Keeping The Faithful Faithful

Pope Francis at World Youth Day

I was reading an interesting article about why people—and often entire congregations—are leaving mainline Protestant churches and either dropping out of formal religious practice altogether or affiliating with more “evangelical” groups.  The reasons given for the breakdown of the mainline churches is

Bullying tactics by denominational leaders

A perceived abandonment of foundational principles of scripture and tradition

A devaluation of personal faith

It is interesting to look at the crisis of American Catholicism and ask how and to what extent these same issues have affected Catholics in the United States and led them to make other religious commitments (or non-commitments).

Bullying tactics by denominational leaders.  The Catholic hierarchy in the United States has a long history of oppressive and even “bullying” behavior towards the faithful.  While John Carroll, in the flush of excitement of the new American Republic, tried to set a democratic tone to American Catholicism, by and large American bishops after him followed the monarchic style of their European counterparts.  With the exception of the rare bird such as John England of Charleston (bishop 1820-1842), the American bishops have more often than not been heavy-handed tyrants.  Even the liberals such as John Ireland of Minneapolis St. Paul (1875-1918) or Patrick O’Boyle of Washington  (1948-1973) were most often unabashed autocrats while the conservatives such as William O’Connell of Boston (1906-1944), James McIntyre of Los Angeles (1948-1970), or Michael Corrigan of New York (1880-1902) were ecclesiastical despots.  Pope Francis has adopted a radically more open style of leadership as pope and it can be hoped that his episcopal appointments’ for the United States will reflect this change of approach in leading the Church.  Blase Cupich of Chicago certainly seems to be of this new Francis generation.  Coadjutor Archbishop Bernard Hebda of Newark is another Francis appointee who seems to have won the confidence of the clergy and faithful.  The new bishops of Fall River (Massachusetts) and Gary (Indiana) are also signs of hopeful change in the hierarchy.  For the most part, the Catholic faithful seem enthusiastic by Pope Francis’ style of leadership.  At the same time there are loud and strident voices that lament that there are not more dictatorial prelates in the style of Raymond Burke when he was Archbishop of Saint Louis or Fabian Bruskewitz, former bishop of Lincoln Nebraska whose resistance to change in the Church is legendary.  I think the message is clear that under Pope Francis bullying will not get a bishop or priest any desired advancement in his ecclesiastical career. Hopefully the Church will be  blessed by having this Pope long enough to make a permanent change in the style of leadership not only in Rome but in local chanceries as well.

The second issue I think is a bit more pertinent—actually much more pertinent—to our Catholic situation.  I don’t doubt that there is a perceived—and, in fact a real—break with the best of the Catholic intellectual tradition. I am not sure, however, that the American Church was ever as strong on biblical and theological scholarship as was ancient and medieval Catholicism or pre-WWII European Catholicism.  The state of homiletics in the average Catholic parish in this country was horrendous before Vatican II and it is still poor; what is worse is that today’s poor preacher is too often speaking to the very poorly catechized Catholic.  For all its pedagogical faults, the Baltimore Catechism in its day provided a thorough survey of Catholicism 101.  That is not to say that the average Catholic of the past knew, much less understood, his or her faith.  But there was a definite curriculum of doctrinal content available.  The state of religious education in American Catholicism is abysmal and has been abysmal for two generations now.  I remember studying secondary education as an undergraduate—it was one of my minors as, at the time, I thought I might end up a high-school teacher.  We were taught to always teach just above the student’s level so that reaching for comprehension would keep their interest in the class.  I always followed that in my decades of teaching—which turned out not to be secondary school but mostly at the post-graduate level.  But these years since Vatican II Religious Education both in Catholic Schools and parish Religious Ed programs has always gone just the other way and so grossly oversimplified things as to make the doctrinal content of our faith ridiculous to anyone with a critical mind.  Today in most parishes children have yet to master “The Lord’s Prayer” by Confirmation—forget any understanding of the Scriptures or the Deposit of Faith.  What can we do?  Well we need to put an emphasis on Adult Faith Formation (as distinguished from Adult Education.)  I am not a fan of the neo-Catechetical movement as I think the doctrinal thrust of the “neo-Cat’s” has been tainted by a certain level of Gnosticism, but the methodology of developing a post-baptismal catechumenate is, I believe, brilliant.  And while saying that, let me also give a plug for Father Robert Barron’s video series on Catholicism.  It is both a thorough presentation of basic Catholic doctrine and a profound introduction to our rich Catholic culture—both historical and contemporary. 

Finally, the matter of the devaluation of personal faith is another thing that I think we Catholics need to look at.  In the pre-conciliar Church we had little access to a mature spirituality but we did have a rich piety that sustained our immigrant parents and grandparents through the struggles of an economic Depression and devastating wars.  Among the babies that went out with the bathwater over the last five decades is a healthy mature spirituality suited for modern Catholics.  The old devotionalism won’t do, but neither does it have to.  We have in our Catholic heritage a rich heritage of being introduced to the great mystics.  We have a rich sacramental/liturgical life.  We have superb biblical scholarship of the last seventy+ years.  Modern religious movements like the Community of Saint Egidio and the Monastic Community of Jerusalem as well as the Ecumenical fellowship of Taizé have developed magnificent prayer-forms.  In addition to the Classics of Catholic Spirituality we have the writers of the 20^th century like Merton and Houselander.  Today’s writers like Rohlheiser, Rohr, Keating, and Chittester are sources of spiritual guidance for those who are seekers.  We hear a lot about secularism, but people today are as anxious as ever to bridge the everyday for the Transcendent.  There is much we can do in our parishes to meet these hungers, but until and unless we do we should not be surprised that the hungry are looking elsewhere and the searchers have become disillusioned.  

Monkeys in Space and Empty Pews in Church

I went on a road trip today (Sunday) and as I set out from my home to the highway, I drove past five, six, seven churches—United Methodist, Eastern Orthodox, Reformed, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian.  Nine o’clock Sunday morning and there was not one car in any parking lot.  I am sure that by 10 30 or 11 it was a different story but there is no doubt that Church attendance is on the decline.  It would not have been that way twenty years ago.  In our parish, one of the priests said that there are two less masses and about a thousand people a Sunday less than when he was stationed here thirty-five years ago. Sure, demographics play a part. Families are smaller.  The ethnic pool is more varied with more Asians and others from non-Christian cultures.  In fact, we see the occasional mosque opening—something that we didn’t see thirty years ago.  And yes, south of the Mason-Dixon there are new parishes opening up with large churches to hold an expanding Catholic population of transplanted North-easterners and Mid-westerners.  But when the dust settles there are still fewer and fewer people attending Church now than a generation ago.

And as my observations of late-opening parking lots this past Sunday would indicate, this is not just a Catholic problem.  While Bible Churches and fundamentalist groups are growing, the liberal denominations are shrinking.  The Episcopal Church, despite an influx of converts from Catholicism and other denominations, has shrunk from 4 million members a generation ago to 2.5 million today.  What is the problem?  Is it, as some allege, the vapidity of liberal Christianity?  Or is it something else?

Neo-trad Catholics have blamed the decline in Mass attendance on the Second Vatican Council and the move away from the old Latin liturgy, but the even more severed falloff  of mainline Protestant Churches belies any attempt to pin the problem to anything within Catholicism itself.  And the Catholic Church has not drunk the “liberal Kool-Aide” of same-sex marriage, ordination of women, abortion rights, and other causes that have caused dissention and defection among the liberal denominations.   If anything, we have lost more members because of our intransience than of any alleged accommodation to the liberal agenda.

Of course not all those who have stopped going to mass regularly have stopped going to Church. While many Catholics have often found new homes in Episcopalian or Lutheran Churches because of  issues of divorce and remarriage or for reasons of acceptance of same-sex marriage and families,  most ex-Catholics who still go to Church have joined Bible Churches or Pentecostal Congregations on the other end of the social spectrum.  Of course, even more former Mass-goers seem just to prefer having Sunday mornings to themselves to read the paper, do brunch, play golf, or just sleep in.

In all the arguing about the reasons for the fall off in church I think we are failing to acknowledge that our cosmology has taken a serious hit.  Those of us on the shady side of Medicare (how I never dreamed that day would come), still remember a heaven above and a hell below.  God dwelt in that heaven.  The Devil lived in that subterranean hell.  One died and one went up to heaven or down to hell.  It was not quite clear where purgatory was, but as it was only a temporary arrangement we could live with the ambiguity.    Today, of course, without much thought such a tiered universe has completely disappeared from the human immagination.  Long before Sputnik or Alan Shepherd and Freedom-7, we knew the vast infinity of space but it was only when people started to pierce it that the boundless vacuum of the universe began to sink into our consciousness.  And when it did, it left God homeless.   It seems embarrassingly naïve to us now to admit that we bought into the picture of Trito-Isaiah who has God declare: “The Heavens are my throne; the earth is my footstool.”   And indeed we may not have put it quite that way, but we did have a place for God and we don’t anymore.  Five hundred years ago, a helio-centric cosmos threatened Christian orthodoxy but now the situation is far more disturbing.  It was bad enough that Copernicus told us that we were not the center of being, but that we were a planet orbiting the sun; now our earth has been reduced to a mere neutron orbiting an atomic nucleus—one of trillions and trillions in a measureless universe.  Such immensity makes us totally irrelevant to a Deity that could not possibly—in our imagination at least—be any more aware of us than we are aware of whatever subatomic particles comprise that neutron that orbits the atom that is one of the trillions that make up the “h” key on our keyboard. 

On the other hand, there are those for whom God, dispossessed of his home in the heavens, has taken up residence in the human soul.  I am not sure what word to use.  I have chosen soul, but I could equally have chosen psyche or even heart.   I would prefer heart, in fact, but don’t want to confuse that to which I am referring as merely the emotions.  I mean that center of consciousness which has access to the emotions, but also consists of the intellect and of the will.  So let’s say soul.  I am not quite sure exactly what the human soul is.  It is a metaphysical category rather than a subject of the physical sciences, and so I mean it simply as our self-conscious being. 

The idea of God dwelling in the soul (or heart, or psyche) is not anything new.  Long before the space program began shooting monkeys and then humans into space, people like Augustine of Hippo and Teresa of Avila wrote of the human heart (or soul) as God’s dwelling place.  You find it in the psalms.  You find it in the Christian scriptures.  Among my favorite spiritual writers, an early twentieth-century French nun, Elizabeth of the Trinity, wrote eloquently of heaven being within the human heart.  She builds her theology on Saint Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle.

The Mass, as it was celebrated before the Second Vatican Council, reflected the cosmology of a God in Heaven above.  The theology, built on the scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages—Saints Anselm and Thomas Aquinas in particular—saw a priest, who was a sacramental representation of Christ the High Priest, offering the propitiatory sacrifice of the Cross to God the Father above on behalf of the People gathered below.  An anthropologist could explain how the ritual of the Mass reflected this cosmology and theology.  The people knelt silently—hopefully attentively—beyond the railings that marked the sacred space that only the priest and his assistants (all males) could enter, ascending anywhere from three to ten stairs to do so.  At the top of the stairs, the priest standing (others kneeling) and with the faithful gathered behind him, approached the earthly altar which was a sort of “stargate” that opened into a world beyond and there made a sacrifice of Christ mystically (i.e. sacramentally) re-presented (that is, made present again) in his Body and Blood by bread and wine.  It was a making-present-once-again of the one Sacrifice of Calvary and it was done with the aim of winning forgiveness of our sins.  It really is a lovely conception and when carried out with full ceremony (which was quite rare) is an exquisitely beautiful ritual.  But it sacramentally represents a cosmology that has disappeared.  This tiered universe with God looking down from the clouds above has gone the way of Zeus on Mount Olympus or Woden in Valhalla. 

Now to be fair, the old liturgy could also be a contemplative experience.  The operative word here is “could.”  For most it was a quasi-magical ritual.  The right person (the priest) had to say the right words (the prescribed text) in the right way (in Latin)with the right gestures (the rubrics).  If anything was off, the ritual was “invalid.”  Similarly many of the laity had their self-imposed prescribed prayers and rituals.  They said the rosary or worked their way through a stack of novena booklets preparing themselves for Holy Communion.  There was a huge disconnect between what happened at the altar and what the average person in the pews was doing until the moment of intersection when the person approached the communion rail and received the Holy Communion that had been offered on the altar.  Then the individual went back to his prayers and the priest to his ritual.  But for some, the quiet and the aesthetics of the church building, or if the full ritual was used,  the choir and a full set of sacred ministers, could still their souls into an interior quiet of genuine contemplative prayer.  But even this was a bit complicated as some confused an appreciation of the aesthetics of the Liturgy with supernatural prayer.  The aesthetics could, and often did, emotionally sweep a person into a sort of sweetness that was easily confused for some allegedly spiritual grace.     

One of my favorite operas is Puccini’s Tosca, probably because I lived for a good number of years in the area bordered by Sant’Andrea della Valle, the Palazzo Farnese, and the Castel Sant’Angelo: the sites of Acts I, II, and III of the work.  And Act I concludes with a magnificent scene of a religious procession with the Blessed Sacrament carried in a monstrance by a richly vested prelate and assisted by equally gorgeously garbed clergy beneath a tall canopy carried on poles by lace bedecked acolytes.  There are multiple thuribles sending clouds of incense into the air as the stage is filled with scores of singers chanting a melody reminiscent of the Pange Lingua.  It’s wonderful. It’s mystical.  It carries you away.  And the host in the monstrance is, of course, a dud, probably a cardboard cutout.  Supernatural grace and aesthetic appreciation can find themselves in a shared experience, but feelings of religious transport are no sure sign of grace.  The only sure sign of grace is an increase in charity.  I wish I could say that I find that increase in all those who prefer the old rituals.  I wish I could say that I find it in all those who prefer the new liturgy. 

The problem with the new rites is that they side-step the challenge of a collapsed cosmology and never address the issue of where to find God.  Just as the pre-conciliar rites are built on a medieval scholastic idea of the priest offering a propitiatory sacrifice for the forgiveness of the sins of the people, the novus ordo is based on the patristic understanding of Christ, in his Body the Church, announcing the Evangelion of the Kingdom of God and proclaiming the Death and Resurrection of the Lord until he comes again.  The focus is not on the priest alone but on the assembly which is Christ present in his Body the Church. The various members of the assembly have, as members of Christ’s Body, their diverse ministries.  The priest sacramentally represents Christ, the Head of the Body, in the dual ministries of Announcing the Word and Breaking the Bread.  By Breaking the Bread I mean, of course, not simply the distribution of the Eucharist but the entire Eucharistic Action of offering the Great Thanksgiving in which re-present the One Eternal Sacrifice of Christ.  But the emphasis is Christ and Christ in his Body, the Church.  Where is God (the Father) in all this?  That is never really cleared up—at least not in the ritual itself.  And it is hard to make this liturgy a contemplative experience.  In the first place, I am not sure that the Mass is meant to be a contemplative experience, but at least as it is structured now, we are all rather busy being Christ to one another.   There are readings to be read and responsories to be sung and processions to be processed and all within 60 minutes.  I have seen the liturgy prayed, really prayed, but almost exclusively in monastic settings and not always there.  Cistercians tend to do it well, but then they don’t seem to have much else to do.  I envy them for that.  But in the average parish, the Mass tends to be just one thing after another.  Entrance rite.  Penitential Rite. Gloria. Opening Prayer. First reading. And so on.  Maybe we sprinkle a little silence here and there, but it often becomes just as mechanical as the old ritual but without the magic.  Without the bad magic, but also without the good. 

I don’t think the answer is a reform of the ritual.  This isn’t that the ritual doesn’t need some reform, but that all the liturgical tinkering in the world isn’t going to solve the problem.  The problem is where is God?  Ok, we got Jesus in his Word, in his Sacramental Body and Blood, and in his Body the Church.  That is good.  But Jesus is meant to bring us to the Father. 

We Catholics have a very rich tradition of spirituality and it is for the most part untapped.  O we do the piety thing but I am not speaking of piety, but of spirituality.  We have to recover our spiritual heritage and start making it accessible to our people.  Richard Rohr writes

….  Much of the Western world has given up on the church and is going other places for wisdom.  Unfortunately, in these other places they are sometimes “willingly filling their belly with the husks the pigs are eating” (Luke 15:16) But we in the church must ask ourselves if we have not been the parent who sent them away because there was nothing trustworthy or life-giving at home. [i]

Our Catholic faith has long known that God dwells in the human heart.  I think for worship to make sense to people, we need to recover that awareness and provide the introduction to the spiritual life that allows the liturgy to be that “stargate” that opens us to a Mystery that is already at the center of our own souls. 

---

[i] Richard Rohr, Near Occasions of Grace, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993, p. 26

Preparing the Ground for a New Luther?

Are we facing in the wrong

direction?  not only at the

altar but for God's Work in

the world?

I was at Mass Saturday evening and heard the Gospel:

"All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."

What concerns me most about the nonsense right  now with the Vatican’s complaints about the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the “scandal” with the Pope’s butler leaking confidential documents,  the Vatican Bank and its inability to meet transparency standards set by international conventions, Cardinal Bertone’s alleged coup to consolidate all power in his Secretariat of State, the issues about Caritas Internationalis needing more hierarchical  supervision, Cardinal  Burke parading around thinking he is Louis XIV—and then the nonsense here with the alternative magisterium of Michael Voris and “Real Catholic T.V.,”  Carl Anderson and the mismanagement of the Knights of Columbus, and everything else going on is that—wait a minute: we have a mission and we have taken our eyes off that mission. 

     “Go and make disciples of all nations”—where is that in this current mess? 

     Somewhere in the reign of John Paul II the steersman took his eye off the course of proclaiming the Kingdom of God and the bark of Peter has been foundering in waves of turmoil ever since.  The Second Vatican Council is about more than putting the liturgy into everyday language, turning altars to face the people, (neither of which things the Council itself actually did, mind you); what the Council did do was to set a course for the Church to proclaim the Gospel in the Modern World.  What is going on today is nothing more than a free for all as those with power jockey for more power whether on the level of the Vatican bureaucracy or the American hierarchy.  The political connivance, led by Cardinal Francis George of Chicago in 2010, that kept Vice President of the conference, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson from becoming president of the conference—the first time that a sitting Vice President did not become President of the USCCB—is only one example of the misdirected energy that is going to infighting rather than carrying out a vision for the Church here in the United States.  The connivance of Archbishop Lori (who owes his Baltimore See to the generosity of Carl Anderson and the Knights of Columbus money which Anderson uses freely for some very  biased agenda items), with Cardinals Burke, Law, and Levada to go after the American Sisters  is yet another.  The transformation of a personal vendetta of an American bishop into a scathing attack on Sister Elizabeth Johnson—a more sound scholar and better theologian than any of the bishops—for her book Quest for the Living God is a third example of wasted energy that should be devoted to bringing Christ to people with profound spiritual hungers.  Richard Rohr has written

      Much of the Western world has given up on the church and is going other places for wisdom.  Unfortunately, in these other places they are sometimes “willingly filling their belly with the husks the pigs are eating” (Luke 15:16) But we in the church must ask ourselves if we have not been the parent who sent them away because there was nothing trustworthy or life-giving at home."  (Richard Rohr, Near Occasions of Grace, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993, p. 26)
      This is precisely the situation in which we are finding ourselves as Church—we have a tremendous storehouse of spiritual nourishment to share with a world that suffering in immense distress and hunger of every sort but instead of bringing the Gospel and its life-giving hope, we are squabbling over who holds the keys to the pantry.  And when the internecine squabbling stops long enough for the Church to speak something to the world beyond its doors—it is always a message of negativity.  As I have written before: today everyone can tell you what the Catholic Church is against but very few can tell you what we stand for.  
       From a historical viewpoint this situation is fraught with signs of danger for the Church.  The loss of reputation for moral integrity, the concern with power and wealth by many prelates, the ignoring of advances in scientific knowledge and learning, the alienation of an educated and competent laity, the defense of antique social and political structures in a rapidly evolving society—these are all reminiscent of situation that led up to the Protestant Reformations of the 16^th century.  Vatican II was called to heal the divisions in Christianity but the betrayal of the Council over the last thirty plus years is threatening us with further discord and schism.  We need to refocus on mission and be willing to surrender our personal ambitions for the sake of advancing the Kingdom of God. 

Genuine Spiritual Hungers and Pious Charletans

How is it that a Marcel Guranizo or a James Haley can have such devoted followers who swear to their “holiness” while at the same time Church authorities see it necessary to remove them temporarily (Guarnizo) or permanently (Haley) from ministry?   Now granted there are dozens of stories in the history of the Church where good men—and women—fell afoul of the Institution and paid the price for their integrity.  This past week I related the story of Margaret Anna Cusack, the foundress of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace, whose persecution by Archbishop Corrigan led her not only to leave the Sisterhood she had founded but to return to the Anglican Communion in which she had been baptized and raised.  Saint John of the Cross was persecuted by his fellow Carmelites and even imprisoned for nine months in a monastic prison for his “disobedience” to his religious superiors when all he was trying to do was encourage reform among his brothers.  Saint Mary MacKillop, Australian foundress of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, was excommunicated because she wouldn’t buckle under to the local bishop’s demands to control her religious order.  But even as they say that being paranoid doesn’t mean that people aren’t out to get you, so too persecution is no sure sign that one is a saint.   
       I have never met either James Haley or Marcel Guarnizo, but their ecclesiastical status is troubling vis a vis the perceived sanctity about which their defenders are loud and long.   There are degrees of censure.  “Administrative Leave”—the status of Father Guarnizo is probably the lightest form of censure under which he could be put.   It is not, I believe, even a canonical category.  As I explained in an earlier blog (April 25)  it seems that it is just removing him from the public eye while circumstances totally unrelated to his refusal of communion to Barbara Johnson are investigated to make sure that in his involvement with Aid to the Church in Russia and the Educational Initiative for Central and Easter Europe he has done nothing illegal or that would otherwise “embarrass” the Church.  His administrative leave only affects his ministerial status in the Archdiocese of Washington.  He is totally free to return to his home diocese, the Archdiocese of Moscow, and serve there at the will of that Archbishop.  In fact, he probably is free to assume ministry in any other diocese, even in the United States—or the world—with permission of the local bishop. 
       The next most serious step would be for a priest to be deprived of his faculties and this would bar him entirely from priestly ministry but leave his clerical status intact.  Such censure would apply only the diocese where the faculties were withdrawn.  This is sometimes used against religious order priests to force them from a diocese where the Bishop finds them troublesome for their preaching social justice themes or their failure to adhere strictly to liturgical norms, but it could be used against secular clergy as well.   Another bishop, another diocese, is free to admit the priest and restore his faculties for the new diocese.  Suspension a divinis which bars him from public ministry would be the next most serious step and in this case the accused is not able to resume ministry even in another diocese unless and until the suspension is lifted by the priest’s canonical superior who had placed him under suspension. 
      For a priest to be defrocked is the most serious punishment and it is rarely used. It is invoked only when the priest’s behavior would continue to bring extraordinary disgrace on the Church.  The priest is not only prohibited from exercising ministry but is returned “to the lay state”—that is to say he is no longer acknowledged as a priest.  Persistent and public immorality would be one reason this censure would be invoked, but it might also be used to distance the Church from a priest with serious psychological problems for which he either refused or is unable to be treated.  A priest with a sexual addiction that cannot be brought under control might be defrocked.    A man who uses the priesthood or the Church in a serious financial scam might be defrocked.  In both those—and most other cases—the individual usually would first be given the opportunity to resign his priestly ministry voluntarily but the refusal to do so would result in his being defrocked.  
        I don’t know why James Haley was defrocked but the fact that he was not only defrocked but then, according to his defenders, excommunicated is an indication of some very serious misdeed which he will not acknowledge.  It may be that psychologically he cannot accept responsibility for whatever misconduct has brought down this punishment but in any event it is a tragic story not because he didn’t deserve the punishment but because he cannot bring himself to take responsibility for his actions and be restored to the unity of the Church.  If this were a case, as in the case of Mary MacKillop, of an individual bishop, it could be a personal vendetta but if the excommunication comes from the Holy See—as “defrocking” would have to (the local bishop not having that authority)—the charges must have grave weight.      
Reading various blogs and entries on the internet, both Father Guranizo and James Haley have impressed many people with their being “holy priests.”  How is it that people are so easily impressed?  A colleague of mine was a parishioner at Saint Lawrence Church in Arlington where James Haley had once served as parochial vicar.  I remember this story because my friend and his wife left Saint Lawrence, their long time parish, and joined Saint Matthew Cathedral parish across the river in Washington, precisely because of James Haley.  Then-Father Haley would speak at Mass of the “visions” he had while gazing into the chalice of the newly consecrated Precious Blood.  They found this very disturbing without being able to explain precisely why.  Other parishioners, however, ooohhhed and aaahhhed at Haley’s profound “mystical gifts.” 
       Many are taken in by great piety and devotion because they confuse piety with true holiness and this is one of the structural faults in contemporary Catholicism.  A newly ordained Methodist pastor with whom I was speaking recently told me that when she was in seminary she and other Protestant students cross-registered with a Catholic seminary for courses in spirituality because the Methodist faculty didn’t offer any courses while the Catholic theology school had an entire department of spirituality.  Yet, she was surprised that most of the students in the spirituality courses were Protestants or lay people.  Candidates for the Catholic priesthood were too busy with their canon law and liturgics classes to have the room in their schedules to study the mystics.  This corresponds with my own experience where I find the secular clergy in particular to be grossly ignorant of the mystical tradition in Catholicism.   I think these accounts for much of the poor preaching today when Catholics are either subjected to pious drivel or drowned in doctrinal complexities, neither of which belongs in the pulpit.   Modern people have great spiritual hungers and the Catholic Church is blessed with a rich tradition of spiritual teachers such as Francis de Sales, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius Loyola, Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Bernard of Clairvaux,  Elizabeth of the Trinity,  Thomas a Kempis, as well as a host of lesser known writers—Brother Laurence, Dom Augustine Baker, Marie of the Incarnation, Hadewicjh of Antwerp, Jan Ruysbroeck.  The work of many of these writers is available in the Classics of Western Spirituality series by Paulist Press.   In addition to these great writers of the past, current Catholic spiritual writers such as Thomas Keating, Ronald Rohlheiser, Ruth Burrows, Joan Chittester, Richard Rohr, are writing books that are helping tens of thousands of people—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—on their spiritual journeys.  And of course the work of the twentieth century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton (d. 1968) continues to inspire countless people.  And yet, do we hear about the spiritual journey in our parishes?  All too rarely.  One of my students last year mentioned that her pastor had cancelled a talk by the Trappist monk William Menninger  because  as her pastor told her “contemplative prayer is for monks and nuns, not people like you.”  What a pity.  Richard Rohr writes:
      Much of the Western world has given up on the church and is going other places for wisdom.  Unfortunately, in these other places they are sometimes “willingly filling their belly with the husks the pigs are eating” (Luke 15:16) But we in the church must ask ourselves if we have not been the parent who sent them away because there was nothing trustworthy or life-giving at home.

I think he has a point.

How Religion Has Changed These Last 50 Years

Does this sort of religion "work" today?

I caught a few minutes of Fresh Air with Terry Gross Easter Monday afternoon while I was in the car and she was interviewing anthropologist T.M. (Tanya Marie) Luhrmann who was speaking about prayer and the experience of evangelical Christians of God “talking back” with them in prayer.  I should have listened to the whole show before I make a judgment but I am a little skeptical of God talking with “evangelical” Christians ever since Jesus told George Bush to invade Iraq.  Trust me, if I ever had a good reason to push saying the rosary it is what God supposedly says to politicians and preachers when you get into free style prayer.  But what caught my attention was this:

“American spirituality has shifted since the '60s toward a much more engaged, responsive, intimately experienced sense of the spiritual. Every church is different. Every person within a church has a somewhat different experience of God. But I thought this represented something really important about American spirituality."  I think this insight has a lot to say about the changed Catholicism of the last fifty years. 

        Now I grew up, or at least got a good head start on growing up, in the pre-Vatican II Church.  I was in High School when the Council met.  I had at that point been through eight years of Catholic grade school and was safely ensconced in a private Catholic Boys High School where we were expected to be in Sodality and where the entire student body went to Mass in the gym every Friday morning.  I grew up with family rosary, Mass on Sunday, Wednesday night Holy Hour, and Friday Stations during lent.  We had no meat on Friday, fasted in Lent and the Vigil of Christmas (and several other days), and had a crucifix in every room in the house (except the guest bathroom), and assorted statues and holy pictures not only in the bedrooms but the living room, family room, foyer, and dining room.  We weren’t fanatics—though it sure sounds like it now—it was what everybody we knew (‘cause everybody we knew was Catholic) did.  We didn’t have Mass in English, communion in both kinds, charismatic prayer meetings, centering prayer, bible study, Lectio Divina, or guided meditation.  Thomas Merton was Seven Story Mountain, Joan Chittester was still wearing a wimple (and not yet writing books), and Richard Rohr and Ronald Rohlheiser were both in Little League. It seems strange in retrospect, but this sort of religion worked.

     Mass was something Father did for us.  He said Mass.  We went to Mass and, if we were in the “State of Grace” and hadn’t eaten, we went to Holy Communion.  God to us was “mediated” by the priest. Those gates in the communion rail were a powerful symbol—they kept us at our respectful distance but they swung open and closed to admit the priest who went from us to God and from God to us.  In the same way, the priest standing at the altar with his back towards us and “facing God” was a clear sign of his role as our designated mediator. 

       And if there was anything that the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council did, it was to give us direct access to God in which the priest may have remained a facilitator but no longer was the mediator.  The gates were gone—the rail was gone—the barrier stood no longer and we could enter the sanctuary without obstacle.  Prayer was in our own language and we could speak with God directly without Father having to take our prayers to God in Latin, God’s language of choice.  The Mass and rites of the Church shaped our prayer, but didn’t exhaust it.  Now people would gather for prayer meetings.  Now there were bible studies.  Now people began reading books about meditation and growing in the spiritual life.  Lay people began having spiritual directors and spirituality shifted from staying out of sin and saying prayers to serious paths of spiritual journeying.  It wasn’t only evangelicals who wanted an experiential prayer life—it was Catholics. 

     This has had various consequences.  For some of us, we have found communities in the Church that help us on this journey.  We attend parishes where the homilies are scriptural and make faith a matter of daily life.  The Liturgy of the Church nourishes us spiritually and is an important component of our relationship with God.  Others have found their experiences of Church lacking anything meaningful.  Sometimes this is because they don’t know what they are looking for, they just know they aren’t finding in Church, or at least the Catholic Church.  Some have found that once you take away the spoon-fed mediated sort of religion, they are not interested in the work a spiritual life takes.  Others have found the Church, or even religion in general, to be no more than stories and ceremonies in which they aren’t interested.  And still others attend churches where the priests are still trying to give them the old mediated religion where the priest will sit on them until they hatch and then feed them beak to beak the worms of piety, predigested in their priestly gullets as if that will give them the nourishment to be spiritual eagles.  I think Vatican II made a brave new start but then I think have had a loss of confidence, not unlike Simon Peter after those first tentative steps across the sea.  I think those who have taken the Council seriously have benefitted in their spiritual growth.  I know I have

Voices Past and Present

Bishop John Carroll, the first United States

Bishop and a model for bishops who can
think "outside the box" to effectively

evangelize in new and uncertain situations

I am on the road this weekend giving a workshop in the History of the Church in the United States and don’t have access to my library so  let’s do a divergence from our saga of the building of Saint Peter’s.  I had dinner the other evening with a group of seminarians—several Catholic and several Protestant.  Each was asked to introduce himself or herself and say something about their experience in seminary and how they realized their vocation.  One young man, an Episcopalian Seminarian from the (Episcopal) Diocese of South Carolina,  mentioned in his introduction that his bishop had identified him for “church planting and evangelization.”  “Church planting” is the process of establishing a new congregation in an area where there is no existing congregation of the particular denomination that is sponsoring the mission.  We Catholics begin plenty of new parishes—especially in the south and the west of the United States where the Catholic Church is growing;  not so much in the north-east and upper mid-west where the there are often more churches than are needed and we find parishes being closed or  amalgamated with other parishes.  But we Catholics don’t usually engage in “church planting.”  We simply divide the existing parish or parishes and split off a new parish.  Church planting is something different.  It really requires beginning a new parish or congregation “from scratch.” 
     What impressed me in this conversation with this seminarian is not that he is being prepared for this challenging and creative mission.  What impressed me is that his bishop is thinking so creatively about how to make the best use of his present and future clergy.  The bishop is “thinking outside the box,” seeing possibilities that do not yet exist.  There was a time in the history of the American Church when our bishops had that sort of creative leadership.   One of the seminarians present at the dinner, a Catholic, is a recent immigrant from Germany.  He asked a question about the “chapter” providing guidance for the bishop.  The other Americans, at least the Catholics in the group, all looked at him blankly.  “Chapter?” they asked, “what is a chapter?”  He was surprised when I explained that we don’t have chapters in the American Church.  The Chapter is composed of the canons of the cathedral and they have certain rights and duties in the election of the bishop and in advising the bishop in his ministry.  Chapters are—had have been for fifteen hundred years—standard operating procedure in European dioceses.  But when the American hierarchy was established with John Carroll’s appointment in 1790,  Carroll told Rome that chapters were not practicable in the United States.  We could not afford to tie up seven or eight priests to serve a cathedral when we needed every available priest to go out and “ride the circuit,” saying mass, hearing confessions, baptizing, blessing marriages, anointing the sick, preaching, and teaching catechism in the dozens and dozens of rural communities in Maryland, Pennsylvania, upstate New York and along the Canadian border where there were Catholic settlements.  Carroll and his priests found many creative ways of meeting the challenges of a small and minority denomination in a large and then rural society.    
      It would be interesting for today’s  American (Catholic) bishops  to think outside the box how to meet the pastoral challenges of an expanding Catholic population in some parts of the nation while it is shrinking in others.  It would be great to see them come up with some creative solutions to the vocation problem and how we can keep our Catholic communities tied to the Eucharist when we just don’t have enough priests to go around.  It would be wonderful to see them address the complex problems of a Church that is so heavily immigrant and non-English speaking before there are more Latino “evangelicals” than Catholics.  If only they could repair their moral credibility and speak with authority rather than from what has become a very shaky power.  This is the time to think creatively and try new solutions.  When you know the History of the Church, creativity is the Catholic response.  Just ask Augustine of Canterbury or Innocent III or Hildegarde of Bingen, or Bernard of Clairvaux, or Charles Borromeo, or Ignatius Loyola, or Mary Ward or Vincent DePaul, or Madeline Sophie Barat, or Catherine McAuley or Mary MacKillop.  These were creative thinkers.  We have been blessed in more recent times with people like Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton, and Dom Helder Camara,  and Gino Baroni, and Joseph Bernardin, and  Monika Hellwig.  Today we have among us Elizabeth Johnson, and Richard Rohr, and Thomas Keating, and Joan Chittester, and Daniel Berrigan, and Tom Gumbleton, and Ronald Rohlheiser.  It isn’t that the Holy Spirit isn’t trying to open our eyes, our hearts, and our imagination to challenges of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.   It is just that the hearts of this people has grown dull.  Let us beg for the grace to listen to the Holy Spirit with the ear of our hearts. 

More on the Church's Need for a New Reformation

A Buddhist monk and a Catholic

Religious Sister stand together in

St. Peter's Square during the

Beatification of Mother Teresa

Another indication of an urgent need for Reform in the Church is the critical hemorrhaging of members.  The rapidly changing demographics as vast numbers of Americans move from the North East and Midwest to the South and South West as well as the huge influx of Catholic Immigrants from Latin America and the Pacific Rim has created a sort of shell-game that give the impression in some parts of the country that Church population is somewhat stable.  And indeed, because of the immigration the numbers are holding, unlike for Mainline Protestant Churches.  Even in the North East and Midwest, there is room for self-deception as complacent officials attribute the empty churches to the suburbanization of the Catholic Population and the decrease in family size from the post-war years where Catholic parents often had six or more children.  And, again, there is some truth to this.  But I am a great reader of death notices and when I find a McLaughlin or a Catanzarro or a Kowalski being buried from “Pine Ridge Bible Church” or having their “Celebration of Life” at McGinty’s Tavern and Bowling Alley –and I am finding a lot of these obituaries today—I realize that something has changed.   Several weeks back I did a series of entries on why people come (or don’t come) to Mass.  When people meet a priest at a social event they no longer feel any embarrassment or discomfiture at the subject of no longer being Catholic.  When I was growing up, admittedly in the Pre-Vatican II years, you heard “once a Catholic, always a Catholic.”  And that was true. It was impossible to ever truly leave the Church.  O you might go somewhere else, especially if there was a divorce and remarriage issue, but you always trailed your Catholicism with you.  No longer.  I once marveled at how Protestants could be Congregationalists until they moved to a town where the Methodists church was closer and they became Methodists.  “Abide with Me” lent itself to playing musical chairs much better than “Panis Angelicus,” but no longer.  Today you find Catholics sliding comfortably into a wide variety of other churches, other religions, and no religion at all. 
    Several years ago I met a fellow on a retreat.  He had been in his younger years, long ago, a member of the Society of Jesus—a Jesuit—though he left before ordination, married, and raised a family.  He and his wife are devout and faithful Catholics.  During the Cold War he served as United States Ambassador to one of the Soviet Satellite States of Eastern Europe where his wife and he were driven each Sunday  in the Ambassador’s car, flags flying, to Mass at the Cathedral in public witness of his personal faith and the American commitment to Freedom of Religion.  He regularly called on the capital’s Archbishop or sent the Archbishop gifts of food, firewood, and other necessities the regime made it difficult for the prelate to obtain as a sign to the government that nothing untoward should happen to the Archbishop or it would be noticed by the American Embassy.  The evening I was a guest at their home, we were joined by their daughter, a Buddhist nun.  This woman, raised a Catholic in the most devout of homes, is no flake.  To the contrary.  Not only is she a known and reputable Buddhist Scholar, but a practicing and well respected physician who, among other clients, is the physician for Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in her city.  I have since arranged for her to speak on a number of panels with Catholic, Jewish, and Islamic scholars on the subjects of spirituality and peacemaking.   I have never discussed with her the subject of why she found her spiritual home in Buddhism, but I am reminded of Richard Rohr’s quote: Much of the Western world has given up on the Church and is going other places for wisdom.  Unfortunately, in these other places they are sometimes “willingly filling their belly with the husks the pigs are eating” (Luke 15:16) But we in the church must ask ourselves if we have not been the parent who sent them away because there was nothing trustworthy or life-giving at home.  (Richard Rohr, Near Occasions of Grace, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993, p. 26)  By no means do I want to compare Buddhism to empty husks--to the contrary--I am well read in Buddhism and appreciate its great wisdom and depth, for the most part quite compatible with our Christian faith and practice.  But the lack of appreciation among Catholics for our own profound mystical tradition and practice has left a hunger for many that drives them to look elsewhere for what is at home in locked cupboards.       I deeply appreciate Pope Benedict’s call to a New Evangelism, but it is in vain until we, as a Church, have a deep and soul-searching inner Reformation, individually and collectively.  After all, how can those who have not yet believed the Gospel be its heralds?