Pope in Malta: Church 'wounded by our sins'

"Synthetic"

An interesting Freudian slip.

John,

I like it that you keep us updated.

One thing I keep wondering about: why in this day and age does the Pope and many other bishops (and theologians)continue to speak of the "Church" as an object. Many continue to speak as if the "Church" is the clergy and we lay people are customers. Or the "Church" is a vague thing "out there," and distant.

I know about the "reform of the reform" of the Liturgy, the "Evangelical Catholicism" you speak of in Future Church. But, wouldn't it be refreshing if the Holy Father and bishops identified the Church as "The People of God, said "We' instead of "the Church," and stopped using (from corporate America) the wishy-washy word "mistake" all the time and admit that "bad judgments," "wrongs," and even "sins," explain a lot of what has and is going on in "the Church." The Laity are not ignorant, we are forgiving. All we want is honesty and serious attempts to make amends.

BTW, Thank you very much for Future Church. It is superb. Although I hope you are wrong that Evangelical Catholicism will endure for so long.

Ken

Dear John-

Thanks for your updates. I read them regularly. (I've also heard you speak in Seattle @ St. James a couple of years ago on the "10 Changes facing the Church int he next Century.") I appreciate your insightful analysis of Church matters, especially as the current sex abuse crisis unfolds in Europe. I think it is important to have balanced views, especially coming from America. I personally feel that the Euro-dominated Vatican minimizes or dismisses advice and influence of the American church on cultural - and sometimes political - grounds, but as this abuse crisis has shown, they might be well advised to start listening. In that case, the voice of balanced moderates is important. Thanks for your work.

-Gary M
Seattle

Please define "our" in "Church wounded by our sins." Also, who is to do penance for these sins?

"In another apparent reference to the crisis, the pope also picked up on the shipwreck theme, saying that Paul’s experience is a reminder that shipwrecks can be part of "God's project" and lead to “a new beginning in our life.”
As Hans Kung stated in his irish Times letter to bishops, this is a'Kairos' moment: a moment of grace and opportunity.
It is time that the 'people of God' the church had a say in the appointment of their leaders, the bishops.
This would prevent,among other things, career bishops from leap-frogging from one diocese to another, e.g., this is the third diocese of Thomas Collins; first St Paul,in Alberta then Edmonton, and now Toronto.. one the road to a Cardinal? there are many more who mirror this example, including the pope himself, who said it was not right!
There is no loyalty to the local people of God, only loyalty to papal authority

I will like the Holy Father To Speak less about the scandals and focus on the Gospel for the people.

"We will not follow the process of other trips, with questions and answers and questions and answers. The Holy Father will give us his synthetic remarks." In other words . . . the pope is not taking any questions and is giving prepared remarks.

Recently I watched the Jason Berry documentary where Cardinal Ratzinger slapped the hand of a reporter (three times) because he did not like being questioned about Maciel. Why couldn't he be forthright about the charges and the investigation - since his office was responsible for all abuse investigations?

The sad part about Benedict's reference, "how the church is “wounded by our sins”, is that "sexual abuse crisis" is not about how the church has been wounded, but how the clergy of the church has wounded others.

God Bless Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church.

Sigh!!! In a previous topic, Pope Benedict's abilities as a world teacher was discussed. As a teacher of theological concepts, Benedict is superb! But the role of Pope is also to deal with flesh-in-blood people, with real flesh-in-blood problems.

But dealing with real people, real problems with people is a messy business. People cannot be put into outlines---catalogued like ideas. Nor should they be. And Pope Benedict just does not know how to do this---he is uncomfortable with anyone who asks questions (and there are loads of questions coming at him from every side). Pope Benedict does not deal well with dissent. This part of his personality showed up after he returned to teaching after acting as peritus for Cardinal Joseph Frings during Vatican Council II. Due to the good offices of Hans Kung, Joseph Ratzinger landed a position at Tubingen (the most prestigious and erudite university in Germany).
But this was the turbulent 1960's---and while Kung was not afraid of the lively give and take with both students and colleagues, Ratzinger was not.

In 1969, Ratzinger left Tubingen, to go to Regensburg, a new university he had just helped establish. He wanted to create a new generation of docile, orthodox theologians. Over and over again in his life, Ratzinger demonstrated and demonstrates that when his beliefs, or his authority was/is challenged, rather than dealing with the issue, rather than dialoguing, he ran/runs to what is secure and comfortable. Here in Malta (as in other places), Pope Benedict runs away in his comments. He cannot face the real issues, the real problems, and the real people who have been hurt.

Benedict seems to 'miss the point' on almost everything. Maybe he's ill advised.

In response to the Pope's comment about the shipwrecks of our lives being part of God's project and being opportunities for new beginnings, I think that could also be applied even more appropriately as it relates to the shipwreck that is "the institutional church" at this point in the life of the church. Hopefully the Pope will use the remainder of his papacy to bring about new beginnings for the institutional church. However, I put my trust in the Holy Spirit to bring about new beginnings from the shipwrecks in the life of the Church of the People of God.

Dear Holy Father

‘Faith expressed in charity.’ This is something important also today, that faith, a relationship with God, transforms itself into charity.

I am awaiting the Charity from the Church for all the various scandals that have causes such a crisis in the very top of leadership in our Church. It is my understanding that Charity begins with the two greatest of Christ's Commandments of Love. Do you believe that the gift of a Rosary to the documented people raped by Catholic Priests is the type of Charity that Paul or Christ means? If so I hope you are willing to try to understand the Post Traumatic Stress syndrome that many of these Rosaries are bound to eventually cause in these Victims of the Clergy and the Crises in leadership that empowered these clerics to relentlessly repeat their attacks. There are many current scandals in our church. The Sex scandal is but one of them. The very real problem is in the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. The crisis in leadership has little to do with the misbehavior of most of the People of God, but is centered in the leadership in a rather authoritarian governance of the Vatican. Luckily, the Church is not composed of just the clerics and especially just the Vatican. No the Universal Church is all of us Christians. My question of you is it not time to recognize that the Vatican is really a museum and the governance of God's people is ill served by the leadership. The only answer is a change in the structure of the leadership- the way it is selected and the way the way it is retired. What is happening now is not the totalitarianism of a society that believes in relativism but is the ethical relativism found in the mental reservations of the leadership of our institution that excuses lies and enabling of misbehavior.

May we all gain grace through humble service to the people of God with out the use of mental reservations, lies and a faulty governance.

R. Dennis Porch, MD

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