The Roman Disease - Prophets or Poppets?

How can it be that one man, a pope, can single-handedly colour the Church so ? How is it that the Church, in a single generation, can be made in the image of one man? The answer is clear. There is too much power held centrally in Rome. Wielding this power, a pope who’s around long enough can change the temperament of national and regional hierarchies by appointing bishops whose ideas conform to his own. These bishops in turn will seek out like-minded clerics for support and later recommend them for preferment in their turn.

What kind of men do we end up with, under this system? Do we find ourselves led by fearless prophets who will speak their truth even when it conflicts with their own interests? Occasionally we do, but these bishops don’t rise any further up the Roman greasy pole. Any bishop who speaks contrary to the prevailing Roman view, can say goodbye to any further promotion. Most of our bishops are safe, reliable products of a Rome-based educational system where strict adherence to curial orthodoxy is the only way to survive. We end up with papal poppets rather than Old Testament-style prophets.

I’m not saying that these are bad men. They are good men who have been corrupted by a system of patronage that rewards subservience and compliance, and encourages careerism. How many bishops worldwide have not been educated in Roman colleges? How many archbishops are there who have not spent time training or working in Rome? How many cardinals of voting age have not come through the Roman mill? The days when a monk like Basil Hume, with no Roman provenance, could be appointed an archbishop and given a red hat are long gone.

One of the demands of the 1,000 priests meeting in Dublin last week, was that bishops be elected. If bishops were chosen by the diocesan church, we would end up with a wider spectrum of views and backgrounds than we have at present. The Church as a whole would be richer for having leaders who didn’t conform to a single model of Church, whose understanding priesthood and ministry was multi-coloured rather than monochrome, and who were a reflection in some way of the people of their diocese rather than the curia or the pope.  

The notion that the local Church should appoint local bishops follows an ancient tradition. The cuckoo in the nest is the idea that the world’s bishops are chosen in Rome. Never, in the history of the Church, has so much power rested in the hands of a few men in Rome as it does today. If the people of the Church were once again allowed to choose their bishops, we’d find ourselves with many more prophets than we currently have. Rome, of course, prefers poppets.

Abuse of Power II

News came last week of another gagging of an Irish priest, this time Father Brian D'Arcy, a much loved and respected priest who has enjoyed a long career as a journalist. As well as a newspaper column, he has been a regular commentator on BBC and Irish radio. Father D'Arcy, 67, a member of the Passionist Order, has questioned mandatory celibacy for priests. He has also been a fierce critic of the church's handling of child abuse scandals in Ireland.

He received a censure from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) last year and has spoken about it for the first time this week. The censure obliges him to pass all his written articles and well as notes for radio broadcasts to a Vatican appointed censor before they can be published or aired.

He is just the most recent focus of the CDF's displeasure. Last year the emminent Marist moral theologian, Father Sean Fagan, was the subject of a CDF investigation and then silenced. To compound the sense of unease, Fr Sean and his order were served with a CDF super-injunction forbidding them even to admit that he was under censure; they were ordered to remain silent about the silencing. Fathers Tony Flannery and Gerard Moloney have also been ordered to stop writing. Such measures are bizarre and more consistent with the behaviour of a paranoid and ultra-secretive multinational gangster operation than with the, body of Christ.

There's a word that's much overused nowadays and blocks the questioning Catholic at every turn - MAGISTERIUM. The magisterium is the teaching authority of the Church and good governance can't exist without it but it has been distorted of late.  During the current and previous papacies, it has been used to silence any theologians who don't conform to the thinking of the Roman Curia. It doesn't allow for faithful servants of the Church to question, speculate and consider positions which challenge the status quo. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have forbidden discussion on issues such as artificial contraception, married priests and women being admitted to the priesthood. 

The teaching authority of the Church is exercised in different ways. The pronouncement of a pope supported by all the bishops is an exercise of the extraordinary magisterium and is considered infallible. The teaching of a pope or a bishop is considered the exercise of the ordinary magisterium and is authoritative but not infallible. In practice, nowadays, the ordinary is treated as if it were the extraordinary magisterium by Rome and conservative elements within the Church. As well as teaching, the other  purpose of the Magisterium is to act as a safety net which allows thinkers within the Church to fly high and take risks with their thinking without harming themselves or the Church by erroneous thought. It should encourage thinking rather than stifling it.

The notion of faithful questioning is unknown to the Vatican which views all differing opinion as disloyal dissent and rebellion. Brian D'Arcy and Sean Fagan are no rebesl. They are gentle men with a sharp minds and a generous spirits who would always give the benefit of any doubt. They and their Irish confreres join the ranks of respected and respectful men and women who have been deprived of the right to think out loud.

While PapaRatzi seems willing to bend over backwards to bring the traditionalist SSPX on board, he demonstrates little compunction in pushing liberal thinkers and Church members overboard.

 He drew a circle that shut me out.

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

   We drew a circle that took him in.   

Edwin Markham

Abuse of power

For more than sixty years, all through the traumatic changes following Vatican II and since, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States has offered comfort, challenge and guidance to nuns and sisters. It has done this hand in hand with the relevent Vatican congregations and has had regular meetings with senior Church officials in an attempt to stay in full communion with the Church, and true to the spirit of the Gospel. Rome has now decided that these women are unable to manage their own affairs and need to be brought back in line.

 The largest leadership organization for U.S. women religious says it was "stunned" by the announcement Wednesday that the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had ordered it to reform its statutes and had appointed an archbishop to oversee its revision.
"The presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious was stunned by the conclusions of the doctrinal assessment of LCWR by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," the group said in a news release Thursday morning.
"Because the leadership of LCWR has the custom of meeting annually with the staff of CDF in Rome and because the conference follows canonically-approved statutes, we were taken by surprise." On Wednesday, the Vatican announced it had appointed Seattle Archbishop Peter sartain to oversee the LCWRwhich has been the subject of a doctrinal assessment by the Vatican congregation since 2009.

The sisters aren't commenting at this time, preferring to observe a period of quiet consultation, prayer and reflection.

Timothy Radcliff (former Master of the Dominicans) said that "the role of the Magisterium is to keep us talking, thinking and praying about what is central to our faith, as we journey towards the one who is beyond all words." Again we see another example of the Magisterium being used as a very large stick to beat around the heads of those respond to the Gospel call faithfully but in a way the Vatican doesn't understand.

Good Friday

Vendredi Saint, here in Molières, is a day of quiet reflection. I went  down once to the neighbouring Cistercian abbey for the Good Friday service but won't go again. I go to Mass there as often as I can and relish the contemplative atmosphere created by the sisters, but the Good Friday liturgy leaves me cold and unmoved - it's too busy and if ever there was a day for helpless inaction, this is it.

For the last three years, I've done little on this day but read, pray and remain in silence until our evening meal. No radio, no music only peace and quiet. I clean the 13th century church next door, leaving it bare save for a small icon of the crucifixion on the altar before which a candle will burn all day. We get a lot of visitors passing through and this is a gentle reminder that this day is unlike any other. This year I can't clean as thoroughly as I would like because my back is too fragile but I've wiped down the benches so that, should anyone take a few moments to sit, they won't leave dustier than when they arrived.

I spent a very agreable hour on the phone yesterday with a sister who taught me scripture in the olden days. She's now 82 and in frail health but her mind is as sharp as ever and her heart as full of the love and life of God as anyone I know. We spoke of the tension between being and doing and how people tend to look for the meaning of life in terms of what they do, and measure their worth by what they produce whereas, in reality, the real ground of our being is to be found in relationships. The first relationship is with God who loved us before we even realised we needed love. This unconditional love which wills us into existence is mirrored in our human relationships which sustain that existence. We find our worth and dignity in the love of God. We find signs of that same worth and dignity in the lives of those with whom we're in relationship. What we produce, how much we earn, our social standing has nothing to do with our worth.

If the Church called us to gather in silence on Good Friday, to spend an hour in contemplation of God's love for the world, I'd me more inclined to go. If ever there was a day for the words to cease and for us to see our worth in the eyes of those around us, it is today. If ever there was a day for action to cease and for us to realise our existence in our relationship with God, then this is it. Hermann Hesse expresses the desire more powerfully that I ever could:

"Hands, stop all your work.
Brow, forget all your thinking.
All my senses now
yearn to sink into slumber.

And my unfettered soul
wishes to soar up freely
into the magic circle of the night,
to live there deeply and  a thousand times more intensly." 

Beim Schlafengehen.

Papa Salsa

It was good to hear the Pope calling for the end to the US embargo on Cuba. "The present hour urgently demands that in personal, national and international co-existence we reject immovable positions and unilateral viewpoints which tend to make understanding more difficult and efforts at cooperation ineffective," he said. President Obama has disappointed on many issues, not least the continued use of Guantanamo Bay on Cuba to detain prisoners without trial, and maintaining the marginalisation and isolation of Cuba for idealogical reasons. The island republic is clearly no longer a threat. The US can hardly justify the embargo by citing Cuba's poor human rights record when, on that same island, it does the same.

On the subject of the internal life of the Church, he made a few surprising but welcome remarks, the most notable of which was that bishops should correct improper the attitudes of some priests. “It is not right that [the laity] should feel treated as if they hardly count in the Church,” he said. “It is important for pastors to ensure a spirit of communion reigns among priests, religious and the lay faithful, and sterile divisions, criticism and unhealthy mistrust are avoided.”  Though welcome, it's hard to understand such an appeal coming from a pontiff whose attitude to priesthood appears to foster clericalism.

Arghhh! Gay marriage.

There has been much written and said about the UK government's proposal to allow gay marriage.Wr have also been distracted from the real issues by the intemperate language of Cardinal Keith O'Brien. We shouldn't be too hard on the Archbishop, allowing that we all make mistakes. If he doesn't by now regret his words, he might well reconsider how he exercises his ministry in persona Christi. I fail to hear The Lord in his words.

The pastoral letter of the Archbishops of Westminster and Southwark is clearly following traditional teaching but is more conciliatory in tone than that of the Scotish prelate. The pastoral refers throughout to the two elements of marriage: "marriage provides the best context for the flourishing of their relationship and for bringing up their children". Are infertile couples to be denied such a support for the flourishing of their relationship? Of course not. So why should same-sex couples be denied the support that this core social unit has to offer? I'd go further and ask why a couple, seeking to faithfully live a life of love should not come before the God of Love for a blessing?

Creativity is an essential element of marriage but this doesn't simply mean the procreation of children. Indeed, in the three versions of the nuptial blessing, mention of children is in parentheses - propagation of the species, while a usual element, isn't an absolute essential. In the nuptial blessing  all couples are called upon to love creatively, mirroring and witnessing to the dynamic life of The Trinity.

"Lord, grant that as they begin to live this sacrament
they may share with each other the gifts of your love
and become one in heart and mind
as witnesses to your presence in their marriage.
Help them to create a home together."
or
"Lord, may they both praise you when they are happy
and turn to you in their sorrows.
May they be glad that you help them in their work
and know that you are with them in their need.
May they pray to you in the community of the Church,
and be your witnesses in the world.
May they reach old age in the company of their friends,
and come at last to the kingdom of heaven."
The nuptial blessings only talk in terms of man and woman because nobody's thought until now to do otherwise. Much has been said in the general debate about the immutability of the institution of marriage.  This is nonsense as the briefest look at its history will show. In the Judeo-Christian tradition how marriage is understood has developed and its form has changed. As recently as a thousand years ago, the sacrament of marriage was only open to the rich with the poor jumping a broom or, if they were lucky, being giving a grudging blessing in the porch of their parish church. Why should our understanding be fixed now and for all time?

As for those who advise us dissenters to leave, how can we? I was made a child of God, made a new creation, through baptism. The Church is a family not a club. I can't have my membership revoked for infringing the club statutes. As the child of a loving and attentive Father, I'm not going to be abandoned. I may be described by some as a dysfunctional family member, but I remain a member of the family, regardless.

The Spirit still moves in the hearts of people of goodwill and perhaps contemporary society has much to teach us. If we showed a willingness to listen to the world, perhaps the world might be more willing to hear our Good News. Dialogue and respectful, loving dissent can only enrich the life of the Church.

Manifesto prompted by Mumsnet

I am incapacitated at the moment with a prolapsed disc and am not an easy patient. I've just spent the morning very profitably by reading through the mumsnet thread on reactions to the bishops' pastoral letter on gay marriage. I was so moved by the honesty of contributors and the pain that such good people expressed on the subject. http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/philosophy_religion_spirituality/a1425888-Catholics-what-are-your-thoughts-on-this-mornings-Bishops-letter

Many contributors expressed frustration at our seeming powerlessness to change anything within a Church to which we are devoted but by which we are so often abused, ignored and derided.

A conservative group in Germany recently encouraged those of us who are not in accord with all Vatican pronouncements to leave the Church so that only the 'faithful' remain, untainted by dissent. I cannot leave the Church. It is not a club whose membership I forfeit when I don't obey the rules. I'm a member of the Church by baptism when I became a child of God. I cannot become an un-child of a loving God who will forever tenderly seek me out.

Tha Church has, for centuries, had an unhealthy hunger for earthly power and status. These are human appetites against which Christ preached throughout his earthly ministry. This disordered attachment to wordly status, leading many hierarchs to still adopt the title and manner of 'Prince' of the Church, is encouraged by wealth. The source of that wealth is your pocket and mine. Shamefully, that's where our influence lies.

I attend Mass daily, (when my back allows) at a small Cistercian abbey, where no collection is taken. For many years I have refused to financially support the 'institutional' Church. Money that would have gone into the collection plate now goes to CAFOD and others agencies which seek to take Christ to marginalised people in need, at home and abroad. I feel happier being represented but such groups than I do by the Sovereign of the Vatican State and his scarlet-clad cheer leaders.

There is so much good in the Church as 'the pilgrim people of God'. There is true life to be found in a personal relationship with The Trinity, fed and nurtured through prayer and through coming together to share The Word and The Eucharist. There is so much hope available in the Gospel of liberation and love, of comfort and challenge. The world needs this now as much as ever. I find that the trappings of power, wealth and status obscure the good. I believe that financial, sexual, and political scandals muddy the message of Jesus of Nazareth.

Sadly, the only way to make the institution listen to the faithful dissent of us the Pilgrim People is to reduce its appetite for bling. I suggest we cut the purse strings. Refuse to pay a penny, cent or centime until the hierarchy starts to listen to you and returns to the values of the Gospel, in word and deed. If we withold our financial contributions, our parish priests should know why - word will soon get back to Rome. An envelope placed in the collection basket with a note saying something like "I'll contribute with a generous heart when the Church starts to .... "etc. would make our voices heard.

I'll contribute with a generous heart when the Church

• starts to reform, to open its heart to the Gospel;
• recognises the gifts that women have to offer, in teaching, preaching and even in ministry
• opens its mind to the possibility that the Holy Spirit is calling married men and women to ordained ministry;
• recognises that gay men and women are created in God's likeness in their capacity and natural imperative to love;
• follows the ancient practice of the Eastern sister-Churches in dealing commpassionately with those whose marriages have fallen short of the ideal;
• recognises by its practice, that Truth is more important than image and reputation;
• opens her eyes, ears and hands to secular society and is willing to converse with it and learn from it rather than just blame and condemn;
• seeks to look like Christ in trying to convey in word and deed, God's infinite love and forgiveness for us all, the unlovely and the unforgiving.

A less wealthy Church might be more open to the life of the Spirit moving in the lives of the People of God. A less wealthy Church would certainly bear a more faithful witness to the Gospel than it currently does.

Am I a voice crying in the void? I would welcome any comments offered with respect and love.