Saving Vatican II: Recovering a Sacramental Imagination in the American Church
Though the shift from one year to the next occurs with only a tick of the clock, that single tick has come to mean much more. It’s a time for reflection, for thinking about how we might do things differently in the future. Because it allows us to stand apart from normal time, the shifting of the year has the potential to be a kairos moment.
As 2007 arrives, I want to propose that the American Catholic church stands at an important kairotic crossroads. As Catholic columnist E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post notes in a Christmas eve op-ed piece, 2006 was “one of history's hinge years, a moment when old ideas are cast aside, new leaders emerge and old leaders decide to speak in new ways.”
Dionne points to a profound transition in the political mood of younger Americans. He notes that in the 1984 presidential election, 57-60% of voters under 30 cast their votes for the candidate representing “new” conservatism. In the 2006 House elections, 60% of voters under 30 chose candidates who promise a break with the neo-conservative direction the country had previously taken. In Dionne’s view, this shift suggests that, to the youth of America, “Conservatism now looks old, tired and ineffectual.”
Political transitions do not necessarily entail religious realignments. However, as numerous commentators have noted, the shift in the American political climate in 2006 has produced significant soul searching among evangelicals precisely because many evangelicals made a decisive alliance with neo-conservatism in the last quarter century.
Less has been written about similar soul searching in American Catholicism. Indeed, one might read the actions of the American bishops at their meeting after the 2006 elections as a deliberate evasion of questions arising in religious groups wedded to American neo-conservative politics—as many of the bishops have often been in recent years. As Catholic journalists Cokie and Steve Roberts note in a Christmas commentary entitled “Who Speaks for the Least among Us?” the bishops’ recent Baltimore statements were so divorced from the pressing moral questions of the nation at present that “it’s as if they are asking to be ignored.”
Cokie and Steve Roberts suggest that the bishops are missing a golden opportunity to articulate Catholic values in the public arena at this hinge moment of American history. I agree. This hinge moment is a kairos moment for American Catholics in several respects. It allows religious groups (including large sectors of American Catholicism) that closely aligned themselves with neo-conservative politics to look dispassionately (and anew) at the effects of that alliance. We must ask whether the alliance has made it impossible for us to stand apart from and speak the truth effectively to power.
This may be a divinely-given opportunity for us to resurrect our traditions’ prohibition of idolatry, as we regain the moral voice to remind our culture that no political option or cultural development completely enshrines gospel values. The reign of God stand always before us, as a critique of all that we build in history.
This kairos time also offers opportunity to renew conversation about our most deeply cherished convictions, about our identity as Catholics. Though some commentators have suggested that ongoing discussion of disputed theological issues—including the significance of Catholic identity—undermines the church’s influence in culture and politics, I wish to propose that the opposite is true.
When the meaning of the tradition is imprisoned in formulas handed down from above—when it is mandated by a unitary voice from above that does not consult the faithful at large—that meaning is likely to have far less political and cultural influence than when it is broadly determined by wide-ranging and inclusive dialogue. This is particularly true when the voice from above appears to endorse one political option as the only acceptable Catholic stance.
One of the tragic consequences of the alliance between our church and neo-conservative politics in the last quarter century has been the way in which this alliance dovetailed with intra-ecclesial attempts to abort conversation about the meaning of our heritage in contemporary culture. We have been taught to rely solely on the word from above, as if that word is the final answer to all questions about how to live our faith in the world.
As we have done so, we have lost contact with vital currents of our tradition that offer salvific promise to the cultural and political realms. We have forfeited influence on the public sphere, as we have narrowed the tradition to a tiny deposit if faith maniacally obsessed with selective hot-button issues and have turned inward, reviving the fortress mentality of the pre-Vatican II church. It would be heartrending if the new hinge moment in our political arena does not reopen intra-ecclesial conversation about the authentic Catholic imagination in the American church.
This conversation will naturally center on the significance of Vatican II. As the political and ecclesial centers shifted to the right in the recent period of neo-conservative dominance, perspectives purporting to represent the center of Catholicism inevitably became ever more tinged with neo-conservative ideology. These perspectives often either explicitly or implicitly attack Vatican II—sometimes, ironically, in the name of defending and saving that council. . . .
Some “centrist” commentators have suggested, for instance, that Vatican II ushered in a period in which American Catholicism lost sight of the tradition, and began to conform to culture as liberal Protestantism did at the end of the 19th century. For these commentators, saving Vatican II means returning to some predetermined notion of “the” tradition that will safeguard the church’s ability speak a strong, united word to culture.
I wish to suggest that these “centrist” proposals miss the point of Vatican II and fail to represent the center they claim to be protecting. They misrepresent what Vatican II was about, in its most fundamental theological thrust. They also misrepresent what has happened in American Catholicism following Vatican II. They are not at all centrist proposals: they undermine the ethos of Vatican II while purporting to save it, and they do so by importing into the Catholic imagination neo-conservative political assumptions that impoverish this imagination.
For anyone who studies Vatican II carefully, what stands out as the chief impetus of that reform council is the intent to return to deeply traditional biblical and sacramental understandings of the church as the people of God on pilgrimage in history. What also stands out is the desire of John XXIII to retrieve sacramental images of the church precisely in order to assure that the church’s salvific message would be accessible to contemporary believers, and not be shut up in a museum that faithfully preserves select aspects of the tradition in the name of safeguarding “the” tradition.
In his startling statements about why he called an ecumenical council at a time when no clear or visible threat faced the church, John XXIII indicated that he wanted to assure that the church’s message could be proclaimed to the world in language that made sense to the world. John XXIII was intently concerned to keep the church’s salvific message to culture alive. John wished to retrieve sacramental notions of the church as a reminder that the church lives within the world as a sacramental sign of God’s salvation offered freely and everywhere to the entire world.
As the hinge moment in our political sphere promises to re-open conversation about our most cherished convictions, it may be fortuitous that recent controversy in American Catholicism has centered on who is worthy to be in communion, to receive communion. If nothing else, this controversy directs us to the heart of our tradition, to the fundamental significance of Vatican II. The discussion places the sacramentality of the church front and center. Whether intentionally or not, the controversy retrieves the central preoccupation of Vatican II and places it on the table for open discussion, following a period in which open discussion of disputed theological issues has not been entertained by the sector of the church that purports to represent its teaching office in totality.
Saving Vatican II in the American church will require no more and no less than this: we must retrieve the sacramental imagination around which all Catholic belief is premised. Saving Vatican II will require us to look at our theology of communion with fresh eyes that rediscover its biblical, traditional basis—and, in particular, eyes that retrieve the sacramental ecclesiology of Vatican II.
A theology of communion that takes seriously what we proclaim about the Eucharist is by its very nature inclusive—all-inclusive, if it is authentically Catholic. Its first impulse is never excommunication, either the formal excommunication in which the pastoral sector reads someone out of communion, or the informal excommunication in which parishioners drive others out of the church or acquiesce in impulses to see them driven from communion. A theology of communion that takes seriously our Eucharistic proclamation values the contributions of everyone.
A church centered on the Eucharistic proclamation actively solicits the gifts of all, and works to eradicate any barriers that prevent the inclusion of anyone and the contributions anyone is able to make. A theology of communion that takes the sacramental nature of the church seriously never rejoices in excluding anyone, because it implicitly recognizes that in such rejoicing it undermines the most central affirmations the church makes about the Eucharist and about catholicity.
Communion, by its very nature, dissolves boundaries. We proclaim one cup, one bread, a cup in which the blood of many grapes is commingled to form one wine, a bread in which many grains of wheat have been milled to form one loaf.
A theology of communion is thus eschatological. It looks toward the salvation of all. An authentic theology of communion seeks to save everyone, since all count. As Joe Wise’s beautiful hymn “Take All the Lost Home” notes, “The bread that is broken/Won’t be one again,/Unless in your healing/You gather each one and each grain.”
At their recent meeting, the American bishops stressed the word “countercultural.” Many of those who claim to be saving Vatican II while defending a centrism that is actually neo-conservative also claim that they are defending the church’s countercultural influence. Yet in the Eucharistic proclamation itself is enfolded a countercultural imagination far more daring than any arising out of neo-conservative Catholicism, and far more faithful to the tradition. Our Eucharistic proclamation dares us to imagine and hope that all—the entire cosmos—may be saved. The countercultural imagination it places before us with shocking clarity is the haunting challenge to invite everyone to our table.
Origen’s texts about the Eucharist as the heavenly liturgy are often used by neo-conservative Catholics as a basis for retrieving a purist notion of liturgy that excommunicates the unwashed and unrighteous. Yet those texts, which speak of the liturgy as a ritual space that opens the heavenly liturgy to us, where all the saints and angels surround us as we worship, may be read quite differently. Our Eucharistic theology dares us to imagine that all of creation, living and dead, washed and unwashed, may share in communion with the divine salvific presence that fills the cosmos.
Such a Eucharistic imagination cuts against the grain of our American religiosity, which wants to see in the here and now “hard-cash” payment for good behavior and punishment for bad behavior. When our Catholic imagination has been captivated by such an implicitly capitalistic religiosity, we find it hard to believe the message of the parable of the prodigal son, in which the errant child is loved as freely as the one who has done what was expected. We find it all too easy to exclude those we imagine as undeserving and unrighteous—even when what we proclaim about communion cuts so strongly against the grain of such an imagination.
Our theology of communion engenders a profoundly countercultural imagination that contests a world in which anyone is oppressed, dehumanized, made to appear as less human than other human beings. A communion-centered countercultural theology probes the world continually against the backdrop of the reign of God, in which the least are the greatest, the first last, and the poor uplifted. It does not reinforce what exists now; it refuses to apotheosize a human order that makes us comfortable in the present or to give ecclesial sanction to that order by identifying it with the reign of God. To be countercultural is to be always on pilgrimage toward what is not yet here.
In a world always on pilgrimage, we do not journey alone. We journey with others toward the salvation promised at the end of history. We do not have that salvation captured, encapsulated in neat formulas. As others are doing—both inside and outside the church, within Christianity and within the other religious traditions of the world—we are seeking God and God’s truth, in full awareness that these stand in front of us and do not belong to any of us. None of us owns God. As a sacramental sign of the divine salvific presence indwelling creation, the church signifies a salvation much broader than the boundaries of the church itself.
When a theology of communion prevails, the walls between world and church become permeable. Our central ritual act demands such impermeable church-world walls, because it centers on the sharing of a very material substance, something of this world that bears the weight of divine presence—bread, a staple of the family table. A theology of communion reminds us that the holy and the daily are as commingled as are the water and wine in the Eucharistic cup or the grains of wheat milled into the one loaf. A theology of communion reminds us that holy bread is daily bread transformed. Our theology of communion challenges the imagination that would divide the world up into two separate spheres called sacred and secular.
There is no need to stretch ourselves to justify corporal works of mercy where a theology of communion prevails, or to speak of spiritual works of mercy as if they somehow inhabit a higher plane. A theology of communion likewise dissolves the dualism between life in the womb and life after birth. Both are equally significant where a theology of communion prevails. When a theology of communion guides our imagination, we cannot worship God in spirit and truth while ignoring the needs of the world around us. We cannot enshrine life in the womb while ignoring life after birth, if we are faithful to the most central affirmations of our Eucharistic theology.
When we take the theology of communion seriously, we want every human being (as well as all of creation) to thrive, because every voice counts. In the unending dialogue that draws us forward to God’s reign, no voice can be suppressed without loss to all. That unending dialogue involves interaction between all; the truth is found through such dialogic interaction. It has to be found in this way, when it does not belong to any of us. It is what we all seek together.
When we retrieve the sacramental theology of Vatican II (and of the tradition itself), we recognize that the sciences of human behavior—sociology, psychology, and so on—have an important role to play in understanding doctrine, because understanding the meaning of doctrine always involves sounding the effects of what is taught on real human lives. Doctrinal truths are not merely truths written down in black and white on paper. Doctrine has sacramental significance, because it conveys the truth Who is God to us, in a way that moves and alters our lives. A theology that takes sacramentality seriously has no choice except to turn to the sciences of human behavior to probe the effects of doctrinal statements on real human lives.
The sacramental ecclesiology of Vatican II suggests that if we are truly to be a sacramental people, we must subject the hierarchical, dominative approach to church polity—an approach in which friar trumps nun trumps religious woman trumps layperson—to constant critique. A church that takes sacramentality seriously has an inbuilt anti-hierarchical and anti-imperialistic impulse at its very core. It clings to the gospel promise that, in the reign of God, the least are the greatest. It works against all cultural norms that subordinate one person to another on grounds of economic or social status, race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, etc.
The center of a sacramental church is Christ—not the papacy or the episcopal office. In a church oriented to sacramentality, these church offices exist to serve the center, not to claim it for themselves. The host lifted up each day in Catholic liturgies has only one center, represented by the cross etched into it: that center is Christ.
A sacramental church that takes what it proclaims about communion seriously is countercultural first and foremost in its parish life, since the parish is where the people of God live out the gospel within their own cultural context. A church seeking true countercultural effect inculcates the countercultural imagination of the gospel in parishioners on an ongoing basis through careful religious education, pointed homilies, and good liturgy.
The countercultural imagination that should inform parish life is enshrined in an iconic figure we encounter in the religious art of many of our churches—in Francis of Assisi, the alter Christus. As Thomas Cahill noted in a Christmas day op-ed piece in the New York Times, Francis taught his followers to befriend every outcast they encountered, whether leper, heretic, or highwayman. He taught that judgment that sorts the wheat from the chaff and places some outside communion belongs to the all-merciful God alone, and is not a Christian’s concern.
As did Jesus, Francis taught these Eucharistic values to his followers through symbolic gestures, embracing lepers when many in his society would not touch the flesh of those despised outcasts. For Francis as for Jesus, simple human touch has a sacramental, countercultural significance. It heals social divisions. It effects what it promises, by reaching across social chasms and bringing the outsider in. It affirms the human dignity of the despised outcast.
Every parish has pristine opportunities to practice these sacramental actions—and to understand their deep countercultural significance—through liturgy. Through the kiss of peace, through the cup and bread that we all share, parishes have the opportunity to live the countercultural each time they celebrate the Eucharist. Parishioners are able to fathom the profound countercultural implications of these actions when they are taught to recognize the significance of the sacramental gesture of reaching across the pews and touching the hand of those who are different.
Nothing could be less countercultural and more antithetical to the imagination of the gospels than asking those who make our flesh crawl to be invisible in parish life, as the American bishops recently asked gay people (yet again) to be. As we proclaim (and live) the gospel message, our constant temptation is always to imagine that lepers are somewhere else. But they are among us in each parish: they include, among many others, those abused by clerics who are taunted or demeaned for telling their stories; they include gays and lesbians, many of whom do not have the support of their families of origin and who rely on the embrace of the parish family to affirm their humanity; they include the old and the young. Lepers are everywhere, and we can touch their flesh each time we celebrate liturgy.
As an aside—and profoundly significant for “ordinary” parish life—the sacramentality of touch also points to a very different understanding of human sexuality than the one codified in our natural law theology. Perhaps the most profound reason most Catholics in the western world—in union with their Protestant brothers and sisters, including “orthodox” Protestants—reject the natural law theology of human sexuality is that it fails to touch the depths of what human beings in committed relationship experience through sexual union. In reducing human sexuality to the level of animal behavior, it fails to recognize the sacramental significance of this profound interchange between human beings.
If our society is sexually disordered, as some neo-conservative Catholic wish to argue, then the salvific word we Catholics need to offer the culture must recover the sacramental significance of human sexuality. We cannot transform a sexually disordered culture with a natural law theology of human sexuality that is, for compelling reasons, widely rejected by Catholics and Protestants, whether liberal or orthodox, alike.
Nor can we transform it by continuing the sort of neo-conservative attack-dog rhetoric against “liberals” that has characterized talk-radio shows, though taunts accusing groups such as Call to Action or Voice of the Faithful of being “adolescent.” The use of such labels, when applied to faithful lay groups who are seeking to further the church’s mission to infuse culture with its values by dialogue about theological questions not yet resolved, does not further the church’s countercultural mission. It implies a parental relationship of church authority figures—of the ordained—to the laity that cuts against the grain of Vatican II and undermines that council’s retrieval of sacramental notions of the church.
Recovering Vatican II and taking its sacramental understanding of the church seriously also means that we have no choice except to face the abuse crisis head-on squarely. In order to have countercultural significance in culture—to be an effective sacramental sign of God’s salvific presence in the world—the church must live the values it proclaims. This is all the more true of the pastors of the church, because of their claim to signify Christ to the community in a unique way.
Those who suggest that the bishops are being unfairly hounded to be accountable for the abuse crisis—that they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t—are not fathoming the profound threat this crisis poses to the sacramental effectiveness of the church within culture. The abuse crisis is not primarily a public relations nightmare for the church. It is not first and foremost a problem to be managed by adroit spin control. It is not a plot cooked up by an anti-Catholic press to undermine the church’s reputation. It is a serious challenge to the very heart of the church’s mission in the world, to its ability to be an efficacious sacramental sign of God’s salvific presence in the world.
When it can be demonstrated that at least two-thirds of the American bishops have protected and promoted a clerical sexual abuser, the church’s sacramental significance is threatened in a way that must intently disturb anyone concerned to see the church having a persuasive influence in the culture. When the behavior of the pastoral leaders undermines key aspects of the Eucharistic proclamation, when that behavior militates against the word of salvation the church offers to the world, we have no choice except to be concerned, if we revere the church and wish to see it thrive.
As the most recent lead editorial of National Catholic Reporter argues, telling the full truth about the abuse crisis and seeking in all respects to accord justice to those wounded by it is mandated by our sacramental tradition. At this kairos moment, the American church will lose a crucial opportunity to have salvific influence in culture, if it does not listen to the voices of the many call it—and, in particular, its pastors—to retain the church’s sacramental influence in the world by facing the abuse crisis squarely, honestly, and with full intent to do justice to those who have been denied justice.
William D. Lindsey
Bob, as I read today's news
Bob, as I read today's news coverage of Wielgus stepping down as archbishop in Warsaw, I'm continuing to mull over your posting from yesterday.
Far more troubling to me in this story than his complicity with the secret police in the Communist era is how he handled the initial revelations about this. If news reports are correct (and I have no reason to doubt the ones I'm reading), he did the same song and dance we've seen for some years now, when revelations break re: the abuse crisis: no, I didn't do it. No, my memory is faulty.
Then, as more records are disclosed, the inevitable admission of guilt and a belated reaction of those higher up in the church, taking action that should have been taken from the beginning....
I have grown very weary of this kind of behavior. What does it say about our concern to be a sacramental sign of God's salvation in the world?
We're not talking about a few isolated instances in which records reveal behind-the-scenes corruption in pastors of the church. We're talking about a pattern of behavior that seems deeply entrenched in the clerical culture of the church.
Given that pattern and how it undermines the church's sacramental effectiveness, I'm appalled when clerics issue statements about how the poor bishops are being put through the ringer by layfolks. There's such paternalism and arrogance in such statements, such a clerical presupposition that theology is the sacred preserve of clerics. There's such a presupposition that the benefit of the doubt should be given to those in the know, and that we layfolks shouldn't bother ourselves with wanting to know the compromises that have to be made behind the scenes by those wielding power.
The same old song and dance has to end soon, if the church is to retain any effectiveness as a sacramental sign of salvation in the world. What's disheartening about the Wielgus case, to me, is that it shows business still being done as usual--despite all the revelations since 2002.
William D. Lindsey
Too late for me to edit, but
Too late for me to edit, but apologies for calling a "wringer" a "ringer"!
William D. Lindsey
Maybe the Church is dieing
Maybe the Church is dieing in Europe because they've experienced one too many centuries of this kind of mismanagement, and it's not about secular relativism, it'a about secular cynicism.
You can try to evangelize secular relativism, but cynicism is combatted by a humble transparency. Maybe Poland will be the country that blows open the door of ecclesial secrecy like it was the force that blew down the iron curtain.
"Maybe the Church is dying
"Maybe the Church is dying in Europe...."
I suspect that we should look first at the sustainability of the medieval model in which the Church has couched itself. Maybe Europe is just a few decades ahead of us in realizing that it is no longer relevant and ignore it while in America we seek to find a way to mend it and it just shouts louder.
Very good points both,
Very good points both, Colkoch and Dennis.
I think there are some positive things for North American culture to learn from the way in which Europe has come to handle religion in the public sphere. When religion seems bent on propagating some of the most toxic currents in culture, then it seems understandable to build the public sphere apart from religion.
Case in point: I was extremely disheartened to read in today's news coverage that some in the crowd of believers gathered to see Wielgus elevated to the archbishop's throne shouted that the Jews were behind the scandal, when he announced he was stepping down.
I grow impatient with discussions of why religious life isn't thriving in the North American church, and of how to fix the problem, when those discussions focus narrowly on garb, obedience, the overblown charge that some religious communities threw out the baby with the bathwater after Vatican II.
In my view, the discussion has to be put in a much broader context: how can good, well-disposed people who might in the past have been drawn to religious life get around what we now know about the "inside" of the church? I'm convinced that a generation or so of young folks has not been motivated to choose religious life not because of the changes made in religious life, or changes that might be made to make it more attractive. I think they've opted for other vocations because the church as a whole, and in its pastoral leaders in particular, so often fails to inspire idealism or passion for the church's mission.
There's a lot of talk about how this generation of youth wants to return to the pre-Vatican II model, because the pouty, adolescent baby-boom generation adopted a secular liberal model of religious life that doesn't sustain commitment. In my view, that discussion is superficial and shields the leaders of the church from their responsibility for leading us into a blind alley.
How do we continue to support the thesis of all those reactionary or neo-conservative young folks, in light of the statistics from the fall 2006 elections? Those statistics indicate that all the right-wing Catholics hinging their hope for a return to the fortress church may be deceived. The majority of young people may be anything but reactionary these days.
I know quite a few intelligent, mission-minded young people who, in previous generations, would have been naturals for religious life. But they wouldn't dream of it now, given what we all know about the church since the revelations of 2002.
Cases like the Wielgus case only serve to underscore, sadly, that business is going on as usual from the top of the church, as if nothing at all has happened since 2002--as if nothing has changed. I predict that we'll continue seeing a quiet hemmorhage of talented, thoughtful, mission-minded people in the North American church, just as has happened in Europe, unless the pastoral leaders dare to become more accountable and transparent.
William D. Lindsey
Bill, re: your comment:
Bill, re: your comment: "There's a lot of talk about how this generation of youth wants to return to the pre-Vatican II model, because the pouty, adolescent baby-boom generation adopted a secular liberal model of religious life that doesn't sustain commitment. In my view, that discussion is superficial and shields the leaders of the church from their responsibility for leading us into a blind alley."
This is exactly the kind of misinformation (so well-honed by the intelligence-military complex that is the Bush dynasty administration) that Bill Moyer's exposes in a different arena in his very elegant piece entitled, "For America's Sake" (found at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070122/moyers).
We are being duped into "blaming the victims" once again (remember when we were tricked into doing that when the War on Poverty was jettisoned as funding was withdrawn and institutional support withheld? Remember how it all was rationalized as a "tax revolt" against "Big Government" and how we were tricked into believing that a "commodity crisis" was on the horizon only to be followed by a dire "energy crisis"? Kind of like the masking of the genuine health care crisis now faced by millions of Americans as we prepare for the new deceit of a global "pandemic" for which billions must be spent ...) I, like you, find it especially scurrilous when we blame the young who are innocent and who like the "hungry sheep" of Milton's telling "look up and are not fed."
The Blind alley is worse; it is a sheering barn and slaughter house.
Your
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near." (Phil 4:4-5)
Elaine, thank you for the
Elaine, thank you for the link to the Bill Moyers article, which I haven't read, but will look forward to reading (and using in class).
Your final image of the blind alley as a sheering barn and slaughter house is very powerful. As I just mentioned on a response to Dennis's wonderful meditation on the church's need to break with the imperial model, we owe it to "the youth" of today to bequeath to them a better church and world than the one we're leaving behind, even as we claim that our destructive actions are being taken on behalf of "the youth."
William D. Lindsey
I see from today's news
I see from today's news reports that Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus of Warsaw has resigned.
If we prescind from the particular facts of this case, I think we can see a trend developing that may confirm a point I make in my posting about sacramentality.
Increasingly, as the media in some places dare to scrutinize the history and lives of those holding pastoral office in the Catholic church, more will be expected of those holding pastoral office. As in more conformity to the gospels, more transparency and accountability in exercising pastoral office....
There's certainly a danger in witch-hunting. We could be entering an era of new Puritanism in which all the peccadilloes of each person in episcopal office are examined with magnifying glasses. I hope that's not the case.
On the other hand, because of what those exercising pastoral office have claimed about their position in the church, it is to be expected that they will be scrutinized carefully. To be good sacramental signs, they have to live in such a way that they proclaim the message they are teaching.
If that's the path we'll now be treading with increased media scrutiny of bishops, then I think it's for the good. This means, however, that the Vatican can no longer act imperiously, as if it has the right to do anything at all it wants, and the laity and press be damned. It would be good if those at the top began dialoguing with those of us at the bottom, as they make appointments to episcopal offices. Daring as that idea may seem, it's very traditional.
William D. Lindsey
Bill, I have been following
Bill,
I have been following the same story. What bothers me most about it is that I am quite sure the Vatican takes a very close look at anyone who is being considered for such positions. I simply cannot believe the revelation that Wielgus had cooperated with the Communists and informed on other members of the clergy came as a surprise. In spite of the damage the cover-up of cases of child abuse have caused the Church, seems the Vatican is steaming ahead at full speed with business as usual.
I agree that, and I certainly hope, there will be greater media scrutiny of much the Chruch does because, apparently, the Vatican is still under the opinion that it can do whatever it wants and is answerable to no one.
And yes, the nominations for candidates for episcopal offfices should come from the faithful. Moreover, for this to work, the faithful have to become far more involved in the government of the Chruch in a real and meaningful way. On the level of the diocese and also the parish, the physical and material operation of the Chruch should be in the hands of qualified laypeople, thus leaving the role of the clergy to be preachers of the Word and spiritual advisors.
We are a long way from anything like that. However, I believe it is clear that the Chruch has, in many ways, become a multinational corporation with its own agenda which all too often is not compatible with its mission. I am not even sure it remembers what its mission is.
I would suggest the Pope would do well to declare a year of penance and reflection on what and where the Chruch is and refrain from making any new pronouncements such as our U.S. bishoph have until a great deal of "inner work" and soul searching has been done.
If the Chruch cannot reform itself because of a renewed committment to holiness, then let it be motivated by self preservation, but let it be done.
"I agree that, and I
"I agree that, and I certainly hope, there will be greater media scrutiny of much the Chruch does because, apparently, the Vatican is still under the opinion that it can do whatever it wants and is answerable to no one."
I read the report that Fr. Tom Doyle et al sent to the bishops in 1985 this past week. The guidelines baldly state that the Church would no longer enjoy the silence of the media or the complicity of the legal system. This is 21 years ago, 17 years before the explosion of the abuse scandal.
Everytime the Church gets caught with it's hand in the cookie jar I keep wondering if anyone up there 'has ears to hear'.
Bob, I'm thinking along
Bob, I'm thinking along precisely the same lines as you are. Anyone being vetted for these pastoral positions is scrutinized intensely. The Vatican has an information network that rivals that of the KGB. I doubt there are any surprises when it comes to the background of a person who is made bishop.
Which suggests to me that, when these decisions are made, there are certain prudential (I'm tempted to say cynical) judgments about how much the media investigation of the new appointment's life can be managed, about how people will react if this or that fact is found out.
Like you, I tend often to think that "the Church has, in many ways, become a multinational corporation with its own agenda which all too often is not compatible with its mission. I am not even sure it remembers what its mission is."
That's part of why I posted this lengthy posting reminding us of the central "fact" of the church's mission in the world--to be a sacramental sign of God's salvific presence everywhere in the world, offered freely to everyone.
One of my theological mentors, Gregory Baum, wrote a now-classic article some years back, in which he pointed out that corporations are discovering that they have to balance maintenance and mission, if they're going not just to survive, but to thrive. Though they have to pay attention to maintaining themselves, if they are not mission-driven, they tend to shrivel on the vine. He challenged the church to learn from this corporation theory and stop placing all its bags in the maintenance basket.
If the abuse crisis has no other effect than to force the church--in its top leaders--more intent on listening to how people will react when it makes cynical appointments that belie its sacramental mission, then the crisis will have had some good results. (This is by no means to say that the atrocious pain and suffering of molested children has been good!)
If the crisis means that the media in many places stop protecting the church by deliberately suppressing stories about which they know, which reflect unflatteringly on the church, then that will be good, too, in my judgment. I do not want those stories to be told because I support some big anti-Catholic conspiracy. I want them to be told because I want our pastoral leaders to live what they proclaim. The church's effect on culture is at stake. When it conspicuously fails to be a sacramental sign of what it preaches, people will naturally stop listening.
William D. Lindsey
"Origen’s texts about the
"Origen’s texts about the Eucharist as the heavenly liturgy are often used by neo-conservative Catholics as a basis for retrieving a purist notion of liturgy that excommunicates the unwashed and unrighteous. Yet those texts, which speak of the liturgy as a ritual space that opens the heavenly liturgy to us, where all the saints and angels surround us as we worship, may be read quite differently. Our Eucharistic theology dares us to imagine that all of creation, living and dead, washed and unwashed, may share in communion with the divine salvific presence that fills the cosmos."
Bill, what you have written here is absolutely true. I finally understood the power of the Eucharistic celebration when it was made manifest to me that the saints and angels I had hero worshipped shared their presence in this sacramental reality with all of us, irrespective of our 'sinfullness'. To them it didn't matter. What mattered is we all shared this common prupose called the Body and Blood of Christ. In this Sacrament we are all peers, all equals, all joined, all loved. To deny this experience to any creation of God's is to deny it to Him.
I spent Christmas reading the story of St. Joan of Arc, a woman very familiar with the Church Triumphant. When asked if her 'voices' were to be obeyed before the Church Militant she answered in the affirmative. I often wonder how the Church Militant would change if they heard the same voices of the Church Triumphant and understood there is no separation within the Sacramental reality. We are all one body in Christ.
Thank you for an exceptional thread, and a true expression of radical sacramentality.
Thanks, Colkoch. I was
Thanks, Colkoch. I was thinking of Joan last night, strangely enough. We often forget (or I do) that some of the saints we admire so much were among those taunted by fellow members of the church, including by bishops, cardinals, priests, religious. They, too, were told they did not belong and would be better off outside the church.
Joan made the daring claim that even she, a simple, untutored peasant girl, heard God's voice. That claim got her into lots of trouble, especially with the theologians and church dignitaries of her day, who thought that God had quite a bit of nerve speaking to anyone but them.
She's one of the saints I'm happy to have communing with us as we all commune together in the liturgy, washed and unwashed, warts and all, hoping that God's offer of salvation is as freely offered to us as it was to those who went ahead of us.
William D. Lindsey
Over the last few years I
Over the last few years I have often asked myself why I continue to call myself Roman Catholic. Any number of postings on this cafe have posed that question of those who contribute as "quest-ioners". It is ironic that where the question has been posed by others it has sounded like a rather pointed suggestion to leave. My personal questioning has rarely been a question for decision. It has always been a quest for the approprieate answer to why I will stay, why I will never leave. Again, with a twist of irony, I have always been confident that should I be invited to leave or otherwise excluded I would fear not the judgment of Christ, for that same reason.
William, your expression of sacrament and the sacramental, the dynamic incarnational inclusiveness of Communion and its concomitant imperative to share,nurture and where there is rupture, to heal is in so many ways the answer to my question. Thank you.
Thanks, Dennis.
Thanks, Dennis. Interestingly enough, just as I mentioned to Colkoch that I was thinking of Joan of Arc last evening, I was also thinking about some of the issues your post raised. I have just begun reading David Gibson's book on the current pope, and was finding myself feeling not a little depressed. It looks as if that mentality of establishing the leaner, meaner church of the "truly" holy is not going to go away anytime soon--though I have come to believe that no one owns the future, and the Spirit retains the right to surprise us.
As Gibson points out, this leaves many of us hanging on by our fingernails, knowing we're not wanted, left wide open to those taunting voices that keep inviting us (all so glozeningly) to join the Episcopalians.
Then it occurred to me: why aren't those same voices inviting themselves to join those break-away Episcopalian parishes now affiliating with Peter Akinola? My principles don't encourage disinviting anyone from communion, but it does strike me as interesting that those doing the disinviting in our own communion aren't seeing some interesting parallels between the Catholic and worldwide Anglican situation that may well indicate the church of the pure and holy inevitably ends up becoming something of an irrelevant cult.
We often talk about "the African church" as if it's monolithic and speaks with a unitary voice. And yet in the past year, we saw two very startlingly different voices emerging from that church re: gay human beings. On the one hand, there's Peter Akinola, who told the NY Times recently that he recoiled in horror when he realized he had first touched a gay man.
Then there's Desmond Tutu, who says that excommunicating gay believers is continuing the practice of apartheid, and why has written, "It is baptism which gives us our special character, and to exclude anyone from the church is to deny God's grace and our interdependence as members of the Body of Christ."
The African church offers us widely divergent options on the question of including openly gay believers in our communion. It strikes me that many of those within our communion inviting us to leave and join the Episcopalians have more in common with the church of Akinola than of Tutu--and more in common with the handful of Episcopalians now exiting their communion to place themselves under Akinola, than with the majority of American Catholics.
Perhaps they'd be happier with the Akinola group, since the parishes affiliating themselvs with Akinola are likely to form a cultural and historical bubble in which they will be happiest trying to live apart from the currents of inevitable (and humanizing) historical developments, including the gradual acceptance of the full humanity of gay human beings. When Anglicanism revised the prayer book, some groups split off to form purist movements that are now isolated sects. When it began ordaining women, the same happened, with much fanfare in the press and predictions of a fragmentation of the communion.
The same may well now be happening as that church faces the question of accepting openly gay believers more frankly and openly than our church does. As the world slowly moves to an acceptance of the full humanity of gay persons, churches that have premised so much on making gay people invisible and implicitly telling gay people to disappear from communion may find themselves without much of salvific significance to say to those who want to live within culture, as salvific sacramental presences in it, and not in a time-warp bubble of the pure and holy.
William D. Lindsey
Bill, this overarching
Bill, this overarching posting is a rich field you have given us. Thank you. I'll think about it and discern whether I have anything to contribute. But, by the way, and in light of your mentioning the disruption in the Anglican Communion here are three items:
1/ some of us see the nonsense in all of this. Go to this site for a good laugh:
http://garethjmsaunders.co.uk/tte/news/2005/news-20050326-risk.html
2/ I attended seminary with Mpho Tutu and saw her not too long ago at a friend's ordination. Mpho, like her father is now an ordained Episcopal priest and also, like her father, doesn't take herself as seriously as the rest of the world seems to but is, nevertheless, seriously aware of the true source of authentic Communion: Jesus Christ in and through the world. Desmond Tutu's own visits to our seminary were occassions for great joy. His pleasure in life lived in God's presence is infectious.
3/ in the U.S. about 53-55 parishes are "breaking away" from the Episcopal Church (seeking episcopal oversight from Bolivia and Nigeria.) They represent LESS THAN 1% of our US Communion's parishes! They are only of interest because of their exotic (and often bizarre) expression of ecclesial theology. We continue to "via media" them because of our genuine call to inclusion but they can't seem to live with that (plus publicity) and so seek other exotic places to ruminate and self-flagellate.
Happy New Year to you and all. May all God's Blessings be upon you!
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near." (Phil 4:4-5)
Dear Dr. McCoy, Thank you
Dear Dr. McCoy,
Thank you for your clarification. It was because of people like Bishop Tutu that I joined the Episcopal Church, as well as no less distinguished but lesser-known people who had impressed me with their kindliness, open-mindedness and erudition along the way, over the years, particularly a Rector in Salt Lake City.
(Not that many Roman Catholics don't also have that.) But, unfortunately, the current Roman Catholic Bishop in our Diocese has not appeared to, or at least he hasn't appeared to have, the perception to understand that American Citizens get to vote for the candidates of their choice, freely and without ecclesial pressure. He also appears to have a distorted view of his own "powers" over the lives of "his" people, perhaps more than is called for in a society that is not a theocracy. Anyway, thanks for the stats, Star (Edited 1/10/07 for clarity.)
You are most welcome,
You are most welcome, *star*. The Episcopal Church is immeasurably enriched by Desmond Tutu's wisdom and courage, and with voices such as your own.
God's peace,
Elaine+
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near." (Phil 4:4-5)
Dear Star, great to hear
Dear Star, great to hear your voice!
William D. Lindsey
Dr.McCoy~ thanks for the
Dr.McCoy~ thanks for the insight. The preoccupation with "break-away" per se as an argument for or against issues really is a red herring. It is the other face to the demand for exclusion or ex-communication. Christianity and indeed, the pursuit of human wisdom and virtue, is more about how we live, how we live with the world, others, and issues, it is about the Sermon on the Mount. Sure intelligence, respect, good judgemnt and information culled with an open mind will tend to concensus but that process is what is important. In that kind of a world, differences can be tolerated, even respected much more easily. Church should be a forum for these values.
There are a number of almost insidious posters among us who appear to read and expostulate through a prism of vitriol which applies colours which are not there and bends and twists what is straightforwardly offered, using the flaming banner of orthodoxy as justification.
"There are a number of
"There are a number of almost insidious posters among us who appear to read and expostulate through a prism of vitriol which applies colours which are not there and bends and twists what is straightforwardly offered, using the flaming banner of orthodoxy as justification."
Dennis I'm not sure it's the 'flaming banner of orthodoxy', to me it seems more of a Catholic form of patriotism. The kind expressed here in the "America, love it or leave it" mentality, and the kind that is so enamored of collective symbolism that flag burning is the ultimate patriotic sin.
With this kind of mindset, the Mass becomes the flag, and the hierarchy the flawless party, and teaching is elevated to absolute truth. In either instance it seems a form of fascism where the only response for good citizens is obedience and the need to exclude or erradicate the dissenter.
It's puzzling to me that in a country which has free speech enshrined in the constitution our fellow co-relionists would demand we shut up on matters of religious doctrine. Maybe this comes from too many years of Catholic education which began the day with the pledge of allegiance and the Our Father. It predisposes one to not separate the two mindsets.
Elaine, thanks--I was
Elaine, thanks--I was hoping, as I replied to Dennis, that you would log in and add some reflections about the parallels between the Episcopalian/Anglican dialogues and the Roman Catholic ones.
Thanks for the link to the website and for the information about Desmond Tutu's daughter. She sounds fascinating.
It does strike me as interesting that the purported fragmentation of the Episcopalian church--due initially to its inclusion of women, and now its inclusion of gays--is often used by the media to suggest that any church which lives the gospel faithfully by eradicating barriers based on gender or sexual orientation is engaging in radical liberal behavior and will lose adherents. Media reports often implicitly set up a stark alternative between secular-liberal American Episcopalianism and doctrinally, biblically faithful Anglicanism in Africa, Asia, etc.
Yet these media reports never seem to note that African Anglicans are just as divided in their mind about the inclusion of gay persons as we are. Akinola and Tutu illustrate that for me very clearly.
There are rich ironies in this discussion, with its media-driven political interests. One of the ironies (as my previous reply tries to suggest) is that those Catholics taunting many of their co-religionists to leave the Catholic church for the dissolving secular liberal Episcopalian communion don't reflect on how they may actually be more suited to the splinter groups within Anglicanism than to the American church as a whole. After all, if approval or use of artificial contraception by American Catholics is used as a litmus test for worthiness to be in communion, the majority of American Catholics are not opting for the vision of that mean, lean church of true belivers that those taunting the rest of us to leave want.
They are implicitly taunting the WHOLE American Catholic church to excommunicate itself.
History seems to show that when Episcopalian parishes have resisted praiseworthy, courageous attempts of the church to live the gospel by including more and more marginalized groups, and have departed from the mainstream, they end up living in cultural bubbles and time warps that diminish their effect on the culture as a whole. Is this what the mean, lean groups in American Catholicism want? I think so. I think that, despite calling themselves conservatives and traditionalists, they often have little grasp of history or of the tradition, and cannot see that they are backing themselves into a corner and diminishing the salvific influence of the church in contemporary culture, even as they claim that their primary goal is to safeguard that influence.
Your note that less than 1% of your U.S. communion's parishes are breaking away is a point well-taken. In my home state of Arkansas (which is, after all, in the bible belt), when the then bishop, Larry Maze, signed a statement some years ago endorsing ordination of openly gay clerics and supporting gay unions, the bishop of a neighboring diocese, Ft. Worth, sent letters to every Episcopalian church in the state, inviting them to leave communion with Bishop Maze and place themselves under his leadership. No church in our bible-belt state did this. All remained in communion with Bishop Maze. One of Bishop Maze's last acts as bishop was to open the door to commitment ceremonies for gay Episopalian couples. One such ceremony has already taken place.
The sky hasn't fallen. There has not been a mass exodus of Episcopalians in Arkansas from the church. There is one tiny group of breakaway believers who have placed themselves under an African bishop. This happened back when the Ft. Worth bishop began to stir things in the Little Rock diocese. I lived in the neighborhood in which this group met for some years. I would often walk by the church giving them hospitality on Sundays, and see those who belonged to the group. They were largely twenty somethings from suburban areas. It interested me that, in our quiet inner-city neighborhood, this group had an armed guard at the church doors each Sunday.
This surprised me, because there was so little crime in our sedate neighborhood that the local police watch station closed a year or so after it was opened. I wondered what the young suburban churchgoers feared in our inner-city neighborhood? I had to wonder if they were people simply afraid, period--afraid that the world was going out of control, that it didn't conform to their dreams of what it had been like in the 1950s, a period through which these folks hadn't lived, while I grew up in those years....
When we're afraid, we often create cultural bubbles and time warps in which we try to live, in order to feel less afraid. And we try to stop the world's march and make it fit into such bubbles and time warps. But we do so ineffectually. Churches don't really have any business creating such bubbles and time warps, it seems to me.
Their business is to live within culture as sacramental signs of God's salvific presence in the world.
William D. Lindsey
"They were largely twenty
"They were largely twenty somethings from suburban areas. It interested me that, in our quiet inner-city neighborhood, this group had an armed guard at the church doors each Sunday."
What an image this evokes. How does one recieve the 'Good News' in an armed church?
Kind of an oxymoron, isn't
Kind of an oxymoron, isn't it, Colkoch--an armed church? But it may be what our churches become, when they regard the world as completely dark and believe that they uniquely hold the light of Christ in a dark world....
William D. Lindsey
William~ Returning to this
William~ Returning to this string and rereading my earlier post along with your exchange with Dr.McCoy, I feel a need to clarify or maybe extend my post.
While I hold to my attestation that I would never leave the RC Church (willingly or otherwise) it is in no way a contention that any faith "held in good faith" is not held in God's great big, warm palm.
Dennis, I appreciate the
Dennis, I appreciate the clarification, because it helps me to clarify where I stand. I have been concerned that my own comments may be read as a suggestion that there Catholicism is salvific in a way that other churches aren't. And yet, as we know, Vatican II speaks of the presence of the Spirit in non-Catholic churches....
So why keep butting my head against the wall and not accept those taunting "invitations" of my mean, lean co-religionists to exit for the liberal Episcopalian church?
I certainly don't stand in judgment of any Catholics who have made that choice. I often wonder if they haven't made the better choice.
I'm tired of being embarrassed by my church. I'm tired of hanging my head in shame when people say, "Oh, Catholic. Yes, those abuse cases...."
I'm also tired of being beaten up in every way possible by people within my church who claim to represent Jesus's love in unique ways, but who constantly carry cudgels with them.
Yet I hang on, though I've been told I don't belong and have been more or less definitively excommunicated by being denied teaching positions as a theologian--without any stated reason for having my livelihood removed and my vocation blocked.
Why do I hang on? Perhaps it's a dogged determination not to allow "them" to determine my identity. Perhaps it's a stubborn refusal to exit, until I'm told why my vocation as a theologian has been regarded as meaningless, and I've been treated as persona non grata.
Perhaps it's a recognition that it's my church, too, after all. I chose it at great personal cost as a teenager, after a conversion experience that made me believe I was called to move from my family church of origin to the Catholic church.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, Dennis: any faith held in good faith is held in God's great big, warm palm.
For now, even knowing this, I am choosing to resist the invitations, both from the mean, lean contingency and from the "liberals" who purport to represent the center while fundamentally arguing for circles of protection to be built around the bishops, and while bashing those who call the bishops to accountability, to leave.
William D. Lindsey
Bill, Please, never even
Bill,
Please, never even consider that your vocation as a theologian has been regarded as meaningless. It is part of your vocation as a person and you have a mission in life which only you can fulfill and, as I see it, you are fulfilling it very well.
Do you really think your becoming a Catholic and a Catholic theologian happened by chance. Or, that you are gay was some kind of a mistake? Who and what you are, the experienced you have had and are having, your insights allow you to say things that only you can say and that absolutely must be said.
I firmly believe the Holy Spirit is working in and through you.
HopingvsHope fits you well. Keep hoping. I see the day when the Magisterium is going to run out of places to hide and will be forced to fact issues is really does not want to face and say things it really does not want to say. People like you will have had a very large part in bringing about that day and, on that day, the great value of you and your vocation will be vindicated.
Bob, it sometimes takes
Bob, it sometimes takes several days for me to mull over all that a posting has said--to take the words into the ear of my heart and really hear them.
This morning, I was finally struck by the significance of some of the points this posting makes. It is rather hard to see as gift and virtue what society (and church, school, family, the legal system) condemns as a flaw in one's very personhood. One of the struggles of my life, as with many gay people, is to learn to see my sexual orientation as a gift, rather than a burden or a deformity.
I won't pretend this struggle doesn't continue to occur in my life. How can it be otherwise, when those claiming to occupy the center of Christianity (and our church) so confidently tell me and my sisters and brothers that we are disordered and should be invisible in church?
Yet, I have definitely received the grace in my life journey to see what others see as stigma, as a gift, as a precious lens through which I can see the world in my own unique way, and can experience God's presence in my own unique way.
You're right to say this is part and parcel of my vocation as a theologian. Being gay is not all I am. It doesn't define my personhood in toto. There is much more to me than that, and I have something to say (I hope) on many other subjects.
Yet is definitely an important part of who I am, and claiming this part of myself has been very significant in helping me release my voice and speak the truth as I discover it in my graced experience. Thank you for affirming that.
As Julian of Norwich says, when the crucified Savior looks into the wounds in his side, he sees "a fair, delectable place, and large enough for all mankind that shall be saved to rest in peace and in love."
I love that image, of God opening God's very body to all humankind to be saved, to enter in and enjoy rest in peace and in love. It's a pity our church's imagination hasn't caught up to Julian's vision of salvation, which dares to include the possibility that everyone--included the despised and wretched of the earth--may enjoy the peace and love of salvation.
William D. Lindsey
Bob, your words mean much to
Bob, your words mean much to me. Thank you for affirming my vocation. Being a theologian is, in part, about teaching and speaking, and hoping that, in the process, you speak an efficacious word, and that you plant seeds that will later grow to maturity.
In teaching (and speaking), a person doesn't always see the effects of the process. It's nice to receive feedback. I have always believed that the ultimate test of a vocation is whether it is helping to produce the response that engenders life in others.
I did choose my username carefully. Hope has always been the virtue I struggle the most with. It's perhaps hardest to maintain when the voices that define the center (or purport to define the center) define me and my voice right out of the picture. I can deal better with those coming from the fringes than those that purport to be centrist, while they don't truly represent the center of our tradition at all.
To me, those voices often sound like voices from the tomb--suave, persuasive, very attractive. But when I reflect on where they are inviting us to go, I see that it's inside the tomb.
The voices I keep trying to hear invite us to a future not yet present in any reality within the world or church. Those voices speak with a distinctly different cadence, and not with the seductive tones of the authoritative deep voices echoing out of the tomb. They are tonic in their effect, the voices that invite us forward, and they come from surprising places.
William D. Lindsey
Through the kiss of peace,
Through the kiss of peace, through the cup and bread that we all share, parishes have the opportunity to live the countercultural each time they celebrate the Eucharist
Your post is so rich and so wonderful, I'm hard pressed to know where to begin. But I'll start with the above quote. The most memorable communion I ever shared was in 1983 or 84 in a Lutheran church whose guest homilist has just been given a diagnosis of AIDS. There were many communion stations and a tray of small communion cups being passed among the congregants. The choice was mine. For the first time in my life I lived that act of communion in a deep sense of radical commitment and solidarity with Jesus and everyone who belongs to Him. I heard Him ask,"Can you drink from the cup I drink from?" I just prayed to be worthy of that privilege. My joy in my thanksgiving was so overwhelming. I knew why I was a Christian. I knew I was safe within His Providence, however my path might lead me to live it out. It was for me a kairotic moment, a true sacramental experience.
This is a great story of
This is a great story of personal conversion Frannie. I feel honored that you shared it with this community. Thank you.
Thank you, Frannie. I value
Thank you, Frannie. I value your feedback. Your story moves me very much. It's a parabolic story, and it reaches the heart of what I was trying to say about the countercultural potential of parish life, if we really take seriously what the sacramental gestures we employ in liturgy mean.
If we do take them seriously, it's hard (for me, at least) to justify the request of the magisterium that gay people--or another other despised minority--remain invisible in liturgical life. The request seems to me to militate against all we say we believe about the Eucharist.
I hope, confronted with the situation you describe, I would have had the courage, compassion, and faith you displayed in your choice.
William D. Lindsey
More on the Wielgus story:
More on the Wielgus story: it's interesting to read some of the European press coverage, since that coverage is beginning to note the implications of this story for how the church views its role in society--that is, for how it sees its sacramental mission in the world.
In an article on Wielgus in yesterday's Le Monde (Paris) by the Warsaw bureau, the following interesting observation is made: “Tomasz Wiscicki, journalist for the Catholic monthly Wiez, hails 'the emergence of a group who recognize their responsibility to guide the future of the [Polish] church and who join together in a new way laypersons,…priests,…and certain bishops.' Indeed, 'the crisis we find ourselves passing through has resulted in an examination of conscience on the part of the church about the necessity of listening to the demands of culture,' he indicates" (my translation).
The article notes that the Polish church is facing a junction in the road in which it seems called to choose whether to maintain the top-down ecclesiology of John Paul II, which placed all power in the hands of clerics and sought to affect society and the political sphere through bishops and priests, or to move to the ecclesiology of a new engaged laity collaborating with church leaders while dialoguing with culture in a give and take process in which the church learns from culture.
A similar point is made by Thomas Dudek entitled “A Polish Cultural Revolution� in Telepolis (a publication of Heise of Hanover). Dudek notes the extreme irony (shock is actually the word he uses) that Wielgus was a strong promoter of the John Paul II vision of the church and was very close to those of John Paul II’s inner circle, while being an informer.
In the final analysis, what has happened with Wielgus may be a strong indicator that it's time to reconsider John Paul II's restorationism, which Benedict seems intent to continue. It may be time to reconsider an ecclesiology that places almost absolute power in the hands of the clerical sector of the church while almost completely disempowering the laity. This ecclesiology appears to have resulted in the keeping of ugly secrets within the inner circles of the church, which prove more and more embarrasing as they are made public. It also appears to have undermined the church's ability to influence culture redemptively, despite the claims of its supporters that the ecclesiology of Vatican II conceded too much to the culture it sought to address salvifically.
William D. Lindsey