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PDF versionHope stirs in religious life
by John L Allen Jr on Aug. 07, 2009
Summer is conference season, which makes it a great time to get a sense of what’s stirring at the grass roots of the Catholic church in America. I’m speaking this week at a couple of Catholic events, and Thursday brought me to the annual assembly of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, representing the leadership of more than 20,000 vowed religious priests and brothers in the United States, some 10 percent of whom are now foreign missionaries.
The assembly took place in St. Louis, at a downtown hotel with a dramatic view of the Gateway Arch and the Old Courthouse where the Dred Scott case began to work its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in the mid-19th century.
It’s no secret that in many ways, these are tough times for religious orders in America. From its peak in the late 1960s, the number of active religious order priests in the country dropped by 2005 by almost 4,000, representing a decline of 22 percent. (The decline in diocesan priests over the same period was 24 percent.) One sign of the times in St. Louis was a flyer for an upcoming CMSM conference in November on “Supervision and Support for Aging Members.”
Membership isn’t the only challenge. Benedictine Abbot Jerome Kodell of the Subiaco Abbey in Arkansas acknowledged that the orders have also been badly shaken by the sexual abuse crisis. In part, Kodell said, that’s because of the enormous damage caused by priests who abused their trust; in part, he said, it’s because every priest today lives with the knowledge that “we may be accused tomorrow, guilty or innocent.”
Yet the message radiating out of St. Louis was largely one of hope.
Perhaps the most determined apostle of hope in the mix was Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the pope’s nuncio, or ambassador, in the United States since December 2005, who delivered the assembly’s keynote address on Thursday.
Here’s a window onto Sambi’s personality: When I sat down next to him at the speaker’s table on Thursday morning, I asked how he was doing. “Better every day,” he said with a broad smile, adding. “We must be optimistic ... we are Christians, after all.”
Sambi is the kind of guy who, just by being himself, puts a radiant human face on the church. Even his sartorial choices in St. Louis set a tone: Rather than his episcopal regalia, he delivered his address Thursday morning clad in a sort of relaxed, untucked BBQ shirt. While he’s perfectly fluent and clear in English, he also began by apologizing for his “Oxford accent” -- which brought gales of laughter, since his Italian-inflected English is more Guido Sarducci than John Henry Newman.
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In his address, Sambi called upon the church in the United States “not to remain a prisoner of the sex scandal” nor “a prisoner to the crisis in religious life.”
Sambi acknowledged that the sexual abuse crisis has taken a terrible toll, saying that in some quarters it has “deprived us of all credibility.” Likewise, he conceded that diminishing numbers have induced a crisis of confidence in some circles of religious life. Nonetheless, Sambi insisted that rebirth is possible through adopting the spirit of St. Paul, being “seized,” “grasped,” by the Gospel of Christ, and preaching that gospel relentlessly.
“There is a Christian way of dealing with problems,” Sambi told the several hundred leaders of religious life. “It involves converting humiliation into strength by fidelity to our vocation and mission.”
Sambi praised religious orders in America for having given witness since the nation’s founding to two great values of the Gospel: charity and education. He said that some orders today seem to have “abandoned their charism,” under the mistaken notion that the Holy Spirit has decided that they’re headed for extinction, while others talk vaguely about finding “new ways of being religious.”
“This is not the Catholic faith,” Sambi insisted. “In the creed, we pray to the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life ... never the giver of death.”
Invoking a challenge laid down by Pope Benedict XVI during his April 2008 trip to the United States, Sambi encouraged the religious to be bold in pursuing renewal.
“Evangelization, with faith and courage, will restore trust in the church of God,” Sambi said, recalling a similar message he delivered to the American bishops in November 2006.
Ordained in 1964, Sambi is a veteran of a 40-year diplomatic career that’s taken him to such far-flung outposts as India, Indonesia and the Holy Land. (Jokingly, Sambi said that so far he hasn’t worked a single day in the Vatican, and that now he’s waiting to be called back to the Vatican “for my martyrdom.”) He finished his address with an anecdote from his time in the early 1990s as nuncio to Indonesia.
A professor of Buddhist philosophy, Sambi said, once asked if he could come to Sunday Mass in the chapel at the nunciature in order to learn something about Catholicism by listening to the sermons. He came eight Sundays in a row, and at the end, pride got the better of Sambi, and he couldn’t help asking, “How were my homilies?”
“They were beautiful, like a flower,” Sambi said the Buddhist professor replied. “But I couldn’t tell from listening to them what the Christian God is like.”
Sambi used the experience to make a point about St. Paul, who, he said, had the “marvelous capacity” to preach the Gospel in a way that communicated God’s entire plan of salvation. That’s the kind of preaching, Sambi said, that the church in the United States needs today like a desert needs rain -- preaching that presents “not a single flower, but the entire Christian garden.”
One footnote: In talking about St. Paul, Sambi veered into a brief reflection on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. He said that historically, Christianity has bred two broad theologies of Judaism: “substitution,” which holds that by rejecting Christ, Israel forfeited its election and the church is the “new Israel”; and “fulfillment,” insisting that nothing in Judaism has been canceled by Christ, but rather brought to completion. That second view, Sambi said, seems to be the thought of St. Paul, and Sambi said that it seems to him the “correct” theology.
Kodell likewise struck a note of hope in his opening meditation Wednesday evening. (By the way, nothing says “inculturation” quite like listening to a Benedictine monk who, on the basis of his Southern drawl, sounds like he ought to be coaching the Arkansas Razorbacks.)
Kodell said that scrutinizing the writings of Paul, there are three kinds of death: physical death; the death of sin; and death to oneself, which is the kind of death that breaks through into new life. In projecting the public face of religious life, Kodell said, the tendency is too often to dramatize the death part -- the struggles, the hard work, the sacrifice -- and to “hide the resurrection.”
Religious sometimes almost seem to hide “the subterranean river of joy that’s within us,” Kodell said.
In a sort of tectonic metaphor, Kodell noted that earthquakes are often set in motion when a small sliver of rock shifts deep beneath the earth. He called upon religious to be those “small slivers of rock,” helping to realign the plates of the world in the direction of Gospel values.
“We are not hopeless or helpless,” he concluded.
It remains to be seen, of course, whether this determination to live in a spirit of hope will actually translate into new energies -- new vocations, new apostolates, creative new means of engaging social challenges. Nonetheless, the headline from St. Louis seemed to be, “Hope stirs in religious life.”
Other headliners at the assembly included Sulpician Fr. Ronald Witherup, who spoke on St. Paul and the renewal of religious life, and Rocco Palmo of “Whispers in the Loggia” fame. Redemptorist Fr. Thomas Picton, president of the CMSM, delivered the presidential address on Friday.
Tomorrow I’ll be in Houston, speaking to a gathering of permanent deacons. According to a recent study of the permanent diaconate in America by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown, the Galveston-Houston archdiocese has the second largest number of deacons in the country after Chicago.
In an interview with me during the October 2008 Synod on the Bible in Rome, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston praised the quality of preaching offered by his deacons. “As much as I hate to admit it,” DiNardo conceded, “some are better than the priests.” I’m looking forward to hearing a few of them strut their stuff this weekend.
John L. Allen Jr. is NCR senior correspondent. He can be reached at jallen@ncronline.org.
"Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of
"Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston praised the quality of preaching offered by his deacons. “As much as I hate to admit it,” DiNardo conceded, “some are better than the priests.” I’m looking forward to hearing a few of them strut their stuff this weekend."
Of course some of them are better than the priests. The priests are taken from a very small pool: those willing to take a lifetime vow of celibacy. The deacons are taken from a much larger pool. Peter, the first pope, was taken from the latter pool. By today's rules, he could not be a priest, let alone a pope.
Steve
Even over the most joyous and
Even over the most joyous and lighthearted observation on the wisdom of experience, the looney liberal left can't refrain from dark and sinister suspicions of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
Isn't a "Catholic" one who accepts and holds the teaching of the Magisterium and, to the best of his ability, puts it into practice?
Pat
No Pat, A true Catholic is
No Pat,
A true Catholic is one who embraces the tenets of the Apostles' Creed.
That was, is and will always be the ONLY litmus test accepted by all churches of the Catholic tradition.
In addition to the Gospel, the good Catholic listens to and informs or educates their conscience from the best of our Tradition (this includes, but is not limited to the teachings of the Magisterium), and then ultimately prioritizes the stirrings of their own Conscience when making decisions.
It is just as well that these be the true test of Catholicity, because our magisterium has frequently lined up on the wrong side of many an issue, only to correct itself much later - usually after the faithful have stopped listening to their teaching on that particular issue.
Truth is the dominion of God. We creatures have our best shot at reaching it as a group. That is why - notwithstanding more recent insistance on infallibility of the Pope and/or members of the Roman burocracy and local Bishops - our Tradition teaches that it is only in the assembly of Bishops together with the Pope, and the approving reception of the faithful (sensus fidelium) that we can assert that we have found some small sliver of truth on any given issue.
Read your history, don't rely on the modern authors who distort it.
A true Catholic is the one
A true Catholic is the one who loves enemies, does good to the hurtful, does for others what is self desired, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, cares for widows and orphans in their distress, and receives gratefully the stranger in our midst. And supports health care for all.
all else is background noise.
Read Saint James.
Read the Sermon on the mount, and on the Plain
frere charles: You could not
frere charles:
You could not be more incorrect! A true Catholic is one who acknowledges that Jesus Christ is God, that he established a way of life, the Church, and calls us to be in union with him through that Church.
What you mentioned are byproducts, of true belief in the message of Christ, contained fully in the Catholic Church. (Except of course your pitch for universal health care)
Basil, dude, Love thy enemy
Basil, dude, Love thy enemy is a mere incidental waste product of Christianity?
Read your Gospel, dude . . .
It's a commandment, not a by-product
What part of Love thy enemy do you not understand?
I understand none of it, but try to find a way to do it.
Love ya dude even when you are incorrect!
Well said Leona! We are
Well said Leona! We are Christians first and last, and if that means we have to sometimes say to the Pope, and the Magisterium, sorry, but you have got it wrong, that is how it has to be and we can only pray that sooner rather than later, they will come to see the truth ie that the faith has its real existence in the lay people of the church. It is for OUR sakes that the priests and all the hierarchy exist, not the other way round. The laity have perceived that women have been oppressed since the dawn of civilisation, that there is more than a grain of truth in the statement that "we cannot trust men on their own not to make a mess of it." Just occasionally you get a saint, a male saint like Padre Pio for instance, who shows a real knowledge of the human heart, both male and female. Our Lord showed he understood the heart of that woman "taken in the act of adultery". No woman ever takes that risk unless she wants to be discovered, by her husband, to show him how much she despises him. Yes, it is sinful - but no more than a man does who runs after anything in skirts. He shows how much he despises his wife by such a deed. WOMEN MUST BE RECOGNIZED FOR WHAT THEY ARE - equal partners with men in the adventure of life. And part of that adventure is priesthood. WE MUST HAVE WOMEN PRIESTS! I remember distinctly, aged 16 or 17, when the reform of the Mass into the vernacular took place. at that Benediction on that fateful day, all us Catholic boys said together as one, in ringing tones so different from the usual mutter, BLESSED BE GOD! with that tone of determination, relief, new excitement, that cannot be mistaken. The Church - Glory be to God had MOVED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION and we believed, must move on and on to become what She must be, the Light Shining on the Lampstand.
But the direction of movement has been rethought, slowed down, and now Benedict seems to be moving to reconciliation with those who want to kill Vatican 2 by ignoring it, ptretend it never happened or was a ghastly mistake. Absolutely not.
I have a solution to Benedict's problem. He has the power and he might well have the political will to do the following : In utter secrecy, select let us say 20 female leaders of the major women's orders - like the Dominican sisters, for instance, or the Chief Nun of the Maryknoll Sisters, and appoint them Cardinals. Give them major posts as heads of Vatican divisions. Grant them permanent tenure as Cardinals - no possibility of Papal withdrawal.
He could go further. He could appoint an Advisory Board of these Cardinals and 20 male cardinals and demand that they sit with the Pope, and consider the major policy areas of the Pope's office and advise the Pope, by a their votes which would have to be by a two thirds majority if a unanimous decision cannot be arrived at. Their advice could be secret for a certain length of time, until.......... I leave it to others to suggest some sort of procedural framework .. ie a constitution. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good heavens.
Best regards in Christ
Charles Forder
PatPK, a Catholic is someone
PatPK, a Catholic is someone who believes in the creed and corrects persons in the hierarchy when they are in error. We are going through the worst crisis in the history of the Church in America. The bishops enabled criminal pedophiles by covering up their crimes and moving them from parish to parish. Blind trust in these bishops isn't Catholic. It is the exact opposite.
Steve
Dear Pat, Kindly forgive my
Dear Pat,
Kindly forgive my limited linguistic capabilities but I cannot find your reference within this piece by Mr. Allen.
How so do you mean, this "looney liberal left"?
Whereso these "dark and sinister suspicions?"
One finds you read a far more exciting, while less hopeful and far less Catholic, article.
Where was it that I missed it?
wondering
your minor inferior brother
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Frere, Your minor inferiority
Frere,
Your minor inferiority became MAJOR after your tacky comments re: Kenneth Briggs' article on the LCWR. Spare us your continually feigned self-deprecation - perhaps a result from too much sun in le desert...
mais, mon cher frère chinois,
mais, mon cher frère chinois, what is this word "tacky?" That my comments were sticky? How can this be, mon frère, if you have washed well your keyboard? Which comments were these, I cannot recall, forgive me, mon cheri
And how does this have to do with the present John Allen BBQ-ing my Major Superiors? Is this not, after all, entirely argumentum AD HOMINEM?
your most minor inferior
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
mon cher Craig, I do recall
mon cher Craig,
I do recall now that some nefarious being left a bitter comment using my most despised name under the column of Mr. Briggs, which was very hurtful to me but above all to him whom I respect and appreciate very much, particularly for his writing Double Crossed.
As soon as I saw it I sent a message saying this was not me. Please to note that I have all lower caps in the first part of my "tag" and then some upper case. This cruel person corrected my name to caps for Frère, etc., in order to sneak past the filter. Kindly note always, mon cher Craig, the structure of my name here and now this is the only authentic usage of it. Any other is not me, and I wish you pray for me very much.
Fortunately both the bitter impostor comment and my reply were soon excised from the page, and only you recall.
your most minor inferior brother
frère charles
I can truthfully say (after
I can truthfully say (after teaching deacons preaching courses and considering that a failure--nemo dat quod non habet) that the cardinal's enthusiasm may be because his hearing problem has not let him hear everything that has been said...I am not high on priest-preaching but, like I said, NEVER heard a good deacon preaching...they need a lot of work....
Anon. wrote: "nemo dat quod
Anon. wrote:
"nemo dat quod non habet"
I enjoyed this expression until searching Wikipedia for its origin and finding it in civil law:
"Nemo dat quod non habet, literally meaning "no one [can] give what he does not have" is a legal rule, sometimes called the nemo dat rule that states that the purchase of a possession from someone who has no ownership right to it also denies the purchaser any ownership title. This rule usually stays valid even if the purchaser does not know that the seller has no right to claim ownership of the object of the transaction (a bona fide purchaser); however it is often difficult for courts to make judgements as in many cases there is more than one innocent party. As a result of this there are numerous exceptions to the general rule which aim to give a degree of protection to bona fide purchasers as well as original owners."
Yet I cannot give what I do not have.
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Good grief! You had to look
Good grief! You had to look it up & on Wikipedia, yet.
thank you Seiber, but I was
thank you Seiber, but I was at first enjoying the quotation without wondering at its origin, then I pursued it further through a general google search which directed me immediately to wikepedia. Please forgive me if this source offends you, but I thought it might be of service to others. Of course any first year Latin scholar would have immediately translated it, as I did, but I thought the legal context might also be of some small interest to some. Please forgive my proud sharing here.
Mon cher frere charles, the
Mon cher frere charles, the faux obsequiousness of your florid prose brings out the need to periodically yank your chain! Da' debble made me do it!
Reagards,
Sieber
"Hope stirs in Religious
"Hope stirs in Religious Life" For men, maybe. There is some very confused debate and dissension in the women's religious institutes with the Millea Visitation impending.
And it is highly irresponsible of Nuncio Sambi to encourage the men to leave the sex abuse scandal behind them. Unfortunately, this is still in the category of unfinished business, especially as so many Bishops are accessories to the crime by failing to deal with the guilty, and by "shuffling the pack" thus extending the range of abusers and the numbers of victims.
What cause is there for hope to stir in the Church?
a reply to Simmary Just a
a reply to Simmary
Just a suggestion: you might want to read Pope Benedicts letter on Hope:
"In hope we were saved".
see: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_...
“There is a Christian way of
“There is a Christian way of dealing with problems,” Sambi told the several hundred leaders of religious life. “It involves converting humiliation into strength by fidelity to our vocation and mission.”
It also involves opening up a clerical culture that believes most in its own protection, up and against the behaviors of its members. It involves teaching its members that "community" is not just the protection of "their" community. It involves teaching its members to challenge themselves and their own members at least as much as they stand up and try to challenge those (the "lay") whom they see as one step removed from "their" "real" "community." Something about removing that BEAM from their own eye first, as a group and culture as well as individuals.
Interesting term to use,
Interesting term to use, 'humiliation.' That implies an act done by one person (or group) to another through intimidation, bullying, or mistreatment of some kind that is usually UNWARRANTED and unfair. That hardly applies to the sex abuse scandal. Through their own actions the bishops brought on themselves their own embarrassment and have caused such a loss of integrity to the role of Bishop that I believe the immediate future holds little promise of them teaching anything to anyone except those who prefer to not think for themselves and and/or only want to go to mass on Sunday and be left alone the rest of the week.
A beautiful article and a
A beautiful article and a masterful refutation of Ken Briggs's article today portraying the ageing and rapidly dwindling groups of Sisters represented by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious as the wave of the future cruelly persecuted by Rome.
How so, Simple Priest? Unfold
How so, Simple Priest?
Unfold please your thought here, not just show one petal alone, please, as I am of a thick mind and I cannot comprehend how.
In fact, I find these two articles in perfect, and frightening complementarity, if that term is still permitted its usage.
Similar phenomenon occur yet our good and holy Sisters receive their inquisitional visitation while the Major Superiors receive jokes from the Nuncio in a BBQ tunic.
please explain more fully your point, Father.
your most minor inferior
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Mr. Allen, I know you don't
Mr. Allen, I know you don't write the headlines for your column, but this one takes the cake! Hope may well be stirring for MEN in religious life, but hope is certainly not the word I'd use to describe the current situation for vowed WOMEN religious. And there are both women and men in religious life; perhaps the headline writer was unaware of that reality! The words that Ken Briggs uses to describe the current situation of WOMEN religious (in a commentary that arrived in my Inbox a little bit more than an hour before yours) are "bleak," "stark," and "struggle." If the all-male hierarchy succeeds in its blatant attempt to intimidate and silence the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) that is currently underway, the flickering light of the Second Vatican Council will be a bit dimmer, and its now faint call to renewal and aggiornamento will be that much harder to hear. The women religious who taught me, all from communities represented by the LCWR, prepared me to welcome the Council, worked with me to study and understand the treasures in its sixteen basic documents, and now, by their powerful, joyous embrace of their challenges, walk alongside me as we describe ourselves proudly to be Vatican II Catholics.
Stop contemplating the
Stop contemplating the collective navel and start preaching what you believe! Take a look at the web pages of Taize. The monks there seem solely concerned with traveling and talking and singing with the youth of all nations. Their monastery is overflowing. Get out and get it done.
Dear Joe Granias, I am
Dear Joe Granias,
I am confused by my severely limited linguistic abilities.
You report based upon the Taize website (are they not a mixed congregation?) their monks travel and talk in all nations, while their monastery is overflowing, and thus we must get out as well.
They go out to travel and to talk, and their monastery is overflowing . . .
Please, sir, forgive my little comprehension but how if the monks are all out of the cloister and traveling their monastery remains overflowing? With whom or what? Apparently overflowing with monks, but it sounds like a Sorcerer's Apprentice kind of thing . . .
I am simply of a thick mind, but this does not make sense to me. Forgive me please.
And you tell monks to get out and get it done?
Leave the cloister?
Dude,
scary, dude.
And most unfortunate for a monk . . .
Within these days we read in the Holy Rule for Monks written 1500 years ago by Our Holy Father Saint Benedict the unusually stringent rules for those sent upon a journey, always and only under the Abbot's orders. We do well to read these passages more than the assigned three times a year.
Send a monk out on a journey? Only under the strictest obedience. Seen that movie Into Great Silence yet?
your most minor inferior brother
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Although it sounds as though
Although it sounds as though Archbishop Sambi is a friendlier, cuddlier face for the Vatican, two comments are in order: 1) John Allen was at a "booyz in the 'hood" (the religious 'hood, that is) event. No mention of women. I know from speaking to women who are members of Catholic religious communities that they would borrow Kierkegaard's title, "Fear and Trembling" rather than "Hope stirs." Where does the jolly Archbishop with the Guido Sarducci persona stand on the investigation/inquisition of American FEMALE religious? Nr. Allen: Did you not think to ask or make a comment in your article. 2) Before we give the Archbishop an award for interreligious tolerance, as a Jew I find his comments about Judaism to be cloyingly deprecating, and also lacking a historical perspective (which Mr. Allen also failed to point out): One can not really speak of "Judaism" in the time of Jesus or Paul: The religious life of the "People Israel" during the centuries before and after Jesus was in flux and contained a number of different strains of practice and belief. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. the strongest (but by no means the only) strand of Jewish religious life were those teachers (who became known as "the rabbis") who were descendants and followers of the Pharasaic movement----and by the way, that movement bears little resemblance to the New Testament "take" on the Pharisees and their followers. Rabbinic Judaism (from which all the established modern movements in Judaism descend) changed and developed over a period of hundreds of years and has been the wellspring for many wide-ranging interpretations and practices within Jewish life until the present. What would be helpful for Christian scholars, religious leaders and commentators to acknowledge is that what we call Christianitiy and Judaism today both grew out of the crises in First Century Israelite religious ----especially in response to the destruction of the Second Temple ----- and are sister religions, who have interacted and continued to develop side-by-side over the last 2,000. The followers of Jesus and the followers of the Rabbis in the first century would hardly recognize what their traditions have spawned in the centuries since, so for the Archbishop to talk about Christianity fulfilling Judaism is rather meaningless.
Dearest Fossil, Your learned
Dearest Fossil,
Your learned comment here provokes much thought and recollection and deserves greater expansion than this excellent outline, in particular and especially your concluding sentence. How far have we all wandered into this desert? Have we yet the Holy Spirit which calls us to Peace and to Love one another, or merely the holy name hollowly invoked? Your statement is a great challenge to us all, once more to strive to love one another, to love our enemy, and so to fulfill the Law. We must act now in Love if we are not to lose out Faith.
Thank you very much for writing and for inspiring and for reminding us what we are all about.
your minor inferior
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
So you are faulting the
So you are faulting the Conference of Men's Religious for being men and speaking about and to their own group? By your own logic, will you fault the LCWR at their conference every time they mention their femininity, the womb, the earth goddess, and how every man in the Church is sexist and out to get them?
<<>> I wonder if Rodé will be
<<>>
I wonder if Rodé will be praising the religious women in the U.S. for carrying the load of charity and education to our nation's Catholics for our entire U.S. history, including today and tomorrow??
Orthodoxy without orthopraxis is of little use...who has put their faith into action more than the women of the religious orders in the U.S.??
“How were my homilies?
“How were my homilies? ...They were beautiful, like a flower,” Sambi said the Buddhist professor replied. “But I couldn’t tell from listening to them what the Christian God is like.”
Indeed. I wonder if perhaps that is the fundamental problem within the Church today — too much angry squabbling over rules, legalism and the authoritarian pecking order — too little emphasis on our relationship to the Lord of the Church and what He is like.
What is Love like? Aileen,
What is Love like?
Aileen, you and Rachel make these pages a worthy search, and I thank you.
Please remember ever my name is in lower case only, followed by ALL CAPS, as someone briefly kidnapped my most despised name, and I want YOU to know when it is really me, so that you may ever pray for me, in loving forgiveness.
your minor inferior
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Aileen, I think you hit the
Aileen,
I think you hit the nail on the head here. If we focused more on Jesus and spirituality,and less on bickering about rules and condemning each other our church would be much more attractive, have less of a problem retaining members, and probably have more priests as well.
This is "the grass roots" of
This is "the grass roots" of American Catholicism? Come on Mr. Allen!
Earth to John Allen: Come in
Earth to John Allen: Come in please! Hope is stirring but it is hardly in Religious Life. Perhaps hope is stirring for an entirely new way of being Church. Religious Life for both men and women is in a final passage to extinction. The exception perhaps, the contemplative orders, but they too are having a difficult time surviving in the economic new global order. Really, John, I sometimes wonder what planet you are on. Do you really think we are buying this?
Dear Chris Smith I do! I buy
Dear Chris Smith
I do!
I buy it (with what little I have)!
But then again I am thick of mind and armed with quite limited linguistic powers
your minor inferior
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Ah yes! The "new way of
Ah yes! The "new way of being Church." I suppose that we will sing it into being so that all are welcome in this place. The new Church where the Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of Life, has been replaced by the "spirit of Vatican II."
I see Mr. Allen is very
I see Mr. Allen is very carefully hedging his bets and sidestepping any possible land-mines by NOT appearing on the speakers' dais of any gathering with a significant FEMALE population (lay or religious) in attendance. Good show, old boy! For a married layMAN, you're a card-carrying member of the Curial sycophants' club...but after all, they are your bread and butter, so we do understand your continually gushing effusiveness.
Dear Craig McKee, Have you
Dear Craig McKee,
Have you long read, as have I, the learned columns of Mr. Allen?
Forgive me as I fail to find his effusiveness continually gushing, as you state, but then I bear severely limited linguistic capabilities, unlike yourself.
your minor inferior
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
EGO TE ABSOLVO! Peut-etre il
EGO TE ABSOLVO! Peut-etre il te vaudrait mieux de frequenter un website redige dans une langue que tu piges.
c'y est, copain, c'y est,
c'y est, copain, c'y est, mais comme je suis ici, ici je suis. Ou vaudrait-il mieux que vous frequenter une site Internet dans la Chine?
je vous remercie en tout cas votre bouteille d'ABSOLUT! Je n'en bois point mais je vous remercie.
(and how come when I sent an all Spanish comment to Justiniano in Managua it got canceled by the NCR censor, yet your French sans accents passes untouched?)
a votre service toujours
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Those religious communities
Those religious communities of men and women who remained faithful to the
original charisms of their founders have survived post-Vatican II and now
some new foundations are springing up and attracting many aspirants, such as
the Carmelite Monks of Cody, Wyoming, and the Benedictine Monks of Hulbert,
Oklahoma. In each case embracing the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the pre-
Vatican II Church including the Latin Rite and Gregorian Chant. History does
indeed repeat itself, and what goes around, comes around. Praise be to God!
What goes around, comes
What goes around, comes around? Then we'll be back to having women as deacons and priests as in the earliest days of the church???? Or do we stop with going back to the middle ages?
Dearest earthen vessel (and
Dearest earthen vessel (and what a joy it always is to find your name once more! Be aware that I like you have lower caps for my name; anything else would be an impostor, and please pray for me),
With any luck at all and our most fervent prayer we can all get back to wining and dining sinners and prostitutes with unconditional Love as did Our Lord, selling all that we have and giving the money to the poor and then Follow, turning our other cheek to those who strike us upon one, loving our enemy, doing good to those who hurt us, caring for widows and orphans (and aging nuns) in their great distress, which for Saint James is religion pure and simple, doing for others what we want them to do for us, giving our new shirt as well to whosoever requires of us our coat, and knowing that the measure we give to others is the measure we shall receive.
This with any luck at all, and a great deal of earnest prayer
your minor inferior
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Charles--when we "wine and
Charles--when we "wine and dine" the sinners and prostitutes (perhaps we turn the word dialogue into a verb as so many here do), do we follow Jesus' example and lead them to conversion and to sin no more, or do we accept them as they are and let them go about sinning and being prostitutes?
In Love we accept them as
In Love we accept them as they are and thereby they have strength no longer to sin
Dear Anonymous of Aug.
Dear Anonymous of Aug. 12,
Since you were not with Jesus when he ate with sinners and prostitutes, you do not know what he told them.
I am sure that he did not shake his finger at them or berate them. Jesus did say that he came for the sinners. The "righteous" have no need of Jesus or his message, because in their eyes, they are the chosen, good, and have no need to repent of their own narrow hearts.
God is so much larger and greater than the traditional Catholic Church tries to paint him. God will not be boxed, packaged, processed, in his love for his children. We are not the ones who change hearts---that is the work of the Lord. But our attitudes, our words and actions do lead others to God.
Although we are a long way
Although we are a long way from "out of the woods", there are glimmers of hope, with some religious orders, men and women, discovering that they need to expand physical facilities to make room for postulants.
Notable in this is that it is the more traditional orders "suffering" this growth, rather than those who have "kicked the habit". Those drwan to the religious life are not seeking to be a "pistol-packin' padre", or Sister Henrietta the Hairdresser.
God bless all our relilgious, and may the call to the service of the Lord be heard by ever more young and not-so-young people.
Forgive me, anonymous, but I
Forgive me, anonymous, but I have not yet met this "pistol-packin' padre" you mention, and ask for greater specifics please. I have met many padres in my years with the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America (which Church increasingly includes the USA, DEO GRATIAS) but never once a pistol-packing one.
To whom do you refer, please?
Tonsured as I am, I have failed as well to meet Sister Henrietta, but her ministry sounds most exciting, pertinent and reaching out to many otherwise forgotten. It is certainly a central place to be for ministry. I congratulate her upon perceiving this, and pray with her in her difficult ministry which touches so many souls which might otherwise walk lost. She is certainly very courageous, and profoundly wise, in fact, and if I may use this divine appellation, a wise counselor.
Meanwhile I must remain ever
you minor inferior
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Archbishop Sambri sounds
Archbishop Sambri sounds hopeful and cheery, kind of like a prelude to a Soft Shoe, and quite like he doesn't grasp the gravity of the situation in which he finds himself. Two thousand years of discrimination against women and children in the name of Jesus of Nazareth does not keep Sambri from that joy joy joy down in his heart.
Sambri should be mad as hell. And this conference of men should have been shaking in their boots in the presence of the Vatican nuncio. Under their watch, children were abused with impunity all over our country and all over the world. And by the very men who heard their confessions and buried them.
Mr. Roberts just seems tickled to be part of it all, looking forward to hearing the deacons "strut their stuff."
dear maudesgirl, Forgive my
dear maudesgirl,
Forgive my thickness of mind, as you write:
<>
What has the late, beloved Henry Fonda to do with all of this? Intriguing, tantalizing allusion but one which remains just beyond my grasp, due to my faulty linguistic capabilities, no doubt; yet I fail to find it in the article.
asking your help please, I remain ever
your minor inferior
Mr. Roberts just seems tickled to be part of it all, looking forward to hearing the deacons "strut their stuff."
How nice it was to rad s many
How nice it was to rad s many comments pointing out the gaping hole in all this talk by Mr Allen - ie women. They form a "black hole" in our church invisible but ignore them at your peril. We must have a Pope, whether male or female matters not a scrap. In Christianity there is neither male nor female. Doesn't any one read Paul carefully? So he says that in marriage women should obey men? Is this not just the morality of his time? Did Jesus say anything about women priests, and did He not only appoint men as Apostles? Certainly. But he was a human being too and followed the conventions of his time. Did he say ANYTHING against the institution of Slavery? Certainly not. He showed how even a slave can gain redemption - not by running away or making the master's life a misery - only too easy -- but by accepting the status quo, and going that extra mile. Just so women down the ages since Jesus. BUT - like with Slavery, - the eyes of the Christian world have been opened. Let the eyes of the Hierarchy be opened too.
Nuff said
Love to all
Charles Maurice
So a conference of men MUST
So a conference of men MUST be all about women religious??
For me the main point was the
For me the main point was the Headline, which may not be Mr. Allen's responsibility, "Hope Stirs in Religious Life," which I too found offensive at a time when women's apostolic communities are more troubled than hopeful by the organized efforts to retrench from the vision of Vatican II and the particular expression of this movement: the apostolic visitation.
Dear Mr. Allen, Kindly
Dear Mr. Allen,
Kindly forgive my misstating your name in the above comment. I am getting up in years and quite frankly was aghast by your view of Sambri and the Conference.
Does it make your blood boil to be in a room full of men who enabled ( at the very least) the international clergy sex abuse of children?
Just wondering.
maudesgirl, They do seem to
maudesgirl, They do seem to want to stuff the issue into what they call hope. I guess they are hoping the issue will just disappear and be forgotten. I do hear in the voices of some that they would also wish that Vatican II would just disappear and be forgotten, along with those who understand the significance of VII.
I'd like to ask John Allen if
I'd like to ask John Allen if Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the pope’s nuncio, once mentions in his address the victim/survivors of clergy sexual abuse or those who have not survived?
Did Sambi say anything at all in his address about the "terrible toll" the conspiracy of covering up for and transferring known sexual abusers around for years has taken on these very real individuals the bishops put in harm's way?
Did he say anything about the many older victims, vulnerable adults, including women religious who have been sexually abused by priests here in the United States and around the world?
Why is it that the bishops are not held accountable for their part in what he calls "the sexual abuse crisis?"
They abused their episcopal authority by not doing the right thing in the first place and it has followed that they have been deprived "of all credibility."
Did Sambi acknowledge the scandal given by bishops in states like Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York who so viciously oppose needed legislative reform to better protect children, even including threatening individuals?
And what did Sambi have to say about Cardinal Mahony in LA or Bishop Lori in Bridgeport who are in defiance of the courts' orders to release all documents, files and correspondence regarding known, convicted or credibly accused sexual predators?
Sadly, the answer appears to be that they remain up to their eyeballs in the Clericalism in which they find their comfort zone.
No doubt the church's sexual abuse problems will continue to get worse before they get better.
Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
Victims' Advocate
New Castle, Delaware
maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com
Hello, I am Fr. Carlos, from
Hello, I am Fr. Carlos, from Brazil. The true Catholic is that one who allows to be directed by the Gospel of Life, this world means Jesus Christ, only He is the Saviour of humankind and only He can gives to us a way to follow because He is the Way. The Roman Catholic Church knows her feilures and recognizes her sins, and even those it is the Bride of Christ. When we hear the voice of our pastors we may be cool: we are in the right way, because if the Church was only a human creation, a long time it was supressed. By the Holy Spirit it is going through the human history showing the way to our salvation: Christ. See the saints, see how many women and men are being a sign in this world. I am very happy to be a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. And my happiness makes me to work to the Gospel of Christ and so I founded a religious community called Fraternity Saint Gilbert. May God bless us all. In Christ, Fr. Carlos
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