Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney
Mob: 0417 279 437
mike.delaney@aohtas.org.au
Assistant Priest: Fr Paschal Okpon
Mob: 0438 562 731
paschalokpon@yahoo.com
Priest in Residence: Fr Phil McCormack
Mob: 0437 521 257
pmccormack43@bigpond.com
Postal Address: PO Box 362, Devonport 7310
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street, Devonport 7310
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160
Email: merseyleven@aohtas.org.au
Secretary: Annie Davies
Finance Officer: Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Felicity Sly
Mob: 0418 301 573
fsly@internode.on.net
Mob: 0417 279 437
mike.delaney@aohtas.org.au
Assistant Priest: Fr Paschal Okpon
Mob: 0438 562 731
paschalokpon@yahoo.com
Priest in Residence: Fr Phil McCormack
Mob: 0437 521 257
pmccormack43@bigpond.com
Postal Address: PO Box 362, Devonport 7310
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street, Devonport 7310
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160
Email: merseyleven@aohtas.org.au
Secretary: Annie Davies
Finance Officer: Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Felicity Sly
Mob: 0418 301 573
fsly@internode.on.net
Parish Mass times for the Month: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com
Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.
PLENARY COUNCIL PRAYER
Come, Holy Spirit of Pentecost.
Come, Holy Spirit of the great South Land.
O God, bless and unite all your people in Australia
and guide us on the pilgrim way of the Plenary Council.
Give us the grace to see your face in one another
and to recognise Jesus, our companion on the road.
Give us the courage to tell our stories and to speak boldly of your truth.
Give us ears to listen humbly to each other
and a discerning heart to hear what you are saying.
Lead your Church into a hope-filled future,
that we may live the joy of the Gospel.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, bread for the journey from age to age.
Amen.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us.
St Mary MacKillop, pray for us.
Come, Holy Spirit of the great South Land.
O God, bless and unite all your people in Australia
and guide us on the pilgrim way of the Plenary Council.
Give us the grace to see your face in one another
and to recognise Jesus, our companion on the road.
Give us the courage to tell our stories and to speak boldly of your truth.
Give us ears to listen humbly to each other
and a discerning heart to hear what you are saying.
Lead your Church into a hope-filled future,
that we may live the joy of the Gospel.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, bread for the journey from age to age.
Amen.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us.
St Mary MacKillop, pray for us.
Parish Prayer
Heavenly Father,
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport: Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: First Friday each month - commences at 10am and concludes with Mass
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – Mondays 6.30pm Community Room Ulverstone
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
Amen.
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Arrangements are made by contacting Parish Office. Parents attend a Baptismal Preparation Session organised with a Priest.
Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.
Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a Pre-marriage Program
Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests
Reconciliation: Ulverstone - Fridays (10am - 10:30am), Devonport - Saturday (5:15pm– 5.45pm)
Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport: Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: First Friday each month - commences at 10am and concludes with Mass
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: First Friday each month - commences at 10am and concludes with Mass
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – Mondays 6.30pm Community Room Ulverstone
Weekday Masses 11th– 15th Nov, 2019
Monday: 11:00am Devonport
No Masses for remainder of Week - Priests Retreat
Next Weekend 16th & 17th November
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
MINISTRY ROSTERS 16th & 17th NOVEMBER, 2019
Ulverstone:
Penguin:
Readers: M Murray, J Barker
Setting Up: A Landers
Latrobe:
Procession of Gifts: M Clarke
Port Sorell:
Readings this Week: 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
I come to quiet in the way that works best for me.
Slowly, I read
the text.
I may need to do this several times. (If I find it confusing, I may
choose to put it aside and read the Prego Plus notes.)
I ask the Lord to be
with me and to show me what he means.
The Sadducees are trying to trick Jesus
by quoting the Old Testament.
Have I experienced a similar situation?
Maybe I
myself have used the same approach to prove a point, or to convince someone
else of my beliefs?
I pause and try to recall those events and the purpose
behind them.
With hindsight, how do I feel about them now?
Using my own words,
I speak to the Lord about all of this.
When Jesus mentions the burning bush,
what memories does it trigger?
What place do I feel is 'holy ground' for me?
Once again I speak to the Lord, the God of the living, who loves and
understands me as I am, and thank him for being with me today.
Readings Next Week: 33rd Sunday
in Ordinary Time – Year C
First Reading: Malachi
3:19-20
Your prayers are asked for the sick:
Margaret
Becker, Marilyn Bielleman, Tony Kiely, Brenda Paul, Erin Kyriazis, Carmel
Leonard, Philip Smith, David Cole, Frank McDonald & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Murray Hay, Gerald
Eeles, Peter Imlach, Fr Chris Toms, Fay Bugg, Peter Horniblow, Aydan Fry, Joyce Thompson, Sr Joan Campbell, Sr Francesca Slevin, Wendy Parker, Brian Reynolds, Dale
Sheean, Bob Hickman
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 7th – 13th November
May the souls of the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
Mass for Remembrance Day will be held Monday
at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Devonport at 11:00am
Weekly Ramblings
This weekend we have envelopes for Education of Priests
annual collection. There is a picture of Deacon Steven in this month’s Catholic
Standard urging you to give generously for his education – and the others as
well! If you take an envelope, please return as soon as possible so we can send
off the funds to the appropriate account. Thank you.
This week only one of the gatherings for the Plenary 2020
Preparation will be held – at the Parish House on Thursday. The other two
groups will resume meeting on Wednesday 20th November.
Copies of the Diocese of Wollongong Advent – Christmas
Reflection Booklet are available this weekend.
We are asking for a donation of $3 per copy and because there are only
limited copies available please make sure that you get your copy as quickly as
possible. If there is a greater demand than copies available we will strive to
get more.
Take care on the roads and in your homes, 
SACRED HEART CHURCH ROSTERS:
HEALING MASS:
Catholic Charismatic Renewal are sponsoring a Healing Mass
at St Mary’s Church Penguin on Thursday 21st November commencing at 6:30pm
(Please note early start).
CHRIST THE KING:
Everyone is invited to join morning tea after 9am Mass at
Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone on 24 November to celebrate the Feast of Christ
the King. Parishioners are requested to please bring a plate to share. Come
and join the fun.
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY:
The Auxiliary would like to thank parishioners who
supported the recent Craft and Cake Stall. Through your generous support we
raised $687.00
THURSDAY 14th November, Eyes down 7:30pm. Callers Merv Tippett
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
THE WAY TO
ST JAMES PILGRIMAGE 2020:
IMMACULATA MISSION SCHOOL 2020
THE JOURNEY
CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM – AIRS 17 November 2019
Letter from Rome
From Synodality To A Creative Pastoral Approach
How the Amazon Synod might
have brought forth a new movement of the Spirit
by Robert Mickens
Journalists and
commentators have been spilling a lot of ink over the recently ended
"Amazon Synod." And, naturally, they are mostly focusing on these
three items that emerged from the Oct. 6-27 gathering:
These recommendations,
which all passed by at least a 2/3 margin among the 184 voting members, have
deeply alarmed certain Catholics who boast of being "orthodox" and
"faithful."
Ignorance of Church
history and theology or just mendacity?
But claims that this would
be a break with Church tradition are false. And those who make them – including
presbyters and even some bishops and cardinals – must be ignorant of history
and theology.
Otherwise, they are doing
nothing else but engaging in that unique form of Trump-like mendacity where one
repeats lies often and earnestly enough until people are convinced they are
true.
First of all, Francis is
not moving to end the celibate priesthood. Yes, he is opening a path that many
reform-minded Catholics hope will lead, eventually, to the discontinuation of
mandatory celibacy for diocesan priests.
This is not a break with
tradition, nor is it heretical. It is actually a recovery of the oldest
tradition in the Church – a priesthood of both married and celibate men.
Secondly, there is a wide
body of evidence that women served as deacons in the early centuries of
Christianity, though how and under what conditions seems to be a matter of
further research.
And there are Orthodox
Churches (with a big O) that have embraced this tradition and have reintroduced
the female diaconate.
And, thirdly, in regards to
the possibility of creating a special Amazonian liturgy (liturgical rite), this
is also solidly in continuity – and is not a break – with the oldest Christian
tradition.
The Amazon Synod marks
an important shift
But there is one thing
these alarmists are dead right about – the Synod of Bishops' special assembly
for the Pan-Amazonian Region has marked an important shift.
As La Croix's Isabelle de
Gaulmyn noted perceptively in a recent article, this assembly "clearly
signaled the end of nearly five centuries" of Tridentine Catholicism. (See following articile)
"The cleric, one
single person, then becomes the central character. He concentrates on his
person all the sacred functions, starting from the Eucharist and confession.
This concept of the ideal priest – the "holy priest" identified with
Christ, placed above the faithful and condemning them to be nothing more than a
simple flock of docile sheep – has deeply marked the mentality of all
Catholics, and has greatly favored the prevailing 'clericalism', including
among the laity.”
A Church more centered
on the cultic priesthood than the Eucharist
Catholics believe that the
Eucharist is the "source and summit" (fons et culmen) of the Church's
life and activity. Yet, as Gaulmyn points out, the Tridentine ethos has created
a mentality and model of Church that, effectively, is more centered on the male
cultic priest (sacerdos) than on the Eucharist.
She notes that even in the
aftermath of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), this model and mentality are
still solidly in place. But is she right that this latest Synod gathering marks
the beginning of its end?
Married male priests: a
way to block women?
McDougal argued that the
Roman Church's all-male hierarchy will do absolutely anything – even relax the
longstanding discipline of clerical celibacy and all the horrors they fear that
could cause – to keep the door to a female priesthood firmly shut and bolted.
And she believes that allowing married men to become presbyters would, in fact,
ensure that.
And let us presume that
many, if not most, of these married priests will have children. Some of them
will be girls. And what will happen when the daughters tell their ordained
fathers that they, too, feel called to the priesthood?
Or even more significantly,
what will happen when these married presbyters (and their congregations) are
the ones who tell the daughters that they show signs of a vocation to the
ordained priesthood?
This gets to the heart of
the communal discernment of charisms or gifts of the Holy Spirit. And it would
also include identifying those, among the People of God, who possess the gifts
of leadership, preaching, teaching and so forth.
In the synodal Church that
Pope Francis is trying to bring forth, such communal discernment would be a
necessary component. And discerning who has the gifts to carry out the various
ministries would be an essential task of the community.
This would be what the pope
likes to call a creative pastoral approach. It does not exist right now, but it
could.
The Amazonian Synod: The End Of Tridentine Catholicism
The Church has now embarked
on a less clerical, less masculine chapter in its history
Isabelle de Gaulmyn (editor
of La Croix.)
Make no mistake about it;
what happened at the Synod of Bishops' special assembly for the Amazon in Rome
was nothing short of a revolution for the Catholic Church.
Ending the principle of
celibacy
Structured around the
'holy priest'
The cleric, one single
person, then becomes the central character. He concentrates on his person all
the sacred functions, starting from the Eucharist and confession. This concept
of the ideal priest, the "holy priest" identified with Christ, placed
above the faithful, condemning them to be nothing more than a simple flock of
docile sheep, has deeply marked the mentalities of all Catholics, and greatly
favoured the prevailing "clericalism," including among the laity.
Even though Vatican II
recalled in 1962 the importance of the role of all the baptized, all called to
be "priests, prophets and kings," the figure of the
"super-powerful" ordained priest remained very prominent on church
benches.
The management of the
crisis of sexual abuse has starkly revealed how the excesses of this
clericalism, distorting as it does the way authority is conceived in the
Church, can have dramatic consequences.
For biodiversity in the
Church
By advocating for a true
"biodiversity" in the Church, which leaves room for other forms of
responsibility. In addition to the traditional celibate priest, there would be
mature married men, and also new ministries, defined according to local needs,
and possibly even open to women.
In reality, this
"Catholic biodiversity" already exists to a large extent, but we do
not see it. Above all, it is not officially recognized.
Are readers aware that in
France most dioceses only operate smoothly thanks to women? These are lay
people trained in theology — more than 12,000 of them today — whom the bishops
rely upon. Or that there are already 2,700 married deacon men, who provide many
services in the parishes? All this in addition to only 5,600 priests in
ministry.
A revolution already in
motion
From this point of view, by
inviting for the first time, during their annual Plenary Assembly which begins
in Lourdes on Nov. 5, lay men and women, at their side, the bishops of France
will finally reflect a less clerical and masculine image of the Church.
An image more faithful to
the reality of Catholicism in France. And another way of ending, here too, the
legacy of the Council of Trent.
Amazon Synod Has Set Pope Francis' Professional Haters on Edge
A Series of Articles written by Michael Sean Winters, who covers the nexus of religion and politics for National Catholic Reporter.
The Amazon synod will open next Sunday, Oct. 6, with Mass in St.
Peter's Square. Like everything else in this pontificate, the synod is surrounded
in controversy, not because it needs to be so, but because the professional
haters of Pope Francis now insist that everything he does or says is wrong or
evil or heretical.
Cardinal-designate Jesuit Fr. Michael Czerny and Dominican Bishop David
Martínez de Aguirre did a fine job explaining the rationale for the synod in a
recent article in La Civiltà Cattolica.
"Laudato Si' came out in June 2015. Over the years, numerous
initiatives contributing to integral ecology have begun, many of them Church-based,"
they wrote. "Meanwhile, according to all indicators, the crisis has
worsened significantly. The Amazon Synod is a conscious ecclesial effort to
implement Laudato Si' in this fundamental human and natural environment."
The instrumentum laboris (working document) for the synod, like
Francis' encyclical "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home," calls
for an "integral ecology." I admit I am not crazy about the word
"integral," at least not in English. To me, the word has unfortunate
associations with Fr. Leonard Feeney, Archbishop Michel Lefebvre and Cardinal
Alfredo Ottaviani, those integralists who opposed the Second Vatican Council's
efforts to renew Catholic life and theology.
But as you read the instrumentum laboris, it is obvious that the more
accessible English word would be "integrated," the idea that the
spiritual aspects of a situation are not segregated from the social aspects,
and the social is not segregated from the economic, and none of it is any
longer segregated from the demands of nature, especially when discussing the
Earth's very "lungs."
In addition to the synod being a chance to really apply Laudato Si' and
to promote integral ecology, the simple of fact of the synod highlights another
of this pontificate's themes, synodality itself. The pope could have issued a
document about the challenges facing this region, and the relationship of those
challenges to the broader culture and to the church, all on his own authority.
That is not this pope's way. His method is that pioneered by Cardinal
Joseph Cardijn: See, judge, act. And, in order to see more clearly, judge more
fairly, and act in a more decisively Christian manner, you must listen and
dialogue, listen and dialogue. That is what synodality is all about.
All this, unsurprisingly, has set Francis' critics on edge. Leading the
pack is Cardinal Raymond Burke and Kazakhstan Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius
Schneider. They have called for a 40-day crusade of prayer and fasting to
prevent what they term "serious theological errors and heresies" in
the instrumentum laboris from being adopted at the synod.
The conservative duo is alarmed by the "implicit pantheism"
in the instrumentum laboris and its openness to "pagan
superstitions."
"The Instrumentum Laboris draws from its implicit pantheistic conception
an erroneous concept of Divine Revelation, stating basically that God continues
to self-communicate in history through the conscience of the peoples and the
cries of nature," they write. Good thing they were not around when St.
Augustine was employing Neo-Platonic philosophy to articulate his understanding
of divine revelation, or when St. Thomas Aquinas used Aristotelian concepts to
do likewise.
The rest of their eight-page rant is similar: They supply the worst
possible interpretations of statements taken out of context to promote the idea
that the Holy Father and a Synod of Bishops is about to partake of heresy.
Last week (early October), NCR ran an editorial about the synod that stated, in part,
"How much credence one should give to a two-person campaign against the
pope is an open question." Regrettably, the opposition is not limited to
the two buffoonish prelates mentioned above.
A few weeks back, EWTN's Raymond Arroyo convoked his "papal
posse" to discuss Francis and the synod. Especially ironic were their complaints
about the possibility that the synod might make celibacy optional in certain
circumstances.
"This is a subversion. ... It would be a total disaster to make
celibacy optional. ... Basically, it's an abandonment of what Jesus himself
lived," frothed Fr. Gerald Murray.
I do not remember Murray and the others complaining when Pope Benedict
XVI issued Anglicanorum Coetibus, which allowed married clergy from the
Anglican Communion to join the ranks of the Catholic clergy. Was Benedict
permitting an "abandonment of what Jesus himself lived"? Are our
Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic brothers committing a similar
abandonment when they permit married clergy?
In this internet age, an auxiliary bishop from Kazakhstan can make a
splash, but the particular vehicle for Burke's and Schneider's vile
insinuations is the National Catholic Register, an arm of EWTN. The Register
also led the reporting of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò's nasty attempt at
score-settling.
It would be bad enough if these ridiculous and not very intelligent
prophylactic attacks on the synod were confined to LifeSiteNews and similar
marginal outlets. But, EWTN and the Register reach millions of Catholics.
Indeed, a 2016 survey of the U.S. episcopate indicated that more bishops read
the Register than any other Catholic newspaper or magazine.
It is fine to entertain criticisms of the synod's instrumentum laboris.
I found it terribly dry at points. And I would like a more explicit connection
between some of the anthropological perspectives contained here and the
anthropology articulated in the Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes.
But the hysterical allegations of heresy and error tell us more about
the accusers than the accused. And the haters are not few nor are they
insignificant. The suggestion I made in August is even more obviously needed
now: The U.S. bishops should scrap their agenda for their November plenary
meeting and spend the entire time discussing how to cope with those who are
spreading the seeds of schism.
Amazon Synod's Critics Distort Catholic Tradition For Their Convenience
I noted previously that the opposition to the synod on the Amazon was a
manifestation of the more general anti-Francis attitude of certain
conservatives. And, to my charge, we can now add the indictment of racism as
seen in this bizarre rant from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. Twitter
also had some ugly racist tropes, some of them being spread by clergy. I was
grateful to, and proud of, my The Tablet colleague Chris Lamb for apologizing
to the indigenous representative at the Holy See press conference for this
offensive behavior.
Other criticisms have not been explicitly racist, but either
condescending to the indigenous cultures or inordinately afraid of syncretism.
EWTN's Raymond Arroyo could be counted on for this kind of ridiculousness, as
he and Fr. Gerald Murray fretted about a tree planting ceremony that they, and
other papal critics, considered pagan. J.D. Flynn at the Catholic News Agency
picked up this refrain, noting "the identifiably Christian aspects of the
[Amazonian, indigenous] rituals have often taken place alongside unidentified
images and sculptures, and with the incorporation of rituals of unclear origin.
That has led to confusion." The charge of confusion has been leveled at
Francis before, always by people who like their religion black or white. Why is
the carved image of a pregnant woman so tantalizing to these critics, but they
have not a second thought for the Egyptian obelisk in the center of St. Peter's
Square, nor the fresco of the Delphic oracle in the Sistine Chapel? Remember
that philistines in earlier generations wanted the nudes on the Sistine Chapel
covered.
Other criticisms came more from the fringe, but echoed the same talking
points. An event held by the conservative umbrella group Voice of the Family
accused the synod of perpetrating "poly-demonism." This may be, as
Flynn said, "hyperbolic and overwrought" but it is a difference of
degree, not kind, from the concerns Flynn voiced.
The common theme from all these critics is that in seeking to
evangelize and accompany the people of the Amazon, we should remember that we
are the ones with the truth, that they are the ones who need instructing, that
their pagan ways must be "overthrown" and replaced with Christian,
read Western, ways. And, of course, all this is Pope Francis' fault.
Consider how the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and the
Disciple of the Sacraments dealt with the need to recognize that the seeds of
the Gospel are already present in every culture. A 1994 document
"Inculturation and the Roman Liturgy," stated that the qualities and
gifts of each people are not negated. Inculturation "strengthens these
qualities, perfects them and restores them in Christ. On the other hand, the
church assimilates these values when they are compatible with the Gospel,
"to deepen understanding of Christ's message and give it more effective
expression in the liturgy and in the many different aspects of the life of the
community of believers." This double movement in the work of inculturation
thus expresses one of the component elements of the mystery of the
incarnation." The idea of a "double movement," or what we might
term dialogue, is apparently unknown to Francis' critics, even though it was not
unknown to St. Pope John Paul II who was the pope in 1994. N.B. The easiest
place to find this text is at the EWTN library of ecclesial documents.
Perhaps reference to a dicastery's document is a little insufficient
for the critics. How about an encyclical from John Paul II? When the Holy
Father convoked two synods to discuss family life, conservatives were keen on
citing John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis splendor to complain about the
deficiencies they perceived in Francis' approach. For example, here and here.
The critics have an intellectual fetish for the encyclical's concern to
establish the category of "intrinsically evil acts," a category these
same conservatives tend to abuse. But, in that same encyclical, we read this:
Indeed, as we have seen, the natural law "is nothing other than
the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what
must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man
at creation" The rightful autonomy of the practical reason means that man
possesses in himself his own law, received from the Creator.
This natural law is accessible to all men and women, not only to
Christians, but it is necessarily rooted in the divine law. In case you think
John Paul II was having a bad theological hair day, the quotation is from St.
Thomas Aquinas.
A little later on in that same encyclical, the pope quotes his
predecessor Leo XIII's 1888 encyclical Libertas Praestantissimum on the
universality of the natural law: "the natural law is written and engraved
in the heart of each and every man, since it is none other than human reason
itself which commands us to do good and counsels us not to sin." The
reference is to each and every person, including the indigenous souls in the
Amazon.
If a papal encyclical is not sufficient, how about a document from an
ecumenical council? In the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern
World, Gaudium et spes, there are several passages that invoke the natural law,
Christ's salvific presence in all of creation, and that the church can profit
from all human endeavor and learning, except sin. Here are just a few of such
passages:
For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some
fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human
mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin
Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.
… All this holds true not only for Christians, but for all men of good will in whose hearts grace works in an unseen way. For, since Christ died for all men, and since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery.
… Since all men possess a rational soul and are created in God's likeness, since they have the same nature and origin, have been redeemed by Christ and enjoy the same divine calling and destiny, the basic equality of all must receive increasingly greater recognition.
… Moreover, since in virtue of her mission and nature she is bound to no particular form of human culture, nor to any political, economic or social system, the Church by her very universality can be a very close bond between diverse human communities and nations, provided these trust her and truly acknowledge her right to true freedom in fulfilling her mission.
… The experience of past ages, the progress of the sciences, and the treasures hidden in the various forms of human culture, by all of which the nature of man himself is more clearly revealed and new roads to truth are opened, these profit the Church, too. For, from the beginning of her history she has learned to express the message of Christ with the help of the ideas and terminology of various philosophers, and has tried to clarify it with their wisdom, too. Her purpose has been to adapt the Gospel to the grasp of all as well as to the needs of the learned, insofar as such was appropriate. Indeed this accommodated preaching of the revealed word ought to remain the law of all evangelization.
Still not convinced? How about something from sacred Scripture? In the
Acts of the Apostles, we learn that St. Paul went to Athens. He did not take a
sledgehammer to the Parthenon. Instead, when he went to preach at the
Areopagus, he began by noting that he had found among the many pagan temples a
modest altar "to an unknown God," and began to proclaim this unknown
deity Jesus Christ. Or, perhaps we could consider the Nicene Creed: Is it a
form of syncretism to confess that Jesus is "consubstantial" with the
Father, an idea derived from pagan Greek philosophy, not Jewish or Aramaic
thought?
In addition to these specific texts, ever since Aquinas encountered the
pagan thinker Aristotle, natural law has been intertwined with revelation as a
source of our Catholic moral teaching. Conservatives tend to view natural law
narrowly and curiously do not follow Aquinas, who was far more inductive in his
approach than they are. And it is an open question whether Aquinas made the
claim that they do, namely, that the natural law can be apprehended by anyone,
irrespective of their confessional status. Conservatives have not been shy
about invoking this pagan-derived method of analysis as a source of Catholic
teaching.
Why, then, are the conservatives all in a tizzy because Francis and
some of the Amazon synod fathers believe it is wrong for the church to neglect
the culture of the indigenous as a source of wisdom and specifically religious
wisdom? Because it is Francis doing it. They are allowed to criticize the pope,
of course, but they have no right to claim the mantle of Catholic tradition in
criticizing him or the synod on this issue syncretism. Adopting the best in
every culture is our Catholic tradition.
The Amazon Synod Is About The Concept Of Social Sin, Not Married Priests
If you relied on the mainstream media, you would think that the
three-week synod on the Amazon last month was mainly focused on the issues of
whether or not to ordain married men and to restore the female diaconate. It
wasn't.
"If we read the outcome document of the synod, we see the
ministerial shifts for the Amazon are in part about servicing people so their
human and economic rights are protected," says Eric LeCompte, executive
director of JubileeUSA. "We read that as Catholics we must protect
indigenous communities and our planet. Ultimately, the synod's message is that
we all deserve to live in a world where we have enough, and not too much."
LeCompte argues that the synod document puts forward the most robust
articulation of the concept of "social sin" since that concept came
into official disrepute in the 1980s.
"Much of the Amazon synod's final document can be boiled down to
the reality that we are consuming too much," he told NCR in an email.
"Whether we live in the Amazon or the United States of America, we all are
consuming too much. It's a tough message and it may be the closest the Catholic
Church has ever gotten to the reality that there is social sin, that as an
entire society — our level of consumption is sinful." This bringing back
of the idea of social sin is a significant development in moral theology.
Still, I might put it slightly differently. The Holy Father has set
before the church the idea of integral human development. Before the synod
began, I registered my preference for the word "integrated" over
"integral" because of the latter's hoary pre-Vatican II associations.
But, what matters is the idea or, more acutely, the reality: The social and
ecological and ecclesial and political are all interrelated, not only in the
Amazon to be sure, but interrelated there in such a way that if we do not root
out the sin that has permeated these various realities, the region, and with it
the whole planet, are endangered.
For the church to help confront the challenges the peoples of the
Amazon face, the church must be present, and for it to be present, the church
must bring that most distinctive of Catholic practices and beliefs: the
sacraments. Indeed, our Catholic sacramental sensibility seems to cohere with
the integrated spirituality of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon in ways
that are at first somewhat jarring to Western eyes but which, on second glance,
appear quite beautiful, and beautiful precisely because they are so different
from the hyper-rationalistic, Cartesian sensibilities of us Westerners.
Yet much of the discussion in the U.S. seemed ignorant of the fact that
the mesmerizing discussion of ordaining married men and female deacons grew out
of this prior discussion of sacramentality in the remote regions of the Amazon.
It was not another chapter in our Western culture wars, nor should it be seen
as such.
A friend sent a note in which he commented that after 35 years of
Communio popes, now we have a Concilium pope, referring to the more
conservative and more liberal theological journals created in the wake of
Vatican II. Villanova University theologian Massimo Faggioli pushed back
against this characterization of the pope.
"Pope Francis is not a Concilium guy," Faggioli told me in a
phone interview. "He has none of the technocratic obsession many of the
Concilium writers have." It has been a long time since I picked up a copy
of Concilium but I do know this: Francis
clearly does not see his role as being the Theologian-in-Chief of the universal
church. I recall Msgr. John Tracy Ellis explaining why popes did not choose
among different theological schools of thought. "The chair of Peter is
many things," Ellis said. "But it is not a faculty chair."
Trying to place a pope in the context of two mostly Western journals
fundamentally makes the same mistake as the hyper-focus on gender: This was a
synod about the Amazon. Most of the participants were from the Amazon. The
issued were discussed and framed in terms of the needs of the Amazon. We in the
myopic West want to reduce everything to gender, or race, or ideology, but that
is not what was going on in this synod.
The vicious and stupid attacks on the indigenous peoples' spirituality
came to a head with the tossing of the statues into the Tiber. Last week, on
EWTN's "The World Over," Raymond Arroyo and his papal posse were
still fretting about the statues being idols and what became clear is that none
of them stopped to ask the indigenous people who brought the statues to Rome in
the first place what they signified. Cultural myopia meets bad journalism. It
seemed clear to me, and clear to the participants in the synod, that the people
who brought the statues were themselves Catholics. Why would you accuse such
people of idolatry without even talking to them?
We in the myopic West want to reduce everything to gender, or race, or
ideology, but that is not what was going on in this synod.
It is the people who cheered the act of vandalism who are the real idol
worshipers: They have made an idol of their conservative sexual ethics.
"It is typical of certain Catholics in the U.S.," says Faggioli,
"to embrace a narrative that focuses on the wrong markers for defining
Catholicism." That is exactly right. (I had almost written "Bingo,"
another former marker of Catholic identity.)
In addition to the cultural myopia of most American commentators, it is
worth looking at another issue that emerged from this synod, and from all of
the synods in this pontificate: How does the church change? How does doctrine
and practice develop? And we will pick that theme up on Wednesday.
The Question Behind The Synod:
How Can And Should Change Happen In The Church?
(In the previous article), I discussed how some of the coverage of the synod of the
Amazon reflected cultural myopia. Today, I propose to look at the question that
stands behind the synod, indeed the question that stands behind so much of this
pontificate. It is a simple one: How can and should change happen in the
Catholic Church? The question is simple, but not the answer.
First, this conservative idea that all ecclesial doctrine and practice
has been fixed from all eternity — and that the Western mode of expressing that
doctrine and practice is the only legitimate mode, especially as it was
expressed in the 1950s or the pontificate of St. Pope John Paul II — is, to use
a technical theological term, hogwash. In the introduction to the Code of Canon
Law, promulgated by John Paul II in 1983, we read this:
The phrase "its doctrine on the Church would be decided"
jumps off the page. St. Pope John XXIII had announced his intention to reform
canon law, but that could not be done first because there was yet
"doctrine … [to] be decided." That is, to use a verb we associate
with St. John Henry Newman, doctrine needed to be developed. It is critical for
understanding the opposition to Francis to recognize that much of it is based
on an understanding of John Paul II that is skewed or worse, indeed a severe
lack of knowledge of church history.
It is just as depressing to me, however, to see Catholic liberals
viewing change in the church through the same culture war lenses as Catholic
conservatives.
The subhead in a New York Times' op-ed by Sara McDougall — "The
push to allow married men to serve as priests isn't progress. It's another form
of misogyny." — points to the left's problem with synod coverage: The
assumption that ecclesial change looks a certain way, and that way is to be
akin to modern, Western cultural norms. And it was not just the subhead:
McDougall's article contains these sentences:
The link is to an NCR article by Gary Macy, a theologian at Santa Clara
University. Macy surveys historical developments, and how some of those
developments reflected wider developments in the ambient culture, but nowhere
does he say that ordination was "a man-made invention." We Catholics
believe the Holy Spirit guided the church in the first century, and the eighth century,
and the 12th century, just as the Spirit guides her today. There are mistakes
in the history of the Catholic Church to be sure. The presence of the Holy
Spirit does not vouchsafe everything, but in faith we believe that there are no
exclusively "man-made inventions."
To take another example, NCR recently published an editorial on the
subject of LGBTQ Catholics. It concluded with these words: "We'll rejoice
in the increments, but only with the sober understanding that as long as LGBTQ
Catholics are on the margins, and as long as popes can change while church
teaching on sexuality in so many areas remains unchanged, there's a lot more
work to be done." I do not doubt that more work needs to be done. Our
Catholic theology around the subject of homosexuality is woefully inadequate,
but I also think a fair reading of the New Testament witness indicates sexual
liberation of any kind was not on Jesus' top-10 list. But, what really stalks
this editorial is the idea that we liberal Catholics really know the endgame of
that theological development and expect the universal church to get on board.
How would a significant change in church teaching regarding human sexuality
affect ecumenical relations? How would it be received in the global south?
These are questions pastors must pose and answer before rushing headlong into
an embrace of the norms of Western culture.
I am rereading H. Richard Niebuhr's classic Christ and Culture. I had
forgotten how brilliant it is. He considers the school of faith that perceives
a "Christ-of-culture," as opposed to a
"Christ-against-culture." In his day, the
"Christ-of-culture" crowd were liberal mainline Protestants, but
whose views track closely with today's liberal Catholics. In one of several
devastatingly incisive passages, he writes:
Like their radical counterparts, the Christ-of-culture believers
incline to the side of law in dealing with the polarity of law and grace. By
obedience to the laws of God and of reason, speculative and practical, men are
able, they seem to think, to achieve the high destiny of knowers of the Truth
and citizens of the Kingdom. The divine action of grace is ancillary to the
human enterprise; and sometimes it seems as if the forgiveness of sins, even
prayers of thanksgiving, are all means to an end, and a human end at that.*
As I say, devastatingly incisive.
Pope Francis has offered the church a way to answer the question about
change that, I believe, is so important and obvious that we sometimes overlook
it, and that is his emphasis on synodality. The Amazon synod entailed extensive
consultation before the event. Once convened, the conversations in both the
aula and in the small groups were astonishingly frank, I am told. Now, having
passed a document, they leave it to the Holy Father to put his authoritative
stamp on the deliberations. God so loved the world, he did not send a
committee.
Villanova University theologian Massimo Faggioli explained to me that
the Second Vatican Council discussed collegiality not synodality. Francis is
trying to employ synodality as a means of expressing collegiality. "We
haven't thought about synodality in centuries," Faggioli pointed out. A
synod can be a local or national event. Popes must convoke councils, but not
synods. How synodality will develop remains to be seen. But, as a means of
discerning how the Spirit is calling the church, I can't imagine a better
method. My only worry is that it could provoke powerful centrifugal force, but
our teaching on papal primacy can surely act as a centripetal check on anything
too rash or wrong.
I sincerely hope the naysayers on both the left and the right will
observe what this pope is doing and have confidence that the Spirit is at work
in our church. I hope that people who think change is impossible will study
some church history. And I hope, too, that those who think ecclesial change is
as easy as pie will remember that some of us are not bakers and a pie can be
difficult.
Here is a good rule of thumb I use: If you envision Christ in such a
way that he always confirms your beliefs and never makes you squirm, you are on
the wrong track and you need some spiritual guidance. That works on the
personal level. On the ecclesial level, synodality may help keep the church on
the right track, whatever that track is and wherever it leads.
Coincidence of Opposites
This article is taken from the Daily Email sent by Fr Richard Rohr OFM from the Center for Action and Contemplation. You can subscribe to receive the email by clicking here
The Divine Mind transforms all human suffering by
identifying completely with the human predicament and standing in full
solidarity with it from beginning to end. This is the real meaning of the
crucifixion. The cross is not just a singular event. It’s a statement from God
that reality has a cruciform pattern. Jesus was killed in a collision of
cross-purposes, conflicting interests, and half-truths, caught between the
demands of an empire and the religious establishment of his day. The cross was
the price Jesus paid for living in a “mixed” world, which is both human and
divine, simultaneously broken and utterly whole. He hung between a good thief
and a bad thief, between heaven and earth, inside of both humanity and
divinity, a male body with a feminine soul, utterly whole and yet utterly
disfigured—holding together all the primary opposites (see Colossians 1:15-20).
In so doing, Jesus demonstrated that Reality is not
meaningless and absurd just because it isn’t perfectly logical, fair, or
consistent. Reality, we know, is always filled with contradictions, what St.
Bonaventure and others (such as Alan of Lille [c. 1128–1202/03] and Nicholas of
Cusa [1401–1464]) called the “coincidence of opposites.” This is what we all
resist and oppose much of our life.
Jesus the Christ, in his crucifixion and resurrection,
“recapitulated all things in himself, everything in heaven and everything on
earth” (Ephesians 1:10). This one verse is the summary of Franciscan
Christology. Jesus agreed to carry the mystery of universal suffering. He
allowed it to change him (“Resurrection”) and us, too, so that we would be
freed from the endless cycle of projecting our pain elsewhere or remaining
trapped inside of it.
This is the fully resurrected life, the only way to be
happy, free, loving, and therefore “saved.” In effect, Jesus was saying, “If I
can trust it, you can too.” We are indeed saved by the cross—more than we
realize. The people who hold the contradictions and resolve them in themselves
are the saviors of the world. They are the only real agents of transformation,
reconciliation, and newness.
Christians are meant to be the visible compassion of God on
earth more than “those who are going to heaven.” They are the leaven who agree
to share the fate of God for the life of the world now, and thus keep the whole
batch of dough from falling back on itself. A Christian is invited, not
required, to accept and live the cruciform shape of all reality. It is not a
duty or even a requirement as much as a free vocation. Some people feel called
and agree to not hide from the dark side of things or the rejected group, but
in fact draw close to the pain of the world and allow it to radically change
their perspective. They agree to embrace the imperfection and even the injustices
of our world, allowing these situations to change them from the inside out,
which is the only way things are changed anyway.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a
Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe
(Convergent: 2019), 147-148.
Faith And Dying
This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here
We tend to nurse a certain naiveté about what faith means in the face of death. The common notion among us as Christians is that if someone has a genuine faith she should be able to face death without fear or doubt. The implication then of course is that having fear and doubt when one is dying is an indication of a weak faith. While it’s true that many people with a strong faith do face death calmly and without fear, that’s not always the case, nor necessarily the norm.
We can begin with Jesus. Surely he had real faith and yet, in the moments just before his death, he called out in both fear and doubt. His cry of anguish, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”, came from a genuine anguish that was not, as we sometimes piously postulate, uttered for divine effect, not really meant, but something for us to hear. Moments before he died, Jesus suffered real fear and real doubt. Where was his faith? Well, that depends upon how we understand faith and the specific modality it can take on in our dying.
In her famous study of the stages of dying, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, suggests there are five stages we undergo in the dying process: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Our first response to receiving a terminal diagnosis is denial – This is not happening! Then when we have to accept that it is happening our reaction is anger – Why me! Eventually anger gives way to bargaining – How much time can I still draw out of this? This is followed by depression andfinally, when nothing serves us any longer, there’s acceptance – I’m going to die. This is all very true.
But in a deeply insightful book, The Grace in Dying, Kathleen Dowling Singh, basing her insights upon the experience of sitting at the bedside of many dying people, suggests there are additional stages: Doubt, Resignation, and Ecstasy. Those stages help shed light on how Jesus faced his death.
The night before he died, in Gethsemane, Jesus accepted his death, clearly. But that acceptance was not yet full resignation. That only took place the next day on the cross in a final surrender when, as the Gospels put it, he bowed his head and gave over his spirit. And, just before that, he experienced an awful fear that what he had always believed in and taught about God was perhaps not so. Maybe the heavens were empty and maybe what we deem as God’s promises amount only to wishful thinking.
But, as we know, he didn’t give into that doubt, but rather, inside of its darkness, gave himself over in trust. Jesus died in faith – though not in what we often naively believe faith to be. To die in faith does not always mean that we die calmly, without fear and doubt.
For instance, the renowned biblical scholar, Raymond E. Brown, commenting on the fear of death inside the community of the Beloved disciple, writes: “The finality of death and the uncertainties it creates causes trembling among those who have spent their lives professing Christ. Indeed, among the small community of Johannine disciples, it was not unusual for people to confess that doubts had come into their minds as they encountered death. …The Lazarus story is placed at the end of Jesus’ public ministry in John to teach us that when confronted with the visible reality of the grave, all need to hear and embrace the bold message that Jesus proclaimed: ‘I am the life.’ … For John, no matter how often we renew our faith, there is the supreme testing by death. Whether the death of a loved one or one’s own death, it is the moment when one realizes that it all depends on God. During our lives we have been able to shield ourselves from having to face this in a raw way. Confronted by death, mortality, all defenses fall away.”
Sometimes people with a deep faith face death in calm and peace. But sometimes they don’t and the fear and doubt that threatens them then is not necessarily a sign of a weak or faltering faith. It can be the opposite, as we see in Jesus. Inside a person of faith, fear and doubt in the face of death is what the mystics call ‘the dark night of the spirit” … and this is what’s going on inside that experience: The raw fear and doubt we are experiencing at that time make it impossible for us to mistake our own selves and our own life-force for God. When we have to accept to die in trust inside of what seems like absolute negation and can only cry out in anguish to an apparent emptiness then it is no longer possible to confuse God with our own feelings and ego. In that, we experience the ultimate purification of soul. We can have a deep faith and still find ourselves with doubt and fear in the face of death. Just look at Jesus.
The Day After Halloween Is Christmas
This article is taken from the Blog posted by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Timoneum, Baltimore. You can find the original blog by clicking here
It seems like the fall season is a sprint. It just moves so quickly. And then, of course, the holidays are upon us, ready or not. In fact, we have a saying around here that beginning on the day after Halloween we need to be thinking and acting like Christmas is here. That’s why this weekend brings our ministry push weekend for Christmas Eve.
The one day of the year when we are certain that unchurched people in our community actually want to come to church is Christmas Eve. That’s why we host our celebration at the “Cow Palace” at the Maryland State Fairgrounds. We began the tradition 15 years ago with perhaps 1,500 in attendance. Last year we welcomed 11,000, with many more watching on Catholic TV and online.
But to make that happen, we need 500 parishioners to serve. Service can come in a variety of roles and times. Beginning on December 16, we start our move into the Cow Palace which means we need ops crews daily through the 23rd, as well as crews on the 26th for breakdown and clean up. On Christmas Eve itself we need greeters, host ministers, and children’s ministers, beginning at 2pm. Most critically we need to fill our second shift, beginning at 5pm.
If you are going to be here on our Ridgely Road campus this weekend stop by the Christmas Ministry Market Booth on our Concourse and sign up to serve or learn more about it. Sign up this weekend to serve on Christmas and we’ll give you an exclusive 2019 Nativity Christmas ornament. If you’re still working our your schedule for Christmas you will eventually have an opportunity to sign up online (stay tuned to my Twitter account for more details when online signups are released @nativitypastor). You can serve with your whole family, you can serve with your friends, you can serve with your small group.
Start a beautiful new tradition and add service to your holiday celebration. But don’t wait too long because Christmas is just around the corner.
St Charles Borromeo
St Charles Borromeo, the 16th century Archbishop of Milan whose feast we celebrated on 4 November, was well acquainted with the early Jesuit community in Rome and familiar with Ignatian spirituality. Tim McEvoy marks the feast of the patron saint of spiritual directors by looking back over Borromeo’s life story and reflecting on his approach to the spiritual life. Tim McEvoy, Ph.D, is a spiritual director and a member of the retreat team at St Beuno's Jesuit Spirituality Centre in North Wales. This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
On 4 November we celebrated the Feast of St Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), patron saint of bishops, catechists, seminarians and spiritual directors.[i] He is perhaps best known to history as the ‘hyperactive’ Archbishop of Milan who invented the confessional.[ii] He is not a saint who automatically inspires a great deal of warmth (unless, of course, you come from Milan). But who was he in life? And how did his approach to pastoral ministry compare with that of spiritual accompaniers today in the Ignatian tradition, by which Charles was influenced?
An early vocation
St Charles (or Carlo) was born into the high nobility of Renaissance Italy, growing up in the family castle of Arona by the shores of Lake Maggiore, about forty miles from Milan. He is described as being a bookish and rather serious child, made shy by a bad stammer, who had a deep love of music. He grew up somewhat in the shadow of his popular and sporty older brother, Federico, in a very pious household. His mother – who died when Carlo was nine – was known for her almsgiving and works of charity while his father spent long hours in prayer, often dressed in sackcloth, and received Communion twice a week, almost unheard of at the time.
Carlo seems to have had a very early sense of religious vocation quite independent of his family’s ambitions for him in the Church. At the age of 12 he was tonsured and appointed abbot of the lucrative family-owned Abbey of Arona. However, it is said that he insisted the revenues ‘belonged to God’ not to the Borromei and made sure that any deductions from the income were treated as ‘loans’ to be repaid to the poor.[iii] Carlo was peculiarly gifted as an organiser and administrator, verging on the obsessive compulsive, and had a very strong sense of propriety which was increasingly at odds with the unreformed worldliness he encountered in the Church.
Carlo worked hard to obtain a doctorate in civil and canon law from the University of Pavia, overcoming a breakdown following the death of his father in 1558, after which he assumed responsibility for managing the family estate and taking care of his stepmother and four younger sisters. A year later, he was catapulted into the limelight when his uncle Gian Angelo de Medici (no relation to the Florentine Medici) was elected Pope Pius IV. Overnight, enormous wealth and power was at the family’s fingertips. The young Carlo was summoned directly to Rome and appointed Administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan, amongst other prize appointments, and welcomed by 200 velvet-coated servants into sumptuous Vatican apartments. Within the space of a month he was also a cardinal and papal Secretary of State, all at only 22 years of age, with no theological training and still in minor orders. It is ironic, though perhaps not coincidental, that such a beneficiary of (literal) nepotism would go on to become one of the best-known figures of the Counter Reformation.
Trent and a Jesuit connection
His sudden rise to prominence seems only to have confirmed Carlo’s sense that God was calling him to great service in the Church. As the right-hand man of the pope he naturally took a leading role when Pius decided to re-convene the Council of Trent after a fifteen year hiatus for its third and final session (January 1562 to December 1563). Carlo effectively held the Council together in its last sessions – demonstrating remarkable skill in diplomacy despite his lack of experience – and he left a strong imprint on some of the key documents to emerge, particularly the 1566 Catechism. The style and tone of the Catholic Church after Trent was very much after Carlo’s own heart: doctrinally rigorous, liturgically standardised and administratively centralised with clear emphasis on papal primacy.
But despite the opportunities before him in Rome, Carlo’s heart was very much in Milan where he longed to carry out his true vocation: that of priest and bishop in his own diocese, following the example of his hero, St Ambrose. He was also being increasingly drawn to a life of austerity and withdrawal from the world. Discomfort with his privileged life as a prince of the Church grew after Carlo came into contact with St Philip Neri – who was to remain a lifelong friend – and the early Jesuit community in Rome, which at this time included St Francis Borgia SJ. He used to like making visits to the Jesuit house – a welcome retreat from the stress and intrigue of the Curia and Council of Trent – and he was struck by the startling contrast between their rough clothing and simple lifestyle and his own. Ignatian influence was to prove significant when Carlo came to a sudden crossroads in the form of the tragic death of his older brother from fever in November 1562.
Conversion
Family honour dictated that Carlo, as heir, now assume the headship of the Borromeo family and marry – he had after all officially only taken minor orders and even his uncle the pope was prepared to grant him a dispensation to do this. The sense of duty and weight of expectation must have been huge. It is significant that in the midst of this crisis, it was to the Jesuits that Carlo turned for help. He made the Spiritual Exercises quietly in Rome, in the process re-discovering his calling to serve God and the Church and prompting a renewed conversion. ‘God by His grace has inspired me with the strongest resolution to realise always that my greatest good is whatever comes from His hand,’ he wrote at this time.[iv] Submission to God’s will, and his own deepest desire, mattered more than family name and prosperity.[v]
One of the fruits of his conversion was the embracing of a simple lifestyle: the drastic slimming down of his cardinal’s household, the insistence that all wore the plainest clerical dress – no swords allowed – and a new regime of fasting. Despite misgivings about these new ascetical tendencies, the pope eventually gave way to his nephew’s wishes and Carlo was finally ordained priest on the Feast of the Assumption, 1563. Three years later, he was triumphantly entering Milan as its first resident archbishop in 80 years, ready to begin his life’s work of reform. The instructions he left for the preparation of his quarters at the archbishop’s palace are telling:
I wish emphatically to avoid pomp and luxury. Those prelates who are my guests will be welcomed with love and charity but all is to be modest and without worldly grandeur...Guests are to be better lodged than myself. I wish to begin in Milan as I shall continue, by living as simply as possible.[vi]
Reformer in Milan
As archbishop, Carlo was almost alarmingly driven and efficient, overseeing a wave of reforms that attempted to remove ecclesiastical abuses, raise clerical standards and reinvigorate faith amongst the laity. He imposed his own, admittedly authoritarian, vision of what the Council of Trent represented and did not retreat from clashes with Rome or with secular authority – on one occasion he excommunicated the Spanish Governor of Milan over a dispute of jurisdiction. He was the model reforming bishop of the Counter Reformation, tireless in his visitations to much neglected parishes, some of which had never even had their church consecrated. He is celebrated for establishing one of the first diocesan seminaries, maintaining strict standards of preaching and confession amongst his priests, and for founding many new schools for the poor.[vii]
Many impressive achievements, and yet the gaunt figure of this rather puritanical archbishop who disapproved of worldly pleasure (even attempting, unsuccessfully, to ban Carnival one year) does not perhaps immediately attract and inspire the modern seeker of ‘God in all things’. Borromeo drew criticism even in his day for his rigorism when it came to doctrine and there is no doubt that he could be harsh and demanding of his clergy.[viii] No more than he was harsh and demanding of himself, of course: his much-neglected health, weakened by severe penances, cut his life tragically short. Ignoring the advice of his Jesuit confessor, in his last months he continued to fast on bread and water, keep all-night vigils and to sleep on bare boards for two or three hours at most.
He died, exhausted and overworked, of a fever at the age of 46. It might be true to say that Carlo never really understood his own worth in the eyes of God and for all his love of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius (he unfailingly made them once a year), never moved beyond the First Week.[ix] St Ignatius himself – who at Manresa experienced comparable scruples over his own sinfulness – later cautioned strongly against such extremes of bodily deprivation. Such impulses, he learnt, did not come from God. This experience was to help form the basis for his Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, which continue to guide Ignatian spiritual directors today. His profound mystical experiences by the Cardoner river transformed his understanding of the spiritual life and led him away from an unhealthy attachment to penance and mortification to a new vision of the Incarnate God who labours for us in creation. At Manresa, Ignatius learnt to question the model of ‘heroic sanctity’ – which had driven him since his conversion – and to rely instead on the unmerited mercy of God who accepted him as he was.
Borromeo seems not to have undergone the same transformation, which perhaps speaks more of the extremely limited spiritual formation available to him than anything else. Perhaps, too, the drivenness of this uncompromising reformer is best understood against the background of the extreme abuses he found in the Church of his day, from priests living openly with mistresses to absentee bishops growing rich on multiple benefices. He was a man of his time and an undoubtedly courageous one. He was one of the few officials who chose to remain in Milan when the plague struck in the summer of 1576, personally visiting the sick and dying in horrendous circumstances. He sought to lead his terrified priests by example, not just by fasting and preaching but by risking his own life in the service of his people: ‘We have only one life and we should spend it for Jesus Christ and souls, not as we wish, but at the time and in the way God wishes.’[x] He was known to be a generous host – notably welcoming St Edmund Campion SJ and his companions en route to their martyrdom in England in 1580 – and famously nurtured the faith of the young St Aloysius Gonzaga SJ, to whom he gave his First Holy Communion. An encourager and accompanier of others who remained faithful to his own sense of calling from God in the face of strong opposition and adversity: perhaps these are not bad qualities in the end for a patron saint of pastors and spiritual directors?
[i] We could perhaps add ‘letter-writer’ to his portfolio as, alongside Erasmus and St Ignatius, he ranks as one of the great correspondents of his age: there are over 30,000 extant letters in the Ambrosian Library in Milan.
[ii] Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490-1700 (Penguin, 2004), p. 98.
[iii] Margaret Yeo, A Prince of Pastors: St Charles Borromeo (London, New York and Toronto, 1938), pp. 26-27.
[iv] Cited in Yeo, A Prince of Pastors, p. 79.
[v] Interestingly, Borromeo was to have a Jesuit confessor for the rest of his life. He insisted that all aspirants to his household and recipients of clerical appointments in Milan first make the Spiritual Exercises. (Ibid, pp. 111; 227.)
[vi] Letter to his Vicar General, Nicolò Ormaneto, cited in ibid, p. 97.
[vii] By the end of his life there were an incredible 740 schools in Milan serving around 40,000 pupils. (MacCulloch, Reformation, p. 412.)
[viii] Ibid, pp. 411-12.
[ix] Yeo, A Prince of Pastors, p. 227.
[x] Cited in ibid, p. 197
Weekday Masses 11th– 15th Nov, 2019
Monday: 11:00am Devonport
No Masses for remainder of Week - Priests Retreat
Next Weekend 16th & 17th November
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Devonport
6:00pm
Penguin
Sunday
Mass: 8:30am
Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am
Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
MINISTRY ROSTERS 16th & 17th NOVEMBER, 2019
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: A McIntyre, M Williams, C Kiely-Hoye 10:30am J Henderson, J Phillips, Piccolo
Ministers of Communion:
Vigil T Muir, M Davies, D Peters, J Heatley, K & K Maynard
10.30am: N
Mulcahy, K Hull, G Keating
Cleaners 15th
Nov: M & L
Tippett, A Berryman 22nd Nov: K.S.C.
Piety Shop 16th Nov: R Baker 17th Nov: T Omogbai-Musa
Mowing of
lawns at Presbytery – November: Neville Smith
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: M & K McKenzie
Ministers of
Communion: M Mott,
W Bajzelj, J Jones, T Leary
Flowers: M Swain Hospitality:
M Byrne, G Doyle
Penguin:
Greeters G Hills-Eade, B Eade Commentator:
Y Downes
Readers: M Murray, J Barker
Readers: M Murray, J Barker
Ministers of
Communion: M
Hiscutt, J Garnsey Liturgy: Pine Road
Setting Up: A Landers
Setting Up: A Landers
Care of
Church: M Murray,
E Nickols
Latrobe:
Reader: M Williams Ministers of
Communion: M Mackey
Procession of Gifts: M Clarke
Procession of Gifts: M Clarke
Port Sorell:
Readers: L Post, T Jefferies Ministers of Communion: L Post Cleaners: G Richey
Readings this Week: 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C
First Reading: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14
Second Reading: 2 Thessalonians 2:16 – 3:5
Gospel: Luke 20:27 -38
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
If I can, before settling down to my prayer, I surround
myself with my favourite 'praying objects' – a cross, a candle, perhaps a plant
or a flower.
I come to quiet in the way that works best for me.
Slowly, I read the text.
I may need to do this several times. (If I find it confusing, I may choose to put it aside and read the Prego Plus notes.)
I ask the Lord to be with me and to show me what he means.
The Sadducees are trying to trick Jesus by quoting the Old Testament.
Have I experienced a similar situation?
Maybe I myself have used the same approach to prove a point, or to convince someone else of my beliefs?
I pause and try to recall those events and the purpose behind them.
With hindsight, how do I feel about them now?
Using my own words, I speak to the Lord about all of this.
When Jesus mentions the burning bush, what memories does it trigger?
What place do I feel is 'holy ground' for me?
Once again I speak to the Lord, the God of the living, who loves and understands me as I am, and thank him for being with me today.
I come to quiet in the way that works best for me.
Slowly, I read the text.
I may need to do this several times. (If I find it confusing, I may choose to put it aside and read the Prego Plus notes.)
I ask the Lord to be with me and to show me what he means.
The Sadducees are trying to trick Jesus by quoting the Old Testament.
Have I experienced a similar situation?
Maybe I myself have used the same approach to prove a point, or to convince someone else of my beliefs?
I pause and try to recall those events and the purpose behind them.
With hindsight, how do I feel about them now?
Using my own words, I speak to the Lord about all of this.
When Jesus mentions the burning bush, what memories does it trigger?
What place do I feel is 'holy ground' for me?
Once again I speak to the Lord, the God of the living, who loves and understands me as I am, and thank him for being with me today.
Readings Next Week: 33rd Sunday
in Ordinary Time – Year C
First Reading: Malachi
3:19-20
Second
Reading: 2 Thessalonians
3:7-12
Gospel: Luke 21:5-19
Your prayers are asked for the sick:
Margaret Becker, Marilyn Bielleman, Tony Kiely, Brenda Paul, Erin Kyriazis, Carmel Leonard, Philip Smith, David Cole, Frank McDonald & …
Margaret Becker, Marilyn Bielleman, Tony Kiely, Brenda Paul, Erin Kyriazis, Carmel Leonard, Philip Smith, David Cole, Frank McDonald & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Murray Hay, Gerald
Eeles, Peter Imlach, Fr Chris Toms, Fay Bugg, Peter Horniblow, Aydan Fry, Joyce Thompson, Sr Joan Campbell, Sr Francesca Slevin, Wendy Parker, Brian Reynolds, Dale
Sheean, Bob Hickman
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 7th – 13th November
Dean Turnbull, Nicole Fairbrother, Damian Matthews, Ken
Lowry, Harril Watson, Jessie Hope, Shirley Winkler, Finbarr Kennedy, Ronald
Garnsey, James Monaghan, James McLagan, Margaret Kenney, Catherine Fraser, James Monaghan.
May the souls of the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
Mass for Remembrance Day will be held Monday
at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Devonport at 11:00am
Weekly Ramblings
You might have noticed that there is only Mass on Monday at
OLOL. There are no other Masses this week as Fr Paschal and I are both on
Retreat and will be away from the Parish from Monday afternoon through Friday
afternoon.
This weekend we have envelopes for Education of Priests
annual collection. There is a picture of Deacon Steven in this month’s Catholic
Standard urging you to give generously for his education – and the others as
well! If you take an envelope, please return as soon as possible so we can send
off the funds to the appropriate account. Thank you.
This week only one of the gatherings for the Plenary 2020 Preparation will be held – at the Parish House on Thursday. The other two groups will resume meeting on Wednesday 20th November.
This week only one of the gatherings for the Plenary 2020 Preparation will be held – at the Parish House on Thursday. The other two groups will resume meeting on Wednesday 20th November.
Copies of the Diocese of Wollongong Advent – Christmas
Reflection Booklet are available this weekend.
We are asking for a donation of $3 per copy and because there are only
limited copies available please make sure that you get your copy as quickly as
possible. If there is a greater demand than copies available we will strive to
get more.
Take care on the roads and in your homes,
SACRED HEART CHURCH ROSTERS:
Rosters are now being prepared for Sacred Heart Church. If
you are interested in taking on a role within the Church or if you are unable
to continue on the roster, or would just like to be an emergency when help is
required, please contact Jo Rodgers 6425:5818/ 0439 064 493 as soon as
possible.
HEALING MASS:
Catholic Charismatic Renewal are sponsoring a Healing Mass
at St Mary’s Church Penguin on Thursday 21st November commencing at 6:30pm
(Please note early start).
All welcome to come and celebrate the liturgy in a vibrant
and dynamic way using charismatic praise and worship, with the gifts of
tongues, prophecy, and healing. After Mass, teams will be available for
individual prayer. Please bring a friend and a plate for supper and fellowship
in the hall.
If you wish to know more or require transport please
contact Celestine Whiteley 6424:2043, Michael Gaffney 0447 018 068, Tom Knaap
6425:2442.
CHRIST THE KING:
Everyone is invited to join morning tea after 9am Mass at
Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone on 24 November to celebrate the Feast of Christ
the King. Parishioners are requested to please bring a plate to share. Come
and join the fun.
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY:
The Auxiliary would like to thank parishioners who
supported the recent Craft and Cake Stall. Through your generous support we
raised $687.00
Raffle winners were: 1st Prize M Murray, 2nd
Prize Z Crowden, 3rd Prize J Scully
THURSDAY 14th November, Eyes down 7:30pm. Callers Merv Tippett
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
THE WAY TO
ST JAMES PILGRIMAGE 2020:
Registrations are now open (early
bird pricing finishes 15th November 2019). Inspired by the famous
Spanish El Camino of St James this two day pilgrim walk will take you through
the scenic & peaceful Huon Valley to a celebration at the Spanish mission
styled Church of St James, nestled in the heart of Cygnet. Through fellowship, reflection, rejoicing and
ritual you will find an opportunity to reconnect with the spiritual dimensions
of your life. The pilgrimage commences
on Saturday 11th January 2020 at 10:30am from the Mountain River
Community Hall and finishes on Sunday 12th January 2020 at approx.
5pm at St James Church, Cygnet in the midst of the wonderful Cygnet Fold
Festival. For further details and to register go to: www.waytostjames.com.au or visit us
on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/waytostjamescygnet/
IMMACULATA MISSION SCHOOL 2020
What is it: A ten-day live-in formation school for young people, with
talks on the faith from awesome speakers, daily Mass and prayer,
Eucharistic Adoration, praise and worship, fun and fellowship and
lots more! When: 1-10 January, 2020 Where: The Glennie School,
Toowoomba QLD Who: 15-35 year olds Special guest speaker: Dr Ralph Martin (USA), Professor of Sacred Theology, international
speaker on evangelisation and the spiritual life. Dr Martin is a
consulter to the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation. Other guest
speakers: Archbishop Julian Porteous, Vince Fitzwilliams, James
Parker, Jess Leach, Paul Elarde, Sisters of the Immaculata and more. How much: $390 (cost includes all accommodation, food, speakers and
activities) before 18th November, $450 after 18th November.
For more info or to register: www.sistersoftheimmaculata.org.au/ims or
0406 372 608
THE JOURNEY
CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM – AIRS 17 November 2019
This week on the
Journey, we reflect with Fr Graham on the Gospel from Luke. The sensational
words of wisdom from Mother Hilda grace the show as well as the likes of
Marilyn Rodrigues, the Peaceful Parent and Trish McCarthy. Kick off your
preparation for Advent with our reflections - Go to www.jcr.org.au or www.itunes.jcr.org.au and
to ensure that you never miss a show it can be sent to you each week as a
podcast via email – for free
Letter from Rome
From Synodality To A Creative Pastoral Approach
How the Amazon Synod might
have brought forth a new movement of the Spirit
by Robert Mickens
Journalists and
commentators have been spilling a lot of ink over the recently ended
"Amazon Synod." And, naturally, they are mostly focusing on these
three items that emerged from the Oct. 6-27 gathering:
1. The Synod Fathers'
recommendation that married men who are already permanent deacons be ordained
to the presbyterate (priesthood) in certain cases.
2. The request for further
study on how to formally recognize ministries carried out by women, including
the possibility of allowing them to become deacons.
3. The Synod assembly's
suggestion that people of the Pan-Amazon region be allowed to develop a
liturgical rite that better incorporates religious elements and expressions
unique to their culture.
These recommendations,
which all passed by at least a 2/3 margin among the 184 voting members, have
deeply alarmed certain Catholics who boast of being "orthodox" and
"faithful."
Ignorance of Church
history and theology or just mendacity?
The journalists among them
have been saying apocalyptically that Pope Francis would fall into heresy if he
were to implement the suggestions that came out of his "rigged" Synod
assembly. The pope has already indicated that he will, in some way or another,
advance these three proposals (among several others).
But claims that this would
be a break with Church tradition are false. And those who make them – including
presbyters and even some bishops and cardinals – must be ignorant of history
and theology.
Otherwise, they are doing
nothing else but engaging in that unique form of Trump-like mendacity where one
repeats lies often and earnestly enough until people are convinced they are
true.
First of all, Francis is
not moving to end the celibate priesthood. Yes, he is opening a path that many
reform-minded Catholics hope will lead, eventually, to the discontinuation of
mandatory celibacy for diocesan priests.
This is not a break with
tradition, nor is it heretical. It is actually a recovery of the oldest
tradition in the Church – a priesthood of both married and celibate men.
Secondly, there is a wide
body of evidence that women served as deacons in the early centuries of
Christianity, though how and under what conditions seems to be a matter of
further research.
And there are Orthodox
Churches (with a big O) that have embraced this tradition and have reintroduced
the female diaconate.
And, thirdly, in regards to
the possibility of creating a special Amazonian liturgy (liturgical rite), this
is also solidly in continuity – and is not a break – with the oldest Christian
tradition.
The Amazon Synod marks
an important shift
Still, the
"orthodox" Catholics (with a small o) are acting like these are novel
innovations. They clearly are not.
But there is one thing
these alarmists are dead right about – the Synod of Bishops' special assembly
for the Pan-Amazonian Region has marked an important shift.
As La Croix's Isabelle de
Gaulmyn noted perceptively in a recent article, this assembly "clearly
signaled the end of nearly five centuries" of Tridentine Catholicism. (See following articile)
"We are still,
consciously or unconsciously, largely dependent on this Council (of Trent)…
(which) structured Catholicism around the figure of the priest," she
wrote.
"The cleric, one
single person, then becomes the central character. He concentrates on his
person all the sacred functions, starting from the Eucharist and confession.
This concept of the ideal priest – the "holy priest" identified with
Christ, placed above the faithful and condemning them to be nothing more than a
simple flock of docile sheep – has deeply marked the mentality of all
Catholics, and has greatly favored the prevailing 'clericalism', including
among the laity.”
A Church more centered
on the cultic priesthood than the Eucharist
This one paragraph sums up
the type of Church and model of ordained priesthood that many Catholics – and
not just the so-called traditionalist – want to preserve.
Whether it is out of
nostalgia or a clericalist mentality, they do not want the Church they have
always known to become "protestantized," an anti-ecumenical phrase
that even too many bishops carelessly use.
Catholics believe that the
Eucharist is the "source and summit" (fons et culmen) of the Church's
life and activity. Yet, as Gaulmyn points out, the Tridentine ethos has created
a mentality and model of Church that, effectively, is more centered on the male
cultic priest (sacerdos) than on the Eucharist.
She notes that even in the
aftermath of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), this model and mentality are
still solidly in place. But is she right that this latest Synod gathering marks
the beginning of its end?
Married male priests: a
way to block women?
Not all reform-minded
Catholics are convinced. One of the most articulate, if not painful,
expressions of that appeared in an article by history professor Sara McDougall
in the New York Times. It was titled, "Catholic Bishops Agree: Anything
but a Woman."
McDougal argued that the
Roman Church's all-male hierarchy will do absolutely anything – even relax the
longstanding discipline of clerical celibacy and all the horrors they fear that
could cause – to keep the door to a female priesthood firmly shut and bolted.
And she believes that allowing married men to become presbyters would, in fact,
ensure that.
But would that be the case?
Let's presume that, no matter how long it takes, married priests will at some
point become a normal part of Catholic life.
And let us presume that
many, if not most, of these married priests will have children. Some of them
will be girls. And what will happen when the daughters tell their ordained
fathers that they, too, feel called to the priesthood?
Or even more significantly,
what will happen when these married presbyters (and their congregations) are
the ones who tell the daughters that they show signs of a vocation to the
ordained priesthood?
This gets to the heart of
the communal discernment of charisms or gifts of the Holy Spirit. And it would
also include identifying those, among the People of God, who possess the gifts
of leadership, preaching, teaching and so forth.
In the synodal Church that
Pope Francis is trying to bring forth, such communal discernment would be a
necessary component. And discerning who has the gifts to carry out the various
ministries would be an essential task of the community.
This would be what the pope
likes to call a creative pastoral approach. It does not exist right now, but it
could.
The Amazonian Synod: The End Of Tridentine Catholicism
The Church has now embarked
on a less clerical, less masculine chapter in its history
Isabelle de Gaulmyn (editor
of La Croix.)
Make no mistake about it;
what happened at the Synod of Bishops' special assembly for the Amazon in Rome
was nothing short of a revolution for the Catholic Church.
It might not happen
overnight but it will happen. Pope Francis is not obliged to follow the
bishops' opinions unconditionally but that said, it is hard to see how he can
avoid them, especially since they were the result of a process that he has
himself encouraged so widely.
Ending the principle of
celibacy
By asking for Amazonia to
ordain married men as priests, by considering the creation of new
"ministries" (i.e. responsibilities within parishes or dioceses),
with even the recognition of a ministry for "women who lead
communities" and finally, by demanding to reopen the explosive debate on
the female diaconate, the bishops have clearly signalled the end of nearly five
centuries of a type of Catholicism and a model that emerged from the Council of
Trent.
Structured around the
'holy priest'
We are still, consciously
or unconsciously, largely dependent on this Council, which dates back to the
16th century. Aiming to consolidate a religion damaged by the powers of the
princes and the Lutheran Reformation, the Council of Trent structured
Catholicism around the figure of the priest.
The cleric, one single
person, then becomes the central character. He concentrates on his person all
the sacred functions, starting from the Eucharist and confession. This concept
of the ideal priest, the "holy priest" identified with Christ, placed
above the faithful, condemning them to be nothing more than a simple flock of
docile sheep, has deeply marked the mentalities of all Catholics, and greatly
favoured the prevailing "clericalism," including among the laity.
Even though Vatican II
recalled in 1962 the importance of the role of all the baptized, all called to
be "priests, prophets and kings," the figure of the
"super-powerful" ordained priest remained very prominent on church
benches.
The management of the
crisis of sexual abuse has starkly revealed how the excesses of this
clericalism, distorting as it does the way authority is conceived in the
Church, can have dramatic consequences.
For biodiversity in the
Church
This is all that the Synod
of Bishops' assembly for the Amazon has just definitively condemned. How so?
By advocating for a true
"biodiversity" in the Church, which leaves room for other forms of
responsibility. In addition to the traditional celibate priest, there would be
mature married men, and also new ministries, defined according to local needs,
and possibly even open to women.
In reality, this
"Catholic biodiversity" already exists to a large extent, but we do
not see it. Above all, it is not officially recognized.
Are readers aware that in
France most dioceses only operate smoothly thanks to women? These are lay
people trained in theology — more than 12,000 of them today — whom the bishops
rely upon. Or that there are already 2,700 married deacon men, who provide many
services in the parishes? All this in addition to only 5,600 priests in
ministry.
A revolution already in
motion
This "silent
revolution" is gradually transforming the face of the Church in France. It
is now necessary, as the Synod Fathers for the Amazon have just requested, to
give it more visibility, to formalize it and structure it.
From this point of view, by
inviting for the first time, during their annual Plenary Assembly which begins
in Lourdes on Nov. 5, lay men and women, at their side, the bishops of France
will finally reflect a less clerical and masculine image of the Church.
An image more faithful to
the reality of Catholicism in France. And another way of ending, here too, the
legacy of the Council of Trent.
Amazon Synod Has Set Pope Francis' Professional Haters on Edge
A Series of Articles written by Michael Sean Winters, who covers the nexus of religion and politics for National Catholic Reporter.
The Amazon synod will open next Sunday, Oct. 6, with Mass in St.
Peter's Square. Like everything else in this pontificate, the synod is surrounded
in controversy, not because it needs to be so, but because the professional
haters of Pope Francis now insist that everything he does or says is wrong or
evil or heretical.
Cardinal-designate Jesuit Fr. Michael Czerny and Dominican Bishop David
Martínez de Aguirre did a fine job explaining the rationale for the synod in a
recent article in La Civiltà Cattolica.
"Laudato Si' came out in June 2015. Over the years, numerous
initiatives contributing to integral ecology have begun, many of them Church-based,"
they wrote. "Meanwhile, according to all indicators, the crisis has
worsened significantly. The Amazon Synod is a conscious ecclesial effort to
implement Laudato Si' in this fundamental human and natural environment."
The instrumentum laboris (working document) for the synod, like
Francis' encyclical "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home," calls
for an "integral ecology." I admit I am not crazy about the word
"integral," at least not in English. To me, the word has unfortunate
associations with Fr. Leonard Feeney, Archbishop Michel Lefebvre and Cardinal
Alfredo Ottaviani, those integralists who opposed the Second Vatican Council's
efforts to renew Catholic life and theology.
But as you read the instrumentum laboris, it is obvious that the more
accessible English word would be "integrated," the idea that the
spiritual aspects of a situation are not segregated from the social aspects,
and the social is not segregated from the economic, and none of it is any
longer segregated from the demands of nature, especially when discussing the
Earth's very "lungs."
In addition to the synod being a chance to really apply Laudato Si' and
to promote integral ecology, the simple of fact of the synod highlights another
of this pontificate's themes, synodality itself. The pope could have issued a
document about the challenges facing this region, and the relationship of those
challenges to the broader culture and to the church, all on his own authority.
That is not this pope's way. His method is that pioneered by Cardinal
Joseph Cardijn: See, judge, act. And, in order to see more clearly, judge more
fairly, and act in a more decisively Christian manner, you must listen and
dialogue, listen and dialogue. That is what synodality is all about.
All this, unsurprisingly, has set Francis' critics on edge. Leading the
pack is Cardinal Raymond Burke and Kazakhstan Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius
Schneider. They have called for a 40-day crusade of prayer and fasting to
prevent what they term "serious theological errors and heresies" in
the instrumentum laboris from being adopted at the synod.
The conservative duo is alarmed by the "implicit pantheism"
in the instrumentum laboris and its openness to "pagan
superstitions."
"The Instrumentum Laboris draws from its implicit pantheistic conception
an erroneous concept of Divine Revelation, stating basically that God continues
to self-communicate in history through the conscience of the peoples and the
cries of nature," they write. Good thing they were not around when St.
Augustine was employing Neo-Platonic philosophy to articulate his understanding
of divine revelation, or when St. Thomas Aquinas used Aristotelian concepts to
do likewise.
The rest of their eight-page rant is similar: They supply the worst
possible interpretations of statements taken out of context to promote the idea
that the Holy Father and a Synod of Bishops is about to partake of heresy.
Last week (early October), NCR ran an editorial about the synod that stated, in part,
"How much credence one should give to a two-person campaign against the
pope is an open question." Regrettably, the opposition is not limited to
the two buffoonish prelates mentioned above.
A few weeks back, EWTN's Raymond Arroyo convoked his "papal
posse" to discuss Francis and the synod. Especially ironic were their complaints
about the possibility that the synod might make celibacy optional in certain
circumstances.
"This is a subversion. ... It would be a total disaster to make
celibacy optional. ... Basically, it's an abandonment of what Jesus himself
lived," frothed Fr. Gerald Murray.
I do not remember Murray and the others complaining when Pope Benedict
XVI issued Anglicanorum Coetibus, which allowed married clergy from the
Anglican Communion to join the ranks of the Catholic clergy. Was Benedict
permitting an "abandonment of what Jesus himself lived"? Are our
Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic brothers committing a similar
abandonment when they permit married clergy?
In this internet age, an auxiliary bishop from Kazakhstan can make a
splash, but the particular vehicle for Burke's and Schneider's vile
insinuations is the National Catholic Register, an arm of EWTN. The Register
also led the reporting of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò's nasty attempt at
score-settling.
It would be bad enough if these ridiculous and not very intelligent
prophylactic attacks on the synod were confined to LifeSiteNews and similar
marginal outlets. But, EWTN and the Register reach millions of Catholics.
Indeed, a 2016 survey of the U.S. episcopate indicated that more bishops read
the Register than any other Catholic newspaper or magazine.
It is fine to entertain criticisms of the synod's instrumentum laboris.
I found it terribly dry at points. And I would like a more explicit connection
between some of the anthropological perspectives contained here and the
anthropology articulated in the Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes.
But the hysterical allegations of heresy and error tell us more about
the accusers than the accused. And the haters are not few nor are they
insignificant. The suggestion I made in August is even more obviously needed
now: The U.S. bishops should scrap their agenda for their November plenary
meeting and spend the entire time discussing how to cope with those who are
spreading the seeds of schism.
Amazon Synod's Critics Distort Catholic Tradition For Their Convenience
I noted previously that the opposition to the synod on the Amazon was a
manifestation of the more general anti-Francis attitude of certain
conservatives. And, to my charge, we can now add the indictment of racism as
seen in this bizarre rant from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. Twitter
also had some ugly racist tropes, some of them being spread by clergy. I was
grateful to, and proud of, my The Tablet colleague Chris Lamb for apologizing
to the indigenous representative at the Holy See press conference for this
offensive behavior.
Other criticisms have not been explicitly racist, but either
condescending to the indigenous cultures or inordinately afraid of syncretism.
EWTN's Raymond Arroyo could be counted on for this kind of ridiculousness, as
he and Fr. Gerald Murray fretted about a tree planting ceremony that they, and
other papal critics, considered pagan. J.D. Flynn at the Catholic News Agency
picked up this refrain, noting "the identifiably Christian aspects of the
[Amazonian, indigenous] rituals have often taken place alongside unidentified
images and sculptures, and with the incorporation of rituals of unclear origin.
That has led to confusion." The charge of confusion has been leveled at
Francis before, always by people who like their religion black or white. Why is
the carved image of a pregnant woman so tantalizing to these critics, but they
have not a second thought for the Egyptian obelisk in the center of St. Peter's
Square, nor the fresco of the Delphic oracle in the Sistine Chapel? Remember
that philistines in earlier generations wanted the nudes on the Sistine Chapel
covered.
Other criticisms came more from the fringe, but echoed the same talking
points. An event held by the conservative umbrella group Voice of the Family
accused the synod of perpetrating "poly-demonism." This may be, as
Flynn said, "hyperbolic and overwrought" but it is a difference of
degree, not kind, from the concerns Flynn voiced.
The common theme from all these critics is that in seeking to
evangelize and accompany the people of the Amazon, we should remember that we
are the ones with the truth, that they are the ones who need instructing, that
their pagan ways must be "overthrown" and replaced with Christian,
read Western, ways. And, of course, all this is Pope Francis' fault.
What is missing from all these criticisms is any awareness of the fact
that the Catholic Church does not, in fact, view indigenous cultures with such
horror, and core teachings of our faith posit that God is active in every
culture, indeed, in every human heart.
Consider how the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and the
Disciple of the Sacraments dealt with the need to recognize that the seeds of
the Gospel are already present in every culture. A 1994 document
"Inculturation and the Roman Liturgy," stated that the qualities and
gifts of each people are not negated. Inculturation "strengthens these
qualities, perfects them and restores them in Christ. On the other hand, the
church assimilates these values when they are compatible with the Gospel,
"to deepen understanding of Christ's message and give it more effective
expression in the liturgy and in the many different aspects of the life of the
community of believers." This double movement in the work of inculturation
thus expresses one of the component elements of the mystery of the
incarnation." The idea of a "double movement," or what we might
term dialogue, is apparently unknown to Francis' critics, even though it was not
unknown to St. Pope John Paul II who was the pope in 1994. N.B. The easiest
place to find this text is at the EWTN library of ecclesial documents.
Perhaps reference to a dicastery's document is a little insufficient
for the critics. How about an encyclical from John Paul II? When the Holy
Father convoked two synods to discuss family life, conservatives were keen on
citing John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis splendor to complain about the
deficiencies they perceived in Francis' approach. For example, here and here.
The critics have an intellectual fetish for the encyclical's concern to
establish the category of "intrinsically evil acts," a category these
same conservatives tend to abuse. But, in that same encyclical, we read this:
Indeed, as we have seen, the natural law "is nothing other than
the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what
must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man
at creation" The rightful autonomy of the practical reason means that man
possesses in himself his own law, received from the Creator.
This natural law is accessible to all men and women, not only to
Christians, but it is necessarily rooted in the divine law. In case you think
John Paul II was having a bad theological hair day, the quotation is from St.
Thomas Aquinas.
A little later on in that same encyclical, the pope quotes his
predecessor Leo XIII's 1888 encyclical Libertas Praestantissimum on the
universality of the natural law: "the natural law is written and engraved
in the heart of each and every man, since it is none other than human reason
itself which commands us to do good and counsels us not to sin." The
reference is to each and every person, including the indigenous souls in the
Amazon.
If a papal encyclical is not sufficient, how about a document from an
ecumenical council? In the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern
World, Gaudium et spes, there are several passages that invoke the natural law,
Christ's salvific presence in all of creation, and that the church can profit
from all human endeavor and learning, except sin. Here are just a few of such
passages:
For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some
fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human
mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin
Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.
… All this holds true not only for Christians, but for all men of good will in whose hearts grace works in an unseen way. For, since Christ died for all men, and since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery.
… Since all men possess a rational soul and are created in God's likeness, since they have the same nature and origin, have been redeemed by Christ and enjoy the same divine calling and destiny, the basic equality of all must receive increasingly greater recognition.
… Moreover, since in virtue of her mission and nature she is bound to no particular form of human culture, nor to any political, economic or social system, the Church by her very universality can be a very close bond between diverse human communities and nations, provided these trust her and truly acknowledge her right to true freedom in fulfilling her mission.
… The experience of past ages, the progress of the sciences, and the treasures hidden in the various forms of human culture, by all of which the nature of man himself is more clearly revealed and new roads to truth are opened, these profit the Church, too. For, from the beginning of her history she has learned to express the message of Christ with the help of the ideas and terminology of various philosophers, and has tried to clarify it with their wisdom, too. Her purpose has been to adapt the Gospel to the grasp of all as well as to the needs of the learned, insofar as such was appropriate. Indeed this accommodated preaching of the revealed word ought to remain the law of all evangelization.
Still not convinced? How about something from sacred Scripture? In the
Acts of the Apostles, we learn that St. Paul went to Athens. He did not take a
sledgehammer to the Parthenon. Instead, when he went to preach at the
Areopagus, he began by noting that he had found among the many pagan temples a
modest altar "to an unknown God," and began to proclaim this unknown
deity Jesus Christ. Or, perhaps we could consider the Nicene Creed: Is it a
form of syncretism to confess that Jesus is "consubstantial" with the
Father, an idea derived from pagan Greek philosophy, not Jewish or Aramaic
thought?
In addition to these specific texts, ever since Aquinas encountered the
pagan thinker Aristotle, natural law has been intertwined with revelation as a
source of our Catholic moral teaching. Conservatives tend to view natural law
narrowly and curiously do not follow Aquinas, who was far more inductive in his
approach than they are. And it is an open question whether Aquinas made the
claim that they do, namely, that the natural law can be apprehended by anyone,
irrespective of their confessional status. Conservatives have not been shy
about invoking this pagan-derived method of analysis as a source of Catholic
teaching.
Why, then, are the conservatives all in a tizzy because Francis and
some of the Amazon synod fathers believe it is wrong for the church to neglect
the culture of the indigenous as a source of wisdom and specifically religious
wisdom? Because it is Francis doing it. They are allowed to criticize the pope,
of course, but they have no right to claim the mantle of Catholic tradition in
criticizing him or the synod on this issue syncretism. Adopting the best in
every culture is our Catholic tradition.
The Amazon Synod Is About The Concept Of Social Sin, Not Married Priests
If you relied on the mainstream media, you would think that the
three-week synod on the Amazon last month was mainly focused on the issues of
whether or not to ordain married men and to restore the female diaconate. It
wasn't.
"If we read the outcome document of the synod, we see the
ministerial shifts for the Amazon are in part about servicing people so their
human and economic rights are protected," says Eric LeCompte, executive
director of JubileeUSA. "We read that as Catholics we must protect
indigenous communities and our planet. Ultimately, the synod's message is that
we all deserve to live in a world where we have enough, and not too much."
LeCompte argues that the synod document puts forward the most robust
articulation of the concept of "social sin" since that concept came
into official disrepute in the 1980s.
"Much of the Amazon synod's final document can be boiled down to
the reality that we are consuming too much," he told NCR in an email.
"Whether we live in the Amazon or the United States of America, we all are
consuming too much. It's a tough message and it may be the closest the Catholic
Church has ever gotten to the reality that there is social sin, that as an
entire society — our level of consumption is sinful." This bringing back
of the idea of social sin is a significant development in moral theology.
Still, I might put it slightly differently. The Holy Father has set
before the church the idea of integral human development. Before the synod
began, I registered my preference for the word "integrated" over
"integral" because of the latter's hoary pre-Vatican II associations.
But, what matters is the idea or, more acutely, the reality: The social and
ecological and ecclesial and political are all interrelated, not only in the
Amazon to be sure, but interrelated there in such a way that if we do not root
out the sin that has permeated these various realities, the region, and with it
the whole planet, are endangered.
For the church to help confront the challenges the peoples of the
Amazon face, the church must be present, and for it to be present, the church
must bring that most distinctive of Catholic practices and beliefs: the
sacraments. Indeed, our Catholic sacramental sensibility seems to cohere with
the integrated spirituality of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon in ways
that are at first somewhat jarring to Western eyes but which, on second glance,
appear quite beautiful, and beautiful precisely because they are so different
from the hyper-rationalistic, Cartesian sensibilities of us Westerners.
Yet much of the discussion in the U.S. seemed ignorant of the fact that
the mesmerizing discussion of ordaining married men and female deacons grew out
of this prior discussion of sacramentality in the remote regions of the Amazon.
It was not another chapter in our Western culture wars, nor should it be seen
as such.
A friend sent a note in which he commented that after 35 years of
Communio popes, now we have a Concilium pope, referring to the more
conservative and more liberal theological journals created in the wake of
Vatican II. Villanova University theologian Massimo Faggioli pushed back
against this characterization of the pope.
"Pope Francis is not a Concilium guy," Faggioli told me in a
phone interview. "He has none of the technocratic obsession many of the
Concilium writers have." It has been a long time since I picked up a copy
of Concilium but I do know this: Francis
clearly does not see his role as being the Theologian-in-Chief of the universal
church. I recall Msgr. John Tracy Ellis explaining why popes did not choose
among different theological schools of thought. "The chair of Peter is
many things," Ellis said. "But it is not a faculty chair."
Trying to place a pope in the context of two mostly Western journals
fundamentally makes the same mistake as the hyper-focus on gender: This was a
synod about the Amazon. Most of the participants were from the Amazon. The
issued were discussed and framed in terms of the needs of the Amazon. We in the
myopic West want to reduce everything to gender, or race, or ideology, but that
is not what was going on in this synod.
The vicious and stupid attacks on the indigenous peoples' spirituality
came to a head with the tossing of the statues into the Tiber. Last week, on
EWTN's "The World Over," Raymond Arroyo and his papal posse were
still fretting about the statues being idols and what became clear is that none
of them stopped to ask the indigenous people who brought the statues to Rome in
the first place what they signified. Cultural myopia meets bad journalism. It
seemed clear to me, and clear to the participants in the synod, that the people
who brought the statues were themselves Catholics. Why would you accuse such
people of idolatry without even talking to them?
We in the myopic West want to reduce everything to gender, or race, or
ideology, but that is not what was going on in this synod.
It is the people who cheered the act of vandalism who are the real idol
worshipers: They have made an idol of their conservative sexual ethics.
"It is typical of certain Catholics in the U.S.," says Faggioli,
"to embrace a narrative that focuses on the wrong markers for defining
Catholicism." That is exactly right. (I had almost written "Bingo,"
another former marker of Catholic identity.)
In addition to the cultural myopia of most American commentators, it is
worth looking at another issue that emerged from this synod, and from all of
the synods in this pontificate: How does the church change? How does doctrine
and practice develop? And we will pick that theme up on Wednesday.
The Question Behind The Synod:
How Can And Should Change Happen In The Church?
(In the previous article), I discussed how some of the coverage of the synod of the
Amazon reflected cultural myopia. Today, I propose to look at the question that
stands behind the synod, indeed the question that stands behind so much of this
pontificate. It is a simple one: How can and should change happen in the
Catholic Church? The question is simple, but not the answer.
First, this conservative idea that all ecclesial doctrine and practice
has been fixed from all eternity — and that the Western mode of expressing that
doctrine and practice is the only legitimate mode, especially as it was
expressed in the 1950s or the pontificate of St. Pope John Paul II — is, to use
a technical theological term, hogwash. In the introduction to the Code of Canon
Law, promulgated by John Paul II in 1983, we read this:
As is obvious, when the revision of the Code was first announced [by
Pope St. John XXIII in 1959], the Council was an event of the future. Moreover,
the acts of its magisterium and especially its doctrine on the Church would be
decided in the years 1962-1965; however, it is clear to everyone that John
XXIII's intuition was very true, and with good reason it must be said that his
decision was for the good of the Church in the long term.
The phrase "its doctrine on the Church would be decided"
jumps off the page. St. Pope John XXIII had announced his intention to reform
canon law, but that could not be done first because there was yet
"doctrine … [to] be decided." That is, to use a verb we associate
with St. John Henry Newman, doctrine needed to be developed. It is critical for
understanding the opposition to Francis to recognize that much of it is based
on an understanding of John Paul II that is skewed or worse, indeed a severe
lack of knowledge of church history.
It is just as depressing to me, however, to see Catholic liberals
viewing change in the church through the same culture war lenses as Catholic
conservatives.
The subhead in a New York Times' op-ed by Sara McDougall — "The
push to allow married men to serve as priests isn't progress. It's another form
of misogyny." — points to the left's problem with synod coverage: The
assumption that ecclesial change looks a certain way, and that way is to be
akin to modern, Western cultural norms. And it was not just the subhead:
McDougall's article contains these sentences:
According to the laws of the
Catholic Church, known as canon law, that priests might marry or not is
man-made law, therefore mutable, while the exclusion of women is divinely
ordained. But the priesthood itself is a man-made invention, an amalgam of
Judeo-Roman and other traditions, refined and also only rather belatedly
attached to the mass, a ritual performance that re-enacts and celebrates the
most important tenets of Catholic faith.
The link is to an NCR article by Gary Macy, a theologian at Santa Clara
University. Macy surveys historical developments, and how some of those
developments reflected wider developments in the ambient culture, but nowhere
does he say that ordination was "a man-made invention." We Catholics
believe the Holy Spirit guided the church in the first century, and the eighth century,
and the 12th century, just as the Spirit guides her today. There are mistakes
in the history of the Catholic Church to be sure. The presence of the Holy
Spirit does not vouchsafe everything, but in faith we believe that there are no
exclusively "man-made inventions."
To take another example, NCR recently published an editorial on the
subject of LGBTQ Catholics. It concluded with these words: "We'll rejoice
in the increments, but only with the sober understanding that as long as LGBTQ
Catholics are on the margins, and as long as popes can change while church
teaching on sexuality in so many areas remains unchanged, there's a lot more
work to be done." I do not doubt that more work needs to be done. Our
Catholic theology around the subject of homosexuality is woefully inadequate,
but I also think a fair reading of the New Testament witness indicates sexual
liberation of any kind was not on Jesus' top-10 list. But, what really stalks
this editorial is the idea that we liberal Catholics really know the endgame of
that theological development and expect the universal church to get on board.
How would a significant change in church teaching regarding human sexuality
affect ecumenical relations? How would it be received in the global south?
These are questions pastors must pose and answer before rushing headlong into
an embrace of the norms of Western culture.
I am rereading H. Richard Niebuhr's classic Christ and Culture. I had
forgotten how brilliant it is. He considers the school of faith that perceives
a "Christ-of-culture," as opposed to a
"Christ-against-culture." In his day, the
"Christ-of-culture" crowd were liberal mainline Protestants, but
whose views track closely with today's liberal Catholics. In one of several
devastatingly incisive passages, he writes:
Like their radical counterparts, the Christ-of-culture believers
incline to the side of law in dealing with the polarity of law and grace. By
obedience to the laws of God and of reason, speculative and practical, men are
able, they seem to think, to achieve the high destiny of knowers of the Truth
and citizens of the Kingdom. The divine action of grace is ancillary to the
human enterprise; and sometimes it seems as if the forgiveness of sins, even
prayers of thanksgiving, are all means to an end, and a human end at that.*
As I say, devastatingly incisive.
Pope Francis has offered the church a way to answer the question about
change that, I believe, is so important and obvious that we sometimes overlook
it, and that is his emphasis on synodality. The Amazon synod entailed extensive
consultation before the event. Once convened, the conversations in both the
aula and in the small groups were astonishingly frank, I am told. Now, having
passed a document, they leave it to the Holy Father to put his authoritative
stamp on the deliberations. God so loved the world, he did not send a
committee.
Villanova University theologian Massimo Faggioli explained to me that
the Second Vatican Council discussed collegiality not synodality. Francis is
trying to employ synodality as a means of expressing collegiality. "We
haven't thought about synodality in centuries," Faggioli pointed out. A
synod can be a local or national event. Popes must convoke councils, but not
synods. How synodality will develop remains to be seen. But, as a means of
discerning how the Spirit is calling the church, I can't imagine a better
method. My only worry is that it could provoke powerful centrifugal force, but
our teaching on papal primacy can surely act as a centripetal check on anything
too rash or wrong.
I sincerely hope the naysayers on both the left and the right will
observe what this pope is doing and have confidence that the Spirit is at work
in our church. I hope that people who think change is impossible will study
some church history. And I hope, too, that those who think ecclesial change is
as easy as pie will remember that some of us are not bakers and a pie can be
difficult.
Here is a good rule of thumb I use: If you envision Christ in such a
way that he always confirms your beliefs and never makes you squirm, you are on
the wrong track and you need some spiritual guidance. That works on the
personal level. On the ecclesial level, synodality may help keep the church on
the right track, whatever that track is and wherever it leads.
Coincidence of Opposites
This article is taken from the Daily Email sent by Fr Richard Rohr OFM from the Center for Action and Contemplation. You can subscribe to receive the email by clicking here
The Divine Mind transforms all human suffering by
identifying completely with the human predicament and standing in full
solidarity with it from beginning to end. This is the real meaning of the
crucifixion. The cross is not just a singular event. It’s a statement from God
that reality has a cruciform pattern. Jesus was killed in a collision of
cross-purposes, conflicting interests, and half-truths, caught between the
demands of an empire and the religious establishment of his day. The cross was
the price Jesus paid for living in a “mixed” world, which is both human and
divine, simultaneously broken and utterly whole. He hung between a good thief
and a bad thief, between heaven and earth, inside of both humanity and
divinity, a male body with a feminine soul, utterly whole and yet utterly
disfigured—holding together all the primary opposites (see Colossians 1:15-20).
In so doing, Jesus demonstrated that Reality is not
meaningless and absurd just because it isn’t perfectly logical, fair, or
consistent. Reality, we know, is always filled with contradictions, what St.
Bonaventure and others (such as Alan of Lille [c. 1128–1202/03] and Nicholas of
Cusa [1401–1464]) called the “coincidence of opposites.” This is what we all
resist and oppose much of our life.
Jesus the Christ, in his crucifixion and resurrection,
“recapitulated all things in himself, everything in heaven and everything on
earth” (Ephesians 1:10). This one verse is the summary of Franciscan
Christology. Jesus agreed to carry the mystery of universal suffering. He
allowed it to change him (“Resurrection”) and us, too, so that we would be
freed from the endless cycle of projecting our pain elsewhere or remaining
trapped inside of it.
This is the fully resurrected life, the only way to be
happy, free, loving, and therefore “saved.” In effect, Jesus was saying, “If I
can trust it, you can too.” We are indeed saved by the cross—more than we
realize. The people who hold the contradictions and resolve them in themselves
are the saviors of the world. They are the only real agents of transformation,
reconciliation, and newness.
Christians are meant to be the visible compassion of God on
earth more than “those who are going to heaven.” They are the leaven who agree
to share the fate of God for the life of the world now, and thus keep the whole
batch of dough from falling back on itself. A Christian is invited, not
required, to accept and live the cruciform shape of all reality. It is not a
duty or even a requirement as much as a free vocation. Some people feel called
and agree to not hide from the dark side of things or the rejected group, but
in fact draw close to the pain of the world and allow it to radically change
their perspective. They agree to embrace the imperfection and even the injustices
of our world, allowing these situations to change them from the inside out,
which is the only way things are changed anyway.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a
Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe
(Convergent: 2019), 147-148.
Faith And Dying
This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here
We tend to nurse a certain naiveté about what faith means in the face of death. The common notion among us as Christians is that if someone has a genuine faith she should be able to face death without fear or doubt. The implication then of course is that having fear and doubt when one is dying is an indication of a weak faith. While it’s true that many people with a strong faith do face death calmly and without fear, that’s not always the case, nor necessarily the norm.
We can begin with Jesus. Surely he had real faith and yet, in the moments just before his death, he called out in both fear and doubt. His cry of anguish, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”, came from a genuine anguish that was not, as we sometimes piously postulate, uttered for divine effect, not really meant, but something for us to hear. Moments before he died, Jesus suffered real fear and real doubt. Where was his faith? Well, that depends upon how we understand faith and the specific modality it can take on in our dying.
In her famous study of the stages of dying, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, suggests there are five stages we undergo in the dying process: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Our first response to receiving a terminal diagnosis is denial – This is not happening! Then when we have to accept that it is happening our reaction is anger – Why me! Eventually anger gives way to bargaining – How much time can I still draw out of this? This is followed by depression andfinally, when nothing serves us any longer, there’s acceptance – I’m going to die. This is all very true.
But in a deeply insightful book, The Grace in Dying, Kathleen Dowling Singh, basing her insights upon the experience of sitting at the bedside of many dying people, suggests there are additional stages: Doubt, Resignation, and Ecstasy. Those stages help shed light on how Jesus faced his death.
The night before he died, in Gethsemane, Jesus accepted his death, clearly. But that acceptance was not yet full resignation. That only took place the next day on the cross in a final surrender when, as the Gospels put it, he bowed his head and gave over his spirit. And, just before that, he experienced an awful fear that what he had always believed in and taught about God was perhaps not so. Maybe the heavens were empty and maybe what we deem as God’s promises amount only to wishful thinking.
But, as we know, he didn’t give into that doubt, but rather, inside of its darkness, gave himself over in trust. Jesus died in faith – though not in what we often naively believe faith to be. To die in faith does not always mean that we die calmly, without fear and doubt.
For instance, the renowned biblical scholar, Raymond E. Brown, commenting on the fear of death inside the community of the Beloved disciple, writes: “The finality of death and the uncertainties it creates causes trembling among those who have spent their lives professing Christ. Indeed, among the small community of Johannine disciples, it was not unusual for people to confess that doubts had come into their minds as they encountered death. …The Lazarus story is placed at the end of Jesus’ public ministry in John to teach us that when confronted with the visible reality of the grave, all need to hear and embrace the bold message that Jesus proclaimed: ‘I am the life.’ … For John, no matter how often we renew our faith, there is the supreme testing by death. Whether the death of a loved one or one’s own death, it is the moment when one realizes that it all depends on God. During our lives we have been able to shield ourselves from having to face this in a raw way. Confronted by death, mortality, all defenses fall away.”
Sometimes people with a deep faith face death in calm and peace. But sometimes they don’t and the fear and doubt that threatens them then is not necessarily a sign of a weak or faltering faith. It can be the opposite, as we see in Jesus. Inside a person of faith, fear and doubt in the face of death is what the mystics call ‘the dark night of the spirit” … and this is what’s going on inside that experience: The raw fear and doubt we are experiencing at that time make it impossible for us to mistake our own selves and our own life-force for God. When we have to accept to die in trust inside of what seems like absolute negation and can only cry out in anguish to an apparent emptiness then it is no longer possible to confuse God with our own feelings and ego. In that, we experience the ultimate purification of soul. We can have a deep faith and still find ourselves with doubt and fear in the face of death. Just look at Jesus.
The Day After Halloween Is Christmas
This article is taken from the Blog posted by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Timoneum, Baltimore. You can find the original blog by clicking here
It seems like the fall season is a sprint. It just moves so quickly. And then, of course, the holidays are upon us, ready or not. In fact, we have a saying around here that beginning on the day after Halloween we need to be thinking and acting like Christmas is here. That’s why this weekend brings our ministry push weekend for Christmas Eve.
The one day of the year when we are certain that unchurched people in our community actually want to come to church is Christmas Eve. That’s why we host our celebration at the “Cow Palace” at the Maryland State Fairgrounds. We began the tradition 15 years ago with perhaps 1,500 in attendance. Last year we welcomed 11,000, with many more watching on Catholic TV and online.
But to make that happen, we need 500 parishioners to serve. Service can come in a variety of roles and times. Beginning on December 16, we start our move into the Cow Palace which means we need ops crews daily through the 23rd, as well as crews on the 26th for breakdown and clean up. On Christmas Eve itself we need greeters, host ministers, and children’s ministers, beginning at 2pm. Most critically we need to fill our second shift, beginning at 5pm.
If you are going to be here on our Ridgely Road campus this weekend stop by the Christmas Ministry Market Booth on our Concourse and sign up to serve or learn more about it. Sign up this weekend to serve on Christmas and we’ll give you an exclusive 2019 Nativity Christmas ornament. If you’re still working our your schedule for Christmas you will eventually have an opportunity to sign up online (stay tuned to my Twitter account for more details when online signups are released @nativitypastor). You can serve with your whole family, you can serve with your friends, you can serve with your small group.
Start a beautiful new tradition and add service to your holiday celebration. But don’t wait too long because Christmas is just around the corner.
St Charles Borromeo
St Charles Borromeo, the 16th century Archbishop of Milan whose feast we celebrated on 4 November, was well acquainted with the early Jesuit community in Rome and familiar with Ignatian spirituality. Tim McEvoy marks the feast of the patron saint of spiritual directors by looking back over Borromeo’s life story and reflecting on his approach to the spiritual life. Tim McEvoy, Ph.D, is a spiritual director and a member of the retreat team at St Beuno's Jesuit Spirituality Centre in North Wales. This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
On 4 November we celebrated the Feast of St Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), patron saint of bishops, catechists, seminarians and spiritual directors.[i] He is perhaps best known to history as the ‘hyperactive’ Archbishop of Milan who invented the confessional.[ii] He is not a saint who automatically inspires a great deal of warmth (unless, of course, you come from Milan). But who was he in life? And how did his approach to pastoral ministry compare with that of spiritual accompaniers today in the Ignatian tradition, by which Charles was influenced?
An early vocation
St Charles (or Carlo) was born into the high nobility of Renaissance Italy, growing up in the family castle of Arona by the shores of Lake Maggiore, about forty miles from Milan. He is described as being a bookish and rather serious child, made shy by a bad stammer, who had a deep love of music. He grew up somewhat in the shadow of his popular and sporty older brother, Federico, in a very pious household. His mother – who died when Carlo was nine – was known for her almsgiving and works of charity while his father spent long hours in prayer, often dressed in sackcloth, and received Communion twice a week, almost unheard of at the time.
Carlo seems to have had a very early sense of religious vocation quite independent of his family’s ambitions for him in the Church. At the age of 12 he was tonsured and appointed abbot of the lucrative family-owned Abbey of Arona. However, it is said that he insisted the revenues ‘belonged to God’ not to the Borromei and made sure that any deductions from the income were treated as ‘loans’ to be repaid to the poor.[iii] Carlo was peculiarly gifted as an organiser and administrator, verging on the obsessive compulsive, and had a very strong sense of propriety which was increasingly at odds with the unreformed worldliness he encountered in the Church.
Carlo worked hard to obtain a doctorate in civil and canon law from the University of Pavia, overcoming a breakdown following the death of his father in 1558, after which he assumed responsibility for managing the family estate and taking care of his stepmother and four younger sisters. A year later, he was catapulted into the limelight when his uncle Gian Angelo de Medici (no relation to the Florentine Medici) was elected Pope Pius IV. Overnight, enormous wealth and power was at the family’s fingertips. The young Carlo was summoned directly to Rome and appointed Administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan, amongst other prize appointments, and welcomed by 200 velvet-coated servants into sumptuous Vatican apartments. Within the space of a month he was also a cardinal and papal Secretary of State, all at only 22 years of age, with no theological training and still in minor orders. It is ironic, though perhaps not coincidental, that such a beneficiary of (literal) nepotism would go on to become one of the best-known figures of the Counter Reformation.
Trent and a Jesuit connection
His sudden rise to prominence seems only to have confirmed Carlo’s sense that God was calling him to great service in the Church. As the right-hand man of the pope he naturally took a leading role when Pius decided to re-convene the Council of Trent after a fifteen year hiatus for its third and final session (January 1562 to December 1563). Carlo effectively held the Council together in its last sessions – demonstrating remarkable skill in diplomacy despite his lack of experience – and he left a strong imprint on some of the key documents to emerge, particularly the 1566 Catechism. The style and tone of the Catholic Church after Trent was very much after Carlo’s own heart: doctrinally rigorous, liturgically standardised and administratively centralised with clear emphasis on papal primacy.
But despite the opportunities before him in Rome, Carlo’s heart was very much in Milan where he longed to carry out his true vocation: that of priest and bishop in his own diocese, following the example of his hero, St Ambrose. He was also being increasingly drawn to a life of austerity and withdrawal from the world. Discomfort with his privileged life as a prince of the Church grew after Carlo came into contact with St Philip Neri – who was to remain a lifelong friend – and the early Jesuit community in Rome, which at this time included St Francis Borgia SJ. He used to like making visits to the Jesuit house – a welcome retreat from the stress and intrigue of the Curia and Council of Trent – and he was struck by the startling contrast between their rough clothing and simple lifestyle and his own. Ignatian influence was to prove significant when Carlo came to a sudden crossroads in the form of the tragic death of his older brother from fever in November 1562.
Conversion
Family honour dictated that Carlo, as heir, now assume the headship of the Borromeo family and marry – he had after all officially only taken minor orders and even his uncle the pope was prepared to grant him a dispensation to do this. The sense of duty and weight of expectation must have been huge. It is significant that in the midst of this crisis, it was to the Jesuits that Carlo turned for help. He made the Spiritual Exercises quietly in Rome, in the process re-discovering his calling to serve God and the Church and prompting a renewed conversion. ‘God by His grace has inspired me with the strongest resolution to realise always that my greatest good is whatever comes from His hand,’ he wrote at this time.[iv] Submission to God’s will, and his own deepest desire, mattered more than family name and prosperity.[v]
One of the fruits of his conversion was the embracing of a simple lifestyle: the drastic slimming down of his cardinal’s household, the insistence that all wore the plainest clerical dress – no swords allowed – and a new regime of fasting. Despite misgivings about these new ascetical tendencies, the pope eventually gave way to his nephew’s wishes and Carlo was finally ordained priest on the Feast of the Assumption, 1563. Three years later, he was triumphantly entering Milan as its first resident archbishop in 80 years, ready to begin his life’s work of reform. The instructions he left for the preparation of his quarters at the archbishop’s palace are telling:
I wish emphatically to avoid pomp and luxury. Those prelates who are my guests will be welcomed with love and charity but all is to be modest and without worldly grandeur...Guests are to be better lodged than myself. I wish to begin in Milan as I shall continue, by living as simply as possible.[vi]
Reformer in Milan
As archbishop, Carlo was almost alarmingly driven and efficient, overseeing a wave of reforms that attempted to remove ecclesiastical abuses, raise clerical standards and reinvigorate faith amongst the laity. He imposed his own, admittedly authoritarian, vision of what the Council of Trent represented and did not retreat from clashes with Rome or with secular authority – on one occasion he excommunicated the Spanish Governor of Milan over a dispute of jurisdiction. He was the model reforming bishop of the Counter Reformation, tireless in his visitations to much neglected parishes, some of which had never even had their church consecrated. He is celebrated for establishing one of the first diocesan seminaries, maintaining strict standards of preaching and confession amongst his priests, and for founding many new schools for the poor.[vii]
Many impressive achievements, and yet the gaunt figure of this rather puritanical archbishop who disapproved of worldly pleasure (even attempting, unsuccessfully, to ban Carnival one year) does not perhaps immediately attract and inspire the modern seeker of ‘God in all things’. Borromeo drew criticism even in his day for his rigorism when it came to doctrine and there is no doubt that he could be harsh and demanding of his clergy.[viii] No more than he was harsh and demanding of himself, of course: his much-neglected health, weakened by severe penances, cut his life tragically short. Ignoring the advice of his Jesuit confessor, in his last months he continued to fast on bread and water, keep all-night vigils and to sleep on bare boards for two or three hours at most.
He died, exhausted and overworked, of a fever at the age of 46. It might be true to say that Carlo never really understood his own worth in the eyes of God and for all his love of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius (he unfailingly made them once a year), never moved beyond the First Week.[ix] St Ignatius himself – who at Manresa experienced comparable scruples over his own sinfulness – later cautioned strongly against such extremes of bodily deprivation. Such impulses, he learnt, did not come from God. This experience was to help form the basis for his Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, which continue to guide Ignatian spiritual directors today. His profound mystical experiences by the Cardoner river transformed his understanding of the spiritual life and led him away from an unhealthy attachment to penance and mortification to a new vision of the Incarnate God who labours for us in creation. At Manresa, Ignatius learnt to question the model of ‘heroic sanctity’ – which had driven him since his conversion – and to rely instead on the unmerited mercy of God who accepted him as he was.
Borromeo seems not to have undergone the same transformation, which perhaps speaks more of the extremely limited spiritual formation available to him than anything else. Perhaps, too, the drivenness of this uncompromising reformer is best understood against the background of the extreme abuses he found in the Church of his day, from priests living openly with mistresses to absentee bishops growing rich on multiple benefices. He was a man of his time and an undoubtedly courageous one. He was one of the few officials who chose to remain in Milan when the plague struck in the summer of 1576, personally visiting the sick and dying in horrendous circumstances. He sought to lead his terrified priests by example, not just by fasting and preaching but by risking his own life in the service of his people: ‘We have only one life and we should spend it for Jesus Christ and souls, not as we wish, but at the time and in the way God wishes.’[x] He was known to be a generous host – notably welcoming St Edmund Campion SJ and his companions en route to their martyrdom in England in 1580 – and famously nurtured the faith of the young St Aloysius Gonzaga SJ, to whom he gave his First Holy Communion. An encourager and accompanier of others who remained faithful to his own sense of calling from God in the face of strong opposition and adversity: perhaps these are not bad qualities in the end for a patron saint of pastors and spiritual directors?
[i] We could perhaps add ‘letter-writer’ to his portfolio as, alongside Erasmus and St Ignatius, he ranks as one of the great correspondents of his age: there are over 30,000 extant letters in the Ambrosian Library in Milan.
[ii] Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490-1700 (Penguin, 2004), p. 98.
[iii] Margaret Yeo, A Prince of Pastors: St Charles Borromeo (London, New York and Toronto, 1938), pp. 26-27.
[iv] Cited in Yeo, A Prince of Pastors, p. 79.
[v] Interestingly, Borromeo was to have a Jesuit confessor for the rest of his life. He insisted that all aspirants to his household and recipients of clerical appointments in Milan first make the Spiritual Exercises. (Ibid, pp. 111; 227.)
[vi] Letter to his Vicar General, Nicolò Ormaneto, cited in ibid, p. 97.
[vii] By the end of his life there were an incredible 740 schools in Milan serving around 40,000 pupils. (MacCulloch, Reformation, p. 412.)
[viii] Ibid, pp. 411-12.
[ix] Yeo, A Prince of Pastors, p. 227.
[x] Cited in ibid, p. 197
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