Barry Hudock's Blog, page 24

“People think the Church now approves of sin”: Francis, sin, and “the new confusion of grace and mercy”

The first few lines of this new column by religion writer Michael O’Loughlin had me just a bit wary of what was coming:

Alison Donohue teaches college writing in Hawaii, but her preference is to be back in a Catholic school, an environment where she spent more than 15 years of her career. “Once I got engaged to my wife,” Donohue said, “I was faced with the reality that being openly married and teaching in a Catholic school were incompatible.” She recalled scanning job posts that sought, “Catholics in good standing,” and thinking to herself, “I am married to a woman, which probably means I’m not.” But today, because of something that happened in Rome seven months ago, she is “hopeful” for her professional, and religious, future.

Given the headline — “With a New Pope, a More Open Catholic Church?” — it looked like O’Loughlin might, in the paragraphs ahead, tell us that thanks to Pope Francis, it will soon be okay to enter into a gay marriage or that gay marriage would soon be sanctioned by the Church. I think either conclusion would be a serious mistake.

But the more I read, the more I realized that O’Loughlin not only was not screwing up was Francis is up to; he was really capturing what’s so new and important about our Pope quite effectively. There are a lot of insightful passages in the piece — so check out the whole thing — but two especially fine comments come from people that O’Loughlin quotes:

“Francis’s main theme is mercy, and that’s mercy that Catholics direct outwards,” said the Rev. James Martin, author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything and contributing editor at America magazine. He said that the pope is focused on encountering the world as it is. “Jesus took people where they were. If you’re a tax collector, he comes to you at your tax booth. If you’re a fisherman, he comes to you on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. If you’re a woman who’s about to be stoned, he kneels down in the dust with you. We need to take people where they are, and that’s exactly what the pope is doing.”

***

Today, when Donohue, the writing teacher in Hawaii, looks for jobs at Catholic schools, she’s encouraged. “I feel like ‘Catholic in good standing’ means a Catholic who doesn’t judge others, who cares for the poor, who has a deep, humble spirituality. Finally, the good people are in ‘good standing.’ Thank God—and Francis—for that.”

Good as all this is, the finest comment had nothing to do with O’Loughlin or his sources; rather, it came in the comment box. What prompted it was a one-sentence comment that reflected the same wariness I’d initially felt when I began reading the article (though maybe not worded in the way I’d have chosen). A woman wrote, “Sad, that people think the Church now approves of sin.”

But then came a beautiful response, and this is the one that made the whole read worthwhile, and the one that sums up Francis better than even O’Loughlin and his quotes from others were able to do. A man named Patrick Gilmore wrote in reply to the previous comment:

I recall that it was assumed that another religious leader “approved of sin” because he “ate with sinners and tax collectors”.  I think the Pope is just trying sincerely to be more like him.  If people get confused then so be it.  People have been confused by previous Popes, and assumed that they “disapprove of sinners”.  If people are going to be confused anyway, I prefer the new confusion of grace and mercy!

Those previous popes that the commenter refers to here were fine men, excellent teachers, strong leaders, and in some cases even saints — I thank God for them. But they were not perfect, and neither, of course, is Francis. But I think Francis brings something to the papacy, to the Church, that has been lacking. You nailed it, Mr. Gilmore.

Being American and Catholic in a “competitive-democratic context”

Having had the chance, following the publication of Faith Meets World, to speak to several Catholic audiences in parish settings and radio interviews, I have found myself returning in those talks & discussions to one idea often. That is how very troubling I find the tendency of us American Catholics to allow ourselves to be formed far more dominantly by our politics than by our faith.

Too many of us docilely, even hungrily, take our instructions on how we should understand the world, how we should live in society, from whatever political party we affiliate ourselves with, and then we make careful and cautious judgments about what the Church and indeed the Gospel have to say in light of that — when it fact the process should work the other way around!

So I was pleased to see this commentary recently by historian and theologian Massimo Faggioli at the Italian incarnation of the Huffington Post. Faggioli is an Italian by birth and nationality, but has lived and worked in the United States for several years. He’s professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas here in Minnesota and the author of the book True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium (full disclosure: that book is published by Liturgical Press, where I work).

Faggioli’s HP piece provides an interesting and instructive view of us American Catholics and the church we’re building here from the perspective of an “outsider.” Here is my translation of his comments, which he has approved. (Note for context that it was written and published before the resolution of the federal government shutdown.)

“Conservative American Catholics and Pope Francis”

Pope Francis has, up to now, received almost universal approval, but if there is one country where Catholics are divided over Bergoglio, it is the church of the stars and stripes. An article published on October 15 by the Washington Post makes the divisions clear, offering a journalistically credible platform to a group of Catholics who usually speak only among themselves and to their own followers, in their own circles, magazines, and blogs.

But the problem is real, and it is typical of the American church and its unique nature. On the one hand, there is the question of the relationship between American Catholics and non-Catholics, or, if you will, a problem of “market share”: a pope who is too ecumenical and too welcoming, one who refuses to use exclusion as a tool to strengthen religious identity, risks, in the eyes of some American Catholics, weakening the Catholic “brand.”

But there is a more pressing problem within American Catholicism: the church in the United States is highly polarized and divided within itself. It lives in close contact with the ambient democracy, a democracy that is not “consensual,” as are the European democracies based on multi-partisan alliances, but “concurrent,” composed of only two competing political parties. The Catholic Church in the United States has absorbed the mechanisms and the ethos of this competitive-democratic context, including what it means to belong to and participate in the Church.

Participation in the church of the United States is guided often by a “competitive,” alternative vision, more than by a “consensual” instinct. One clear result of this is that “non-negotiable” values have become a dominant element of the American Catholic landscape: not only because of the proverbial puritanism of the Americans (Catholics included), but also because of the American political culture. The democratic ethos has become part of the culture of the church, but in the church of the United States this has created more “concurrence” than “consensus.”

Pope Francis has begun his pontificate by systematically re-opening the doors to a long series of exclusions that had been closed within the church by some neo-exclusivist tendencies. It is obvious that conservative Catholics are those who are most skeptical about these new accents of the Bergoglio pontificate. That these skeptical voices are loudest in the United States has to do not only with the American religious culture, but also with its political culture. Indeed, the very mindset that is now bringing the country to default, to bankruptcy, is what Pope Francis is trying to avoid within the Catholic Church.

More on Gutierrez: CDF head is “naive”?

Gustavo Gutierrez has been on my radar lately, so recent comments of Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani are of interest. Vatican Insider reports:

Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani has criticised [sic] the Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith, Gerhard Ludwig Müller for opening up to Liberation Theology. Müller, whom Benedict XVI nominated leader of the Congregation in 2012, is the co-author – alongside liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez – of the book “Dalla parte dei poveri. Teologia della liberazione, teologia della Chiesa” (“On the Side of the Poor: Liberation Theology, Theology of the Church”), a recent Italian edition of a book they wrote in German in 2004. A great deal was written about the book in the columns of Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano. Gutiérrez met with Pope Francis last September.

Complete article is here. I do hope someone will publish the Müller/Gutierrez book in English.

Pramuk on Gutierrez

In a recent blog post, theologian Christopher Pramuk offers a keen reflection on Jesus’s parable about Lazarus and the rich man. What especially caught my attention, though, was Pramuk’s lovely personal reflections on theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, whom I’ve mentioned a few times here recently. A snippet:

When I was a doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame I had the enormous privilege of studying in the orbit of Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez. I took several classes with him, including an independent study involving one-on-one meetings with him every month, usually over lunch, and once even with my newborn daughter in tow — whom Gustavo greeted with childlike joy. I watched him teach from note cards, his mind as razor sharp as his sense of humor, and patiently respond to the questions of twenty year old undergraduates, children of privilege at one of the nation’s wealthiest universities. My oldest son still remembers him as Fr. Gustavo, “the little priest with the accent” who came over to our house to celebrate “house church” with my family and fellow graduate students gathered around a coffee table in our living room. Of course like many others I revered the ground he walked on. Not so much from the cult of celebrity but rather from the sense that the “ground he walked on” was (and is) the same ground trod by Jesus, the prophet and carpenter of Nazareth.

Read the whole post, especially if you’ve never checked out Pramuk’s Hope Sings, So Beautiful blog (related to his book of the same title). It’s well worth a look.

Bishop McElroy on “A Church for the Poor”

Not to be missed: Bishop Robert McElroy’s new America magazine article, “A Church for the Poor.” Some snips:

Both the substance and methodology of Pope Francis’ teachings on the rights of the poor have enormous implications for the culture and politics of the United States and for the church in this country. These teachings demand a transformation of the existing Catholic political conversation in our nation, a transformation reflecting three themes: prioritizing the issue of poverty, focusing not only on intrinsic evils but also on structural sin, and acting with prudence when applying Catholic moral principles to specific legal enactments.

***

If the Catholic Church is truly to be a “church for the poor” in the United States, it must elevate the issue of poverty to the very top of its political agenda, establishing poverty alongside abortion as the pre-eminent moral issues the Catholic community pursues at this moment in our nation’s history. Both abortion and poverty countenance the deaths of millions of children in a world where government action could end the slaughter. Both abortion and poverty, each in its own way and to its own degree, constitute an assault on the very core of the dignity of the human person, instrumentalizing life as part of a throwaway culture. The cry of the unborn and the cry of the poor must be at the core of Catholic political conversation in the coming years because these realities dwarf other threats to human life and dignity that confront us today.

***

The core teaching of the church on the role of government in combating poverty declares that in addition to promoting conditions that provide meaningful jobs for their citizens, nations must provide a humane threshold of income, health benefits and housing. Just as important, as Pope Francis has repeatedly taught, wealthy nations must work ardently to reduce gross inequalities of wealth within their borders and beyond. Accomplishing these goals requires a series of complex prudential decisions about financial structures, incentives for wealth creation and income support programs that enhance rather than undermine family life. Many different types of choices are compatible within a full commitment to Catholic teachings on economic justice.

But choices by citizens or public officials that systematically, and therefore unjustly, decrease governmental financial support for the poor clearly reject core Catholic teachings on poverty and economic justice. Policy decisions that reduce development assistance to the poorest countries reject core Catholic teachings. Tax policies that increase rather than decrease inequalities reject core Catholic teachings. The nature and tone of Pope Francis’ declarations on poverty and evil in the world powerfully convey that while prudence is necessary in the formulation of economically just policies, the categorical nature of Catholic teaching on economic justice is clear and binding.

But there’s plenty more. Read the whole thing here. Thank you to Bishop McElroy for his fine work.

Francis and the family

Now here’s an interesting development (fascinating how often we say that since Francis’s election!):

Today the Vatican announced that Pope Francis will host an  Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops to discuss the topic,  “The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization.” The  meeting will take place in Rome, October 5-14, 2014, and the issue of divorced and remarried Catholics will almost certainly be on the table.

There have only been two previous such Extraordinary Synods since Pope Paul  VI established the Synod of Bishops in 1965.

That’s from Time‘s Elizabeth Dias yesterday.

Of course, in his interest in marriage and family, Pope Francis is picking up a major theme in the papal magisterium and ministry of Pope John Paul II. (Think , the World Meeting of Families, the Pontifical Council for the Family, Familiaris Consortio, the Letter to Families, and the Year of the Family, just for starters!) The very interesting thing — and quite unavoidable, despite the constant insistence we are sure to hear from some that “nothing has changed … Francis has not changed church teaching” — will be to see the different and distinctive emphases and twists that Pope Francis brings to the topic.

Also worth noting is that the next World Meeting of Families is slated to take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in September 2015. Since his election, there has been no public confirmation that Pope Francis will participate in this event, though his predecessors have been present for each such international gathering in the past. I’d say this decision about the extraordinary synod is a pretty good indicator that Francis will be very interested in going to the World Meeting of Families. And that means we can probably expect Francis’s first pastoral visit to the United States less than two years from now.

 

Pope Francis on married life in Assisi: “simple certainties, but true ones”

One of the final moments of Pope Francis’s beautiful visit to Assisi yesterday was a meeting with 20,000 young people (another report says 50,000) in the piazza in front of the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels. Here’s the video of the event.

Several young men and women offered comments to the Holy Father on several important aspects of life: family, work, vocation, and mission. The first of these was offered by a young married couple, Nicola and Chiara Volpi, who stood with their new baby (they said his name is Ricardo) as they spoke of the difficulties and challenges, as well as the joys, of living married life in society today. (The photo at right is from Vatican Radio’s coverage of the event. In the video, the Volpis appear at 1:03:25.)

The Pope’s comments are not yet available in English translation on the Vatican website. Here’s my translation of his comments on marriage.

I am happy that the first question comes from a young couple. A beautiful witness! Two young people who have chosen, decided, with joy and courage, to form a family. Yes, because it takes courage to form a family! It takes courage! And your question, young spouses, is about vocation. What is marriage? It is a true and proper vocation, just as much as priesthood and the religious life. Two Christians who get married have recognized in the story of their love the call of the Lord, the vocation that these two, man and woman, form one single flesh, one single life. And the Sacrament of matrimony wraps this love in the grace of God, roots it in God himself. With this gift, with the certainty of this call, they can carry on secure, without fear of anything. They can handle everything, together!

We remember our parents, our grandparents, or great-grandparents: they were married in conditions much more difficult than ours, some in times of war or the years following war; some emigrated, like my parents. Where did they find the strength? They found it in the certainty that the Lord was with them, that the family is blessed by God with the Sacrament of matrimony, and that being blessed, its mission is to bring children into the world and educate them. With these certainties, they overcame the most difficult trials. They are simple certainties, but true ones, and they were the columns that supported their love. It was not easy, their life; there were problems, many problems. But these simple certainties helped them go forward. And they managed to form a beautiful family, to give life, to raise children.

Dear friends, this moral and spiritual foundation is necessary to build upon solidly! Today, this foundation is no longer guaranteed by families and social traditions. In fact, the society into which you were born emphasizes individual rights more than those of the family – these individual rights – emphasize the relationships that last until difficulties arise, and so sometimes speak of the couple’s relationship, of family, and of matrimony in superficial and equivocal ways. It would be enough to watch certain television programs to see these values! How many times the parish priests have heard – myself included, sometimes I heard it – from a couple who comes to be married: “But you know that marriage is for life?” “Ah, we love each other very much, but …  we will stay together for as long as our love lasts. When it ends, we will go our separate ways.” It is egoism: when I no longer feel it, I cut the marriage and forget the “one flesh” that cannot be separated. It is risky to get married. It is risky! It is that egoism that threatens us, because within all of us is the possibility of a double personality: that which says, “I freely choose this …” and the other which says, “I, me, with me, for me…” The egoism always, it returns and refuses to open itself to others. The other difficulty is this culture of the temporary: it seems that nothing is definitive. Everything is temporary. As I said before: Ah, love, as long as it lasts. One time I heard a seminarian – great – who said, “I want to become a priest, but for ten years. After that, I will rethink it.” It is the culture of the temporary, and Jesus did not save us temporarily: he saved us definitively!

But the Holy Spirit always brings about new answers to new problems! And so in the Church we’ve developed different paths for couples, programs of preparing for marriage, groups of young couples in parishes, movements for families…. There is an immense richness! They are points of reference for all: young people searching, couples in crisis, parents in difficulties with children and vice-versa. They help all of us! And then there are the different forms of welcome: foster care, adoption, case families of various types… The dream – permit me to use the word – the dream of the Holy Spirit is infinite, but it is also very concrete! So I would like to say to you not to be afraid of making a definitive decision: don’t be afraid of doing it. How many times I have heard mothers say to me: “Father, I have a son who is 30 years old and he’s not married: I don’t know what to do! He has a beautiful girlfriend, but they haven’t decided.” But, ma’am, stop ironing his shirts! Okay. Don’t be afraid of making definitive decisions, like marriage: deepen your love, respect the timing and expressions, pray, prepare well, but then have trust that the Lord does not leave you alone. Let him come into your home as one of the family. He will always sustain you.

On a different topic, also from yesterday, see Fr. Imbelli’s comments and translation here.

Where is liberation theology headed?

As had been anticipated, the Pope has met with Gustavo Gutierrez, one of the fathers of liberation theology. Apparently the only thing we know about the meeting is that it happened, in early September.

Is there a sort of “rehabilitation” of liberation theology, after much criticism by Church authorities in the mid-1980s? Several things have led some, including myself, to think that may be so. Besides this meeting with Gutierrez, we know that Pope Francis has also recently asked (in a way that became public) for a copy of the new book by another big name in liberation theology, Leonardo Boff, for his review.

In addition to that, and more importantly, Francis’s thinking — to the obvious consternation of many — is marked by clear echoes of liberation theology. The preferential option for the poor is at the center of his thinking and ministry — not just in the benign “it’s important to help the poor” way that many understand in that phrase, but also in the sense specific to liberation theology: that there are powerful structures of society which conspire against the poor and that these structures must be opposed by the Church and by individual Christians. The Pope’s repeated and sharp criticisms of consumerism, “savage capitalism,” and the unjust global economic system since his election are pure liberation theology.

We should add, finally, that despite the official suspicion, several ideas central to the work of Gutierrez, Boff, and other liberation theologians have already made their way into official Church teaching. Structures of sin that support injustice, preferential option for the poor, and solidarity (prominent in the social encyclicals of the past three decades) owe much to liberation theology. For that to have happened even as the liberation theology was being officially criticized is somewhat remarkable. It’s no wonder that John Paul II referred to liberation theology, in a 1986 letter to the bishops of Brazil, as “not only timely but useful and necessary.” So it could certainly be argued that it deserves to be more highly regarded within the Church.

On the other hand, there’s the recent interview with Pope Francis published by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Liberation theology came up in the course of it, quite naturally actually within a line of thinking the Pope was expressing. At a moment ready-made for him if what he has in mind is fresh thinking about liberation theology within the Church, Francis, to my mind, seems rather uninterested in discussing the topic. Here’s the pertinent passage:

You heard your calling at a young age?

“No, not very young. My family wanted me to have a different profession, to work, earn some money. I went to university. I also had a teacher for whom I had a lot of respect and developed a friendship and who was a fervent communist. She often read Communist Party texts to me and gave them to me to read. So I also got to know that very materialistic conception. I remember that she also gave me the statement from the American Communists in defense of the Rosenbergs, who had been sentenced to death. The woman I’m talking about was later arrested, tortured and killed by the dictatorship then ruling in Argentina.”

Where you seduced by Communism?

“Her materialism had no hold over me. But learning about it through a courageous and honest person was helpful. I realized a few things, an aspect of the social, which I then found in the social doctrine of the Church.”

Liberation theology, which Pope John Paul II excommunicated, was widespread in Latin America.

“Yes, many of its members were Argentines.”

Do you think it was right that the Pope fought against them?

“It certainly gave a political aspect to their theology, but many of them were believers and with a high concept of humanity.”

And that’s it. Then the interviewer changes the subject. No correction of the interviewer’s obvious overstatement that John Paul II “excommunicated” liberation theology — on the contrary, a “yes.” And let’s face it, ”Many of them were believers” is decidedly not the statement of a Pope who wishes to offer long-withheld support or vindication of theologians whose work has been the object of considerable suspicion on the part of Church authorities. Indeed, Francis’s comments are a far cry from JP2′s above-mentioned “not only timely, but useful and necessary.”

So until Francis is much more clear on the topic – and maybe this is as clear as he will get – we shall have to wait and see.

There they are…

God bless ‘em, Holy Spirit guide ‘em, that whatever the Lord wishes to come of this will.

The sixth state in six years to abandon capital punishment

The Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty puts it well:

With the stroke of midnight, at 12:01am on October 1st, 2013, Maryland officially becomes the sixth state in six years to abandon capital punishment. The Catholic Mobilizing Network congratulates Maryland Citizens Against State Executions and all of its partners. We proudly stand with them.

Just as it was in New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois and Connecticut, Catholics played a major role in this life-affirming policy change.

From the Catholic Governor who led the charge and signed the bill to the thousands of Catholics who wrote to their legislators, we made the difference.

Read the rest here.