The grieving church

My Catholic church has left me, I have not left it.

Fr McBrien,

This is such an irresponsible text - using an email from a faceless victimized parishioner who reports anecdotes about the unjust and tyrannical encroachment of a cleric whose approach to parish life embodies the "traditionalist" side of the polarization you deny exists in the minds of "average folk."

This faceless pastor becomes your icon of the "many like him." Like him? Traditionalist? Many? That fit that grotesque caricature? What if another columnist were to stage an anecdote of the "progressive" cleric whose unjust and tyrannical encroachment was yet an icon of the "many like him" that have inflicted untold grief on parishes throughout the US? Is such an analysis serious, sociologically or otherwise?

I respect your usual grounding in intelligent and factual analysis - and am very disappointed in this propagandist piece.

Not only grieving, but alarmed and dumbfounded, as when I recently observed a flaming pink bumper sticker in Houston with the following: "Vatican II: Mass Destruction."

Equally disheartening are parishes that just don't do anything to further VII.

Tending the Grief

What’s going on in the Church and
what are the life-giving truths that need to be spoken?
Prophecy is not so much an action program,
as much as it is a mind-set, a consciousness,
a way of imagining a scene of the world.
The prophet’s role is to propose alternative visions and possibilities
not those that are officially endorsed.

The biblical prophet had a two-fold task:
First, in light of God’s word, to articulate the people’s groans,
their grief’s, their losses, or their lamentations, their wails, their woes.
And then in light of God’s word,
to express the peoples’ deepest hopes and
to lead them to embrace God’s promise of new life.
So prophetic vocation is first to help the faith community to embrace a loss
that it does not want to admit and
then, secondly, to proclaim to the people a hope
that they cannot dare to imagine.

The Loss

The first groan, probably the most obvious,
is the demographic collapse of the priesthood,
both in terms of numbers, age and health.
Forget the phrase, priest shortage.
It’s a euphemism that avoids reality.
We are in the demographic collapse of the priesthood.
We are in the midst of the third decade of a sharp, steep and irreversible decline
in the number of ordained priestly ministers,
sharp, steep and irreversible.
And this is going to usher in changes in the Church,
whether we like them or not,
whether we are ready or not,
or whether we want to admit it or not.

Less than 20% of the clergy are under the age of 55.
In ten years, anywhere between 70 to 75 percent of the priests will be retired.
The Jesuits have done a study showing that half of the Jesuits are over the age of 70, and that’s not going to change for the next fifteen years.
There will be half the number of Jesuits
serving the Church in the United States,
with half of those over the age of 70.

This decline is not a shortage anymore, because it’s irreversible.
To put it bluntly,
priests are older, grayer and fewer than they have been in any time
in the living memory of the United States Church.

This shortage has already had major effects
upon our life.
It has deeply realigned parish life throughout the country through parish closures.
We don’t close parishes anymore; we merge them, especially in our urban centers,
with shared pastorates, reduced number of masses,
and compromised access to sacramental services.

A lack of ordained ministers is also causing
deep transformations
in structures of lay ecclesiastical leadership.
A lack of ordained ministers has lead to an explosion
in the development of lay ecclesiastical ministry.
Yet, we need to question the ecclesial commitment of the Church
to these lay ministers.

Among the questions that need to be raised
are the nature of their connection and affiliation
with the Church and its leadership,
and the willingness of the Church to respect and utilize their competence.
Anecdotes abound throughout the Church about how the collar still trumps
academic intellectual competence
and academic preparation and
high clericalism negates the willingness of lay ministers to use their gifts
in the service of the Church
as a vocation, and not simply as a career.

All of these are pressing questions
that need to be raised,
but they will never be faced by a Church
that still acts as if lay ecclesial ministry is
an emergency stop-gap measure
to meet a temporary mal-distribution of the clergy.

Related to the demographic collapse
of the priesthood,
not only are priests older, grayer and fewer,
they are also sick and sicker,
as in Michael Moore’s movie, “Sicko”.
At a recent priest council meeting,
a Vicar for Clergy gave a report and said,
“Brothers, I need to tell you,
the wheels are coming off the bus.
I spend most of my time dealing with
the health concerns of those under the age of 50.”
The next priest, who gave a report, began by saying
he’s a younger priest – under 55– and
he was taking a sabbatical leave
in order to try to center himself,
and salvage what was left of his priesthood.
That was followed by another of the vicars,
who gave his report beginning by apologizing
for the fact he wasn’t at our last meeting
because he was clinically depressed,
and couldn’t get himself out of bed
to attend the meeting.

When are we going to pay attention?
The wheels are coming off the bus,
and we are debating whether the seats on the bus should be cloth or leather.

Around the country, and you can hear stories of
priests who are dearly loved and respected,
who are on anti-depressants,
who are going through counseling and therapy,
often on their own dime,
in an attempt to cope with the difficulties of this time
in the Church.
One priest said,
“Commitment and dedication should not result in sickness.”

This is a groan.
All is not well.
This is not the way God intended things to be.

Another groan.
There is among priests,
and among the people of God as well,
a pervasive sense of frustration and
a smoldering lack of trust
in the Church’s leadership in general,
and with its bishops in particular.
At best, we might like our bishop as a person,
but we don’t trust him as a bishop.
As one priest candidly confessed to his new bishop,
“We need to know if you are in the boat rowing with us,
or in another boat trying to sink ours.”

Underneath is a deeper groan
that conveys a sense of betrayal.
The Church increasingly seems to be in retreat from the vision of Vatican II.

How often I hear priests say,
“This is not what I gave my life to.”
“This is not what I fought for.”
Or, among the people of God,
“I feel like they’re telling me everything I learned, everything I did,
and even the way I pray, is wrong.”

You also hear lay ministers say,
“You know, I can’t stand my pastor; but I can’t leave,
because I don’t have another job to go to.”
But you listen underneath the words, and
you hear the sense of betrayal.
Betrayal – there’s a word that we use,
but let’s get clear about what that reality is.
Dictionaries define betrayal in terms of “violated trust.”
One dictionary says to betray is
“to violate by fraud or unfaithfulness”.
Perhaps the most comprehensive description
comes from psychologists
who study betrayal and treat its effects.

These healers speak of what they call “betrayal trauma,”
which they state, occurs when
the people or institutions we depend upon for survival
violate us in some way.

Betrayal is a kind of abusive behavior.
What is common to all acts of betrayal is that
a trusted party violates our trust
to deliver what we see as necessary
for our physical, emotional, financial or religious
well being.
Now, regardless of where this betrayal happens,
in what settings it occurs, or the age of betrayal,
it unleashes primal intense emotions.

Among these are
hurt, bitterness, resentment, helplessness, anger, fear
because it compromises what we need for our survival.
Whenever we are betrayed,
it sends shock waves through our very core.
The psychic pain is profound.
The emotional wounds are deep.
Those who study betrayal say that the intense emotions it engenders,
as difficult as they are, serve a useful purpose.
Put bluntly, they motivate us to
get the hell out of Dodge.

Or to put it another way, more formally,
they are a motivator for changing social alliances.
In other words, the pain of betrayal moves us
to leave the abusive situation.
We flee our betrayer,
we sever our ties with the abusive institution,
we discontinue our association
with the offending parties,
we find safer people, places and settings
from which to meet our needs.

But what happens in a situation where we are not free to flee or to leave?
More complex reactions happen.
Therapists in these situations speak of a coping strategy of disassociation.
People stay in the abusive situation.
We maintain a relationship with the betrayer,
but in ways that are more or less disengaged.
People in that situation
pull back from institutional involvement.
They attempt to create a buffer or zone of safety
that limits their contact
with the betraying or abusive party.
We narrow our focus.
We look for our own little piece of the kingdom.
We tend our own little garden.
We focus on OUR parish, or OUR ministry, and
we avoid the diocese as much as possible.

Our affiliation with the betrayer,
though necessary for various reasons,
becomes loose or distant.
The damage, done at their core,
makes us appear dispirited.

Sometimes people in this situation strike us as lifeless.
Such individuals or groups sometimes are characterized as suffering from low morale.
In an extreme case, the one betrayed disassociates
by denying that the betrayal ever occurred.
And from that, the event is depressed,
the psychic pain is buried,
the deep wound is covered thickly,
but remains unhealed.

One of the major signs of the times in our Church
is that as the Catholic community,
both as individuals and as a corporate body,
we bear the deep scars of betrayal trauma.

Many congregations continue to struggle
feeling betrayed by the Church’s leadership,
especially through its complicity in the scandal
of childhood sexual abuse.

Many examples could be given,
but betrayal names a deep wound and a deep groan.
It’s real and it says:
This is not right.
This is not the will of God.

Perhaps the deepest groan, and
the most unarticulated groan,
especially among clergy
is the groan expressing a desire
for more honest discussions of
human sexuality,
a discussion moving beyond
the mere repetitions of stock phrases,
such as celibate chastity, and chaste celibacy,
and faithful marriage between man and woman,
as if these mantras can resolve the serious issues
that face us.

This is not a vote against
the fundamental values of our tradition.
The fundamental values of our tradition
such as honesty, fidelity, responsibility, care,
and deep affection
are solid.
But too often, our teaching as a Church becomes reduced to pious clichés
which simply evade, hide or avoid the complex, and
sometimes messy reality of human sexual relationships.
Human sexual relationships are complex, and messy,
but spiritual piety is no substitute for sexual honesty and maturity.

One of the sorrows
we need to name in our Church is this:
the growing irrelevance of the Church,
when it comes to matters of human sexuality.
Now this is a point
that makes people’s hair stand on end,
but no honest account
of the contemporary ecclesial context
could have met what is an obvious
“elephant in the room.”
It is no secret there is a widening chasm
between official Church teachings on human sexuality
and the actual behavior
of the vast majority of the Catholic population.

This gap is not due to
the sinfulness of the Church’s members.
Ninety-nine point nine percent
of the Catholic population lies on occasion
and the point one percent who don’t admit to lying
are lying to themselves.
All of us lie.
But none of us want the commandment against lying to be repealed.
We lie; we admit that We are not doing right;
we admit that we are sinners.

The difference with human sexuality is
we don’t follow the Church’s teaching because we don’t believe, deep down,
that the Church’s teaching is correct.

We don’t believe We are sinning
when We are not living up to that teaching.
It’s an expression of our non-acceptance
of the teaching itself.

It’s also no secret that the Magisterium
has heavily invested its authority
in maintaining these traditional teachings,
evident in the disciplining
of theologians and pastoral agents
who propose modest modifications
or revisions of such teachings
such as John Kern, John McNeal, Jeanine Grammick, Robert Nugent and others.

This controversy is not new to us,
but the new insight is this:
whereas in the past, issues of sexual morality
polarized and politicized the Church,
that polarization is less significant to the present life
and future of the Church.
The deeper reality that marks our ecclesiastical life now is that
we sense the irrelevance of its teachings.

The Church is increasingly
not so much polarized over these issues;
rather, large segments of the community
have come to the conclusion
that the Church is simply irrelevant
in terms of having anything credible or useful to offer
when it comes to human sexuality.

There is a new blown moment occurring
among the faithful.
The previous generation of Catholics
struggled with
and engaged the Church’s leadership
over these matters,
the younger generation has simply decided
to move on.

And a number of older Catholics,
their parents and their grandparents,
have made their peace with their sons or daughters
living with each other before marriage,
not liking it,
not especially happy about it,
but not splitting the family up over it.

The gay clergy in our midst
are calling for an honest discussion of human sexuality,
because many now are discerning whether they should leave the Church.
Why should I minister in a Church,
which not only won’t validate my experience,
but which actively invalidates my person?

Many in the priesthood are not going to be priests
a year from now.
Something is terribly wrong.
A groan.

Finally, there are groans related to
the continuing impact
of the clerical sexual abuse scandal.
There’s a tendency in some parts of the Church to insist,
“We’ve turned the corner;
we’ve put all that behind us now.”
And yet, the repercussions of these events
still hang over us.
In many ways Catholic identity for us at this moment is marked by the sobering realization:
we belong to an institution that failed to protect
its youngest and most vulnerable members.
Now this has so many ramifications.

There’s been an erosion of moral authority
in the Church in general,
and especially its bishops.

Our moral witness is compromised and
our voices are muted on significant justice issues.
We are seen as lacking in our credibility to speak.

There has been a severe financial cost, as well, estimated at over a billion dollars.
The number of dioceses declaring bankruptcy
is ever growing.

This significantly impacts our public witness
and presence,
as economic pressures compel dioceses to downsize
and to reduce their staff for all but essential services.
Among the first offices to be cut around the country are
offices for peace and justice, social ministries, and
outreach for racial and ethnic communities;
those deemed non-essential.

A final ramification of this scandal is that
the Church has decided to turn inward.
There has been a noticeable lack of presence in a social sphere.

The bishops are less active and present
in our nation’s public policy debates,
with the exception of issues concerning abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research
and same-sex marriage.

Commenting on this situation J. Bryan Hare,
noted Catholic scholar and author,
attributes this to three realities:
the bishops’ loss of confidence in their moral authority,
the pressures of finances and vocations,
and cuts to their own national conference staffing
due to these financial constraints.

All of these groans

The prophet listens to these groans and comes to an obvious conclusion:
Things are coming to an end!
For the prophet, this conclusion becomes a judgment.
These things must end.

In fact, the prophet dares to proclaim
God is bringing an end to things;
Our collective groans are indisputable evidence
that the current state of the Church
is not the will of God.
The collapse of what was seen as sacred,
the prophet declares,
is a demise brought about
by none other than God’s own self.
God himself,
God herself is bringing an end to the Church
or to put it bluntly:
A particular way of being Church is dying.

There’s an unstoppable wave of seismic changes
at work in the Church
which will take the priesthood, the Church and us
to places unknown,
and for that reason,
scary and terrifying.

The church is dying
and the prophet proclaims this demise is aided
and abetted by God’s own self.
That’s the uncomfortable, unpopular, yet life-giving and essential proof
the prophet must proclaim today.

The Hope: “See I Am Doing Something New”

But the prophet also must do a second thing;
otherwise, you are not just a prophet,
you are a groaner.
The prophet not only announces to the people
an end the community cannot admit,
we must also proclaim to the people
a hope they can hardly believe;
because, you see, at any time of transition,
there are two dangers that need to be avoided.

The first danger, or strategy, is that of nostalgia,
which essentially is a strategy of denial.
The strategy of nostalgia denies
that the loss has happened, or is happening,
and with increasing desperation,
nostalgic people attempt to cling to a faith
and way of life that are no more,
such as the Tridentine Liturgy.

The second temptation or danger is one of despair.
It’s a stance which says that faith is no longer possible
in this new situation,
that all is lost,
that there are no future possibilities to be found here.
It says, get out while you still can;
take the next job offer you get.

Both nostalgia and despair are present in the priesthood and in the Church.
But despite both desperate denial
and fatalistic despair,
a prophetic voice speaks in a different key.
The prophet says, “Look! Pay attention!
God is doing something new.”

Against both nostalgia and despair,
the prophet proclaims hope –
the advent of a new future,
not a simple re-arranging of the old furniture,
nor a continuation of the former ways
in different configurations.
As Jeremiah says, “God will make a new covenant,
but it will be a covenant very different from the old.”
Hope is the belief that things can and will be radically different than they are now.
As Isaiah declares, “Now, it springs forth,
do you not perceive it?”
A prophet pierces the veil of numbing despair
and energizes the new hope
by offering symbols and images
which nourish an alternative vision.

The Church is dying;
a new Church is being born;
and that means, if we are to be prophets,
we need to be hospice ministers for a dying Church.

Hospice

Hospices prepare people to face endings
that are unthinkable and yet inevitable.
And thus, they help people to face new beginnings
that are unwanted,
yet full of life.

Hospices do not deny diminishment, death or loss,
but they facilitate the choice to live fully while dying,
and focus on preparing for the new
by letting go of the old.
So, when you enter into a hospice,
whether in a hospital or at home,
you become committed to the task of living fully,
even while You are dying.
Entering into hospice is an act of faith
in the Resurrection,
which declares one’s death
is but the gateway
to a more glorious beginning.

All theology is autobiographical.
I suspect, the reason I resonate with hospice so much
is because of my own bereavement counseling experience and
living through my son’s dying.
That experience makes me sympathetic for those who resist talk of death and hospice.
My son was dying long before he would admit it.
He was a master of denying and bargaining,
always hearing only what he wanted.

God will work a miracle,
but not the one we expect.
That’s the kind of prophetic hope for Church
and priesthood
which ties in with the image of hospice
and the hospice workers who lovingly stand with us.
With gentle firmness, they help us
move beyond the futility of clinging to life
as we knew it.
They encourage us to accept the inevitability of loss;
they help us to reframe the dying process
as an experience of living fully in the present,
while not holding to it too tightly.
When the dying enter into hospice,
they become new persons.
They begin to live more calmly and freely.
They spend their remaining energies
engaging family and friends,
rather than denying and fighting death.
The hospice aids and the social workers help us
say goodbye,
gracefully and lovingly.
They help us to move into a new phase of life.
It IS a miracle,
but not the one we’d been praying for,
not the one we expected.

I don’t have a hospice theology
of ministry and priesthood all worked out;
but I suspect it means, as hospice workers,
we need to stand with the Church and with each other
in helping the Church
to live fully while it’s dying.

At the very least, a hospice approach
to ministry and priesthood means
we must help facilitate honest conversations
of sadness, hurt, anger and even rage,
for these are the inevitable reactions
to death and dying,
or any loss.

A hospice consciousness
requires that we recognize
not everyone in the Church will be on the same page,
or at the same point of transition,
in dealing with the loss.
All the stages of dying, denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
and the spiral back and forth among them,
will be present and should be expected in ourselves,
and in our Church,
and in our leaders.

A hospice understanding of a prophetic vocation
requires the virtues of patience and compassion,
the ability to provide boundaries and guidance for grieving communities,
and a sense of laughter and humor in the face of the unknown.
Being a hospice minister will also demand of us deep prayer – contemplative prayer – surrendering to that which is beyond us,
which we sense intuitively is worthy of trust.

Being a hospice minister to the Church also requires
our own personal sense of agency, leadership
and power.
No institution is going to empower us to speak unwelcome truths to it.
If We are waiting for permission to speak unwelcome truths,
We are going to be waiting in vain.
A hospice minister also does not act in collusion,
aiding and abetting a family’s denial.
Families may be in denial,
and a hospice minister, at times,
has to speak the hard and unwelcome truth
to a family who refuses to face the impending reality
of loss.

What that means for us as priests and lay ministers is this:
we need to get beyond
waiting for bishops to get their acts together.
We need to own the fact that
maybe it is up to us to help them,
lovingly and firmly, to face realities they fear to own.
Another way of saying this is,
bishops are not the only leaders in the Church.
We need to stop waiting for the bishops
to do what we could and should be doing
for ourselves.

Being a hospice minister requires courage
to speak the truth that sets us free,
even if it, sometimes, makes some people miserable.

Well, this is a hopeful vision of hospice,
this new Church is coming into being.
But where is the hope?
How can you stay hopeful to the question,
because hope is inherently a fragile reality?
Hope requires an ambiguous situation.
If success is guaranteed, you don’t have to hope.
On the other hand, if failure is guaranteed,
there’s no need for hope either.

Hope requires the willingness to work for a non-guaranteed future,
even in the face of formidable obstacles.
That’s hope!

I hope for a new Church.
I hope for a new Church first, because of my faith.
I believe God has not abandoned God’s people.
God is still with us.
My hope for the future is founded in the second thing:
the non-necessity of the present.

The Church of today doesn’t have to be the same as the Church was in the past.
This is not the way we were in the twelfth century;
it’s not the way we were in the twentieth century;
and with God’s grace, we can change.

My hope for the future is based on
the non-sustainability of the current Church.
If nothing else, the irreversible decline of the priesthood
means that the Church will change,
whether it wants to admit it or not.

My hope is grounded in a witness of past and current struggles, and engagement.
We talk about St. Francis of Assisi being a prophet,
who answered the call to rebuild the church.

We also speak of St. Teresa of Avila,
St. Catherine of Siena,
women who were bold witnesses,
who spoke truth to power,
to bishops,
and even the pope,
criticizing institutional wrongs of the Church of their day.

And finally, my hope is grounded
in the witness of other groups,
who are discovering their leadership.
There are many other leadership groups in the Church who speak, who are speaking.
This gives me hope for the future Church.

We are about doing something new.
The prophet stands against both nostalgia and despair voices that say,
All we have to do is go back to, or
if only we were more faithful, more loyal or prayerful and obedient,
then nothing would have to change.”

These are not prophetic voices,
but discourses of denial.
But the same way those voices say,
“It’s all over; priesthood is dead;
the Church is finished;
get out while you can.”
These are not prophetic voices.
Those are the voices of despair.
Contrary to both denial and despair, the prophet proclaims the name of the Lord,
“See, I am doing something new.”

Prophetic voices proclaim the hope we articulate
in our funeral liturgy,
“Lord, for your faithful people, life is changed,
not ended.”
Priestly ministry, ministerial service, the Church’s life, these are not over
but they cannot,
will not,
and must not, be the same.
The image of hospice can help us to live peacefully
in the graced promise of the new,
even as we breathe the demise of the old.
The prophetic vocation is to help the community
to accept a loss
they cannot admit,
and to embrace a hope they cannot dare believe.

Prophets do this by listening
to the groans of the people,
and positing an alternative future vision.
This is the essence of being a spiritual leader
in the Church in a time of transition.

This is the essence of a prophetic ministry in the Church today.

Let’s Hospice Our Church

Again the church proves itself to be irrelevant today. The Gospel is still very much the order of the day, but the organization called "the roman church" has basically died. RIP.

The Church took a huge step in the wrong direction under Constantine when it coverted Jesus' message about the Divine power of love into an ideology that feeds the human love of power. The Church has struggled with these two messages ever since, but made significant progress during Vatican II in recognizing the unresolvable conflicts between those two fundamental orientations towards the world.

Unfortunately, the charismatic mysogynist, John Paul II, has reversed that progress, and Benedict XVI is doing what he can to make that reversal permanent.

So the choice is simple to me. Do I want to follow Jesus, or the pious fools running the Church today who don't have a spiritual bone in their body. The Church with its current direction is doomed to failure. Many brilliant Catholic scholars, like Fr. McBrien, have translated the magical and mythical thinking of orthodoxy into a very consoling and coherent spirituality around historical and scientific thinking. This type of religious expression can withstand the scrutiny of the modern world, and is what our granchildren will believe with or without the Roman Catholic Church.

These new ideas are on the internet more often than in the pulpit. If the Church did not survive the printing press intact, can you imagine what effect the internet will have.

I wish you all the peace of Jesus from Nazareth (not Bethlehem).

The lay associate quoted by Mc Brien speaks with the tongue of wisdom about manny churches in my area too. We have had several new breeds of pastors taking over as Pastors without training for the job. They now are trying to deliver us back to the pre-vatican churh. That church of old gave all power to the priest and none to the layity who really own the parishes in which they live. Shared responsibilty has gone out the window. What we need is for the parioners to walk with there feet and their money to a parish where Vatian II is used for the good of all. Dictators should never be pastors.

Father McBrien,

I enjoyed your comments very much. It is very sad to see the way our Church is being torn. Many of the traditionalist's couch there items in terms of being supportive of the Magesterium. However, it is the Mageterium that has approved Vatican II and caused it to be reinforced. They act as if the Church of the 50's was the way the Church has always been.

I am fortunate in that my pastor and Bishop are supportive of the changes brought about by Vatican II and we continue to grow.

God Bless you and your work.

Regards,
Bill Cooper

If there are no parishes or other worshipping communities in the vicinity where the pastoral leadership is healthy rather than driven by a narrow ideology, then one simply has to ‘take a vacation’ from the church until the skies finally clear and we are bathed in sunlight once again.”

well said Father.....can't believe there are parishes like the one described.... I'm aware of "creeping" traditionalism in some parishes by some priests, but this parish has gone too far.

One wonders why this "anonymous" pastoral lay assistant thought to go to you rather than the Bishop? There are always incompetents in any field of endeavour. You seem to suggest that this rule does not apply evenly to every point of view. I find this view to be chauvinistic.

I can very much connect with the woman who left church. For months after our new bishop came, I tried, but the GIRM (we called it the GRIM) was forced upon us. No more glass cups , so we no longer saw the Blood of Christ when we received the Eucharist under both species. Women no longer allowed to pour the wine. No longer could the Pastoral Associate preach (after all, she was female) even though she was a better preacher than the priest. Finally, after deciding I could no longer leave the Mass either angry or sad, I left. No response to my letter of resignation or to others whom left. We now float between several parishes with at least 10 or more families who left also. Now the Bishop that brought these changes is off to another larger diocese. Our first reaction is hooray, then reality set in and the new appointee could be worse than the first in the march to pre-Vatican II status. As a life long Catholic,I've decided to give my contributions to other charities. I truly believe the hierarchy will only listen if you vote with your feet and your $.

May God richly bless this pastor for his zeal and for having his heart and mind in the right place. The manner in which he implemented these reforms may need some examination, and while I personally do not agree with disbanding the youth group, it is clear to me, from the rather one-sided account that we are given in this article, that this is a pastor who is interested more in the eternal souls of his people rather than making them feel good and stroking their egos.

I wonder, what is wrong with draping the statues in purple? The Church still permits this from the fifth Sunday of Lent until the Easter Vigil in order for us to more fully contemplate the passion and death of the Lord in the last days of Lent. What is wrong with auricular confession? That is the norm! General absolution has been forbidden by the Church. What's wrong with people confessing their sins to the priest, who represents the Church and who stands in persona Christi? What's wrong with trying to restore the devotional life of the Church, which was stripped away by modernist bishops and priests following Vatican II? How do Eucharistic Processions, Exposition and Benediction, devotions to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Stations of the Cross, etc. harm the people of God? Why should traditional, God-centered music be objectionable? What's wrong with singing Gregorian Chant (which, even after Vatican II, is to be accorded pride of place in our liturgies) and traditional hymns? Is it because they can't be strummed on the guitar that we object to them?

I am baffled by the reaction of the woman in this story. Statues covered in purple, to remind us to focus on the passion of Our Lord; traditional, Christocentric hymns; a priest giving a homily telling people that they are not as good as they think they are and they need to go to Confession. And this woman reacts by running out of the church in tears? Perhaps she had other things going on in her life. Perhaps she had been through some difficult circumstances lately (who hasn't?). Perhaps she was on the, now-defunct, parish council. We shall not know what drove her to leave, but if it was the priest and the parish, then perhaps she needs to look insider herself and ask why were the words of the homily so hard to hear?

This pastor is trying to bring his parish back from the edge of the abyss, on which the Church has tottered since the end of the Council. The Council itself did not change nearly as much as we were all taught to believe it did. Indeed, the document on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, indicates that the organ is to be retained, Gregorian Chant and Latin are to be the norm in our parishes, and priests are to face ad orientum (away from the people) during Mass. Even the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (the "how to" guide for celebrating Mass) presumes that the priest is facing away from the people, otherwise, why would it contain such instructions as "the priest turns to face the people" throughout it? The so-called "spirit of Vatican II" (whatever that is) is the excuse we have used to permit all sorts of abuses and the theft of the patrimony and rights of the People of God. This pastor is trying to restore what rightfully belongs to the parish, and was stolen by the "spirit of Vatican II": traditional customs, music, pious devotions and the regular reception of the Sacrament of Confession.

There is much more to this story than meets the eye, and much more than is contained in this column. For example, this pastor cannot be so against the reforms of the Council, since he employs a lay pastoral associate who is clearly not in this pastor's camp. I think the most telling words in this entire article are the words of this associate who says that “consultative is not in his (the pastor's) vocabulary". In other words, it seems to me that this pastoral associate is feeling left out, that he has not been consulted by the pastor, that the priest is not coming to him and asking his opinion (and perhaps, permission) before teaching, governing and sanctifying his parish. As for the priest seeming to say that Confession is the most important sacrament, I suspect that this is a case of selective and, in charity, possibly not willful, distortion of the priest's words. I will say this for him, Confession is certainly the LEAST talked about sacrament. Perhaps that's why he is talking about it so much, to make up for the fact that most priests hardly ever talk about it anymore.

I do not find any reason to denigrate or to attack or even criticize this pastor (beyond the youth group thing). On the contrary, I salute this pastor and will pray for him and for the conversion of his parish and his parish staff. May God raise up more good and holy men to minister at His altar and bring us out of the darkness of the last 40 years and into the light that Blessed John XXIII foresaw when he called the council.

my parish (non traditional) covered the statues on the vigil, which is fully allowd by the usccb. we even had a sermon on the benifits of confession a little while back. should i run from teh church in tears too?

how many 'offenses against vatican 2' should i witness before i have to run away in tears? you may wanna list them for everybody as i doubt most people here could even list the docs that came out of that council, let alon have read them.

Interesting. It used to be that people who preferred the pre-Vatican II way of doing things were characterised as old people who couldn't let go. Now comes the admission in an above comment that "several new breeds of pastors" (i.e. the young) are at the forefront of this movement. Since the Church has, since Vatican II, prided itself on listening to the young, shouldn't these young "traditional" priests be right?

What is happening is not a movement to a pre-Vatican II state. It is simply correcting some of the excesses that followed it in order to reach a healthy equilibrium.

And we shouldn't worry about "our" church changing. It's not "our" church, but the Church of Jesus Christ. If we insist on calling it "our" church then we've lost the plot.

I miss the powerful hymns of the past and the beautiful organ music that has been replaced by a non-singing congregation generally dominated by the local crooner on his badly tuned guitar destroying the concept of the sacred space and preparation for the Eucharist.
Also will someone tell the hierarchy that hand shaking in closed quarters after coughing , sneezing, etc spreads disease!! Think someone might have gotten the idea from the swine flu. Generally if you don't shake hands when you have a cold or see that someone near you has been blowing their nose and coughing vociferously, you get a dirty look as if you don't belong in this hallowed contemporary yuppiedom!! If this is contemporary worship then I long for the days of the fire and brimstone leading to repentance accompanied by meditation and good music!!

Grieving is the best term I've heard yet for what I feel for the Church today. I hadn't thought in those terms but when you said it my heart said "aaah, someone gets it". Thankyou for helping me clarify what I feel so I can express myself better when I talk to my sister who loves EWTN.