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Essay: Pittsburgh Catholics
20th-century history shows a people engaged with the world and tradition
May. 27, 2009
Timothy Kelly
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PDF versionAs a historian, I’ve studied three generations of Pittsburgh Catholics: grandparents, parents and the students I teach. They’re good people, loyal, devout and engaged -- and each cohort different from the next. The greater finding is that even in the 1950s, American lay Catholics were ahead of the church, meaning the still-to-come Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which added legitimacy and energy to their impetus for reform.
What happened in the middle of the 20th century was that lay Catholic behavior changed relative to long-standing popular practices, practices understood as central to “acting Catholic.”
From the mid-1950s, American lay Catholics participated less regularly in the range of traditional devotional exercises: They went to fewer novenas, perpetual eucharistic adorations, and group rosary recitations. Yet they continued to flock to Masses, perhaps in even greater numbers than just a few decades earlier.
While it is not clear why the laity changed, evidence points us to a few significant developments. The laity had by then become more highly educated, middle class, more central to American social, cultural and political power. Scientific and medical advancements had removed many of the powerful anxieties that shaped American outlooks on everyday life. They no longer feared epidemic disease and deadly infections. World War II and the Korean War were over. Equally significant, women had entered the paid work force in rising numbers.
Catholics did not reject Catholicism in the 1950s; in fact, they appeared to do the opposite. They embraced their religion powerfully, but differently. They sought to engage it with the same vigor and assent with which they had once participated in devotions. In 1958, roughly three out of every four American Catholics reported they attended Mass every week. They followed the Latin liturgy through the side-by-side English translations in their missals. They returned home from college eager for a new enhanced role in their parishes and Catholic organizations.
Young suburbanites built churches and schools at an incredible rate. But they were no longer content to merely attend Mass, they sought to participate in their church.
They also rejected many of the social and cultural strictures that constituted the Catholic ghetto. They worked and socialized with and even married Protestants and Jews. They rejected the Legion of Decency’s denunciations of movies. They lived more comfortably in a religiously heterogeneous society, and they cherished their faith. To see all this as a trend toward secularization, as some do, mischaracterizes the development.
Church officials were not quite ready for this new 1950s laity. Bishops generally supported Catholic Action, the Christian Family Movement and other strong programs of lay engagement with their faith and the world, but they continued to affirm the appropriateness of the devotional structures that the laity had begun to reject. It is fair to say that church officials did not yet understand how to accommodate a highly educated, confident and increasingly independent laity who wanted to play important roles in their parishes and organizations.
The arc of lay Catholic will and willingness to fully participate in church life at every level continued to the present. Clearly, today there’s disaffection toward the institutional church, but not from American Catholics’ concerted efforts to engage the world informed by Catholic tradition and theology.
Vatican II had come at a propitious moment for American laity. It opened the possibility of a new form of Catholicism that resonated more fully with their lives. Not only did the council place great emphasis on the common baptism of all Catholics (laity and clergy alike), and define the church as the people of God, but it created a sense of a dynamic church, a church that was responsive and socially responsible.
The church that emerged from the council was pastoral rather than juridical, emphasized inner transformation over external behavior. There was now space for an energized and active laity to bring their religious sensibility more fully into the public sphere and to let that engagement inform their theology.
The American church embraced this dynamism as laity and church officials together sought a fuller understanding of their faith and ways to live that faith authentically to improve their communities and the world. They struggled with big social issues, such as race relations and changing gender roles, economic inequalities and war. The fact that American Catholics divided over how to understand and to address these issues reflected their genuine engagement with a complicated world. The U.S. bishops engaged in a transparent and consultative process to reach authoritative statements on these important moral questions and their pastoral letters shaped the broader American discourse significantly.
St. Paul Cathedral in Pittsburgh (CNS/Courtesy of the Pittsburgh Catholic)Authenticity was critical to this new dynamic Catholicism. While Catholics did not all agree on the means, policies or tactics to achieve social and personal good, they privileged the honest search for genuine understanding and answers.
Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae played a critical role in separating that authentic search for a livable theology from the strictures of official church policy. While many Catholics had come to see their partnership with theologians and clergy in apprehending the world and shaping their behavior in (and toward) it, they saw the affirmation of traditional church prohibitions against contraception as a mere flexing of institutional power.
The encyclical addressed an issue vital to lay Catholics, one that affected their lives much more powerfully than it did the celibate clergy. And the prohibition contradicted the advice of the theological commission that Pope Paul himself had charged with studying the issue. The decision demeaned the very sensibility that had so energized lay Catholics.
In the eyes of lay men and women, any further search for understanding and working for good might coincide with or confront official hierarchical pronouncements. Historians can trace the lay response to the flexing of institutional power in a number of ways. Social surveys reveal that Catholics largely rejected the prohibition against contraception. They practiced birth control just as readily as did their Protestant and Jewish neighbors. Moreover, Catholics identified the individual and not church leaders as the final locus of moral authority on whether to use birth control.
Over time, Catholics came to see the individual as the final moral authority on most moral issues. Lay men and women continued to attend to moral questions, but they saw church leaders as less and less relevant to the search for authentic answers.
In addition, from the time the encyclical was issued in 1968, church attendance dropped dramatically. If 65 percent of lay Catholics reported attending Mass weekly in 1968, only half did so a decade later.
Humanae Vitae established a serious rift between the laity and church officials on important moral questions, but the clergy sex abuse scandals that erupted in the 1980s and then again at the century’s end eroded lay confidence in church officials even further. Weekly Mass attendance dropped once more, this time down below 40 percent. That was below the pattern for American Protestants. The American laity increasingly worried that church officials prized institutional stability over even the safety of their own children.
Lay Catholics today clearly rely on their conscience more than they rely on church officials to determine what moral positions to maintain. But this does not mean that they have become less interested in moral concerns, or that they do not approach these concerns from a perspective shaped powerfully by their understanding of Catholic values and mores.
Their increasing disaffection from institutional authority derived not from a rejection of Catholic moral criteria. No, it was from the laity exercising these criteria to judge church officials’ actions. In sum, the American laity remains highly Catholic, even when they no longer practice the particular forms of devotion so common a half century ago.
Timothy Kelly is associate professor of history at St. Vincent College, Latrobe, Pa.
Dear Tim Kelly, While you
Dear Tim Kelly,
While you wrote an excellent article, I don't see how it describes a uniquely Pittsburgh Diocese. Your article, outlines in general, the American scene---but not the particular characteristics that mark Pittsburgh.
Perhaps, I can do a little flavoring for your "Pittsburgh Diocese essay".
Of all the areas in the country who contributed to the World War II effort, (with the exception of New York state ), Pennsylvania (and the Pittsburgh area in particular) had more veterans involved in this effort than any other area in the country. After the War, the veterans returned to their homes and jobs (very many in the steel mills around Pittsburgh), and while many did indeed move to the suburbs----families were begun---and new churches and schools blossomed all over the Pittsburgh Diocese.
The Bishop at the time of the almost overnight mushrooming building process, was Bishop John Deardon. "Iron John" as the priests nicknamed him---ran a
tight diocesan ship--and oversaw the rise of many new schools and
parishes. It was during the early 1950's that the growing Pittsburgh
Diocese split---with the eastern most counties---Armstrong, Westmoreland,
Indiana, and Fayette formed the new diocese of Greensburg--of which Latrobe,
a small town rich with its Benedictine heritage, is a part.
One ingredient (among many) that marked Pittsburgh as unique---was that Pittsburgh was heavily blue-color, pro-union, and voting Democratic. Greensburg (Westmoreland county) generally tended/s to vote Republican in political elections. A bit of a difference between the two dioceses.
As the late 1950's came---the great building spree slowed down---and as
Pope John XXIII came into office---Pittsburgh (as well as the rest of
the world) began to experience changes. Bishop Deardon was moved to
Detroit, named Cardinal, and among his many accomplishments---began a
lay group entitled "Call To Action" which has certainly lived up to its
name---as a group enlivened by the Holy Spirit and the love of the empowerment given to the laity as a result of Vatican Council II. I like to think that Cardinal Deardon learned to respect and love the input of the laity from his years in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh received a new bishop---the energetic John J. Wright (coming from the Diocese of Worcester Massachuetts). Bishop Wright, known for his deep understanding of the modern times and his scholarly reflection of the Church's place in them, realized that the laity needed to be encouraged to take its place as leaders in the Church. As a boy, Bishop Wright attended the Boston Latin School (not a Catholic school) and saw the need for thoroughly educating the Catholic children in the public schools in their Catholic faith. Possessing an almost prophetic vision---Wright knew that the massive building of Catholic schools was at an end---the children in public schools could no longer be treated as the Church's step-children. But needed to be well prepared in their faith to become the Church's future leaders.
More religion teachers were needed---and Bishop Wright issued the call to the people of the Pittsburgh Diocese---"We need catechists---come learn about your faith, and teach others for today and tomorrow because "Deus Est". And by the hundreds and hundreds Pittsburghers responded (including me---I was a high school freshman at the time). An excellent catechetical training program began that has not diminished over the decades.
Some more unique things about the Pittsburgh diocese. Pittsburghers generally really love their bishops--and have been blessed with some truly excellent ones. Some of the bishops were scholarly like Bishop (later Cardinal) John J. Wright and his secretary who became a Bishop of Pittsburgh (now Archbishop) Donald W. Wuerl. Some were/are pastoral such as Bishop Vincent M. Leonard and the current, Bishop David A. Zubic.
Pittsburgh was not afraid of labor unions! One of the great labor priests---defending the rights of the workers to form unions and if need be, to strike, was the late Monsignor Owen J. Rice---a Pittsburgher. As a result---the Catholic Diocesan High Schools of the Pittsburgh Diocese are unionized as are many of the parish grade schools. And even if a grade school isn't unionized
--both principal and pastor alike---have copies of the Teachers' Union Guidelines and follow them like the 5th Gospel. In the early 1970's there was one brief strike by the Catholic Teachers' Union---hasn't been one since.
The Pittsburgh Church lived, struggled, and survived the implosion of the steel mills in the late 1970's and the 1980's. Pittsburghers saw their sons and daughters move out of the area seeking work, most never to return. As a result---Pittsburgh and the Catholic Church was left with an aging population--second only to Dade County in Florida. The Pittsburgh Diocese had and has adjusted to the situation and has come out stronger and wiser.
As the nation now struggles with major economic issues---Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Diocese can serve as a beacon of hope and promise to the rest of the country--"Yes, you can survive and thrive!" Having gone through a number of 'Renaissance' cycles, Pittsburgh and the Catholic Church there---are currently leading the way with eco-friendly measures. Pittsburgh is going green!
Green is the liturgical color for the Ordinary time---but it is also the color of hope. Today, the Pittsburgh Diocese is smaller in numbers of people, but it is open to new, creative methods of life, service, and love of God and neighbor. Pittsburgh, just named by President Obama, as the hosting American city for the "G 20 Summit"---can demonstrate to the world how it has re-invented itself. And the Diocese of Pittsburgh, a strong and vital component of the city itself, can be a beacon of hope and promise to the American Catholic Church.
Church's
Church's step-children
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Thank you Littlebear for mentioning:
"Bishop Wright knew that the massive building of Catholic schools was at an end---that the children in public schools could no longer be treated as the Church's step-children, but needed to be well prepared in their faith to become the Church's future leaders."
That is at odds with the current Bishop's statement at
http://www.dioceseofgreensburg.org/schools/ff/Pages/default.aspx
"Research bares this truth, as two-thirds of the local Catholic leaders have been educated within Catholic schools."
I wonder how well prepared the students at the Catholic Schools in Pennsylvania are in their faith.
Why does the USCCB shy away from organizing a national exam for students in Catholic schools (like the SAT math, and the SAT English) in subjects like:
1. Scripture
2. Church History
3. Christain Doctrine
Is it because they are worried about the current LOW standards in the teaching of Religion in our Catholic Schools?
Will these bishops from Pennsylvania propse this at their next USCCB meeting?
Cardinal Justin Rigali - Philadelphia, PA
Bishop Edward Cullen - Allentown, PA
Bishop Joseph V. Adamec - Altoona-Johnstown, PA
Bishop Donald Trautman - Erie, PA
Bishop Lawrence Brandt - Greensburg, PA
Bishop Kevin Rhoades - Harrisburg, PA
Bishop David Zubick - Pittsburgh, PA
Bishop Joseph Martino - Scranton, PA
Once they have a national standard and a national exam for students in Catholic schools, then dioceses can pass the same curriculum onto Catholic students at Public schools too, and prepare them by offering "ONLINE CLASSES" to enable them to appear at these exams. Adults too who have missed these studies during their schooldays can (LIKE GED) study these subjects.
The current system of leaving all of that in the hands of an overworked and aging population of pastors is not helping the Church in America at all.
21st Century tools (Online classes) ought to be used for solving 21st century problems.
This will also help shift the emphasis from using the popular crutches in many Parishes, like Rosaries, Novenas, and Pilgrimages (that were popular during the Middle Ages in Europe, when laity were mostly illiterate) to a more mature understanding of the Catholic faith by the laity.
God bless,
Moses
And that's the problem. Let
And that's the problem.
Let me ask you some questions. Progressive Catholics...I kindly ask you for a answers.
1) When the Traditional Latin Mass was supressed...did the bishops consult the faithful, lay and clerical, who loved it and asked them if they would like it? Did they offer to make it available widely for them? Your article claims the modernist bishops of the 60s and 70's were consultative. So answer me this.
2) You blame the decline in the Catholic Church on Humanae Vitae. Do you honestly know how many priests in the 60s and 70s, and even today, preached open dissent from the pulpit when that encyclical was issued? Do you even know just how many priests and theologians signed petitions on humanae vitae regarding their dissent towards it? Many. Most Catholics would have just sided with them and went to church. It didn't separate Catholics from the clergy...because so many clergy dissented!
3) Look at France. French Catholic mass attendance is a joke. Except in one area. The Traditional Orders. FSSP, ICK, SSPX...yes...they are not perfect. But they have many vocations (and their are more than I have listed...far more). This is not true for just traditionalist orders but also orthodox dioceses (St. Louis, Denver, Lincoln, etc...). Other orthodox orders like Franciscan Friars of the Renewal are growing as well.
Why are no liberal orders growing? Why are liberal Catholic dioceses in spiraling decline?
Your own Fr. Richard Mcbrien was discussing how Jardot, the Belgian prelate, was responsible for getting 1/3 of the U.S. bishops appointed in the 60s and 70s. Fr, Mcbrien talked about how they were "pastoral" men. In other words, progressive Catholics. Why were many of those dioceses (Milwauke, Rochester, Syracuse, etc...) going into serious decline under them?!
Thankyou. I am not sure if NCR will actually publish this comment. But if they do I await your replied.
Jesus was very aware of Rome,
Jesus was very aware of Rome, and since Rome was an invader of His native land I suspect that He feels about Latin the same way the Iraqis feel about English.[considering our activities recently He may not think too much about English either]
People crave leadership. The bishops of the church have not yet gotten the message that lace vestments,dictatorial language and that excommunication stuff are not the core of leadership. The Seed grows in the warm soil of love and sacrifice and poverty. If that love etc.. is not in the Church at present the Seed will still germinate and grow. There really are no progressive or regressive Catholics. There are just practicing Catholics who never seem to get enough practice in to be good. A sinner..The enemy is selfishness, the answer is the Seed
Dear Sinner, You presented
Dear Sinner,
You presented some interesting questions---I'll try responding to a few. You made comment about the Traditional Latin Mass. The Vatican II Document "Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy" (December 4, 1963) was voted on by the participants at the Council. It passed by a vote of 2,147 to 4. The main points of this Constitution also established the vernacular in worship, stating that the laity cannot participate in Latin. As an aside, why would anyone want to worship the Living God in a dead language? This is especially true in using a language that was the main tongue of those who oppressed God's People, the Jews. This document restored the Eucharist as an ACT rather tah as a STATIC DEVOTIONAL OBJECT. That meant a downplaying of devotions outside of Mass: rosary, benediction, and so on.
You mentioned France---and you stated that "Mass attendance is a joke." Why just pick on France? Include Spain, Italy, Austria, and Ireland (now going through a major crisis in faith---sex abuse of children and youth by male and female religious---incidently going back to the 1930's---way before Vatican II). Even in Catholic Poland---most of the religious are coming from the countryside rather than from the cities. Poland isn't getting the vocations that it once had.
Orthodox??? The only legitimate 'orthodox' are those who are members of the Eastern Church that parted company with the Western Church in 1055 A.D.
The Bishops (or religious orders) that preach that there is nothing but a decline of truth and the ruin of the Church in these modern times---are nothing but prophets of gloom and reactionism. They preach a hegemonism of impending disaster----failing to see that the Holy Spirit of God is leading us toward the fullment of God's greater plan for us. Everything, even human differences, leads to a greater good for the Church.
"Humanae Vitae" On October 29-30, 1964----a heated discussion occured concerning the secton in the Vatican Documents concerning marriage and birth control. One one side were the members of the Vatican Curia led by Cardinal Ottaviani and on the other side were the (as you call them) "Progressive" Cardinals and Bishops. It was Cardinal Deardon of Detroit who stated, "that marriage as ordered toward God, the love of the couple, and the procreation of children---in that order." Others {Cardinal Leger (Montreal), Cardinal Suenens (Belgium} supported Cardinal Deardon.
It was Patriarch Maximos IV Saigh (Antioch), the eighty-seven-year-old whose words had so often called the council to realism in previous debates, stated that dealing with marriage and birth control was an "urgent problem because it lies at the root of a great crisis of the Catholic conscience. The faithful find themselves forced to live in conflict with the law of the Church, far from the sacraments in constant anguish, unable to find a viable solution between two contradictory imperatives: conscience and normal marrried life. Frankly, can the official positions of the Church in this matter not be reviewed in the light of modern theological, medical, psychological, and sociological science?...And are we not entitle to ask if certain positons are not the outcome of outmoded ideas and, perhaps, a bachelor psychosis on the part of those unacquainted with this sector of life?"
However, on the other side of the debate, Cardinal Ottaviani stated that he "was not pleased with the statements that married couples can determine the number of children they are to have. This has never been heard of before in the Church." Cardinal Browne (Curia) repeasts the scholastic doctrine: "The primary end of marrieage is the procreation and the education of children. The secondary end, is on the one hand, the mutual aid of the spouses, and on the other, a remedy for concupiscence." (sexual desire)
Two days later, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, in a worldwide news conference, says that the Church's teaching on this matter will never change because that teaching is based "on the natural law and several scriptural texts." And Pope Paul, worrisome and timid, overly committed to gradualism, unwilling to anger the Curia by acting against its desire for the status quo, and unable or unwilling to make decisions in the face of conflicting advice, dismissed the panel of theologians that he had assembled to advise him on marriage and birth control---wrote out "Humanae Vitae"---which expressed much of what the Curia has stated.
What happened at the Vatican was not lost on priests (some who later became Bishops), theologians, the press and the laity in general, and yes, "Humanae Vitae" began the first major movement of Catholics either out of the Church or they disregarded the Church's teaching in this area. People, confused and angry about the position the official Church placed them, expressed their feelings in Confession. Many were counseled by their confessors to do what they thought was best. After all, it was the married couples who were living the married life---not the celibate clergy.
The questions arising from this are: Who knows best as to what constitutes married life---the married couples themselves or celibate males with, as Patriarch Maximos IV phrased it---a "bachelor psychosis" concerning married life? Is married life nothing more than a legal and church permissable 'remedy for concupiscence' as Cardinal Browne stated it?
Finally, there are reactionary bishops in a number of dioceses such as in Scranton, PA and Madison, WI just to mention two----and are these dioceses alive and vibrant? Many of the people in these dioceses would tell you that their dioceses are dying on the vine---because of their bishops.
Das Wesen des
Das Wesen des Katholizismus
Karl Adam had summarized similar tragedies throughout the history of the Church, in his book "The Spirit of Catholicism"."The Spirit of Catholicism" (ISBN-10: 0824517180;ISBN-13: 978-0824517182) was first published in 1924 in German as "Das Wesen des Katholizismus".
"The faithful Catholic is distressed by the "servile" forms which disfigured the Church in certain periods of the Middle Ages. ... He cannot but grieve that pure logic restricted the power of psychological sympathy, so that men sometimes were blind to several of the most luminous teachings of the Gospel, as for instance to the teaching that the Kingdom of God is not of this world and is not a kingdom of the sword, that a man should forgive his offending brother seventy times seven times, and that fire should not be invoked from heaven upon unbelieving cities. ..... The Catholic sorrowfully recognizes that even the holders of the highest and most exalted office on earth can be children of their age and slaves of its conceptions, and that the Holy Spirit in governing the Church does not guard every act of the pope and every papal pronouncement from error and delusion, but is infallibly operative only when the pope speaks "ex cathedra," i.e. when basing himself on the sources of the faith and in the fullness of his power as Head of the Church and successor of St. Peter, he pronounces a decision in matters of faith or morals which embraces and binds the whole Church."
"Therefore the men through whom God's revelation is mediated on earth are by the law of their being conditioned by the limitations of their age. And they are conditioned also by the limitations of their individuality. Their particular temperament, mentality, and character are bound to color, and do color, the manner in which they dispense the truth and grace of Christ. And these influences will operate also in their hearers, that is to say in the "learning Church" as well as in the "teaching Church." So it may happen, and it must happen, that pastor and flock, bishop, priest, and layman are not always worthy mediators and recipients of God's grace, and that the infinitely holy is sometimes warped and distorted in passing through them. Wherever you have men, you are bound to have a restricted outlook and narrowness of judgment. For talent is rare, and genius comes only when God calls it. Eminent popes, bishops of great spiritual force, theologians of genius, priests of extraordinary graces and devout layfolk: these must be, not the rule, but the exception. God raises them up only at special times, when He needs them for His Church. We may and should pray for them, but we cannot reckon on their coming. And so as a rule it is the ordinary and average man who bears God's truth and grace through the world. The Church has from God the guarantee that she will not fall into error regarding faith or morals; but she has no guarantee whatever that every act and decision of ecclesiastical authority will be excellent and perfect. Mediocrity and even defects are possible. "The weak and the little hath God chosen that He may confound the strong." It is true that the power of divine truth and grace is manifested all the more gloriously because of this weakness. But reflective Catholics must feel and be pained by the conflict which arises out of the contrast between the sublimity, depth and power of divine revelation and the weakness of the human, too- human factor. The same phenomenon is repeated in the history of the Church throughout the centuries which so tragically moulded the relation of our Lord to His disciples. They were unable in their small mirrors to receive all the rays of light which went forth from His divine Person and to transmute them without loss into living forces."
"Still more palpable and painful does the conflict between the power of God and the weakness of man become when the in-streaming life of grace and truth is checked by human passions, by sin and vice, when Christ as He is realized in human history is dragged through the dust of the street, through the commonplace and the trivial, and over masses of rubbish. That is the deepest tragedy, the very tragedy of the Divine, when It is dispensed by unworthy hands and received by unworthy lips. An immoral laity, bad priests, bishops and popes—these are the saddest wounds of the Body of the mystical Christ. This is what grieves the earnest Catholic and inspires his sorrowful lamentation, when he sees these wounds and is unable to help."
http://www.ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/SPIRCATH.HTM#13
God bless,
M.Francis
'For purity—fright, spaghetti
'For purity—fright, spaghetti and beans.'
A good Diet and Fear of SIN
"The Issue of Imprimatur"
TIME MAGAZINE
Friday, Aug. 19, 1966
"In 1951, a French priest named Marc Oraison was awarded the highest possible mark at Paris' Institut Catholique for a doctoral thesis entitled Christian Life and Problems of Sexuality. After it was published as a book, Abbe Oraison was summoned to the Holy Office at the Vatican, where, he recalls, Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani and Giuseppe Cardinal Pizzardo counseled him that the best methods for preserving sexual purity are a good diet and fear of sin."
"As Abbé Oraison wrote in Le Monde: "Twice Cardinal Pizzardo repeated to me, 'For purity — fright, spaghetti and beans.' "
"Then Cardinal Ottaviani told the French priest that his book had been placed on the Index of Prohibited Books."
"The Second Vatican Council has since abolished the index, but that does not mean the hierarchy has stopped discouraging books it does not like, especially those written by priests."
"Though the Holy Office has been renamed Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, conservative Cardinal Ottaviani remains in command, and he can still induce bishops to withhold the imprimatur — or church seal of approval—from books touching on theology and ethics."
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,836269-2,00.html
"The American laity remains
"The American laity remains highly Catholic, even when they no longer practice the particular forms of devotion so common a half century ago."
One practice among American Catholics that is vanishing
(thanks to Priests like FR. Elvis Elano of New York)
is the practice of CONFESSION:
"Confession, one aspect of the Sacrament of Reconciliation which used to receive the greatest emphasis, is now seen as just one step in the total process. Confession of sin can only be sincere if it is preceded by the process of conversion. It is actually the external expression of the interior transformation that conversion has brought about in us. It is a much less significant aspect of the sacrament than we made it out to be in the past. This does not mean that confession is unimportant-only that it is not the essence of the sacrament."
http://www.americancatholic.org/UpdateYourFaith/answers.asp?QC0386
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Queens Priest Used Confessional To Pick Up Woman
Oct 31, 2008
http://wcbstv.com/local/father.elvis.elano.2.852811.html
Father Elvis Elano Suspended After Being Named In LawsuitQUEENS (CBSA Queens priest who worked as a chaplain at a hospital has been suspended after apparently using his confessional booth to take advantage of a vulnerable parishioner and engaging in a sexual relationship with her.
The alleged affair began at the Our Lady of the Snows Church in Glen Oaks, where Rev. Elvis Elano practiced. It was in a confessional there where the illicit liaison between the Catholic priest and a woman going through a divorce began.
"For lack of a better word, he was hitting on her," said the woman's attorney, Andrew Laufer.
Laufer says his client, Judith Rodriguez-Lytwyn was vulnerable when she walked into the confessional where Elano allegedly told her, "Your presence struck me like a thunderbolt."
The two soon starting dating.
"They became intimate, engaging in sex," says Laufer.
When Fr. Elvis left the building, he'd head to Rodriguez-Lytwyn's home, where the two carried on a seven-month affair, one that had parishioners stunned.
"I can't believe it. You know it knocks me for a loop," said Dan Torpey, one of the church's parishioners.
Added parishioner Viola Czajkowski: "I don't see how a priest who took vows could possibly do something like this and have mass every day while this was going on."
Rodriguez-Lytwyn's lawyer says his client ended the affair this month when her lover sent an e-mail indicating the presence of a sexually transmitted disease he may have gotten from another woman.
On Thursday, the diocese wasn't taking questions, but in a statement said: "In August of 2008 Ms. Judith Rodrigues-Lytwyn informed the Diocese of Brooklyn that she had been involved in an inappropriate relationship with a priest who had served in the diocese. Despite repeated requests on the part of diocesan officials, she neither would name the priest nor would she identify the parish in which the priest had served.
"We understand that yesterday the parish Our Lady of the Snows was served with a summons. Today documents have been turned over to counsel for review. We have not had the opportunity to review the summons and therefore have no statement regarding the lawsuit at this time."
Rodriguez-Lytwyn has filed a $25 million lawsuit, a suit her lawyer claims isn't about a payday or payback for a woman scorned.
"She's a God-fearing catholic and gave into sin and this cannot happen again," said Laufer.
Fr. Elano was transferred a few months ago, not to another church, but instead to work as a hospital chaplain.
On Thursday, he left the hospital in Kingston after being suspended.
I agree with Kelly's claim
I agree with Kelly's claim that, "Lay Catholics today clearly rely on their conscience more than they rely on church officials to determine what moral positions to maintain." I would add that the laity must rely more on their own consciences. This is true primarily because the institutional church (meaning priests and bishops) has proven beyond doubt that it has an agenda that is diametrically opposed to the best interests of the faithful, even to their expense. How sad, and the bishops and priests are doing nothing to remedy the situation, Virtus training be damned. Who are they kidding? We are truly a church adrift on moral seas without rudder or mast, let alone a captain.
Yes Jay, I find your brief
Yes Jay, I find your brief comment both interesting and true. The Episcopacy lacks an authenticity, as it increasingly demands it has authority. This "authority" demand over the laity is a reactionary break from Vatican II. It comes from a very fearful place in the hearts of these men that would rather see themselves as rulers instead of humble servants.
Rome with all its conservative Bishops have never gotten over the fact that the People of God cannot and must not give into the dictates of Humanum Vitae. This encyclical was given even though there were two Vatican II commissions composed of the Church’s finest theologians, scientist and philosophers that advised the Church to accept the birth control pill. Immediately after this encyclical was published no less that 80 prominent American theologians took out a full page add in the New York times instructing American Catholics that they could continue to use the pill and consider themselves good Catholics. It took some time for the authoritarian policies of the church to develop but they did develop. In the 1990's the Bishops demanded that they license all theologians that taught in “Catholic” institutions. This is inspite of the fact that most of the Bishops and certainly the Bishops as a whole have extremely poor résumé’s when compared to the theologians.
In their action the Bishops were acting as if they had been abandoned and were attempting to force theologians to think in the way they wished. Of course this only took place after two plus decades of conservative Episcopal appointments over seen by cardinal Ratzinger. It is interesting that these very Episcopal appointments resulted in his own election to the papacy. However the policy of licensure is to be likened to and administrators like the mayors of the cities getting together to tell the academics what they could teach to whom. It would be like the mayor not allowing a scientist to teach because he does not agree with the science, or a mayor rejecting certain political thought and not allowing it. When Administrators insist on licensing educators as to the purity of what they teach and to whom, we are on the path of cultism. The bishops have now restricted Catholic Universities to the realm of Catechesis centers. This type of indoctrination has no place in a valid University. The "Catholic" Universities have as yet failed to respond adequately, but respond they must if they are to remain faithful to their responsibility to seek truth.
The Episcopacy has also taken the anti-birth control pill to a further extreme. They have recently proclaimed that the BC pills are not only a wrong because they are against "natural law" but also because they cause abortions. This has shown a complete lack of authentic study of embryology. They say the birth control pills action is to prevent human conception from embedding in the uterine wall thus aborting it. First of all the birth control pill primarily works by preventing ovulation and there is a secondary effect that sometimes makes the uterine wall less likely to accept a blastocyst. Many other medications cause the same condition. The bishops also say it is ok for young women to use the pill to treat acne and regularize their cycles because these are "medical" uses.
The Bishops apparently do not recognize that other very natural conditions interfere with the ability of the normal uterus to implant. These include but are not limited to rigorous exercise, depression, anxiety, herbs and diet.
Embryologists have shown us over the last 30 years that from 60 to 80% of normal blastocysts in non-hormonally stimulated women fail to implant. They simply pass through the woman's uterus and never implant. If the BC pill causes abortion where is the moral imperative to save these normal blastocysts that fail to implant? Why has not the church commissioned a task force of scientists to save these structures? The reason is simply because it takes more growth and development to form an ensouled person than simply a few thousand cells that are structures more akin to a seed or a kernel than a plant or a tree. Fortunately most seeds never develop into trees! It is as if the bishops cannot tell the difference between a seed and the magnificence of a tree. They cannot tell the difference from a few undifferentiated cells that have no organ systems and no organs from a human person.
Interesting enough both St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas saw ensoulment very differently than does the modern church. Yes it is the Church that creates its own modernism that is the problem!
The reason that the current reactionary episcopacy is misbehaving in this way is that they feel attacked by the laity and their own theologians for refusing to take seriously the mandates of a pope that went against the theological and scientific sense of the matter. What is even worse is that these old men are slowing the advancement of medical treatment and cure of disease by defining these structures (blastocysts that mostly fail to implant in a fertile soil of the uterus) as full persons with bodies and souls. This is not only nonsense but is a defining act of a failed Episcopacy.
No, this group of men is in no way democratic! It is a structure that was created by MEN not God and as men created this rather archaic structure, it is now time to reform that very structure and this is what the Episcopacy fears the most the loss of power. It is up to the People of God to change this failed structure as it was up to common people to chance the governmental structure of feudalism.
Peace and understanding,
R. Dennis Porch, MD
"The primary argument used
"The primary argument used against Humanae Vitae is that most Catholics disagree with it."
http://media.www.gonzagawitness.com/media/storage/paper809/news/2008/02/...
"The primary argument used against Humanae Vitae is that most Catholics disagree with it. According to a survey by the U.S. Catholic (June 1998), eighty-one percent of Catholics believe that the question of birth control is up to the couple, regardless of Church teaching on the matter. Even the commission set up to study the issue prior to Paul VI's pronouncement concluded that the Church's age-old teaching on contraception should be changed, and recommended as much to the pope. The fact that the Paul VI ignored the commission and reaffirmed the teaching is seen as an attempt to protect papal authority by refusing to admit that previous popes had been wrong."
" The answer to this argument is very simple: the Church is not a democracy."
"The most effective argument against Humanae Vitae is that contraception helps the couple develop their relationship without hassles and allows them to attain the emotional and material security that children need before any children are born, thereby making the marriage happier and more secure...."
Those that see "the
Those that see "the affirmation of traditional church prohibitions against contraception as a mere flexing of institutional power" ought also to take note that,
"up to 50% of women discontinue the Oral Contraceptive Pill in first year due to side effects and fears of long term risks."
Whether you care about "Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae" or not, women ought to take the time to read the Fine Print, before jumping into using the PILL for Contraception.
http://www.radianceclinic.com/html/oral_contraceptive_pill.html
Side effects of the Oral Contraceptive Pill
Up to 50% of women discontinue the Oral Contraceptive Pill in first year due to side effects and fears of long term risks
1. Long term use of pill increases the risk of breast cancer.
2. There is increased risk of deformity in foetus conceived quickly after coming off the Oral Contraceptive Pill.
3. The Mini pill during breast feeding affects protein quality, fats and mineral levels. It may cause neonatal jaundice and masculinised female babies.
4. Coronary heart disease, obesity, cerebrovascular disorders/strokes, benign liver tumours, hepatocellular carcinomas, gallbladder disease/stones and hypertension are all attributed to the the Oral Contraceptive Pill.
5. Other things such as nausea, vomiting, fluid retention, weight gain, headaches, migraines, acne, pruritis, amenorrhoea, breast discomfort, leucorrhoea, depression (if sensitive to progesterone),loss of libido, fibroids and decreased glucose tolerance can be attributed to the use of the pill.
Ladies, it is you and your children (and NOT POPE PAUL VI) who will be paying the price for swallowing these PILLS. The men don't get breast cancer, so they don't care, anyway!
It is interesting to me that
It is interesting to me that you would list the side effects of the BC pill. This is something that should of course be discussed by a couple with the woman's gynecologist. There is no such thing as a medication without side effects. We should also look at the side effects of unwanted pregnancies! This would require us to look at several populations from unmarried young teens to older 20's and 30's age group to even older women. It would require us to look at the genetic constitutions of these women and their partners. Bottom line is that there are many medical and sociological complications to unwanted pregnancies. But it is important to not that the possible physical complications of pregnancy are much worse than taking a BC pill or using a condom or other forms of BC. It is wrong Santa Monica to list only the possible complications of the pill.
The risk benefit ratios of any medication must be personalized and discussed between the woman, her husband or partner and the doctor. People who would try to scare others away from pursuing this type of discussion are simply not being genuine. The author also states that 50% of women stop taking the BC pill within one year. This would be true for so many medications. This author then does not go on to discuss the process where a woman may wish to change her method of BC to limit her possible problems with these medications. It is further interesting that the author does no go on to explain that most of these women go on to use BC pills again within the next 24 months. There are many types of BC pills and it often requires fine-tuning of these medications.
What is so very misleading by our Bishops and some of the authors on these boards is the lack of genuine understanding of medical and scientific process. They use only the facts that they wish and try to scare people. It will not work for the educated populace. If the leadership does not reform, then the People of God will in the end reform them!
Peace and understanding,
R. Dennis Porch, MD
I thought we were talking
I thought we were talking about Catholic couples in this article?
First, one of the pre-requisites to being married in the Catholic Church is openess to children (remember, it's included in Catholic marriage vows). So, while a pregnancy might be inconviently timed for a married Catholic couple, that child should never be considered 'unwanted'. (Pre-born human children should never be refered to as "unwanted pregnancies", because it de-emphasizes the fact that they are human children made in the image of God and loved by him.) Don't forget, the modern method of Natural Family Planning is a viable, effective, and healthy option for timing and spacing children.
Second, who are these 'partners' that you are refering to in your post? Catholic women who are having sex, therefore possibly becoming pregnant, should have husbands, not partners. Having a partner implies a commitment which is less than marriage, in which case, no sex should be taking place (remember, it's a grave sin).
Also, I got a good laugh out of your comment: "People of God will in the end reform them"?!?!?! Seriously? That sounds like some kind of threat. What is this? Mutiny on Bounty because the Church teaches against birth control? The Catholic Church is not a democracy and I doubt She's going to be over-taken by an up-rising of lay people over demands for birth control.
The Doctor brought up many
The Doctor brought up many sensible points all of which you, Sally, are avoiding. The partners might well be unmarried teenagers, as the Doctor Porch suggested that age must be taken into consideration. It is not true that all Catholic women or even most catholic women have sex to have children. Most women in the United States, Catholic or Protestant are having less than three children. Many Catholic women have carriers and can not be baby factories as you seem to suggest that they should be. The main point of this note by Dr. Porch is that there are risks and benefits to any medication and they should be discussed with a physician. Others with little medical knowledge are not acting in a genuine way when they only call attention to risks and try to scare others into a different agenda.
Finally, although not mentioned by the Doctor, I believe that the celibate clergy are not only wrong in a matter that they have no medical knowledge but also a matter that they suffer very much because of their own self and organizational prohibition. The way to God is not through ones self but through our relationships. Celibacy makes for poor relationships, often unfaithfulness and poor theology.
Just because it is "SCIENCE"
Just because it is "SCIENCE" does not make it "ETHICAL".
Even Nuclear weapons are products of "SCIENCE". That does not make them "ETHICAL"
Besides, doctors with M.D.'s are also "HUMANS" and therefore are not "INFALLIBLE".
Here is an "UNETHICAL" example of a SURGEON using "SCIENCE":
California Surgeon Used Human Fat to Power Car
Friday, December 26, 2008
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473078,00.html
Did a former Beverly Hills doctor use the fat he liposuctioned out of patients to fuel his car?
The odd accusation was allegedly made in lawsuits filed by former patients and unearthed by Forbes.com this week.
Unfortunately, if he was in fact fueling his car with fat, the practice was illegal, according to California state health officials.
An investigation has been launched by the California public health department into the now-closed liposuction practice of Craig Alan Bittner, who once claimed on a Web site that he created "lipodiesel" from his patients' fat and used it to power his Ford SUV and his girlfriend's Lincoln Navigator, Forbes.com.
California law apparently forbids the use of human medical waste to power vehicles.
Bittner's practice, Beverly Hills Liposculpture, closed in November.
Several former patients have filed lawsuits against the doctor, claiming he allowed his unlicensed girlfriend and an assistant to perform procedures, causing mistakes that left the patients disfigured, attorney Andrew Besser, who represents three of the former patients, told Forbes.com.
It is certainly not ethical
It is certainly not ethical to claim to describe something scientific when you know little about it. Yes science may or may not be ethical and the same goes for our Bishops!
You are absolutely right
You are absolutely right -
the People of GOD will reform the world.
Bristol Palin's message to teens on ABSTINENCE is available at:
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/bristol-palins-message/947576363
If you think that Bristol
If you think that Bristol Palin is on the right track then why did she not practice abstinence? Ever since the Abstinence campaign, there have been increases in teenage pregnancy. Out church seems to have some loose screws in its sexual theology and it is probably caused by the celibacy requirements of the priests! Many men with and without partner masturbate frequently. When a priest masturbates, if he believes he is going to hell, what keeps him from doing other things? I think that this is one very large problem that the clerics are too immature to answer.
Yes as a pre-Vatican II
Yes as a pre-Vatican II Catholic I say you have 'nailed it'
I wodd add the Legion of Mary evanglization out-reach, Marriage Encounter brought to the US by Christian Family Movement and also the Catholic Inter Racial Councils in the urban areas as part of the lay movement for engagement. .The VOTF membership data [ published in NCR] shows how this remnant of the 50s 60s is still active. [Thank God]
CFM's Crowleys were on Pope PaulVI birth control commission, voted to accept the pill and sadly watched the Humanae Vitae slow exodus. Our present mess is still being fueled by the the Vaticans unproclaimed infalliblity position. "One cannot ever, ever, modify a dead pope's position for at least 100 years" e.g usury, slavery, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, error has not rights, torture OK for conversions, and the old goodie Flat earth and the sun moving around the earth. etc etc..One must wait 100 years so as not to appear frivolous. Will our great granchildren even care, read or know what the revisiting these issues will be in another 60 years?
Wow. I wish I could have
Wow. I wish I could have said it first and as well.
In sum, when individuals
In sum, when individuals emancipate themselves from the magisterium of the church they cease to be "highly Catholic". To say that "lay Catholics today clearly rely on their conscience more than they rely on church officials to determine what moral positions to maintain," [when in reality they have deposed the authentic magisterium and judged the clergy to be irrelevant and harmful] and claiming that this is done on the basis of their understanding of Catholic values and mores as if it makes it thoroughly and authentically Catholic is ludicrous. Describing the dissent of the laity from the teaching of the Church's authentic magisterium as a serious rift between the laity and church officials is dishonest by the omission of the central point. Those referred to as, "church officials" are the successors of the apostles with a mandate from Christ to teach the truth and shepherd the faithful. To set up the case as if the church is some corporation with "church officials" that are worried about institutional stability is to refuse to address the real issues facing the church today. Demonizing the institution is not the way for the laity to correct those shepherds that have been remiss in their duties, rather it just perpetuates dissent, "the rift between the laity and church officials".
Dear Xpihs, My, My, My, and I
Dear Xpihs,
My, My, My, and I was under the opinion that every baptized Christian was a successors to the Apostles. I guess that the clerics really see us in some way inferior as only they are successors! The laity must correct the failing leadership of the episcopacy or we will be equally complacent with there scandals and manic desires to control and not serve!
What is ludicrous is the authoritarian claims to authority. Theologians with good resume's could claim to be somewhat authoritative but the bishops in most cases are just very poor administrators!
Thank you Timothy Kelly for
Thank you Timothy Kelly for taking an historical stand on some of the defining issues that those of us who were priests during those years were involved with. (my time, 1950-1972, a religious order, and 10 years of priestly practice, inner city work, social activism, Liturgical & pastoral renewal etc.).
Many of us left for the same reasons you outlined that the laity left as well as the fact that the gracious and special human that John XXIII was let us leave in "good standing" within the church unlike those running it today would do.
I am writing my own memories from those days to give witness to the marvelous new burst of human/spiritual,intellectual and communal energy we all had for opening the windows in the church itself for even a brief time.
John Kysela, writer/art agent
Oakland, California
On the whole I think Timothy
On the whole I think Timothy Kelly's observations are correct, but from my own experience (I was was baptized as a teenager the week Humanae Vitae was released) and the available research, there were also some couples who gave up "artificial" birth control after Humanae Vitae ---out of fear that they were committing a great sin---and had two, three or four more children. For some this strengthened their connection to the Church, bur the most after several "rhythm babies, they truly lost their fear and went back to whatever form of family planning was most effective for them before the summer of 1968. Humanae Vitae became the "make or break" issue for so many (including priests and religious) because they felt the Pope and the Hierarchy were out of touch with the struggles and needs of ordinary families ---people struggling with economic realities, health concerns and the needs of the children they had already brought into the world. If the hierearchy didn't have it right about birth control, it was time to question them on other issues as well.
This pretty much follows
This pretty much follows exactly the course of my church life. Born in 1939, daughter of choir directors, really knew the Church from the inside; went to Mass every day even into graduate school. Catholic school all through, up to graduate school at Georgetown. St. Andrew's missal with English and Latin my 11th birthday present; the same year; introduction to the type of church laid out by Vatican II through participation in the newly organized summer liturgy school at Notre Dame; Seven Story Mountain and The Last Temptation of Christ and Young Christian Students in college; annoyance at the Church's preoccupation with sex alongside the emerging stories of sexual abuse by clergy. Studies of theology that made me feel the institutional church no longer (if ever) lived in the real world. Moving more and more into a heterogeneous society. Living in Turkey for 9 years and discovering Moslems at least as sincere and righteous as any Christians I knew, which made me a better Christian.
I especially like the line that says it's a mischaracterization to see all this as a trend towards secularization. It's a move towards the real world. It's the recognition that life isn't neatly black and white. I think if the Church had stuck to the idea of Jesus as the Compassion of God (Monica Hellwig title) it might have gotten away with a lot more foibles than it can now. But the institution has made the letter of the law more important than the Good News. Now my idea of God has changed so much--become more Chardinian, perhaps--so I feel even farther away from the Church, though I still go most Sundays and sing in the choir. When I was first in graduate school I had a friend who refused to talk to me about some religious things because, he said, I was lucky to have the security of strong faith and he didn't want to shake it up. Nonsense, I said, I want to know what's true. If what I believe isn't real, I want to know it. Now I find myself gently avoiding speaking about some things with some people, even a couple of priests, because I don't want to shake up their faith, having no confidence that I'd be able to convince them well enough of what I see as the more real truth.
After my 9 years with Moslems in Turkey (in the steps of St. Paul), I spent 2 years in the Philippines with their old world Catholicism side by side with Vatican II Catholicism, and then 15 years in Japan where most people I knew don't have any religion and seem to behave perfectly well and feel no particular insecurities. Starting in the Philippines I spent years working with Buddhist refugees and studying Buddhism with colleagues who later became Buddhists. I asked myself if, were I to feel that Buddhism is more true than Catholic Christianity, I would be able to take the step of switching over. I decided I couldn't because I'm so culturally Catholic and I like that and would be reluctant to move into a different culture. My newly Buddhist friends felt the opposite and have moved from Flint, Michigan and settled in Sri Lanka. I moved back to Notre Dame.
Thanks for this unusually accurate explanation of the US Church from the 1950s. I wonder why it happened to some people and so not with others. I've spent a lot of years feeling like I was in the doghouse for not being a mainstream Catholic. Your narrative makes it sound so normal and right.
As a Catholic woman, mother
As a Catholic woman, mother of six and grandmother of 14, I can say that this article accurately reflects my personal faith journey, and that of family members and friends. As an educated Catholic, I have formed my own conscience, based on 18 years of Catholic education, consultation with priests and religious leaders, and ongoing spiritual direction based on Ignatian spirituality. As a Catholic journalist, I am disappointed that so few Catholic publications have the courage to print stories that challenge Catholic hierarchy to take a long, hard, look at how they are successfully eroding the foundations of the church founded by Jesus Christ. I admire NCR's approach to Catholic issues: To promote carefully formed consciences through accurate reporting. This article is a step in that direction. Thank you.
THANX to the many
THANX to the many contributors here for sharing their own personal histories which corroborate Dr. Kelly's work. Very enlightening for a 1964 altar boy who began the school year learning Latin and finished it memorizing English.
Just because Catholics
Just because Catholics stopped listening to Church authority with regards to teachings on birth control, does not make the laity right and the Church wrong. In fact, I would venture to say that the Church correctly sized up the birth control issue and the 'empowered laity' got it wrong. One does not have to look far to see the destruction (health problems, infidelity, STD's, disrepect for women, broken families) brought on by massive use of birth control. I can think of one good thing that chemical neutering has done for society.
On the other hand, modern methods of Natural Family Planning are more effective than any artificial birth control method. (99.8% effective) Couples who practice NFP have a divorce rate of somewhere between 2% and 5%, which cannot be said of Catholics who practice a form of artificial birth control. The only reason that Catholics find NFP "un-livable" and decide to follow their own (incorrect) consciences is because they are too lazy and disobedient to use NFP correctly. NFP takes hard work and sacrifice, which is not something most materially confortable suburbanite Catholics seem to be interested in. It's easier to just pop a pill or throw on a condom, but that ease of use doesn't make it righteous.
I think that Mr. Kelley's
I think that Mr. Kelley's observations are generally accurate, which is a genuine shame. Catholics in America use any excuse that they can find to permit them to do whatever it is that they want to do.
Do they want to practice birth control? Well, Humane Vitae was the work of one pope who didn't understand the modern age, and, anyway, there is no such thing as objective moral truth, only subjective moral truth: what feels or seems right for me.
Do they want to vote for a politician who actively supports abortion on demand? Well, the Church doesn't say much about the death penalty, so they ar hypocrites and it's all about a woman's right to choose anyway.
Do they want to engage in pre-marital sex or any other kind of illicit sexual activity? Well, some bishops allowed priests to abuse kids, so that means that none of the bishops are credible moral authorities.
It is truly sad that so many Catholics lack the integrity or willingness to openly practice their faith, even, and most especially when, it is difficult. They want to pick and choose what they will believe and want to follow an easy path, one that demands nothing from them.
If this is the path you want, if this is the faith you choose to follow, then the Episcopal Church welcomes you.
I was somewhat surprised to
I was somewhat surprised to note the glaring omission of Christ Hope Ecumenical Catholic Church, a group of Catholics in the Pittsburgh
area who, with their pastor, Fr. Bill Hausen, have decided to make
a progressive, "separate peace" albeit at odds with Rome.
Their disagreements with Rome run to some of the very issues mentioned
in the essay.
Couple of comments from a
Couple of comments from a middle-aged mom who's really enjoying this stream of posts.
". . . laity who wanted to play important roles in their parishes . . ." Nah, power is the whole problem; do we still not get that? Jesus would weep at our top-heavy, self-important, insular, overly arrogant clerical superstructure. The laity should not aspire to power. It's not Christian.
Regarding committees and power: let's be careful not to move the Church any further into "business" mode. Let's back up into "discernment" land.
Even with all this overbearing and stifling (and expensive) structure, the boys cannot police their own ranks. Much damage gets done on a daily basis by men harboring no doubt--or more probably, men with doubts they are not allowed to express or share, so they're stuck, and therefore likely to act--well, let's just say it--sick. I'm not even talking the sexual stuff. I'm talking the steady stream of bullying clerical behavior that drives good and holy people away in droves and causes the rest of us to have to do so much damage control. (We're really tired, out here. Even/especially at our local Cathedral.)
Most of us struggle more than priests are apparently allowed to express. Please do not dismiss us as "less than authentic Catholics" because of that.
Exams and self-learning modules? They already exist, at least in the textbook some use to home-school kids. But "book learning" is only a small part of being a Catholic. Please don't over-estimate its importance. We're already 'way too much "in the head," with a liturgy that has too many words, and homilies that trump the rest of the liturgy by their sheer length. Enough exams, enough words. Let's all go live the Beatitudes. Don't give us meetings and service projects; leave us time to try to pray and have dinner as a family. All that's more important.
"Qualifying exams" for Catholics are about as welcome as Bishops asking questions at Confirmation. (Thanks, Bishop Winter, for not doing that. Please talk to your boss.) Let's line ordinands up before they go prostrate, and quiz 'em on Canon Law!
"Natural Family Planning" is still cheating. Yunz are not "letting go and letting God," either. (Yunz = Pittsburghese for "y'all.")
Let's at least get David Zubik's name spelled right, huh?
LittleBear, give us a hint. Who is that masked person?! Fantastic contribution. Thanks.
--with much love from a Pittsburgh Catholic, struggling as so many are during these terrible retro times. Note the guy we're sending to the Jospehinum as rector, with his all-boy flock of MC's, his cassock, lace, and fancy hat. The true grace is: now us good Vatican II kids get to experience what the pre-Vatican II folks felt when life changed. Neither mess is/was right. But then again, the Kingdom is not yet here. When it is, we'll all be one Church, and folks won't have to comment about going Episcopalian. (We're already one Church; it's just human politics and arrogance that get in the way of its full expression.)
You're simply wrong about
You're simply wrong about NFP. While you have your opinions, they are not founded in Catholic teaching.
Read the full text of Humanae Vitae (you know, written by Pope Paul VI). NFP is a perfectly acceptable way for Catholic couples to enter parenthood responsibly and space the birth of children. It is not the mandate of the Church for Catholic women to have as many babies as possible. In 1994, JPII said "Unfortunately, Catholic thought is often misunderstood on this point [about "responsible parenthood], as if the Church supported an ideology of fertility at all costs, urging married couples to procreate indiscriminately and without thought for the future"
So, I think you're getting the use of NFP mixed up with the abuse of NFP. Awareness of natural fertility cycles should not be used to postpone children for selfish or careless reasons. Get Informed!
Clint, you said," Do they
Clint, you said," Do they want to engage in pre-marital sex or any other kind of illicit sexual activity? Well, some bishops allowed priests to abuse kids, so that means that none of the bishops are credible moral authorities."
Yes most bishops have lost there credible ethical authority because they will not speak to the issue of this horrible abuse and will not act in a way to rid us of the cancerous bishops that allow the crisis to continue.
It is not Catholics that lack the laity that lack integrity but an Episcopacy that trails the general society in the development of ethical values! No wonder so many people have completely lost their willingness to follow these simple old men. Yes there is an Episcopal Church with different values than the Catholic Church but I am a catholic unwilling to follow an Episcopacy that is so poorly lead. My choice is to stay on in my Church and speak my mind and ask our ethically challenged Bishops to reform and to work with others in the People of God to force these reforms.
Timothy Kelly's review of a
Timothy Kelly's review of a half century of Catholic life in and around Pittsburgh brought back many fond memories. A great unmentioned change is the loss of the religious sisters. What Pgh. faith still animates me is anchored in the teaching and example of the Seton Hill Charity Sisters at Resurrection, Brookline and the Mercyhurst Mercy Sisters at St. Justin, Mt. Washington. On this foundation the now absent Carmelite friars at parishs long gone supplied the values for a deep and abiding faith life in later years.
I am sure that countless others feel as I do. I have nothing of value to add to the on-going discussion of what the faith elites should do now and tomorrow in Pgh. or anywhere else. But I do pray that all that is valuable in this shared heritage will endure and flourish in my hometown and elsewhere. Amen.
Thanks Tim for your fine
Thanks Tim for your fine analysis. Since I was born and lived in Wisconsin until 1955 when I migrated to the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua as a Capuchin Franciscan priest, working with campesinos and indigenous peoples until 1980. I feel in a position to appreciate the objectivity of much of what you have written. The triumph of our Sandinist Popular Revolution in Nicaragua on July 19, 1979 ushered a new paradigm into our national life and also a new paradigm into my personal life as I stepped out of hierarchical organized religious pastoral work, entered an ecclesiastically legitimate sacramental marriage and have since continued working for the Kingdom through community development.
I am under the impression that a much more radical vision might be useful to diagnose the theme under consideration. Let’s go back to the year 1943, when I was just a young man in the “minor seminary”. Those were the days of the Second World War, when Pope Pius XII, surely not historically recognized as a reigning liberal pontiff , chose the feast of St. Jerome, Sep. 30 to publish his encyclical letter “Divini Afflante Spiritu” encouraging biblical scholars to use all the means that modern scientific “investigation in the domain of archaeology or history or philology have made available for the solution of new questions.” In my humble opinion this is when the Pope, as he said, “Divini afflante spiritu” [breathed upon by the holy spirit] really opened up Pandora’s box, probably something that Pius ever dreamed of doing. Nevertheless de facto he did it. The past 66 years of modern biblical studies tend to throw many modern Catholics into a dither.
We have entered into a new paradigm. Copernicus, Keppler, Newton, Gutenburg, Galileo and good old Christopher Columbus, followed recently by Charles Darwin and a flock of other valiant scientists have thrown light upon “doctrines”, “truths”, “beliefs” etc. that the Second Vatican Council just brushed upon when we forgot about Latin in our Eucharistic Celebrations, began to eat hamburgers after the Friday night football games, take part in the sharing of the table of the Eucharist after eating a good supper in the evening etc. etc. And now that we have satellite pictures of our beautiful round planet earth, we’ve walked around on the moon and have found traces of H2O on the planet of Mars, we also have discovered that our cosmos seems to be continually expanding as new galaxies pop into the field of our Hubble telescopes etc. and we wonder about all those people “in hell” and even put to death as heretics by “infallible religious authorities” for being intellectually convinced other then they were supposed to believe.
Most of these things were condemned by a good number of Popes en the past, including “modernism, democracy and liberalism” and we wonder about that “infallible authority” that has condemned left and right so many heretics in the past and that even today still holds that “outside the Church there is no salvation” (Joseph Ratzinger, 2 years before becoming Pope) in a world where a doubtful 12% belong to it, and millions of people seem to be working very hard to save our planet and the marginal people of our world population, quite oblivious of the Church. In fact the last century of wars of the USA have all been wars by “Christians”, and both Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin in their youth studied in Christian seminaries.
Today we know that Adam and Eve were not historical people walking around the earth someplace so we wonder how we fit in “original sin” and all that it implies. The Gospels are not longer considered “history” but rather “teaching” and even Pope Benedict XVI, admitted last year that Jesus was very probably born not in “O Little Town of Bethlehem” but rather in Nazareth where his parents lived. We ask ourselves if Jesus really was interested in starting “a religion”, or whether he was just simply “dead earnest” [even to death on the cross] in starting up the Kingdom of his Abbá Father right here on this earth.
So I feel that “the problem of condoms” seems to be a bit over simplifying the question. It seems to me we should be looking much more deeply into our belief in Jesus and his kingdom.
So Tim, I’a awaiting your next article. Justiniano de Managua
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