Perhaps it could emerge from the current Roman Catholic synodal movement? I would like to see a Roman Catholic constitutional convention, with a broad selection of lay and ordained members, assisted by historians, theologians, and sociologists.
The task would be three-fold:
First: Draw up a constitution for the Roman Catholic Church, as one of several – very valid and important — Christian traditions. The constitution would clarify that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Christian Community is broader than than just the Roman Catholic Church.
Secondly: Create a new administrative structure, covering all aspects of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical governance, from the bishop of Rome to local bishops and to local parishes.
Thirdly: Clearly establish that the bishop of Rome, the pope, could be a man or a woman and should be elected for a limited term of office by an international body of lay and ordained representatives. She or he would be the chairperson of an international administrative board of directors. Much of the old Vatican bureaucracy could be dismantled.
Under the new Roman Catholic Constitution, there would be no need for a papal electoral college or a smoking stove in the Sistine Chapel. The cardinal electors could be retired and hand in their red hats. The old stove that sent up white smoke when a new pope was elected could be put in a papal museum or simply recycled.
We need to move ahead. Broad-reaching church reform is necessary. But, I would emphasize that church reform is about much more than the necessary structural institutional changes.
Genuine church reform must be primarily about how people experience and live their Christianity. About one’s pattern of life. About how one lives respectfully with others and lives with self respect.
The historical Jesus did not establish or lay down any pattern or plan for church structure. He clearly did imphasize, however, a necessary pattern of life, which we see in the “Sermon on the Mount” found in Matthew 5-7. It is a message of love, compassion, and selflessness. Jesus encourages his followers to love their enemies, to forgive others, and to care for the poor and marginalized.
Paul the Apostle reminds Christians as well, in 1 Corinthians 13, that “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Constructive and effective reformation promotes healthy religion.
For many years I promoted and conducted performance appraisals for church ministers, calling attention to signs of their involvement in healthy or unhealthy religion. I was appraised as well by colleagues.
Healthy religion is grounded in contemporary life with all of its ups and downs. It deals with reality not fantasy.
Unhealthy religion is grounded in fantasy and longings for the “good old days,” which, we know from history, were not so good for a great many people.
Unhealthy religion is anchored in historical ignorance and antiquated and discredited theological understandings. The disciples of Jesus, for example, were men AND women. Women DID preside at Eucharist in early Christian communities. The historical Jesus did not ORDAIN anyone.
Healthy religion builds bridges between people and promotes collaboration.
Unhealthy religion separates people into qualitative classes. It demonizes “those who don’t fit in” and validates hatred and cruelty through racism, misogyny, and homophobia.
Unhealthy religion imposes power OVER people in often dismissive and demeaning ways through abuse, control, repression, and coercion. It uses guilt, fear, and overly-strict rules.
Healthy religion empowers people and promotes love and respect, and compassion and collaboration.
*******
Concluding thoughts for today: As I have now done for several years, starting next week I will be away from my blog for some late spring R&R. I hope to return around mid-June with fresh thoughts. Frankly, I do not want to become just another babbling old man.
For your summer reading I strongly recommend an excellent book by William G. Joseph: An Evolutionary Biography of God: Christianity in a World of Science. It is well worth reading and available on Amazon.
Bill is a Roman Catholic priest, physicist and computer scientist. He is also a very good friend. Bill brings his knowledge and awareness to bear on biblical narratives by looking at them through the scientific knowledge we have today, with attention to the profound human truths they are dealing with. In the process Bill calls us to a deeper and richer contemporary belief. I find his book energizing.
In the preface for a new book about Pope Pius X, pope from 1903 to 1914, Pope Francis has expressed great admiration for his early twentieth century predecessor. “I love Pius X very much, I’ve always loved him,” Francis wrote in the preface to Omaggio a Pio X (Homage to Pius X), a newly published work by Msgr. Lucio Bonora, an Italian priest who has worked for many years in the Vatican Secretariat of State.
I find admiration for Pope Pius X rather surprising. Yes, he enabled children to receive Communion at an earlier age, age 7, and he encouraged people to receive Communion regularly. But he stressed teaching of medieval scholastic philosophy and theology in Catholic institutions, and he condemned “modernist” interpretations of Catholic teachings.
Modernists sought to explain Roman Catholic theology in terms more in sync with contemporary insights from science, philosophy, psychology, and history. They understood that theological ideas are conditioned by the historical circumstances in which they are formed.
Pope Pius X denigrated Scripture scholars who were already stressing that the Bible should not be read strictly as a collection of historical documents because it contains elements of history, religious beliefs, metaphors, and imaginative descriptions of important religious people and events. Pius X also banned women from singing in church choirs. Pope Pius XII (1939 – 1958) — whose pontificate is still being evaluated — greatly admired Pope Pius X and canonized him as Saint Pius X in 1954.
Thinking about popes past and current, I suggest it is helpful to examine the story of the papacy. It has its factual history, but also, from the start, some significant imagined history.
And so, we start from the very beginning… Jerusalem, after the death and Resurrection of Jesus, was the first center of Christian life and preaching. The first Christian community there was led not by Peter the Apostle but by James who was a brother of Jesus of Nazareth. (According to Mark 6:3 Jesus had four brothers and two sisters. This brings up a question perhaps for a future reflection.)
Within ten years after Jesus’ death and Resurrection, Christianity had already begun to spread along the seaways and roads of the Roman Empire, northwards to Antioch, where Peter the Apostle had a leadership role among Hebrew Christians, and on to Ephesus, Corinth and Thessalonica, under the leadership of the Apostle Paul. Paul, originally known as Saul of Tarsus, was a sophisticated Greek-speaking rabbi who, unlike Jesus’ early disciples, was himself a Roman citizen.
Called the “Apostle to the Gentiles,” Paul became an enthusiastic supporter of non-Hebrew Christians. He insisted that the life and death of Jesus not only fulfilled the Hebrew Law and the Prophets but made sense of the world and offered reconciliation and peace with God for the whole human race, not just Hebrews.
And Peter? The Apostle Peter and his wife certainly belonged to the group of young men and women, most in their late teens or early twenties, who were Jesus’ close disciples. Peter, however, was never the first bishop of Rome, because the Christian community in Rome was governed not by a bishop but a group of elders: what today we would call a steering committee. Peter was, however, martyred in Rome during Emperor Nero’s persecution of Christians, which started in 64 CE right after the Great Fire of Rome. Historians put Peter’s death as well as Paul’s death between 64 and 68 CE.
By the second and third centuries, however, we see stories about Peter springing from historical suppositions, legends, and much creative imagination by people like Irenaeus of Lyons (died 202 CE) the influential early bishop in the south of France. Contrary to what some say or think, neither Peter nor Paul brought Christianity to Rome. Before Peter and Paul would have arrived, there were already Christian elders and house churches in Rome. But there was no central administrator. No bishop of Rome. At some point Peter may have been one of these elders. We really do not know for certain.
The Roman Catholic biblical scholars, Raymond Brown (1928 –1998) and John P. Meier (1942 – 2022), were emphatic in their book Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Christianity, (Paulist Press 1983): “There is no serious proof that he (Peter) was the bishop, or local ecclesiastical officer, of the Roman church: a claim not made till the third century. Most likely he did not spend any major time at Rome before 58 CE when Paul wrote to the Romans, and so it may have been only in the 60s and relatively shortly before his martyrdom that Peter came to the capital.”
Long after Peter’s death, the Christian community in Rome did come under the leadership of a single “overseer,” as bishops were called. The bishops of Rome were strongly supported by Emperor Constantine (c.272-337), who needed Christianity to unify his empire. Thanks to Constantine and the religious devotion of his mother Helena, Peter and numerous legends and suppositions about Peter developed in third and fourth century Rome. Constantine built a church — now called “Old St. Peter’s Basilica” — over what was believed to be a burial site with Peter’s bones. Old St. Peter’s Basilica stood, from the 4th to 16th centuries, where St. Peter’s Basilica stands today in Vatican City.
When the Roman Empire began to clearly fall apart in 376, the Bishop of Rome, called “pope” (from the Latin word for “father” papa) began to exercise more civil authority. Then when the Western Roman Empire finally collapsed in 476, the pope took over the clothing, pomp, and ritual of the Roman Emperors. The papal title became Pontifex Maximus — “Supreme Pontiff” — a title that had been held by the Roman Emperors.
The first great acclamation of “Peter as a pope,” did not come, however, until the fifth century. Pope Leo I, pope from 440 CE until 461 CE, greatly contributed to the development of the belief that first pope had been Peter the Apostle. The belief was based on Pope Leo’s his personal devotion and suppositions about Peter. It was not based on any historic evidence.
Certainly, since early centuries CE, there has been a long line of papal bishops of Rome. Some were kind and benevolent. Others were crafty authoritarians or simply immoral rulers.
Pius IX, pope from 1846 to 1878, for example, was one of the crafty authoritarians. For him the most disturbing event in his long pontificate was the loss of the Papal States, which popes had controlled from 756 to 1870. But Pio Nono, as he was known in Italian, was also alarmed about “modern” intellectual problems confronting the church. He laid the foundations for the anti-modernism of his successor Pius X, when in 1864, he issued his “Syllabus of Errors,” condemning liberalism, modernism, and the separation of church and state. Roman Catholicism, he insisted, should be the state religion in all countries.
Wishing to consolidate and regain his papal power, Pio Nono created the Roman Catholic dogma of papal infallibility, which was defined dogmatically at the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) in the document Pastor aeternus. Papal power in grand form.
Three not so exemplary historic popes were Sixtus IV, Julius II, and Alexander VI.
POPE SIXTUS IV (1471-84), established the Spanish Inquisition but had among his accomplishments as pope the construction of the Sistine Chapel and the creation of the Vatican Library. He also was known to have a substantial sexual appetite during his time as pope. He had six illegitimate children, one of them the result of incest with his sister.
POPE JULIUS II (1503-13), called the “warrior pope” because he led the papal army in battle, had all the attributes and corruption of an unscrupulous Renaissance prince. He is now best remembered for commissioning his friend Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. His other claim to fame is that he was the first pope to be afflicted with “the French disease,” syphilis. He got it from Rome’s male prostitutes.
And the all-time winner of course is Rodrigo Borgia, who took the name POPE ALEXANDER VI (1492-1503). He confirmed the rights of the Spanish crown in the New World, especially after the discoveries of Christopher Columbus. But Alexander became one of the most controversial of the Renaissance popes, because he acknowledged fathering several children by his mistresses. In August 1503, the pope and his son, Cesare, began suffering from Malaria. Cesare survived, but Alexander succumbed to the disease. Pope Alexander VI left behind a legacy of corruption and scandal. Although his behavior was typical of Renaissance-era popes, he became known as the embodiment of sexual imorality, lived a lavish lifestyle, and abused his power to improve his children’s futures.
There are, however, two medieval popes whom I do particularly appreciate. The first is Martin V (1417 to 1431), who on December 9,1425 founded the Catholic University of Leuven, my alma mater. Next year we will celebrate its six hundredth anniversary.
The other is Pope Adrian VI (1522-1523) He studied at our Catholic University of Leuven where he was ordained a priest and became, successively, professor of theology, chancellor, and rector. The great Humanist Erasmus was one of his pupils. Pope Adrian VI was resented by the Romans as an outsider. After a pontificate of barely twenty months, Adrian died on 14 September 1523. Poison was immediately suspected.
And the papal story goes on and on…In my life time so far there have been seven popes: Pius XII (1939 to 1958), John XXIII (1958 to 1963), Paul VI (1963 to 1978), John Paul I (26 August 1978 to 33 days later), John Paul II (1978 to 2005), Benedict XVI (2005 to 2013), and Francis (elected in 2013).
The future:
Certainly, high on the list of reforms for the contemporary Roman Catholic Church must be a total reform of the Roman papacy.
How refreshing it would be if the next pope would confine to a museum or sell to theatrical costume shops all the old Roman imperial dress and ritual objects and regalia. Some things could be sold on eBay.
A truly contemporary pope should adopt a more contemporary way of dressing and walking on this earth and implement a shared-decision-making leadership style. The pope should not be an authoritarian monarch.
This week, watching young children playing in our neighborhood, I thought how delightful it would be to see the young children of a married pope, riding their bikes and playing in front St. Peters. Maybe the papal husband and wife could invite local children to an Easter egg roll in front of St. Peters on Easter Sunday afternoon.
Of course, I would like to see men AND WOMEN as popes. But they should be elected for a five-year term of office by lay and ordained representatives of the global church. They could be allowed ONLY one second five-year term. Popes should be understood not as authoritarian administrators but chairpersons of the church’s board directors.
This week’s brief reflection is a follow-up to last week’s. A number of people have asked me to clarify the meaning of faith and how it is related to religion. Yes I have touched on this in the past, but perhaps it is good to review it for followers of my blog new and old.
FAITH IS AN EXPERIENCE: In the Faith Experience people do have an experience of the Divine, often described under various names: God, Creator, Father, Mother, Allah, the Ground of Being, etc. To be open to the faith experience, we need quiet and reflective time.
We are often so busy doing that we neglect simply being.
Sometimes people cannot put a name on their deepest human experiences. I still remember the observation by Dag Hammarskjöld (1905 –1961) who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. He wrote: “God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason.”
And these days I resonate more and more with the words of Karl Rahner (1904-1984) one of the most influential Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century: “I must confess to you in all honesty that for me God is and has always been absolute mystery. I do not understand what God is. No one can. We have intimations, and inklings. We make faltering attempts to put mystery into words. But there is no word for it, no sentence for it.”
BELIEF: Belief is the attempt to put into words the meaning of our Faith Experience. Belief is really theology which is “faith seeking understanding.”
RELIGION: Religion is an attempt to interpret and systematize Belief. Any religion is a system of beliefs and practices that helps people understand and live their faith experience. Religion therefore gives people: rituals, ritual places, ritual leaders, sacred books, sacred places, sacred days and seasons, codes of morality and creedal statements of belief. Religion provides helpful aids – MEANS – that point people to the Divine. That is good and proper. But religion is not Faith. Sometimes religion gets distorted and very religious people can be very ungodly. And all religions go through a four-stage life cycle.
RELIGION LIFE-CYCLE:
(1) They begin with the charismatic foundational state, e.g. the primitive Christian community.
Here men and women had such a vivid lived awareness of the Faith experience that they had little need for institutional structure. They relied on do-it-self and charismatic ways of praying, speaking, and celebrating. Men and women, who were local leaders, presided at Eucharist. It all seemed so very natural and normal.
(2) Then when people started thinking and asking “how do we safeguard what we have and how do we pass this on to the next generation?” the religion entered stage two.
This is the stage of institutionalization: important statements like the Gospels are written down, set ways of praying like official sacramental rituals and gestures are established, and properly authorized leaders are established. Ordination was then created as a kind of quality control mechanism to make certain that the Christian leaders are competent and reliable. Ordination, please note, was not originally about power over people and not about sacramental power!
(3) After some time, the religion enters stage three. I call it the stage of self-focused short-sightedness.
The institutional religion becomes so self-centered and so self-protective that it becomes less a means and path to the Divine and more and more the OBJECT itself of religious devotion. This stage comes close to idolatry.
In stage 3, the religious institution and certain institutional leaders, become religious objects and are treated like IDOLS. People get so involved in acts of religious veneration that they miss or distort the Divine.
(4) When stage three happens, the only solution is REFORMATION.
Reformation demands a serious effort to regain the vision and focus on the Divine – the spirit and life of stages one and two. To recapture the vigor and creative enthusiasm of stages one and two and create new structures and theological explanations to guide contempory believers.
All religions need periodic reformations. The old saying in Latin ecclesia semper reformanda est was true yesterday and is certainly true today: “the church must always be reformed.”
I was at O’Hare airport in Chicago waiting for a return flight to Brussels. A young fellow sitting near me asked if I had ever been to Brussels. I told him that I knew Brussels quite well because I lived in Leuven, which is 15 miles from Brussels. He told me he worked for a multinational and was going to relocate to Brussels. I wished him well and told him that over the years I had known a lot of US expats who worked for multinationals.
He asked what I did, and I told him I was an historical theologian. He stared at me, chuckled and said, “So you are one of those guys who plays word games with official church teachings.” I replied, in a friendly way, that historical theologians don’t play games with church teachings but try to understand what those teachings meant in the past and what they do or do not mean for us today.” He didn’t react, and, at that point, we were asked to get in line for boarding our plane. He headed for his first-class line and waved goodbye.
Church teachings do change – or ought to change – because our knowledge and our understanding of languages, cultures, and human life develops and changes. For example, Adam and Eve were once understood as historic people. Today we realize that the Adam and Eve story in the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Scriptures is not an historical account but a symbolic and cultural creation. It serves as a mythological explanation for the origins of humanity and the presence of sin and suffering in the world. The same thing can be said about the Genesis story of Noah and the myth of the global flood.
People in every age need to examine how they observe and speak about religious beliefs and experiences. That has been my point from my very first post on Another Voice, fourteen years ago. I was inspired by lines from T.S. Elliot’s poem “Little Gidding” – “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.”
Today, we live in a world of tremendous and rapidly developing change. Understandings and realities are changing, whether people are comfortable or not about the new realities. Some people, fearful about change, are working hard to reassert their old, often prejudicial perspectives, creating an increasingly polarized society. Certainly, in the United States, we see a level of socio-cultural polarization that is higher than at the time of the nineteenth century Civil War.
We need a new stress on deep reflection and a new of level of serious conversation.
I have no desire to play word games with church leaders but the conversation we should be having with church leaders and politicians today is this: To what degree do the life and message of Jesus of Nazareth reverberate in your minds and hearts? To what degree does the Gospel guide one’s decision making: celebrating “loving your neighbor as yourself” to the extent that people genuinely care for others, support, and yes even forgive one another. This conversation undercuts racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and all human phobias.
Genuine Christianity promotes a healthy and healing ministry that sustains the individual and collective lives of people who genuinely try follow the way of Jesus.
If the life and message of Jesus do not animate and guide their lives, people who proudly wear the “Christian” label, whether conservative or progressive, are meaningless propagandists and phonies.
Historical theology is anchored in Christian living and examines the experience of faith: the human relationship with God – described under various names such as “Creator,” “Ground of Being,” “the Sacred,” “the Divine.”
Theological understandings – statements of belief — can end up as official teachings (doctrines) when institutional leadership judges them useful guidelines for Christian life and belief. But it is important to remember that all doctrinal statements are time-bound, because language and understandings are time-bound. All doctrinal statements therefore are provisional until a better expression comes along.
Some guidelines for theological reflections:
Look less at the church as an institution and see it more as a community of faith-filled believers. What is happening within your own community of faith? What are the life-issues that really concern your family and friends? What does it mean for you to experience God today? Where do you find your support? How can you motivate and help the women and men in your community to truly minister to each other? What is keeping us from experimenting with new forms of parish life? Perhaps a parish should be a collection of many smaller communities of faith?
Look deeper than the shortage of RCC male priests today and the questions about women deacons and women priests. Let’s look at the meaning of ministry itself. Let’s look at and examine the very idea of ordained ministry, as a ministry by trustworthy ministers. Jesus did not ordain anyone. Christian communities selected their own trust-worthy leaders for prayerful rituals and service.
Years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, ordination was intrduced as a kind of quality control – to assure communities that the men and women who were their leaders were trustworthy and faith-filled leaders. Let’s scratch our heads about new forms of ministry and break out of the old patterns and paradigms. Why not have qualified graduate students — whether male, female, or nonbinary– with recognized faith and ministerial qualifications, helping out in liturgy and service in university parishes? If ordination is desired, could it not be for for two or three years? Does it have to be life-long? Why not ordain people for small or large group parish ministry? A parish could have several smaller “neighborhood churches.” Perhaps a parish could have many part-time ordained ministers who also have “regular” jobs? We can be creative.
Healthy Christianity is rooted in being a healthy follower of the Way of Jesus. So, what does it really mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ today? This raises questions of knowledge and belief. What do we really know about the historical Jesus? He was not white, for sure. More likely dark brown. What about all of those very white, blue-eyed, and rather androgynous images of Jesus that really distort who he was and what he was all about? Was his biological father the Holy Spirit or the man we call Joseph? Isn’t the “virgin birth” more about saying Jesus was a very special and unique person than analyzing the biology of his conception? What if Jesus was gay or a married fellow? Would that make a difference for you? I have long thought that Jesus had a very close relationship with Mary the Magdalene. Would that destroy his meaning for Christian believers? Why? Was Jesus God? Early Hebrew Christians, including St. Paul, spoke with nuance about this. They understood Jesus as the revelation of God’s graciousness and love. And they understood that Incarnation involves all of us. As Jesus says in Luke 10:16, “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” Our humanity is anchored in divinity, whether people realize it or not.
We need to change our conversation and move beyond the old worn-out and repetitive discussions.Changing the conversation means moving from lots of talk to making lots of real changes. And change rarely comes from the top. In my RCC tradition, for example, change usually starts at the grassroots level. People see the need and make the change. The old pattern is proven historically: (1) change is made; (2) change is condemned by church leadership; (3) change endures; (4) leadership allows the change as a limited “experiment;” (5) change becomes more widespread; (6) and finally church leadership allows it as “part of our tradition.”
Creative and critical reflection is not a dangerous activity, and it can be a source of life, because it brings a new focus, a new conversation, a new change, and new life. Moving beyond last year’s language.
On April 4th, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a Detroit, Michigan Catholic bishop, passed from this life. He was 94. Gumbleton became a national religious figure in the 1960s when he was urged by activist priests to oppose the United States’ role in the Vietnam War.
Tom, as friends knew him, was a founding leader of Pax Christi USA and a prophetic leader in the US Catholic peace movement. I first met him when I was a high school student at Detroit’s Sacred Heart Seminary, where he had been a student. We met periodically over the years.
As Robert Mickens, Editor at La Croix International, wrote on April 06, 2024: “Tom Gumbleton was a friend and defender of the poor, the imprisoned, and the sexually abused, as well as those discriminated against because of their skin color, sexual orientation or female gender.”
Detroit’s strongly conservative Cardinal Edmund Szoka (Archbishop of Detroit from 1981 to 1990) and his conservative successors marginalized Gumbleton to the point that he eventually became the pastor of a parish of Detroit’s poorest and most run-down urban neighborhoods. He was still living there in a nearby apartment up to the day he died.
Tom Gumbleton’s death reminded me of the other Michigan Catholic bishop who was also a graduate of Sacred Heart Seminary and a very good friend: Kenneth Untener. On March 27, 2004,Ken, who was Bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, died of leukemia. In many ways he was my hero as well as my good friend. His death on March 27th at age 66 also coincided with my 61st birthday.
When Ken first came to Saginaw in 1980, he introduced himself to the people of Saginaw in the city hall. “Hello, I’m Ken and I’m going to be your waiter.” He loved to tell the following story: One day he was walking down the street toward a church with his genuine $12 shepherd’s staff in hand. “Look, Mom,” cried an 8-year-old girl, “there goes a shepherd,” and indeed Ken was exactly that.
Ken was “one of the few bishops for all those alienated women in the church and for liberal Catholics,” wrote Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese, then editor of America magazine, at the time of Ken’s death. “These people could look at him and say, ‘Yes, there is someone in the hierarchy who is sensitive to our views and is willing to speak out.’ In that kind of prophetic role you won’t get your way most of the time, but you know five or 10 years from now, what people call outlandish may be accepted as normal. He was a point man, and it seems the point man always gets hit first.”
A year before his priesthood ordination in 1963 Ken broke his right leg playing handball. Because he had a genetically deformed ankle, doctors removed the entire leg below the knee. Ken never regretted the amputation. “A deformed leg,” Ken later said “was socially awkward. A wooden leg is not. … You can kid about it. But the experience of my leg was most valuable to me. I think I know something of what it’s like to be the only woman in a room of men or the only black among whites. I know what it’s like to be noticed. I’ve been made sensitive to that.” Nor did the loss of his leg impair his dedication to golf and hockey, games he indulged in with a lively competitiveness throughout his career.
I conclude this meditative reflection with a prayer that continues to inspire and motivate me.
“Prophets of a Future Not Our Own,” was written by Ken Untener in 1979. It was originally written by Ken not as a prayer but as part of a homily to be given by Cardinal John Dearden in 1979, at the annual Mass for deceased priests in the Archdiocese of Detroit, Michigan.
It helps now and then to step back and take the long view. The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection; no pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own.
(Another Voice is returning a week earlier than planned.)
On Tuesday of Holy week, former U.S. president Donald J. Trump said, on his social media outlet TRUTH SOCIAL, that the Bible is his favorite book. He then encouraged supporters to buy his special “God Bless the USA Bible” for $59.99. Trump’s “God Bless the USA Bible” includes copies of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Pledge of Allegiance. It also includes country music singer Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA.” On Good Friday of Holy Week some of Trump’s faithful were saying – to DJT’s delight – that it is Donald Trump who is being crucified today.
The 45th U.S. president is now working very hard to transform the Republican Party into a kind of Church of Trump. Robert Reich, who served as Bill Clinton’s labor secretary, observed on X (formerly Twitter) that “Donald Trump is starting the week by comparing himself to Jesus. Whether he has a messiah complex or is just conning his supporters, he’s playing to a growing GOP faction that wants America to be a white Christian Nationalist state, with Donald Trump as a divine ruler.” I thought immediately about the strongly pro-Trump Christian nationalist movement, the Society for American Civic Renewal. It is known as “SACR.” Some even consider it a sacred movement.
SACR is an exclusive, men-only fraternal order which aims to replace the United States government with an authoritarian extreme Christian nationalism and religious autocracy. Its founders sought inspiration in the apartheid-era South African white men-only group, the Afrikaner-Broederbond. SACR is open to new recruits, provided they meet a few criteria: the potential member must be male, a “trinitarian” Christian, a heterosexual, an “un-hyphenated American,” and can supportively – meeting their far-right criteria – answer questions about Trump, the Republican Party, and Christian Nationalism.
SACR was founded by Charles Haywood, U.S. businessman, far-right commentator, and chair of the New Tomorrow Political Action Committee, formerly called Unify Carmel. It is a conservative education pressure group in Carmel, Indiana.
The SACR website describes the organization, which even has a lodge in Moscow, as raising leaders to “counter and conquer” the “poison” of “those who rule today.” SACR uses a cross-like insignia, described on the website as symbolizing “sword and shield” and the rejection of “Modernist philosophies and heresies.” SACR membership is by invitation only, and excludes women, LGBTQ+ people, and Mormons. It is closely associated with the Claremont Institute, a far-right conservative think tank based in Upland, California.
The institute has been a strong defender of Donald Trump, ever since Joseph Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election. And, as Michael Bender wrote in the New York Times this year on April 1st, “Mr. Trump’s political creed stands as one of the starkest examples of his effort to transform the Republican Party into a kind of Church of Trump.” And on the Saturday before Easter 2024, Trump shared an article on social media with the headline “The Crucifixion of Donald Trump.” Christian nationalism in DJT style.
A friend asked recently what is wrong with Christian nationalism. Certainly, between now and the next U.S. presidential election on Tuesday November 5, 2024, we will be reading and hearing a lot about it.
I am a U.S. citizen and a committed Christian but I strongly object to Christian nationalism. It is anchored in an anti-democratic notion that the United States is a nation by and for Christians alone; and it threatens the principle of the separation of church and state. Separation of church and state, I would emphasize, is good for the church and good for the state.
Christian nationalism leads to discrimination and violence, circumventing laws and regulations aimed at protecting a pluralistic democracy, with protections for all people.
There is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is about power not belief.
Christian nationalism is hardly just a USA phenomenon. I have doubts that he is really a Christian, but another big contemporary Christian nationalist is Vladimir Putin. He has greatly increased the power of the Russian Orthodox Church and maintains close contact with Moscow’s Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. Kirill has blessed the war in Ukraine as a “holy war” and claims that God is on Russia’s side. Hundreds of Orthodox priests in Ukraine and elsewhere, however, have accused Patriarch Kirill of “heresy” for his warmongering. Nevertheless, on March 27, 2024, the World Russian People’s Council (WRPC), an organization chaired by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, published a new document that further aligns the Russian Orthodox Church with Vladimir Putin’s political regime.
And a final example of contemporary Christian nationalism is Victor Orbán, the autocratic leader of Hungary, who has urged Christian nationalists in Europe and the USA to “unite our forces.” Orbán met with Donald Trump in mid March 2024 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Trump heaped praise on Viktor Orbán while hosting the Hungarian prime minister at Mar-a-Lago. “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” the former president told a crowd gathered at his Florida resort. Trump added that the European autocrat is “a noncontroversial figure because he said, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss and … he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”
Donald Trump’s comment reminded me of the observation by Desiderius Erasmus (c.1466 – 1536): “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
(This week, Holy Week 2024, I conclude my look at the seven sacraments.)
In ancient times, olive oil was commonly used for medicinal purposes. It was applied to injuries to hasten the healing process. In Luke 10:25-37, for example, Jesus describes the compassionate Samaritan who pours oil, and wine, on the man who was beaten by robbers and left for dead.
Jesus told those whom he healed that their faith had saved them. One could say his ministry was “faith healing,” but with no pejorative connotations. In the synoptic Gospels, Matthew records fourteen instances of healing by Jesus. Mark records six instances. In Mark 6:13, for example, Jesus sends the disciples out and they anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. Luke, traditionally said to have been a physician, recounts thirteen instances of healing. In John’s Gospel, we find three key healing accounts: the healing of a nobleman’s son who was at the point of death; the healing of a man at the sheep-gate pool in Jerusalem; and the healing of the man born blind.
The ministry of healing was an important ministry in the early Christian communities. In New Testament apostolic letters we find a number of examples. In his letter to the Corinthians, written c. 53 CE, Paul mentions that some members of the community have the gift of healing (1 Corinthians 12:9). In the Epistle of James, traditionally attributed to James the brother of Jesus and written before 62 CE, James gave instructions to the Christian community about the ministry of healing: the elders (presbyters) were to be called and were to pray over the sick person and to anoint the man or woman with oil in the name of the Lord (James 5:14-16).
In a letter from the third century theologian Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 220 CE ), he mentions a Christian who cured with blessed oil. There are no other surviving healing texts from the third century. Liturgical documents from the fourth century, however, indicate that the oil blessed for those preparing for baptism was also used for curing spiritual and physical sickness. And there is a prayer for the blessing of oil for strengthening and healing in the early Christian document called “The Apostolic Tradition,” dating most likely from about 375 to 400 CE. The document was once thought to be the work of Hippolytus of Rome, and was dated before 235 CE when Hippolytus is believed to have been martyred.
Up until the eighth century CE, anointing the sick was a widespread practice. It was done by Christian people for their relatives, by men and women with a reputation for healing, and by monks, nuns, and priests. Especially noteworthy, however, is the fact that anointing of the sick remained primarily a lay practice.
Indeed, blessed oil had long been regarded as a substance through which people could be healed. But there had been no official ritual for anointing the sick. That changed in the ninth century.
The blessing of the oil became more solemn and more restricted. It was reserved to the local bishop on Holy Thursday. And the anointing of the sick became a strictly clerical ritual. Most significantly, however, the anointing with blessed oil became an end of life experience, due no doubt to the high mortality rate and the fear of death, at this time.
The sacrament of the sick gradually lost its general healing dimension and became part of the “last rites” before death. Therefore, it came to be called “extreme unction” or “final anointing.” Many people who might otherwise have benefited from the sacrament avoided it or waited until death was imminent before requesting it. It had become indeed a priestly ritual for the dying person.
Reacting to the Protestant Reformation, the sixteenth century Council of Trent stressed that that anointing of the sick is a true sacrament, that it had been established by the historic Jesus, and that it was especially intended for people in danger of death. Trent stressed that only priests were the “proper” ministers of anointing.
The Second Vatican Council (1962 – 1965) reclaimed the original meaning of the Sacrament of Anointing that emphasizes the concern and care of the Christian Community and the healing power of Christ. It is intended not just for the end of life but for any time of serious illness or special need. The Council said as well that “extreme unction” should more fittingly be called “anointing of the sick” because by the 1960s it had become clear that the purpose of the sacrament had originally been for the sick and not just for the dying. The bishops at Vatican II also acknowledged – especially noteworthy — that this sacrament was not a strictly clerical ritual until the ninth century.
My contemporary reflections: I very much resonate with the words of my, now deceased, sacramental theologian friend, Joseph Martos: “The only genuine way forward is to look away from ritual and to look instead at what is ritualized, that is, to look at life rather than liturgy and, indeed, to look at the communal lives of people in the church.”
Today we already have communal liturgical rites, in which the theme and focus are healing. I envision anointing rituals performed by ordained and non-ordained ministers/chaplains for people in hospitals, under hospice care or in homes. And more particularly, I would like to see regular informal rituals performed by parish nurses and lay ministers who regularly visit the sick
Happy Easter 2024.
Easter is our hope and encouragement to live in the Spirit of Christ. To live and act as Jesus did.
In often think about the words of the Christian humanist, Desiderius Erasmus (1466 – 1536) who lived for a few years in Park Abbey very close to where my wife and I live:
“If you just keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don’t do it, and it won’t happen.”
Jack
PS: I will be away from my computer for two weeks and will return on April 18.
Celebrating the arrival spring today – and thinking about Holy Week — I am posting this week’s reflection a couple days earlier than usual.
Our understanding of priests, bishops, and deacons has changed dramatically in the church’s long history.
After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the disciples of Jesus (c. 4 BCE – 30 or 33 CE) understood ther role as one of ministry and service to others. Sent out to spread the Good News of the Way of Jesus, they were called “apostles” from the Greek word apóstolos, meaning “one who is sent out.”
In the earliest Christian communities men and women were apostles. There was a variety of ministries; but ordained priesthood was not one of them. Contrary to what one occasionally hears, the historical Jesus did not ordain anyone at the Last Supper. In the medieval period, many thought he did. But ordination did not exist in his lifetime.
The letters of Paul, written between 48 and 62 CE, mention a variety of charismatic gifts which can be thought of as ministries benefiting the local Christian community, even though the ministers were not ordained in our sense of the word. For example, members, who could teach, taught. Those who were good organizers administered community affairs. Those who had the gift of prophesy could speak out and tell the community what they needed to hear, as faithful followers in the way of Jesus.
We know as well that men and women who were heads of households presided at the Lord’s Supper (Eucharist); and hosted the gatherings in their homes. In Romans 16, Paul greets women leaders such as the deacon Phoebe, the apostle Junia, and the married apostles Priscilla and her husband Aquila. Clear evidence that women were respected leaders in the emerging Jesus movement.
As Christian communities developed, ministries and the ways of training and appointing ministers evolved to meet changing cultural conditions and changing social needs. Presbyters, from the Greek presbyteroi, were community elders. Supervisor overseers (later called bishops) from the Greek epískopoi had oversight and offered guidance in community affairs, and deacons, from the Greek diaconoi, were helpers, entrusted with assisting people in the community by caring for widows, doing charitable work, catechizing, and assisting in baptisms.
The approval and blessing of the community for diverse ministries was indicated by the laying on of hands. These ministries included preaching, prophesy, healing, working miracles, speaking in tongues, and interpreting what was said in tongues (see 1 Corinthians 12:12-30, Ephesians 4:11-12, Romans 12:4-8; and 1 Corinthians 12:4-11). None of the men and women exercising these ministries were ordained. Acts of Apostles, written between c. 90 and 110 CE, mentions the laying on of hands for elders or presbyters, but here it was a form of blessing for those in ministry. In the Hebrew tradition, the laying on of hands was practiced when a father would impart a blessing to his children (see Genesis 48:14-15). We also see Jesus do this: He lays hands on children and blesses them.
In the first three centuries of Christianity, therefore, we have no direct evidence of what would later be called an ordination ceremony. By the end of the third century, however, Christianity had a clear organizational structure headed by presbyters, supervisor-overseers (bishops), and deacons. Initiation into these orders was accomplished through a rite of ordination that inducted a person into a local office in a particular community.
It is important to clarify that ordination at this time was NOT about passing on some kind of sacramental power. As my former professor the “Dutch theologian” Edward Schillebeeckx once said about liturgical leadership in the past: “You led the liturgy because you were the leader of the people. You didn’t lead the liturgy because you were ordained to have the power of consecration.” Ordination was a blessing on the minister and an assurance to the community that the ordained man or woman was competent, a genuine believer, and trustworthy. There is ample evidence that in the West women were ordained as deacons and abbesses well into the Middle Ages. Women continued to be ordained deacons in the East and were ordained to a variety of ministries. Many contemporary scholars agree with Gary Macy, professor of religious studies at the University of San Diego, who argues that, during the first twelve hundred years of Christianity, women were also ordained as presbyters and bishops. I find the arguments in Macy’s book The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination well-documented and convincing.
It is very important to note, however, that in the 12th century ordination changed from its earlier understanding as a blessing for different ministries in service for a specific community to a bestowal of sacramental power “to confect” (make it happen) the sacrament of the Lord’s body and blood. The ordained now belonged as well to a higher social class. The classless and egalitarian church of early Christianity had disappeared. History is important.
The Council of Trent, held in three separate sittings between 1545 and 1563 in Trento in northern Italy, issued several doctrinal pronouncements about ordination, reacting of course to the Protestant Reformation. The Tridentine bishops declared as required Catholic belief that ordination was a sacrament personally instituted by the historic Jesus. The Council of Trent stressed that the sacramental power of ordination was passed on through the tactile laying on of hands, understood as “apostolic succession” going back to Jesus’ “ordination of the apostles as the very first bishops” at the Last Supper. Today we would say that apostolic succession is not about a tactile laying on of hands but about passing on faith, witness, and ministerial leadership from generation to generation.
The Council of Trent stressed as well that ordination brought about an ontological change in the ordained person – a change in the very nature of the person — which elevated the ordained to a level above the laity, leaving an indelible mark on the person forever. The Tridentine bishops emphasized that bishops have the fullest and highest degree of “sacramental power.” They forgot or were ignorant about the fact that the historical Jesus did not exercise power over people but empowered them them to care for others.
Thinking about Trent, one should not forget of course the influence that medieval feudalism still had on the church at that time. There were three estates: the nobility, the clergy, and the peasantry. Bishops, in strongly patriarchal feudalism, held positions of power as feudal lords and as advisers to kings and nobles. Bishops generally lived with the same hierarchical powers, ornate dress, and luxuries as the nobles.
Ordination is a ceremony that celebrates the beginning of a professional life of ministry. It could be much more flexible than it is today and open of course to men and women, married and unmarried, and of whatever sexual orientation. It could be for a specific number of years or life long.
What is celebrated in an ordination ceremony is not getting power over other people or one’s being elevated above the non-ordained. It is about making a commitment and responding to a call to preach the Gospel and care for others. It is about being of service to others, as genuine and credible ministers: helping others grow in and with the Spirit of Christ.
Thinking about ordination and pastoral ministry today, I would like to see some creative changes.
I would like to see ministerial appointments – ordinations — extended to religious educators, youth ministers, pastoral counsellors, social workers, and others, whose faith and competence are well recognized. Perhaps some would only be ordained ministers for just a few years, and then others would carry on their ministry.
Youth ministers for example could be ministers of confirmation.
Pastoral counsellors could be ministers of reconciliation.
Religious educators and youth ministers could preside at small group eucharists.
Social workers could be ministers of the anointing of the sick during house calls and hospital visits as well as presiders at small group eucharists in residences for the elderly.
I am sure there are many other creative ministry possibilities.
[A few friends have written that they miss my comments about contemporary issues. I understand that. But I would strongly suggest that we cannot deal effectively with today’s issues without a correct understanding of what TRULY happened yesterday. Please bear with me. The history of marriage is a good example. And that history is Christian history not just “Roman Catholic history.”]
During the first three centuries of Christianity, when Christians married, they did so according to the civil laws of the time, in a traditional family ceremony, and often without any special “church” blessing on their union. There was no liturgical ceremony for marriage, as we saw for Baptism and Eucharist.
The usual marriage custom was that, on the wedding day, the father handed over his daughter to the groom in her own family’s house. The bridal party then walked in procession to her new husband’s house for concluding ceremonies and a wedding feast. The principal part of the ceremony was the handing over of the bride, during which her right hand was placed in the groom’s and the draping of a garland of flowers over the couple to symbolize their happy union. There were no official words that had to be spoken and there was no ecclesiastical ceremony.
In the late fourth century, it became customary in some places in the Eastern Roman Empire for a priest or bishop to give his blessing to the newly wedded couple either during the wedding feast or before it. Priests or bishops were not in charge of, nor did they conduct the ceremony. Their presence was not necessary for the marriage to be valid.
Throughout the seventh century, Christians could still get married in a purely secular ceremony. By the eighth century, however, liturgical weddings had become quite common in the Eastern Empire, and they were usually performed in a church rather than in a home.
In the Western Empire, however, marriage developed along quite different lines.
The first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne (748 – 814 CE), initiated legal reforms in his empire, in both church and civil government. In 802 Charlemagne passed a law requiring all proposed marriages to be examined for legal restrictions, such as previous marriages or close family relationships, before the wedding could take place. Clandestine marriages were a problem, especially in matters of property ownership. Interestingly, Charlemagne himself had five wives in sequence, numerous concubines, and at least 20 children via his wives and concubines.
By the eleventh century, all marriages in Europe effectively came under the jurisdictional power of the church. It became customary to hold weddings near a church, often in front of the church, so that the newly married couple could go inside immediately afterward to obtain a priest’s blessing. But the priest did not officiate at the wedding. And…it was not until the twelfth century that a church wedding ceremony was conducted by the clergy. But marriage was still not considered a sacrament.
It was also in the eleventh century that celibacy became mandatory for priests in the west. Before that time many priests were married but they were encouraged not to have sexual intercourse with their wives. The last married Pope was Adrian II (pope from 867–872 CE), who was married to Stephania, with whom they had a daughter. There were two big reasons for the imposition of celibacy. First, there was a belief that the historical Jesus was a virgin and that therefore priests should be virgins. But there was a second important reason. Priests’ wives were starting to become too influential and threatened male clerical power in the institutional church.
At the urging of popes and councils, a kind of monastic austerity was gradually forced upon the clergy as a whole. Pope Benedict VIII in 1018 formally forbade priestly marriages. That prohibition was solemnly proclaimed by the First Lateran Council of 1123. The rule, however, was not easy to enforce.
In the thirteenth century, marriage was often viewed by church leaders as a remedy against the desires of the flesh. Many church authorities, like Albert the Great (1200 – 1280), the teacher of Thomas Aquinas (1225 -1274), considered sexual desires themselves if not sinful at best dangerous. Thomas Aquinas stressed that virginity was preferable to marriage. In his Summa Theologiae (sometimes called Summa Theologica) he wrote, “By the example of Christ, who both chose a virgin for his mother and remained himself a virgin, and by the teaching of the Apostle [i.e. Paul] who counsels virginity as the greater good.”
By the early thirteenth century, however, marriage came to be viewed as one of the church’s seven official sacraments. This was confirmed by the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1213, the Council of Florence in 1439, and was reaffirmed by the Council of Trent, meeting off and on from 1545 to 1563. Nevertheless, the bishops at Trent condemned the still ongoing practice of some priests getting married and strongly declared that Catholics had to believe that virginity and celibacy were superior to marriage.
Today many Catholic theologians and canon lawyers say it is better to let the legal regulation of marriage be a matter of civic control, without denying that church weddings are important communal celebrations or that Christian marriages are sacramental. And…marriages are sacramental because two baptized people make a commitment to each other. They are the “ministers of the sacrament.” The priest is an official witness. But what then about two baptized same-sex people who make a marriage commitment to each other? Is not their marriage also sacramental?
Times change. We acquire new knowledge and new insights about our human identity. In many respects we have better biblical and historical perspectives on the past. Our understandings evolve. Accepted patterns of human behavior do change.
My friend, who completed his doctorate in theology in Leuven in 1994, Todd Salzman and his colleague at Creighton University, Michael Lawler, have a new book coming out in May: Pope Francis, Marriage, and Same-Sex Civil Unions.Todd and Michael argue for the organic development of Catholic sexual teaching to recognize the morality and sacramentality of opposite-sex and same-sex marriage.
Contemporary pastoral ministry confronts a number of issues and concerns. Some have been resolved in other Christian traditions but remain problematic in the Catholic tradition, because many in church leadership have difficulty understanding that all church doctrines are time-bound and provisional.
The Greek word, agápē, is usually translated as “love” in the New Testament. It really means care or caring. When Jesus tells his followers to love one another, as we read for instance in John 13:34–35, he is telling them to care about each other and to take care of one another.
Jesus never said it mattered if someone was gay, lesbian, trans, or straight. Agápē is not a feeling word. It is an action word. Loving and committed people are bound together in agápē.
In the New Testament there is no description of a ritual or ceremony associated with Penance or Reconciliation. The only ritual of forgiveness known to the earliest Christian community was Baptism. Today in fact, biblical scholars view just about all the texts that speak of a call to repentance as a call to Baptism, and moral rectitude after Baptism. Penance was seen as part of Baptism. There was no separate sacrament as we have it today.
The early Christians clearly understood that Jesus began his ministry with a call to repentance (Mark 1:15). To those who showed sorrow for their sinfulness he announced that they were forgiven by the power of God (Luke 5:18–26; 7:36–50). When asked how many times people should forgive one another, Jesus said, in effect, “every time.”
By the second century, Bishop Ignatius Theophoros of Antioch (died c. 110) and other second-century bishops continued to speak of personal correction and praying for others as a means of combating sin. Polycarp the Greek bishop of Smyrna (69 – 155) wrote that pastors should be compassionate and merciful to the sheep in Christ’s flock who went astray.
Later in the second century, however, there was a new development. There could only be one penitential reconciliation after Baptism, for the serious sins of apostasy, murder, and adultery. The public sinner would have to confess sins to the bishop. During liturgies, the public sinner had to sit behind the community and wear penitential clothing. The public sinner was not allowed to stay for Eucharist and had to leave after the Gospel.
By the third century, a general pattern for the public reconciliation of known sinners began to appear in many Christian communities. Those who wanted to rejoin the community went to the bishop and confessed their error. But before they could be readmitted to the ranks of the faithful they had to reform their lives. They had to perform works of repentance, fasting and praying, and giving alms to the poor to show that their repentance was sincere. The period of their penitence could be a few weeks or a few years depending on the penitential customs of their community. In effect serious sinners were thrown out of the community: excommunicated. When their time of penance was over, the bishop imposed his hands on their heads as he had done after their Baptism.
There were extremes in interpretation. The rigorists claimed that excommunication for sins like apostasy and adultery should be permanent.
Penance, by the late fourth and fifth century, became a very public matter. But it was still normally received only once in a lifetime. The majority of Christians, however, felt no need for public penitence. They were not great saints but they were not great sinners either. During this time, therefore, we see a new development especially in Ireland.
Christianity first came to Ireland in the fifth century, around 431 CE. Missionaries, most famously including Saint Patrick, converted the Irish tribes to Christianity. The Celtic practice of Penance became the seeking of private spiritual advice. Devout Christians were encouraged to personally confess their shortcomings to a spiritual “guide” or “physician” who would give them direction in works of prayer and repentance. The person to whom they went, note well, was not necessarily a priest. Confession could be made to a layperson, but was usually to a monk or a nun.
Penitential books containing rules concerning Penance were also first developed by Celtic monks in Ireland in the sixth century. They gave lists of sins and the appropriate penances prescribed for them. They became a type of manual for spiritual guides. The number of penitential books and their importance is often cited as evidence of the particular strictness of Celtic spirituality in the seventh century. Depending on the penitent’s social status, a penance could be harsher or more lenient. For example, if a member of the clergy murdered a person, how long he had to fast depended on his position in the hierarchy. A bishop had to fast for twelve years, a priest or monk had to fast for ten years, and a deacon had to fast for seven years. And no matter the clergyman’s status, they were defrocked.
In the twelfth century, the rules changed. Only priests could listen to the confession of sins. Only priests had the “sacramental power.” But fortunately, people could receive the sacrament of Penance many times during one’s life. The formula that the priest used after hearing a person’s confession changed as well. What had been “May God have mercy on you and forgive you your sins” was changed to “I absolve you from your sins.” Thomas Aquinas, with his limited knowledge of the early centuries of Christian life, mistakenly asserted that the changed formula was in fact an ancient formula.
It was also in the twelfth century that the understanding of “purgatory” developed. Medieval theologians said sins were forgiven but that, after death, sinners’ souls still needed to be cleansed before they could enter heaven. Purgatory was suggested and presumed to be a place of a cleansing or “purgatorial fire,” outside the gates of heaven, to enable the deceased to achieve the holiness necessary for them to enter the joy of heaven.
At the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, the Western Church defined, for the first time, its teaching on purgatory, but the Eastern Orthodox Church did not adopt the doctrine. [Much later, Popes John Paul II (1920 – 2005) and Benedict XVI (1927 – 2022) wrote that the term “purgatory” does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence. But neither pope could acknowledge that “purgatory” was simply an imaginative thirteenth century conjecture.]
In any case, it was in the fifteenth century that indulgences — from the Latin verb indulgere meaning “to forgive” or “to be lenient toward” — were introduced as a way to reduce the “days” of purgatorial punishment one had to undergo before entering heaven.
One could get an indulgence for saying special prayers, visiting holy shrines, performing good deeds, and later by contributing money to the church. The main funding for the early stages of building St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, for example, came from the sale of indulgences. The German Dominican friar Johan Tetzel (c.1465 – 1519) gathered indulgence money for the St. Peter’s building project. Although it is now disputed, the old legend was that Tetzel had said: “When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”
When Pope Leo X (1475 – 1521) excommunicated Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) from the Catholic Church in 1520, the bill of excommunication also condemned forty-one of his ideas, including six on indulgences and twelve on penance.
In the mid-16th century, the bishops at the Council of Trent (1545 – 1563) stressed private confession to a priest as the approved approach to the sacrament of Penance. In fact, Trent’s bishops – not always historically aware ecclesiastics – stated that private confession dated back to the early days of Christianity. They simply presumed that the historic Jesus had created the sacrament of Penance as they understood it.
The Council of Trent’s medieval conception of sin and its remission through the confession of guilt and the performance of penitential works lasted into modern times because the Catholic Church, for a long time, retained its medieval cultural form, while the world around it changed.
The Roman Catholic approach to Penance began to change after the Second Vatican Council (1962 – 1965) when the name of the sacrament was changed from Penance to Reconciliation, and the rite allowed for a meeting of priest and penitent that was more like counseling than confession.
How should Christian communities practice Reconciliation today? People do need to acknowledge their sinful behavior and seek forgiveness. But forgiveness also requires reconciliation.
I suggest that at the local parish level, Christian communities should devote resources and personnel to focus on conversion and reconciliation about racism, misogyny, and homophobic discrimination. They should also focus on reconciliation within families: between husbands and wives, between parents and teenagers, between brothers and sisters who are angry with each other, and perhaps even between extended family members.
Sacramental forms and ministers can be adjusted to fit contemporary needs and circumstances. Such a ministry of reconciliation would require specially trained men and women as Ministers of Reconciliation. Then indeed the local Christian community would truly exercise sacraments of Reconciliation.
Another Voice 