Destined for the Rise and the Fall of Many in Israel

Pope Francis meets with Sisters
from the LCWR: they came to
the Vatican, I understand, on a
Bus.  

Well Pope Francis called the dogs of war off the American nuns and that marks another watershed day in the history of the American Church as it is a clear sign that the JPII/Benedict XVI old guard is finished, at least for the length of this papacy.  There had been a mounting tension between the American Religious Women and the Holy See dating back to 1979 when Sister Teresa Kane publically addressed Pope John Paul on behalf of U.S. nuns and asked him to consider admitting women “to all the ministries of the Church.” This opened the question of ordaining women, a question John Paul was quick to put the kibosh on and which angered him and his Curia that it was even mentioned.  Pope John Paul had very definite ideas on the place of women in the Church and in particular on how religious women should conduct themselves.  While his understanding of the role of women in the Church actually marked a step—or several steps—beyond what up to then had been Church practice, it hardly fit our current cultural conviction that men and women are equal and should have equal access to responsibility in our world today.  (I choose the word “responsibility” as it is more consistent with gospel values than the word “power,” but I certainly mean power when I speak of responsibility in this context.) 

The changes in religious life, and especially the life of religious women, has been remarkable in the decades after Vatican II.  In following the Vatican II mandate to return to the charisms of their founders, many religious women have renounced the monastic practices that were imposed on them in the late 18^th and in the 19^th centuries, adopting modern dress, moving out of large convents and the quasi-monastic life required in that sort of environment, taking more personal responsibility for their finances, and revamping authority structures to be more collaborative than directive.  They live now not as semi-monastics but as consecrated lay women living according to the evangelical counsels and devoting themselves to the works of the Church.  Of course there are still monastic and contemplative communities, generally enclosed (cloistered) but that vocation is essentially different than that of Religious Sisters in Apostolic communities.  The monastic life too has, in most places, undergone some external change, but remains essentially focused on prayer and the common life.  If anything, the changes in Religious Life after Vatican II have permitted the Apostolic and the Contemplative vocations to more clearly differentiate themselves from each other and permitted women to make the appropriate choice according to the graces given to each person. 

Of course the changes in Religious Life have also empowered women to take responsibility for their own life and mission and this has been deeply troubling to those who favor the misogynist hierchical power structures for which the Catholic Church was once so famous.  The last thing burned-out or incompetent male clerics need is to have self-confident religious women around.  And let’s face it, if there is anything the experience of the Vatican troubling the American Sisters has shown us is that the rank and file Catholics still love the nuns while the good folk in the pews are more reserved in their affection and respect for the clergy.  In 1995 the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of the Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life (once known as the Congregation for Religious) divided out the more “traditional” religious communities of women from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (originally known as Conference of Major Superiors of Women) and established for the more compliant nuns The Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious.  This left two distinct groupings of American Sisters.  About 80% of American Sisters belong to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. 

The LCWR’s problems began in earnest early in the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI when the Congregation of Institutes of the Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life announced a “visitation” of American Sisters belonging to the LCWR affiliated communities.  This was supposedly “for their own good” to see why they weren’t getting the vocations they had once garnered in the 1960 vocational heyday.  The problem obviously was that most of the good sisters weren’t properly veiled and they were living in apartments and had drivers’ licenses—oh, and minds of their own, and used them.  A moving factor behind the original investigation was that nemesis of change, our own beloved Cardinal Burke who, at the time, was a member of the Congregation of Institutes of the Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life.  (I am getting tired of typing and retyping that title—from here on out CICLSAL.)   Mother Mary Clare Millea, a Canon Lawyer and the Superior General of the Congregation of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (a community belonging to the Conference of Major Superiors of Women) was put in charge of the visitation.  This—it was thought—would be like putting Ted Cruz in charge of investigating Hillary Clinton’s campaign.  But guess what—it became clear that under the microscope of Mother Mary Clare, the Sisters of the LCWR looked just fine!!!  That wouldn’t do.  So stage II kicked in and Cardinal William Levada, an American who at the time was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (at one time known as “The Holy Roman Inquisition” and the most powerful of the Roman dicasteries) announced that the CDF was going to do a doctrinal investigation of the LCWR because they good Sisters were writing a lot of heresy and spreading false doctrines in their various ministries.  As if they had not learned with Galileo—some people just never learn.  Levada is not Torquemada and was only the front man for a cabal of the truly evil: Cardinal Burke (again!), Cardinal Law (the disgraced Archbishop of Boston whose intransience about a fictional princely immunity kicked off the sex-abuse scandal in the American Church), Archbishop Lori of Baltimore (a slimy sycophant of a prelate if there ever was one—you don’t want to know how he got where he got) and their bankrolling stooge, Carl Anderson, Grand Poobah of the Knights of Columbus whose generosity to Vatican causes with other people’s money has given him great influence in the hallowed halls of the pre-Francisco Reform Vatican Bank.  (Just mentioning these boys makes me want to take a shower.)  Well, the pyre was well on its way to being completed when Pope Benedict surprised the world with his retirement and within a month many things had begun to change.  Within a few months of his election, Pope Francis was addressing the Religious from Latin America and he said, in obvious reference to the North American nuns:

They will make mistakes, they will make a blunder [meter la pata], this will pass! Perhaps even a letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine (of the Faith) will arrive for you, telling you that you said such or such thing... But do not worry. Explain whatever you have to explain, but move forward... Open the doors, do something there where life calls for it. I would rather have a Church that makes mistakes for doing something than one that gets sick for being closed up...

Clear enough? One would think.  But just because Petrus locutus est doesn’t mean Roma locuta est, as is becoming increasingly clear in so many ways with top Cardinals publicly disagreeing with a reigning pontiff—something that hasn’t happened in a century and a half.  Ten months later, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, current Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, made it clear that the heat was still on the good Sisters.  And then this past Thursday, suddenly, the Vatican said, in tones reminiscent of Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella on SNL, “never mind.”  There, gone. Poof.  Just like that.  Oh yes, there’s a new sheriff in town—or to put it more biblically for Law, Lori, Burke, Anderson and co: there came a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. 

As if that wasn’t enough news for one day, on Friday Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop emeritus of Chicago, passed to his eternal reward.  May God be good to him.  I will do a posting on his someday soon.  He was not a bad man, he certainly was not princely (or princessly) as some other prelates chose to be, but he represented that return to hierarchal autocracy that we witnessed during the reigns of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  It will be interesting to see that now that Chicago no longer has a living Cardinal, if the new Archbishop, Blase Cupich, will be given a red hat in the next consistory.  Of course, Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput’s predecessor, Cardinal Rigali turns 80 next Tuesday, freeing up another possible red hat.  Cupich and Chaput are cut from very different cloth.  Chaput, despite his Capuchin/Franciscan background is more of the sort of silk popular in Benedict’s papacy; Cupich, a diocesan priest, is more of the Franciscan homespun.  Yes, it’s true: the Religious take the vow of poverty and the diocesan priests live it.  I have seen it all before.  For the best food and wines, the friars and monks will guide the way. But I digress.  The Red Hat contest is further complicated by the fact that Francis will be the guest of Chaput in September for the World Meeting of Families.  Under the two previous popes, such hospitality was usually acknowledged by a cardinal’s hat for the hosting prelate.  But Francis is quite unpredictable.  Nevertheless, it would be perceived as a snub for Cupich to get the hat and Chaput not, after Chaput had organized the September event.  In the meantime, poor Bill Lori is still sporting a green galero on his coat of arms. I am going to be surprised if that changes in this papacy.  And disappointed.  

A Sidebar on the Krazies

Saint Teresa of Avila

I just finished reading a paper by a graduate student from Boston College describing how Saint Teresa of Avila was able to escape the limitations normally placed on women in sixteenth century Spain and write her phenomenal corpus of the Spiritual Life.  Teresa had everything stacked against her.  She was a woman in one of the most misogynist cultures of the Christian west.  She was not only a woman, but had a Jewish bloodline that made her doubly suspect to the Inquisition.  She was writing at the time where the Spanish Church, keenly sensitive to the threat Protestantism posed in Northern Europe, had a social paranoia Iover the Alumbrados, a movement heavily dominated by women, who were practicing and teaching mystic practices  without proper Church oversight.  Indeed, the Church had grown exceptionally fearful of mysticism even among the clergy.  (And this is ironic because 16^th century Spain was a hotbed of Spirituality with not only Teresa and John of the Cross, but Ignatius Loyola, Peter of Alcantra, Francis Borgia, Juan de Avila, and others.) 

Teresa beat the system by using its own rules and without directly confronting it.  Don’t get me wrong, Teresa had confrontative skills to beat the band, but it was not her usual method.  Her life of profound contemplative prayer endowed her with sufficient confidence to go about her mission by remaining anchored in the security of her knowing herself exceptionally well and trusting in God’s providence.  Her skills at patient understanding and prayer did not simply extend to her overcoming the limitations the Church would normally have placed on her—and did try at times to place on her—but also governed her human relationships.  As a young nun, and visiting with her sister for reasons of health, Teresa encountered a priest who she describes as being “enchanted” (literally, as in the use of a magic talisman) by a local woman who then had become his mistress.  Teresa did not admonish him, scold him, declaim him to the bishop, or shame him in front of his parishioners.  She befriended him, even allowing him to fall in love with her, until he got to the point where he could break the spell.  Indeed, while severe with herself, Teresa was a woman of immense patience with others, a patience that was the fruit of contemplative prayer.  In contemplative prayer we learn to see the world and all whom it holds (including ourselves) with the eyes of God.  It greatly colors our perception. 

The author of this paper speaks how in her contemplative life Teresa overcame the sort of binary relationships that dominate our culture: rich, poor; people of color, whites; liberals, conservatives; women, men.  Her method was to move away from the tension created by the binary relationship and introduce Christ as the third party in the relationship.   How did Christ the other? And then, by means of contemplative prayer, to let aside her own vision to see with the eyes of Christ.   The eyes of God are filled with compassionate love for every one of his creatures.  Why do we have to come into conflict when Christ offers us the potential of reconciliation?

When I returned to my writing , I thought back to Pius V and his Bull, Regnans in Excelcis, excommunicating and deposing Elizabeth.  Elizabeth was giving Catholicism in England a discrete modus vivendi.   Her Catholic subjects could be loyal to her and still good Catholics.  But no, Pius had to speak up for “The Truth.” The only problem is if it were God’s Truth it would have been a reconciling Truth and not a dividing one.  Some people are like that.  Teresa and Pius are both saints; Teresa is a Doctor of the Church, an honor not given to Pius.  Both lived holy lives; only one has been found to be an exemplary teacher of the Church’s Truth—and it isn’t the one who was Pope;  it was the Jewish Lady from Avila.

I think this is what gets me going about the Katholic Krazies.  We have a few on the posting horizon, namely one with the blog “Pope Francis the Destroyer” and the other being the infamous “Mundabor”   whom any number of you keep writing me about, who just cannot think beyond what they perceive to be truth.  (Notice the lack of the capital there.)  All who agree with them—and there don’t seem to be many—are “right”  and all with whom they disagree (most notably Pope Francis) are on the short rode to hell. 

I have read that the etymology of the word “devil” comes via the French diable from the Latin diabolus and the Greek diabolos.  Diabolos in turn comes from two Greek words, dia and bollein: dia means “apart;” bollein means to “hurl” or to “force.”   The devil is the one who divides, who undermines God’s plan of bringing all creation into One in Christ.   (Some dictionaries list dia as “across,” but across not in the static sense of distance but in the more dynamic sense of separation and division.  I am not a fan of literal translation because it doesn’t show one how people of another language actually used the language in every day speech, but to satisfy the devotees of Liturgiam authenticam, a very literal translation of dia bolein would be “to throw across” in terms of a person who hurls insults or slanders “across” at someone else.)  

The acrimonious tones of some of these katholic krazies, and here I don’t mean just the krazier-than-thous like Mundabor and his ilk but a lot of the run of the mill krazies as well) reminds me of the tragedy when twenty years ago or so Cardinal Bernadin established the “Common Ground Initiative” to open dialogue among Catholics of different ideas and perceptions in an effort to establish what we could agree on instead of focusing on that about which we disagree with each other.  He was stabbed in the back by two of his fellow Cardinals, that paragon of Sheparding, Cardinal Law and the grandmotherly old Cardinal Hickey, then of Washington.  It was a lost opportunity for harmony and reconciliation.  And the American Church has paid over and over for this cardinalatial evil.

In the same way a distinguishing mark of the Katholic Krazies today is their opposition to Interreligious and Ecumenical Dialogue.  Lines of division must be drawn in the sand, they insist, to defend and affirm “the truth” against the “heresies” of all with whom they disagree: Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, President Obama, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sister Joan Chittester—the list just goes on and on.  But what if the truth they want to affirm isn’t the real truth?  If it is a message of division it is the devil’s truth, not God’s. 

Teresa of Avila, in her day, knew nothing of Ecumenism.  She fretted about all the “Lutherans in hell” by which she meant Calvinists, but didn’t know the difference.  Prejudice, even among the saints, is like that—an expression of ignorance.  But even there it wasn’t judgment she was passing but a compassionate concern for souls she feared were or would be lost.  The lack of “Truth” in others caused her pain, not self-affirming pride. 

I have studied (and taught) Christian mysticism for thirty years.  One thing that I have learned is that there is no deep authentic relationship with God that does not produce compassion as its chief fruit.  Indeed, as I tell my students, the only infallible sign of God’s Grace in the soul is the increase of charity.  Individually and collectively we must pursue the path of compassion—it is God’s path to bring all Creation into One in Christ.    

Something to Consider cont.

I see that some of my friends among the Katholic Krazies are all in a tizzy about a coming persecution in our secularized culture of Catholics who stay faithful to Church teaching regarding human sexuality.  Janet of Restore DC Catholicism posted a video of Michael Voris who compares complacent Catholics with those Jews who did not take seriously the rise of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism with their program of exterminating the Jewish race.  Voris gives a lot of detail about the German blitzkrieg but is vague about his data for foretelling the threat facing Catholics.  He paints the situation of Catholic schools and health institutions with a broad brush but without giving specific examples.  His agenda is to declare the real threat to the Church is the “Homofacist Hammer”—his term for those who are trying to break the cultural bias against the LGBT population and who see the Catholic Church as the main perpetrator of this prejudice.   

Now I am not saying that just because it is the Katholic Krazies who are screaming doom and gloom from the housetops, that there isn’t something to be concerned about.  Cassandra, the doomsayer of Troy, was as crazy as a *hithouse rat, but her warnings about the large wooden horse the Greeks had left behind was dead on.  I do think that religion—not just Catholicism—is under attack in our western culture.  I mentioned yesterday that if we want to weather the storm of a secular culture that is hostile to religion in the public square we had better take a serious look at the role we play in society.  We cannot afford to cling to political, economic, or even moral power as it has been our abuse of power that got us trapped in this cultural fix.  The high-handed arrogance with which Cardinal Law and other bishops refused to take responsibility for the sex-abuse crisis was an all but fatal misstep for the survival of the Church.  Movies like Doubt, The Magdalene Sisters and Philomena exposed the vicious underbelly of Catholicism and the systemic abuse of power by the Church.  To get out of this snare we need to embrace the role of putting ourselves at the humble service of society rather than trying to force society to conform itself to our values.  In other words, we must regain our credibility by unstinting service to society and then hold up our Christian values as a voluntary choice rather than try to legislate a morality to which all must subscribe.   Jesus never once told us change laws; his commission was for us to change hearts, beginning with our own. 

I have been reading George Weigel’s Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21^st century Church.  I have a bit of a mixed reaction to it and hope to discuss it in future entries.  I would like to look at one quote, however, with which I fully agree. 

The Leonine Revival that reached its fulfillment in John Paul II and Benedict XVI , heirs and authentic interpreters of the Second Vatican Council, is inviting the Catholic Church to Galilee, and then beyond Galilee.  The Catholic Church is being invited to meet the Risen Lord in the Scriptures, the Sacraments, and Prayer and to make friendship with him the center of Catholic life.  Every Catholic has received this invitation in Baptism, the invitation to accept the Great Commission, to act as evangelists and to measure the truth of Catholic life by the way in which Catholics give expression to the human decency and solidarity that flows from friendship with Christ the Lord.   

We need to refocus our lives as Catholics—individually and collectively—on an encounter with Christ in the Scriptures, in the Church’s Sacramental Life, and in prayer.  I think this is the problem with the Vorises and the Janets and others who want to “restore” Catholicism to the Church of the William O’Connells and Francis Spellmans where a call to a State Governor, or even the White House, from a Cardinal could cause a major policy change.  Those days are over.  We need, even in the face of a hostile secularism with its immense cultural and political clout, to renounce any and all power except the power of the Gospel.  Is this change of direction judicious? Of course not. But it is putting our faith in God and in God’s word.  And of course in this week, more than any other week of the year, we see the model of renouncing power and being vulnerable to our foes as being at the heart of the Gospel we believe and are called to proclaim.  In God and in his Word alone is our hope for salvation. 

Such a change in direction from power to service requires our bishops to reconsider the sort of houses in which they live, the diocesan structures by which they carry out their ministry, the people with whom they socialize, and their vision which they have for the Church in their care.  It also requires the clergy to reconsider the way decisions are made in their parishes, the kind of homilies they preach, the style in which they celebrate the Liturgy and Sacraments, and their own relationship with their parishioners.  It will make the religious consider again what is meant by their vow of poverty, how to fulfill their prophetic vocation, and the sorts of ministry to which they give themselves.  But most of all it will require from the Catholic laity a radical decision to become more involved at the nitty-gritty level in hands on service to the poor and marginalized.  It will require us all—hierarchy, clergy, and laity—to reconsider our response to those whose values are in fundamental divergence from our own.  Will we sit in pious judgment with those who are “pro-choice,” or LGBT, or angry about how they have been hurt by religion, or will we approach others with an honest desire to hear them out and enter into a dialogue towards mutual understanding?  Will we be willing to serve the needs not only of our own, but even of those who have come to hate us and hate the faith to which we are committed?  Will we learn to respect others regardless of whether we agree with them or not?  Will we open the doors of our churches, our schools, our health-care institutions, our social-service institutions, not only to those who share our beliefs and values but to all who come to us in need.  This requires a radical change not only of policy, but of heart.   But isn’t that precisely what God has called us to every since the days of the Prophets?  

Why They Are Afraid of Pope Francis 15

Bishop Bernard McQuaid--19th century architect

of American Catholic Isolationism.  Like they say,

a picture is worth ten thousand words--not the

faithful kept behind the fence. 

WASHINGTON — Shortly before leaving the Capitol for the holiday recess, Senate Democrats gathered behind closed doors to lay out an agenda for 2014. When the majority leader, Harry Reid, exhorted colleagues to “deal with the issue of income inequality,” the talk took a spiritual turn.

“You know,” declared Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent, who caucuses with Democrats, “we have a strong ally on our side in this issue — and that is the pope.”

That Mr. Sanders, who is Jewish, would invoke the pope to Mr. Reid, a Mormon, delighted Roman Catholics in the room. (“Bernie! You’re quoting my pope; this is good!” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois recalled thinking.) Beyond interfaith banter, the comment underscored a larger truth: From 4,500 miles away at the Vatican, Pope Francis, who has captivated the world with a message of economic justice and tolerance, has become a presence in Washington’s policy debate.

The above is taken from an article that appeared in the New York Times a few weeks ago and it illustrates why this papacy is a very different papacy than its recent predecessors.  We have a Pope that isn’t playing in the intramural league.  This papacy is not nitpicking over internal issues like liturgical translations or nuns not being appropriately veiled.  It isn’t simply that this pope doesn’t think that we should stop “obsessing” over same-sex relationships or contraception, but he has taken the Church back out onto the court for serious game with the big boys.  When President Obama visits the Vatican in March it won’t be for the genteel sit-down and photo-op that it was with Pope Benedict.  This Pope is saying something that Mr. Obama (and Mr. Hollande, and Mr. Putin, and Mr. Peres, and Ms. Merkel, and other world leaders) are very interested in.  We’re back in the game now that we have stopped the navel-gazing and remembered our mission to announce the Kingdom of God.  But this is alarming to certain factions within the Church, and the American Church in particular, who are anxious to restore the ghetto mentality that pervaded American Catholicism from the final quarter of the nineteenth-century to the Second Vatican Council when the opened windows in Rome blew a wind strong enough to knock down the isolationist walls that had been carefully constructed by generations of American clergy who were terrified of the world outside the boundaries of the Church.  In the famous words of Bishop McQuaid of Rochester (1823-1909), one of the chief architects of the isolationist policy of the American Church:  “If the walls are not high enough, they must be raised; if they are not strong enough, they must be strengthened…”  When a pro-choice Jewish senator cites the Pope for policy support to a pro-choice Mormon senator—you know those walls aren’t standing anymore.  And this means that Catholics have to deal with the reality of a very non-Catholic world out there.  We can’t stay in our own enclave cheering each other on in our own in-house competitions and refusing to play ball with people who do not accept our basic premises.

Twenty years ago Cardinal Bernardin tried to stem the re-ghettoization of American Catholicism with his appeal for the Catholic Common Ground Initiative.  He was crushed by his fellow Cardinals Bernard Law and James Hickey who were determined that isolationism was the best policy for American Catholicism.  The complex ambiguities of Pope John Paul II’s papacy allowed the narrow vision of Hickey and Law to prevail and it led the American Church into a long cold dark night of increasing irrelevance.  With Cardinal Law the “kingmaker” of American bishops we were given a hierarchy that can only be described as masturbatory in its ecclesial leadership--  Francis George, Raymond Burke, Edwin O’Brien, William Lori, Michael Sheridan,  Edward Egan, John Myers, Edward Slattery, Charles Chaput, Joseph Martino, Fabian Bruskewitz, Thomas Olmstead, John McCormack, Richard Lennon, Thomas Tobin, to mention a few.  It didn’t get better with the rise in Roman influence of Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke and a new generation of bishops who lack vision such as, among others, Robert Finn, Salvatore Cordileone, Thomas Paprocki, Kevin Rhoades, Frank Dewane, and David O’Connell.  This is not to say that there have not been good bishops—and some very good bishops—over the last twenty-five years—but that the balance of power tipped to men who tried to re-fortify the American Church against the larger society.  I have no doubt that this was done in good faith but the results have been disastrous.  The Church not only retreated into a cultural isolationism—losing credibility among many of the more intellectual faithful in the process—but gained a reputation for being intellectually closed and negative in tone.  As one priest often said in his homilies “everyone knows what the Church is against; no one can articulate what it is for—and that is a disastrous position from which to evangelize.” 

Pope Francis has changed all that but to the consternation of those who favor ecclesial isolationism.  It should not be surprising that these same people favor a cultural isolationism that wants to preserve American Catholicism from the rich diversity that its membership reflects.  Their idea of church buildings is the retro appeal of a 1930’s “Chicago basilica style.”  Music is limited to organ accompaniment and Latin libretto.  Religious art is of the pre-Raphaelite revival.  Prayers are found in the Enchiridion or to be said on beads.  Mariachi bands, gospel choirs, and dance have no place. The politics follow with anti-immigrant bias and an identification of Catholicism with what might be called “Spellman Capitalism” in honor of the Cardinal Archbishop of New York who vigorously supported the “military industrial complex” in its war to defend American economic hegemony.  But that is not where Pope Francis is.  Here he is giving his weapons to those closet Marxists who call themselves “Democrats” and overturning all that we Americans hold dear in our dream that any red-blooded American boy can claw his way to the top, earning 230 times what the slaves who toil in his industry earn.  What would Jesus say?