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Is the Roman Catholic Church Lost at Sea?


The Bark of Peter, it seems,  is drifting somewhere these days with neither map nor compass.

The Lord has not abandoned the People of God; but our institutional leaders have lost their bearings.

A quick summary of what’s been happening……

(1) Sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy and religious and the episcopal cover-up of  that rape and sodomy are now a systemic deformity in the global church. Put a pin in your globe for every country where Roman Catholic sexual abuse has been acknowledged and you have a sieve not a globe. Austria, the USA, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Chile, Brazil, India, Italy – you can add a new country every day with your morning coffee and newspaper.

(2) And then we have the still-to-be-revealed other forms of sexual abuse. Certainly the Vatican knows about the practice in some parts of Africa where women religious are expected to help priests relieve their sexual tensions with special attentiveness: young “brides of Christ” turned into present day temple prostitutes, with a covert snicker from church authorities.

(3) And certainly the Vatican knows about those prominent bishops, archbishops and cardinals – often publicly homophobic – who have an inordinate fondness for androgynous young seminarians.

(4) Roman Catholic hierarchical credibility is at an all-time low. If one is a “successor of the Apostles,” the expectation is that the fellow (officially we have only fellows who are successors of the Apostles in the Church of Rome) carries on and lives the faith, ministry, and witness of the Apostles. Far too many members of our hierarchy today have the imposition of hands but their actions and attitudes seem terribly distant from those of the Carpenter from Nazareth and his band of faithful followers. The moral authority of the Roman Catholic Church’s leadership has never been weaker. The men dressed in purple and red have sold their souls to self-protective power, control, and arrogant privilege and prestige.

(5) The Dean of the College of Cardinals (and former Secretary of State under Pope John Paul II) Angelo Sodano complained on Easter Sunday that news reports about sexual abuse in the Church were petty gossip. That same old gentleman was long-time friend and supporter of Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, Founder of the Legionaires of  Christ and a favorite of John Paul the Great.

Some fellow that Father Degollado: when he had abdominal cramps, invited seminarians to his room to masturbate him.  At   other times of physical and psychological malaise, Degollado penetrated and masturbated seminarians. Good at sexual multi-tasking, Father Marcial also fathered at least one child and (according to his son’s testimony) sexually abused his own son. But perhaps Cardinal Sodano would say this is just more petty gossip.

(6) According to Cardinal Darió Castrillón Hoyos, former prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, sexual abuse is just a fact of life; and lawyers and the media have unfairly focused on it. In 2001 he praised a French bishop for breaking the law and refusing to hand-over to civil authorities a priest engaged in the sexual abuse of minors.

(7) Increasingly our bishops and cardinals parade around and process down the central aisles of churches and cathedrals like princes in some medieval royal court. Twenty-feet-long red trains are now in vogue as episcopal haute couture. And Jesus only complained about tassels and phylacteries! 

            The signs of the times call for creative action and deep and serious planning for the future.

As an institution we seem to have all our engines running full-speed in reverse.

The Roman Catholic institutional regression began with the election of Pope John Paul II. And now under Cardinal Ratziner-become Pope Benedict XVI and his “reform of the reform” we are moving back to a nineteenth century Roman Catholic ethos that stresses power and control and demands unquestioning obedience to Rome.

 Pope John XXIII opened the church’s windows to the contemporary world; and the council he inaugurated stressed collegiality and shared decision-making at all levels in the Church. Pope Benedict XVI is nailing those windows tightly shut. All roads now go in one direction back to Rome.

Joseph Ratzinger’s institutional church is a centralized power structure which controls everything in the Catholic Church through a network of Vatican congregations controlled by a group of old men who demand strict compliance to what they deem orthodox. Censure and punishment await the disobedient. Control and command have replaced conversation and persuasion.

Most recently Pope Benedict has announced the creation of a new department at the Vatican: the Pontifical Council for New Evangelization. The Pope hopes his new office will clear up the problems created by secularism out there in Western Europe and the United States.

I think the Pope should focus first of all on the problems at home: in the very heart of his institutional superstructure.

Some readers have accussed me of being both anti-Catholic and anti-hierarchy.

NOT TRUE!

I just want the Church to be what it should be:

TRULY   CHRISTIAN    AND    TRULY    CONTEMPORARY

    

 

 

 

The Lord has not abandoned the People of God; but our institutional leaders have lost their bearings. The Bark of Peter, it seems,  is drifting somewhere these days with neither map nor compass.

 

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The Vatican Nightmare: WOMEN PRIESTS!


Something in Vatican DNA reacts negatively towards women.

But it was not always so……..

 

When it comes to the Vatican’s current attitude toward women in the church, I think of George Orwell’s famous line from Animal Farm that “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”. 

(1)   The Vatican is preparing to update the 2001 norms that deal with priestly sex abuse of minors, in effect codifying practices that have been in place for several years. At the same time, it will include the “attempted ordination of women” among the list of most serious crimes against church law, or “delicta graviora,” sources said.

(2)   Vatican opposition to women’s ordination is reprehensible and absolute theological nonsense.

(3)   The old men at the Vatican (well young men at the Vatican as well!)  need some serious in-service updating about women in Christian history.

_________________________________

What we know……………………..

Women in the ministry of Jesus: Jesus broke established religious and cultural taboes about women.

  • In stark contrast to the rabbis of his day, Jesus often used women as illustrations in his teaching.
  • He dared walk out to and speak to the Samaritan woman at the well in the heat of the day. He offered her living water. She talked to her neighbors and many of them believed in Jesus “because of the woman’s testimony” (John 4:28-29, 39).
  • Most Jewish and Greek men had negative views of women, but Jesus treated women with dignity and respect.
  • He healed various women, cast demons out of them, and raised their children from the dead.
  • The rabbis said that women should not be taught Scripture, but Mary (criticized by older sister Martha) rejects the typically female role, becomes a disciple learning at the feet of Rabbi Jesus. His response:  “Mary has chosen what is better.”
  • He protected the woman about to be stoned to death.
  • Women were the first witnesses to the Resurrection.

Women in ministry in the early Christian community

  • Following the example set by Jesus, women were acknowledged and respected as leaders in early Christian communities.
  • Euodia and Syntyche are called Paul’s fellow-workers in proclaiming the Gospel.
  • Priscilla (Prisca), Junia, Julia, and Nereus’ sister are all key leaders in the Christian community.
  • Paul praises Junia (or Junias) as “prominent among the apostles.”
  • For Paul and the early church: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Ordination and Eucharist in the early church 

  • Ordination as we know it did not exist in the early Christian church.
  • The “Twelve” were not ordained by Jesus at the Last Supper.
  • (Parenthetical remark: I find it comical and sadly stupid the way even some “informed” people posit events at the Last Supper based on what they see in the 15th century mural painting in Milan created by Leonardo da Vinci.)
  • The person who presided at Eucharist in early Christian communities was the head of the household or the leader recognized by the community.
  • Even when important visitors, like Paul,  came to visit and address the community – an early form of “apostolic visitation” – the person who presided at Eucharist was the community leader.
  • We know of course that women were heads of households and the acknowledged leaders in early Christian communities.

Women and ordination in later church history

  • There is now abundant historic evidence that right up into the late Middle Ages women in the church were ordained to diaconal, presbyteral and episcopal ministry. (See for instance The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination by Gary Macy)
  • In a great number of Christian communities today women are ministering as ordained ministers.
  • And of course there is an ever-increasing number of Roman Catholic women who are now ministering very effectively as women priests.

There is no valid excuse

for

Vatican patriarchy, misogyny and opposition to women’s ordination in the Roman Catholic Church.

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Vatican Rules: Ordaining Women Priests a Crime Like Sex Abuse of Children


As David Gibson and others have reported, new rules the Vatican is expected to issue soon on penalties for priests who sexually abuse children will also put the ordaining of women in the same category of the most serious crimes under church law.

So let me see…..the official institutional response to sexual abuse by male priests is to abuse and denigrate women who are priests and any male priests who support them.

Curiously MISSING in the new Vatican legislation is any ecclesiastical punishment for all those bishops who have condoned and covered-up sexual abuse: like for instance Cardinal Bernard Law, still living in grand style in Rome.

Posted on by Dr. John A. Dick

RIP William R. Callahan: Champion of Social Justice


Rev. William R. Callahan, an international leader in movements for social justice, peace, and reform of the Roman Catholic Church,

died on Monday, July 5th in Washington, DC

In 1976, together with Dolly Pomerleau and Jesuit Bill Michelman, he founded the Quixote Center, where – as he put it – “people could dream impossible dreams of justice and make them come true.”

In 1980, Bill was silenced by the Jesuits on the issue of women’s ordination, but resumed his public stance a year later. 

In the late 1980s, he founded Catholics Speak Out, a project of the Quixote Center that encouraged lay Catholics to take adult responsibility for the direction of their church.

In 1989, the New England Province of the Jesuits, at the direction of the Vatican, threatened Bill with dismissal unless he severed his ties with the Quixote Center, Priests for Equality, and Catholics Speak Out, and returned to Boston.

He was dismissed from the Society of Jesus in the early 1990’s. 

Over the years, Bill guided many projects that the Quixote Center initiated.  These include: New Ways Ministry, a gay-positive ministry of advocacy and justice for lesbian and gay Catholics, the successful Karen Silkwood case on nuclear safety issues (completed by the Christic Institute), and Equal Justice/USA – a project opposing the death penalty.

Bill, far better than many Catholic leaders, understood the tension between laws and justice. Laws vary from time to time and place to place. Justice is unconditional. Laws are real but justice is a spirit that haunts laws and those who make and enforce laws.

People with enough power and influence often violate the demands of justice under the protection of the law and persecute the just.

The George W. Bush administration did it every day by unjustly making the poor poorer, by shrinking the size of the middle class, and by  filling the pockets of the rich with perfectly legal tax breaks.

The Christian Right — among whom are far too many prominent Roman Catholics — calls for law and order but makes hardly any mention of the biblical demands for social justice: justice for people forced to move to a foreign land to squeeze out a meager living. Justice for people caught in the poverty of inner-city life. Justice for people forced to work for below-subsistence wages and with no health care.

The God of forgiveness, mercy, compassion, and JUSTICE shines like a bright spotlight on the hypocrisy of those who, under the cover of God and in the name of Jesus, oppress the most defenseless people in our society.

In the Gospels the only time we see an angry Jesus is when he shows his anger at the hypocrisy of religious authorities who made a living denouncing sin while thriving in and concealing their own corruption. And they did it all, like those bishops today who cover-up sexual abuse of children, in the name of God.

A prophet is not someone who sees the future but a man or woman who warns about the consequences in the future of a present evil.

A prophet hears the call of justice as a human cry for help and the beating of a human heart.

Let us thank God for prophets like William R. Callahan and may we be inspired and encouraged by his example and memory.

 

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What Rome Never Understood: From Power and Control to the Reign of God


The Roman crucifixion of Jesus is the iconic and ironic symbol of today’s deeply troubled Church.

 

A brief meditation about Sacred irony

 

With cruel mockery, the Romans labeled Jesus “King of the Jews.” The crucified Jesus proclaimed for all time the essence of genuine Christian belief: the Reign of God — the Way of Jesus —  is not about the strong-arm rule of power and control.

In the Reign of God the weak are strong. God’s Reign —  rule of Jesus —  invites and extolls  self-giving, patient listenting, tolerance, understanding, and forgiveness.

Some Christians just never seem to hear or understand what authentic belief is all about.

Christianity is about the powerless power of the Reign of God. And that powerless power reigns wherever the questioning, the least and the most undesirable are favored while the most orthodox and the most powerful are put on the defensive.

When the institutional Church degenerates into the nineteenth century Catholic ethos, it regresses into a sinister and deeply un-Chritsian lifestyle.

No. It is not just a question of a diffent theology or a different ecclesiology. It is a matter of poor theology and bad ecclesiology.

The Rule of Rome is not the Way of Jesus.

Without a change of heart, our old instituition risks the loss of of its immortal soul…..

 

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Pope Benedict’s Love Affair


Pope Benedict Has His Eyes on the Past 

Historians will label this papacy as the Ratzinger push to return the Church to a nineteenth century Catholic ethos anchored in authority, sin and priestly ritual.

AUTHORITY

      The 19th century church felt threatened by Napoleon, Garibaldi, Bismarck, modern science and technology.

      Pope Pius IX (“Pio Nono”) reacted by proclaiming himself infallible.

      The monarchical papacy becomes the “traditional” norm.

      Obedience to Rome becomes the sign of authentic and orthodox  Catholicism.

      Pope Pius X launched a CIA-type and well-organized campaign against “modernism.”

      Pius X  proclaimed that “the church is essentially an  unequal society…comprising two categories: the Pastors and the flock.”

      The Church exercised iron rod authority through church laws, rules and regulations.

      The church endeavored to control information and even personal thoughts.

      Catholicism became a religion of authority and control.

      The good Catholic was docile and obedient and submissive

 SIN

      Strongly anchored in an exaggerated Augustinian theology, the church saw the world as a place of sin.

      Laws and regulations are established to keep people from near occasions of sin and to discipline and strengthen Catholics.

      Civil society is secular and a wicked world of sin and temptation.

      Regular confession is important and the big sins are ones of sexual impurity.

      The view that civil society (“the City of Man”) is evil is reinforced by anti-Catholicism.

      Protestants became the embodiments of heresy, infidelity, and evil.

PRIESTLY RITUAL

      Priests are ontologically superior to lay people.

      For Catholics the way to the sacred was through priestly ritual and blessings.

      Through ritual and ritual objects, like scapulars and holy medals, one entered into the “City of God.”

      Ritual devotions (often highly sentimental) to the Virgin Mary and the saints become popular.

      God is the hard and demanding task master. The saints are soft and comforting.

      Since the leaders of ritual are also church authorities, ritual reinforces authority.

      Ironically — in a church fearful about sexuality, Catholic rituals and ritual people are feminized in a queer way.

      Jesus is portrayed as a type of effeminate androgynous male. Priests and altar boys are dressed in lace.

 VATICAN II and FRESH AIR

For informed and contemporary-minded Catholics,  Vatican II was a welcomed relief from the negativity, clericalism and triumphalism of the nineteenth century.

 

  • Priority on Incarnation — we meet God in the daily events of  human life

  • Ecumenism: dialogue + integrity of traditions

  • Humility: church always needs reform, responsible criticism

  • Social justice: human rights and justice essential to mission

  • Religious freedom: all people have right to own religious expression

  • Liturgy: Eucharist central, vernacular, importance of Scripture, communal

  • The priest is not the focus but the one who presides at community prayer

  • Participation: bishops in collegiality & lay involvement in decision-making

  • Church is community of equals: brothers and sisters….the People of God

  • Church ministry is an exercise of servant leadership.

 

 

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Brussels Calling


A note sent from an observer located in Belgium……..

 

Reflections about the Storm Over Belgium

As objectively as I can I will sketch my personal reflections about the article by Alexandra Colen about the Catholic Church in Belgium published in her husband’s the “Brussels Journal.” I offer as well some personal reflections, as a practicing Roman Catholic theologian, and an American,  who has lived and worked in Belgium for more than thirty years.

(1)  Alexandra Maria Catherine Colen (born on July 9, 1955 in Dublin, Ireland) is a Belgian politician. She is member of the Belgian Federal Parliament for the Vlaams Belang party since May 21, 1995. She holds a PhD in linguistics, and is known for her advocacy of strict Catholic ethics. She is married to Paul Belien, the editor of the conservative blog the “Brussels Journal”. Within the radical-far-right party Vlaams Belang, Colen is seen as leading the religious conservative wing of the party.

(2)  I find that her article shows her far to the right bias and at times is just plain wrong in what it asserts and what it insinuates.

      a.      She describes Cardinal Gotfried Danneels as “close friend and collaborator” with the pedophile bishop Roger Vangheluwe. Belgium is a small country. Gotfried and Roger went to school together. They are both Belgian bishops. They are both (like most of the Belgian bishops) graduates of the Catholic University of Leuven. Roger Vangheluwe is a pedophile. Gotfried Danneels is not.

      b.     Colen labels Danneels as “the liberal Cardinal.” In fact people who know him (I am among those people) would find him much more centrist in his theology but open-minded. (Personally I am much more liberal than Gotfried but we have mutual respect as theologians because we both really try to be open-minded.) A couple months ago I translated a lecture for him that he later gave in Ireland. The lecture was on priesthood today and I was a bit flabbergasted that it was so “conservative”….. I respect his right to hold a different theology about priesthood than I do…and that respect goes both ways.

      c.      Colen wants to create dissonance and polarization in the Belgian Catholic Church with Danneels as the bad guy and his successor Leonard as the good guy. I understand why she does this: her political party thrives on creating dissonance and polarization in Belgium, with it’s anti-foreigner, anti-French rhetoric and politics. BUT, I don’t buy it in either situation.

      d.     Colen says that Roger Vangheluwe was “the supervising bishop for the University of Leuven.” This is untrue and absolute nonsense. As Archbishop of Malines-Brussels, Cardinal Danneels was the “grand chancellor” of our university. Cardinal Suenens held that position before him. Archbishop André Leonard holds it today.

      e.      Colen spends a lot of time complaining about the sex-ed textbook, ROEACH, that was used in some Belgian Catholic schools. I have not seen it. I do know one of the authors who is a rather level-headed theologian. The only people I have heard objecting to the book are from the radical right. I suspect (but cannot say because I have not seen it) that some people have misinterpreted and overreacted to some images in the book. This is an ongoing problem with any sex-ed. text. The text appeared more than ten years ago. I am quite up on Belgian church developments and the Belgian press….. I never heard much objection to the text. But I have had a lot of experience with sex-ed. materials. Many years ago, when in the USA, I was on a diocesan committee to evaluate religious education and catechetical materials. One year our committee had to evaluate an excellent sex-ed. text. Content and focus were excellent. Ethical perspective was excellent. BUT there were images of a penis slipping into a vagina and images of penises and vaginas disconnected from bodies. I objected that a man is not a penis and a woman is not a vagina. Show, I said, a man with a penis and a woman with a vagina. In the end we prepared a study guide that pointed out the danger (as shown in the pictures), of disconnecting genitalia from human beings…and the danger of disconnecting sexual relations from love, commitment, etc., etc. The text was used very effectively in Catholic schools for some years.

I also remember that Pope John Paul II at the very last minute wanted to cancel the appointment of Kenneth Untner as bishop because some far-to-the-right Michigan Catholics had sent the pope images copied from a  sex ed. program Untner used when he was rector at St. John’s Major Seminary in Plymouth, Michigan. Cardinal John Dearden and Archbishop Jean Jadot flew to Rome and had to defend Ken for what was actually a very good sex information program and had to explain that the images had been taken out of context. I suspect Colen and company are doing the same thing here…..taking things out of context and misinterpreting. Of course, it is also possible that there were a couple stupid images in the book Colen criticizes. (We all can point to good books marred by stupid or idiotic illustrations…) But it is water under the bridge and I will lose no sleep about this. I know a lot….a lot….. of parents of young Belgian children who go to Belgian Catholic schools (my own son went to Belgian Catholic grade school, Catholic middle school, Catholic high school, when these terrible things were supposedly going on) and I have NEVER heard the kind of objections and things that Colen speaks about…..

Did Cardinal Danneels refuse to speak with Alexandra and her “concerned parents”? Maybe. Is this bad? Maybe. Maybe not! Again, years ago when I was head of the religious education department at a Catholic high school, I refused to meet with a right-to-life delegation that appeared in front of the school one afternoon. They were crazy and idiotic rabble-rousers and I wanted nothing to do with them. (That became quite an issue and the diocesan superintendent of schools had to defend me…which he did.) I am and have always been solidly “right to life “but I will not tolerate being used – and abused — by irrational and hysterical agitators….. This is not the way to promote Catholic values in our society.

MY FINAL COMMENT is about Cardinal Gotfried Danneels. People who know me,  know that I hold him in high regard. We have known each other for many years….That being said, if Cardinal Danneels is shown to be guilty of cover-ups and inappropriate behavior as archbishop, he deserves appropriate civil and ecclesiastical sanctions. No one of us is perfect. He deserves what his actions warrant…..If, after serious examination, he is found guilty, I will support that judgment; but I will support that decision with a couple sad tears for an old friend.

We have a lot of work to do in this old church……and we need to do it with faith, open-minds and friendly and honest collaboration.

Jack

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Pastoral Reflections about People Who Exercise Authority in the Church


“He taught with authority, not like the scribes and Pharisees”

Pope Pius VI    —    Pope from 1775 to 1799

 

Authority comes from Latin auctor which means author: the capability to influence people.

Jesus provided the model for Christian authority: service and invitation to live the life of the  Spirit.

 

Historical Evolution of Authority in the Church:

In the second and third centuries authority is identified with trusting and trustworty leaders who preside over and guide the church.

In the fourth to eleventh centuries, authority becomes identified with political authority, now exercised by church leaders.  Monasticism with its stress on moral authority is a reaction against this.

In the eleventh century Gregorian reform (reform against lay encroachments on the church), the papacy claims monarchical authority.

The sixteenth century Council of Trent stresses hierarchical authority.

Vatican I (1870) stresses papal authority, the monarchical papacy, and proclaims the pope infallible.

Vatican II stresses that — in the style of Jesus — authority is for service and should be exercised in a collegial mode.

How we should understand church authority today:

I      The ability to influence and create specific consequences in the life of another, for good public order in the church.  This is impersonal, normative and legal authority. This is necessary but easily regresses into authoritarianism and self-serving mechanisms — often secretive — of institutional power and control.

II    The ability to motivate and transform people based on trusting relationships.  This is operative and relational authority.

 Contemporary reflections:

Good leaders and good followers are good listeners — in contact with reality.

Responsive leadership generates credibility which is the bond of trust that must exist in any healthy faith community.

Secrecy and a lack of tranparency in how leaders and followers make their decisions destroy Christian community.

Polarization in the church is an unhealthy development.

With honesty and transparency we need to focus

on mutual responsibilities, mutual conversion, and mutual collaboration in building and maintaining the church.

Posted on by Dr. John A. Dick

Belgian Police Raid Church Offices


It was inevitable in our hierarchy where secrecy is the rule.    

 

Former Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, Cardinal Godfried Danneels

As reported in the New York Times, Belgian authorities on Thursday, 24 June, heightened pressure on the Roman Catholic Church in a sexual abuse scandal, raiding the Belgian church headquarters, the home of a cardinal and the offices of a commission established by the church to handle abuse complaints.

Police officers arrived at the church headquarters, the palace of the archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, on Thursday morning while the monthly bishops meeting was in progress. The police questioned all of those present, from bishops to staff members like cooks and drivers.

Two truckloads of documents were removed including Cardinal Danneels’ private computer.

Danneels is being accused of covering up 50 pedophile cases.

And Danneels is one of the very best archbishops we have……

The practice of secrecy in the church has to end!