I heard a joke the other day about a pious soul who dies, goes to
heaven, and gains an audience with the Virgin Mary. The visitor asks
Mary why, for all her blessings, she always appears in paintings as a
bit sad, a bit wistful: Is everything O.K.?
Mary reassures her visitor: “Oh, everything’s great. No problems.
It’s just ... it’s just that we had always wanted a daughter.”
That story comes to mind as the Vatican wrestles with the
consequences of a patriarchal premodern mind-set: scandal, cover-up and
the clumsiest self-defense since Watergate. That’s what happens with old
boys’ clubs.
It wasn’t inevitable that the Catholic Church would grow so addicted
to male domination, celibacy and rigid hierarchies. Jesus himself
focused on the needy rather than dogma, and went out of his way to
engage women and treat them with respect.
Yet there’s another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely.
This is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the
world than it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports
extraordinary aid organizations like Catholic
Relief Services and Caritas,
saving lives every day, and that operates superb schools that provide
needy children an escalator out of poverty.
This is the church of the nuns and priests in Congo, toiling in
obscurity to feed and educate children. This is the church of the
Brazilian priest fighting AIDS who told me that if he were pope, he
would build a condom factory in the Vatican to save lives.
This is the church of the Maryknoll
Sisters in Central America and the Cabrini Sisters in Africa.
There’s a stereotype of nuns as stodgy Victorian traditionalists. I
learned otherwise while hanging on for my life in a passenger seat as an
American nun with a lead foot drove her jeep over ruts and through a
creek in Swaziland to visit AIDS orphans. After a number of encounters
like that, I’ve come to believe that the very coolest people in the
world today may be nuns.
So when you read about the scandals, remember that the Vatican is not
the same as the Catholic Church. Ordinary lepers, prostitutes and
slum-dwellers may never see a cardinal, but they daily encounter a truly
noble Catholic Church in the form of priests, nuns and lay workers
toiling to make a difference.
It’s high time for the Vatican to take inspiration from that sublime
— even divine — side of the Catholic Church, from those church workers
whose magnificence lies not in their vestments, but in their
selflessness. They’re enough to make the Virgin Mary smile.
Church in worst credibility crisis since Reformation, theologian
tells bishops
HANS KÜNG
Fri, Apr 16, 2010
Pope
Benedict has made worse just about everything that is wrong with the
Roman Catholic Church and is directly responsible for engineering the
global cover-up of child rape perpetrated by priests, according to this
open letter to all Catholic bishops
VENERABLE BISHOPS,
Joseph
Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians
at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest
and the only ones still fully active. I have always understood my
theological work as a service to the Roman Catholic Church. For this
reason, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope
Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In
doing so, I am motivated by my profound concern for our church, which
now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation.
Please excuse the form of an open letter; unfortunately, I have no other
way of reaching you.
I deeply appreciated that the pope invited
me, his outspoken critic, to meet for a friendly, four-hour-long
conversation shortly after he took office. This awakened in me the hope
that my former colleague at Tubingen University might find his way to
promote an ongoing renewal of the church and an ecumenical rapprochement
in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.
Unfortunately, my
hopes and those of so many engaged Catholic men and women have not been
fulfilled. And in my subsequent correspondence with the pope, I have
pointed this out to him many times. Without a doubt, he conscientiously
performs his everyday duties as pope, and he has given us three helpful
encyclicals on faith, hope and charity. But when it comes to facing the
major challenges of our times, his pontificate has increasingly passed
up more opportunities than it has taken:
Thousands of U.S. women religious have just staked their public
credibility in the cause of health care reform, during one of the most
polarized civic debates in decades. These women with a vow of poverty
had riches to spend: public trust accumulated since the Middle Ages,
when European orders of women and men risked their lives to treat
victims of the plague. Later, congregations like the Daughters of
Charity and the Sisters of Mercy built hospitals in the United States to
serve the poor, refugees and immigrants. Catholic sisters tended the
wounded during the Civil War and nursed the pioneers—all for the love of
Christ at pittance wages.
Gradually, they built the largest number of not-for-profit health
facilities in the nation: an extensive network of clinics, hospitals,
home health programs and facilities for assisted living, long-term and
hospice care. The Catholic Health Association of the United States
currently represents 600 Catholic hospitals and 1,400 nursing homes.
The Catholic Health Association, whose membership is made up largely
of religious congregations of women and their institutions, exercised
substantial leverage in the recent health care debate. Carol Keehan,
D.C., as president and chief executive officer, expressed the
association’s position with civility and candor. “We urge Congress to
continue its work toward the goal of health reform that protects life at
all stages, while expanding coverage to the greatest possible number of
people in our country,” she said in January. As Congress prepared to
vote on the final bill, the C.H.A. was joined in its support of the
reform by the heads of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and
more than four dozen U.S. congregations of women.
The sisters entered the fray burdened, like an athlete at the
Olympics with family problems on her mind. First, their communities have
been the focus of an ongoing Vatican investigation, the purpose of
which has never been fully explained. That troubling circumstance alone
might have paralyzed less committed advocates. Second, toward the end of
the legislative process, the sisters found themselves holding a
different view from that of the U.S. Catholic bishops on a matter of
prudential judgment concerning possible loopholes for federal funding of
abortion resulting from the bill.
Although some opponents publicly dismissed the sisters’ view, the
women religious in health ministry have earned special standing on this
issue. They built the hospitals, tended the sick, midwifed the newborns,
sat with the suffering and calmed the dying. As for the sisters in
other ministries, they wrote to Congress: “We have counseled and prayed
with men, women and children who have been denied health care coverage
by insurance companies. We have witnessed early and avoidable deaths
because of delayed medical treatment.” The sisters demonstrated
leadership of a high order. The church’s credibility in public advocacy
on health issues has always rested on their service—especially to women,
children, the sick, the poor and the uninsured—and it continues to do
so today. That record of service gave them a right to speak out.
Ironically, the U.S. sisters’ civic leadership on health care reform
marks a climax in their own history: a display of strength when the
sisters are becoming aged and their numbers are decreasing. Today the
church in the United States needs more young women, moved by the Spirit,
to join religious life. A new generation of religious women still has a
vital role to play in the flourishing of Catholic life in the United
States. Their lifelong witness of prayer and service is needed to
energize Catholic health care, Catholic education and Catholic justice
ministry. They can be pioneers in the 21st century as their predecessors
were in the 19th.
In addition, more lay movements with a charism for healing ministry are
needed, and more lay health professionals committed to sponsoring
Catholic health institutions, especially those affiliated with the
sisters’ congregations, can build on what the sisters have
established—in hospice care, in prevention programs, in helping seniors
(and others) navigate increasingly complex health systems, and in
sustaining the nonprofit model of quality care driven by the compassion
of Jesus the healer.
The sisters’ extraordinary witness illustrates how huge a gap would
be left were their numbers not replenished or their work not taken up by
others. For the civic muscle the sisters brought to bear is a result of
their lives of prayer, discipline and vows kept daily in service to the
church. They have shown how powerful and authoritative Christian
communities can be when they build credible institutions that serve the
common good. If there was ever any doubt about the relevance of women
religious to contemporary American life, the sisters’ role in health
care should dispel it.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was the principal celebrant and homilist at a mass celebrated March 18 for the participants of a conference sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace entitled "A Call to Justice" on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Gaudium et Spes. In the homily, he said:
"As Christians we must constantly be reminded that the call of justice is not something which can be reduced to the categories of this world. And this is the beauty of the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, evident in the very structure of the Council's text; only when we Christians grasp our vocation, as having been created in the image of God and believing that "the form of this world is passing away...[and] that God is preparing a new dwelling and a new earth, in which justice dwells (GS n. 39)" can we address the urgent social problems of our time from a truly Christian perspective. "Far from diminishing our concern to develop this earth, the expectation of a new earth should spur us on, for it is here that the body of a new human family grows, prefiguring in some way the world that is to come" (GS n. 39).
And so, to be workers of this true justice, we must be workers who are being made just, by contact with Him who is justice itself: Jesus of Nazareth. The place of this encounter is the Church, nowhere more powerfully present than in her sacraments and liturgy. The celebration of the Holy Triduum, which we will enter into next week, is the triumph of God's justice over human judgments. In the mystery of Good Friday, God is judged by man and condemned by human justice. In the Easter Vigil, the light of God's justice banishes the darkness of sin and death; the stone at the tomb (made of the same material as the stones in the hands of those who, in today's Gospel, seek to kill Christ) is pushed away forever, and human life is given a future, which, in going beyond the categories of this world, reveals the true meaning and the true value of earthly realities.
And we who have been baptized, as children of a world which is still to come, in the liturgy of the Easter Vigil, catch a glimpse of that world, and breathe the atmosphere of that world, where God's justice will dwell forever. And then, renewed and transformed by the Mysteries we celebrate, we can walk in this world justly, living - as the Preface for Lent says so beautifully - "in this passing world with our heart set on the world that will never end" (Preface for Lent II)."
I am reading a fascinating, beautifully written book by Carlos Eire, called "A Very Brief History of Eternity."
In A Very Brief History of Eternity, Carlos Eire, the historian and National Book Award-winning author of Waiting for Snow in Havana, has written a brilliant history of eternity in Western culture. Tracing the idea from ancient times to the present, Eire examines the rise and fall of five different conceptions of eternity, exploring how they developed and how they have helped shape individual and collective self-understanding.
A book about lived beliefs and their relationship to social and political realities, A Very Brief History of Eternity is also about unbelief, and the tangled and often rancorous relation between faith and reason. Its subject is the largest subject of all, one that has taxed minds great and small for centuries, and will forever be of human interest, intellectually, spiritually, and viscerally.
Among other things, the book yields (what seem to me to be) real insights into the individualism - statism - community dynamic that we talk about a lot here at MOJ.
I asked a friend who is a member of the prelature of Opus Dei how his organization deals with sexual abuse cases involving its lay or clergy members. He replied that he didn't know of any cases in which a member was credibly accused of sexual abuse. Since, as I understand it, Opus Dei is a world-wide organization with thousands of priests and an even larger number of celbate as well as married lay members, I found this remarkable. Virtually every diocese in the United States has had sexual abuse cases, as have most men's religious orders. If Opus Dei has had none, or very few, I wonder what accounts for that. Does anyone know whether it is in fact true that it has had no sexual abuse cases or very few? If so, does anyone have any thoughts about why their record is so good? Does it have to do with the screening of possible members? Does it have something to do with the procedures of the organization or the ethos it has created? Is it just good luck (so far, at least)?
When I talk to self-identified pro-choice people, they usually say that, of course, they are opposed to late-term abortions and support their legal prohibition. Certainly a viable or nearly viable child ought not to be deliberately killed. But when it comes to actual legislation trying to do anything about late-term abortions, they are more often than not AWOL . . . or worse. A case in point. Mark Parkinson, the Governor of Kansas, has vetoed a bill that simply would have required physicians who perform abortions at 22 weeks gestation or later to record the specific reason for the abortion. Under Kansas law, the abortion of a potentially viable child is prohibited unless undertaken for certain specific reasons relating to maternal health. For the law to be enforceable, however, obviously abortionists would need to identify the putative reasons for the late-term abortions they perform. They would need to say which maternal major bodily function would be placed at risk of grave harm unless the child were removed in a way that necessarily involves taking its life. Why did Parkinson veto the bill? Because abortion, though a "tragedy," is "a private decision and should not be dictated by public officials." In other words, Parkinson really doesn't want to prohibit post-viability abortions. Evidently, he's happy with an essentially unenforceable law that merely purports to afford legal protection to the child. My friend Carter Snead of Notre Dame Law School informs me that former Kansas Governor (and current HHS Secretary) Kathleen Sebelius vetoed an identical bill in 2009. (He also informs me that despite so heinous an act, the group calling itself Catholics United endorsed Sebelius's nomination.) According to Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, there have been some 3,000 late-term abortions since the late-term abortion act was passed in Kansas in 1998. One wonders how many of these were actually performed to prevent grave damage to maternal health, and how many were, in truth, elective abortions. More fundamentally, one wishes that pro-choice politicians like Parkinson and Sebelius would just tell us the truth. If they really do favor a right to abortion that extends even to the killing of viable children, they should have the courage say so. They should not claim to favor legal protection for viable children while acting to ensure that the laws protecting these children are meaningless. Here's a link to the Wichita Eagle's story on Parkinson's veto: http://www.kansas.com/2010/04/16/1271594/governor-vetoes-bill-on-abortion.html
Note: In the original post, I incorrectly attributed the endorsement of Sebelius to "Catholics United for the Common Good." The group that endorsed Sebelius is simply called "Catholics United." (It is not the group "Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.") I apologize for the error.
I have an op-ed in today's "weekend" edition of the Wall Street Journal called "The Minority Court" (I didn't pick the title). Here's a bit . . .
Those who founded our nation would certainly have been surprised by much of what goes on now at the Supreme Court—free-speech cases about online child pornography, search-and-seizure disputes involving thermal-imaging devices, and so on. Even more surprising to them than the Court's work, though, would have been the Court's current makeup. Its nine members include two Jews and six Roman Catholics. And Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court's lone Protestant member, recently announced his plans to step down. . . .
Certainly, the Court's current lineup confirms the long distance traveled since crude and bizarre anti-Catholic polemics and conspiracy theories helped to sink the 1928 presidential campaign of Al Smith, or the days when the unabashedly anti-Semitic Justice James McReynolds refused to speak to his Jewish colleague, Justice Brandeis. More curious than the increasing numbers of Catholics and Jews on the Court is the possible disappearance of Protestants. Diminishing prejudice helps to account for why a country that is 2% Jewish has a Supreme Court with two Jewish justices, but it would not seem to explain why the Court of a nation that is half-Protestant might soon have no Protestants. . . .
Whatever the explanation for the Court's current religious makeup, and for the possible (though certainly temporary) absence of Protestant justices, it should be remembered and emphasized that all judges—Protestants, Catholics, Jews and all the rest—have views, commitments and experiences that shape their thinking and understanding. We should not ask or expect judges to put all this aside when they put on their judicial robes. Instead, we should ask and expect them to work conscientiously in every case to identify not their own preferred outcome but, to the extent possible, the answer that is given by the best reading of relevant legal texts, rules and precedents.
