present moment as “one more assault on the council and, sadly, one more blow to episcopal collegiality.”  He reminds his readers that Vatican II had given to each conference of bishops the authority to produce its own translations of the Mass texts.

            To be sure, these translations were to be approved by the Holy See, “but not, presumably, to be initiated, nitpicked and controlled by it.”

            “It is true that the church could gain some credibility by giving us more beautiful translations, but clumsy is not beautiful, and precious is not prayerful.”

            The reactions of both small and large groups of Catholics, when actually presented with samples of the new translations, run the gamut from laughter to outrage.  Father Ryan predicts that, when and if these new translations are eventually imposed upon parishes throughout the English-speaking world, there will be “an almost certain fiasco.”

            What to do, therefore?  Father Ryan urges pastors to mobilize and ask their bishops to hold off on the implementation of the new translations until they can be carefully road-tested.  As of now, however, the bishops seem to be weary of the whole matter.

            If the bishops have nearly given up, what about the priests?  Does obedience to the bishops mean that priests must be complicit in something they are convinced is pastorally wrongheaded?

            Father Ryan urges pastors, pastoral councils, liturgical commissions, and presbyteral councils to appeal to the bishops for a time of reflection and consultation, including some careful market-testing of the new translations in selected parishes and regions.  Only after that should we move forward.

            Father Ryan also asks those who agree with him to log on to the Web site     <www.whatifwejustsaidwait.org>.   “If our bishops know the depth of our concern,” he writes, “perhaps they will not feel so alone.”

            One hopes that he is right.

 

This essay is provided by the Faithful of Southern Illinois (FOSIL).  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.    Faithful of Southern Illinois, P. O. Box 31, Belleville, Il 62222

    

03/15/10

 

 

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