Maybe If They Took Off Those Silly Hats, Bishops Could Listen Better

John Henry Newman,
now here is a Cardinal
for you!

Frank Bruni had an interesting editorial in this morning’s New York Times where he points out in light of last week’s Irish referendum on same-sex marriage, that Catholic countries are in the vanguard of societies that are coming to extend the benefits of marriage to gay couples.  He also makes this comment on American Catholics and the battles over same-sex marriage.

Catholics in the United States appear to be more, not less, progressive about gay rights than Americans in general are. In an especially ambitious survey conducted over the course of 2014 by the Public Religion Research Institute, about 60 percent of Americans who called themselves Catholic said that they approved of same-sex marriage, versus about 30 percent who didn’t. The spread among all respondents was 54 to 38, and the group that clearly stood in the way of same-sex marriage wasn’t Catholics. It was evangelical Protestants.

He waters down the link between Catholic faith and the battle for marriage equality however as he points out that “Catholics” include not only regular church-goers but all those who for ethnic or cultural reasons identify themselves as Catholics regardless of their worship patterns.  He points out—and I believe truthfully—that regular worshippers would tend to be more conservative on this and other social issues than those whose Catholicism is a more abstract participation in heritage than a concrete commitment to faith.  On the other hand, as a regular church-goer myself and one whose social circle is drawn pretty heavily from regular church-going Catholics, I don’t think one can say that “good Catholics” (those who attend Mass regularly) are any less supportive of human rights—and access to marriage is at least perceived as a human right—than the larger self-identifying Catholic population.  What I mean to say here is that when one looks at the basic issues of sexual morality, I think Church-going Catholics tend to a more traditional view of what is right and what is wrong than the more secularized segments of American society, but when it is framed in a question of “rights,” I think Church-goers are just as avid, and perhaps even more avid, for social justice than the larger American society.  As long as there are legal and economic benefits to marriage, access to marriage must be open to couples regardless of their gender-composition. 

Now I want to pair Bruni’s editorial with a posting I saw on Father James Martin’s Facebook Page. 

Cardinal Walter Kasper believes that Pope Francis wants a "listening magisterium," a hierarchy that listens to the faithful, to the "sensus fidelium." Also, in an interesting approach, he says that the hermeneutic of continuity (meaning the view that the church does not change) must be a hermeneutic of reform.

This is something I have been harping on for a long time.  John Henry Newman—so beloved of the Katholik Krazies who obviously have never read him—spoke of the necessary balance between the magisterium of the hierarchy, the work of the theologians, and the faith of the faithful and warned that when they get out of balance the integrity of doctrine suffers.  The faith of the Church is the faith held in the hearts and intellects of the faithful.  The predominance over the last five centuries of what Dulles referred to as the Institutional Model of the Church reduced the laity to recipients of the teaching of the hierarchical magisterium and this has created an imbalance from which the Church and its credibility has suffered greatly.  The hierarchy needs to carefully listen to the faith as it is held by the People of God.  The Holy Spirit puts the truth in the heart of the Church—not in the pen of the hierarchy.  I am not saying that my opinion or your opinion is the truth but precisely where there is that consensus fidelium—where the hearts of all the faithful line up in harmony—the Spirit is speaking.  That is why, even in the pre-Vatican II Church, it was always acknowledged that doctrine must not only be taught for it to be established as the teaching of the Church, but doctrine must be received by the faithful.  Doctrine taught but not received is not yet mature enough to be considered an authentic expression of our Catholic faith.  There is a lot of stuff that bishops—and even popes—have taught that is yet to be received by the faithful.  Maybe it is time for our pastors to be more attentive and less on their own agenda.  

I don’t think that this means that the Church must recognize marriage beyond the traditional boundaries of one man and one women “until death do us part.”  Perhaps we would do best to clearly delineate the Sacramental form of Christian Matrimony and civil marriage as two separate realities, only one of which is  within our purview as Church.  But very frankly many of us good, regular Mass-going Catholics, don’t want our faith in Christ to be tarnished by the homophobic injustices committed in Christ’s name.  

Papal Resignations! IX

Blessed John Henry Newman

As you notice, I very rarely post comments but I often try to respond to them in topics I choose for blogs.  Recently I had several inquiries as to how I view the magisterium if I think that certain Church teachings regarding contraception, same-sex relationships, divorce/’remarriage, in vitro fertilization along with other subjects such as sharing the Eucharist with non-Catholics, clerical celibacy, and women’s ordination need to be discussed openly and honestly at every level of the Church.  The implication of the questions is that once something is defined by the magisterium it cannot be changed.
Well, remember this is a historical blog.  I don’t deal with theology qua theology—only with the history of the Church, and at times the history of the development of theological teachings in the Church.  And—remember this too—my consideration of history is not only about the past but also about what light the past sheds on the present and what opportunities for the future the past reveals to us.  People who limit the study of history to the past and don’t consider the past as metaphor that permits us to speak of the present and the future are not historians, they are antiquarians.   The Church has far too many antiquarians, including whoever it is that has been dressing Pope Benedict up in the left-over glad rags of past centuries.  Nevertheless, I am not anxious to go there in this posting. 
The past shows us that the magisterium, including infallible statements, are not irreformable.  Pius XI condemned the Ecumenical Movement in his 1928 Encyclical Mortalium Animos which was completely overturned by the Decrees Unitatis Reintegratio, Nostrae Aetate, and Dignitatis Humanae at the Second Vatican Council.  Remember it was an encyclical that was overturned—the same medium through which Pius XI condemned contraception in Casti Connubi (1928) and Paul VI extended the condemnation to the use of “the Pill” in his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae.  This teaching is considered to be infallible; the condemnation of ecumenism was once so thought also. 
In the 1302 Bull, Unam Sanctam, Pope Boniface VIII wrote: Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.   
The Church has long moved away from such doctrine—long before Vatican II—but certainly Nostrae Aetate with its positive comments on non-Christian religions and the Divine truths they reflect is more than a repudiation of Boniface’s teaching, it is a contradiction. 
Mortalium Animos and Unam Santam reflect teachings once considered infallible.  On a lesser level, in the 1930’s Pius XI refused a petition from the bishops of France to declare Saint Thérèse of Lisieux a Doctor of the Church on the grounds sexus obstat: her sex (female) was a barrier to such a position.  Hmmm.  That argument is used today in a different context. Some forty years later Paul VI named the first two women as Doctors of the Church—Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena.  John Paul would name Thérèse to that honor in 1997.  Theologians can argue about the ability of the Church to alter doctrine but historians view it from a different perspective, unencumbered by an agenda of apologetics.
What I wrote is that the Church needs to have honest conversation on a wide variety of issues.  The faith of the Church is not solely the teaching of the magisterium—it is the deposit of doctrine and it is the faith held by the faithful, that is by the Church which is not limited to the hierarchy but comprises the community of the baptized.  The Deposit of Doctrine, or the corpus of Tradition, is the province of the theologians who have studied the doctrines along with their roots in Divine Revelation and their historical development through the centuries.  The consensus fidelium—the consensus of the faithful—is the living faith as held and understood (using that term as held intuitively rather than as intellectually fathomed) in the hearts of the baptized.  History shows us, as Blessed John Henry Newman explained so well in his essay On Consulting the Faithful on Matters of Doctrine, that magisterium, theologians, and faithful must work in tandem for doctrines to take hold.  The current dissensions among the hierarchy, the theologians, and the faithful indicate to the historian that this is not yet an opportune time to state the teaching of the Church on a wide variety of issues.  But we cannot afford to come to a standstill, thus conversations are necessary to reach that single voice proceeding from a single heart.
Such conversations will not be easy and such accord will not be quick.  We Americans and Western Europeans have a tradition of imperialistic arrogance that we know better than our “little brown brothers” of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Rim.  We are shocked that they do not see questions about the role of women or about human sexuality from the same perspectives that we do and we think that they are backward for viewing these issues differently.  We are, I suppose, as entitled to our prejudices regarding them as they are theirs regarding women and gays.  Or, maybe we are no more entitled to our prejudices than they are to theirs.  But in any case an honest and frank discussion in a universal Church will not come to easy resolutions, nor will all be pleased with the outcomes, but we need to undertake the process nevertheless.  We can see the chaos which has befallen the Anglican Communion when the Churches of the North have moved unilaterally in directions in which the Churches of the South are unprepared to go. But the alternative is not to stay stuck and go nowhere.  If we believe that the Holy Spirit is here to guide the Church, we need to trust that Spirit and begin the process.             

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.    

 

Holy Father, It Ain't No Mystery!

Quinn Abbey, Co. Clare; not only

the Irish Church is in ruins--it is

time for a new Reformation and

the faithful must demand change. 

Yesterday I mentioned Father Martin’s blog about DeLaSalle Brother Louis DeThomasis and his book Flying in the Face of Tradition: Listening to the Lived Experience of the Faithful.  There was a day, and it was a day exalted by Newman, in which the consensus fidelium—the lived experience of the faithful—played a role in the development of doctrine and the governance of the Church.  Brother DeThomasis says in his book, according to Father Martin,

“Sexual abuse, corruption, authoritarianism, lack of transparency, and cover-ups have all been collapsing into and on top of the institutional church….The 'tipping point' has been reached, and the moral authority, honor and respect that the institutional church once elicited from most peoples and secular institutions around the globe no longer exists.”

Now, according to press reports, the Pope, addressing the Catholics of Ireland during the Fiftieth International Eucharistic Congress being hosted in Dublin, said on Sunday that  it is a mystery why priests and other church officials abused children entrusted in their care, undermining faith in the church "in an appalling way."  I don’t mean to challenge the Holy Father’s infallibility but the sex-abuse crisis is no mystery—in Ireland, here, or elsewhere.   It is the lack of transparency, the authoritarianism that leads people like the former Cardinal Archbishop of Boston to think they are above the law, the corruption that comes from influence pedaling and raw ambition in the Church (Archbishop Lori and Carl Anderson, take note), and the hypocrisy that thinks that all one must do is sweep the dirt under the rug and it’s gone that has led to the alienation from the Church of millions. 
As a historian, I sincerely doubt that the institutional Church is capable of reforming itself.  The faithful need to exercise their responsibility in holding the leadership of the Church accountable and with their feet to the fire of reform.  I haven’t read Brother DeThomasis’ book and am not sure if I will have time to, but it seems to me that, at least in the passage quoted, he is saying no more than that.   The boys in the red dresses had better wake up and smell the coffee that “the moral authority, honor and respect that the institutional church once elicited from most peoples and secular institutions around the globe no longer exists.”

Turning Religion On Its Head

Don't ever go to Rome without

seeing Caravaggio's "Inspiration

of Saint Matthew in the Church

of San Luigi Francese.

I had a fascinating conversation on the airplane last evening with a man who teeters between agnosticism and atheism.  He identified himself as an atheist but when he actually outlined his beliefs he is more at the rationalist perimeter of agnosticism than pure atheism in as that he admits, indeed somewhat warmly embraces, the notion of a spiritual dimension to reality by which he posits the existence and immortality, after a fashion, of what a Christian would call the “soul,” though he himself refrains from that word.  He actually more closely resembles the rationalist Deism of the American Founding Fathers such as Jefferson or Franklin in as that he denies the existence of a personal—or as he said personalist—deity but does subscribe to some sort of what one might call an “Eternal Order” of being.  I have met atheists before and found them, without exception to be fools.  I don’t think atheism itself is foolish; I believe that one must be very intelligent or very stupid to deny the existence of a god.  (God being the deity of the three monotheistic religions; god referring to some sort, any sort, of a deity including the Jewish-Christian-Islamic deity.)  As I said, one must be very intelligent or very stupid to deny the existence of a god and to date I have only met the stupid ones.  By stupid I don’t mean uneducated—education has long ceased being a bulwark against ignorance, much less stupidity, once it abandoned requiring philosophy as a foundation and allowed the houses of the sciences, mathematics, and technology to be built on the sand  of data rather than the rock of metaphysics.  To what purpose is knowledge if it does not impart understanding?  Agnostics, on the other hand, I often find to have the best minds because they are not afraid of the great and important questions but go fearlessly into the dark night of the unexplored queries that relentlessly lead the soul to deeper and deeper searching.  I have much more confidence in the faith of the true agnostic (as opposed to the intellectual sluggard whose laziness leave him or her indifferent  to the search for truth) than the rattler of dogmatic formulae—whether that be the Mormon missionary with his prepared answers or the catechism toting Catholic who thinks all theology lies digested in his (or her) brain once they had memorized the old Baltimore claptrap and calendar of saints.   

     This fellow on the plane is no fool.  Though he works in the technology field he has a Master’s degree in French literature from a prestigious east coast university.  In our wide ranging discussion—most of the way across the Atlantic—I found myself fascinated by his insights on politics, economic, sociology, anthropology and even religion.  It was our discussion of religion—where he confessed he was an “atheist, or perhaps an agnostic”  where I found myself articulating some basic beliefs, the methodology of belief rather than dogma per se, that gave me an interesting insight into my own way of thinking about religious faith as well as why there is tension both between believers and non-believers and among believers who see things from (at least) two very different perspectives. 

     When Patrick—his name—mentioned that he rejected religion and didn’t want his children exposed to it except as a sociological phenomenon, he said that religion claims to be authoritative over the human intellect and thus stifles the human mind in its pursuit of truth.  I know what he meant.  There are plenty of people who think “God said it; I believe it; that settles it, end of discussion.”  This might reflect an “evangelical” (I prefer to say pseudo-evangelical as I don’t think most evangelicals today are true evangelicals, i.e. those who shape their life according to the Gospel.  I think too many take the “Good News” (evangelion in Greek) and make it bad news, something with which to hit  people who disagree with them over the head.  Or it could reflect a lot of super-Catholics who agree unflinchingly with Church authority, or at least as long as Church authority agrees with them.  You know: the Pope is dead right on abortion and same-sex marriage, but when he talks about capital punishment, economic  justice, health care, war, and distributive justice—well that’s just his personal opinion.  What these “evangelicals” and “faithful” Catholics share in common is a highly vertical understanding  of how God communicates himself (I am not into inclusive language when we talk about God, though I don’t have a problem with those who are as long as they don’t get silly.) 

     Now before I go further, let me reaffirm that this blog is not a theological blog and I am not going to approach this question as a theologian, but as a social scientist—that is from a historical/anthropological point of view. 

     The books of Scripture all had historical authors.  Whether or not the Holy Ghost came down and sat on their shoulders, whispering words into their ears as their pens glided across the papyrus and parchment sheets, is not relevant to the historian.  They had human authors and they were written in historical contexts.  The Book of Daniel, for example, was written, or at least much of it was written, in the context of a Hebrew society that was being religiously challenged by Graeco-Syrian political overlords who were trying to move the Jews of their time from traditional belief to a more universal synchronistic religion that would unite the diverse peoples and cultures of their rule.  The Gospel of Matthew was written for a community of Jewish Christians who were trying to harmonize their ancestral faith with some startling new insights developing among the disciples of the lately crucified religious leader, one Yeshua from Nazareth and Capernaum in the Galilee.  And nobody has ever been able to figure out what the author of Revelations had in mind, though there are plenty of theories.  This historical context issue is not limited to Judeo-Christian revelation.  Mohammed wrote in the context of sixth century Arabia with is warring tribes, religious strife, and a society in which alcohol abuse was a significant problem.  He also wrote with a personal exposure to Judaism (less than favorable) and Nestorian Christianity (which was overall a positive experience for him).  The Buddha came out of a Hindu society and culture where he was veddy veddy upper crust and he seems to have had a traumatic introduction to the question of human suffering that shaped his life and doctrine.  Ignatius Loyola wrote his Spiritual Exercises in an attempt to share his own spiritual awakening with his followers.  Martin Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith is rooted in Saints Paul and Augustine but also was profoundly influenced in the way it was formulated by his own scruples and crises, not to mention his alleged digestive tract issues.  We could go on but there is no need.  The point is clear.  While some of these writings may claim to be of “Divine Revelation” that question is of no concern to the historian but only to the religious believer.  There is no objective way to determine with any objective certainty what is and what is not of divine revelation—if there were then faith would not be a required component of the equation. 

      Now, again, I am not writing from a theological perspective but solely from the historical/anthropological point of view, but religion, viewed from the social sciences, is not a matter of “Truth” being imparted from the top down—from God to the Pope, or some Chief Rabbi or Grand Mullah, or even the Dalai Lama (whom I admire tremendously.)  From a historical/anthropological perspective, Truth rises from human experience and crystallizes in the shared experience of a community of believers who shape it into doctrines and practices that reinforce it.  That is not to say that God is not involved but the historian or social scientist (in their role as a historian or social scientist) cannot speak of God but only of what he or she observes.  Of course, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and others can be men or women of faith as well as professionals in their fields.  As men and women of faith they can supply the God-piece to the puzzle but not in their work, at least not directly.  So while as a historian I believe that Christian Revelation –as all other religious systems—rises from human experience, as a man of faith I believe that the truths of Christian Revelation reveal themselves through human experience by the Grace of God.  What is the faith of the faithful is the crux question for me.  In the Catholic Tradition this called the consensus fidelium   and while it has generally been ignored for the last five centuries (some would say the last fifteen) it once was the crucial element in defining Christian orthodoxy. 

      Does this mean that all religion is on a level playing field?  Is the “truth” of Buddhist experience equal to the “truth” of Muslim experience and equal to the “truth” of Christian experience?   As a historian I affirm that each must be taken with the same respect and openness as the others.  I can also see, however, as a historian, that not all religious doctrines have the same success rate in articulating well the core human experiences.  Why has Buddhism lasted when Celtic religion died?  (I think the current revival of paganism is little more than a very ahistorical playing at nature cults.)   Where is Osiris now?  Where is Athena now?  While a host of deities have disappeared,. Jesus has lasted so far.  So have Allah, Shiva, and the Great Spirit.  Time shows that not all religions capture the Truth with equal resonance.  As a Christian, I believe that the religious experience around the teachings and person of Jesus of Nazareth have a unique depth of human truth, that is to say that they reflect the Divine inbreaking into human experience with a unique and superior authenticity.  In other words, I believe they are Divinely Revealed, or better, capture the Divine Revelation, with a unique truthfulness.  As a historian, however, I can only observe they are one of the major religious traditions and comment on how they function in comparison to other belief systems. 

      This view of revelation as rising from human experience is problematic for Churchy people because it moves the cheese.  It takes power from the select few and distributes it through the whole body of the faithful.  It overturns power structures—casts the mighty from their thrones and raises up the lowly, so to speak.  This is why I think, as a Catholic, that we must restore the balance of power between the magisterium, the theologians, and the consensus fidelium.  Do you remember in The Prisoner of Azkaban, the image of Professor Snape dressed up in Neville’s Grandmother’s clothes?  I am afraid, as a historian, that that is what the magisterium looks like when left unsupported by serious theological research and rooted in the everyday faith experience of the everyday believer.  And that is why so many people walk away from religion—it has just too often become ridiculous looking to too many good thinkin’ folk.

Semper Reformanda--A Church Always in Need of Reform

Bernini's famous statue of Saint Teresa in ecstasy
Santa Marria della Vittoria in Rome  

In my last post I mentioned the Church’s loss of membership as one of the reasons that we need a Reformation.  I really only spoke of North America, or actually the United States, though Anglophone Canada suffers the same and Francophone Canada much worse as a once devoutly Catholic people simply slide in secularism.  The Church is growing rapidly in much of sub-Sahara Africa and in parts of Asia and there is great vitality but Europe is in lamentable shape.  Indeed Pope Benedict has made the revival of Catholicism in Europe a chief priority of his pontificate.  Unfortunately , tragically, to date he has completely failed in this mission.  My opinion is that he has not known how to go about it and thinks that all it requires is a somewhat effete renaissance of he thinks to be “Catholic Culture” focusing on music and art rather than a vibrant and authentic “new Evangelization.”  I too love Mozart and Michelangelo, but neither the Freemason composer nor the gay artist can bear the weight of the Gospel.  A genuine Evangelization needs a Saint Francis and a Catherine of Siena and an Ignatius Loyola and a Teresa of Avila.  We need men and women who are on fire with the Gospel and who exude a love for God and the Love of God for us.  The art and the music come later.  I mean, Bernini’s skill needed Teresa’s passion to create his masterpiece, and first came Ignatius and then the marvelous Gesu.  The religious situation in Europe is terrible.  When I attend Mass in France, for example,  I have found—in Paris, Avignon, Bourges, Nantes, Angers—wonderful vibrant congregations that are warm and welcoming and in which the liturgy is well celebrated with beautiful music and deep reverence, but I have also seen that only a fraction of the population is at Mass. (In Rome, on the other hand, while only a fraction of the people are at Mass, I find the Masses hurried, uninspiring, minimal participation, empty homilies.)   This tells me that it is not a liturgical renewal that is needed—though I appreciate good liturgy—but a genuine evangelization.  Even where the liturgy is good we, as a Church, are not speaking to the hungers of the human heart.  I don’t think that the problem is that people aren’t interested in what the Church has to offer, but rather the Church is not offering in what the Holy Spirit is leading the hearts of people to desire. We are too confident in our own convictions to listen attentively to what God is calling us to become.  We think that our own “tried and true” approach to the faith is THE approach.  I am not sure what hungers the Holy Spirit is putting in the hearts of people today, but it obviously isn’t for the externals of religion that we are too often offering them.  I do think that there is a deep desire for an inner life, a spiritual life.  I think people long for paths to wisdom and compassion—paths our Catholic Tradition knows well (John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, The Ignatian Exercises) but too rarely draws on.  I think people are looking for integrity, honesty, transparency which are signs of genuine holiness but we offer a rather palid piety and superficial devotion.  To bring that down to earth—the need today is not for May Crownings and Holy Hours (though there is nothing wrong with either, other than that they are no more than frosting on the Catholic Cake) but a Church that practices the ideals that it preaches, a humble Church, a Church that delivers on its promise to bring good news to the poor, healing to the sick, freedom to the oppressed and announce a time of God’s Favor to ALL.  I think that people are looking for a Church that empowers them to be of service to others—both to individuals and to society.  They are not looking for a Church that will think for them or tell them what to do or how to make specific decisions, but will give them the tools to be self-actualizing and responsible disciples.  There are people, of course, who will look only towards their own good or their own hedonistic satisfaction, just as there are people who have no awareness of any religious hunger within their heart, but I honestly believe that most people, especially most people who were raised in Christian families, or even families that were only vaguely religious, have values that make them want to move beyond themselves and self-interest to the good of others.  They don’t need, or want, to be told that they have to oppose same-sex marriage or contraception or even abortion.  When it comes to concrete issues, they can make their own decisions but they want an opportunity to discuss and reason out the sound moral principles that will empower them to make those decisions.  Frankly, they are often just as intelligent, or sometimes even more so, than their priest or bishop and they resent being told how they should think.  They want a faith that engages them, that lets them bring their own experience and insights into dialogue with the moral heritage of the Church—not because they reject that heritage but precisely because they want to make that heritage their own, to contribute to its development, to bring heritage into a shaping dialogue with contemporary experience.  They day of telling the faithful what to think or how to believe is over.  The earthquake has begun, the tomb is rumbling, the stone starting to roll back and the Consensus Fidelium is being raised from its deathly slumber of a millennium and a half.  This will be the beginning of the New Evangelization, not a Mostly Mozart evening in the Nervi Hall.