Why Bishops Never Should Have Lawyered Up

Here's John Paul II, speaking not specifically about the sexual abuse scandal but Christian charity and justice in general.  He's commenting on the parable from Luke that depicts Lazarus, the beggar who lives outside the gates of the rich man (the parable that served as the Sunday gospel two weeks ago).

“…How can we exclude anyone from our care? Rather we must recognize Christ in the poorest and the most marginalized, those whom the Eucharist – which is communion in the Body and Blood of Christ given up for us – commits us to serve. As the parable of the rich man, who will remain forever without a name, and the poor man called Lazarus clearly shows, ‘in the stark contrast between the insensitive rich man and the poor in need of everything, God is on the latter’s side’. We too must be on this same side.”

 This is the spirit, the drive, that I love so very much within Catholicism.  Social justice.  The call to reject materialistic values and instead work for justice and peace.

Wherein lies some of my ambivalence as The Mighty Ambivalent Catholic.  The Church has for many decades (centuries, let's be honest) too often failed to live up to this teaching.  The sex abuse scandal (including the cover-ups; the shuffling of bad priests through a series of unwitting parishes; the lawyering up at the diocesan and archdiocesan levels, culminating in Cardinal Law's decision to flee Boston in late 2002, while under a legal cloud, for the safety of Rome) is the most flagrant recent example of the Church not living up to this call.  Too much of that occurred under John Paul II's watch.  (Sorry, this fact cannot be ignored.)  Cut the man some slack, if you like, because he was in poor health for the last decade of his papacy.  Perhaps his ability to tend to administrative details--reports of ghastly crimes, even--was diminished.  But there is no way to let him or his lieutenants off the hook entirely, not without suggesting that this call to favor the poor, the victimized, the marginalized only applies to individual Christians and not to the Church as an institution.  I don't see how we can do that or why we would ever want to do that.

Say a prayer, if you are a person of faith, that every cell of the Christian church--and the Roman Catholic church in particular--will recommit itself daily to giving preference to the needs of the oppressed and the poor; commit itself fully to putting victims' needs before its own earthly desires for prestige, unquestioned authority, material wealth.

Yes, you have to be a person of faith to chase after that prayer, to hope that such a thing is possible.  I have no idea how long it will take us, as a church, to get there.

(Hat tip to Whispers in the Loggia for JPII's lines.)

Random Thought from Henri Nouwen: On Gratitude

Thumbing through Henri Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son, which I read and marked up last spring, I come across the following passage, which deals with the elder's son attitude toward his returning brother:

"Along with trust there must be gratitude--the opposite of resentment.  Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift.  My resentment tells me that I don't receive what I deserve.  It always manifests itself in envy. . . . There is the option to look into the eyes of the One who came out to search for me and see therein that all I am and all I have is pure gift calling for gratitude."  The Return of the Prodigal (Doubleday), p. 85

In those eighty-odd words I find something I should chew on for days, if not weeks.  And this is so typical when reading Nouwen.  Words to take with me on the never-ending path of conversion.

The Gospel I Wanna Reject

One of my closest friends, recently ordained as a priest in the Episcopal church, sent me a copy of the sermon she's going to preach this Sunday.  I liked the sermon a lot.  The only problem is that I don't much like the gospel story on which it's based.  We're talking here about the parable of the rich man who is indifferent to the hunger and suffering of his poor neighbor, Lazarus.  I don't like that gospel story because I see myself in the rich man.  I see him in me.  (Maybe that's why Lazarus gets a name and the rich man doesn't.  Fill in your own name, in other words, if the shoe fits.)  I'm the one who is experiencing material comfort right now--and, quite honestly, for all of my life up to this point.  (Sure, I bought groceries at Aldi's during graduate school, but I was always able to buy plenty of them.  And if I had needed my parents' assistance--as I sometimes did--I could put out a call to my parents.)

Make no mistake.  I don't really want Lazarus's misery.  I don't view him in romantic, grandiose terms.  I want desperately to avoid his fate, his suffering, while on this earth--both for myself and for those whom I love.  But I also do not want to hear Jesus calling me out for enjoying my creature comforts while the poor--the poor within thirty miles of me, as well as the poor around the globe--suffer in very palpable ways.  It's painful to think that Jesus means me--not somebody else, not some abstract entity who exists in some other society--when he's telling this story.  It's me who has not helped them--not nearly enough--in meeting their material needs.  It's me who has not done enough to respect and protect their human dignity.  It's not that guy to the left of me Christ is talking about, nor the woman on my right.  I'm the one he's pointing his finger at every time I hear this story.

I don't like this Sunday's gospel.  Which is a pretty potent sign that this is the gospel, perhaps more so than any other gospel proclaimed throughout the year, that I most need to hear.  The one I need to wrestle with, pray over, reread.  And more than all that, the one I need to figure out a way to do something about.

If I end up in hell some day (please God, no), my guess is that it's my sins of omission that will get me there, not stuff I've done.  Too much good untapped; too many good intentions not put to work.  And too many Christs-in-need walking around whom I ignored for too long.

Join a Retreat: Fifteen or Twenty Minutes a Day

Something I love about Catholicism:  the call, through the centuries, to step away from the pressing demands and numbing routines of daily life and seek out what is timeless, spirit-filling, truly enriching.  This call can be found in the writings of the ancient monks (modern monks too), and even in the gospels, where Christ tells his disciples to come away with him for rest, prayer, recharging.  (All right, I guess Christ never did call it recharging--seeing that electricity and batteries weren't part of the vocabulary then.)

Creighton University, which has a wonderful daily reflections center (with many of the scripture reflections written lay people, as well as scripture scholars), also is home to this online Ignatian retreat.  I meant to follow along last autumn but somehow got distracted.  This time, I'm doing it.  Dug into the book about three o'clock this morning, actually.  (Yep, you can do the retreat totally online or with paper, your choice.)  I'm grateful to the people associated with Creighton who put these things together.  Great resource; food for my faith life, and I need that food.

Yes, Virginia, Sometimes You Sure Can Take Things Too Literally

Over at Standing On My Head, Dwight Longenecker is proud of taking this weekend's gospel admonition (i.e., that we are to "hate" our family members in order to fully please Christ) literally.  He looks askance, predictably enough, at folks who think that particular reading should not be taken literally.  He comes close to expressing regret for the love that exists in important, familial relationships because that love does not involve God and God alone.  (How one can love a family member or friend and not have God involved at least indirectly, well, I don't know.  Is not the God we worship the very definition of love?  Where does love come from, if it is not from the ambiguous-yet-definitely-there, impossible-to-ignore frosted-glass tracings of God?)

Too many human relationships are lacking in love.  Let's not be sorry, on the basis of God's supposed jealousy, about the ones we are part of that do include love.  Lean into Christ, put nothing before him, take up your cross; that's an inevitable part of the Christian ethic.  But love your neighbor as yourself:  that's part of the same ethic, not a value we need to renounce, not a value for which we need to  hem-and-haw out an apology.

And we wonder why we're short of priests

One of the Catholic blogs I read on a regular basis belongs to a conservative young priest who nonetheless strikes me as a decent fellow, a smart guy.  Needless to say, we disagree about seventy percent of the time on liturgical and theological issues--but as I said, I like him just the same; I'm convinced he has a good heart.  A few days ago, Fr. D posted in his blog a letter from the vocations director for his diocese (which also happens to be my diocese).  At one point, the vocations director asks, "Is there someone there [in your parish or circle of friends] who might just possibly make a good priest?"  I've heard this question posed any number of times over the last three decades.  It was asked frequently when I was a teenager finishing up at my Catholic grade school.  When I was fourteen, I seriously considered the priesthood myself.  Not for me, though I respect people who are called to it.

Still, I can't help but laugh (gently) at the irony of the Catholic church asking this question so frequently, with mixed results, even as it fails to consider ordaining women to the priesthood.  Conservatives/traditionalists in the church will offer a dozen arguments about why the church does not--"cannot," in their words--ordain women as priests.  Ultimately, though, human prejudice is a factor that cannot be overlooked, though defenders of a male-only priesthood always do deny that there's anything vaguely resembling sexism at work here.

Do I know--have I known--promising, faith-filled Catholics who would make excellent priests?  Yes indeed.  But some of those folks are female.  Unfortunately, the church has told them not to apply; we Catholics in the pews evidently do not need those folks (you know...women) to minister to us, to bring the sacraments into our lives, as priests.  The Holy Spirit has basically been told by Church leadership, over and over, that only males are eligible.  How out of whack is that?  And how very unfortunate for those of us who want to see the priesthood flourish!  (I realize, yes, that the Church would characterize the situation otherwise.)  May God, in God's wisdom, send His ministers, of whichever gender, to those churches that will accept them.  

Pray hard for vocations, yes!  Truly!  And try to keep an open-mind and be non-sexist in those prayers -- that would be a wonderful charge for the Church to give itself.  Priest shortage indeed.

Progressive Christian Blogs I'm Following

This post is substituting for a legit blog roll, which I can't seem to do with my old-fashioned template (one that I kind of like, actually) here in Blogger.  Of course, this post will get lost in the mix, I guess, as I add new posts, but here are some blogs I like.  These are blogs that offer a nice counterpoint to the gazillion arch-conservative blogs that are out there (especially in the Catholic portion of the blogosphere).  Many of these blogs also provide laughs alongside meaningful reflections, and, most of all, hope for the future.  (Not everybody is running away from Vatican II, thankfully.)

• Ad Dominum
• Pray Tell: Worship, Wit, and Wisdom
• Jesus Needs New PR
• Daily Episcopalian

I imagine I'll add more as I stumble across them, and maybe I'll re-post this post if it eventually gets lost in the mix.  In the meantime, though, I'm just happy to have come across these progressive Christian sites.

Anne Rice and Walking Off by One's Self

Jane Redmont, writing in The Daily Episcopalian, discusses the all-too-tempting route that Anne Rice has taken, that is, walking away from the flawed church (aren't they all flawed?).  I say all-too-tempting because there are days when I would like to leave too--yet I know I can't.  (If I left the Catholic church, I would do so only to go to another Christian community.  No shunning of the church altogether for me.)

A couple salient quotes from Redmont in her "Open Letter to Anne Rice":

What I am writing to tell you is that there’s no such creature as a lone follower of Jesus. You can’t be a Jesus-person away in a corner. Even hermits pray in communion with a larger tradition, a church beyond themselves in a world which is the place where God becomes incarnate.

The world: that’s why Jesus showed up. That’s why we are church. I’m with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor and theologian whom the Nazis killed for resisting Hitler and the Third Reich. He wrote: “The church is the church only when it exists for others.”

There is some grace, indeed, to be found in being part of the larger church:  the quiet church, the church militant, the church visible or invisible, whichever church one wishes to associate one's self with at any given moment.  And yes, I know, one can find grace during a solitary walk through the woods, or a week at the side of a lake; I've had that experience too, and I crave another such moment.  But there is grace also in the brotherhood and sisterhood that Christ calls us to, the human family (flawed and divided though it may be) that Christ died to give life to.  (In every way, at every turn, Christianity is full of paradox.)

Hat-tip to PrayTell for the link to Redmont's letter.

The Consequences of Mandatory Celibacy (Part I)

The last couple days, I've been reading a collection of short essays by Joseph Girzone, the retired Catholic priest who attained fame thirty years ago as author of the popular Joshua series of books.  I've never read the Joshua series because, after a single glance many years ago, I thought they sounded cheesy.  I still don't know whether they're worth a read or not.  Based on how much I've been reading Girzone's nonfiction work, My Struggle with Faith, the Joshua books may well deserve a second look.

In one of the last chapters in My Struggle with Faith, Girzone considers mandatory celibacy for priests within the Catholic tradition.  He first makes a good case for how the celibacy requirement has resulted in a shortage of priests in the modern church, which manifests itself most acutely in the reduced access that many Catholics have to the sacraments, including Sunday Eucharist.  Girzone writes:

Churches are closing.  Many people have difficulty finding a church wehre the Eucharist is celebrated by priests.  Old folks find it almost impossible to find a place to worship.  Priests are overworked to the point where it can only serve to shorten their lives, as more and more responsibilities are laid on them at a time in their lives when responsibilities should be lightened, not weighed more heavily on them.  The sin is that nothing is being done to respond to the needs of the people.

Girzone is right on target; his analysis (published in 2006) is up-to-date.  I can't imagine a patient who is about to undergo emergency surgery, or someone who is in hospice care, would have an easy time finding a Catholic priest (rather than an ecumenical chaplain) to celebrate the annoiting of the sick or reconciliation (confession), both important healing sacraments for any Catholic, but particularly the individual who is in great pain or near death.  The teenager who is pregnant or suicidal or who has just discovered a parent's infidelity is out in the cold; priests don't have time to be there to listen, to offer perspective.  (Not that many priests probably feel comfortable these days spending much time with individual young people of either sex.  But that's another post.)  Many parishes are overseen by a priest who has three other parishes to tend to, and the priest has limited time to spend at each parish, with only one weekend liturgy (at best) to celebrate at each location.  Catholics are being deprived of easy access to the sacraments (not to mention the guidance and spirit of friendship that a good priest, frequently on-site, can bring to a parish).

Girzone continues his analysis,  however, in a tone that I can only guess is meant to be tongue in cheek.  He writes:

 I know it is not cowardice that prevents bishops from speaking out and forcing change.  I know they really care about their people's need for Mass and the Eucharist.  I know it is not fear of censure or of losing a promotion that paralyzes them from taking a bold stand.  I know they realize that there are hundreds of thousands of faithful people who are being deprived of the Eucharist and the sacraments in hospitals, prisons, and nursing homes.  What I cannot understand is why they are doing nothing to provide priests for our people.

Seriously?  It's not cowardice that keeps priests and bishops from speaking out about the consequences of mandatory celibacy?  Surely Girzone, who has kept up with the political culture of the church as the church grows ever more conservative in the last few decades, understands that John Paul II did his damnedest to stifle even the hint of debate around both celibacy and women's ordination to the Catholic priesthood.  JP2 attempted to take the topic off the table.  Bishops dare not speak up, neither in the national conferences of bishops nor in interviews, for fear that they will end up with a coadjutor bishop being appointed to help run their diocese.

Bishops like the late Ken Untener, who did dare to speak up on both celibacy and women's role in the church, faced large-scale opposition from ultra-conservative, traditionalist groups, and it's easy to imagine that his twenty-four tenure as bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, was born not only of his love for the people there (which I have no doubt was sincere) but also from the refusal to the hierarchy to consider him for appointment as an archbishop anywhere.  Dissenting bishops unfortunately do not get a proper hearing as the prophets they may in fact be.  Instead, they end up getting squashed -- or, if they're lucky, simply ignored.  Certainly cowardice is one of the consequences of the church's refusal to reconsider the thousand-year-old tradition of celibacy for priests.  Smart people who hold leadership positions in the church know they cannot discuss in any detail possible changes to the celibacy requirement.  Those changes have been ruled out of bounds by the Vatican (except, of course, when it comes to married Anglican clergy whom the Vatican hopes to poach).

Girzone is back on track when he observes:

I cannot believe that the Holy Spirit is not calling people to the priesthood.  Maybe we are rejecting many whom the Holy Spirit is calling.

Indeed, it's all too easy to see this as the most significant consequence of the church's intransigence.  The church has made itself wiser than the Holy Spirit.  The church dismisses the calls of people with a vocation to marriage -- as well as women, as well as people who are gay -- to serve as the priests God may very well be calling them to.  "Can't happen," the church says.  "Not possible.  They aren't really called."  Even though all things, of course, are possible in Christ.