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Thursday, May 30, 2013

Anglican Bishop of Salisbury falied to mention that popes were condemning slavery long before Wilberforce

http://is.gd/7XZYdK

The Bishop of Salisbury is wrong to say that until William Wilberforce’s abolition campaign, Christians saw slavery as Biblical
By on Thursday, 30 May 2013
Bishop of Salisbury Photo: PA
Bishop of Salisbury Photo: PA

The Anglican Bishop of Salisbury has written a letter in the Daily Telegraph about gay marriage, which can be read here if you feel you really want to. Embedded in the letter the Bishop has this to say:

“For example, before Wilberforce, Christians saw slavery as Biblical and part of the God-given ordering of Creation.”
Interesting, eh? Wilberforce, one assumes he means William Wilberforce, was born in 1759 and died in 1833. So, for seventeen centuries all was darkness until Wilberforce came along and put us all right on the matter.

This will come as major news to Pope Pius II who condemned slavery as a great crime and who died in 1464. The same is true of Popes Paul III, Urban VIII, and Benedict XIV, all of whom long predated the English reformer, not to mention the founders and members of the Mercedarian and Trinitarian Orders, which were dedicated to the redemption of slaves. In fact the history of Christian anti-slavery is a long one, as this useful article makes clear.

Perhaps we should not expect the Bishop of Salisbury to know much about any of the people above; after all, they were all Roman Catholics and foreigners, and thus, one assumes, beneath his notice. But when someone makes such an ignorant remark, whoever he may be, it is worth protesting, simply because if such ignorant remarks go unchallenged, then they may well pass into the mainstream and poison the minds of future generations.

Slavery is a great evil, but it is simplistic, misleading and dangerous to see it as something that flourished because of the Bible or because Christians approved it.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Evangelizing the Evangelicals

As Weigel explains in a recent First Things essay, “Evangelical Catholicism is a Spirit-led development reflecting the cultural contingencies of history, like other such evolutions over the past two millennia,” of which we could identify (1) the Patristic Church, (2) the Medieval Church, and (3) the Counter-Reformation Church. Each was necessary for the demands of its time, each was in keeping with the abiding truth, and each gave way to a new form. The Patristic church, a roughly thousand-year development between the primitive and medieval Church, produced the Creeds, gave us the Fathers, and evangelized the pagans. The 500 years of medieval Catholicism gave us the Cathedrals, systematic theologies, and major religious orders before splintering. In roughly the same length of time—500 years—the Counter-Reformation—“the Church in which anyone over sixty today was raised”—“converted much of the Western Hemisphere … withstood the onslaught of the French Revolution … met the challenges of twentieth-century totalitarianism,” and much else besides.

And yet, “its time has passed.” Led by the Spirit, the Church moves to a “new evolution in … self-understanding and self-expression,” even though, of course, the way the Church expresses and lives itself out never fundamentally alters the “enduring marks” of the Church, namely, “unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity.”  

 

from Crisis Magazine

In his new book, George Weigel explicates the historical development of Evangelical Catholicism, a reform begun by Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), developed by the renewals of the early twentieth-century, formalized by Vatican II, and authoritatively interpreted by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and now expressed with particular aplomb by Pope Francis.

It’s a stunning account, and, for a recent convert like myself, a mark of the ability of Catholicism to retain the abiding and unchanging truths of faith while allowing new expressions—ever ancient, ever new.

As Weigel explains in a recent First Things essay, “Evangelical Catholicism is a Spirit-led development reflecting the cultural contingencies of history, like other such evolutions over the past two millennia,” of which we could identify (1) the Patristic Church, (2) the Medieval Church, and (3) the Counter-Reformation Church. Each was necessary for the demands of its time, each was in keeping with the abiding truth, and each gave way to a new form. The Patristic church, a roughly thousand-year development between the primitive and medieval Church, produced the Creeds, gave us the Fathers, and evangelized the pagans. The 500 years of medieval Catholicism gave us the Cathedrals, systematic theologies, and major religious orders before splintering. In roughly the same length of time—500 years—the Counter-Reformation—“the Church in which anyone over sixty today was raised”—“converted much of the Western Hemisphere … withstood the onslaught of the French Revolution … met the challenges of twentieth-century totalitarianism,” and much else besides.

And yet, “its time has passed.” Led by the Spirit, the Church moves to a “new evolution in … self-understanding and self-expression,” even though, of course, the way the Church expresses and lives itself out never fundamentally alters the “enduring marks” of the Church, namely, “unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity.” Despite the constancy of essentials, the new expression and life is, at times, quite dramatically different in feel and language, although nothing really changed. It is the same Church proclaiming the same Faith in the same Lord.

It also presents, I’d suggest, a genuine opportunity to reach out to evangelical Protestants, which, until Palm Sunday, I was.

“Roman fever” is a well-documented Protestant phenomenon, perhaps especially among academics and college students, prompting the common question “Why are so many evangelicals going to Rome?” A good deal of this results from the fact that reason alone is insufficient, always requiring tradition, and as evangelicals look to recover tradition they discover the Tradition. While recovering the past, they also find the sheer enormity and depth of the Catholic intellectual heritage, including its music, art, literature, and poetry, all providing a place to dwell rather than the furious scuttling about of constant reinvention.

While suspicions are not as deep as they once were, in part because of ecumenical cooperation on issues such as abortion and marriage, still many evangelicals have hesitations (to put it mildly) about Roman Catholicism, largely in four categories: (1) the status of the Bible, and how that relates to doctrines about Mary, the Saints, and Purgatory; (2) Papal infallibility (however much this repeats the previous issue); (3) justification and faith/works, and (4) the Catholic thing—statues, mumbled prayers, fish, the Rosary, Swiss Guards, noisy kids in the Mass, an odd inability to sing, and so on.

Don’t underestimate the fourth category. At the evangelical college where I teach, most students have given me a respectful berth about my conversion—everybody knew, no one was surprised, no one asked very much—but before one Honors class a student hesitantly asked if I could explain Marian doctrine, then another question was asked and another, for about an hour. The vast majority of questions related to the fourth category: “What’s the deal with Catholics and drinking?” “Why are people so inattentive during Mass?” “Bingo … what’s with that?” “Why not spontaneous prayers?” “Why are homilies so short?” and so on. Not a single question, not one, about justification, even though in a survey of concerns they would list that objection, but largely because they know they’re supposed to, not because they really are bothered by it.

Given the history, how could that be? First, the evangelical Protestant world is a mish-mash of theologies, a good many of which are not remotely linked to the magisterial Reformers on justification, which is why there is so much discussion about it, sometimes heated, and a good many evangelicals are not overly tied to Scriptural authority anyway. Second, most people in the pews are not theologians or Church historians, and evangelicals are perhaps particularly concerned to not be bogged down by the past and so not overly worried to distinguish sola fide from sola gratia. Third, young evangelicals are decent people, and many are more concerned with care of the poor then with the finer points of sixteenth-century theological disputes. In other words, I’m proposing that while all would list the four categories of objections, the most alienating and troubling for many is the fourth—Catholicism just seems weird and foreign to the most salient aspect of evangelicalism, which is a committed, personal, meaningful relationship with Jesus. And from the perspective of a young evangelical, Catholics just don’t get this.

One of my students, to use a representative anecdote, was seriously exploring Catholicism. He was attending Mass, was in conversation with a local priest I had recommended, and was hard at work reading the Catechism and some theologians. And he loved what he was reading. Eventually, however, he went to a Presbyterian congregation because, in his words, “the people at Mass were so uninterested and it was a serious challenge to my faith.” On the one hand, this reveals a cultural difference on the point of going to services; I go to Mass, primarily, to receive Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Everything else is a bonus, but when I was a young evangelical, I was taught that if I didn’t have an experience of God something was wrong, and so I had to express my enthusiasm as proof of my experience. One pastor once told me to “worship hard”—meaning with visible emotion and zeal—so to help others have a similar experience. If this is your expectation, the mumbled prayers, sometimes uninspired homilies and music (oh dear, the music of some parishes! I’ll admit it delayed my own conversion) can be seen as a mark that this is dead, a religion without spirit. Of course, this misunderstands the Mass and is an imperialism of expectations, but culturally it’s a big deal.

On the other hand, it’s also why Evangelical Catholicism has such great missionary potential for drawing in younger evangelical Protestants. I had read Aquinas and Augustine and Athanasius, I had studied with the Jesuits, I had learned the ancient music, I knew the art, I encountered the saints, I was impressed with the commitment to the poor, but until I met Evangelical Catholics for whom, as Weigel puts it, friendship with Jesus Christ was the main thing, I wasn’t convinced. What Weigel describes makes sense to evangelicals, and coupled with the markers of unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity is precisely what a good many of them/us are searching for: “in friendship with Jesus Christ, we come to know the face of the merciful Father, for whoever experiences the Son’s power to forgive sins sees the merciful Father, who welcomes home the prodigals and reclothes them with the garments of integrity.”

The Great Commission continues, and as we experience the ongoing contraction of Christendom, the Oneness of the Church will be especially important. Welcoming home those who left will be an enormous task, requiring patience and charity. If I’m right, though, a good deal of this work could be accomplished if we just did what we should be doing anyway, if we just were who we should be—friends with Jesus.

A Church without Christ is not worth having, but a Christocentric Church will bring home its separated brothers and sisters; it will evangelize those who already have faith but wait for its fullness.

Off the Rails - Was Vatican II Hijacke


This is a four year old article that does an excellent job of explaining just what happened, or didn't happen, that caused the Second Vatican Council to become so controversial, even 50 years later.
 
Was Vatican II Hijacked?

The key reason why postconciliar "renewal" often went wrong is the almost incredible fact that the hierarchy in the early 1960s made almost no systematic effort to catechize the faithful (including priests and religious) on the meaning of the council – something about which many bishops themselves seemed confused. "Renewal experts" sprang up everywhere, and the most contradictory explanations of the council were offered to Catholics thirsting for guidance. Bishops rarely offered their flocks authoritative teaching and instead fell into the habit of simply trusting certified "experts" in every area of Church life. . . .

The partisans of aggiornamento [“updating”] became the first theologians in the history of the Church to make systematic use of the mass media, entering into a working alliance with journalists who could scarcely even understand the concept of ressourcement [“back to the sources”] but eagerly promoted an agenda that required the Church to accommodate itself to the secular culture. Strangely enough, some theologians, along with their propagandist allies, actually denied the Church the right to remain faithful to its authentic identity and announced a moral obligation to repudiate as much of that identity as possible. "Renewal" came to be identified with dissent and infidelity, and Catholics who remained faithful to the Church were denounced as enemies of Vatican II. . . .

Nothing had a more devastating effect on postconciliar Catholic life than the sexual revolution, as believers began to engage in behavior not measurably different from that of non-believers. Priests and religious repudiated their vows in order to marry, and many of those who remained in religious life ceased to regard celibacy as desirable. Catholics divorced almost as frequently as non-Catholics. Church teachings about contraception, homosexuality, and even abortion were widely disregarded, with every moral absolute treated as merely another wall needing to be breached. . . .

Ultimately the single best explanation of what happened to deflect the council's decrees from their intended direction is the fact that as soon as the assembly ended, the worldwide cultural phenomenon known as the "the Sixties" began. It was nothing less than a frontal assault on all forms of authority. . . .  [Actually the release of the Envoid birth control pill, the inaugural event of “the Sixties”, came in July of 1961.]


Off the Rails - Was Vatican II Hijacked?

by James Hitchcock - July 16, 2009

Reprinted with permission from our good friends at InsideCatholic.com, the leading online journal of Catholic faith, culture, and politics.

Most Catholics in 1959 probably didn't even know what an ecumenical council was. And yet, here it was. Pope John XXIII announced that the goals of the Second Vatican Council would be "the renewal of the spirit of the Gospel in the hearts of people everywhere and the adjustment of Christian discipline to modern-day living" – a proclamation that was on the face of it ambiguous. How was authentic renewal to be achieved? How should essential discipline be adjusted to modern culture?

John was a relentless optimist, inclined always to look for good in the world, disinclined to scold, and deeply convinced that he had been called to help bring about a new Pentecost in the Church. He further believed that the Counter-Reformation era, characterized both by defensiveness inside the Church and aggressiveness toward those on the outside, was over. The council made only an oblique reference to the fact that the 20th century had already seen a persecution of Christians more severe than any in the entire history of Catholicism.

The Church was apparently flourishing during John's pontificate. By contrast with what would come later, its members were unusually serious, devout, and moral. But such a Church could be criticized as fostering formalism, a neglect of social justice, and an overly narrow piety, and it's likely that John XXIII thought that a new Pentecost could build on this foundation to reach still higher levels.

In his opening address to the council, John affirmed the infallibility of the Church but called on it to take account of the "errors, requirements, and opportunities" of the age. He regretted that some Catholics ("prophets of gloom") seemed unable to see any good in the modern world and regarded it as the worst of all historical periods. The dogmas of the Church were settled and "known to all," so the conciliar task was to explore new ways of presenting them to the modern world.
The preparatory commissions for the council were dominated by members of the Curia, who were inclined toward precisely such a pessimistic view. When the council opened, there were objections to those commissions, with the result that the council fathers were allowed to approve new schema prepared by some of their own. In some ways this procedural squabble was the most decisive event of the entire council, and it represented a crucial victory for what was now called the "liberal" or "optimistic" party, guaranteeing that the council as a whole would look on its work as more than a mere restatement of accepted truths. There was an officially endorsed spirit of optimism in which even legitimate questions about the wisdom of certain ideas were treated as evidence of lack of faith.

The intellectual leadership of the council came mainly from Western Europe, the most influential prelates being Bernard Alfrink of the Netherlands, Leo Jozef Suenens of Belgium, Achille Lienart of France, Julius Doepfner and Joseph Frings of Germany, and Franz Koenig of Austria. Those five countries, along with the rest of Europe, possessed an ancient tradition of Catholicism, and they had nourished a vigorous and sophisticated Catholic intellectual life.

As theological questions arose, the council fathers almost automatically deferred to the opinions of these European prelates, who were in turn influenced by men recognized as the most accomplished theologians of the age – Henri DeLubac, Jean Danielou, and Yves Congar in France; Edward Schillebeeckx in the Netherlands; Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger in Germany.


But in many respects the Church in those five nations – with the possible exception of the Netherlands – appeared less than robust (judging, for example, by rates of church attendance and religious vocations). Indeed, the vigorous intellectual life of those countries was colored by a certain sense of crisis – the need to make the Faith credible to modern men. By contrast, the Church in the British Isles, Southern Europe, and the United States, to say nothing of the Third World, lacked dazzling intellectual achievements but appeared to be relatively hearty.

Most council fathers therefore seemed to have felt little urgency about most of the questions that came before them. For many, the discussions involved issues that, before now, hadn't even been considered, such as making the liturgy and religious life more "relevant." But an unquestioned faith that the Church would always be preserved from error, along with the leadership of John XXIII and Paul VI, led most of the delegates to support the schema that were finally forged from the debate. No decree of the council provoked more than a small number of dissenting votes. Ironically, in view of the later claim that the council brought about the democratization of the Church, deference to authority was a major factor in determining how most of the fathers voted.

Creating Radicals

John XXIII announced Vatican II as a "pastoral" assembly, but there were growing differences of opinion as to what exactly that meant. Pious, instinctively conservative prelates might think of encouraging Marian devotions or kindling zeal for the foreign missions. The dominant group, however, moved the council toward dialogue with the modern world, translating the Church's message into a language modern men understood.

The council fathers always strove to remain balanced. To take what are now the most fiercely debated issues, they imagined no revisions in Catholic moral teaching about sexuality, referring instead to "the plague of divorce" and to the "abominable crime" of abortion. Deliberately childless marriages were deemed a tragedy, and the faithful were reminded of the Church's condemnation of artificial birth control.
At the same time, the fact that practically every aspect of Catholic belief seemed to be under discussion had results that John XXIII probably didn't intend. Famously, at one point he removed the subject of contraception from the floor of the council and announced that he was appointing a special commission to study the issue – an action that naturally led some to believe the teaching would indeed be revised. When Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae in 1968, liberals were outraged that he rejected the commission's recommendation to permit some forms of birth control and accused him of betraying the council.

The council fathers each had periti, or advisers, on matters of theology and canon law, and some of them were very influential, both in shaping the thought of the prelates whom they advised and in working behind the scenes with like-minded delegates and other periti. In explaining the theological revolution that occurred almost immediately after the council, some orthodox Catholics speculate that a well-organized minority intended from the beginning to sabotage the council and that they successfully planted theological time bombs in the conciliar decrees – doctrinal statements whose implications were deliberately left vague, to be activated later. But there's little evidence of this.

It's characteristic of revolutions that they are rarely planned ahead of time. Rather, they arise from the sudden acceleration of historical change, caused by the flow of events and the way in which people relate to those events. There is no evidence that anyone came to the council with a radical agenda, in part because such an agenda would have been considered hopelessly unrealistic. (Some liberals actually feared that the council would prove to be a retrogressive gathering.)
A major factor in the postconciliar dynamic was the reformers' own heady experience of swift and unexpected change. For example, in 1960 no one would have predicted – and few would have advocated – the virtual abandonment of the Latin liturgy. But once reformers realized that the council fathers supported change, it became an irresistible temptation to continue pushing farther and faster. What had been thought of as stone walls of resistance turned out to be papier-mâché.

The council itself proved to be a "radicalizing" experience, during which men who had never met before, and who in some cases had probably given little thought to the questions now set before them, began quickly to change their minds on major issues. (For example, Archbishop – later Cardinal – John F. Dearden of Detroit, who was considered quite rigid before the council, returned home as an uncritical advocate of every kind of change.) When the council was over, some of those present – both periti and bishops – were prepared to go beyond what the council had in fact intended or authorized, using the conciliar texts as justification when possible, ignoring them when not (as recounted, for example, by Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who was in charge of liturgical reform after the council, in his book The Reform of the Liturgy). Aware that the council didn't support their agenda, they quickly got into the habit of speaking of the "spirit" of the council, which was said to transcend its actual statements and even in some cases to contradict them.

The Role of the Media

While the council was still in session, it occurred to some that it was less important what that body actually said and did than what people thought it said and did. Thus as early as the first session, in 1962, there was an orchestrated propaganda campaign to present the deliberations and define the issues in particular ways and to enlist the sympathies of the public on behalf of a particular agenda. Certain key journalists became "participant-observers," meaning that they reported the events and at the same time sought to influence them – the chief practitioners being "Xavier Rynne" (the pen name of the Redemptorist historian Francis X. Murphy), who wrote "Letter from Vatican City" for the New Yorker magazine, and Robert Blair Kaiser, who reported for Time.
Such reports were written for a largely non-Catholic audience, many of whom were unsympathetic to the Faith, and the thrust of the reporting was to assure such readers that the Church was at long last admitting its many errors and coming to terms with secular culture. Most Catholics probably relied on these same sources for their understanding of the council and so received the same message.
The key reason why postconciliar "renewal" often went wrong is the almost incredible fact that the hierarchy in the early 1960s made almost no systematic effort to catechize the faithful (including priests and religious) on the meaning of the council – something about which many bishops themselves seemed confused. "Renewal experts" sprang up everywhere, and the most contradictory explanations of the council were offered to Catholics thirsting for guidance. Bishops rarely offered their flocks authoritative teaching and instead fell into the habit of simply trusting certified "experts" in every area of Church life. Indeed, before the council was even over, several fallacious interpretations were planted that still flourish today.

Even the best journalistic accounts were forced to simplify the often subtle and complex deliberations of the council fathers. But there was also deliberate oversimplification for the purpose of creating a particular public impression. The media thus divided the council fathers into heroes and villains – otherwise known as liberals and conservatives. In this way, the conciliar battles were presented as morality plays in which open-minded, warm-hearted, highly intelligent innovators (Cardinal Alfrink, for example) were able repeatedly to thwart plots by Machiavellian reactionaries (Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani of the Holy Office). It was a morality play that appealed to the prejudices of many Westerners of the mid-20th century. It also had a real if immeasurable influence on many bishops, who soon discovered that being viewed as "progressive" would gain them a favorable press, while the opposite would make them into public villains.

For understandable reasons, vastly disproportionate attention was lavished by the media on such things as the vernacular liturgy and the end of mandatory Friday abstinence, since concrete practices could be easily dealt with journalistically and such practices had long helped to define the differences between Catholics and others. Catholics who understood almost nothing of the theological issues of the council came to understand that its "real" purpose was repealing rules that had become burdensome and old-fashioned.
But in another sense the attention lavished on such things was not disproportionate, because in a sacramental Church "externals" are the doorways to the spirit. In theory it perhaps ought not to have mattered whether nuns wore habits, but in practice the modification, then the total abandonment, of those habits marked the beginning of the end of religious life as it had existed for centuries. For many people the distinction between essentials and nonessentials was almost meaningless. If Catholics were no longer forbidden to eat meat on Fridays, why could they not get divorced, especially given the widespread conviction that the purpose of the council and of "Good Pope John" was to make people comfortable with their faith?

Many of the council fathers, after they returned to their dioceses, seemed themselves to be in a state of confusion over what they'd done. Only a relatively few – some orthodox, others less so – had a clear and consistent understanding.
 

For most, the postconciliar period proved to be a time of rudderless experimentation, as Catholics groped to understand what the council had mandated. For many people the one sure thing, amid all the postconciliar uncertainty, was the fact of change itself; in an odd way it seemed safest to do or believe almost the opposite of what Catholics had previously been taught.

The Scars of Renewal

Underlying the council were two different approaches to reform – approaches that were not contradictory but that required serious intellectual effort to reconcile.
One was ressourcement ("back to the sources"), a program of renewing the Church by returning to its scriptural and patristic roots (DeLubac, Danielou, and Hans Urs Von Balthasar all held to this).

The other was aggiornamento ("updating"), by which the supposed demands of contemporary culture were the chief concern (Hans Küng, Schillebeeckx, and to some extent Rahner, were all proponents).

Kept in balance during the council itself, these two movements increasingly pulled apart afterward and resulted in the deep conflicts that continue to the present.

A prime example of the postconciliar dynamic at work was the "renewal" of religious life. Cardinal Suenens wrote the influential book The Nun in the World, enjoining sisters to come out of their cloisters and accept the challenges of modern life. Whatever might be thought about them as theological principles, such recipes for "renewal" also promised that those who adopted them would experience phenomenal revitalization, including dramatic numerical growth, and for a few years after the council the official spirit of naive optimism won out over the "prophets of gloom."

The most famous instance of such renewal in the United States was that of the Immaculate Heart Sisters of Los Angeles. Their program of aggiornamento had all the ingredients required at the time – intense publicity from an overwhelmingly favorable media, a prestigious secular "expert" (the psychologist Carl Rogers), picturesque experiments with nontraditional behavior (encounter groups), and a reactionary villain (James Cardinal McIntyre) portrayed as the only obstacle to progress. Not until it was too late did anyone ask whether the IHM Sisters, along with countless others, were simply abandoning their vocations completely. [ Wiki - By 1970, 90% of the sisters were dispensed from their vows.  http://is.gd/Vt83ep ]

A tragic dimension of the conciliar period was precisely the irrelevance and ultimate failure of the exciting intellectual programs that emanated from what were then the five most influential Catholic nations. For a very brief period, Dutch Catholicism made a bid to give the universal Church a working model of renewal, before "the Dutch Church" imploded and sank into oblivion. Rates of church attendance and religious vocations may have been worrisomely low in Belgium, France, and Germany in 1960, but the bishops of those countries probably couldn't imagine how much lower they would fall. In ways not recognized 40 years ago, it's now clear that the strategy of countering secularism by moving closer to the secular culture just doesn't work.

The partisans of aggiornamento became the first theologians in the history of the Church to make systematic use of the mass media, entering into a working alliance with journalists who could scarcely even understand the concept of ressourcement but eagerly promoted an agenda that required the Church to accommodate itself to the secular culture. Strangely enough, some theologians, along with their propagandist allies, actually denied the Church the right to remain faithful to its authentic identity and announced a moral obligation to repudiate as much of that identity as possible. "Renewal" came to be identified with dissent and infidelity, and Catholics who remained faithful to the Church were denounced as enemies of Vatican II.

This occurred at the most fundamental level, so that the authority of the council itself was soon relativized. The notion that a council would claim for itself final authority in matters of belief came to be viewed by liberals as reactionary. Vatican II was thus treated as merely a major historical epiphany – a moment in the unfolding history of the Church and of human consciousness when profound new insights were discovered. According to this view, the council's function was not to make authoritative pronouncements but merely to facilitate the movement of the Church into the next stage of its historical development. (For example, the Jesuit historian John W. O'Malley in 1971 proposed that certain conciliar texts could be legitimately ignored as merely reflective of intellectual immaturity, timidity, and confusion on the part of the council fathers.)

After the council, the concept of "the People of God" was reduced to a crude form of democracy – doctrine as determined by opinion polls. The liturgy ceased to be a divine action and became a communal celebration, and the supernatural vocations of priests and religious were deemed to be obstacles to their service to the world.

Nothing had a more devastating effect on postconciliar Catholic life than the sexual revolution, as believers began to engage in behavior not measurably different from that of non-believers. Priests and religious repudiated their vows in order to marry, and many of those who remained in religious life ceased to regard celibacy as desirable. Catholics divorced almost as frequently as non-Catholics. Church teachings about contraception, homosexuality, and even abortion were widely disregarded, with every moral absolute treated as merely another wall needing to be breached.

Off the Rails

Ultimately the single best explanation of what happened to deflect the council's decrees from their intended direction is the fact that as soon as the assembly ended, the worldwide cultural phenomenon known as the "the Sixties" began. It was nothing less than a frontal assault on all forms of authority.

Bereft of catechesis, confused by the conciliar changes, and unable to grasp the subtle theology of the conciliar decrees, many Catholics simply translated the conciliar reforms into the terms of the counterculture, which was essentially the demand for "liberation" from all restraint on personal freedom. Even as late as 1965 almost no one anticipated this great cultural upheaval. The measured judgments of Gaudium et Spes, the council's highly influential decree on the Church and the modern world, shows not a hint of it.

Had the council met a decade earlier, during the relatively stable 1950s, it's possible that there could have been an orderly and untroubled transition. But after 1965 the spirit of the age was quite different, and by then many Catholics were eager to break out of what they considered their religious prison. Given the deliberately fostered popular impression that the Church was surrendering in its perennial struggle with the world, it was inevitable that the prevailing understanding of reform would be filtered through the glass of a hedonistic popular culture. Under such conditions it would require remarkable steadfastness of purpose to adhere to an authentic program of renewal.

The postconciliar crisis has moved far beyond issues like the language of the liturgy or nuns' habits – even beyond sexual morality or gender identities. Today the theological frontier is nothing less than the stark question of whether there is indeed only one God and Jesus is His only-begotten Son. It is a question that the council fathers didn't foresee as imminent and, predictably, the council's dicta about non-Christian religions are now cited to justify various kinds of religious syncretism. The resources for resolving this issue are present in the conciliar decrees themselves, but it's by no means certain that Church leaders have the will to interpret them in final and authoritative ways. Forty years after the council, serious Catholics have good reason to think they've been left to wander the theological wilderness.


James Hitchcock is professor of history at St. Louis University.

How the liturgy fell apart: the enigma of Archbishop Bugnini Michael Davies

Here is the full text of Minnesota State Senator Dan Hall's speech on the Senate floor opposing Same Sex Marriage: 5-13-13



Here is the full text of Senator Dan Hall's speech on the Senate floor 5-13-13:
There’s a lot of celebrating going on today but there’s also a lot of grieving going on today. Grieving because there are many people in the state who do not believe this is the right thing to do. I sometimes call this the divine tension. Our constitution has protections for religious freedom—not to protect the government from religion.
I have six key points I’d like to state.
First off, marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife, to be the father and mother to any children their union produces.
Second, marriage is based on truth that men and women are complementary. The biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, the reality that children need both a father and a mother—which one would you not have wanted. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of assuring the well-being of children. Marital breakdown weakens civil society.
Government recognizes marriage because it benefits society in a way that no other relationship does. Government can treat people equally and with respect and respect their liberty without redefining marriage. Redefining marriage would further distance marriage from the needs of children and deny the importance of mothers and fathers. It weakens monogamy, exclusivity and permanency, the norms to which marriage in our society [inaudible] and it will threaten religious liberty.
I know that, Madam President, you do not allow us to pray in the name of Jesus or the holy spirit while we’re up there, but I ask that the holy spirit be with all of us today in this capitol around Minnesota during this vote. Today we may be changing the course of freedom for our children and our grandchildren in Minnesota. We may be forced to not just listen to someone else’s view—but to accept and then legislate and next, I believe, we will be forced to believe what we don’t.
I have been accused of attacking same-sex marriage because I disagree with the lifestyle. When has disagreeing become an attack? When has taking a stand against something you believe in become a personal attack? Freedom can only be free if we keep our moral compass. If we resolve to strengthen marriage instead of dismantling it. Without strong morals, that which we believe is right or wrong, we lose our freedoms.
Redefining marriage, which has many restrictions—you can’t get married if you’re under 18 without parents’ permission; only two people can get married, not three, not more—is opening that Pandora’s box. If you think marriage, the way it is now, is discriminating, why not add another group? That’s what we’ve done, we’re still discriminating, if that’s what you believe, unless we open it up to all.
But they’ll call me a bigot, they’ll call me a hater, they’ll spit in my face, like they did a friend of mine last Thursday. There are things in life, members, that are worth standing up for, even to be persecuted for.
Many have said to me, ‘Sen. Hall, you don’t understand. You’re married, live in a nice suburb, you’ve got kids, live in a nice house, two-car garage, you’re well educated.’
Most of you don’t know I grew up in the southeast projects, 71 Saint Marys [Avenue] by the U of M. Many of my relatives were addicts, criminals, two sent to prison, more than one child molester. Those that my mother tried to keep us away from were relatives. My mother raised four children in the projects but had an alcoholic husband that she divorced when I was six years old.
Two years later, she married another,  my stepfather who also was a drunk. When he was home, we tried not to be. When I was 12 my mother told him, “You either get on your knees and accept Jesus and have him take over your life and stop drinking or there’s the door, don’t ever come back.’ He did that that day, our life changed, that was a turning point in my history. My father did this 48 years ago today. He’s now in a nursing home, my mother still lives on Lake Nokomis.
But the change of history is like what we’re doing today.  It will forever change the fate of family.
I have family members on both sides of this issue. All of us are not perfect and all of us carry baggage from the past and our families. All have sinned, all have faults, I certainly do. I sin every day. This is not about that. It’s about what’s good for children. The children here in Minnesota. It’s about making the right choice for children’s future. The question is: Are homosexual marriages good for children? Are we as members in this chamber going to change the course of history? As to what the adults, we the caretakers, the public policy holders, leaders of Minnesota—what we think is right for children.
Back to marriage. Marriage is about giving, not taking. It’s about being willing to serve another, giving your affection to no other and, spiritually, marriage is about two becoming one in God’s eyes. A civil union is having a contract to protect yourself from the other that may take advantage of you and legally securing the government and civil benefits that have been reserved for marriage. There are consequences to everything. There will be unintended and, I believe, intended consequences.
Members, God has written his word on your hearts: Don’t legislate what you think personally is wrong. Choose life and life abundantly. Dismantling marriage will bring hurt, shame, confrontation and more indoctrination. Forcing others to give you your rights will never end well. It won’t give you the recognition you desire. That which is right can easily be seen by all. Let me say that again: That which is right can easily be seen by all.
Is this easy for you? Most people know this is not right. You asked for this job, members, when you ran for office. Leading is not easy. Are you still looking for an excuse to vote for it? I’m not giving you that today. I’m here to affirm true beliefs that come from your relationship to your creator.
Do you really want what Europe has? They’re on the verge of civil disaster. Some have said, ‘But don’t you want to be on the right side of history?’ The truth is I’m more concerned about being on the right side of eternity.
In conclusion, let me say this: My desire today is to bring more peace, more justice to all of Minnesota. I propose that we vote “No” on this bill and that we propose a more loving document that will more clearly and more distinctly allow the freedom that both communities would desire.
Don’t fool yourself today and think voting yes on this bill ends the conversation. The great people of Minnesota deserve better than this. This document will bring civil disobedience.
This document will split our schools, our churches, our towns, our counties, our state. It will hurt businesses and confuse children. More than any single issue has ever done since the civil war.
This bill needs to be crafted in such a way that it will not push civil rights back 50 years but bring our communities together. Please think about the devastating repercussions this vote will have on our communities. We must not pass this bill but, rather, we must take one more time to craft a truly bipartisan bill that respects the values of all Minnesotans and where no one feels they’re being shoved into an unwanted world, no one feels their religious liberties are being taken away.
Members, today you must choose who you will serve. May God help us.

Senator Hall represents parts of Bloomington and Burnsville in the Minnesota State Senate , District 63

Some upcoming Catholic-related events of interest in the Twin Cities area. May-June 2013

Below are listed some upcoming Catholic-related events of interest in the Twin Cities area.  See links or attached PDF flyers for more details. Hope you can attend and/or help spread the word to your friends, family, your parish community, etc.
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Tues., May, 28:       Argument Club for Women (new group starting!), St. Michael Church, Stillwater, 6-9PM. $10.  See: www.sccff.net  


Wed., May 29:        Film screening, War on the Vendee,  Holy Family Church, St. Louis Park, 7PM

It is the story of Catholic Martyrs of the French Revolution.  This is a 90 minute G-rated film (no blood shed)  starring a cast of 256 Catholic youth (most are homeschooled) by Navis Pictures. You can watch a trailer at  www.navispictures.com
Jim Morlino, founder of Navis Pictures, will host an informal Q & A session afterwards  and on June 3.   Another film screening will be on Mon., June 3 at St. John Baptist, New Brighton, 7PM

Sun., June 2: Monthly Holy Hour for Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty at St. Raphael, Crystal, 2:30PM (flyer attached)Sun., June 30 at 4PM

Tues., June 11:        Prenatal Partners for Life annual benefit dinner with Matt Birk!  U of St. Thomas, Anderson Center,
6PM (flyer attached)
Sat., June 22:          Save the date!  Religious Freedom Forum, Church of St. Peter, Mendota, 8AM-NOON, held during the U.S. Bishops sponsored Fortnight for Freedom, June 21-July 4. (flyer attached)  HatTip to Cathy Deeds
 

New Gravestones of 64 Pioneer Priests to be Blessed on Memorial Day at Two Catholic Cemeteries

For Immediate Release from
the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis
 
New Gravestones of 64 Pioneer Priests to be Blessed on Memorial Day at Two Catholic Cemeteries
 
Saint Paul, MN, May 20, 2013—On Memorial Day, Monday, May 27, The Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis’ Adopt-a-Marker campaign will culminate with the blessing of 64 new headstones during the annual 10 a.m. Memorial Day Masses at Calvary Cemetery, 753 Front Ave., Saint Paul and St. Mary’s Cemetery, 4403 Chicago Ave., Minneapolis.
 
The Adopt-a-Marker campaign to replace the gravestones of 64 priests who served this local Church as far back as the mid-1800’s began in 2011. At the time, St. Paul’s Phil Jungwirth—whose uncle was a victim of the 1918 influenza epidemic while a priest in nearby Sleepy Eye—mentioned to Rev. Kevin McDonough that he needed help in locating his uncle’s grave every time he went to visit it at Calvary Cemetery. “It got to the point where I had to go to the cemetery office to get its exact location,” Jungwirth lamented.
 
McDonough, pastor of the Church of St. Peter Claver in Saint Paul, and Sagrado Corazon de Jesus and Incarnation in Minneapolis, brought this up with Catholic Cemetery officials.  As a result, it was determined that 42 priests’ headstones at Calvary and 22 at St. Mary’s needed replacement. “I realized we were losing something very important, as these men are a vital link to passing on the Catholic faith from generation to generation,” he commented. McDonough spearheaded the Adopt-a- Marker campaign to raise $27,000 to replace the illegible markers. In all, more than 30 parishes, 40 individuals, the University of Saint Thomas and three local Knights of Columbus councils made significant contributions; two free-will offerings at last year’s Memorial Day Masses also helped in this fundraising effort.
 
Among the new markers are those of Marcellin Peyragrosse, who arrived in St. Paul on July 2,
1851 with the newly-appointed first bishop of St. Paul, Most Rev. Joseph Cretin. Nearly four years later, Fr. Peyragrosse was the first priest to pass away in the diocese; he was ordained in 1851. Another is that of Rev. James J. Conry, who is remembered for his effort to save Fairbault’s Immaculate Conception Catholic School.  Passions ran so high regarding the so-called Fairbault School Plan that complaints were taken to Pope Leo XIII in Rome.
 
The gravestones of two former St. Thomas College presidents, Rev. John F. Dolphin and Rev. Thomas E. Cullen, have also been replaced. Dolphin, a former army chaplain, led St. Thomas between 1899 and 1903, and had hopes of starting a military training program at the college.
However, he had to resign due to poor health before moving to Portland, OR, where he lived and ministered until 1919.  He returned to St. Paul that summer and passed away in January 1920.   At age 24, Rev. Cullen moved to Minnesota from Prince Edward Island in 1898 to study theology at the St. Paul Seminary. Following his ordination in 1901, he served 19 years as pastor of Immaculate Conception parish in Minneapolis, while also leading the effort to complete the Basilica of St. Mary. He was named rector of St. Thomas in 1921, and died suddenly on September 30, 1940.
 
The family of Fr. Joseph Goiffon was very active in having his gravestone replaced.  Born in France in 1824, he came to St. Paul where he met Archbishop Ireland in seminary in 1857. Fr. Goiffon was a central figure in the parishes of Little Canada, Centerville, White Bear Lake and Lino Lakes while serving the diocese for 53 years.  His great-great-great nephew, Duane Thein of White Bear Lake had difficulty praying at his relative’s grave over the years, as “the gravestone was getting harder and harder to read.  I told my family members several times that I’d like to replace it,” he said. Thein called Catholic Cemeteries and learned of the Adopt-a-Marker campaign; in short order, enough family members made contributions which allowed them to adopt his marker along with some others. “He was certainly the most famous person in our family," Thein went on to say.

For Phil Jungwirth, the response to the project he helped launch has been gratifying. “These men played a central role in so many people’s lives and left an important legacy,” he said. “I’m so glad my uncle and all of these priests will be remembered with new markers that will last for generations.”

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

The Nuns Not on the Bus

The Nuns Not on the Bus
http://religionandpolitics.org/2012/10/26/the-nuns-not-on-the-bus/

By | October 26, 2012

(AP Photo/John Russell)
Last April, the Vatican issued an 8-page document addressed to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the major association of American nuns. The “doctrinal assessment” accused the nuns of “radical feminism,” of agitating for women’s ordination, and of remaining silent in “the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States.” As a remedy, the Vatican ordered a five-year rehabilitation, during which the nuns would be supervised by a committee of three bishops. The nuns were not well pleased; they fought back. In June, five nuns from Network, a progressive Catholic lobby criticized in the Vatican assessment, launched the “Nuns on the Bus” tour, traveling through nine states from Iowa to Washington, D.C. The nuns attended Masses, held press conferences, and protested at the offices of conservative congressmen, like John Boehner; all the while they attacked the Paul Ryan budget for hurting struggling Americans. Their leader, Simone Campbell, spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August. In September, they gathered two hundred sisters to ride the Staten Island Ferry for a “Nuns on a Ferry” rally. They are currently organizing protest bus tours around the country, from Missouri to Ohio.
The Vatican, under the current conservative pope, is not irrational to fear these nuns and their progressive ways. Among its many reforms, the Second Vatican Council, which ran from 1962 to 1965 and celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, gave more autonomy to nuns. After it ended, many nuns doffed their habits and resumed their given names. They developed activist ministries, focused on war or poverty. Today, many nuns are feminists who prefer Catholic teaching on social justice to its teaching about sexual morality; they spend less time in communal prayer and more in the neighborhood.
If the stereotypical nun was once the parochial-school teacher in a wimple, today it might be the elderly woman in a well-worn sweater, running a job-training program and reading liberal theology at night. They have moved far to the left of the male Catholic hierarchy in Rome. Their disloyalty is not imaginary, not entirely.
But this fight is about more than the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. About 20 percent of American nuns belong to a rival organization, the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, which split off in 1992. These sisters still wear habits, and many take new names in the convent. They are more loyal to the church hierarchy. In general, they are more interested in stopping abortion than in bringing the troops home from Afghanistan, and they worry more about Obamacare’s health insurance mandate than about the Ryan budget’s cuts to Medicaid.
The conservative convents are not getting more new members than their liberal counterparts: each wing of American sisterhood counts about 500 women in the multi-year process of becoming nuns. But sisters joining liberal convents are much older, often second-career types, sometimes with a marriage and children in their past. By contrast, a majority of women joining convents in the conservative splinter group are in their twenties. Some traditionalist convents are getting ten or twenty new postulants (first-year nuns) a year. And this is significant: In 2010, there were only 56,000 nuns in the United States, less than a third of their 1965 total. The average age of nuns is rising quickly, and many convents are becoming nursing homes for their members.
The small renaissance of American nuns is occurring among sisters who look like nuns from 1960 and, in their deference to the church, act like nuns from 1960. That model is compelling to a young generation of devout women who are more interested in purity than in the messy intellectual complexity, and frequent dissent, that their elders embraced. The Vatican is doubling down on this old-fashioned model of sisterhood—no matter the offense taken by thousands of older nuns who have spent their lives poor, single and childless, all for love of God, if not always the church.

FIFTY YEARS AGO, the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, based in Nashville, was lucky to get four or five postulants a year. But in the past 20 years its population has doubled, from 145 sisters in 1990 to 284 sisters today. And the newbies are overwhelmingly young: this summer, 21 postulants entered the community, ranging in age from 19 to 32.
In July, I visited this congregation, which belongs to the conservative Conference of Major Superiors of Women Religious. I was met at the airport by two young women in white robes and black veils, standing beside a sedan in the short-term parking area. I got in beside Sister Anna, and our conversation, which began on the drive back, continued in a stately sitting room at the convent, where we drank iced tea as Pope Benedict XVI looked down from the wall. Sister Anna was 32 years old and grew up in the wealthy New York suburb of New Canaan, Connecticut. She was fair, with a few blond hairs escaping her veil. She looked like about six girls from my prep school’s lacrosse team. I asked why she became a nun.
“I went to public school, so I wasn’t taught by nuns,” Sister Anna said. “I was raised Catholic, but I wasn’t by any definition zealous. I was raised as a cultural Catholic.” After graduating from New Canaan High School, Andrea Wray — as she was then known — attended Catholic University, in Washington, D.C. There, she happened one day upon a Dominican friar in his robes. “I followed him to ask who are you and why are you wearing that.” They talked, and she began attending Mass at the Dominican House near campus. Under the Dominicans’ tutelage, she got the instruction in doctrine and piety missing from her childhood Catholicism. “It was the Lord giving me what I needed when I was ready to receive it,” she said. “I would have spit it back as an adolescent.”
As a collegian, Wray drank it down. The Dominican monks directed her to the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, a teaching congregation that sends sisters to work in 34 primary and secondary schools, from Nashville to Australia. It felt right. Immediately after graduation, in 2002, she moved to Nashville to become a postulant.
Sister Anna had recently finished three years teaching at a nearby Dominican high school, per the decision of her superior, and she was about to return to Catholic University to finish a master’s degree — also per her superior’s orders. She may visit her family only once a year; they stay in touch by mail. She and the other sisters eat breakfast and dinner in silence, although one sister reads to the rest: sometimes the Vatican newspaper, often a biography of St. Dominic. Sister Anna is chatty and gregarious, very not-contemplative-seeming — she would be the captain of that lacrosse team — but she insists that all this structure liberates her.
“When we talk about sacrifices, we are talking about things that make us more free,” Sister Anna said. “We are not radically independent,” she said. “We’re not 280 women who happen to be living together. We live a common life. As the world becomes more and more focused on the individual, on self-sufficiency, on being an expert in your own field, that can bring down a community.” The Dominicans make a countercultural statement: against individualism, against modernity.
Afterward, Sister Catherine Marie, who was the vocation director from 1990 to 2005, and so oversaw the congregation’s boom, gave me a tour of the Motherhouse, or convent, a large 1862 brick building that originally operated as a boarding school for girls. “There’s no recruiting,” Sister Catherine Marie told me. Curious women, including many college students, stay with the Dominicans for short retreats; otherwise, the sisters’ outreach is just existing, publicly. “It’s about being visible and available,” she said. “We usually get two master’s degrees, one in theology and one in the field of education. So we have a lot of contact with young people.”
After a sit-down lunch with three sisters, 32 women filed into our small private dining room, in the basement. Nineteen were novices and thirteen wore the garb of postulants. One had a guitar, another had a violin. They introduced themselves by name and hometown: Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Melbourne. Then they sang two songs: an original composition they had written about St. Cecilia, and “Prodigal Son,” by country star and Nashville resident Dirks Bentley. They were as exuberant as a collegiate a cappella group, if not quite as tuneful.
After lunch I sat in a living room and talked with about a dozen young sisters. They resisted my insinuation that they cared only about the church’s “conservative” positions. “If you don’t care about the dignity of the human person, it makes no sense to talk about education or war in Iraq,” said Sister Hannah, an African-American woman who majored in philosophy at Notre Dame. “So pro-life is foundational that way. But we do care about other issues.”
They got animated when I asked about the habit. “At the hospital, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been approached,” said Sister Catherine Marie. “A woman once asked me, ‘My mother just died. Will you pray over her body?’ They unzipped the body bag right there. If I weren’t wearing the habit, that wouldn’t happen.”
But what of their cloistered existence, their regimented prayer life, their periods of mandatory silence, their jobs chosen for them?
“Kids today have a thousand friends on Facebook, and they feel totally isolated,” said Sister Ann Dominic, who was completing her second, or novice, year, a year spent of no interaction with outsiders. “I’ve been cloistered all year, and I’ve never felt freer.”

THE SAME WEEK I WENT to Nashville, I visited the Sisters of St. Joseph, in Holyoke, Mass., a congregation that belongs to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. They had arranged for me a program almost identical to the Dominican treatment: a tour, lunch, casual chats. These women were as articulate as the Dominicans, as mirthful, as indifferent to worldly goods. Their simple, sensible-shoe, old-lady garb was, in its way, more modest than the bright white habits of the Dominicans. Many of these sisters were teachers, too, although they were permitted other careers, and some worked in parish houses, in charities, or as social workers. There are 257 Sisters of St. Joseph, about as many sisters as in Nashville.
But the Sisters of St. Joseph were old: they range in age from 53 to 100. This summer brought one new member, a once-divorced, once-widowed woman of 54. The halls of their home, Mont Marie, are filled with walkers, wheelchairs and canes, congregating in loose formation outside the chapel, the living rooms, the dining hall.
Over lunch, I talked with a group including Sister Maxine Snyder, the current president. She joined the congregation in 1960, right after graduating from a Sisters of St. Joseph high school in North Adams, Mass. Four years later, her twin sisters also joined — her parents gave all three of their daughters, and any hope of grandchildren, to the Sisters of St. Joseph.
When Sister Maxine talks about her decision to become a nun, she still sounds enraptured, just like the young Dominicans. It was the example of her high school teachers, she told me. “My mindset was, ‘I cannot imagine doing anything more meaningful, or more compelling, than what I’m choosing to do,” Sister Maxine said. “I’ve seen in people here this energy, this joy, this wide perspective.”
When Vatican II called on sisters worldwide to “renew” their religious lives, every congregation began internal evaluations to consider which traditions they should keep and which they might discard. These were arduous deliberations, taking years. Thousands of nuns left their orders. Some congregations emerged fairly unchanged, like the Nashville Dominicans. Others changed a lot, seizing what seemed an opportunity to become real citizens of the 1960s, with all that era promised. The Sisters of St. Joseph developed a consensus model of leadership; most of them began to dress in civilian clothes, identifying themselves only by a cross worn on the breast or around the neck; and many took jobs outside of education, their traditional field. They became more mobile, and prayer lives became less regular and less rigid. These changes allowed them, among other advantages, to move more easily among the people.
The Vatican’s doctrinal assessment, Sister Maxine noted, tells the nuns to spend more time fighting abortion even as it “contains nothing about the Gospels.” But if you read the Gospels, Sister Maxine said, “so many times Jesus Christ says the poor will always be with you, and there are so many stories about Jesus’ ministry to the poor.” Sister Maxine was implying, quite clearly, that the Vatican’s emphasis on certain hot-button political issues, at the expense of more general concern for the least among us, is a distortion of the Gospels.
That is also the view, I suspect, of Sister Jane Morrissey, a Sister of St. Joseph whom I met in her office at Homework House, several miles away in Holyoke. Sister Jane became a nun in 1964, and in 2005, she founded Homework House, an after-school program and summer camp for the mostly poor, mostly Puerto Rican kids of Holyoke. I asked her why young women were attracted to conservative congregations, rather than congregations like hers.
“For the same reason women were attracted to our order when it was like that!” Sister Jane said, then referred me to the Bible: “John says that it’s easier to love the God we do not see than the neighbor we do. I understand that. When I was young I wanted to go into a contemplative order. There was a kind of safety and solace in the silence…. It’s tougher to live in the North End of Springfield and be awakened by mopeds. I have no doubt that I was called to do this—but I wouldn’t have known that when I was 18.”
The freedoms of Vatican II permitted Sister Jane a more varied life than she could have predicted. Several years ago, she spent a summer as an intern at Shakespeare & Co., the famous theater in the Berkshires. The Dominican sisters tend to limit their reading to Catholic texts, I was told, but Sister Jane just finished Solzhenitsyn’s “Cancer Ward.” For fun she memorizes Emily Dickinson. In the small, cushion-filled room on the third floor of her group home in Springfield, where she and four other sisters pray every morning, I saw copies of “The Te of Piglet” and works by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Han, in addition to Francis of Assisi.
The Vatican looks at Sister Anna, the Dominican, and sees the future; it looks at Sister Jane, and her fellow Sisters of St. Joseph, and figures their only hope is to emulate the Dominicans. The Vatican is right, up to a point: the liberal, more elderly congregations are dying. But then again, so are the vast majority of conservative groups. Five or ten youthful, growing congregations will not reverse the geriatric, and ultimately mortal, trend. And forcing some liberal groups to become more conservative won’t necessarily increase the number of women interested in being nuns. Church conservatives “want to give you the sense that if all groups went back into the habit, they’d all have the success the Nashville Dominicans are having,” Patricia Wittberg, a nun who teaches sociology at Purdue University, in Indianapolis, told me. “Not true!” A few young women “would just all be flowing into more orders. It’s a very small pie.”
For the Dominicans, Catholicism functions as a boat, one with high walls that protects and carries you, while for the Sisters of St. Joseph, the church is a life jacket, something that travels easily and lets you look around. But although they use their religion in different ways, the nuns were all among the best people I had met in a long time. They were smart, cheerful, and authentic, not vain.
And brave. Sisters in both congregations told me their parents were shocked by their decisions—even those who became nuns back in 1960, when all good Catholics were supposed to want to give a daughter or a son to the church. At least for a middle-class girl from a proper New England town, whether Sister Jane or Sister Anna, it was always unusual to commit so much to the church. It was never an ordinary calling. Even those nuns who eschew left-wing politics are radicals indeed, for in our age it has always been a bit radical to be a nun.
Mark Oppenheimer writes the Beliefs column for The New York Times. He is the author of a new e-book about the life of sex columnist Dan Savage, available here. His website is markoppenheimer.com, and he can be followed on Twitter @markopp1.