Archive for the ‘church’ Category
If you want to understand why it’s theologically and morally indefensible for the church to maintain it’s current highly centalized and authoritarian structures of authority, this is the book for you. It describes specific actions taken by the popes and the Roman Curia since the end of the Vatican Council and how these actions have moved the Church in the opposite direction of where it needs to go if it is to really understand and implement (or as Orsy says, receive) the Council.
Ladislas Orsy, S.J., is a theologian and canon lawyer who is on the faculty at Georgetown Law and was formerly a professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America.
He talks about the theological understanding of the Church as a communion and how operationally everything should flow from that. He explains how the current structure of episcopal conferences compromises the proper communion of bishops (and why this goes against tradition and is theologically invalid), how a recent canon law excludes the laity from governance of the church (and why this goes against tradition and is theologically invalid), how canon law should be received and the underlying theology of this reception, and how development of canon law has been paralyzed since the Council (and why this goes against tradition and is theologically invalid). He addresses the issue of the administration of justice in the church by setting it side by side with secular legal wisdom and showing how short it falls in comparison. He then takes apart “definitive doctrine,” a new category of doctrine created by John Paul II which is not infallible but which nevertheless can’t be changed.
His precise descriptions of the events that have moved the Church towards a strangling authoritarianism in the years since the council and the misreading of traditon and flawed theology upon which they stand point the way to future reforms to undo the damage.
He says, “I wish to present my opinions as insights, proposed for debate. Nothing more, nothing less. … In probing the insights, a good step forward is to offer them to the living community: let the believers’ sense of faith judge them. let the insights become disputed questions. Disputations in the spirit of openness and charity always had a place of pride in the intellectual history of the Christian community. St. Thomas of Aquinas was a supreme master of it. He liked to preface his affirmations by contrasting questions. “Such a venerable tradition should not become extinct. After all, the entire body of the faithful has been entrusted with the fullness of the evangelical message. Hence, no one should ever be left out of the process of seeking its fuller understanding.” (p. xii)
“We need an environment where Christians are increasingly free to use their gifts of grace and wisdom and where the Holy Spirit is not hampered by our rules.” (p. xiii)
“To cling to structures and norms that were historically conditioned and that the church is leaving behind would be to opt for stagnation and demise. … Excessive attachment to the ways and means of a remote past is a deadly apostasy from the life-giving present.” (p.13)
Tags: canon law, Orsy, structures of governance
Pope Benedict frustrates yet again with his recent comments in Africa sustaining the Church’s ban of all forms of contraception, in this particular case the use of condoms in the fight against AIDs. I can’t help but wonder why Thomist scholars don’t take apart the “received opinion” of the Church’s use of natural law to condemn contraception. Probably don’t want to lose their jobs or are tired of beating a dead horse. It appears to me to be an utter and complete misreading.
I’ve found only one article, from 1965, which contains a common sense statement of the application of natural law to contraception.
Contraception and the Logical Structure of the Thomist Natural Law Theory
Richard H. Beis
Ethics, Vol. 75, No. 4. (Jul., 1965), pp. 277-284.
Here’s the full article. And here are some excerpts:
Consequently, no consideration relevant to the realization of human nature, for example, the world population problem, financial inability to support more children, psychological and physical health of the marriage partners, etc., is extrinsic to the determination of the moral goodness or evil of contraception in terms of Thomist natural law. On the contrary, such considerations are necessarily included in that determination. …
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Tags: natural law
If we think of the meaning of the word sacred, we imagine a space, time or action that possesses the specific quality of being distinct from the ordinary and possessing a special and unique dignity that stands out from the daily flow of reality. It explicitly sets itself apart from the ordinary and is entitled to special forms of respect, honor, reverence, protection or veneration. The characteristic of being “set apart from the ordinary” is essential to the sacred; without it, the sacred doesn’t exist. We clearly associate the sacred with religious practice but there are other spaces, times and actions that are legitimately sacred and which can tell us something about what the sacred really means.
Imagine a visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, a space made sacred by the nature and magnitude of the sacrifice it represents. 
This would clearly be a place deserving of special reverence. It would be jarring to see a person chatting on their cell, tossing a frisbee or shouting out to a buddy. Such ordinary, innocuous behaviors would be rudely out of place for the very reason that they are ordinary and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a sacred place which by its very nature set apart from the ordinary.
The behavior of the soldiers who guard the tomb embody this sacredness. I expect that when they are off duty they behave in perfectly normal ways, chatting, waving to people, cheering at football games and leading fully normal lives. But they do none of that when they are on guard.
When performing their sacred roles, they don ritual clothes, behave in rigorously ritual ways, perform all the duties of their job, and don’t break out of that role until they are well away from the sacred space and have removed their uniforms and returned to ordinary life. It is clear when they get to behave in normal human ways and when they give themselves over to the performance of their sacred role.
Now let’s consider the sacred in relation to religion. I don’t think that anyone would disagree with the thought that the church should be a sacred place. The priest still wears vestments, we still use all the sacred objects and we still say Mass and go to Communion. But let’s look at how we do it.
When we enter the church, it’s okay to talk softly, see who’s there, and look around and wave. A low rumble of noise precedes the beginning. The priest, deacon, lectors and servers process in with the deacon holding the book of readings over his head. They all take their places, facing the people, no longer separated by an altar rail as we are all now one in the Lord. People are introduced and announcements are made. All very fine and ordinary. The priest says prayers, the lector reads the readings, we stand, we sit, the Gospel is read, the homily given, the gifts offered. More prayers are said and the Eucharist is consecrated. We say the Our Father, led by the priest, and wish each other peace. Again, very fine, we are one in the Lord. The ministers who distribute communion move to their places, we receive communion, the Mass ends, more announcements are read, the priest processes out and stands in the lobby, still vested, greeting the parishioners as they leave.
What could be wrong with such an approach to worship? Absolutely nothing, except that the very focus on the people of God and the priest coming together as one pretty much thoroughly undercuts the essential “otherness” necessary for the construction of a sacred space, time or action.
And when I say sacred, I mean sacred in the way that the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is sacred; I mean the way historically and anthropologically we have always understood the sacred (e.g., Emile Durkheim, Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade) as something explicitly set apart from the ordinary and possessing a special and unique dignity which stands out from the daily flow of reality, the way the Buddhist monk decked out on orange stands out from the ordinary, the way Hindu temples and Muslim mosques stand out (take off your shoes!), the way Holy Name Cathedral and the other great Chicago immigrant churches and old European cathedrals stand out from the ordinary, the way the priest used to stand out from the ordinary, as the one ordained and anointed to perform the sacred rituals. Much of this sacredness has been lost and this is not a good thing.
Tags: loss of the sacred
In the old days, we had priests who knew how to perform their sacred role. They put on the vestments and performed the sacred rituals behind the altar rail where no one else went, the inner sanctum of the sacred space that was the church. Unfortunately they often conflated that role with an often appalling clericalism, assuming that because they performed a sacred role, they themselves (and the institution that supported them) were also somehow sacred. From that they took leave to perpetrate all manner of malfeasance from which we are now still suffering. (In Chicago at least, I bet the white ethnic alderman didn’t invent the blingy pinky ring; I bet he copied it from his pastor.)
In the old days, the sacred role of the priest often became enmeshed with the ego of the priest and the ego in turn of the institution. In the pedophile scandal we have seen the havoc wrought by the egos of some of these priests and the egos of the diocesan institutions that protected them.
Then came Vatican II and all that was supposed to have changed. The sacredotal role of the priest was de-emphasized, the liturgy was opened up so the people could participate, and the role of the priest was broadened beyond just administering the sacraments to the proclaimer of the Word of God, leader of the community and worker for the common good.
What actually happened was that the priest became more human. Many priests became much more approachable and much more socially and politically active (often to the consternation of their bishops or superiors). The Mass also became more human, much more a function of the action of the community coming together as one. Altar rails were removed, altars turned to face the people, the deaconate was opened (to men), and the laity were allowed to distribute communion. The sanctuary, which was once considered off limits, now became all of a piece with the rest of the church. The Mass became the community itself, celebrating the Word of God, rather than a result of the sacred action of the one anointed to offer the sacrifice and the silent, interior but also sacred participation of the congregation.
So what’s wrong with this picture? I totally get the impetus behind it; Vatican II was a long-overdue lurch towards sanity and we have a long way to go until we really get there. But the ritual of the Mass (at least in my experience) has too little to do with the sacred. As the priest discovered his humanity and took himself out into the community and world, that old sacredotal role, enmeshed as with was with clericalism and authoritarianism, got left behind.
But now we face a different kind of enmeshment. Now, if the priest is just an ordinary human being, the ritual he celebrates is also ordinary. To be egalitarian, one must open the ritual to all. Anything associated with the priest as a specially anointed one who celebrates the sacred rituals is seen as pompous and somewhat ridiculous. The priest, being his fully human self, has to be his fully human self not just outside the ritual but inside it. There is no difference. He is Father Joe on the altar, as approachable as can be, saying the words of the Consecration, as much as he is Father Joe, standing in the lobby in full vestments, greeting the parishioners.
(Of course all this egalitarianism is only skin deep. We may have lost the communion rail and the priest may face the people. But he is still a male celibate, the institution still protects its own, bishops are still closing parish schools, the Pope is still smacking down theologians and threatening excommunications–except for the Holocaust denier whose excommunication is getting his lifted. Since Vatican II the church may have lost its sense of the sacred and its understanding of the intellectual content of the faith but it has hung squarely on to its authoritarianism.)
Again, the problem is conflation of ego and role. What is the answer, for those who would like to see a more vibrant sense of the sacred in the liturgy without a return to the authoritarian days of old? I think the answer is to break the enmeshment between the ego and the role. Like the soldier who guards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the priest could consciously choose to absolutely distinguish between his role and his person. When in the role, he’s in it, like the soldier is in his role as guard or an actor is in a role in a drama. As a recognition of the sacredness of what is going on, he maintains the role until the ritual is over and the ritual objects are put aside. He would no more chat from the altar than the soldier guarding the tomb would wave to a friend or an actor break the suspension of disbelief in a play by waving to his Mom.
Of course all this assumes that there is a problem, that there is disquiet in the ranks, that there is a perceived lack in the way the Mass is celebrated. Many people I’m sure actually experience a strong sense of the sacred in church or are otherwise quite satisfied with things as they stand; not all experience a lack of the sacred and if they did might not see it as a loss. But many do and that is, after all, the traditional role of religion: to create spaces, times and actions that make manifest the sacred in relation to the divine.
Of course the biggest question of all is this: What exactly is going on at the Consecration? In his sacred role, what sacred act is the priest performing? Our understanding of this will drive the structuring of the ritual. Unless we believe that there actually is something transcendent going on, something set apart from the ordinary, that the actions of the priest bring about the Real Presence of Christ on the altar, then a push for an increased sense of the sacred isn’t going to make much sense.
If we don’t believe it, then what’s the point, let’s all find a nice Protestant church somewhere, complete with good sermons, women ministers, and a nice community. The only reason many of us hang around the Catholic church and tolerate its authoritarian nonsense is because of the sacred ritual of the Mass. If that has become ordinary, what’s the point?
If, however, we do believe it, if we believe that the action of the ordained and specially anointed priest in consecrating the bread and wine is both the sign and the act that brings forth the Real Presence of Christ among us, then what is going on is so much more than a gathering. If that is the case, the ritual needs to be consciously set apart from the ordinary. We need to leave the concept of the priest and the people as one to the Liturgy of the Word and let the priest and the congregation get on with their sacred actions, which are deserving of all the special forms of respect, honor, reverence, protection and veneration that we can give them, not because of the person of the priest but because of the role he is playing. We need to put back the threshold separating the sacred from the ordinary. We can never revitalize the church by returning to the authoritarian days of old or by rehabilitating various right-wing heretics. We can however, return it to its roots by restoring the tradition of the transcendent mystery of sacred space, time and action to the practice of the liturgy.
Tags: bureaucracy, church, loss of the sacred, Vatican II
If the laity wants a voice in the church, it’s going to have to resolve to exercise some power. We can talk until we’re blue in the face and “speak truth to power” till the cows come home, but until we are actually willing to exercise power in a real way, nothing will change. Organizations change because of inspirational leaders or because they absolutely have to. They do not change because people on the outside talk them into it. The old phone company did a 180 and became an equal opportunity employer when they got sued, not because someone convinced them it was a great idea.
What power does the laity have? Money. The institutional church has all the buildings and all the cool hats, but we’ve got the cash. And until we’re willing to exercise the power inherent in that cash, the church will not change. And if we don’t do it as a result of the pedophile scandal, we’ll never do it. Cardinal Mahony is under investigation by the FBI for heaven’s sake. We just need to think our way through it so we do it right.
I think conceptually the place to start is to unmesh the sacred role of the church (e.g., saying Mass) from the bureaucracy. This struck me in O’Malley’s book (see Church as Mystery; Church as Corporation post below).
There’s no reason at all why the sacred role of the priest has to be associated with an almost exclusively top-down authority. Break that enmeshment and the way opens up to straighten out the institution. And God knows it needs it. Above and beyond the horrors perpetrated on the victims, imagine the good that could have been done with the billions spent on payouts. For starters, see Roman Catholic sex abuse cases Compensation payouts and Roman Catholic sex abuse cases by country.
It seems a no-brainer to set up not-for-profit foundations to which parishioners could contribute, rather than contributing directly to the diocese. Money would then be passed on to the diocese as appropriate with full transparency and accountability.
… from “Qualified Non-expert:”
I agree very much with the basic tenet of your article about the laity using power, but not with the specific comment about hierarchy. Maybe I mis-read that comment, though.
I would put the first point even more strongly: just as God has given the laity money, just so far they are responsible for the use of that money as stewards answerable to God, and giving it to any ole Church outfit won’t be good enough. They (we) must start using the application of, and withholding of, money as befits our role as willing cooperators and co-creators of good.
This means we need to institute good mechanisms for knowing when an institution under the Church umbrella is sound and worthwhile. My suggestion is this: set up an institution that operates as an organizational CPA (well, Certified Public Christian Watchdog, say CPCW) for Catholic principles. If a diocese wants money, I want to see the CPCW report on their operations. I want to see how the report says whether they use the money the way they say they do, whether they have operational standards for (a) getting rid of bad eggs, (b) investigating heresy, schism, and bad morals in its officers (priests & chancelry), and (c) methods for protecting whistleblowers, and so on. No diocese is required to submit to audit – its purely voluntary. They just won’t get any of my money until they do. Just as I would not invest in a public corporation that would not do periodic public audits. (And who watchdogs the watchdogs – important question).
Secondly, Canon lawyer Peter Vere says that ownership of individual parish properties is not supposed to reside in the bishop as corporation sole anyway – this is a quirk (and defect) of American practice. Church subsidiarity may suggest that there is no principle supporting the bishop owning the whole infrastructure of the entire diocese. If we the people own the parish facilities, then we have a lot more say about what and when things happen in it than American parishes are accustomed to.
Third, the laity MUST become more involved in the process of getting new bishops. The current practice is demonstratively grossly defective – nearly all of the American bishops from 1970 to 1990 either actively engaged in, or at least willingly turned a blind eye to, cover ups about the sexual predatory practices in some rectories. Nearly all of the bishops in Holland, and many in France, cannot even stand to listen to orthodox teaching and traditional liturgy. The secret, smoke-filled back-room methods of the good ole boy network don’t serve the Church.
However, neither of these allows for a situation where, as you put it: “There’s no reason at all why the sacred role of the priest has to be associated with an almost exclusively top-down authority.” The hierarchy is an essential facet of the structure of the Church herself, and its lines of authority must be top-down. At least as far as (a) control of the liturgy, and (b) oversight of teaching and doctrine, there can never be any possible release of Apostolic authority to the laity. For the authority of the Pope and bishops in communion with him is exactly what prevents us from becoming the Church of England (God help them). The sacred role of the priest in being the image of Christ to give us the Eucharist is fundamentally connected to the same power that enacts the liturgy, judges in confession, and that teaches without error.
So, whatever methods and changed ways we implement, they must leave intact the inherent right of the hierarchy to rule the liturgy, sacraments, and doctrine. I personally would suggest that this implies that while a priest could not run a parish’s finances without the consent of the people who are the trustees of the parish’s wealth, the priest will not consent to be their priest without a certain amount of freedom to govern the parish. This implies some kind of quid-pro-quo arrangement with a natural, unavoidable tension, but not an automatic dis-harmony. Even more difficult would be the relation between the parish laity and the bishop. What I do not see is any way of putting in practices that allow for greater lay control of assets that does not look like it would devolve into the current Protestant situation, of churches splintering off each other, and inviting as pastors men that do not have the approval of any higher authority (like the bishop). If you can come up with a structure that allows us to block a bad priest from being appointed, or from continuing on as pastor, but is not wide open to protestantish defiance of all authority, I am open to hearing it.
Tags: bureaucracy
It’s clear that the church can’t do its job if it ceases to exist as an organization. We’ve seen enough corporations die of late (e.g., Lehman Brothers, Arthur Anderson, and even, sadly, Salerno–goodbye Jingle Christmas cookies). And I lived through the bust up of AT&T as an employee and it was not pretty (even though old Ma Bell seems to be rising up from the dead and reconstituting herself again from her various parts). The point is, it’s worthwhile for the church to protect its corporate structure. But only with the realization that this structure is only a very small part of the richness, messiness and mystery that is the fullness of the church. And clearly any *protecting* that goes via the sacrificing of the innocents, as so often was the case in the pediophelia scandals, is sinful. The church is special, but not so special that it gets to escape the bounds of morality.
I think we should recognize that the sacred role of the priest has become thoroughly enmeshed with the authority of the bureaucracy. In his book What Happened at Vatican II, John O’Malley describes the discussion that took place on The Decree on Ministry and Life of Priests. “Two opinions emerged from the speeches: the first tended to see priests primarily as cultic figures who were empowered to consecrate the eucharistic body of Christ and to forgive sins in God’s name, who exercised an almost exclusively top-down authority, and who were under bishops who exercised the same authority in their regard. … The other orientation saw priests in a more active role in society at large, saw them as having a collegial relationship with their bishops and as fostering a similar relationship with those unto whom they ministered.”
Well the second opinion clearly won the day (which was a good start), but the enmeshment of “empowered to consecrate the eucharistic body of Christ” with “an almost exclusively top-down authority” still stood. What we ended up with was a diminishment of the sacredotal role of the priest without much dent at all in the authority structure of the church. Hmmm. A negative double-whammy.
I think we need to envision a priesthood that is able to execute the sacred rituals of the church with full and glorious transcendence (as is the nature of the sacred), while implementing an authority structure in the church that is much more fully collegial, all the way up and down the line, from the pews to the Pope.
Tags: bureaucracy, church
According to John O’Malley’s book What Happened at Vatican II, Gary Wills’ comment about Vatican II being a theologians’ rebellion (see post below) against the Curia may not be wide of the mark. O’Malley says that Pius XII’s fourth encyclical Humani Generis (1950) was a renewed attack against Modernism (e.g., historical scholarship, exploration of the early church fathers, democracy, free speech, evolution, etc. etc. etc.). It was an “unremitting condemnation of a number of ‘false opinions’ and ‘novelties’ that threatened to undermine Catholic truth.” What followed was a “wide-ranging clamp-down on theologians” like “Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Marie-Dominique Chenu … and Karl Rahner.” They were “removed from their teaching positions and forbidden to publish.” “Thus the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office … had by the time of the council screwed the lid on tight. Its actions were bitterly resented not only by the theologians but also by a number of bishops, who felt that ‘Rome’ was overstepping its bounds. … What they resented as much as the punishment of theologians was the autocratic style on which it was meted out.” Of course all these theologians ended up being “rehabilitated” and played leading roles in the Council.
It seems the ‘culture wars’ played out with the French, German (including Ratzinger in his progressive phase) and Belgian cardinals, bishops and theologians lined up against the “anti-Modernist” Roman Curia types. Both sides were driven by a passionate but relatively small band of leaders, and both sides realized it. O’Malley says that “Council figures as diverse as Siri [Team Curia] and Congar [Team Scholarship] both lamented the theological inadequacy of most of the bishops at the council and the disproportionate role they thought the theologians played in it.”
A few things are striking to me about all this. One is the clearly European nature of the dispute. For the most part, there were few Americans involved in these disputes. Apparently we were too busy building parishes, schools and universities (ironically for mostly European immigrants). The second is just how nutty the anti-Modernists were. Apparently it took the church quite some time to get through the Counter-Reformation and to get over the French Revolution and the consequent loss of the Papal States. The third is how overtly political this history is, and how over the first 50 years of the twentieth century things oscillated back and forth. Democracy, free speech, and biblical scholarship is BAD. Oops, now it’s good, go for it. Oops, now it BAD AGAIN. Of course each time the mood swung to the BAD side, people’s careers got screwed and seemingly infallible edicts were issued. It’s amazing there was anyone with a brain left in the church.
Tags: bureaucracy, Vatican II
Religion is the means by which the sacred is given form; sacredness is the raw material of religion. Beliefs, rites, etc. serve to organize, commemorate, and transmit an elemental experience, ineffable, to render it durable and universal in time and space. And religion is a form of belief that specifically implies reference to the authority of a tradition.
Tradition
Tradition actualizes the past in the present, to restore to people the living memory. And it modifies it as it passes it along – imaginatively projecting a lineage of belief. Tradition is at the center of religion. (And presumably we know about tradition because of our collective memory.)
Collective memory
Collective memory forms and endures through processes of selective forgetting, sifting and inventing. At the core of all religious belief there is belief in the continuity of the lineage of believers.
The framework of collective memory provides everyone with the possibility of a link between what came before and their experience, and the ability to extend the chain of memory into the future, as long as they are able to see themselves belonging to it.
What happened
The rational imperative and the assertion of the autonomy of the individual has delegitimized the “figures of transcendence” by which traditional societies ensured the stability and coherence of beliefs and practices. The growth of secularization and the loss of memory in societies goes hand in hand. The complexity of the world shown in the vast incoherent mass of available information can’t be ordered in the way collective memory used to order it, so collective memory morphs into a plurality of specialized circles of memory. Science made the world more intelligible but it couldn’t create a meaningful whole. (We’re on our own for the big picture.) Collective memory is fragmented infinitely because of specialization and all the unique groups that people belong to. (However, many other institutions that depend on different chains of memory survive, like corporations and political parties and sports and cultural institutions. Yet the church has spectacularly tanked.)
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Tags: church, loss of the sacred
“Apparatchik is a Russian colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party or government; i.e., an agent of the governmental or party “apparat” (apparatus) that held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management.”
“Members of the “apparat” were frequently transferred between different areas of responsibility, usually with little or no actual training for their new areas of responsibility. Thus, the term apparatchik, or “agent of the apparatus” was usually the best possible description of the person’s profession and occupation.”
“The term was usually associated with a specific mindset, attitude and appearance of the person; when used by “outsiders”, it often bore derogatory connotations.”
“Today this term is also used in contexts other than Soviet Union. For example, it is often used to describe people who cause bureaucratic bottlenecks in otherwise efficient organizations. It is also frequently used to describe individuals, appointed to positions in any government, on the basis of ideological or political loyalty rather than competence.”
From Wikipedia
Tags: bureaucracy
Any boomer Catholic of a certain age, especially in a big ethnic city like Chicago, can think back and remember a church that was so different from the church of today as to hardly be the same organization. It was magnificently confident, enjoying a building boom of churches and schools that transformed the urban landscape. It was its own parallel universe, stretching from the neighborhood church to the city cathedral to Rome. It provided ritual, defining time in a sacred way in the liturgical year, and carved neighborhoods into “parishes.” It provided a world view with an intellectual history that went back two millennium. It provided a clear sense of right and wrong.
That old movie The Cardinal, from 1963, says it all: the bright young priest rising in the meritocracy that was the church, the wisdom of the old pastor, the courage in the face of political pressure. It also shows the dark side: young lives ruined when a Catholic loves a Protestant, back-alley abortion, the absolute obedience to the hierarchy.
The days of that authoritarianism and dogmatism are long gone and no one in their right mind misses them. But that’s not all that’s gone. Much else has been lost, the main thing being confidence in the intellectual fabric of the faith. With that gone, the center doesn’t hold.
Tags: church
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