Father James Martin and Thoughts on Amoris Laetitia

Father James Martin, SJ

Father James Martin recently published in America magazine the top ten “takeaways” from Amoris Laetitia.  I think they are worth considering and I want to make some comments on them here as Father Martin gives us some great insights into what really is a historic shift in the way we perceive the moral issues affecting contemporary family life.  Here is number one. 

1. The church needs to understand families and individuals in all their complexity. The church needs to meet people where they are. So pastors are to “avoid judgments which do not take into account the complexity of various situations” (296). People should not be “pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid classifications leaving no room for personal and pastoral discernment” (298). In other words, one size does not fit all. People are encouraged to live by the Gospel, but should also be welcomed into a church that appreciates their particular struggles and treats them with mercy. “Thinking that everything is black and white” is to be avoided (305). And the church cannot apply moral laws as if they were “stones to throw at people’s lives” (305). Overall, he calls for an approach of understanding, compassion and accompaniment.

There has been in the past, at least in American Catholic culture, too great an emphasis on the objective moral values without placing them in the context of the every-day-life situations in which real people find themselves.  Despite the admonitions of Saint Paul both in Romans and in Galatians, we seem determined to live under the law—or at least make our neighbor live under the law—rather than under grace.  The old catechism, for all its flaws, reminded us that circumstances qualified the sinfulness of our wrongdoings.  In addition to the act having to be gravely wrong to be a “mortal sin,” we had to know that it was wrong and we had to give full consent of the will to it.   We were conditioned to interpret “know it is wrong” and “full consent of the will” in the most narrow of senses.  In fact it is not enough for a priest or a parent or a nosy neighbor to tell us something is wrong for us to know it is wrong.  To know that it is wrong we must have, if not a full understanding that it is wrong at least that interior conviction of its wrongness.  And full consent of the will is even more complex as a variety of exterior circumstances can seriously affect our freedom to make the best possible choice.  Moral decisions are often not easy and they are even less often “black and white.”  This is not to condone “situation ethics.”  Wrong remains wrong; right remains right but the degree of moral culpability is not a steady quotient.  Even more to the point, however, is that it is not left to us to evaluate the state of another person’s soul and to throw the stones of judgment at those with whose moral decisions we disagree. 

In the first session of the Second Vatican Council Bishop Emil de Smedt of Brugge (Belgium) declared that the Church had to move away from “clericalism, legalism, and triumphalism.”  Some progress on this migration had been made before the long winter’s night of John Paul II and Benedict XVI set in and now Francis seems to be returning to the previous course.  I think it no coincidence that those most upset by the distinctly unjuridical tone of Amoris Laetitia are the same voices that decry the fully conscious and active  participation in the Liturgy and who just get goose-bumps at the thought of a Pontifical High Mass at the Throne in the Extraordinary Form.  In other words, it is all of a package.  Of course this can be interpreted a number of ways.  The contemporary liturgy might be watering down our moral sensibility and diminishing our sense of right and wrong whereas the rubrical rigor of the old Mass kept us all corralled into sinless lives. Or, on the other hand, perhaps the contemporary Liturgy is allowing us to perceive the Gospel in a new light:  one that shows us through the Good Samaritan, through the good thief, through the Pharisee and the Publican, through Jesus having table fellowship with sinners, through the woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee, and even through those gentile magi, that in God’s sight life is not lived in the black and white.  To whichever interpretation one is inclined, it is another clear indication that we have two Churches that are drifting further and further apart. 

Reformation Today! 3



Pope John XXIII in

the papal tiara--John

loved the pomp of the

papacy

 We have looked at the issue of Church reform from a historical perspective and although I have yet to cover the reformations of the 16^th century—Protestant and Catholic—I would like to draw on earlier entries to suggest some current principles for reform of the Church today.

I had mentioned the Carolingian and Ottonian reforms initiated under the authority of the various Holy Roman Emperors at a time when the Church seems incapable of reforming itself.  I had also dealt with the Gregorian and Innocentian Reforms of the 11^th and 13^th centuries which were successful attempts by the papacy to bring about reform.  This is the challenge—who can reform the Church?  Ideally reform comes from the leadership as it did with Gregory VII, Innocent III, and in the sixteenth century the Council of Trent and Popes such as Paul III or Pius V who were responsible for convening the Council and implementing its decrees.  Earlier in the sixteenth century when the Emperor proved not to have the resolve to reform the Church and reform was the last thing that popes such as Alexander VI or Julius II or Clement VII wanted, an effort for reform initiated from within the Church led to a series of reformations led by such figures as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others that shattered the unity of the Church and has left us today with a divided Christianity.  We need to take a closer look at the various Protestant Reformations to understand them better but we do know that we don’t want to further split the Church.  On the other hand, we do want reform and it doesn’t seem to be coming today from the leadership.

When John XXIII convoked the Second Vatican Council it was his aim to bring the Church into step with the contemporary world—not to accommodate the Church to the culture but to renew and revitalize the Church by divorcing it from the world of the ancien regime to which it was still tied in so many ways.   (The ancien regime refers to the world of absolute monarchy and hierarchical dominance that characterized Europe before the French Revolution.)  Good Pope John was a man of the times—willing to look at old things in new ways but he did rather enjoy the pomp of the ancien regime and did not plan to change the trappings of the Church as much as to relieve it of its fear of the world outside the basilica doors.  His reign was short, however, and his successor Paul VI was far more radical.  Paul abolished the Papal Court and its ceremonial, doing away with most of the imperial trappings of the papacy—the scarlet silk trains and fur capes of the cardinals were abolished from Roman ceremonies, the various ranks of papal nobility and ceremonial guards were done away with, and the heavy gilt furniture and red damask wall coverings of the papal apartments were replaced with more elegantly simple décor.  He began to convoke synods of bishops to seek their advice.  On the local level, he radically simplified the worship and ritual of the Church, expanding the role of the laity and putting the role of the priest within the community of believers rather than over it.

It was during the reign of Paul VI that Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles, a convert to the Church and son of an American Secretary of State (and nephew of the director of the CIA) wrote a very important book called Models of the Church.  Professor Dulles suggested that the time had come to move beyond the institutional and hierarchical understanding of the Church and to understand the Church more in terms of its mission and its identity as a community—or actually as a communio which is something slightly different and much more profound than our normal understanding of “community.” 

Building on the patristic Tradition that underlays Catholicism and drawing on the documents of the Second Vatican Council, Dulles gave us new possibilities of how to understand what it means to be Church.  The centuries old emphasis on hierarchy and governance going back to Jesuit theologian Saint Robert Bellarmine in the sixteenth century was pushed to the side in favor of seeing the Church’s mission as being a herald of the Gospel in the world, as the sacred bond of Christ’s own Body, as a servant for humankind, and as the new People of God who were to be the leaven for God’s Kingdom.  Dulles did not mean that there was to be no institutionalism or hierarchy but only that the narrow view of Church in terms of structure had to be widened to draw on the ancient insights of the great Fathers of the Church.

We will continue to look at Dulles insights over several entries, but one central point of Church reform today must be to break the monopoly of institutional structure that has such a stranglehold on Catholic life today.  Yes there is hierarchy.  Yes there is structure.   But what must define us and give us energy is something less about us and more about God’s Kingdom.  The current hierarchical fascination with power and pomp that has returned like a resurgent virus in the Body of Christ is weakening the Church and sapping it strength. 

At the opening session of the Second Vatican Council, Bishop Emile deSmedt of Bruges decried the Church for its “triumphalism, clericalism, and juridicism.”  His cry became the guide for the reforms of the Council as the Bishops made a sincere and honest attempt to fashion a Church that could be an effective witness to the Gospel in the modern world.   But that vision seems to be lost today as so many of the hierarchy and clergy want to refashion a Church of pomp and power, of law and pecking order.  Reform—genuine reform—must come with a recovery of the Spirituality of Servanthood not the piety of power.

Two Churches--To Serve or to Be Served

The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve
Matthew 20:28

I am anxious to move on to the subject of the Gregorian Reform but should finish exploring the need for Reform in the contemporary Church beforehand.  While I love the past and can regale myself—if not others—for hours with historical details, I firmly believe that history is not about the past.  Those interested in the past qua past are not historians but antiquarians.   History, on the other hand, employs the past as a means of discussing and understanding the present and constructing the future.   In the August 1  posting I made a claim that the conflicts over the “correct” interpretation of the Second Vatican Council have left us with a bifurcated Church,  with one branch looking backwards to a world of power and pomp and another looking forward into a new world and a new role for the church in the world.  Avery Dulles wrote in his book The Catholicity of the Church, (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1985.  p. 136):  
... papal primacy in the first millennium was envisaged principally as witness, and was closely linked to what had been called the apostolicity of the Church.  In the second millennium, until Vatican Council II, papal authority was understood as a matter of power, and was linked to the Church’s attribute of unity.  A more recent kind of theology, reflected in the documents of Vatican II, links papal primacy rather with service, and interprets it in relation to the catholicity of the Church.    
      It is an interesting observation and if there is a flaw in Dulles’ analysis it is that applies this three-millennia-schema to papal authority when in fact it actually fits the wider self-understanding not simply of the papacy but of the Church itself.  It was not only the papacy, but the Church itself that understood its apostolic mission to be kergymatic, that is to witness to the Gospel to the ends of the earth. That understanding of mission shifted as the first millennium gave way to the second, the very time of the Gregorian Reform of which we are soon to speak, and not only the papacy but the Church itself saw that its “mark” of unity required to have a universal dominion, i.e. a power that extended over all peoples of all times.  The transition was not a smooth one as well shall see—in fact well into the second millennium there were still voices such as Peter Waldo and Francis of Assisi—who rejected the power model in favor of the witness model.  Nonetheless, the power model won out and the Church fitted its structures to accommodate it.  The papacy picked up the trappings of monarchy, the bishops forged alliances with the princes—indeed were often princes themselves.  The hierarchical nature of the Church became more evident as ecclesial power consolidated itself in the hands of prelates and indeed as the evangelical concept of authority gave way to the notion of “power” in ways that Jesus had explicitly condemned.  The liturgy too evolved in ways that emphasized power and hierarchy.  Ecclesial and social hierarchies mutually collaborated to reinforce each other’s dominance over the working and peasant classes and the Church became hopelessly (though at the time it was seen not as hopeless but as the ideal) entwined with the civil powers to create the ancien regime.  When that regime came tumbling down with the Bastille in 1789 (and the subsequent decade) the Church worked for its reestablishment, despising democracy, trumpeting absolutism and monarchy.  If you recall the various entries in this blog about “Americanism” you will remember that the Holy See really didn’t know how to deal with the unique situation of the American Church with its republican convictions in a world of monarchial Catholicism.   
     And so, according to Dulles, the time has come again to shift the paradigm—this time from power that guarantees the Church to be “one”   (though it never really did) to the catholicity of the Church marked by an upcoming millennium of service.  And here is where the conflict lies.  There are those who cannot let go of the “power” paradigm with its trappings of monarchy and lordly domination.  They love their Tridentine Mass which so clearly displays the hierarchy of persons in ecclesial society.  The Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest based at Gricigliano in Tuscany epitomizes this ecclesiology of obsolescent fantasy and the ostentatious displays of Cardinals Burke, Pell, and Castrillón Hoyos as they travel the world in their ermine trimmed cappae magnae keep alive the hope of those who believe in a world of kings and peasants and hope to see once again throne and altar united and Catholicism supreme throughout the world.  
      There is, on the other hand,  those who recall and regard as prophetic the speech by Bishop Emil deSmedt  in the first session of Vatican II calling for an end to “triumphalism, juridicism, and clericalism”  There are those in the Church today who have a radical vision of a Church putting itself at the service of the poor.  Some, like Mother Teresa, embraced this new vision from a very conservative perspective.  Others, like Dorothy Day came at it from a very left field.  Some, like Archbishop Helder Camara or the American bishop, Bernard Topel just walked away from cumbersome pomp of their office and became witnesses to a truly apostolic Gospel.  Others, like the martyred Oscar Romero had been “party men” who found themselves surprisingly, even against their own expectations, converted to a radical Christianity.  Some were simply hard workers who pitched in and got things done like the four American churchwomen (Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovan) martyred in El Salvador.  Some, like theologian Monika Hellwig,  left religious life in order to live the Gospel even more authentically than would have been possible as a religious.  Others—like Dulles himself—found that religious life and the institution of the Church gave them the better platform from which to make their contribution.   
       There are those who find this paradigm shift to be very difficult, indeed threatening, to accept and who do what they can to resist it.  Gamarelli’s stays in business supplying silver buckled shoes and purple stockings for those curial monsignori who are not about to give up the buttons and bows they’ve dreamed of since their seminary days.  Those members of the Roman Curia who are members of or have influence with the Congregation for Bishops try to insure that men named to the episcopacy today are not too inclined to the service model foretold by Dulles.  Certainly in the United States most bishops are quite friendly to be with and usually without much pretense,  but at the same time are corporation men through and through who will not effect any drastic social reformation within the Church or regarding the Church’s position in society.  But the wheels of history, while they do turn slowly, turn nonetheless and eventually one will come to the Chair of Peter who knows that humble service speaks the gospel more convincingly to our contemporary world than do the circumstances of pomp.  Dulles, I have no doubt, is right—service will mark the Church of the third millennium but we are only in the second decade of that epoch and there is much time to come.  The autocracy and the silk gowns alike will one day appear as ridiculous anachronisms  and the battles over models of the Church will be a historical footnote—at least until the paradigm must shift again. 

History in the Making: Today's Need for Reformation II

The Council of Trent
painting in Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome
note the lady pope in the foreground

After yesterday’s blog on the question of what happens today when (and if) the Church needs Reformation and who has the authority to reform it when (and if) the papacy doesn’t see the need for reform? I was emailed with the question whether I think that the Church today does indeed need a Reformation.  My answer is yes.  That is why I am tracing the history of Reformations.  We are facing many of the exact same questions and issues that we have had to face in the past—internal power-struggles, fiscal irregularities, personal sinfulness and sexual immorality at all levels of hierarchy and laity, doctrinal confusion, authority issues—the list goes on.  It is a key axiom of the history of the Church—ecclesia semper reformans, semper reformanda—the Church, always reforming and always in need of reform. 

I think that the Second Vatican Council was a superb opportunity for Reform in the Church and it held great promise.  I believe that it began to make some significant headway in Reform, but I also believe that its agenda has been abandoned or subject to a sort of ecclesiastical “bait and switch” scam where many of its chief advances have been “reinterpreted” to very different ends than the Council Fathers envisioned.  By the way, this is not a new problem.  Several times in the history of the Church, Councils have had be followed up by subsequent councils to put them back on track.  The best example of this was the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517) which met and passed key legislation that probably could have avoided Luther’s Reformation had the Council been taken seriously.  But its reform legislation was never implemented and it took a subsequent Council, the Council of Trent (1545-1562) to clean up the mess that Lateran V had tried to address and failed. 

It would be easy to say that the problem is the Sex Abuse Crisis, or homosexuals in the clergy, or celibacy, or an all-male priesthood, or lack of doctrinal orthodoxy, or the new liturgy, or the revival of the old liturgy, or whatever one’s favorite bugaboo is and say all that we need for reform is some tough legislation that will whip everyone back to shape or to force everyone out of the Church who doesn’t see things the way that we see them.  But the problem is sex-abuse or orthodoxy or secularism or liturgy or whatever.  Certainly the sex abuse crisis is a problem, but it is symptomatic of a far more fundamental problem.  Liturgical aberrations on either the “left”  or the “right” can be problematic, but they are telling us something of a deeper problem to which we must pay attention.  The lack of fiscal transparency in the Church and the lack of accountability of many clergy and hierarchy in financial as well as other matters is a problem, but more important it is another symptom of more basic things going wrong.  No matter what issue is surfaced, we must face the fact that simple legislation—however strict—will not solve the problem of human nature and original sin. 

We can back up a step from the concrete problems and identify the fact that we have some very different theologies operating today in our Catholic Church.  There is a conflict between those who, to use Avery Dulles’ models of Church, are invested in an Institutional view of the Church as opposed to those who embrace a Servant model of Church.  They see issues of authority and mission from vastly different perspectives, so vastly different that it is difficult (if not pointless) for them to even discuss their differences.  There are different moral theologies operating today and this does not just represent a magisterium and a counter-magisterium view as the fuss over condoms as a method to combat aids suggests.  There are different understandings of the Mass and the sacraments which is witnessed by the official sanction of two vastly different rites expressing two vastly different (though not necessarily contradictory) understandings of the Eucharist, of the Church, and of the relationship of humankind to God.  There are times when being Catholic is somewhat like the “crazy-cars” ride that one finds in amusement parks with the little cars all going around in every direction, bumping into one another and bouncing off with no common order or rules.  But this lack of uniformity in practice and even in doctrine is not the fundamental or foundational problem in need of Reform.

What is needed, I believe, to Reform the Church today, is a head-and-members (or the classic term is “root and branch”) renewal in which we examine our personal and communal life as Church with all its structures and rites in the light of the Gospel and the mission of the Church as it is outlined in the Gospel.  We must come to see the Catholic Church as an Evangelical Church—that is a Church, indeed THE CHURCH, of the Gospel.  We need leadership and we need membership who find themselves personally and institutionally renewed and energized by the Gospel. 

It would be relatively easy to legislate “reform.”  People are not to have sex outside of marriage.  Priests and deacons are not to have sex, period!  No abortions.  No birth-control.  Mass is “by the book.”  Everyone has to ante up their share and the clergy have to be honest in dealing with Church funds.  But good luck.  Laws don’t take into account human nature and the effects of Original Sin.  That is why Saint Paul didn’t have a lot of use for “The Law”  (read the commandments of the Old Testament).  The only thing that works is conversion—that arduous process of admitting (and ultimately we have to do this one by one, each for ourselves but with each other’s support and encouragement) of admitting that our way of doing things isn’t working and surrendering to God’s way for us.  I know it sounds naïve.  I know it sounds idealistic.  I know it is terribly abstract.  But conversion is the only model the Gospel gives us and I believe, (to bend Chesterton’s words but not his intent) that it is not that the Gospel has been tried and found wanting; but that it has been found difficult and left untried.

I think as we look at the history of Reformations, we will see that the most successful ones—the Reform of Gregory VII and the Reform of Innocent III, along with the Reform of Trent (or the so called “counter-Reformation)—have all been successful because and to the degree that they fostered conversion in the great and the small alike.  They fostered spiritual renewals in which clergy and laity (and even some bishops) began taking the Gospel to heart.   When Bishop Emil deSmedt stood up at the opening session of Vatican II and called for an end to “triumphalism, juridicism, and clericalism” I think this is what he had in mind.  You cannot legislate Grace. But you can open yourself to it.  We need voices in the Church today that will open our hearts to this sort of conversion—as Saint Francis did in his day or Francis de Sales did in his.  We don’t need bishops or clergy who see the world through the prism of Canon Law (which is not to say that we don’t need Canon Law, only that it is not the foundation of our Christian life).  We don’t need bishops or clergy who are fascinated by their own prerogatives or pomps (which is not to say that a little pomp now and then can’t be a fun thing as long as we don’t take it seriously).  We don’t need dogmatic strict constructionists who strangle Grace before it can emerge from the womb of spiritual experience (which is not to say that we don’t need genuine orthodoxy, operative word being “genuine”).    We don’t need ecclesiastical Nazis who would have a place for everyone and keep everyone in their place (which is not to say that we don’t need some good order in the Church.)  We need in the Church men and women; hierarchy, lay and clergy; that take Jesus—and Jesus alone—at his word and encourage each other to do so too.  We need Christians who get enthused when the read the scriptures and see the possibilities for that Word to incarnate again today in the world as we, the Church, focus on the mission that Jesus has left us.  I am sure that such Reform and Renewal will need guidelines, will even need some parameters, perhaps even a law or two—but it is primarily a question of conversion, personal and communal. 

This will not eliminate sexual misconduct, abortion, dishonesty, pomposity, twenty-foot long trains of scarlet silk trailing behind overweight prelates, priests who don’t know a quid from a quod saying mass in an unintelligible language, aging nuns in capri pants, greed, bad doctrine, nobody going to confession anymore or any other problem.  Human nature is human nature.  No reformation yet has eliminated original sin and its effects—or, for that matter, what the old catechism called “actual sin.”  What it can do is eradicate the “establishment culture” that makes the Church a comfortable home for so much covering up of sin and scandal and help us call one another to ongoing conversion and greater  discipleship.  And we don’t have to wait for Pope Benedict or someone in Rome to lead the way.  Conversion, again, is a one by one process.   None of us can do it alone—we need the support of one another to be faithful—but if we keep the eye of our heart on Christ the Good Shepherd we don’t have to wait for those huffing and puffing guys with shepherds’ crooks to lead us.  They can catch up when they are ready.       

Roots of the Reformation XIII: Clericalism, Cardinal Law and the Fall of the Church

We need to ask ourselves if this is the model
 of Church that will advance evangelization
in the 21st century

I want to stress that this blog is not oriented to Catholic doctrine or theology but is a historical commentary.  Historical commentary involves using the lessons of history to interpret present phenomenon.   History is not about the past.  Those who are interested in the past for its own sake or out of curiosity are antiquarians.  History studies and analyzes the past as a tool to understand the present and the options the future presents to us. 

This will be my final warning about the dangers of the clerical culture that is undermining the health of the Church today, though in several upcoming entries I will treat of anti-clericalism in the sixteenth century and how it opened the door to mass defections from the Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformers.  And it is that reason—the effect that clericalism and the reaction to it, anticlericalism, have on the unity of the Church—why I have spent so much time on the problems of clerical culture in the contemporary Catholic Church in North America and the English speaking world.  The abuse of priestly authority is creating a very dangerous situation as respect for the priesthood falls fast, and as priests alienate the faithful by clinging to the artificiality of a clerical identity and role in a Church and society that is moving beyond hierarchical models. 

It is the clerical mentality that has steered the Catholic Church in the United States—among various nations—on such a disastrous and ill-advised path by which it attempted to “handle” the sex-abuse crisis instead of meeting it with transparency and dialogue.  If one person is to be blamed—and of course it is never the fault of a single individual—but historically, if there is one person who touched the match to the fuse, it is Bernard Law, the former Cardinal-Archbishop of Boston.  His Eminence’s arrogance when confronted by the misdeeds of some of his clergy enraged not only the people of Boston but people—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—across the United States and that anger spread like wildfire from diocese to diocese.  It has continued to spread beyond the United States and has now become a serious issue in many European countries.  The Cardinal was so convinced of the inviolability of the Church and his personal rank that he foolishly thought he was answerable to neither the civil and criminal law nor to public opinion.  No one today, no one, not even the Pope himself, is above being judged by public opinion.  There was a time when the Church declared that no one was suited to sit in judgment of the Roman Pontiff, but those days are over.  Fit or not, Catholics and non-Catholics alike will not be deprived of their opportunity to critique.  We can claim the Church and its prelates are above such judgment; we can protest it; we can even dismiss it, but in the end we had better wake up and smell the coffee. The great unwashed sits in judgment on the Prince of the Apostles and all his little violet-clad princelings and passes judgment.  The Court of heaven may ignore earthly judgments, but the Church, as a visible and historical presence must realize that its day of being a law unto itself is over.  King Louis is dead and millions of Madames deFarge are knitting away as the mitered heads are tumbreled to the guillotine of public opinion.  And it is public opinion, not the rights and privileges of the past, that will determine the fate of the Church in society.   The sooner that the clergy realize that the day of privilege and unearned respect is over the sooner we, as Church, can get on with our mission. 

Anti-clericalism is a very important monitor of danger for the Church.  Distrust of or discontent with the clergy undermines the Church as an institution and alienates people from the practice of the faith.       

In the opening session of the Second Vatican Council, Bishop Emile DeSmedt of Bruges, Belgium, said that the Church had to renounce the “Clericalism, Triumphalism, and Juridicism” of past centuries.  The late Cardinal Avery Dulles expanded on this quite a bit in his book The Catholicity of the Church. We need to listen to these contemporary prophets.  The clerical culture that Archbishop Martin and Bishop Cupich denounced (see blog entries for May 10, 13, and 15 ) is a cancer in the Church that is devouring the very heart of the Gospel from within the Body of Christ.  This does not mean that priests should not wear clerical garb or that titles of respect need to be abandoned.  It does mean that priests or bishops who need such trappings to know who they are and what their mission is need to be removed from ministry until they get the help they need to be healthy functioning adults capable of working collaboratively in a Church that recognizes the maturity and giftedness of each individual not in light of what sacraments they have received but according to the charisms with which the Holy Spirit has endowed them.  We need to see that just as Church structures evolved and changed over the centuries to empower the Church—the entire Body of Christ—to achieve its mission, so too today the Church is changing and evolving to keep pace with the saving work God has called it to in today’s world.  To live is to change, declared Cardinal Newman, and to be perfect is to have changed often.  

Holy Week Thoughts--the history and the future

The Humility of Christ
in the sacristy of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence

I was struck last night at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper.  I had already written yesterday’s posting and my thoughts of yesterday were so reinforced by the liturgy.  After the homily—an excellent homily by the deacon in which he, who will be ordained priest in just a few weeks, talked about the radical selfishness of so many priests that just puts them totally out of touch with the real lives of the very real people they are ordained to serve—was the washing of the feet and it was done in the most remarkable way.  The priest washed the deacon’s foot.  Then the deacon and priest turned and each washed the foot of a server.  The servers then washed the feet of members of the congregation, each of whom, when he or she (note the “she”) had had his or her (note the “her”) foot washed, turned and washed the foot of yet another until all who wished to participate had done so—the only requirement being that to have your foot washed you then had to turn and wash the foot of another.  Why did that sound so familiar? 

If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet,
you ought to wash one another’s feet.
I have given you a model to follow,
so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”

What works about this is that the washing of the feet is not a ritual reenactment of some long ago scene—it is a here and now in the everyday world fulfilling a commandment of Christ.  It is not a command given to some disciples, the apostles, and not to all.  The priest (or bishop, or pope) does not represent Christ and the washees the apostles in a sacramental drama any more than the bread and wine represent Jesus’ body and blood.  It is a here and now, in our modern world and every-day reality carrying on the work of God as Christ has revealed it to us.  The priest is not Jesus washing the feet of Peter; he is “Joe” or “Jack” or “Mike” washing the feet of “Ralph” or “Fred” or “Louise” –and Ralph and Fred and Louise had better realize that as was done to them so must they then do also.  It is about creating a world of service.

We have looked these past months in our dozens entries about basilicas and palaces and nuncios and bishops and plenary councils and whatever about the power of the Church.  In stories like the battlefield nuns of the Civil War or Mother Seton  or Vincent de Paul we have seen the Church as servant.  Frankly there is much more history of the Church in its roles of power than in its roles of service.  Cardinal Dulles said that the first millennium of the Church’s history was about witness and evangelization; the second millennium about power.  The third millennium, he said, must be about service.  And we need to take that seriously.  Bishop Emile de Smedt of Bruges said in the first session of Vatican II that it was time to renounce the triumphalism, clericalism, and juridicism that has so characterized the Church of recent centuries.  I am a historian—as a historian I am willing to deal with the palaces and the pomp, the fancy robes and exalted titles, the ceremony and the power. It is part of our history.  I am also a person of the Gospel and as a person of the gospel I join my voice to Bishop de Smedt and so many others and confess that the triumphalism, the clericalism, and the juridicism has no place in the future of the Church.   Let the dead bury their dead and let us go out and proclaim the Kingdom of God.