Let the Little Children Come to Me ...

The diocese of Madison Wisconsin—no bastion of liberal Catholicism with its very conservative bishop, Robert Morlino—recently announced a policy welcoming the children of same-sex unions for baptism.  Two months ago there was the baptism of the daughter of a lesbian couple baptized in Cordobá Argentina in which the local Archbishop claimed that baptism “was the right of every child.”  In fact, in most parishes in the United States same-sex couples are very welcome and there would be no questioning having their children baptized, but it has set off a firestorm among the neo-trads who see that baptizing the child is an unofficial sanction of the union of the parents.  

What should we do if a single parent were to bring his or her child for baptism?  What would we do if an unmarried heterosexual couple presented a child for baptism?  What would we do if the heterosexual couple married outside the Church came to have their child baptized?  In each of these cases I presume the priest or deacon would privately address the home situation and suggest solutions to the problematic relationships that would bring everyone into accord with Catholic doctrine and practice, but at the end of the day, I have no doubt that the child would be baptized and the parents treated with respect.  The suggestion that we should treat differently the child of a same-sex couple only demonstrates that the objection is not theological but gender-biased. 

I am writing this on Monday though it won’t be published until tomorrow.  The gospel this morning warned us not to judge lest we be judged and it reminded us that until we remove the wooden beam from our own eye, we cannot see clearly enough to remove the splinter from another’s eye.  This sort of self-righteous Catholicism that some neo-trads advocate is just so out of step with the words of Christ in the Gospel.  I have no doubt that we are called to challenge one another to ever greater holiness, but I have no desire to return to the Church of the super-holy, especially when it is spiritual pride that masquerades as true holiness.  

Let's Hear It For Those Swiss Abbots

Mariastein Abbey

A few weeks ago (see entry for January 15, 2013) I published an entry about Martin Werlen, the Abbot of the famous abbey of our Lady of Einsiedeln in Switzerland and his call for radical reform in the Church—echoing the same call of the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini shortly before his death last year (cf blog entries for September 2, 3, 4, and 12, 2012).  A reader sent me a link to an article about another Swiss Abbot, Peter von Sury, Abbot of Mariastein , a Benedictine community in Solothurn Canton.
Like Abbot Martin, Abbot Peter pulls no punches in his estimation of what the Church needs today.  Abbot Peter is trained in the canon law and he sees the problem is that the structures of authority in the Church are broken.  He calls for consistency and transparency in the way decisions are made in the Church.  He thinks that politics have replaced the action of the Holy Spirit in Church administration (ya think?) and that there is a need to return to the ancient system of choosing bishops by involving the local faithful and clergy along with the regional bishops.  The present system is nothing more than turning the local dioceses into “papal fiefs.” 
An article by Christa Pongratz-Lippitt in the National Catholic Reporter quotes the abbot:
Asked why episcopal nominations are so important, he replied: "The bishop has a pivotal position in the church. He is a 'pontifex,' that is, a bridge-builder, and must have a personality that integrates. Unfortunately, we have again and again experienced the opposite, as, for instance, at the moment in the diocese of Chur. There the bishop is obviously not a bridge-builder, but someone who sows discord, and that is disastrous.
"In my opinion, a bishop who sows discord is morally obliged to step down. The same applies to an abbot or a parish priest. If they sow discord, they destroy a part of the church. It is not a case of blame. There are simply situations when people sow discord -- perhaps even without meaning to do so, and then they must step down."
"Church institutions, including the papacy, should have an opposite number as it were. In economics or politics we speak of checks and balances," von Sury said. Parishes have parish councils, dioceses have priests' councils, which the bishops are supposed to listen to. "But for the bishops' conference level and the world church level there is nothing similar. This is a great mistake," he said.
Boy, this guy should visit the Church in the United States and see the damage that prelates such as Bishop Robert Finn (Kansas City), Bishop Robert Morlino (Madison WS), Bishop Thomas Olmsted, (Phoenix)  and Archbishop William Lori (Baltimore, formerly Bridgeport) have wreaked  in their climbs up the ecclesiastical caterpillar pillar.  On the other hand, Rome did get Cardinal Law and then-Archbishop (now Cardinal) Raymond Burke out of Boston and St. Louis respectively before they totally trashed those dioceses with the discord they had caused.    
The Bishops of Switzerland, with the exception of the aforementioned Bishop of Chur, Vitus Huonder, have shown themselves very willing to listen to the faithful in their dioceses and the move for more dialogue in the Church. 

My correspondent wondered what sort of water these Swiss Abbots are drinking and if we can bottle it.  O Please God, let such waters flow in your Church today. 

Good Shepherds and Bad--Mostly Bad

I referred to trouble brewing in the Diocese of Madison in a recent post and I want to look at that issue because it is a harbinger of trouble to come.   At Vatican II the bishops told us “to read the signs of the times” and that advice is never better taken than right now—and the word “Trouble” is in bright lights these days on the Madison Marquee. 

Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison—like a lot of American bishops—has had to face declining numbers of clergy to serve his diocese, and like many American bishops he has looked overseas for ready-made vocations.  Bishop Morlino, a former Jesuit who became disaffected with the Society during the years of Pedro Arrupe’s leadership and at age 37 left the Society of Jesus to become a secular priest in the diocese of Kalamazoo, brought in a community of priests from Spain to take over a cluster of parishes in southwestern Wisconsin.  This community—the Society of Jesus the Priest (not to be confused with the community of prelates known as the Institute of Jesus Christ Sovereign Priest) regularly celebrates the Catholic Liturgy in both the Tridentine and current Rites, but even in the “new mass” does not permit girls to serve at the altar, laity to serve as ministers of the Eucharist (even to bring the Eucharist to the homebound), insists on the faithful receiving communion on the tongue and kneeling.  It is not simply a matter of liturgical back-pedaling  but essentially a question of the relationship of priests and laity. The Midwest has long been among the most progressive sections of the Catholic Church in the United States and Wisconsin, in particular, was quick to embrace the changes at Vatican II. I think this openness has had to do with a long tradition of progressive archbishops in Milwaukee but also the combination of Lutheran and Catholic populations—groups similar enough to have been able to learn from one another in matters liturgical and ecumenical.  In any event, the laity in the parishes “served” by the priests of the Society of Jesus the Priest have not been happy with the direction things are taking and complained bitterly about these practices being foisted on them but the priests show no openness to listening to the legitimate complaints of their people.  Their model of Church is one where “Father” holds all decision making to himself.  The Church belongs to the clergy and the laity are granted the privilege of paying for it.

Well, many of these parishioners are not paying for it.   One Monsignor in the Diocese of Madison told me that “all hell is breaking loose.”  Faithful Catholics are driving fifty and seventy miles to attend Mass elsewhere—some even crossing State lines as they are “fed up” not only with the priests of the Society of Jesus the Priest, but with Bishop Morlino who has shown himself to be utterly unsympathetic to their grievances.  (And to think, last Sunday was Good Shepherd Sunday with the Gospel speaking to us of the wise and compassionate Shepherd.)  Others have begun attending the local Methodist and Lutheran churches.  Still others have simply stopped attending Mass.  One man was in tears telling me that his 87 year old mother, bedridden from a stroke, had been receiving Holy Communion twice a week from a Eucharistic Minister but now was told that “Father would bring her Communion on first Fridays.”  They told “Father” he could stay home.  A generous parishioner has offered instead to drive 35 miles to a town where the priest will give him the Eucharist to bring to this homebound woman who says a rosary every day for vocations and a second one for “the Pope and our bishop.” 

Collections have fallen drastically as parishioners have deserted the parishes in and around Platteville WI where these priest are “serving.”   In Platteville, a parish that had been thriving under its previous pastor, the parish school will close this June because collections are down at least 40%.  As if this wasn’t bad enough, the Bishop had threatened parishioners who complain with ecclesiastical censures including being refused Holy Communion and Christian burial.  What is going on? 

I have several reasons for saying this is a sign of the times.

1.     There is an increasing number of clergy, both American-born and foreign, who have taken a sharp “turn to the right” in terms of undoing the liturgical changes of the Second Vatican Council.  Moreover the liturgical abuses they propagate are not simply idiosyncratic aberrations but bespeak a view of authority that is entirely “top down” and without accountability to the Church—that is to the people whom they are ordained to serve.  There is no dialogue here—it’s Father’s way or the highway. 

2.     The shortage of vocations to the priesthood has caused bishops both to look overseas for supplemental clergy and to lower the standards—intellectually and psychologically (which means morally)   of the candidates they are willing to accept.  (Check back and read the blog entry for May 20, 2011.) 

3.     There has been a drastic shift in our hierarchy with an increasing proportion of bishops who see the Church primarily in institutional terms and do not consider themselves responsible for and to the faithful.  This episcopal arrogance is typified by Cardinal Law who, in his days as Archbishop of Boston, considered himself totally unaccountable to anyone and even to the Laws of the State of Massachusetts, in dealing with pedophile priests.  Law’s mistake was huge and not only cost him his see but turned the sex-abuse issue into a national crisis as the Cardinal became the poster-boy for protecting sex-abusers.   This sort of episcopal arrogance also led to Raymond Burke being relieved of his duties as Archbishop of Saint Louis, though it gained him a red-hatted desk job in Rome.  (And doesn’t that say something?) This hierarchical presumption that the Church consists pretty much in men in red dresses nicely accented by the appropriate jewelry has led to Archbishop Lori’s attack on the American nuns.   Any view of Church that consists of the community of the Body of Christ is definitely relegated to the dust bin of Vatican II enthusiasm. 

4.     All of this is an indication that the future of the Second Vatican Council, at least for the American Church, is very much in question.  Ecumenism is dead in the water, the liturgical advances are being dismantled in favor of a neo-traditionalism, parish advisory boards and Diocesan finance councils are reduced to being rubber stamps, open and honest discussion whether of diocesan policy or serious theological issues is a thing of the past. 

The signs of the times are ominous for those who drank the Vatican II Kool-Aid.