Saturday, August 27, 2011

Evangelical Catholicism on display in Spain (Post #156)

Exerpt from the National Catholic Reporter:  Big Picture at World Youth Day: 'It’s the Evangelicals, stupid!'

by John L. Allen, Jr.

World Youth Day offers the clearest possible proof that the Evangelical movement coursing through Catholicism today is not simply a “top-down” phenomenon, but also a strong “bottom-up” force.

Defining Evangelical Catholicism

“Evangelical Catholicism” is a term being used to capture the Catholic version of a 21st century politics of identity, reflecting the long-term historical transition in the West from Christianity as a culture-shaping majority to Christianity as a subculture, albeit a large and influential one. I define Evangelical Catholicism in terms of three pillars:

• A strong defense of traditional Catholic identity, meaning attachment to classic markers of Catholic thought (doctrinal orthodoxy) and Catholic practice (liturgical tradition, devotional life, and authority).
• Robust public proclamation of Catholic teaching, with the accent on Catholicism’s mission ad extra, transforming the culture in light of the Gospel, rather than ad intra, on internal church reform.
• Faith seen as a matter of personal choice rather than cultural inheritance, which among other things implies that in a highly secular culture, Catholic identity can never be taken for granted. It always has to be proven, defended, and made manifest.

I consciously use the term “Evangelical” to capture all this rather than “conservative,” even though I recognize that many people experience what I’ve just sketched as a conservative impulse.

Fundamentally, however, it’s about something else: the hunger for identity in a fragmented world.

Historically speaking, Evangelical Catholicism isn’t really “conservative,” because there’s precious little cultural Catholicism these days left to conserve. For the same reason, it’s not traditionalist, even though it places a premium upon tradition. If liberals want to dialogue with post-modernity, Evangelicals want to convert it – but neither seeks a return to a status quo ante. Many Evangelical Catholics actually welcome secularization, because it forces religion to be a conscious choice rather than a passive inheritance. As the late Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris, the dictionary definition of an Evangelical Catholic, once put it, “We’re really at the dawn of Christianity.”

Paradoxically, this eagerness to pitch orthodox Catholicism as the most satisfying entrée on the post-modern spiritual smorgasbord, using the tools and tactics of a media-saturated global village, makes Evangelical Catholicism both traditional and contemporary all at once.

Evangelical from the Bottom Up

“Evangelical Catholicism” has been the dominant force at the policy-setting level of the Catholic church since the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978. If you want to understand Catholic officialdom today -- why decisions are being made the way they are in the Vatican, or in the U.S. bishops’ conference, or in an ever-increasing number of dioceses -- this is easily the most important trend to wrap your mind around.

You’ll get Evangelical Catholicism badly wrong, however, if you think of it exclusively as a top-down movement. There’s also a strong bottom-up component, which is most palpable among a certain segment of the younger Catholic population.

We’re not talking about the broad mass of twenty- and thirty-something Catholics, who are all over the map in terms of beliefs and values. Instead, we’re talking about that inner core of actively practicing young Catholics who are most likely to discern a vocation to the priesthood or religious life, most likely to enroll in graduate programs of theology, and most likely to pursue a career in the church as a lay person -- youth ministers, parish life coordinators, liturgical ministers, diocesan officials, and so on. In that sub-segment of today’s younger Catholic population, there’s an Evangelical energy so thick you can cut it with a knife.

Needless to say, the groups I’ve just described constitute the church’s future leadership.

Once upon a time, the idea that the younger generation of intensely committed Catholics was more “conservative” belonged to the realm of anecdotal impressions. By now, it’s an iron-clad empirical certainty.

Case in point: A 2009 study carried out by Georgetown’s Center of Applied Research in the Apostolate, and sponsored by the National Religious Vocations Conference, found a marked contrast between new members of religious orders in the United States today (the “millennial generation”) and the old guard. In general, younger religious, both men and women, are more likely to prize fidelity to the church and to pick a religious order on the basis of its reputation for fidelity; they’re more interested in wearing the habit, and in traditional modes of spiritual and liturgical expression; and they’re much more positively inclined toward authority.

To gauge which way the winds are blowing, consider women’s orders. The study found that among those which belong to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, considered the more “liberal” umbrella group, just one percent have at least ten new members; among those which belong to the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, seen as the more “conservative” group, a robust 28 percent have at least ten new members.

For the most part, it’s a mistake to diagnose this trend in ideological terms, as if it’s about the politics of left vs. right. For today’s younger Catholics, it’s more a matter of generational experience. They didn’t grow up in a stuffy, all-controlling church, so they’re not rebelling against it. Instead, they’re rebelling against a rootless secular world, making them eager to embrace clear markers of identity and sources of meaning.

Among youth, Evangelical Catholicism usually becomes ideological only if the older generation paints them into a corner, demanding that they choose sides in the church’s internal battles. That tendency, alas, seems equally pronounced on the left and the right.

Evangelical Catholicism and World Youth Day

For sure, not all the youth gathered in Madrid this week are Evangelicals. I’ve covered five World Youth Days, and it’s my observation that you can generally identify three groups: A gung-ho inner core; a more lukewarm cohort, who don’t think about religion all that much, but who still go to Mass and see the faith as a positive thing; and those who are just along for the ride, perhaps because their parents would pay for WYD but not spring break in Cabo. (These are usually the kids outside playing hacky-sack and eating ice cream during the catechetical sessions.)

Pastorally, I’ve always thought the aim was to nudge a few young people from that second group into the first, and from the third group into the second.

That said, the Evangelicals clearly set the tone. World Youth Day is perhaps the lone international venue where being faithfully, energetically Catholic amounts to the “hip” choice of lifestyle. To be clear, this passion isn’t artificially manufactured by party ideologues and foisted on impressionable youth, like the Nuremberg rallies or Mao’s Red Guard brigades; it’s something these young believers already feel, and WYD simply provides an outlet.

In that sense, World Youth Day is the premier reminder of a fundamental truth about Catholicism in the early 21st century. Given the double whammy of Evangelical Catholicism as both the idée fixe of the church’s leadership class, and a driving force among the inner core of younger believers, it’s destined to shape the culture of the church (especially in the global north, i.e., Europe and the United States) for the foreseeable future. One can debate its merits, but not its staying power.

In the real world, the contest for the Catholic future is therefore not between the Evangelicals and some other group -- say, liberal reformers. It’s inside the Evangelical movement, between an open and optimistic wing committed to “Affirmative Orthodoxy,” i.e., emphasizing what the church affirms rather than what it condemns, and a more defensive cohort committed to waging cultural war.

How that tension shakes out among today’s crop of church leaders will be interesting to follow, but perhaps even more decisive will be which instinct prevails among the hundreds of thousands of young Catholics in Spain this week, and the Evangelical generation they represent.

That’s the big picture in Madrid, whatever the individual brush strokes end up looking like.

Sources includehttp://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/big-picture-world-youth-day-it%E2%80%99s-evangelicals-stupid
http://ncronline.org/users/john-l-allen-jr
http://www.madrid11.com/en
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelical_Catholic
http://www.scolopi.org/eng/quienessomos/testi/Robert_Schreiter_ENG.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marie_Lustiger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II
http://www.salesianoscam.org/pas_juv/pjlima09/IIFABIO/3.%20ANIMACION%20VOCACIONAL/3.1%202009%20NRVC-CARA%20Study%20on%20Recent%20Vocations%201.pdf
http://www.lcwr.org/
http://www.cmswr.org/

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Editorial casts new light on Washington's John Paul II Cultural Center (Post #155)

An NCR editorial

Excerpt from the National Catholic Reporter: $34 million loss was a theft from the poor


The John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., a colossal and vapid manifestation of episcopal arrogance, will take on a new identity and purpose thanks to the recent purchase by the Knights of Columbus, who plan to turn it into a shrine to the late pope.

Exactly how the Knights will manage to fund the ongoing operations of a facility that has been a financial nightmare during its 10-year existence has yet to be announced. But the Knights have enormous resources from the insurance it sells to its 1.8 million members. We trust that the organization’s members have means of letting the leadership know if it doesn’t like what it’s doing with their money.
Unfortunately, such is not the case for Catholics in the Detroit archdiocese who, when the deal is finalized, will be left with a loss of $34 million.
They had no say in the matter when their former archbishop, Cardinal Adam Maida, decided to commit to loans and loan guarantees to a personal project for which he could not raise sufficient funds. He only managed to raise $67 million, $8 million short of the final $75 million construction costs. That amount was far short of the funds needed to endow the place to assure its ongoing operation.

So Maida simply dipped into diocesan coffers, and also borrowed from the Allied Irish Bank $23 million for which the archdiocese is responsible, to keep afloat a losing papal attraction more than 500 miles from his own archdiocese. John Paul personally selected Washington as the site when originally approached by Maida about the idea for a cultural center.

Some have tried to soften the understandable outrage over Maida’s use of church funds for his personal ambition by saying that the initial investment was made in better times, prior to the global economic crisis and when the archdiocese’s other investments were doing well.

The reality, however, is that while the Detroit metro area includes rather affluent suburbs, the city of Detroit has for a long time been one of the poorest U.S. cities by many measures. Since 2000, the archdiocese has closed more than three dozen schools, and more than 60 parishes have been either closed or merged.

Let’s just say $34 million would have gone a long way toward aiding the lives of the poor.

This, indeed, was a theft from the poor, a crime made more egregious by the fact that Maida felt free to use the people’s money to his own ends without consulting anyone. The episode represents the worst side of the hierarchical culture that remains above accountability. This was the prince serving the image of his king, no questions please. And when the boondoggle was finally uncovered and the natural questions posed, the only answer forthcoming was: “We just don’t talk about our investments.”

It is heartening to learn that Archbishop Allen Vigneron, upon taking charge in 2009, immediately went about a thorough review of finances and reform of structures that should lead to much wider consultation and transparency about financial matters in the future.
Perhaps Detroit’s loss will serve for a while as warning to other princes in the hierarchy that it is time to see service to the church as something other than sitting atop tiny kingdoms in which whatever the bishop says or wants to do becomes the law of the day. It would be far more encouraging were we to begin hearing voices speaking -- in light of the depressing run of sexual and financial scandals that Catholics have lived through as a result of bishops’ poor decisions -- of the need for deep reform of the clerical/hierarchical culture.

Sources include
http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/34-million-loss-was-theft-poor#comment-247152
http://jp2cf.org/_index.php
http://www.aodonline.org/AODOnline/SharingtheLight+18708/CulturalCenterSale.htm
http://www.kofc.org/en//index.html
http://www.kofc.org/un/en/insurance/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Maida
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bmaida.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Irish_Banks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Henry_Vigneron

Saturday, August 13, 2011

WYD indulgences: Rome fiddles while we burn (Post # 154)

Excerpt from The National Catholic Reporter: Bulletins from the Human Side

by Eugene Cullen Kennedy on Aug. 12, 2011

The sex abuse crisis among priests and other church personnel has now exploded like napalm across the entire Catholic world. New revelations tell an old story almost every day: that of the suffering of its victims, often in secret and compounded by ecclesiastical ineptitude, inattention, or moral insolvency.
How Irish that the scandal has turned into a brawl between the Irish prime minister and the Roman authorities he has criticized for their handling of the crisis. That reveals that Ireland's green is really base metal beneath the phony gilt of its claims to be the land of saints and scholars.

Things are even worse in Germany where the non-stop revelations of sex abuse have stunned the world and embarrassed Pope Benedict XVI who, while all this is going on, is busily promoting a return of the church to the pre-Vatican II period that served as the incubator for a tragedy that has brought immeasurable grief to innumerable people, including the priest sex abusers themselves whose lack of inner growth led them into lives of pseudo-celibacy that made them seem virtuous to their bishops when they were actually menaces to their people.

Now, while Catholics burn with the shame inflicted on them by this crisis, Rome seems so pre-occupied with re-entering the shadowed yesterday of clerical domination that it has no interest or enough spiritual energy to lead the church to a fresh dawn of self-examination and self-cleansing.
The latest example is found in promising plenary indulgences to those who fulfill certain conditions when they attend World Youth Day in Madrid, Spain, Aug. 18-21. BUT WAIT -- as they say on infomercials -- partial indulgences are also available to those who pray appropriately during this gathering even if they cannot attend in person.

As part of the Reform of the Reform, this unfortunately rings like a church bell with associations of selling such indulgences during medieval times when bartering for grace and time off from Purgatory with cash scandalized Catholics and helped bring on the Reformation.

It is worse now because it confounds the mystery of Time and Eternity in which Roman officials should have an interest even if they lack any understanding of them. These are also critical variables in the human experience of the sexual abuse crisis and confusing them can only increase the suffering of the victims of sex abuse.

Indulgences are airily explained as lessening the temporal, or in time, punishment for sin that actually takes place beyond the reach of time, or the application of its parameters, in eternity. Where there is time, as Joseph Campbell has expressed it, there is sorrow. That is a function of time not of eternity and indulgences make no sense, sold 500 years ago or promised now, as any kind of spiritual currency to bail us out of the timeless sphere of eternity.

Time, with its sorrows, has a meaning for sex abuse victims because there is no time in the human unconscious; it is always NOW. That means that a wound that was seemingly inflicted on a certain date breaks free of the calendar's grip and is always as fresh in the victim as the moment it was inflicted. There is not statute of limitations for victims and their suffering, no plenary or partial indulgences to relieve them of their wounds.

By turning back to the concept of giving "Get Out of Purgatory" cards to those who attend an event in time demonstrates how estranging to human experience this return to another age really is. The world's victims are burning with suffering that is not cured by the passage of time and Rome fiddles, neglecting to plumb the depths of the still continuing sex abuse crisis, while talking irrelevantly in the language of plenary and partial indulgences.

To promise to relieve the so called temporal punishment due to sin through indulgences while failing to understand the timeless nature of the suffering of the sexually abused makes one think that Nero may have had it right when he did the fiddling while letting Rome do the burning.

[Eugene Cullen Kennedy is emeritus professor of psychology at Loyola University, Chicago.]

Sources includehttp://ncronline.org/blogs/bulletins-human-side/wyd-indulgences-rome-fiddles-while-we-burn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Kennedy
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1103187.htm
http://www.madrid11.com/en
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12575a.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Roman Catholic priest booted for supporting women's ordination (Post #153)

Excerpt from The Christian Post: Priest Dismissed From Order for Supporting Women's Ordination

A Catholic priest has been dismissed from his order for refusing to relent in his campaign to have women ordained as priests, and his case again sheds light on the divisive issue of women and church leadership.

The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a member of the religious order Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, received a letter notifying him that he was being dismissed due to his “disobedience” and “defiant stance” in regard to official church policy on the ordination of women.

The letter, signed by the Rev. Edward Dougherty, Superior General for the Order, reads:

“Your numerous public statements and appearances in support of the women’s priests movement continues to create in the minds of many faithful the view that your position is acceptable to our Church.”

The warning, Bourgeois’s second, was dated July 27, 2011, and informed Bourgeois that he had 15 days to rectify the situation.

“They want two words: I recant,” Father Bourgeois told the New York Times. “And they can’t get that out of me. For me, the real scandal is the message we are sending to women: you’re not equal, you cannot be priests, you’re not worthy.”

Bourgeois, a priest for nearly 40 years, insists that the Roman Catholic Church’s argument for the exclusion of women from the priesthood “doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.”

In a written response dated August 8, the Catholic priest wonders, “Who are we to reject God's call of women to the priesthood?”
Citing Galatians 3:28, Bourgeois continues, “How is it possible for us to say that our call from God, as men, is authentic, but God's call of women is not?”

Bourgeois, who was automatically ex-communicated in 2008 for attending a women’s ordination, said to recant would make him a liar.

“This I cannot do, therefore I will not recant. I firmly believe that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is a grave injustice against women, against our Church, and against our God.”

In the letter, Bourgeois did not appeal to remain a part of the order, but that the Roman Catholic Church would allow women who feel called by God to be ordained as priests.

The issue of women leading in the church is not one exclusive to Roman Catholics, as it has also been debated in Protestant churches for years.
Although various Christian denominations allow and encourage women to be ordained in roles of leadership, some churches are adamantly opposed to women preaching from the pulpit, finding it offensive and against Scripture.

However, a 2009 survey by the Barna Group shows that women in mainline Protestant churches were making gains when it comes to attaining leadership roles.

The Barna Group survey reveals that between the early 1990s through 1999, only five percent of the senior pastors in Protestant churches were women. That figure doubled to 10 percent in 2009, according to the survey.

Most of these women, 58 percent, were affiliated with Baptist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian denominations.

Sources include:http://www.christianpost.com/news/priest-dismissed-from-order-for-supporting-womens-ordination-53615/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/us/09priest.html
http://www.soaw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=413
http://www.maryknoll.org/
http://ncronline.org/news/bourgeois-dismissal-came-after-two-years-dialog-says-maryknoll?page=1
http://www.barna.org/

Thursday, August 4, 2011

600 child porn photos among those found on Canadian Bishop's laptop Post #152)

Excerpt from The Canadian Press: 600 child porn photos among those found on Bishop Raymond Lahey’s laptop

Thursday, August 4, 2011

A disgraced Roman Catholic bishop betrayed little emotion Thursday as an Ottawa court was told his laptop computer contained hundreds of pornographic images of young boys — including photos of torture. Bishop Raymond Lahey was in the Ottawa courtroom for sentencing in a child-porn case that has rocked his former Nova Scotia Diocese of Antigonish. The 71-year-old cleric pleaded guilty in May to importing child pornography and voluntarily went to jail to begin serving time even before a formal sentencing. A second charge of simple possession remains against Bishop Lahey, but it is expected to be withdrawn as part of the plea deal when he is formally sentenced later this year.

Close to 600 photos, mostly of young teen boys, were found on Bishop Lahey's Toshiba laptop and a handheld device when he was stopped at the Ottawa International Airport in September 2009. An Ottawa police detective told the court Thursday that the images ranged from soft-core nude shots to far more gruesome photos. “Some of them were quite graphic,” Det. Andrew Thompson said. “There were images of nude boys, but there were also torture and stuff like that.”

As Det. Thompson answered questions from the witness stand about the contents of Bishop Lahey's laptop, the Bishop sat quietly, his right hand trembling slightly as he ran his index finger along his mouth, chin and the cleft between his nose and upper lip. He was dressed in a grey sport coat, khaki pants and a tan shirt with the top few buttons undone. He wore glasses and his grey hair was neatly combed and gelled.

Bishop Lahey's lawyers argued that the bishop may not have seen every image stored on his laptop's hard drive, since some of the pictures may have come from pop-up windows he never actually looked at. They also tried to make the case that the 588 images of child porn were just a small fraction of the 155,000 or so photos on his computer. Police found three child-porn websites in Mr. Lahey's web-browsing history, Det. Thompson said.

Bishop Lahey is scheduled to return to court in December. His lawyer, Michael Edelson, has asked the judge to reschedule that appearance for an earlier date.

Sources include
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/atlantic/torture-photos-among-those-found-on-bishop-laheys-laptop-court-told/article2119607/
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/blahey.html
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/danti.htm