Origins of Radical Catholicism II: The Father McGlynn Story, part I

Jeremiah Cummings was succeeded as pastor of Saint Stephen’s Parish in New York City by his hand-picked assistant pastor, Father Edward McGlynn (1837-1900) who is one of my favorite characters in the history of American Catholicism.  McGlynn was one of ten children of a young widow who had been left—fortunately—in comfortable circumstances by her Irish immigrant husband.  Archbishop John Hughes was a family friend and oversaw the education of the McGlynn children and when Edward expressed a desire to become a priest, he was sent to study in Rome.  McGlynn initially studied at the Urban College of the Propaganda, but when the Pontifical North American College opened in 1858 he transferred there earning doctorates in Theology and Philosophy.  He finished and was ordained a priest in 1860, returning to New York and becoming assistant priest to the progressive Reverend Thomas Farrell at Saint Joseph’s Church in Greenwich  Village.    Farrell was an abolitionist and had a particular concern for the social welfare of African Americans.  Normally a priest with McGlynn’s background would be expected to have a quick rise in the hierarchy and it would not have been unreasonable for McGlynn to foresee a career for himself as a bishop, perhaps even Archbishop of his native New York, but the influence of Farrell set him off on a different track where he became far too radicalized to ever advance in Church politics, even in a dawning era where a liberal party would emerge in the American hierarchy. 

McGlynn viewed pastoral work very widely—not just the narrow sacramental and educational ministries common to priests of the day, but concern for the social welfare of parishioners and non-parishioners as well—and he threw himself into parochial work to the degree that his health broke after only two years. He was given a recuperation period in Europe but he had drawn the attention of Father Cummings who,  asked the Archbishop McGlynn as his associate.  Cummings died and McGlynn succeeded him as pastor.    Under the tutelage of Farrell and Cummings McGlynn had developed some very strong ideas.   There was a circle of New York diocesan priests who were opposed to the “Europeanizing” of the Catholic Church in the United States.  They—like prominent converts Orestes Brownson and Issac Hecker—believed that the American political and social tradition was compatible with Catholicism and did not need to be abandoned for European models that would appear strange, and even dangerous, in the American Republic.  McGlynn was a strong advocate of Public School education and would not build a parochial school at St. Stephen’s.  Instead he became very interested in providing poor children with good vocational training.  Although Saint Stephen’s was a very fashionable Church drawing membership from the at the time small pool of well-to-do Catholics, McGlynn devoted both personal and parochial resources to ministries to the immigrant poor.  It was probably here where he became involved in the Irish Land league.   

The Irish Land League was an organized attempt in Ireland to relieve the Irish peasantry from the burden of the often outrageous rents they had to pay the landlords—mostly British and Irish Protestant Ascendency—for the tenant farms they held.  This league was an eminently respectable organization benefitting the Irish Catholic peasantry but with the leadership coming primarily from the faction of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendency that favored Irish independence.   It effectiveness was a huge threat to the Irish Status-Quo and the Irish bishops, always ready to accommodate their British Masters, opposed it, although much of the on-the-ground organization was provided by the country parish priests.  Incidentally, while the principal targets were the absentee Protestant British landlords, the first landlord to be hit by a rent strike was a wealthy Roman Catholic priest, Canon Burke of Knock (where, I presume coincidentally, the Blessed Virgin and assorted other heavenly types were allegedly appearing just about this time.  They were, by the way, appearing to the peasantry, not the Landlord-priest).  The Land league was strongly supported by Irish immigrant Catholics in the United States, Canada, and Australia and McGlynn became very involved in the cause.  The Cardinal MacCabe of Dublin and the Irish bishops, opposed to the league, communicated to their American counterparts that they should do their part to keep priests and the faithful from adding to the agitation.  To be fair, this was a very complex time in Irish history as not all the movements were dedicated to peaceful objectives and indeee d it was in the midst of this that the English chief secretary for Ireland, Lord Cavendish and the permanent Undersecretary, Thomas Henry Burke, were murdered at the viceroy’s lodge in Phoenix Park.  McGlynn however was not to be stopped in his publicly advocating support for the Irish tenant farmers and as he travelled around the North East speaking on behalf of the Land League he drew the wrath of a number of bishops.  More to come.    
The image today is Saint Stephen's Church (now known as Our Lady of the Scapular and Saint Stephen's) in New York City,

Origins of Radical Catholicism

Several days ago I published a letter (in edited form) that I had received from a liberal voter-motivational group commenting on the issue in Wisconsin with the governor trying to take away collective bargaining rights from Wisconsin State employees.  I had always thought that American Catholics knew the tradition of Catholic teaching on social issues, and in particular the rights of labor to organize, but I am finding out that not everyone went to Catholic Schools as good as the one I went to back in the 50’s and early 60’s.  (I graduated 8^th grade three and a half months before Vatican II opened—so I qualify as a pre-Vatican II Catholic School grad.)  The nuns—the Sisters of Mercy—beat this labor union tradition into us and the good members of the Society of Jesus (these were their pre-liberal years—Father Arrupe, aka Bl. Pedro, was elected General when I was in High School) drove the tradition home as well, even though I was one of the few students to come to their fancy-schmancy school from a working class family.  So I think I will start a new strand on Catholics and Labor to share what the good sisters and fathers taught me. 

The nineteenth century was hardly a time when the Catholic Church espoused liberal principles.  At the close of the eighteenth century the Church got whacked up the side of the head by the French Revolution.  It was not pretty.  Across Europe, the Church lost huge amounts of property in the social reorganization effected by the Revolutionaries, not to mention the countless victims of the guillotine—priests, religious, bishops, and laity—during the more radical phases of the Revolution in France itself.  The chapter (dean and canons) of Notre Dame in Paris—before the Revolution one of the wealthiest Church institutions in Europe—were reduced to such poverty that they had to beg for brooms to clean the cathedral when it was reopened for Catholic Worship in 1801.  Pius VII came to the papal throne as a liberal but his arrest and detention (I won’t say imprisonment; it is too strong a word) in France by Napoleon moved him considerably to the right.  Gregory XVI (other than for his condemnation of slavery and the slave trade) was totally in favor of the ancien regime, and Pius IX, like Pius VII, began as a Liberal but the 1848 revolution that cause him to flee Rome left him an implacable conservative, indeed reactionary.  In other words this was a papacy that was firmly behind Tradition, Authority, and Property.  It has a justified paranoia about the liberté, égalité, fraternité of the Enlightenment and the Revolution it had brought about.  Its commitment to aristocracy, traditional social order and the rights and privileges thereof understood labor to be subordinate to capital while the middle and working classes (and, of course, the poor) were to be entrusted to the “protection” of the aristocracy.  The Church at this time also saw Monarchy as the divinely ordained social order and was highly suspicious of democracy which overturned the idea that authority is from God to his anointed and chosen rulers; Catholic thought rejected the idea of vox populi vox dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God).  This was not an atmosphere in which the rights of labor were about to flourish.

Americans, including Catholic Americans, tended to see things a bit differently.  American Catholics had supported democratic government from the time of our revolution which Catholics—then a minority religion located almost exclusively in Maryland and Pennsylvania—universally supported.  American Catholics had never supported Monarchy, which to them represented the repression of their faith as they knew only the British Crown which had so long put Catholics at legal disadvantage when they weren’t actually being persecuted.  A century of republican government had given American Catholics great confidence in the idea that political authority comes from God through the citizenry not directly to civil officials. Moreover, Catholic clergy—and even a few bishops—supported the rights of the working class out of a genuine pastoral concern.  After all, the vast majority of American Catholics in the late 19^th century were working class and immigrants in search of employment.  The economic-capital class who benefitted from the Industrial Revolution were overwhelming the old (and in the case of Andrew Carnegie and a few others, new) Protestant American aristocracy.  Let’s take a look at the example of one of the more forward looking priests of the period—the Reverend Jeremiah Cummings of Saint Stephen’s Church in New York. 

Cummings was an extremely talented man—a linguist, a musician, and a powerful orator.  He was a close friend of the literary convert to Catholicism (from Calvinism via Universalism), Orestes Brownson, and was himself a noted writer.  Sent to Rome by Bishop DuBois for his education and assigned to the Cathedral on his return, Cummings travelled in the best of circles and in 1848 when he established Saint Stephen’s Parish in what is now the Lower East Side he drew “the better sort” of people to the church by his gifts for preaching and good music.  At the same time, he was a noted social thinker whose “outside the box” ideas on everything from seminary education to social welfare stirred a considerable about of controversy.  Although educated in Rome, he was one of the earlier “Americanist” thinkers who wanted to adapt Catholicism to American political and social models without lessening the doctrinal stringency of the faith—indeed as an Americanist intellectual he and Browning and others—saw the Catholic doctrinal tradition to be just what America needed to give its democratic spirit the rich loam in which it could develop healthy intellectual roots that would guarantee its republican ideals a stable future.  People like Cummings, Browning, and Issac Hecker (another intellectual convert) were able to see the forest of Catholic culture through the trees of Catholic customs ((I won’t’ say traditions for fear of being misunderstood for Catholic Tradition).  They were often misunderstood (and still today often not appreciated) for their ability in forward thinking. Cummings’ keen awareness of American society and Catholic faith let him see (and write and preach) that new solutions to the problems of poverty needed to be found and he used his pulpit as a powerful tool to advance the cause of the working classes.  Saint Stephen’s became known not only for its beautiful music and elegant liturgy, but for social outreach to the immigrant and working poor.  More on this subject to follow—the famous Father McGlynn!!!
The image today is a portrait of the younger Father Issac Hecker, founder of the Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle, or Paulist Fathers

Anti-Catholicism in Post-Civil War America

      I will eventually come back to the topic about Vatican II being under attack from within the Church, but I have noticed that questions of the history of the Church in the United States tend to draw considerably more interest than European Church history or “history in the making” issues.  And so today I want to go back to the subject of the history of anti-Catholicism in the United States.   In earlier blogs we looked at the Charlestown Convent burning, the Philadelphia Riots, the Know-Nothing movement and other episodes in nineteenth century America of prejudice against Catholics resulting in violence and discrimination.  At some point I want to take a deeper look at anti-Catholicism in the pre-Revolutionary colonies, especially Massachusetts, New York and Virginia.  Today however I want to pick up the thread where we had left off with the American Civil War and Catholic involvement in the Lincoln assassination. 

In a certain sense the Civil War was a bit of a draw for Catholics.  On the one hand the remarkable work of the nursing sisters on the battlefields, the diplomacy of Bishop John Hughes of New York, and the Irish immigrant troops that fought for the Union built up the esteem of Americans for the Catholic faith.  On the other hand, the Diplomatic Recognition of the Holy See for the Confederacy, the support for the Confederacy of Archbishop Oder of New Orleans and Bishop Lynch of Charleston, along with refusal of Bishop Elder of Natchez to have prayers said for the President of the United States, and the predominance of Catholics in the Lincoln conspiracy cast Catholicism in an unfavorable light, at least among the Northerners in general and Republicans in particular.

In the years immediately after the Civil War, veterans of the Confederate army organized the original Ku Klux Klan to resist the Northern “Carpetbagger” politicians who were enforcing “Reconstruction” in the South in order to disenfranchise those who had been loyal to the Confederacy and to keep the African American population, almost all former slaves, from exercising their political and civil rights. This “First Klan” (as opposed to the revived Klan, or “Second Klan” of the 1920’s and 30’s did not have a specifically anti-Catholic agenda but that is not to say that there wasn’t strong anti-Catholicism in the Southern United States.  Catholicism was virtually unknown in the South whose population—with the exception of Maryland and Louisiana— was almost entirely Baptist and Methodist Protestant.  Catholicism’s being unknown was both a blessing and a curse.  Catholicism was not a strong threat and thus did not provoke as strong a reaction as it did in places such as Ohio and Indiana where the Catholic-Protestant balance was more delicate with the rural population being Protestant and Catholics often holding the political edge in the cities and larger towns.  But also being unknown, it became the subject of negative myths and stories.

The greater problem, however, was in the North where a rapidly growing Catholic population was a threat to the economic and political establishments.  The fierce Catholic attachment to the Democratic Party with its ties to labor and its openness to immigrants along with the stories of Catholic involvement in the murder of President Lincoln generated a strong anti-Catholicism in Republican circles.  This often worked against the Republican interest such as in the 1884 Presidential campaign when a Presbyterian Minister, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Burchard in a speech at which Blaine was present, declared: “We are Republicans, and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and Rebellion." Blaine failed to repudiate the statement (he probably had not even noticed it) and it ended up costing him the election and returning the White House to the Democrats for the first time since 1856, before the Civil War. 

Even more acrimonious was the Republican cartoonist Thomas Nast.  Nast, a German Protestant immigrant, is best known for his visual creation of “Santa Claus” drawn for an 1863 illustration of the Rev. Clement Clark Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas”  in Harper’s Bazaar, but he had a pathological hatred for the Catholic Church, accompanied by a particular hatred for the Irish.  Nast depicted the Irish as violent drunks and Catholics as dangerous to American liberty.  His cartoons were carried in scores of newspapers and journals across the country. 

Much of the anti-Catholicism of the period had to do with the huge flood of immigrants sweeping in the United States from the end of the Civil War right up until World War I.  Irish (almost entirely Catholic) and Germans (more than half Catholic) composed the largest number of immigrants, but considerable numbers came also from such Catholic populations as Italy and the Austo-Hungarian Empire, including parts of Poland.  While these immigrants were almost invariably relegated to menial work and the poorest of living conditions, it was clear to the old Anglo-Saxon establishment that America was changing and would soon be nation in which they—the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants—would be a political and economic minority.  This put them in a conflict between their traditional intellectual liberalism and their self-interest.  Social evolution would in time create a more homogenous society where the descendents of the immigrants would “Americanize” but in interim fear and anxiety fed stereotypes and  prejudices. 

The image today is one of Thomas Nast's (1840-1902)  anti-Catholic and anti-Irish cartoons

Is Vatican II in Danger: VIII "the new translation."

There is one final entry I want to post on the subject of the liturgical developments of the past several years and the question of whether or not the Second Vatican Council is slowly being undone.  And perhaps not all that slowly!  Then I hope to return to some entries on the History of the Church in America, particularly several blogs on the development of anti-Catholicism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  But before we look at anti-Catholicism with the rise of the Klan and some dirty American politics, let’s deal with one more entry on the subject of the new translation of the Roman Missal that will come into effect this autumn. 

I have seen large sections of the new Missal and I honestly think several aspects of it are an improvement over the current translations.  I also think for various reasons that much of it is a step backward.   Several weeks ago I was doing a workshop at a monastery of Episcopalian nuns and was present for the Service of Holy Communion according to the current Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church in the United States.  Last Sunday, visiting friends out of town I attended their Lutheran Church for the Sunday Eucharist according to the Lutheran Book of Worship.  Both Sundays I had no problem reciting much of the liturgy from memory as the translations used in their various rites are the ICEL translations, or at least close enough to our current translation that there is no barrier to ecumenical participation.  This feature will be lost or greatly reduced as we unilaterally introduce a new translation.  It is a step backward ecumenically. In many ways this is a small issue as most of the prayers affected—e.g. the particular Eucharistic Prayers (canons), prefaces, prayers at the Presentation of the Gifts, and the invitation to Communion are unique to the Roman Rite, but the changes in the Creed, Gloria, and Sanctus give witness to an unnecessary division—not of the substance of our common faith but of an arbitrary expression of that substance. 

The second objection is that this new “translation” is not always as faithful a translation as it toots itself to be and can, in several instances, lead to false doctrine (aka heresy).  The two most serious examples are the Words of Institution and the response to the presider’s greeting. 

In the Words of Institution for the Cup, the Latin phrase “pro multis” is translated “for many.”  Now anyone who has two years of high school Latin would ask: what is the problem with that?  Well there are two problems.  The first is the translation itself; the second is the doctrine expressed.  While “for many” would normally be a good translation of the phrase pro multis  in this case it is a distortion.  The Latin itself is a translation of the Greek in which the New Testament is written and from which these words find their role in the consecration of the wine.  Today few priests know Latin anymore (which doesn’t stop some of them from “saying mass” in it) and virtually none know Greek.  But the Latin pro multis is itself a translation of the Greek ‘oi polloi which means “the many” or “the multitude.”  These terms are inclusive; they affirm the doctrine that Christ’s blood was shed for the multitude of humanity, for all.  If it can be restricted in any way, it would mean that Christ’s blood was shed for the common sort of people, the “great unwashed” as it were.  ‘oi polloi has a sense vulgar or low class sort of people.  The problem is that Latin doesn’t have the word “the” (nor “a”) and thus “for the many” becomes in literal Latin, pro multis “for many.”  I have already mentioned the second objection that this translation produces, the doctrinal danger, of people coming to believe that Christ died for some, not for all.  This Jansenist proposition—that Christ did not die for all—was condemned by Innocent X in the Bull cum occasione in 1653.  It is Catholic doctrine that Christ died for all.  It is no coincidence that the agitation against the current translation has been in great part from Catholic sources in the United States and in Great Britain that have expressed other Jansenist tendencies. With the principle lex orandi; lex credendi  (literally “the law of prayer is the law of doctrine” meaning that the formulae by which we pray shapes the formulae by which we express our faith) we run the risk of Catholics coming to believe that Christ died for many but not for all—that are those for whom Christ did not die—and thus falling into the condemned doctrine of the Jansenists. 

The second problem with the translation is the translation of the response “et cum spiritu tuo” –“and with your spirit.”  I will grant that the translation is faithful on a literal level, but it misses accuracy because it does not take into account the shift of anthropology between the ancient Roman world and our world today.  A more accurate translation, awkward as it may be, can be rendered Dominus vobiscum: The (peace of the) Lord dwell within you.  Though “the Lord dwell within you” by itself is by no means bad, there is the implication of something even deeper, richer.  The same meaning might be conveyed as “the grace of the Lord” or some similar such phrase that implies an indwelling of God by grace.”  Similarly, taking into account the original understanding of the human person from the second- or third-century classical world, the response “et cum spiritu tuo” would better be rendered “and (his peace, or indwelling) within your deepest heart.   The problem is that the translation “and with your spirit” while literal, to the modern mind presents a two tiered world of a material or physical self and a higher “spiritual” self while the classical understanding saw spirit not so much as “soul” in the sense of the immortal or heavenly component of the human person, but as their truest and most authentic, most real, part.  This spiritus dwells within the person, where we would say today—metaphorically of course—in their heart.  It is dangerous to create a two-tiered world of “spiritual” and “earthly” realities as it leads quite quickly to a certain Gnosticism that disdains all but the “spiritual” and this ultimately leads to a denial of both the Incarnation and the Redemption. 

And this leads to the final problem I see with the new translation—not that others may not see other problems of which I am unaware.  But the entire translation effort was intended to create a two-tiered language separating the language in which we talk to God from a fundamentally different language in which we speak to our neighbor.  We should, of course, speak as well as we can to both God and neighbor but the separation of “God language” from “neighbor language” can lead to huge doctrinal problems regarding the sanctity of the world in which we live and the relationships which we have in this world—again, problems affecting doctrines of the Incarnation and Redemption.  I will be the first to say that the current translation needed a lot of work, for style as well as for precision of doctrine but the new translation is highly problematic and reveals a crisis in the modern Church where there is a cultural split that indicates a far more serious doctrinal division beneath.  As a person of faith, I am confident that all works itself out in time; as a historian I think this signals some stormy seas ahead for the Bark of Peter. 

History in the Making--Catholic voice in America today

History is not only the past--it is an awareness we bring to the present.  Even as the recent series i have been writing on Is Vatican II in Danger is History-as-it-happens, there are other things going on as well in which we can see History, and here History of Catholic America--unfolding.  I have recently received the following letter.  I have edited it slightly to take out the more partisan passages (as much as I could without hurting the substance of the letter) but it gives some interesting reflection on the tradition of the Catholic Church in regards to the Rights of Labor as it comes into conflict with contemporary events. 

Dear Friends,

The union-busting legislation of the new Republican Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker, has dominated the headlines for several weeks now. By his own words, the Jesuit-educated Walker has acknowledged a hidden agenda, to diminish the collective bargaining rights of teachers, nurses, snowplow drivers and other state workers, with the ultimate intent of breaking the union. This former county commissioner, in a now notorious prank interview, compared himself to Ronald Reagan and said, "This is our moment, this is our time to change the course of history."

Walker's "moment in history" - paralleling actions taken by Republican governors in other states - marks the beginning of an ambitious movement to systematically dismantle a century of social progress.  As Catholics, we must respond to all those who trample these American values, borne out of the Catholic Social Tradition. Your help is needed today, and into the future, to embark on a crusade of sorts ...for the common good.    

The right of labor to organize - and collectively bargain - is a foundational principal of Catholic Social Justice, first enshrined in Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum. It has been further developed and amplified for over a century by popes, bishops and theologians. Most recently, Pope Benedict XVI addressed labor rights in his 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate.  

Emboldened with an over-reaching confidence from the midterm elections, and led by the one-size-fits-all budget slashing Tea Party philosophy, other states with Republican governors and legislative majorities are in the process of passing similar union busting legislation. Ohio and Idaho are two of the states in a second wave of this ambush. Some Republican led state houses, including those in Indiana, Tennessee, and Florida, appear to be scrutinizing the outcome in Wisconsin before acting. It is also reported that Missouri, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, Maine and Pennsylvania are also considering legislation to limit worker's rights.

With the support of progressives, labor unions have taken a stand for justice in response to Walker's bad faith efforts (he did not campaign on breaking the union).  The views of the American public have become clear.  At least three public opinion polls (USA / Gallup,  Greenberg Quinlan Rossner, NY Times / CBS) have shown that both the citizens of  Wisconsin and people across the country support Labor's right to collectively bargain, by a margin of at least 27%, averaging 60% in support versus 33% in opposition.

At the same time, the Wisconsin Catholic bishops and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have also weighed in. The Wisconsin Catholic Conference has issued a statement that supports labor's right to organize, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has spoken out in solidarity with the Wisconsin bishops.  In the USCCB Statement, Bishop Stephen Blaire of the Diocese of Stockton CA says, "these are not just political conflicts or economic choices; they are moral choices with enormous consequences. The debates over worker ... collective bargaining are not simply matters of ideology or power, but involve principles of justice, participation and how workers can have a voice in the workplace and economy." 

The turmoil in Wisconsin and other States coincides with the budget battles in Washington DC. House Republicans are in a "fire, ready, aim" mode, seeking draconian federal budget cuts that do nothing to address the nation's long-term budget problem, yet cut programs for the most vulnerable in our society today. Speaker of the House and fellow Catholic, John Boehner, speaks of "moral responsibilities" while proposing budget cuts that would eliminate $7.6 billion in support to women and children (the WIC program), $2.5 billion in home heating oil subsidies for the poor, and $4.1 billion on job training programs, to name just a few. These symbolic cuts - which could be paid for by closing corporate loopholes - are not only an assault on the common good, and presumably the morality that Boehner wants to preserve, but are also bad economic policy. The investment bank of Goldman Sachs and conservative economist Mark Zandi of Moody's, who advised John McCain in his bid for the presidency, have projected these cuts would actually hurt the economy and job creation, let alone the people whom it is supposed to serve.

The Massachusetts Catholic Conference has issued a statement in support of working families and the poor that reflects their concerns for the budget cutting frenzy going on across our nation.  The Massachusetts bishops make a pledge to "do all we can ...to help our neighbor's in need." They plead for elected officials, such as John Boehner and all citizens to preserve "for the sake of human dignity, a special place for the vulnerable ...for whom the destination of every dollar is now so consequential."

The union-breaking legislation and the federal budget cuts House Republicans are demanding place an unacceptable and unnecessary burden on working families and the poor. Helping put this in its proper perspective, Newt Gingrich - likely presidential candidate and recent convert to Catholicism who proposed Republicans use the slogan "Jobs not Food Stamps" in the 2010 midterm congressional campaign - has coined the term "replacement conservatism" to describe this multi-front Republican assault on the common good, or as he sees it, on liberalism.

Walker's "moment" in history, Boehner's judgment on "moral responsibility," and Gingrich's "replacement conservatism" represent the strategic zeal brought to a political war being waged by ideologically conservative free marketers. Their goal - under the guise of liberty - is to roll back the social justice progress that defines our nation's growth over the past century. If successful, they would reshape our country and economy to put corporate interests and those of the wealthy first, rather than to serve the needs of people. They do so unapologetically at a point in time when we are facing record poverty and a concentration of wealth that has never been greater. 

If ever there was a time for patriotic social justice Catholics to fight for what we believe in, this is that time. So, we must mobilize our collective efforts like never before and embark on a crusade for the common good. 

What you can do:

1.     If you have a governor or legislature threatening to limit the rights of labor to bargain collectively, call or e-mail them to let them know you support the collective bargaining rights of public employees. Please keep us apprised of your efforts and of what is going on in your state.

2.     Contact your bishop and tell them that you support the Wisconsin Catholic Conference's and the USCCB's statements in support of the public employee's labor unions. Their influence is important in the public square. Ask them to consider doing the same if your state is facing a labor busting bill and to also consider issuing a statement similar to the one issued by the Massachusetts bishops in support of the poor. Please advise us if you learn that your bishops have issued the statement that we are urging them to make.

Thank you for your continued support. Let us all keep one another in our prayers this Lenten Season, particularly our elected officials and those most in need, as we work in pursuit of a more just society.

With warm regards,

Patrick Whelan MD PhD

Suzanne Morse

Lisa Schare 

Steve Krueger

 The image today is Pope Leo XIII whose encyclical letter Rerum Novarum--issued 110 years ago still has much to say for our Catholic values today

Is Vatican II in Danger? VII The Sacred and the Profane of the Liturgy

One of the questions we need to look at as we examine the new translation of the liturgy in the light of the question “Is Vatican II in Danger?” regards the relationship of the Worship of the Church to its mission in society.  Steven Millies, a professor of political science at the University of South Carolina at Aiken wrote an article for America magazine this February past raising a concern about the new translation and its impact on the Church’s mission of calling society to Justice.  Now the first problem, of course, is that not all agree that the Church has such a mission, but it is clear from the Gospels, from the Decrees of the Second Vatican Council, and from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that working for a just society is a constitutive element of the Church’s mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.  Striving for social justice is not a characteristic of Christian life that one can accept or reject.  Some months back Glen Beck warned his listeners “If your Church is preaching the Social Gospel—get out of your Church.”  Well, Mr. Beck is a Mormon and perhaps (and I only say perhaps as I am unfamiliar with Mormon theology) the Book of Mormon doesn’t believe in Good News for the Poor, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ does.  Stephen Colbert, in his testimony before Congress, testified that his passion to defend the rights of immigrants and migrant workers in particular, came from his conviction “that whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me.”  That is in the Gospel of Jesus and, Mr. Colbert, a devout Catholic, takes those words to heart.  Mormons are good people; Mr. Colbert is a good Christian. 

Dr. Millies in his article speaks of the late Monsignor George Higgins, the famous “labor priest,” who headed up the social action department of the Bishop’s conference for decades and then he goes on to cite Monsignor Higgins’ mentor, Monsignor Reynold Hillenbrand.  “The Mass helps us learn our oneness at the altar and to bring that oneness to the other relations of life.” 

As a historian, I have often wonder what brought about the tremendous shift in the American Catholic population from the social conservativism of the first six decades of the twentieth century where it drew back from the Civil Rights movement, open housing, the peace movement etc. to its current commitment to human dignity, rights for immigrants, and social justice?  The liturgy modeled for us the Kingdom of God.  We heard the prophets being read to us in the liturgy.  We prayed together, confessing to one another in the penitential rite our own sinfulness.  At the most sacred moment of the mass, as Christ himself lies on the corporal and in the chalice, we turned to one another and offered one another his peace.  We drank from one cup.  The horizontal dimension of the liturgy formed the cross-bar with the vertical and we understood that one cannot love the God whom we cannot see if we do not love the neighbor whom we can. 

Now those various rites—the prayers of humble confession, the sign of peace, the cup of consecration all remain, but the language surrounding them will be a very elevated language—not the language in which we speak to one another but a “God language, ” an artificial and somewhat stilted language that actually puts God a few steps further from us and leaves more room in our subconscious to divide the world between the Sacred and the secular as if all we must do is render unto God some segment of our lives for there is a firewall between heaven and earth.  Artificial it may be, and terribly dangerous it probably isn’t—but it does betray a mindset of restoring the ancient hierarchies that led to that blasphemous hymn

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

There is a subtle shift in these translations that removes God a few steps from the every day and permits us more room to play unsupervised by heaven in the economic and social playground of our modern world.       

Is Vatican II in Danger? VI Pope Benedict's Approach to Liturgy

Pardon for the interruption in regular postings of the blog but I had a few days of visiting with friends in the Southwest—nice break from winter—and they are the sort of folk who don’t let a moment go by that isn’t scheduled—bluegrass concert, art show, Mexican restaurant, weekly discussion group, church (of course), dinner at home, dinner out—I was never so glad to get on a plane.  All the work I had brought with me, including class preparations remained undone.  But I amhome  again and ready to pick up.   We were discussing some of the reasons for wondering if Vatican II is in danger and we were focusing on the Liturgy.  I am giving a talk next month on the new English translation of the Roman Missal so as I continue my research on this topic, I am sure we will return again to the issue of whether or not this new translation represents a threat to the post-conciliar advances in Catholicism, but for today let’s look at Pope Benedict and his personal preferences for the Liturgy and how they play out regarding “forward” or “backward.”  We have already spoken about the “Reform of the Reform” movement and in particular about a book by the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber calling for a reining in of the Liturgical Reforms initiated by Pope Paul VI.  You may recall that Joseph Ratzinger had written the preface for that book which more or less defines the “Reform of the Reform.”

Benedict is in an uncomfortable position with the liturgy.  He himself has had very limited pastoral experience having been a theology professor and then a Vatican bureaucrat with only a slight interval as a residential archbishop—archbishop of Munich—if being the metropolitan of a large see can even be called pastoral experience.  For most of his years as a priest and even as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, he celebrated mass privately with only a server or his secretaries in attendance.  It can be expected that his own experience of the Eucharist has been focused on the celebrant in his relationship to God to whom the sacrifice is offered and to Christ as whose alter persona he offers it.  It should not surprise us then that his theological reflection on the Eucharist will be different than the understanding of the Eucharist of a person who has normally celebrated the Eucharist in the context of a large community of the faithful who are bringing to the altar a wide variety of hopes, concerns, anxieties, and life experiences.  The theologian or the prelate can be expected to have a more “high” or even ethereal interpretation of the Mysterium while the pastor or the lay theologian (or member of the lay faithful) may have a more “low” or even experiential understanding.  This does not have to be problematic in an inclusive Church. The Eucharist should be understood and appreciated on a variety of levels—the complexity and variety of meaning is what makes it a mysterium.   Nevertheless, Joseph Ratzinger had publically identified himself with both the Restorationist and Reform of the Reform schools before being chosen as pope and it should not surprise us that he is more open to liturgical developments on the right side of the spectrum than on the left.  He long attended conferences on the traditional liturgy at the abbey of Fontgombault,  a daughter house of Solesmes but a monastery which, unlike its motherhouse, never accepted the Reformed Missal of Paul VI.  Cardinal Ratzinger also wrote the preface for Klaus Gamber’s book, The Reform of the Roman Rite, giving an endorsement to Gamber’s position that the liturgical reforms implemented by Paul VI after the Council exceeded the Council mandate and created a flawed liturgy. In his preface to Gamber, Ratzinger showed his hand very clearly

In the place of the liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it, as in a manufacturing process, with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.

 At the same time, however, and this is what makes Benedict’s position so uncomfortable—as pastor of the Universal Church Benedict cannot himself deviate—at least deviate far—from the established norms.  He has yet to publically celebrate the extraordinary form permitted by his own motu proprio Summorum Pontificium.  Claims that he privately does so have not been substantiated.  And the failure of the pope to personally use the traditional rite leaves the extraordinary form without the highest endorsement.  Cardinal Dario Castrillon-Hoyos, a strong advocate of the Extraordinary form—has claimed that the Holy Father wants at least one liturgy each Sunday in every parish to follow the extraordinary form, but this claim has never been substantiated and Castrillon Hoyos is a notoriously unreliable source for an inability to differentiate his dreams and fantasies from fact.  Benedict has, on at least one occasion, celebrated the liturgy of the 1969 missal of Paul VI ad absidem—on the high altar of the Sistine Chapel—but as the papal altar in all four major basilicas in Rome face the people—as they have always faced the people, his public masses are invariably versus populum.  This too must make him uncomfortable as before his election as Pope  he had written extensively on the theological rationales for  celebrating the liturgy while facing in the same direction as the congregation.  Such celebration is impossible in the papal basilicas—where it has never been done—as the main altars are designed in such a way that one cannot ascend much less stand on the people’s side of the altar. 

One area which Pope Benedict has been able to demonstrate his preferences is that he himself only distributes communion directly on the tongue and to kneeling communicants, though in his diocese—the diocese of Rome—communion in the hand and to standing communicants is both permitted and the all-but-universal practice.  This has created a dilemma for some other bishops. While the directives of the American bishops supposedly guarantee communicants the choice of receiving in their hands or directly on the tongue, bishops find themselves unable or unwilling to discipline those priests who refuse to administer the Eucharist into the hands of the faithful.  In some places such as the Dioceses of Arlington Virginia, Lincoln Nebraska, Oklahoma City, and Colorado Springs this is an increasingly common phenomenon.  Priests argue that if the pope can do something in the Vatican Basilica, then they can also in their parish church.  Now, I am just waiting to see the red pradas peeking out from beneath their albs.