Indulgences for the Year of Faith

Starting Thursday, the Year of Faith is in effect, and with it, an indulgence. Full news announcement here.

Some highlights, once the believer has celebrated the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist and prayed Pope Benedict’s monthly intentions, there are four opportunities:

Each time they attend at least three sermons during the Holy Missions, or at least three lessons on the Acts of the Council or the articles of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in church or any other suitable location.

I like the inclusion of attending a mission. I wonder how many pastors and staffs are considering adding a parish mission in the coming year. Continuing adult formation, also a laudable idea.

Each time they visit, in the course of a pilgrimage, a papal basilica, a Christian catacomb, a cathedral church or a holy site designated by the local ordinary for the Year of Faith (for example, minor basilicas and shrines dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Apostles or patron saints), and there participate in a sacred celebration, or at least remain for a congruous period of time in prayer and pious meditation, concluding with the recitation of the Our Father, the Profession of Faith in any legitimate form, and invocations to the Blessed Virgin Mary and, depending on the circumstances, to the Holy Apostles and patron saints.

The easiest solution is to celebrate Mass or the Hours at such a pilgrimage location. I wonder if such locations will provide a program of “prayer and meditation” to assist visitors. If I were serving such a site, I certainly would make it available in print as well as online. I would also take care that such online availability extended only to actual pilgrimage visits, not cyberspace.

Each time that, on the days designated by the local ordinary for the Year of Faith, … in any sacred place, they participate in a solemn celebration of the Eucharist or the Liturgy of the Hours, adding thereto the Profession of Faith in any legitimate form.

Which dioceses already have such events posted, planned, or publicized?

On any day they chose, during the Year of Faith, if they make a pious visit to the baptistery, or other place in which they received the Sacrament of Baptism, and there renew their baptismal promises in any legitimate form.

This I like. Very definite little blue thumb.

This is some of what is missing on the baptismal front:

For parents, an observation of each child’s anniversary of baptism in one or more of the following ways:

• a Mass of personal thanksgiving celebrated by the family in the parish or other church
• a home celebration of a liturgy of the Word or the Liturgy of the Hours, adapted for the inclusion of children, and including the godparents of the child(ren).
• some home formation connected to the child’s baptismal patron, or a home liturgy, or a celebration of Mass.

For Catholic schools, through high school level, a recognition of Catholic students’ baptismal anniversaries instead of birthdays.

For adults, a personal rededication to their baptism anniversary:

• a Mass of thanksgiving on the anniversary day of baptism, and/or on the patronal feast (one’s baptismal name(s))
• a triduum or a novena at or around the time of one’s baptismal anniversary (I’ll have a post or two with some suggestions on these in a few days)

In addition, I wonder if the personal sharing of one’s baptism, faith, or conversion with a non-believer wouldn’t be a good addition to the list. I hesitate not because I doubt the spiritual fruitfulness, but because I don’t know quite how to phrase the idea in an accessible way.

The last omission on the baptismal front would be for people who are aged or ill and who cannot travel to pilgrimage sites. Some way of praying for their parish’s catechumens or baptism families would be great. Maybe some way of including a profession of faith with the celebration of anointing. Or with Communion and pastoral visits.

These indulgences strike me as being rather heavy on the promotion of the institution, from bishops on up. Praying for the pope’s intentions is great. But praying for the intentions of parents whose children are being baptized–that strikes me as a needful connection to make. Recognizing the universal church is also great. But other aspects of the Church are often ignored and overlooked: the domestic church, the sick and elderly at the parish margins. An emphasis on “doing” Year of Faith activities can unfortunately steer people away from the interior life, especially people who are not oriented to the life of the clergy.

Any other suggestions for what might have been good opportunities missed on the indulgence list? And by the way, let’s not get hung up on the offering of indulgences. I’d rather focus on ideas that can be encouraged among believers. Whether we bother with indulgences or not, we can agree that many activities can be encouraged among believers just because they have an innate value for deepening one’s faith, and not because something is promised.

 

I Feel So 21st Century

Some of you know about the “small fire” at our parish center last week. The good news is that the cleaning company will get our basement classrooms ready for youth catechesis tomorrow, and staff will be back in our offices a week from tonight. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in a coffeehouse about a block from campus. A strong black coffee is steaming next to me. I’ve already gotten through my list of morning calls. Email replies are next. Lectio Divina rescheduled to the church next door. I needed to order a new shipment of hosts. Later I’ll assess if the altar bread in the sacristy is better off tossed, once we get back into the sacristy next week. We had significant soot deposits within our tabernacle–amazing how smoke penetrates everywhere.

In short, I can function as a parish liturgist pretty much anywhere I can get an internet connection and I have my laptop and cell. I feel much busier than usual: calls, texts, and emails coming and going all morning. If only I had a jet pack instead of a car, the feeling would be complete.

The bad news is that we’re out of our church until Christmas. Asbestos in a soot-stained ceiling will require extensive clean-up.

For Saturday Masses, we’ll merge with the other Catholic parish in town. The temporary site for worship on Sundays will be at a conference center on the edge of campus.

People at all the Masses laughed when this song was announced for entrance. It was wholly an accident of planning–chosen way back in August.

 

All Are Welcome, But Who Is Saved?

A few times in the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a few internet essays about how many people will be saved. Hell has to be real, according to some, or nothing eschatological has real meaning. I suppose I can relate: the whole world can’t be populated by younger sons and five o’clock hirelings. Somebody has to disapprove of fatted-calf parties and screwed-up payrolls.

My short-but-serious take on this that I don’t care. Oh, but I do care … in the sense that I have a hope that everyone will respond to the invitation of Christ and that everyone indeed will be saved. But what people do with the invitation is not very much my business. In all seriousness, I don’t think it furthers the Gospel for Christians to openly discuss in broad terms who will get saved, or how many, and do they need to explicitly know Christ, or be Catholic, or Christian, or orthodox. I have what I hope are good and serious reasons.

First, I think the proper Christian orientation to salvation is to attend to oneself, and by extension, one’s own logs, planks, and personal woodwork that needs removal, polishing, or whatever. I can’t work out someone else’s salvation. And it’s only because of grace that I have a hope for my own.

Speaking of hope, I think this is an important Christian virtue. Saint Paul seemed to think so too. It seems good to hope for one’s own salvation. It seems loving and charitable, if not wildly optimistic, that we hope for the salvation of every human being.

It’s unseemly. Really. It has the whiff, if not the stench of the popular kids in high school yukking it up amongst themselves on who will go to the cool parties and such, and which losers will be shut out.

It gives people an excuse to feel puffy and triumphant. It might be that out of the seventy billion human beings (so far) who have ever lived that maybe only seven-hundred million or so will be in heaven. The one-percent. The special. Is that going to accomplish the evangelization we’re called to effect?

 

Milwaukee’s 200-Year Plan

I’ve been on the fence commenting about Cardinal Martini’s parting interview which has been getting lots of Catholic blogosphere traction the past few days. For a few days, it seemed enough to let others carry the ball on the supposed “progressive hero” that I honestly didn’t know much about. The news from Milwaukee tips me over. If there’s a good way to link up two stories in some new way, I’m inclined to jump in with both feet.

The deceased cardinal has been quoted all over Google as saying the Catholic Church is two-hundred years out of date. More on the Reuters translation from Corriere della Sera:

Our culture has aged, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up; our rituals and our cassocks are pompous.

…

The church must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the pope and the bishops. The pedophilia scandals oblige us to take a journey of transformation.

No spit.

The Catholic Right is in full spin on this one, including Britain’s Catholic Herald:

(P)lease let us remember that reform is not to be confused with abolition.

Even the CH admits there’s nothing about doctrine getting pulled back. So why are they even bringing it up? Just to make sure the alarm spreads, and any potential renewal gets a quick clamp down.

A bit more than a decade ago, Milwaukee’s archbishop got no little Vatican heat for suggesting that rather than close parishes, he would prefer that communities surface viri probati, “proven men” who, though married, would make sound, reliable, and honored clergy to continue the mid-1900′s wave/glut of ordained priests. So much for the proven solution. Slap it down, then let the Jovial One pass on the tough decisions to his sorry-sap successor, who tries to put the best face on it:

Now that a long-term strategy has been determined for the archdiocese, it is extremely important for each parish and cluster to become actively involved in planning for the future. Each pastor or parish director in consultation with the parish pastoral council is charged with the responsibility for these planning efforts. The full implementation of the plan will require the collaborative efforts of everyone in the archdiocese.

Collaboration is indeed a worthy strategy to share. But I can’t help but think Archbishop Listecki is a cover boy for Cardinal Martini’s 200-Year comment. While it may have a time-honored practice in the West, a celibate priesthood is not a matter of faith and morals. It has nothing to do with doctrine. Even if the Church was somewhat preoccupied with Napoleon on the loose two centuries ago, there was no reason not to explore the viri probati solution, say, thirty to forty years ago. Would have done Catholics a lot more good than an Anglican Ordinariate. Or the return of the TLM. Ask Bishop Lennon in Cleveland if he wished he’d have dodged getting taken to ecclesiastical court over his reduction plan.

Let’s not kid ourselves. This has nothing to do with doctrine. Cardinal Martini was being generous with his brother prelates in the curia. They and their neo-aristocrat followers want to dial it back to the Dark Ages. Make no mistake about that.

And as for your own bishop, be aware of his priorities in all this. If he has to close a hundred parishes to prop up the 200-years, he’s going to be his own best advocate, career trail or not. You can bet he will never, ever buck the institution on the non-doctrinal front for you or any of your diocesan parishes.

 

On Confession

John Cornwall at The Tablet has a piece up describing “trends” but also some personal experiences, first and second-hand, of the Sacrament of Penance. A few bits I had not considered before, including this co-incidence of sex abuse and the lowering of the age of First Eucharist, and therefore Penance:

Strong and widespread evidence has emerged of a link between early confession and clerical sexual abuse. The lowered age of confession from 13 to seven coincides, according to meta-analyses (see Marie Keenan’s Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, Oxford University Press, 2011), with the age group of most affected victims. Pius X’s initiative resulted in the frequent exposure of Catholic children to priests untrained in child psychology and pedagogy, in circumstances of unsupervised intimacy. It is perhaps significant that the rise in sexual attacks, which started in the late 1950s through to the 1980s, coincides with not only the explosion of sexual permissiveness of that era, but the tendency for priests to hear confessions outside of the confessional box – in sacristies, parlours and priests’ quarters.

That “strong and widespread evidence,” I’d like to see something of that. I hope it’s something more than blaming the Beatles for Vatican II.

(You readers know I’m a skeptic on the so-called “rise” in attacks in the 50′s. We obviously have no statistics on dead victims and predators. The bell curve of the people we’ve talked to is always going to start somewhere, if we only ask those living as of a certain date. We can never know for sure if there was a slow rise in sexual predation through the first half of the 20th century. That might point to a causation, but it’s likely just one of many.)

I think we can settle that some approaches to rejuvenating the sacrament have failed.

Knocking form III out of the picture hasn’t “forced” people into form I. Form II seems a constant over the years. And for Catholic school students, it may be an interesting part of the problem. School kids can’t be coerced into form I, and the only opportunity many of them experience is form II in an elementary or high school format. Getting into the teen and young adult years, the retreat or pilgrimage experience seems dominant. We have at least a full generation of Catholics who are formed in Reconciliation as second graders, then experience the sacrament in group forms as they mature. But there is little to no follow-up formation in the examination of conscience.

Another interesting insight was that reference to “priests untrained in child psychology and pedagogy.” Six to ten years of hurry-up reconciliation conducted perhaps by amateurs. And even if those retreats and youth events are well-attended, that high is not likely to be found in a Saturday afternoon church where the pastor may have a homily, a wedding, and possibly other concerns.

The author is seeking input on a book. What would you tell him?

 

MHR In the Blogo-Big Time

Frequent commenter and friend Jimmy Mac has been keeping me updated on the drag queen not welcome/welcome flap at his parish. Religion News Service’s daily roundup has linked to this secular outlet’s news piece. The news has hit the blogosphere big time, and it’s all a big mistake, it seems.

The drag queen question? MHR business manager Michael Poma:

Father Brian wasn’t educated about the importance of drag queens in the gay community. Once it was explained to him, he said they were welcome  to attend as long as their behavior was church-appropriate.

Mr Poma again:

This is not a ban on drag queens or an insult to the gay community whatsoever. In the church hall there have been issues with weddings and other  groups, so we decided to put an end to them altogether. We are part of the  community here and to think that we’re banning drag queens is obnoxious and  ridiculous.

 

Helping Or Not

Just this week I encountered two significant books from the parish library. They’ve been hovering around the new book shelf for some time. They impact things I’ve done and things in ministry I plan to do. If you read either or both of them, they will likely make an impression on you, too.

Tattoos on the Heart, Father Gregory Boyle’s “storehouse of stories and parables” was, for me, a shattering read. After absorbing some of the more powerful experiences of this Los Angeles Jesuit pastor, I was very quickly taken back five years in time to the young people I met and tried to serve at a children’s psychiatric center in Kansas City. Fr Boyle’s efforts to lead the reader into a new way of “seeing the world and others” was convincing enough for me before I even finished chapter one. My memories of my young troubled friends of 2007-08 seemed to align with the even more brutal experiences in Southern California gang life and redemption.

Only a stony heart would emerge unmoved from reading this book. I’m not even going to bother to attempt to relate any of the content. The author is a passionate and born storyteller. And the message is clear, whether we’re dealing with young people crushed by poverty and despair, or the casual obstacles of modern first world life. You just have to read this book.

One of my staff colleagues has been promoting When Helping Hurts, and it has been reading material for the parish’s Just Faith series. Let the authors describe their aim:

First, North American Christians are simply not doing enough. We are the richest people ever to walk  the face of the earth. Period. Yet, most of us live as though there is nothing terribly wrong in the world. … We do not necessarily need to feel guilty about our wealth. But we do need to get up every morning with a deep sense that something is terribly wrong with the world and yearn and strive to do something  about it. There is simply not enough yearning and striving going on.

Second, … when North American Christians do attempt  to alleviate poverty, the methods used often do considerable harm to both the  materially poor and the materially non-poor. Our concern is not just that these methods are wasting human, spiritual, financial, and organizational resources but that these methods are actually exacerbating the very problems they are  trying to solve.

I don’t work as a third-world missioner. But evangelization is a core part of my ministry in a parish and at a campus ministry. I came away from this book asking myself if I was doing enough yearning and striving–not only for the Third World poor, but for the unchurched young people who live in my community. Do the methods of liturgy actually bring harm? The problem seems to be less one of proper worship (orthodoxy, or right-praise) but of addressing the root problems of young people in American culture: a disinterest in religion, a distrust of authority, a lack of connectedness to their communities and traditions, and probably more I can’t think of at this moment.

It’s a small thing that I’m confronted with a reconsideration of my aims and goals of traveling to Honduras some day. I’m glad my friend John has steered me to consider a visit more for the exchange of music and the building of relationships. Not so much for teaching music and liturgy. But after reading this book, I find myself challenged to re-engineer the whole way I conduct parish ministry.

Blowing everything up and starting over is going to have to wait another day. I have a talk to prepare for the new peer ministers and student coordinators, “Parish Mission and Structure” for the retreat next week. I have a feeling there’s going to be nothing about “doing for” others and a lot more “doing with” in that presentation.

Good books, both of these. Either one would have churned my insides and caused me to reexamine much of what I do. Coming on the heels of a very difficult and emotional week on the home front, these reads have left me exhausted. Literally. If you tackle either book, expect something of the same.

 

Tale of Two Planets

David Gibson has a good feature on LCWR head Pat Farrell over at RNS today. What a life experience: an Iowa farm childhood, loss of a father at an early age, Texas, Chile, El Salvador.

I’ve had a dramatic life, I really have. But the drama of it is not what’s important. The best of what we do is not about high drama.

This speaks of a mature and seasoned approach ot ministry. It’s about the people we serve. Mr Gibson’s commentary, suggesting that the sisters are operating on one planet, bishops on another:

Indeed, behind the drama is a story of service to the poor, advocacy for the marginalized, and a radical spirituality that has profoundly shaped Farrell and many nuns like her – as well as shaped the identity of the LCWR. Viewed in this context, the standoff is not a political struggle or power play as much as a contrast of complementary roles and experiences in the church.

While church officials often want to protect and emphasize doctrinal orthodoxies, sisters like Farrell often operate from a pastoral experience of faith in action that emphasizes a prophetic voice on behalf of the people they live with.

My sense is that we’re speaking of inhabitants of Planet Orthodoxy and Planet Orthopraxis.

Neither approach is wrong, and to a degree each needs the other. But the Lord seemed to favor the Praxis Planet:

A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him. (Matthew 21:28b-32)

The core of the monotheistic religions is right actions, orthopraxis. Christian teachers and saints hammer away at it. The apostle Paul favored love over knowledge and preaching. Orthopraxis is more attractive for the purpose of evangelization. What non-believer has ever uttered, “Those Christians! See how they preach correct doctrine!”?

The bishops are in an unfair spot, to be sure. They are traditionally responsible for the teaching of correct doctrine. It’s just as biblical a principle as doing the right thing. And they come off looking very badly in comparison to women who shun drama, and are simply looking to follow their call.

 

 

Albany Clergy Challenge

… both the CDF and the LCWR to offer an example to the world on how disagreement and misunderstanding are handled. From the letter:

We pray for a successful outcome of the mutual dialogue that will occur between your leadership, the Bishops and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. We are confident this conversation will provide a much needed example to the wider world of respectfulness and civility, as it embodies a degree of mutuality, trust and honesty, often absent in today’s world.

Thanks to Fran for the heads-up on this.

 

LCWR Response Coming Soon

Laurie Goodstein at the NYT has a feature up this weekend on the upcoming LCWR meeting and the response to come from a summer of discernment. I guess my own summer has been roaring by; I didn’t realize the moment of truth was so near.

Looking back, I have to say that I admire Bishop Blair for going on NPR’s Fresh Air to state the bishops’ view. That interview could have gone much worse for him and the bishops than it did. As it happens, I don’t think he carried himself well at all. If he’s any indication, the bishops see this as an issue of obedience to Church teaching. For the sisters, I don’t think the Church teaching is a matter of dispute, at least not in any great numbers. They see it as a twofold problem.

First, the matter is one of what’s fair game for discussion. This report is more about imposing a gag order on disputed topics. Not aligning oneself against faith and morals. Secondarily, it seems the sisters have a serious case to say that the views cited in the report are taken out of context, or even blatantly misunderstood.

If the CDF is intentionally misreading their reports, then that would be a matter of grave sin, a participation in gossip and defamation.

I’m more inclined to think that this is something of a dialogue of the deaf, as one cardinal put it. I’d say a certain intellectual curiosity is a danger signal to modern bishops, who, it seems, lack the general theological aptitude of their forebears of the post-conciliar years. Uniformity is routinely confused with unity. Talking and listening equates with accepting. This is just not logical.

If the LCWR as a canonical entity can’t get past the blockade of ignorance, then I don’t see its purpose. Religious sisters seem well-able to convene in conference in any sort of way. It continues to happen among communities. No doubt it will continue outside the approval of the bishops–there are simply too many women who will talk about minsitry and theology and way too few bishops to have a prayer of stopping them. All that has been accomplished is the weakening of the institution. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

 

More Bishops Said, LCWR Said

Bishop Leonard Blair got some radio and CNS time this week, chatting about the LCWR:

If by dialogue they mean that the doctrines of the church are negotiable and the bishops represent one position and the LCWR presents another position, and somehow we find a middle ground about basic church teaching on faith and morals, then no, I don’t think that is the kind of dialogue that the Holy See would envision.

But if it’s a dialogue about how to have the LCWR really educate and help the sisters to appreciate and accept church teaching and to implement it in their discussions and try to hear some of the questions or concerns they have about these issues, then that would be the dialogue.

I’m not sure the LCWR and the CDF are quite on the same page. The LCWR has disputed the claims made against it. It would seem that before Bishop Blair can even be sure what the dialogue is about he should listen to his own flock first and suspend belief on the CDF’s claims here.

However, if this is about the occasional wayward sould who escorts women for abortions, that’s an argument built on the same lines as those who marginalize the episcopal witness for the moral mismanagement of cardinals such as Bernard Law and Anthony Bevilacqua. The ordination of women is not a matter of morality, nor faith in God. It is an administrative tradition, well-packed in history and especially metaphor. Permitting oneself to be swayed by the mewlings of sex addicts and declining to protect the innocent is under a direct condemnation of the Lord. Bishop Blair is correct that such a scandal does not remove the resposibility of the bishops to teach and serve in Christ’s name. Another model for serving, addressed to the apostles directly should be well-considered here.

This is a beef over administration. I can’t see the American sisters submitting to lies, if the bishops insist on turning this into a catechism lesson. Jesus didn’t found canonically-approved membership organizations. While helpful to facilitate communication, they don’t appear necessary to the tradition. Especially when the communication has been tarnished by gossip, innuendo, and misunderstanding. Many otherwise good bishops believed the lies of predator clergy. Raising the issue of their handling of sex abuse is definitely apt here. Are theu so sure they haven’t been hoodwinked again?

 

Translating Sanctions

I was catching news of the NCAA and self-imposed sanctions against Penn State football before hitting the road today. The list includes more than $70 million in fines and lost revenue, no bowl games, removal of a statue, and reduced scholarships for four years. There’s that “vacating” of wins for fourteen years. I think that’s an appropriate measure for the coach’s record. But it’s otherwise a silly gesture, even for a scandal like this. It strikes me as akin to a rewriting of history, erasing the public memory of events for a political purpose. Joe Paterno won more games as a coach than any other. He also allowed a sex predator to continue to molest and used the almighty power of college football to have his way. Maybe that’s embarassing for the NCAA to have Coach Paterno  at the top of the heap, but that’s the culture they’ve long-encouraged in big time college athletics. I hope they don’t think there aren’t other culture-of-football challenges ahead.

If the Catholic Church ever imposed sanctions on a diocese, let’s say Philadelphia, I was wondering today what that would look like.

Removal of the JoePa statue would sort of be like removing the burial remains from the cathedral crypt and putting them in an unmarked grave.

No bowl games for four years and an extra year of probation on top of that is like a generation in college sports. For a diocese, a generation would be like the active ministry life of a priest. No red hat and no metropolitan status for thirty to forty years.

Scholarships and fines … well, I don’t think you can take seminarians, priests, and money away from a diocese. Penn State will have a hard enough time paying fines without dipping into academics or women’s sports. Losing a bishop’s burial spot and a red hat? Man, that would hurt big time and there’s no money involved with that whatsoever. I guess the courts are already mandating abuse settlements, and dioceses are doing what PSU won’t be allowed to do: take money from innocent people.

Penn State football avoided the “death penalty.” Geez, what would that look like for Philadelphia? The actual archdiocese would be chopped up and reapportioned to Allentown, Harrisburg, and maybe even Camden, Trenton, and Wilmington. I think that’s under consideration in Ireland, though, a radical reduction in the number of bishops and dioceses.

There are still people who say that Penn State got off easy in all this. And many respected sports commentators are saying these were a little too strong. I’d have to concede that the NCAA and Penn State itself were far more serious about the eradication of the culture of silence around protecting sex predators. The Church would have to do a lot of distasteful things before it approached the impact of these penalties.

 

Taking Bridal Imagery Too Far

Be forewarned about some inappropriate marriage imagery in the following text and links …

CitE* Watch, courtesy of Whispers:

roccopalmo In Vespers preach, +Chaput to his Denver successor: “You’re marrying a beautiful bride…. And I’m overjoyed to pass the baton to you.”

roccopalmo +Chaput at +Aquila Vespers: “I return to my former wife, who tomorrow will be marrying somebody else. And I’m supposed to be happy about it”

The awkward humor grates for two reasons here. The prevalance of careerism among bishops is really something of a minor scandal. Isn’t it gratifying to think that any diocese, except Rome, could get jilted at any time? Yet some still persist in using marriage imagery for their own convenience. A metaphor is a fine thing, really. It loosens us from the bindings of literalism, and injects something of a higher plane of meaning when we speak of things of the spirit, especially the mystery of love. There is no mystery in transferring a bishop from the Dakotas to Denver. There is no love. no lifelong commitment. Through the US nuncio, the pope and his Congregation of Bishops calls. Speaking of the CB, that’s where another American serial monogamist has a seat.

Lifelong celibates making jokes about marriage and tossing in metaphor about which they know nothing. Honestly, bishops: keep your paws off our sacrament. Stick with what Jesus preached. You jest about marriage and I think of cable tv shows.

For the record, the list of starter wives in this company:

most recently divorced

the wife who in recent years never seems to lack a high-profile spouse

another spurned Dakota wife

* Careerism in the episcopacy

 

Evangelism, Not Ideology

At RNS, Tom Ehrlich takes his turn at Ross Douthat’s misreading of the American religious climate. I think he’s a good bit closer to the mark in suggesting that Christianity is in decline because it is too conservative (in actual sense, not the ideological). The postwar (1945-date) world changed and most churches declined to change with it. Or, if they did alter practices, it was with the firm intent to keep both feet planted in a comfortable neighborhood plot. Rev. Ehrlich even suggests that the Episcopal Church’s recent endorsement of a liturgical blessing for same-sex marriage is consonant with a timid approach:

The Episcopal Church’s decision on same-sex blessings wasn’t a leap beyond; it was the last gasp of old ways of thinking, namely, that Sunday worship and in-house protocols are what matter.

Hmm. What do you make of that?

Even as women were entering other male bastions, conservatives resisted opening ordination to women. Even as new cultural languages and forms were emerging, conservatives fought any adaptation of mainline liturgies and hymnody. As people sought new expressions of faith in response to changing times, traditionalists mocked “renewal” as “happy-clappy.”

It was those fights that drove people away. It was also the looking-backward attitudes that prevented church leaders from responding to cultural shifts, many of them painful, such as decimation of the middle class, collapse of disposable income for all but the very wealthy, collapse of employment and safety nets, and eroding infrastructure such as public schools.

In time, many mainline Protestant churches became precious enclaves of old people doing old things. We were still arguing about paint colors when people needed us to help them find new purpose and confidence.

My sense is that there’s a significant kernel of truth in this. Most Catholics I know are totally ignorant of the propers-versus-the-world debate. And perhaps there’s too much pragmatic acceptance of “what works” in the Catholic musical world. They don’t see the chanted propers as significant to the real world problems of living the Christian life. What they do see as helpful is the placement of the Scriptures sung on the tongues of people not only in their Sunday best, but when the weekday worst is upon them, in the workplace, the neighborhood, and even in the family where the real struggles of life are found. This would be the reason why I feel I can support chant as a valid theory, but remain a skeptic on how it is preached. This is ultimately why the popular slogan pretty much has it backwards. It is in saving the world (engaging in a radical and enthusiastic evangelism) that one will save the liturgy (and the church in which it is housed). To be clear: the Church exists for one purpose: to evangelize and to complete the mission of Christ. I would have to totally reject the magic pill theology represented by an extreme focus on the red-n-black.

Does that mean the building interior goes unpainted? When there is need, of course not. The difference is that it does not consume our energies.

More …

Neither do Douthat and Murdoch’s mouthpieces understand the present moment. Mainline Protestant church leaders are finally getting ready to do what they should have been doing for 50 years, namely, looking outside their walls at a deeply troubled world, resolving to turn their congregations toward being responsive and effective, and allowing young adults into leadership.

My own sense is that Catholic vitality in the 60′s and 70′s was achieved, or perhaps more likely, maintained, by the infusion of young adults into leadership. I missed most of those times being a bit younger and on a different life track. But by the time I was in graduate school in the 80′s, and later getting involved peripherally beyond the parish, I encountered something of that reforming barrier. Many of my peers weren’t that much older than I, but there was a very definite line between those born in the forties and early fifties, and those who did not remember the days before Vatican II.

I had to laugh at one parishioner who thought I had the perfect experience and skill set as I was finishing up my Masters’ degree. She thought my openness to new music would attract youth. (Little did she know that pop music in the late 80′s had moved on from guitars to metal and hip-hop.) And I was prepared theologically in ways that were not open to lay people in “her” day. (Did I note a wistfulness about that?) After about three dozen applications and about a dozen interviews in five months, I was preparing to go back to school for my MDiv, when I got a call from a priest who had mistreated so many staff members that he had to offer a job on three days’ notice to someone half a continent away.

All that aside, you can understand why I’m thrilled my new parish has absorbed three new staff members all under the age of thirty. And for us, that’s just the tip of the berg. We have thirteen peer ministers, nearly thirty small group leaders, and an openness by the very definition of our mission, to give young adults genuine responsibility.

Rev Ehrlich again:

Conservatives will find themselves ignored, not because mainline traditions have lost their way, but because they are determined to find their way, and my-way-or-the-highway conservatives have cried wolf too often.

Well, not all conservatives. Ross Douthat considers us a nation of heretics. If one stakes one’s flag on small-town, main street American religion, then certainly, we’ve grown up and left that setting behind. It’s part of the natural development of our culture. And whether we like it or not, religious people will have to adapt to it. Some conservatives will be successful, because they will wake up and engage the Great Commission and do it with everybody, even the young, and yes, even the liberals.

But there’s no way that Christian decline is a function of left/right ideology getting it right/wrong.

 

RNS on Ross

Ross Douthat’s takedown of liberal Christianity is itself given a brisk one-two in the gut by Mark Silk and Daniel Burke at RNS.

Mr Douthat is smarter than this:

As a result, today the Episcopal Church looks roughly how Roman Catholicism would look if Pope Benedict XVI suddenly adopted every reform ever urged on the Vatican by liberal pundits and theologians.

Too many conservatives are too smug about decline. The truth is that conservatives have been deeply compromised by immorality from papal hangers-on to tv preachers. The real thing missing from Christianity is not ties to tradition or thoughtless reform, but a refusal to demand much of believers. Traditionalists are coddled by an indult.  Suburban progressives have their religious needs serviced by degreed professionals. Christianity prospers when it roots itself in tradition, but tears full speed ahead into the challenges of the day. Many liberals and conservatives miss this. It’s not about them.