Cardinal Kasper at Catholic University in Washington

OK, OK, I know this isn't an engaging title for a blog posting, but I was fortunate this evening to hear Cardinal Walter Kasper give the lecture accompanying his being awarded the Johannes Quasten Medal by the Catholic University of America and I am excited about his talk.  The audience was much larger than expected and we were tightly squeezed into the auditorium at Caldwell Hall but I was fortunate to arrive early and get a seat behind a row of young Dominican friars in their white habits. From an ecclesial perspective, it was a rather diverse audience—a lot of religious in their habits, diocesan seminarians in their collars, professor types in jackets with elbow patches, business people in suits, a huge assortment of people in dress-down casual, and, of course, the usual NCR lefty types in sensible shoes.  The talk was well received because it was really an apologia for Pope Francis’ pontificate.  Kasper was the man behind the podium but Francis was the man of the hour.  

The Cardinal began by giving a contrast between the theological methodologies of Popes Benedict and Francis.  Benedict was, as one would expect of a scholar of his background, steeped in the classic European theological method, though from the patristic sources rather than the Thomist perspective that had so long dominated Catholic dogmatic theology.  Francis—whom Kasper described as “not a Franciscan in disguise, but a Jesuit through and through” works from the Ignatian model of discernment which Saint Ignatius developed in his Spiritual Exercises In Francis’ theological model this is interpreted through the Argentine experience of the Communidades de Base, the so-called “Base Communities” that study the scripture together in order to arrive at a “hermeneutic from below” and which use a “See, Judge, Act” methodology to move from theological theory to concrete action.   Kasper admitted that this draws on “the Argentine model of Liberation Theology” which he very carefully distinguished from the Marxist models of the same.  Nevertheless, it was clear from his talk that it is respectable, indeed more than respectable, again to be fan of “liberation theology.” 

Cardinal Kasper moved from Francis’ model of theological reflection to the Pope’s preoccupation with the idea of “joy” which he learned from reading the Gospel with these communidades de base.  This led Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, to understand that the Gospel is not a dogmatic text but a living message of God’s love for the world.  One of the key insights the Cardinal gave in his talk is that dogma or doctrine does not interpret the Gospel but the Gospel is the key to interpreting the doctrines.  This alone made the talk more than worthwhile as so many Catholics are trapped in a pseudo-theology where the Joy of the Gospel (in Latin: Evangelii Gaudium—which is the title of Francis’ encyclical) can be trumped by the rigors of dogma.

This joy of the Gospel opens our eyes to the central message of the Gospel which is the Mercy of God.  Mercy—and this is another great idea expressed by the Cardinal—is the maximization of justice whereas justice is the minimalization of mercy.  In other words, the barest minimum of mercy is to offer justice, but justice—expanded to its fullness of virtue—will always manifest itself in mercy.  Mercy will always manifest itself in love.  The Church’s mission—and mission is the priority of the Church in the world—is to spread this message of God’s love in a cynical and weary world. 

The Cardinal went on then to talk about Francis’ understanding of Church.  Of the various ways in which we can look at the Church, Francis emphasizes the Church as communio, as the People of God.  The Institutional model of Church doesn’t hold much of Francis’ interest.  Again this understanding of the Church as a communion of people, of the living and the dead, comes from his experiences in the communidades de base.  But Francis also sees the Church not as a centralized institution, but as a communion of local Churches, each gathered around its bishops and in communion with all others. This has great impact on the potentials for ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue.  And Francis, the Cardinal said, sees the Church’s relationship with other Churches not in the model of concentric circles of truth, diminishing in truth as they move further and further from the Catholic center, but as a gem with its many facets, each of which reflects the light, albeit it in different ways and in different intensities. 

So all in all it was an evening of stimulating thought and exciting vision for the future.  Not everyone clapped at the end.  I notice the professor types were, for the most part, somewhat reticent but academia is filled with its Sheldon Coopers who think no one else is quite so intelligent or has so much to say as themselves.  And as we walked into Caldwell, I notice two sad souls (three, if you count the life-size statue of Our Lady of Fatima they brought with them.  It would be nice to count her as she was the only one with a smile, though a somewhat wry smile.)  They were saying the Joyful mysteries of the rosary.  Too bad the talk wasn’t tomorrow so they could say the sorrowful ones.  Joy didn’t befit them.  But then, as the Cardinal implied in his talk, that is the difference between Religion and the Gospel.   

The Old Order Passes: A New Sheriff in Town

Monsignor Marini--Pope Francis

doesn't want to be his dress-up doll

The neo-traditionalists are in an increasing panic over the new pope’s abandoning the retro-ceremonial of Pope Benedict.  According to some sources there was quite a kerfuffle in the room of tears over the papal habit with Pope Benedict finally telling Monsignor Marini, the papal dress-up mago, “Those vestments, Monsignor: wear them yourself; the carnival is over.”  Surprisingly sharp retort from this normally humble man but it is clear that there is a new sheriff in town.  And it seems that Francis’ more simple style is certainly winning the approval of the average Catholic-in-the-pews.  But all this fuss and bother about mozettas and the pope’s old black shoes and even insisting on a temporary altar being set up facing the gathered Cardinals for Mass in the Sistine is only matters of style; substance will be far more interesting.  I think the tempest in the room of tears is only a beginning of far more serious issues for the neo-trads.     
One of the misconceptions about Pope Francis is his relationship to Liberation Theology.  Conservatives were relieve to hear that the new pope was opposed to Liberation Theology but now that they have had a chance to do some research about his years as the Jesuit Provincial and then as a bishop in Argentina they are  having second thoughts.  Part of the problem is Americans not understanding precisely what Liberation Theology is, or at least what the version of it rejected by Pope John Paul II (and Cardinal Brogoglio) is. 
The Church’s difficulty with Liberation Theology is its ties to Marxist ideology.  Some Liberation Theologians advocated a Marxist approach saying that the possession of wealth by a minority is unjustified when others are in lack of basic necessities for life and that consequently the poor have a right to take from the rich what they, the poor, need for their survival.  (Or actually, what it usually meant is that the government has the right on behalf of the poor to forcibly take from the rich to provide for the poor such as is done in Marxist revolutions.)    
Americans do not understand the fine (and sometimes not so fine) differences between Socialism, Communism, and Marxism.  While Marxism or Marxist-Lenism are forms of Communism and Communism is a form of Socialism, the terms are not mutually interchangeable.  While a Marxist is a Socialist, not all Socialists are Communists, much less Marxists.  Many of our European allies have or have had at various times Socialist Governments and yet were politically opposed to the Soviet style socialism of the old Eastern Bloc.
Many of Archbishop Brogoglio’s ideas sound socialistic to American ears.  He does—or at least did when Archbishop of Buenos Aires—advocate for the redistribution of wealth.  So for that matter did Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  They did not advocate the Marxist system of seizing private property and communalizing it.  Pope John Paul’s theory of Solidarity sounds very Socialist to many Americans because it does not see private property as an absolute right but rather as a privilege that also carries responsibility.  Pope Francis will undoubtedly build his social theories on the foundations laid by his papal predecessors but one can expect that the edifice of a more just distribution of the world’s wealth will rise by an appreciable amount during his pontificate.  This will not make the defenders of Tradition and Property happy but most of them have been out of step with papal teaching for some time now and just not known it, or at least admitted it.  
I have long thought that we will be facing the possibility of schism within the Church.  At the end of the reign of Paul VI and even into the reign of John Paul II  I thought a schism would come from the right.  I think the Lefebvrirsts and other integrist groups that refused to accept Vatican II were the nucleus of a schism.   With John Paul throwing a bone to the neo-trads with Quattuor adhinc annos and Ecclesia Dei followed up by Benedict’s overriding the authority of the local bishop to regulate the pastoral care of the faithful entrusted to him with Summorum Pontificum, I thought that it was now the left that would feel pushed out of the Church.  The recent policies of certain figures within the Roman Curia towards the American nuns, the new translation of the Roman Missal, the appointment of several American bishops who combined arrogance and pomp with an élan worthy of Louis XIV, and what is perceived by some as a gutting of the Second Vatican Council made me fear this even more.  Well, the scales swung fast and swift this week with the left crowing and the right-wing once again starting to gather with pitchforks and torches.  So who knows?  Historians note, however, that at the end of the day, however, when the dust settles, it always is the Bishop and Church of Rome that are left in the center of the picture.           

Tribute to a Martyr II

Father Rutilio Grande(1928-1977)
a martyr for the poor of El Salvador

Oscar Romero was born to a working class family in El Salvardor—a country where a small clique of less than twenty families owned almost 50% of the arable land, the vast majority of Salvadorans being share-croppers on the extensive ranches of the oligarchs.  The Romero family, though working class, was not poor by Salvadoran standards and Oscar and his siblings were tutored at home.   Romero was an introverted child and deeply religious who spent much time studying or hanging out in the town’s churches.  The Church sent him to Rome for seminary training and he was ordained to the priesthood in Rome in 1942.   The following year his bishop summoned him back to Salvador.  He spent years as a parish priest before being called to be rector of the seminary. 

A lot of things had changed in the Latin American Church from the time that Romero had gone off to study.  In 1955 the Bishops of Latin America had organized the Latin American Episcopal Conference.  At the time of the Second Vatican Council the Bishops in Latin America, or at least the vast majority of them, made a drastic shift in their alliances.  Traditionally the bishops had been closely tied to the political and economic oligarchies that ruled most of the Latin American nations but as the Gospel began to take root in the hearts of so many of the clergy and faithful, the bishops themselves came to see the radical demands Christ makes on his disciples to embrace the plight of the poor.  The 1968 meeting of CELAM (the Spanish language acronym of  Latin American Episcopal Conference) at Medellín in Columbia gave a strong endorsement to what is called “Liberation Theology.”  The timing of this endorsement was not opportune as 1968 was not only a year of great political unrest and riots in various countries,  around the world but was also the year that Pope Paul VI released—to very mixed reviews—his encyclical, Humanae Vitae, repeating the Church’s condemnation of artificial contraception.  In many ways 1968 can be seen as the year in which the optimistic enthusiasm in the Catholic world unleashed by the Second Vatican Council met the resistance of those in the Church determined to undo the work of the Council.  It certainly was a time when Paul VI’s confidence in Church reform faltered as his difficult decision to maintain the teaching against contraception resulted in an immense fall not only in his popularity but in his credibility.  Paul aged terribly that year and in many ways his papacy faltered, giving him the sobriquet “the Hamlet Pope” for the agonizing indecision that marked the last eight years of his papacy.  It was in this atmosphere of reevaluation of Vatican II that Romero was named an auxiliary bishop.  After a few years in a small diocese, he was named Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977. 
His appointment reflected an alliance among the Salvadoran military, the small oligarchy of rich families, and the Church.  He was considered “safe” by the establishment.  On the other hands, the clergy and faithful were distraught, feeling that they had been deprived of a genuine pastor. 
While the people were unenthusiastic and most of the clergy shunned him, one priest who reached out in friendship was Father Rutilio Grande.  This was somewhat ironic as Grande was among the most radical of the “liberation theologians,” organizing the poor campesinos into Bible study groups that gave the poor an understanding that their suffering was not God’s will but the product of human sinfulness.  Grande’s method of using the scriptures to open the eyes of the poor and to give them a sense that God is on their side was thought by those in power to be very subversive.
On March 12, 1977 Grande and two laymen—one only a lad of 16—were driving to the village of El Paisnal where Grande was to say mass.  Their car was racked by machine gun fire and all three men were killed. 
Romero went at once to the village church to which the three bodies had been brought and celebrated Mass there.  He sent the evening there listening to the local peasants as they told him story after story of their suffering.  This event radicalized the Archbishop.
Romero demanded of the government that they do an investigation of the murders—rumors were strong that Grande and the others had been killed by the Salvadoran military—but President Molina refused.  The newspapers, under duress from government censors, published a highly sanitized version of the murders.  The Archbishop had an independent investigation of the murders and published an accurate account of what happened.  Moreover, the Archbishop announced that he would not attend any Government function nor meet with President Molina until the government investigated the murders and punished the offenders.  This was a huge embarrassment for the government as the presence of the Archbishops—Romero and his predecessors—had always given a legitimacy to the government.  Romero’s blockade of government functions signaled the world that the Church no longer recognized the legitimacy of the government in representing the people.   From this point on, Romero became a public enemy in the sight of the military and the government.