Faith Lost, Faith To Be Regained

Quinn Abbey, County Clare

I have been in Ireland this past week.  I came for meetings—I come often and know the country well.  I have quite a few contacts here, both professional and personal.  And Friday evening where I was “down in the country”—meaning in the west of Ireland—with people I have known for some forty years we had a fascinating discussion regarding the challenges facing the Church here.  Now this small group of seven or eight are all still practicing Catholics—which, I must admit, surprised me somewhat.  As I said I have known them for decades and heard their gripes and complaints about the Church—gripes and complaints that I would say are quite justified in the particular situations that they had described—but here they are still going to Mass regularly and friends with their various parish priests (the term for pastor both here in Ireland and in canon law).  But they had some very insightful comments nonetheless.
Even a generation ago Ireland was strongly Catholic.  Two generations ago vocations were not only plentiful but now empty seminaries and convents were then swarming.  Was it the economic boom that killed the faith—I asked—the Celtic Tigre?  Well, they opined, that did play a role in it; the current recession has seen a slight rise in Mass attendance.  But they offered several other suggestions.  One is that while the practices of the faith: Mass attendance, meatless Fridays, family rosary, etc. were well defined, there was never good catechesis.  People knew what to do but they never understood what it was about. Even in the glory days of Catholic Ireland it was cultural but not deeply rooted.  They talked about going to Mass as youngsters.  The men, they said, would stand outside smoking until the Sanctus bell and duck inside the back until the priest’s communion and then were back outside lighted up.  The women would say their rosaries with rapid speed—making three and four tours around the beads in the course of a single Mass—but pay no attention at all to the Mass itself.  Priests were praised for the speed with which they could say Mass.  And after Mass on the way home the discussion was “Did you see that one?  And how does she have the nerve to come to Mass with her being out all night with her man from Doolin?   And him—and he was going to communion after he was in the pub last night and carrying on as if he weren’t a married man?”  It was a remarkably frank conversation about how shallow the faith sometimes was even where it was supposedly healthy.
One of my academic colleagues is from Krakow and he happens to be a priest. Now I have often been to Poland as well, though not as often as to Ireland, and remarked to him how strong the faith is in Poland.  He is quite cynical about the Polish situation and believes that for most it is only a cultural attachment.  He claims that while Church attendance is still strong, when it comes to issues from abortion to alcohol abuse to domestic violence the Catholic faith makes little impact on the church-going Pole.  “There is a ‘wall of separation’ between religion and daily life.  We are Catholics because we are Poles and aren’t like the Evangelical Germans or the Orthodox Russians—but if it weren’t that our historic enemies were either Lutherans or Russians, we would have no idea what it means to be Catholic.”
I think this points to the need for us to look long and hard at catechetics and the most effective ways to catechize the youth we still have.  I still believe the most effective catechetical tool we have is the liturgy itself.  This doesn’t mean that the priest should use the homily at mass to “teach.”  There is a world of difference between teaching and preaching and for my money there is nothing more deadly than an academic homily.  A homily is meant to relate the scriptures read at Mass to daily Christian living.  But I think if the liturgy were celebrated with great thought being given to the music selected, to the petitions being written, and to clear and honest ritual without the distracting fuss and bother so many priests overlay it with these days, the basic elements of our faith would be imprinted on our mind week after week.  Neither the happy-clappy liturgies of the left nor the ceremonial rigid pomposity of the right wing clergy does this but what we need is a good, prayerful, focus on the key truth of our faith: that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son that whoever believes him may not perish but may have eternal life for God did not send his son to condemn the world but rather so that the world may be saved through him.        

Freedom of Conscience--All Depends On Whose Conscience It Is

Bishop Loverde of Arlington

teaching children the faith

My last posting concerned a “fidelity oath” that the Diocese of Arlington has imposed on teachers in Catholic Schools and Religious Education programs throughout the diocese.  This oath allegedly requires teachers to “believe everything the bishops characterize as divinely revealed and Arlington’s top doctrine official said it would include things like the bishops’ recent campaign against a White House mandate that most employers offer contraception coverage…” 

Well we have some problems, here, don’t we boys and girls?
In the first place, is the problem of oaths.  Let us look at paragraph 2155 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church

The holiness of the divine name demands that we neither use it for trivial matters, nor take an oath which on the basis of the circumstances could be interpreted as approval of an authority unjustly requiring it. When an oath is required by illegitimate civil authorities, it may be refused. It must be refused when it is required for purposes contrary to the dignity of persons or to ecclesial communion.

Now I will be the first to say that it is extremely important that those charged with teaching the faith teach the faith as the Church teaches it, no problem.  I will also agree that a priest being given the charge of souls as Parish Priest (the canonical term for a pastor) may be required to take an oath to teach the faith in its fullness and without alteration.  Even more would this be true for a man being installed as bishop of a diocese.  No problem.  But an oath requiring complete assent of intellect and will to be in conformity to all Church teaching for a man or woman teaching seven-year olds?  Or—for that matter—teaching seventeen year olds?  I think the pastor needs to meet with the teachers and explain the importance of teaching what the Church teaches.  I think teaching needs to be—to some extent—monitored to make sure the children are getting the faith of the Church and not the private opinions of a teacher presented as the teaching of the Church.  But an oath!  I would think that it is funny—somewhat like a cartoon of a man going after a horsefly with cannon—were it, if not a violation of the 2^nd commandment at least skirting its violation. 

Secondly, in taking an oath, is the person being required to admit the right of

diocesan authorities to require such an oath and do the bishop and his officials  have the moral right to require religion teachers to take an oath that extends their authority over “intellect and will”? 

According to the catechism we should not take an oath that is being imposed unjustly lest the taking of that oath be interpreted as approving the unjust exercise of authority.  Do Diocesan authorities have the right to call in individuals and make them swear that not only in the public forum—i.e. in what they say in the classroom—but in the internal forum—i.e. what they believe and practice in their conscience—that they give complete assent to whatever the bishop(s) determine is divinely revealed.  This is very complicated as it involves authority over the internal forum—the conscience of the individual.  Now, under certain circumstances, the Church has imposed the obligation on certain people to give assent both internally and externally to certain doctrines, including the teaching on contraception.  I have no problem with the Church requiring priests and those who teach in the name of the Church to promise that they will not teach contrary to Church doctrine.  I do have a problem, however, when you talk about requiring internal assent if that extends to conscience.  While I believe that we must form our consciences according to the teaching of the Church, I also believe that the conscience is sacrosanct and that even an erroneous conscience must be listened to by the person to whom it belongs. I have been taught that this too is a fundamental principle of Catholic moral theology.  What authority then does the Church have to make a person hold in conscience what they do not in fact hold in conscience?    

Now up to this point we have been talking about issues like contraception or same-sex relationships and these are certainly within the area of the Church’s teaching competency, but this Arlington “oath” extends not only to such grave matters but to agreement of intellect and will that the HHS mandate that most employers offer contraception coverage is a violation of religious freedom.  We have crossed a line here from faith and morals (contraception) to Constitutional Law (that the mandate is an infringement of the First Amendment).  Can such a principle justly be required to be accepted in “intellect and will?”  Would not taking such an oath involving a constitutional question with political overtones be a validation of the authority of the Church to impose itself beyond the area of faith and morals?  Or perhaps the catechism is saying that the requirement to resist an unjust oath only applies to civil authorities but that the Church has such a right over its members? Hmmm.  No it seems to be that this oath is wrong in the first place because the matter is not sufficiently grave to require an oath.  Secondly it is wrong because it tries to exercise an absolute jurisdiction over an individual’s conscience.  Thirdly it seems to be to be wrong because it admits the validity of the diocesan authority to impose its weight beyond the competency of the Church’s magisterium.  Let me conclude with an email I recently received from a friend of mine.  It just repeats part of the Washington Post article—but a significant part

Loverde, who called for the oath, was not available for comment. Catholic bishops have broad authority in their dioceses, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said there is no churchwide requirement for such oaths.

Some experts said the oath embodies the intense struggle in Catholicism today to define what makes someone a true follower. What teachings are core? What authority do laypeople have?

The Rev. Ronald Nuzzi, who heads the leadership program for Catholic educators at the University of Notre Dame, said many bishops “are in a pickle.” They want Catholic institutions to be staffed by people who not only teach what the church teaches but whose “whole life will bear witness.”

Nuzzi said he keeps a photo on his desk from the 1940s that shows all the German bishops in their garb, doing the Nazi salute.

“I keep it there to remind people who say to do everything the church says, that their wisdom has limitations, too.”     

Let me repeat

“I keep it there to remind people who say to do everything the church says, that their wisdom has limitations, too.”