"If I were not a Catholic and knew what I know today, would I become one?" That was the question asked a few weeks ago by a member of the gay men's group at a local Catholic parish. He had just come back from a colloquium sponsored by New Ways, a ministry founded to serve LGBT Catholics. And yet there he was, posing a very uncomfortable question.
For some cradle Catholics, it's an unthinkable question. But Americans are spiritually restless. This man was baptized more than 80 years ago. The fact that after more than eight decades he could consider leaving the Church is a sign of serious tension.
This tension is not just the vertical struggle between LGBTQ Catholics and the Church hierarchy. It's horizontal as well. It plays out within parish councils, as they argue over differing styles of liturgy and differing types of ministry. It plays out within dioceses, as Catholics increasingly choose the parish in which they will worship on the basis of ideological affinity rather than geographical proximity. Parishes and religious communities end up competing against each other for members and support. Divergent approaches to the broader world only fuel the bitterness of this competition. When parishes and religious communities ask the hierarchy to settle their disputes, it's enough to make me feel sorry for the bishops -- even if the efforts of those bishops to enforce theological and political uniformity are wrong-headed.
You can see this horizontal strife in media responses to conflict between the Leadership Council of Women Religious (LCWR) and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). This will be obvious to readers of Andrea Ryan, a Catholic laywoman who crows that "the Holy See's five-year plan will sweep the Catholic church clean of Leftist nuns." But it is no less true of Nicholas Kristof, who opened a recent op-ed piece proclaiming that, "Catholic nuns are not the prissy traditionalists of caricature." In fact, there are a number of Catholic nuns who describe themselves as "traditional," and by most accounts "traditional" orders of Catholic women religious are growing. Ignoring their existence won't make them go away. Ms. Ryan's talk of "five-year plans" recalls the rhetoric of the Stalinist era, but in the final analysis she might be more honest about her final vision of the Church than Mr. Kristof.
If you really want to see someone making an honest attempt to address the horizontal tensions within the Catholic Church, read the speech of Sister Laurie Brink that drew the fire of the CDF.
(A copy of that speech can be found at Patheos.) Addressing the LCWR, Sister Laurie outlined four options open to women religious communities confronting the crisis of declining membership. Communities can stop accepting new postulants, make arrangements for their remaining members, and die with dignity. They can return to pre-Vatican II forms of ministry and community life. They can decide to move "beyond the Church, even beyond Jesus" and become "in most respects Post-Christian." Or they can engage bishops who object to their approach to social justice and spiritual life and work toward "Reconciliation for the Sake of Mission."
Three things stand out in this speech. First, Sr. Laurie argues that the situation demands a deliberate choice -- divided communities risk paralysis and an ugly end. Second, she refuses to dictate uniformity in that choice -- each community must decide for itself. Finally, while she might not accord them as much warmth as she does to other women religious communities, she acknowledges the flourishing of "traditional" religious orders, and even defends them from the accusation of being nothing more than "the nostalgic portrait of a time now passed." This shows for more Christian charity than Ms. Ryan, Mr. Kristof or the CDF, for that matter.
If we want to practice "reconciliation for the sake of mission," we first have to acknowledge the people with whom we need to be reconciled. For some Catholics, the presence as an openly gay man in the Church is a scandal -- an old fashioned word meaning "a stumbling-block," something that stands in the way of other persons' faith in Christ. If I reject the bishops' teaching on sexuality, what else will I reject? And if I seem to give in to sexual temptations, why should others resist their own? But if they can acknowledge that insistence on absolute conformity on all points of theology is as much a scandal for me and for others as my sexuality is for them, if we all put aside the threat of canon law and come to the table, we might have a real conversation. We could even invite the bishops. It might set a good example for the World. It might even convert some people.
Mary C. Johnson: The Vatican Lays A Cunning Trap For American Nuns
On one hand, the Church is condemning them, but there seems to be pockets of parishes that seem to flourish. The Chuch can't have it both ways. One would think the bishops would pick up on this and see that there isn't much of a threat to religious doctrine after all.
Is there anyone from such a locality like Frisco, Fire Island, or Key West that can provide an answer?
» 03/10/2012 13:13
VATICAN
Catholic Church is growing: In 2010, numer of Catholics at 1.196 billion, up by 1.3% over the previous year. Decline in numbers in South America and Europe, rise in Africa and Southeast Asia. Halt in the decline of men religious, but not in women religious.
American Episcopalians, NALC, & Anglicans are joining the Catholic Church, forming aliances and the Vatican has welcomed them with open arms.
Is the homosexual issue dividing the church? You bet it is but not in the way you would have your audience believe.
Most women in the Catholic Church stand firm on the positions the church holds.
Women in the Catholic Church, unlike many Protestant denominations, have always offered women positions of leadership and teaching.
"Anglican Fever " is the new trend. The young are looking for truth, stability and answers. They are finding them in orthodox teaching. The wind has changed.
"For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." - 2 Corinthians 5: 14-21
Thanks for playing.
We have seen how centralized power brings its own problems.. The Reformation was caused abuse and corruption that continues. Only when bishops are nominated and selected by the local people will this change. Only when the Church replaces corporation sole in each diocese with an independent board will change occur.
Toleration is needed. There are mysteries that a person cannot fully understood so quit trying to force one's own understanding on others. Many things have crept into the deposit of faith that were not there in the first century and were not there after the first seven ecumenical councils. These things need to be dropped from the deposit of faith but allow individuals to believe or not. For example, a good practicing Catholic should not be required to believe in Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima or other apparitions. Another is that Latin is really a recent innovation and should be optional and is no better than the vernacular. Allow the growth of liturgy in the local church instead of imposing changes without consultation say with the English speaking nation.
Decentralizing will allow the Church to diversify in liturgy just as it did in the first millennium. Forcing everyone into lock step will not work. Quit assuming everything a pope does is infallible and he certainly is not indefectible. .
"Progressive Catholicism" will be remembered centuries from now alongside heresies of the past like Arianism and Catharism.
" "For, they (the lawfully established clergy of his time) preach but do not practice. They pile up back-breaking burdens and lay them on other men's shoulders -- yet they themselves will not so much as raise a finger to move them. Their whole lives are planned with an eye to effect. They increase the size of their prayer books and lengthen the tassels of their robes; they love seats of honor at public functions and front places and to have men call them "rabbi" or "teacher".
As for yourselves, . . . don't call any human being "father" -- for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. And you must not let people call you "leaders" -- for you have only one leader, the Anointed One (Christ)." (Matt. Ch. 23)
I urge all devout Roman Catholics to follow the wisdom and example of this R.C. "NOBODY" whose heroism and wisdom I highlights at http://JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/StFranz.html .
( See also CatholicArrogance.Org/callnomanfather.html &
http://JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/clergysins.html )
You don't have to park your brains outside the convent. You can still think and have opinions And the growing " numbers" of young women entering into "traditional" orders is at best wishful thinking The decline will continue in the US.
And you can bet your bottom $ that if women had a leadership role in the
Church there would not be the disgusting pedophila scandal that has been festering for the past 50 years.
There: fixed it for you.