By George 2

Leo XIII, the Pope who introduced the

Catholic Church to modernity

Weigel lays the foundation for his book by claiming—and rightly—that Leo XIII breaks the continuity of what Weigel calls “Counter-Reformation Catholicism” which he characterizes as the marriage of catechetical instruction with devotional piety.  I think this is another genius insight—both Leo’s radical turn towards modernity from the defensive-mode Catholicism that preceded him and the description of pre-Leonine Catholicism as a combination of catechism and devotions.  However, what raises my suspicions of Weigel and I seeing things very differentlyis the term “Counter –Reformation.”  Historians are very divided on the precise nature of the program of Church Reform in the sixteenth-century.  There are those Catholic historians who see Ignatius and the Society of Jesus, Philip Neri and the Oratory, the Theatines, Mary Ward, Charles Borromeo and the Council of Trent all as a reaction to Luther and Calvin—thus “Counter-Reformation.”  I belong to the other school of thought that looks through a wider lens and sees the above in the context of Ferdinand and Isabella’s Spanish Reformation, the Fifth Lateran Council, Desiderius Erasmus, Dean Colet, Teresa of Avila, the Capuchins, the Ursulines, and call it “The Catholic Reformation.”  The issue is whether sixteenth-century Reform of the Church came about only because of Luther and the Protestant Reformers or was there a genuine movement towards Reform in the Church that happened independently of—and had even begun previously to—Luther and his contemporaries?  Indeed, there is even the question whether Luther and others were even part of that same impetus for Reform and their break with the Catholic Church due to the Catholic Reform proceeding too slowly for their little patience?  This question of “Catholic Reformation” or “Counter-Reformation” has serious implications for ecclesiology and for ecumenism and while it can never be resolved one way or the other, it needs to be discussed, argued, and understood.  Weigel and I obviously see the issue of Catholic Reformation/Counter Reformation from very different perspectives and that will undoubtedly play itself out as I delve further into his book. 
That being said—and remember I think his identification of Leo XIII as the Pope who breaks the train of this Counter Reformation (or Catholic Reformation) Catholicism with its emphasis on catechism and piety, is sheer genius—I also think he is right on with the unsuitability of this catechism and rosary Catholicism for the modern age.  (Which is not to say that the catechism, much less the rosary, doesn’t have a place in contemporary Catholicism—only that we have to have a much more deeply rooted and more intellectually sophisticated faith if we are to be anything more than religious idiosyncratists.) 
Weigel makes the argument that both the “traditional Catholics” (whom I usually refer to as “neo-trads” because the traditions by which they identify themselves are not part of the Tradition/Deposit of Faith but later customs and pieties) and the “progressives” by which term he means the Catholic-Lite variety we so often find today reading the NCR or going to dour Voice of the Faithful covens held in the borrowed Presbyterian basements, cannot move beyond the “rule-based catechetical devotional Catholicism.”  Weigel claims that the one group wants to “tighten up and ratchet down the rules;” the other wants to “loosen the bolts in the name of openness or compassion.” For Weigel—and I agree—both groups are wrong because the rules-catechism-piety type religion is waiting to catch a train that left the station more than a century ago when Leo began serious engagement with the social complexities of the modern world. For the neo-trads: you can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube.  And for the happy-clappies—why remodel a house that no one is interested in living in any more?  Whichever end of the spectrum from which you are coming: we need something new.  That something new Weigel calls “Evangelical Catholicism”—a faith rooted in taking the Word of God to heart in our daily lives and nourishing ourselves with a full sacramental life in the Church.  So far I am with him.  However—as I look ahead, I see some stormy seas and realize that we have some very different ideas of how the barque of Peter should set these sails of Word and Sacrament. I also can’t help but wonder if George is doing a bait and switch—talking the new game but offering his reader the same old same old.  I am seeing hints that beneath the “Evangelical”
 language there is little more than catechism and rosary beads. 

Reformation Today! 5

John Henry, Cardinal Newman,

champion for the voice of the

faithful in the formulation of

Church Doctrine

This issue about the “loyalty oath” in the Arlington Diocese returns us to the topic of necessary reforms in the Catholic Church.  As I had written in some earlier entries, reform and reformation is always part of the Church’s agenda.  Semper reformans, semper reformanda—always reforming, always in need of reform is an old axiom of ecclesiology—the theology of the Church.

In the past many of the Church’s reformations such as the Carolingian Reform or the Tridentine Reform (sometimes called the Catholic Reformation to distinguish it from the Protestant Reformations which it followed and attempted to staunch) have been internal reforms.  Other times, unhappily, attempts to Reform the Church have ended up splitting the unity of the Church.  Luther’s Reformation and the English Reformation are two examples of this.  Sometimes Catholics lump Luther and Henry VIII and John Calvin and others all together into a single “Protestant Reformation but the history is far more complex and Luther, Calvin, the English Church, and other Protestant movements of the sixteenth century are as different from one another as they are from the Papal Catholicism from which they split.  If one is to consider the new religious groupings of the sixteenth century in general it is better to pluralize it and refer to the “Protestant Reformations.”   But that isn’t where I want to go today.

I think that “liberals” and “conservatives” alike can agree that there is an urgent need for Church Reform today.  We may disagree on how that reform be implemented, but we all can agree that there are serious problems facing our Church.  The sex-abuse scandals and the financial irregularities, both of which stretch from the highest authorities in Rome down to the level of local parishes, are only two such indications.  The emerging stories of nuns being sexually abused by priests in Africa is a third.  The loss of huge numbers of Catholics to secularism in Europe and to Evangelicalism in Latin America is yet another.  The vocation crisis facing the Church in Europe and North America is one more. 

At the same time that we speak of these problems, however, we can also see that in some ways the Church is healthier than it has been in centuries.  We have a much better educated membership.  We have a laity that is stepping up to bat and assuming vocations and ministries in the Church proper to their status as baptized and confirmed members of Christ’s Body.  The Church is growing rapidly in Asia, the Pacific, and Africa—and Latin America, where once the Catholic faith had fallen into gross inactivity through the lack of priests, is now alive and vibrant with small faith communities who are evangelizing and animating the faith of their neighbors.  While the Church in the Northeast and urban centers of the upper Midwest sees parishes closing, South of the Mason Dixon (once staunch Baptist land) and west of the Mississippi, new churches are being built to hold large congregations. 

Well what about the Arlington Oath?  How does that give us any indication of what is needed in Church reform?  Any reform of the Church today needs to respect the laity and take seriously their vocation as full members of the Body of Christ. When I speak with people who have left the Church for other religious groups, and especially the evangelical communities, it seems that the most common response I hear is that they were frustrated in the Church because they were not being listened to and their gifts were not being taken seriously. 

According to Blessed John Henry Newman, in the early days of the Church, when the Church was in its first flower and at its strongest, it spoke with three voices: the Magisterium—the bishops; the theologians, those who studied and knew the tradition and prepared the work of the magisterium; and the consensus fidelium—the articulated faith experience of the laity.  Over the centuries first the laity and then the theologians have been pushed to the margins.  The faithful were told to be quiet and think as they were told to think and act as they were told to act.  (Some would call this “assent of the intellect and will.)   Then from the end of the Council of Trent up to the present, the theologians have not been allowed to think for themselves but relegated to providing a rationale for what the magisterium was proclaiming.  And then, after Vatican I, the bishops—an essential component of the magisterium—were told that the Pope (and his Curia) would do the thinking for them and they simply had to utter to those below what they had heard from those above.  Although Vatican II and the decree Christus Dominus was an attempt to restore at least the bishops to their proper authority, the effort has been reversed in this and the previous pontificates.  This is not a healthy situation.  As Newman also said: when the laity stop questioning the bishops, the bishops fall into heresy.  (He was referring to the Arian heresy of the fourth century into which the majority of bishops fell and from which only the faithful adherence to orthodoxy of the laity preserved the Church.) 

We need a laity today who are educated (which we have), informed (which they must be) and are allowed to ask the significant questions and articulate the faith as their experience provides.  It doesn’t mean that they will always be right or that the Church is a democracy.  But they have been baptized and sealed with the Holy Spirit and their voice is an essential part of the confession of the Church’s faith.    And theologians must be allowed the freedom inquiry without which their work—formulating the faith of the Church with intellectual credibility—will be dismissed as insubstantial by those who use the intellects God has given them.    

 

Will It Take Another Luther?

St Francis, model
for inernal reform
of the Church

There is no doubt that the Church today stands in desperate need of a new Reformation.  When we speak of “Reformation” we usually think of Martin Luther, but his was only one of several Reformations in the history of the Church.  Luther’s Reformation had the unfortunate consequence of splitting the Church—as did the subsequent Reformation of John Calvin as well as the English, Scottish, and Scandinavian Reformations.  There were other Reformations that did not divide the Church.  Previous entries on this blog have spoken of the Carolingian and Ottonian Reformations of the 9^th and 10^th centuries respectively. (See entries for May 9, June 4, 5, 18, 20, 23, 28, 29,  July 1, 16, 18,  28, August 6, 7, 11, 26, 2011, Feb 21, 2012. )  These Reformations were imposed on the Church by the political authority of the Holy Roman Emperors.   Then there was the Gregorian Reform from within the Church, led by a series of Popes and assisted by various saints.  (See July 19, 28, August 6, 7, 25, 27, 28, 2011 and February 21, 2012.)  I hadn’t gotten to the Spanish Reformation of Ferdinand and Isabella or the Tridentine Reformation yet in my postings, but the former of these was, like the Carolingian and Ottonian, imposed by king-protectors of the Church; the latter was the internal Reform mandated by the Council of Trent.  My favorite Reformation is that of Innocent III at the beginning of the thirteenth century.  It was sheer grace.  A wise and good pope empowered a generation of saints—John of Matha, Francis of Assisi, Dominic, Clare, Albert of Vercelli, Jordan of Saxony, Philip Benizi, Anthony of Padua, Edmund Rich, Bonaventure and countless others who founded new and enthused religious orders, stirred up the laity to deeper faith, preached the gospel, called people to live a gospel life, provided good pastoral service to the faithful and gave new life to the Church.  All this was under the guidance of a Pope, Innocent III, who understood that the Institution of the Church was there to advance the Gospel and foster holiness in Church’s members. 
      That the Church today stands in need of a serious Reformation—in head and members—is very clear.  The reforms of Vatican II have been a disaster—not because they weren’t sound and good ideas, holy ideas, but because they have not been properly implemented.  The Council was no sooner over and the last busload of bishops had hardly left for the airport, when curial officials began dismantling the Council, giving it its “authentic interpretation” which steadily and surely has reconsolidated all power in the Roman Curia leaving the Roman bureaucracy unmanageable to the Pope and unaccountable to anyone.  The result is the chaos and scandal we now endure with the Holy See sheltering prelates from prosecution for protecting abusive priests, with money laundering being the business of the Vatican Bank, with cronyism being the chief criterion for the nomination of bishops, and with vicious infighting involving Cardinals and butlers in stabling one another in the back. 
        The monarchial and bureaucratic structure by which the Church is administered cannot be relied upon for honest and transparent leadership needed in a community that professes its mission is to spread the Gospel.  There is a need to change the basic constitution of the Church, not to do away with the papacy or the episcopal structure which we Catholics believe was instituted by Christ (though that needs some historical nuancing), but to integrate leadership into the Church rather than place it above the Church. By this I do not mean introducing democracy into the Church, but I do mean creating structures of accountability.  If the leadership of the Church does not realize that the faithful do already in fact hold them accountable and create structures of administration that “give some teeth” to that accountability, the faithful will continue to drift away from the leadership in ever greater numbers. Right now the choice—Luther or Innocent—can still be made, but if the Church leadership does not opt for an Innocentian Reform from within, then they will find themselves the victims of a Luther style Reform that will lead the faithful away from the leadership.  

Resurexit sicut dixit, Alleluia, Alleluia

Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη
happy easter

I spent Easter Day with friends at their country home.  There were several families there for the weekend and a priest friend of theirs had joined them Easter morning to celebrate mass for the group and have Easter dinner with them.  Among the families were seven “kids”—all of College Age or seniors in High School and all took part in various ways, as did the adults, in the mass.  The readers were both among the younger generation.  Others had moved the chairs and set up and decorated the screened porch to be a temporary chapel.  In a shared homily, all the youth but one shared their response to the Easter readings.  All come from good Catholic families and all obviously know the mass and participate in it regularly.  Yet something struck me and made me wonder as I watched them: how many of these—all children of practicing Catholics—will be practicing Catholics themselves in ten to fifteen years?  They represent a new generation, a generation that thinks for themselves, can be articulate about what they think and believe, and do not take things on other people’s testimony.  In the course of the day I heard various kids express some very different opinions on politics, on social mores, and on religion from their parents.  These opinions may have been somewhat disturbing, but they were well-informed, well-thought out (in one case in particular, far better thought out than the opinion that this girl’s father had just expressed), and well expressed.  This is not a generation to take things “on authority;” indeed my impression was that at least five of these seven young men and women do not even have an intellectual construct that admits to authority’s having a claim over them.  Their experience seems to be their only guide.   While this failure to accomodate a place for authority is a dangerous sign for the future, I want to emphasize that—for this limited group of young people—their experience is informed and rational and not just a whim or a bandwagon rolling by.  But if such is fate of the green wood, what shall become of the dry?  These "kids" are la crème de la crème--Catholic families, Catholic Schools, all in college or about to go there.  If authority has little or no credibility for them, what will happen to the much larger number whose ties to the faith and Catholic  background is weak?    When the Renaissance caused a sharp and swift rise in European education in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it led to challenges to the authority of the Church—challenges that resulted in the series of Protestant Reformations that split western Christianity into an all but infinite number of denominations and sects; it also created the most effective internal Reformation which the Catholic Church has known in its history.  It gave us Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli; it also gave us Ignatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and Francis deSales.  We need to take today’s technological advances with the subsequent revolutions in knowledge and communication seriously so that time we can experience the Reformation of heart and mind without seeing the Body of Christ disintegrate even more than it has.  This requires us to “think outside the box” not merely with a photo of the Pope opening his Facebook page, but with genuine communication running up and down throughout the central nervous system of the Body of Christ tying all together in mutual understanding and profound respect.  The renewal demanded for the Church to stand faithful today to the mission of its Lord is not a matter of guitars at mass or aging nuns in pants suits—it is a thorough revisioning of what it means to be the Body of Christ.