Archbishop Chaput On The Job

David Gibson at RNS gave a teaser for an Archbishop Chaput piece in Catholic Philly here. The RNS comment:

Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput is also known as a straight-talking fellow, and God bless him for telling it like is.

And a comment that few bishops are likely to make publicly, when asked how the job was going:

It has been an awful time.

I saw the man in person for the first time earlier this year in Florida at a campus ministry conference. He’s an honest chap. I think he’s somewhat misguided on a few issues. But anyone who’s a straight shooter with others is probably not inclined to self-deception.

I spend all of my time trying to figure out how we are going to do the next thing. I ask your patience.

I hope that when I turn 75 and the Pope says it is time to retire and get out of here you will have a reason to give me an award. You don’t have any yet. But we will do it together because I know you love the Lord and love His Church. Let’s do it together.

There was an award connected to this speech. Clearly nineteen months is not a long time to make an impression, but apparently the archbishop has done just that. He indeed has an awful situation. The realities of post-WWII America have made the situation with schools and parishes inevitable. However, his predecessors have leveled a great deal of damage in their mishandling of predator clergy. One of their own might well be in jail today, had he still been alive–and that was coming from the archdiocese’s own lawyers.

 

Getting Into My Gig, Part 2

Last week I described my exit from the world of full-time secular work. My experience of the Paschal Triduum twenty years ago this month at St Charles Borromeo Parish in Bloomington, Indiana was certainly an eye-opener. I had the immediate hope that all parishes would celebrate the Three Days as fruitfully–maybe every parish needed a liturgist to facilitate this. I didn’t make the immediate connection I wanted to be that person.

My college chum Marianne was in law school at IU. By phone she described briefly how student-friendly the townie parish was. The university’s Newman Center attracted casual Catholics who wanted Mass, if that, and no entanglements. She also told me that had “our CIA” at St Charles. “Your CIA?” I said. “Is that what I think it is?”

The letter “R,” she clarified. The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. I had no idea. No matter; I would see it in action. Some of her friends were involved. In fact, I would be crashing in the apartment of the godparents.

An aside here. The RCIA “brown book” had been out since 1972, but implementation was fairly spotty to non-existent in my home diocese of Rochester, New York. People who know that diocese by its bishop have the sense it was and is progressive. Really, it’s not. After Fulton Sheen’s attempt to improve race relations and his opposition to the Vietnam War (1966-69), we had a local parish pastor appointed bishop for a decade. Matthew Clark was seen as a throwback, in the sense that he was from Rome. And as a young bishop of the new young pope, he gave the impression at first of being a careerist. Many people disliked him. Plus, there wasn’t much going on liturgically in the diocese. A few parishes had good music programs. Maybe five.

At any rate, my bus came to central Indiana on Holy Thursday afternoon. I was whisked away to a home celebration of a Seder Meal. The liturgy included footwashing, but it wasn’t open as I recall. I joined the community for stations and liturgy on Good Friday. They also prayed the Hours during these days.

In my phone call to my friend, she also explained the Easter Vigil was a little more involved than it was back in our college days. They observed an all-night vigil. My friend was enthusiastic about all this. I said I was probably going to be tired form my travels–maybe I would just go for the start and the finish.

That Saturday was my first experience of an excellent Easter Vigil. The pile of wood for the fire was as tall as I stood. The embers were still warm the next morning. I’m sure we did all nine readings, because by the time the elect and candidates were called forth, the liturgy was already an hour and 45 minutes old. Technically speaking, Easter Vigil didn’t really last from 7:30pm till 7:50 am. We took a pause in active liturgy, while the RCIA community and many parishioners remained for prayer. What else do I remember?

This parish didn’t have an immersion font. So the elect built their own font with a feeding trough, an upper basin, a water pump, and a few wheelbarrows of rocks. By 10:30-ish the plan was complete, and a trickly stream emptied into a pool in the middle of a rock outcropping in the church.

Some of us had an impromptu jam session in the choir loft.

One parishioner was writing out her Easter cards.

Some of us went outside and warmed our hands in front of the fire. One person remarked that if only we had marshmallows to roast.

As a serious law student, my friend Marianne decided she needed her rest and study time. So it was I who stayed up the whole night.

By 6am, the church was fully lit and full of worshipers. I had met one of the elect, a young man named John–he came from a Buddhist Chinese family in San Francisco. They had threatened to disown him if he went through with his conversion to Christianity. But he was a very determined and faith-filled young man. I was seventeen when I was a freshman in college. I don’t know that I would have had the strength and courage to do as he did. But I marveled at his new faith, and his willingness to share his story so freely. RCIA was more than an all-night Easter Vigil. It seemed to do things to people.

We had a pancake breakfast afterward in the church’s social hall. John was still wearing the baptismal garment and the special stole. His godparent (my host) chided him about getting syrup stains on his stole. But John grasped the ends of it and said he was wearing it all week as part of his celebration of being a new Catholic Christian.

That a teenager would endure alienation from a close-knit family: that witness amazed me. I don’t think I went through that weekend with more than a blizzard of experiences and images. But it was as momentous a conversion experience as my first was in 1969-70. When I was ten, I became a believing Catholic Christian. In 1983, I had my first awakening as a disciple. I began to think in terms of doing things, both taking personal initiative in my faith life as well as doing things for others.

I was broke and unemployed. And worse, I had no career, no real prospects for one. And no future. Or so it seemed.

I had nowhere else to go but turn tail and stay at my parents’ house while I started to figure it out. I didn’t see clearly in the Easter of 1983 what was happening. My own sense of being a church minister was slow to waken over the course of the next year. But that’s a post for another day.

I will say that as I look back with fresh eyes on thirty-years-ago, I have a renewed sense of compassion for many of the young people at the Student Center. Especially the eones who have yet to discern a real life’s path. Or who feel that there’s no place out there where they fit. I remember it well. And I can look back on how formative it was for me. But the perspective of three decades is a lot easier than the days when one is trampling through it.

 

Getting Into My Gig, Part 1

I’ve enjoyed Rory Cooney’s entry into the blogosphere, Gentle Reign. I especially like the stories behind his songs and recordings. This week, his post on his thirty-year anniversary as a parish music director plucked a few of my historical strings. It was thirty Lents ago I began my own journey into ministry. My path wasn’t quite as crystal clear-cut as Rory’s.

Thirty years ago this Lent I came to the realization that I was in a dead-end job and my life wasn’t leading anywhere. The deeper I got into college, the better student I became and the less sure of where it was all leading. The last two years (1979-1981) were a struggle. I almost enjoyed my three student jobs more than classes. Residence halls. Food service and catering. Communications.

I think I still had an attachment to my university after a handful of years. I found a fourth job when telemarketing came to the university campus. I hung on after graduation because I could help manage an office, train callers, keep statistics, and be an eagle-eye on mistakes. After a day off I came in to help complete a 1200-person mailer and in a few minutes I noticed some familiar names on the labels. We already called these people. My boss said I was dreaming. A quick check of our last campaign’s files found about a third of these new names had been called just three months before in the preliminary round of the campaign. Attention to detail.

My boss wasn’t impressed with the attention. Our consultants weren’t happy that 382 out of 12oo “new” potential pledges were x’ed out of the campaign. The development office had a bit of face egg–they vouched for the list. People don’t like attention to detail, especially when it’s pointed out by an obnoxious recent graduate.

The last straw was when an entry-level position opened up in development and it was filled before I got the interview. My alma thought the reverse would kick, so they hired a guy who was coming off five years of telephone fundraising for one of the two major political parties. No way was I going to compete with nonsense like that. And after a number of applications and just two interviews elsewhere, it was clear no other college was going to hire me either.

With my fate sealed, I swept off my desk into the trash, announced to my boss I was leaving (and she could interpret that as unpaid vacation or resignation) and walked out the door, nearly broke, but fairly free. I packed up and bought a bus ticket to Ohio to visit my mother’s family. I had about three weeks to a month before running out of money and getting to the Next Stage and maybe something would come to me.

I took a walking tour of Dayton Ohio one day. I like being dropped into a city when I can start walking and see what I find. This day was cloudy, though. I think I was trying to find a historical museum or something. But I got turned around. I was in a neighborhood where it’s good to look tough and not make eye contact. Passed a bookstore. Almost walked in, but I realized that the product offered there wouldn’t make a good impression on my good Baptist cousins. I turned a corner instead. The sun came out. And there to my right was St Mark’s Bookstore. They had stacks of liturgical albums and songbooks I had never seen before: PAA, GIA, St Meinrad’s, Collegeville, and others. I picked up a few and a few days later, it was time to move on.

The next stage of the trip took me to Indiana University to visit a friend in law school. I’ll write more in detail about that experience some other day. They had a “liturgist” (never heard that term before) on loan from St Meinrad’s. I experienced my first really serious Triduum at St Charles Borromeo Parish in Bloomington that Holy Week. It wasn’t immediately clear to me that I was going to follow in the footsteps of the liturgist-on-loan. I did think how great it would be to have liturgy like that back home. Or in every parish.

More on the next steps in a few days. Maybe.

 

No More Russian Children to the US

This is not new information, that tomorrow a Russian law goes into effect that makes illegal the American adoption of Russian children. UCA News covers it here, with this statement about the state of those children’s souls:

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, chairman of the Synodal Department for the Cooperation of Church and Society of the Moscow Patriarchate, said the law was “a search for a social answer to an elementary question: why should we give, and even sell, our children abroad?” Speaking to state news agency Interfax, Chaplin said the path to heaven would be closed to children adopted by foreigners. “They won’t get a truly Christian upbringing”.

In some cases, “sell” is not an exaggeration. In order to adopt overseas, one must have money. One must have money to travel, money for legal counsel, and money to lubricate the bureaucracy (some of it in fees, and some of it in bribes, and some in the gray area in between). And that doesn’t count the setting up of a home with what a child–usually an infant–needs.

The path to heaven closed? In going from one of the most irreligious countries to one of the most Christian, that seems a stretch. Or maybe Archpriest Chaplin has been drinking the American conservative Catholic Cool-Aid on this one.

The young miss has a friend her age who was adopted from Russia many years ago. She has noted the news development. I wonder what she thinks about that.

For me and my wife, a foreign adoption was never seirously discussed. First, we were not dead-set on getting an infant and seeking the “complete” child-rearing experience. We wanted a chance to “imprint” on a child younger than six or seven, and engage the “attachment” of one or more children. We talked with people who had outlays of tens of thousands of dollars to go to Asia. Good for them, but not our path.

The bottom line was that we learned that about a half-million American children are in foster care, and over a hundred-thousand of them are completely cut off from birth parents, either by law or by death. We decided we had to do some small part for them. More from the UCA, which notes that unlike in the US, adoption in Russia has cultural factors burying it:

Adoption is seen as something to hide. In addition, only very young and healthy children are prized because of biases against alleged “genetic defects” passed on by poor families.

The United States is, by far, the most adoption-friendly nation on the planet. Too bad the US bishops can’t parlay that into a significant pro-life witness. Catholic families by the tens of thousands would, with information and encouragement, line up to adopt many of the needy kids available. Given the American indulgence for creationism, I’m not sure how to comment politely on the notion that poverty is a genetic defect. Wealthy people have genetic defects all the time. Aristocratic inbreeding, especially in royalty, is a fact of history.

I also read that a few hundred American couples will be SOL when the law takes effect, and that spent time and resources will not be getting grandfather consideration.

These people do good work. We were on their mailing list during the two years before we adopted our daughter. Worth checking out.

 

Antarctic Monasticism

Feeling a bit better today. But with howling winds pushing the falling and fallen snow, I don’t think I’ll be venturing out until much later today. They already closed the church office. Did I mention this was tabbed the worst blizzard since 1996, which happened to coincide with the day before Anita and I got married?

All of our windows are iced and snowed over. I was doing a lot of cooking last night–chicken soup and apple-cinnamon pan bread. I did manage to get a half-clear shot out the back door. But the rest of the kitchen windows are frozen fogged and whited out.

Astronomy Today has a magnificent image from orbit of the remote Antarctic station Concordia. The closest human beings to the French and Italian engineers and astronomers are the Russians at Vostok base, 350 miles away. Even the International Space Station doesn’t orbit that high.

The station has a blog, which is fascinating reading. In particular, Dr Alex Salam’s reflection on the privilege of serving in Antarctica struck me deeply. There is a deep monastic opportunity, it seems to me, in this remote wilderness.

It wasn’t until the last plane of the summer season left that the feeling of living on another planet fully hit home however. Concordia is extremely busy over the summer, full of hustle and bustle with planes arriving and people coming and going. Over the course of a couple of weeks around early February numbers begin to dwindle however, until eventually one day you find yourself huddled amongst a group of just twelve of you, struggling to keep track of the last plane as it gradually disappears into the desolate distance.

And then it really hits home: you’re own your own, no matter what. This is when the adventure really begins, the challenge of living in a small group in a confined space, the sensory and social monotony that gradually builds up over several months, having to deal with medical and technical emergencies autonomously, prolonged separation from family and friends with limited telecommunications, and the inevitable darkness.

The Jesuits, about the most hardcore retreatants out there, don’t do more than thirty days. Several months strikes me as a deeply monastic opportunity. There is work to do. I imagine that for scientific minds, the routines of menial tasks needed for survival are a challenge. But that feeling of being “on my own”–I get that every time I park the car at a monastery or retreat house. There is very much the sense that I have left a lot behind, and I’m heading to an intimate encounter in a way I’m not usually attuned. When our surroundings, our usual routines do not support us, there is little else left but reliance on God:

O God, you are my God—
it is you I seek!
For you my body yearns;
for you my soul thirsts,
In a land parched, lifeless,
and without water. (Psalm 63:2)

Dr Salam lists many of the aspects of “normal” life that I would probably describe as “usual” to our modern sensibilities:

But despite all the factors that make Concordia a difficult place to live in, there is an absence of some of the stressful situations present in ‘everyday’ life such as commuting, shopping, queues, bills, excessive choice, advertising and information overload, rules and regulations and so on. And although everyone feels some of the psychological and social stressors to a certain degree, some experience the absence of “normal” life very positively.

What I see in this reflection is the innate human longing that is unsatisfied by consumption and indulgence. Living and working in a community of a dozen people with the distractions stripped away.

Indeed, with time most people who have spent a winter at Concordia (and often Antarctica in general) feel many positive effects associated with the privilege of having experienced one of the planet’s most spectacularly vast and daunting environments, such as: a profound sense of accomplishment, increased personal and professional confidence, a better tolerance and adaptation to stress, a clearer vision of one’s personal needs, limits and ambitions and a deeper appreciation of personal freedoms and the natural environment.

This list would easily fit for the goals of monastic life.

But I know what I would look forward most to seeing …

But despite the effects the darkness can have on sleep, mood and cognitive performance, there is something inherently special about the Antarctic night. The heavens present a view that many stargazers can only ever dream of. You just have to try and catch a glimpse of the stars before your eyelashes freeze together! Seeing the station from a distance with the Milky Way towering far above it never failed to make me feel both awe inspired and simultaneously insignificant.

The believer can get a flavor of this even without looking at the stars. The interior life always beckons. And while there are often inner terrors and demons to battle, the encounter with God is no less wondrous …

I think of you upon my bed,
I remember you through the watches of the night
You indeed are my savior,
and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy. (Psalm 63:7-8)

 

Sandy From Space

A day’s worth of Atlantic coast meteorological menace in a thirty second video on Universe Today. Considering the 850-mile stretch of this storm, one can imagine the power. The cloud stretch over the inland, that must be the storm system riding in from the West.

I remember being on the fringes of Hurricane Agnes forty years ago. My uncle’s basement was flooded, but people to the south of us in Pennsylvania and in the southern counties of upstate NY were far worse for it.

 

Australia’s Msgr Lynn Moment

In a development similar to charges filed against Philadelphia’s Msgr Lynn, a priest from the Maitland-Newcastle diocese has been charged with covering up the abuse of another priest. Some of the fourteen charges against Fr Tom Brennan relate to alleged abuse on his part. But others stem from covering up sex crimes of another priest while both served at a high school. These are thought to be the first such charges in Australia. The story has already spread to Vatican Insider. Do we take heart that stories of criminality race across the world these days, and that cover-up is becoming difficult in some quarters?

 

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.

 

To The Dogs?

From Australia’s CathNews site, a liturgy mess. A Melbourne priest presides at liturgy outside the auspices of his archbishop. The Age reports on this. And it happened that while their reporter was in attendance, a visitor gave part of his communion to his dog. Archbishop Hart protests through this press release.

Commentary, but where to begin?

A first-time visitor to a small breakaway “inclusive” community offers a portion of consecrated bread to his dog. That strikes me as less an “abomination” (the archbishop actually labels the person who did it as an “abomination,” not the act) and more a lack of an understanding, or at worst, stubbornness. There’s no theological intent behind the action. And the animal, obviously, is an innocent.

The Age is obviously reporting on a story of human interest. The incident with the visitor’s dog seemed to just get in the way. The reporter, Barney Zwartz, was likely on assignment from his boss. It’s far from likely that Mr Zwartz and his editor are going to pull an assigned story because of how people might react to what happened with the canine. It’s probably less a situation of ridicule and more one of curiosity: this twist will draw a little attention, and get a few more readers hooked.

Nobody, not even the archbishop, seems concerned enough to mention that this small congregation is something of a breakaway group, and not operating under official Catholic auspices. Archbishop Hart seems to accept the validity of what his former foil is confecting.

Other religions get treated better, says the prelate:

Your integrity in this matter can be judged by asking whether, if something sacred to Judaism or Islam had similarly been desecrated, you would have treated the matter with such flippancy.

My sense is that the archbishop is right, but way overstates his case. In so doing, the alternative Catholic community gets some press. People who wouldn’t dream of attending have another thing to criticize. People in the fringes might have something to check out. If newcomers start bringing their pets, then they have a serious situation on their hands.

As for the notion of animals participating in human sacraments, I can say this. I’m a pet owner and an animal lover. But animals are innocent companions to human beings and there is no need for their participation in the sacraments. When people insist on it, it really says more about their own needs than what benefit the pet might receive. When people protest, it often says more about their own emotional makeup than the rightness or wrongness of a particular act. Something liturgical might be wrong, but such things are not usually personal attacks on the institution. Ridicule? No. Abomination? No. Overstating the protest? Could do more harm in the long run.

 

Deportation For Peace and Good Order

Amidst this summer’s flock of worthy women, it should be noted that clergy, too, are persecuted for making a couerageous stand. Father Viateur Banyangandora was deported from Zambia for a peace and justice homily. The official line:

Father Banyangandora’s conduct was found to be a danger to peace and good order in Zambia.

Of course it was. The good order of the rich and powerful are always bothered by preaching on behalf of the poor.

 

Snapshots For The New Evangelization: Korea

We have a handful of Korean students at the student center. I’ve come to know a few of them, those involved in liturgical ministry. It’s always interesting to hear how faith has developed for different people in different cultures. My wife is genius for drawing out people’s faith stories. When she’s in the conversation, others follow soon. I keep my ears open.

So I read with interest this commentary at the excellent UCA News site. The heady years after Vatican II were good for Catholics in Korea:

The impact of the Council … helped move the Church towards a more participatory body in terms of religious dialogue and ecumenical movements.

As of the end of 2011, the local Church had 5.32 million Catholics, or 10.3 percent of the total population. In 1962 when the Council convened, it had only just more than half a million.

Many factors contributed to such a sharp rise in the Catholic community, but I think the Council was a principal one.

The Church in Korea saw a six to 10 percent increase each year after the 1960s. However, in the last decade the rate of increase has dropped to two percent, similar to trends in the West.

It’s difficult to maintain such a heroic pace. On a local level, the Church is sometimes bolstered by charismatic leadership. People are attracted to personalities. That’s not a bad thing, in moderation. The lived witness of the Christian life is an important part of the evangelical life. It’s biblical. One sees it in the life of the saints. One sees it in many modern charisms, both healthy ones and those less so.

(P)articipation in what is the core of the life of faith and an indication of spiritual maturity – the sacraments – has greatly weakened.

Many Christians, even Catholics, speak of that personal relationship with Jesus. One would think that the sacramental life is the key locus for Catholics to experience that relationship. So I wonder: what is it about the sacramental life that doesn’t nourish and deepen that relationship, at least on the scale of the larger Catholic culture? Regular readers here know I’m deeply skeptical of the supposed link to traditional Catholic piety and obedience. I think that intentional communities are closest to touching on this relationship in more than a casual, being-serviced, suburban way. Those communities usually happen off the mainstream and into the margins. Those would be places with well-defined missions: university communities, inner cities, particular apostolates. The rest of the parishes? Sometimes we flounder.

(T)he numbers of infant baptisms, first communions and Sunday school attendance, all of which are indicators of how well faith is transmitted to the next generation, has fallen steeply over the last decade.

These trends suggest the Korean Church may be repeating the failure of the European Church and requires analysis of socio-cultural challenges and factors within the Church.

That analysis would be interesting. If we can detach from political trends within the Church long enough to look at the signs and discern our directions. The most effective approach will include substantial input from various Catholic factions. We will need it. The task ahead is big, and since the late 70′s, we’ve been losing ground. A charismatic pope clearly wasn’t enough. Somehow, we need to get about a billion Catholic believers into the charismatic realm to convince the other five billion humans we have something more than a big, happy, dysfunctional family to offer.

Speaking for myself, I need to ponder the approach we’ll take at Catholic Sensibility to the Year of Faith. It won’t be completely congruent to the institutional path, mainly because others will cover this effort much better and more comprehensively. Ten weeks to figure it out. Any ideas?

 

Liturgy Snapshots from A Sunday Pew

Whew! Back from a weekend in the Twin Cities. The young miss should be enjoying her first evening under the pine trees of central Minnesota as I type. Before I forget, I thought I’d relate some Sunday liturgy observations from the pew, since I so rarely get that perspective.

Three blocks from our hotel, I found St Olaf Catholic Church. The family and I were wandering through the downtown Skywalk Saturday evening and we spotted the sandy colored exterior. 10AM Mass seemed to work best, and I seated myself in a pew near the organ console. As I paged through the bulletin, I noted that I landed in Lynn Trapp‘s parish. I figured I’d not be finding much amiss in the liturgy. And I was right. The order of worship was printed on the back page of the bulletin. I was looking around for the Carl Daw text on the Opening. I needn’t have bothered; it was projected on the white spaces on the interior balcony. It’s not a great text by Prof. Daw, but I generally turn my nose up at “gathering” texts. Too darned preachy.

The psalm settings, Liturgy of the Word and during Communion, were my first exposures to these settings of Psalms 23 and 107 from the Collegeville Composers Group. Very nice. Interesting. The Psalm 23 “went on forever” in the estimation of the organist and cantor (private conversation, post-liturgy). I didn’t mind. The refrain was  longish, and two lines (of the four) were repeated interspersed with the psalm verses. It was better than random, and it engaged the congregation in a way that probably requires more attention than a sung-through hymn setting of a psalm. It was definitely not an idle time of musical reflection. It was about the most active I’ve felt after the first reading in my life, even including times when I might have played two instruments on one piece. Every week, something like this would get tiring. Like I said, for Psalm 23 and as an occasional thing, this was okay for me.

Good homily and well-structured. A young pastor who spoke fast like people of his generation, but he paused often to let the thought sink in. I had to concentrate to follow him, but it was no worse than following an African-accented associate at my current parish. He had three points in the homily. I stuck with two, a mention of the Ignatian practice of a twice-a-day examen, and being open to the opportunity of being waylaid by ministry or service opportunities.

I was having a very hard time placing the verses of the Communion Psalm. No wonder. The 107th.

Interesting harmonization on “City of God.” I will have to utilize that. I note that the advantage of throwing the music up on the wall is that they were able to pick and choose verses–in this instance, they cut the third verse. I didn’t miss it.

You know, it’s very nice to get exposed to new music, especially psalm settings, and be able to pray them. My experience of this Mass bordered on delightful. The people sang pretty well, and they were quite willing to participate in the new stuff. The musicians started when they should for Communion. I might quibble that the psalmist didn’t sing from the ambo, or that they sang all three verses of preparation, even though the ritual action was complete after refrain-verse one-refrain. But when the overall sense of liturgy is excellent, one doesn’t mind trivial problems.

 

Sleepless Before Skedaddle

The morning before a trip, I always wake early. It was 2:30AM today.

We’re off to the Twin Cities in a few hours for a few days of vacay. Eventually, we’ll jettison the young miss to the camp bus on Monday.

I’m hoping to spend some cool  Sunday afternoon hours here and above. The young miss is surprisingly tolerant of such things. Here, too. Though maybe that’s asking too much. Too bad they’re both closed Mondays.

Hopefully the heat will break enough to stroll around here, one of our favorite spots.

 

Missionary

I linked to Commonweal a few weeks ago about Padre Alejandro Solalinde’s true life battle for religious freedom. Unlike American prelates, many Christians around the world are facing far more serious threats. Also unlike some prelates, this particular Christian seems to have his priorities straight on the sacramental roots of his calling:

I’m a missionary, not because I’m a priest … because I’m baptized.

This is an evangelical mindset in which we could all use immersion. And not just in times and places of authentic persecution. But every day.

 

Priest: Employee or Office Holder?

This illustrates a serious quandry for the bishops: do they fight legal definitions? Any by doing so, do they express an adequate theology of the Church? Win or lose, have they set a moral (forget the canonical) precedent? Or, can secular lawyers consult canon law and church documents to learn what the institution really thinks of the relationship between bishops and clergy, not to mention pope and bishops? Finally, what impact do legal fights like this have on the morale of the clergy and laity?

Jimmy Mac sent me a link to this article from the Tablet, in which the British diocese of Portsmouth was found it can be held liable for the actions of abusive clergy. Summing up:

In November last year the High Court ruled that the diocese could be held liable because the relationship between a bishop and a priest is “akin to employment”.

The diocese appealed and in a judgement released today the Court of Appeal ruled the diocese is liable.

In a statement, the trustees of the diocese said the case raises questions of wider legal importance for the Church and the voluntary sector. They stressed that the case was not an attempt to avoid paying compensation to victims – they say they regularly pay damages to victims with valid claims – but rather about establishing an important legal point.

Bishops are moved at the request of the pope. Clergy, too, at the direction of their bishops. In the news recently, we know that bishops can be fired by the pope. Most of the headlines on this one spoke of a “rare show of authority.” Rare? Is this true? We know that bishops muzzle priests, like this one.

I’m certainly aware that Rome takes sacramental matters with grave seriousness. It should. But moral matters like the sexual predation on the innocent have their own sense of gravity. Sexual predation has shown it knows no ideology. Prominent conservative priests and bishops have been caught up in the whirlwind. Nobody seriously suggests that the sexual abuse of children is a immoral domino at the end of a chain that started with Vatican II reform.

It’s time for the institution to add sex abuse and its coverup to the list of “rare show of authority.” It is demonstrable that Catholics across the ideological board are alarmed at sex abuse and particularly, its cover-up. It is a demonstrable Scriptural point that God detests the obstruction of faith by leadership, above and beyond serious liturgical offenses. It seems clear that hundreds of thousands of believers have left the Church or limited their involvement not because of the occasional abuser, but because of the institutional cover-up.

My question of the day for bishops and for the institution: Do you believe in the grace of contrition or not?