Catholic Sensibility

Next to the celebration of the Easter Vigil, the Rite of Acceptance is as much of a highlight as you can get in RCIA. When done properly and prayerfully, it is also among the most moving.

41. The rite that is called the rite of acceptance into the order of catechumens is of utmost importance. Assembling publicly for the first time, the candidates who have completed the period of the precatechumenate declare their intention to the Church and the Church in turn, carrying out its apostolic mission, accepts them as persons who intend to become its members. God showers his grace on the candidates, since the celebration manifests their desire publicly and marks their reception and first consecration by the Church.

The rite of acceptance is a dialogue between two communities. Newcomers have determined to enter the Church. The faith community, in the tradition of the apostles, accept them as their own. The rite is careful to note the agency of God in this. It happens on two levels. First, that God’s grace is part of the inner urging of people to join themselves to Christ and his community of disciples. And second, this rite is an act of consecration. It is the call to faith in microcosm: God urges, people respond, and God further intensifies the relationship with the gift of holiness.

From the president:

Now, the Freedom of Choice Act is not highest legislative priority. I believe that women should have the right to choose. But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on. And that’s — that’s where I’m going to focus.

Time for the Republicans to find another sacred … er, cash cow. Good thing gay marriage has come along, eh? Or not. Let’s shift the watch from FOCA and focus instead on the predictable blogosphere denial: This was nothing more than spin … FOCA will wait until his SECOND term … The fact that it is a priority is bad enough …

The president is mistaken if he thinks this will tamp down anger. The extremists in the Catholic blogosphere will divide and go into different places. Some will refuse to believe their ears. Others will pink slip Doug Kmiec and Sam Brownback from the Church. Watch and see.

Meanwhile, anybody get a fund raising letter from Deal Hudson lately?

… but wave?

Bishops and diocesan liturgy directors are warning off communion from the cup in some places. But this idea seems a little limp to me:

(M)embers of our congregations should not be offended at this time if someone chooses not to shake the other person’s hand at the sign of peace.

If you are ill, the appropriate response to someone extending a sign of peace might be to bow to them and say, ‘Peace be with you,’ to avoid bodily contact, or one might wave slightly at the other person.

This, from Father Michael Dugan, Dallas diocesan liturgy director. I like the bow. That works well. Slight wave: that doesn’t. I’d stick with the bow: dignified, non-secular,

Just so I can demonstrate some balance, I’m going to lob something President Jenkins’ way over his statement of finding another worthy recipient.

It’s a bad idea.

He, or his committee, or whoever, have already decided Mary Ann Glendon is the best recipient. I agree. Her name should stay on the plaque or tree or whatever, the award noted, and medal not received, and the acceptance talk not given. Then just move on. He’s already given the political pro-lifers plenty to crow about and laugh at. If I were on his Laetare board, I would counsel wait till next year for the next recipient. Suggestion: Stephen Colbert.

Natch, we liturgists have know this for years. Want your kids to be Catholic adults? Take ‘em to church every Sunday and holy day. Do you think we clergy, lay ministers, and schools are going to instill it without you? Archbishop Wuerl tells it from a bigger pulpit:

The report highlights the importance of Mass attendance among children and teenagers. Adolescence is a critical time in religious development and, as the poll shows, what happens in the teen years has a long-lasting affect. We have to help young people and their parents appreciate the importance of going to weekly Mass so teenagers know Jesus is there for them now and always.

Professor Mary Ann Glendon promised she would remain silent after her public letter in First Things declining Notre Dame’s Laetare Award and sharing the stage, as it were, with President Obama. Others are not so silent. Her daughter Elizabeth Lev posts an essay with a nice start (referred from Via Media) but a poor and telling conclusion:

What is likeable about a Catholic University named for the most important woman in Christianity exploiting a woman who has already dedicated her life to protecting the Church’s teaching by turning her into a warm-up act for a grotesque twist on a reality show?

First the poverty. The POTUS is suddenly a weak sister to a pop culture curiosity? I think President Obama can be rightly and thoroughly criticized for his stance on abortion and ESCR. While I can understand family love runs deep, it does the issues little credit to waste a nice assessment with such a crass insult. An ambassador might well think such thoughts, and a college professor certainly, but a person with class would never to rarely state them publicly.

Finally, after 50 Catholic bishops condemned the university for its direct defiance in honoring a man in open conflict with the Church’s teaching, it is right that Professor Glendon let her silence speak louder than her five-minute allotment of words would have.

Ms Lev notes that she read her mother’s letter with “careful consideration.” The world’s commentariat can also read carefully. Monday Professor Glendon stated that the celebration of graduation should be an occasion for joy. Personally, I think a little shake-up for young adults is not so much of a bad thing.

Reading between the lines, maybe it wasn’t sharing the stage with a known-pro-choicer that was so daunting. The political pro-life crew is a tougher audience than the executive branch’s best orator is a sparring partner. Just ask Sam Brownback about that. First they use him behind his back to rake in the donor cash, then he’s a traitor for pawning off his state’s governor to HHS.

Ambassador Glendon surely knew that YouTube and hundreds of thousands of internet signatories would be watching her every move. It was a lose-lose situation. If she doesn’t talk about abortion, she gets run out of the Church on a rail. And if she does, she looks like a clod for hammering the president who almost certainly doesn’t hammer back. No, unlike Ms Lev’s characterization this isn’t rapier versus missile launcher. If there’s a rapier on one side, the other is more like a pool of water.

I’m thinking that thanks to gallons of bile and those fifty bishops, this incident has suckered hundreds of thousands of Catholics off point: the pro-life movement. The reality is that President Obama is enough of a gentleman not to use the ND platform to pound away on pro-choice and embryonic stem cell cures. And if he were? It would be enough to make me regret not sticking to Third Party.

The longer this sad affair drags on the less honor drawn to the political pro-life side. Fifty bishops and 350,000 signatories might feel good, but the crystal witness of Catholics is tarnished. Millions of unborn children can’t speak up or make a witness, but those who speak on their behalf have a responsibility to make the wtiness for life as persuasive as it can be.

This last section of the chapter on the precatechumenate is addressed to clergy:

40. During the precatechumenate period, parish priests (pastors) should help those taking part in it with prayers suited to them, for example, by celebrating for their spiritual well-being the prayers of exorcism and the blessings given in the ritual (RCIA nos. 94, 97).

It’s interesting that while large-scale liturgy is strongly discouraged, it is left to the pastor’s discretion and responsibility to pray with inquirers, and to be familiar enough with these newcomers so as to discern their proper spiritual needs.

This concludes what the rite have to teach on the precatechumenate period. No big public rituals, but remember the important principles contained in the rite: the call for the community to evangelize, for the whole community to be involved in meeting and conversing with inquirers, the emphasis on the proclamation of the Gospel (as opposed to “teaching” it), and the hope for spiritual growth. Everything is guided to the next step, when inquirers will make the choice to enter the catechumenate and their first “consecration” (RCIA no. 41) before the faith community is celebrated.

Meanwhile, any final comments on the period of precatechumenate?

I was going to do an “armchair liturgist” post on First Communions, but we’ve already hit that topic. If you care to read it and post your comments, feel free. Your additions to that old thread will bring it to the surface on the sidebar, right.

I bring it up because one of our musical middle school parishioners has a younger sibling celebrating First Communion on Saturday. I’ve been gently (I hope, gently) urging the young lady to play at Mass for some time now. The family approached me about having their daughter play the final song Saturday night.

Playing the whole Mass can be a very intimidating experience for young musicians. Sit in the purple chair and pontificate on the future of church music. How would you acclimate a young keyboard musician to liturgy? Are you flexible enough for a piecemeal approach? Would you encourage them to learn the Mass setting and play it week after week? Would you arrange a piano/organ duet so if disaster strikes, you have one keyboard working? Are there other liturgical services that you’ve found to be a good intermediate step to Mass?

Let’s get to the section, then I’ll add comments at the end:

39. It belongs to the conference of bishops to provide for the evangelization proper to this period. The conference may also provide, if circumstances suggest and in keeping with local custom, a preliminary manner of receiving those interested in the precatechumenate, that is, those inquirers who, even though they do not fully believe, show some leaning toward the Christian faith (and who may be called “sympathizers.”

1. Such a reception, if it takes place, will be carried out without any ritual celebration; it is the expression not yet of faith, but of a right intention.

2. The reception will be adapted to local conditions and to the pastoral situation. Some candidates may need to see evidence of the spirit of Christians that they are striving to understand and experience. For others, however, whose catechumenate will be delayed for one reason or another, some initial act of the candidates or the community that expresses their reception may be appropriate.

3. The reception will be held at a meeting or gathering of the local community, on an occasion that will permit friendly conversation. An inquirer or “sympathizer” is introduced by a friend and then welcomed and received by the priest or some other representative member of the community.

It would be the role of the USCCB to provide for evangelization of American inquirers. I’m not aware of any official document for this. The national statutes in the US reinforce the notion that if inquirers are welcomed, this is a social event, not a liturgical one. This is a sound approach, saving the first ritual moment for the entry into the order of catechumens. But having a pastoral and respectful way of introducing newcomers to the parish at-large, even Catholics moving into the neighborhood, is just good common sense.

Any thoughts on this? How is handled in your parish?

Our staff and a few parish commissions are thick in the discussion of accessibility, mainly at our weekend Masses. Though we are getting good marks on the issues of welcoming and accommodation, we have some items to tweak.

Some of the positives include a flexibility on where folks in wheelchairs and walkers can sit. It is important to give people the choice, and not to force them into a segregated area. We are easily able to accommodate people who want to sit in front, near the front, or in the back. When you think about it, having a particular area isn’t really very welcoming or respectful.

One piece I’ve noticed as I see our automatic doors in use–we’ve been criticized for them. The synchronization of inner and outer door isn’t necessarily a good thing. As they are set now, door one opens first, and door two is on a delay. As it opens, the first door will begin to close. One parishioner reports concern that the first door may begin to close before she can proceed all the way through the second. While it may save a bit on lost heat or conditioned air, it is a challenge to us to consider a simultaneous opening. And one lasting a sufficient time to get a carefully-moving person through.

How do you handle accessibility issues at your parish? Churches aren’t required to be ADA-compliant, but very many choose to do so. I wonder how more traditional churches handle the challenges of wheelchairs, especially the larger mechanical ones.

It’s a page straight from the Republican playbook. Don’t like someone? Get them fired. And start a web site for it.

Consider the conservative patched-up old coat (corrolary here) and how it bridges the gap between a principled stand for justice and a neo-Nixon enemies’ list:

We cannot convince millions of women to forego abortions.

We cannot convince doctors and others to cease performing the procedure.

We cannot convince politicians to make it illegal.

We cannot convince voters to elect politicians to give lip service to … we mean make it illegal.

We cannot stop other believers, even pro-life believers, from inviting those who defeated our politicians to speak or giving them a token or a free meal or something.

So let’s go after somebody we can touch, and even worse–his money. The neo-con 9/12 manifesto expressly states never to make a personal sacrifice when you can make someone else your sacrifice instead. Heaven forbid that the pro-life effort would ever call for personal sacrifice. My goodness, the liberals would overrun the stadium on gameday and the others would have to fall back on watching the game on the hi-def tv they bought with funds diverted from the students of Notre Dame.

I have to admit a fantasy. President Obama goes to Notre Dame, gives a speech largely in favor of supporting unborn life in the womb, and Randall Terry, Bishop D’Arcy, Deal Hudson, and Mary Ann Glendon sit home with egg on their faces. It would be a lovely day for an omelet. Dang, but I don’t think that will be on the menu.

Like half a million other internet Catholics, I read Professor Glendon’s statement on First Things. Unlike most of them, I come away unimpressed. Here’s why:

We’re what: less than two weeks from ND commencement? This story has been brewing a lot longer than that. What took her so long to make up her mind? It was clear from the first post on a Catholic conservative web site this was going to be ideological anti-abortion armageddon. Has Professor Glendon spent so much time in Rome she’s not aware of the magnitude of issues like this within Catholicism? Didn’t Bishop D’Arcy encourage her to attend and receive her award when he announced his own boycott last month? So one strike for just plain bad manners.

As for this statement:

U.S. bishops’ express request of 2004 that Catholic institutions “should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles” and that such persons “should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

Professor Glendon, like many other Catholics, seem to gloss over the clause “which would suggest support for their actions.” I suppose you can read it that every award, honor, and platform automatically suggests support. Those of us who do not apply Liturgiam Authenticam in daily speech might also realize that a Catholic institution might well be able to invite a pro-choice person to speak, as the witness of the Church and institution clearly give others the impression the speaker is not being honored for his beliefs on pro-choice issues, but in spite of them. But this principle and document seem open to interpretation, so ball one for the prof.

However, Professor Glendon has a valid point if her perception is that she’s being used by the ND administration as sort of a pro-life antidote. Her quotes from the university reveal something clumsy is afoot in the spin game. I would rather ND just said, “Look: we invited him, and we’re not going to take it back. Like it or lump it.” Ball two on a hard inside pitch.

I wasn’t impressed with this reasoning:

A commencement, however, is supposed to be a joyous day for the graduates and their families. It is not the right place, nor is a brief acceptance speech the right vehicle, for engagement with the very serious problems raised by Notre Dame’s decision—in disregard of the settled position of the U.S. bishops—to honor a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church’s position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice.

Say what? This commencement has been touted as a battleground ever since the conservatives got whiff of it. Do you think that South Bend graduates and their families aren’t aware of who their commencement speaker is and why people are upset? Professor Glendon, if she was really concerned about keeping the day nice and sunshiney, should have also written a letter to the president’s detractors and told them to cool it.

This is some kind of courageous decision, I hear it touted, not to disrupt the joy. Sheesh. This is exactly the time for people to get a rip-roaring taste of life in the outside world, as much as the Culture Wars can be evidence of that world. We’re not talking kindergarteners, but young men and women who will very soon be dealing with real life morality in the world (if they haven’t confronted it already on campus). They don’t need spoonfeeding.

So that makes it a generous two-and-two count for the pinch hitter from Harvard.

Beyond this at-bat, I don’t see a good short-term solution for bishops, universities, or the political pro-lifers. This is like the bottom of the eighth, trailing 9-3 with two outs. Bishops, more and more, come off as pouty and ineffective. Rather than boycott these speaker events or insist on a disinvite, why wouldn’t they attend, take advantage of the platform, and really stir up the pot with some strong words? Maybe some of them wish they’d been stronger in preaching and public speaking–I don’t know.

Universities will be doing a better job vetting speakers from now on. I predict a lower quality of presentation or a lower quality of content delivered at commencement. I don’t see how university presidents are suddenly going to go hat in hand to their bishop to get their speakers approved. Worst case scenario would be some conservative getting her or his hands on prospective lists and tallying up the disinvites. Which bishop vetoed the most speakers? Give him a medal. Which speaker was vetoed by the most bishops? You have the antichrist of the year.

Political pro-lifers have a pyrrhic victory. The movement can’t break abortion numbers, can’t get laws passed, and resorts to pep rallies for the disillusioned faithful. Which bishop was it that suggested the local Birthright or other pro-life service gain extra volunteer hours in reparation for the sins of society? Oh wait, it was another pep rally–I mean Mass.

Maybe Professor Glendon can hit the summer speaking circuit now that Harvard is on summer break. I’m sure she could reap lots of medals in return for declining the Laetare.

Update: I think RP Burke has delivered the strikeout pitch.

The family and I were off to Kansas City for a friend’s surprise 50th birthday party yesterday. About 3PM I got a phone call from the boss. Where was the wrench for the holy oils?

Yipes.

I had misplaced the wrench at the Easter Vigil and I had meant to get to the hardware store to acquire a replacement. We had anointing of the sick at all weekend Masses … 235 miles away.

I sat back down with my friends and I told them the story. Our ambry is mounted on two columns near the font (chrism on one, below, and OI and OC on the other). There’s a wrought iron collar for each container of oil. A little wrench loosens the collar and allows us access to the container.

Two Saturdays ago I thought I had put the wrench in my shirt pocket then I was sure I bent over somewhere that night, because, by the time liturgy was over, my pocket was empty.

The young miss spoke up. “You didn’t lose it, Dad.”

“What?”

“I have the wrench.”

“What?”

“You handed the wrench to me so you wouldn’t lose it. I put it in the pocket of my purple coat. It’s still there, front pocket on the right side. My coat’s hanging up next to the front door at home.”

Dumbfounded, I called our housesitter and left a message. When I saw him at Mass tonight, he said he found the little wrench, just where I told him it was.

I’m getting too old to lone ranger on liturgy. I think I’m hiring the young miss for all of next year’s Triduum.

We’ve discussed some general approaches in the past two posts, but what are the particular responsibilities of clergy and catechists? What should the candidates experience during this time to facilitate their initial conversion?

38. During this period, priests and deacons, catechists and other lay persons are to give the candidates a suitable explanation of the Gospel (see RCIA 42). The candidates are to receive help and attention so that with a purified and clearer intention they may cooperate with God’s grace. Opportunities should be provided for them to meet families and others groups of Christians.

Section 38 reveals a theme we shall see repeated over and over in RCIA. The ministers are the entire Christian community, and from the very beginnings of first faith in those inquiring, the community has an indispensable role. Along with the community, catechists and clergy are to give a “suitable explanation” of the Gospel. Note this is not described as teaching, per se. Whatever this exposure to Christ is called, the end result of the precatechumenate is purer and clearer intentions. What might this mean? The unbaptized spouse or fiance might be guided to explore becoming a Christian for his or her own sake, not the expectations of the beloved, the families, or the culture of the Church.

How many parishes take RCIA 38 seriously and provide opportunities to meet families and other groups? I looked up my own parish’s calendar for the coming week. On Tuesday, for example, inquirers might be invited to no less than five groups: Centering Prayer, the Honduras Ministry dinner, the cookie bake, the prayer group or the Bible study. The cookie bake, in particular, would be an excellent way for inquirers to meet parishioners socially and be exposed to how ordinary Catholics live the Gospel.

Needless to say, there is the strong hint here that families invite inquirers to their homes, to neighborhood gatherings, and do so in a natural and friendly way, especially when whole families are pondering becoming baptized.

I read where Steubenville’s Bishop Conlon is urging Catholics to return to Friday fasts. He might have consulted an episcopal document from the last generation, in which the USCCB suggested:

298. As a tangible sign of the need and desire to do penance we, for the cause of peace, commit ourselves to fast and abstinence each Friday of the year. We call upon our people voluntarily to do penance on Friday by eating less food and by abstaining from meat. This return to a traditional practice of penance, once well observed in the U.S. Church, should be accompanied by works of charity and service toward our neighbors. Every Friday should be a day significantly devoted to prayer, penance, and almsgiving for peace.

From Bishop Conlon’s letter:

I am inviting the Catholic people of the Diocese of Steubenville to resume the practice of abstaining from meat on all Fridays throughout the year, but with a twist. I am asking that this be not only a penitential practice but also an experience of prayer and service. This can happen by connecting abstinence with our witness to the sacredness of human life.

Do you suppose we’ll fall back on the usual fish and shellfish? Or could vegetarian Fridays gain some traction?