Tag Archive for ‘power of the faithful’
From the Commonweal Blog:
“The Fordham Conversation Project … brought together young professors of theology to discuss their emerging role in the Church and university at a time of evident polarization. In this regard the undertaking bears resemblance to the Common Ground Initiative launched by the late Cardinal Bernardin and Monsignor Philip Murnion.
“Here is how one participant describes their intense two days together:
“The concept of friendship, which obviously has a long theological history, was perhaps the central idea of the weekend. If those who disagree actually make conscious choices to engage in practices to create the space to be friends then the disagreement is far less likely to fracture the relationship. And sometimes understanding grows in such a way that the disagreement fades away…or at least is much better understood.
“I think the focus on junior people allowed both of these ideas to flourish in our discussions because ‘our generation’ (1) hasn’t been formed by the culture wars of the 60s and by Vatican II and its aftermath and (2) generally haven’t yet fought the battles that define one’s self in opposition to another person or idea. This allows friendships to flourish across divides.”
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=9598
Tags: church, power of the faithful, tradition recreating itself
This, from a Commonweal blog post on the topic of the loss of the old-school Catholic culture and what that means for the future:
“Every single 60-ish or 70-ish year old Commonweal Catholic can tell you of memories of various thick, ‘ghetto’ practices that imprinted Catholicism into their DNA. The felt banners and coloring books of my generation’s Catholicism neither inspired nor repelled; they just made Catholicism trivial and easily surrendered, for they never made a substantial claim in the first place. The irony is that such a culture–which is ‘given,’ automatic, un-self-conscious, atmospheric, osmotic–now has to be intentionally and consciously constructed so that it can be organic and automatic in the future.”
How do we go about that, constructing something that is automatic and not self-conscious, in an intentionally self-aware way? It seems impossible on the face of it. Yet we have a model.
Think about the way we treat traditional, ethnic music, like for example how the Chieftains play Irish music. They play all the old tunes in an authentic way, but do it consciously. They don’t play Irish music on traditional Irish instruments because that’s all they know or because they only have one fiddle. They do it because they want to. They have many alternatives but choose to make this music. They’ve learned about it and play it in a way that’s both authentic yet unique to our time, with other artists like Sting or the Rolling Stones, Sinéad O’Connor, and Tom Jones (in their album The Long Black Veil), or fusing it with other musical styles to create something new yet recognizable as part of the tradition.
We can never recreate the “thick, ghetto practices” (and who would want to) that gave us the old school atmospheric, osmotic Catholicism of old, but we can understand and take from the riches of the past to recreate the best of the past today, in a way that is true to our time yet yet recognizable as part of the Catholic tradition.
These new traditions may never be “un-self-conscious” but there’s no reason they can’t be atmospheric: as rich in metaphor, aura and beauty as anything in the past.
Tags: loss of the sacred, power of the faithful, sacramental imagination, self-awareness, tradition recreating itself
In Thoreau’s 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, the driving idea was that one does not necessarily have to physically fight the government, but one must not support it or have it support one (if one is against it). This essay has had a wide influence on many later practitioners of civil disobedience. In the essay, Thoreau explained his reasons for having refused to pay taxes as an act of protest against slavery and against the Mexican-American War.
Quoting from Wikipedia:
Thoreau argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice.
Thoreau tells his audience [in relation to slavery and the Mexican-American war] that they cannot blame this problem solely on pro-slavery Southern politicians, but must put the blame on those in, for instance, Massachusetts, “who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may.… There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them.”
He exhorts people not to just wait passively for an opportunity to vote for justice, because voting for justice is as ineffective as wishing for justice; what you need to do is to actually be just. This is not to say that you have an obligation to devote your life to fighting for justice, but you do have an obligation not to commit injustice and not to give injustice your practical support.
Paying taxes is one way in which otherwise well-meaning people collaborate in injustice. People who proclaim that the war in Mexico is wrong and that it is wrong to enforce slavery contradict themselves if they fund both things by paying taxes. Thoreau points out that the same people who applaud soldiers for refusing to fight an unjust war are not themselves willing to refuse to fund the government that started the war.
In a constitutional republic like the United States, people often think that the proper response to an unjust law is to try to use the political process to change the law, but to obey and respect the law until it is changed. But if the law is itself clearly unjust, and the lawmaking process is not designed to quickly obliterate such unjust laws, then Thoreau says the law deserves no respect and it should be broken.
Existentialist Martin Buber wrote, of Civil Disobedience
“I read it with the strong feeling that here was something that concerned me directly.… It was the concrete, the personal element, the “here and now” of this work that won me over. Thoreau did not put forth a general proposition as such; he described and established his attitude in a specific historical-biographic situation. He addressed his reader within the very sphere of this situation common to both of them in such a way that the reader not only discovered why Thoreau acted as he did at that time but also that the reader– assuming him of course to be honest and dispassionate– would have to act in just such a way whenever the proper occasion arose, provided he was seriously engaged in fulfilling his existence as a human person.
The question here is not just about one of the numerous individual cases in the struggle between a truth powerless to act and a power that has become the enemy of truth. It is really a question of the absolutely concrete demonstration of the point at which this struggle at any moment becomes man’s duty as man.…
—”Man’s Duty As Man” (1962)
Some interesting food for thought here for approaching how the faithful might use money and voice to affect positive change.
Tags: papal disobedience, power of the faithful
It’s entirely possible that passion is getting the best of intelligence here, but of late I have been coming to two realizations: the first is the true extent of the damage the current structures of governance are perpetrating on the Church, and the second is the additional damage done by the acquiescence of the faithful to the situation. It’s one thing to be fighting the good fight and failing, and another thing to assume the situation is hopeless and just go about your business. I even sense a bit of self-satisfaction in the post-Vatican II church, like we’re all so cool because we have girl altar boys. None of this is to say that what goes on is bad, it’s not, it’s marvelous. Girl altar boys are marvelous. It only looks bad in comparison to what it could be if certain things were changed. Like the ordination of women priests to go along with those girl altar boys.
The faithful will be the source of change in the church; it will not come from the top. We don’t run the joint yet but we are not powerless: we have money and voice. We just need to get off our butts and figure out how to use our money and our voices appropriately to initiate change for the good.
I think the first step is being realistic about the kind of relationship the faithful often have with the Vatican and the bishops. As the “visited” sisters are finding out, it is not one necessarily based on respectful communication (which you’d hope) but one often based on power and control. If the Vatican was really intent on helping the nuns for example, they could have just talked with them and listened to them. This is not rocket science. Rode was not interested in this; he admits he was concerned about “feminism” and “secular influence.” So rather than a useful conversation the sisters got an exercise of power: a million-dollar visitation, intrusive, secretive, intimidating, the exact opposite of a respectful conversation. In effect, a punch in the nose. How does one respond to a punch in the nose? I think the first thing is to recognize that you have in fact been punched in the nose.
I think in the Church today (incoming generalization) we’ve become benumbed so much through lack of hope for change that we tolerate the intolerable. To haul out a trope from the 60s, I think we need another consciousness-raising so we can act accordingly if we have the opportunity. In our networked world, consciousness of injustice makes a difference. The alternative is being complicit in the downward spiral of the Church.
I also think it important to see questions of collegiality, centralization, sanctions, etc. as questions of power, not theology. Theology (and common sense) point to a much different structure of governance than the one we got. This is why I think the faithful should consider options such as alternative funding structures and acts of “papal” disobedience as a means of forcing change.
Tags: papal disobedience, power of the faithful
