Thursday, April 14, 2005
As many of you know, Margaret O'Brien Steinfels is, like her husband Peter Steinfels, a former editor of Commonweal; with Peter, she directs the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture. For her reflections on the Church at this time of interregnum--reflections that will appear in the May 6th edition of Commonweal--click here.
Michael P.
Thanks to Gerry Whyte, of Trinity College, Dublin, for this item from today's Irish Times. Note that according to the report, the Roman Catholic Church is among the authors of the law: France's parliament has approved a law that will allow terminally ill
patients to opt for death instead of further treatment, but which supporters say
stops short of permitting euthanasia. In an overnight session, the senate adopted a text already approved by the
lower house that allows doctors to stop giving medical assistance when it "seems
useless, disproportionate or has no effect other than maintaining life
artificially". The draft bill says terminally ill patients should have the right to ask for
treatment to be stopped, even if that leads to death, and doctors should respect
their wishes after verification with the patient and medical colleagues. The law also suggests families should be able to request an end to life
support for unconscious patients, and says doctors can prescribe pain-stopping
drugs for a terminally ill patient, even if the medication increases the risk of
dying. The authors of the law - supported by the conservative government, opposition
Socialists and the Roman Catholic Church - have said the bill does not copy
voluntary euthanasia which is legal in Belgium and the Netherlands. They say it is distinct from euthanasia because it does not allow the doctor
actively to end the patient's life.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
From the April 22d issue of COMMONWEAL, by Catholic Theologian Richard Gaillardetz:
Richard R. Gaillardetz
The death of Pope John Paul II has unleashed an outpouring of grief and gratitude for a man who may well have been the most widely recognizable human being of our time. This pope’s virtually unparalleled charisma and productivity and the length of his reign will likely rank his pontificate among the most influential in church history. Studies on the contributions of Pope John Paul II and his impact on the church will engage theologians and church historians for decades to come.
In the midst of this widespread mourning it is inevitable that the world will also be looking to the future. By the time this article appears we may already have a new pope. Over the weeks and months ahead there will be much discussion regarding items that ought to appear on a new papal agenda. Many will hope for a spiritual clone of John Paul II, a pope who will continue to encourage a robust and evangelical Catholicism capable of confronting the insidious relativism of our age. Others will wish for a pope with the courage to change Catholic teachings they find troubling. We will surely hear more, as we probably should, about issues that still rankle the church politic (at least in North America): women’s ordination, mandatory priestly celibacy, and homosexuality.
I harbor my own “wish list” for our new pope. Yet perhaps our hopes and prayers ought to leave more room for the work of the Spirit and focus less on issues and more on papal vision. For my part, I shall be content to pray that our new pope might allow two insights affirmed throughout the documents of Vatican II to inform his vision for the church: First, the Word of God is addressed to the whole church. And second, living in history as a faithful follower of Jesus requires an eschatological humility.
. . .
This is no liberal fantasy for a democratic church, but a quite traditional longing for a genuine community of discernment that dares to introduce its decisions as did the church of Jerusalem: “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us...” (Acts 15). It is a longing for a church that raises up leaders who recognize that leading and listening are not mutually exclusive.
. . . I hope for a pope who has a healthy dose of eschatological humility. Eschatological humility treasures divine truth as it is mediated through the received faith of the church but also recognizes that we do not so much possess divine truth as it possesses us. The revelation of God’s love comes to us first, not in doctrinal formulae, but as a person, Jesus Christ, who is for us “both the mediator and the sum total of revelation” (Dei verbum, 2). As the council taught, the church is “always advancing toward the plenitude of divine truth” (Dei verbum, 8). A pope with eschatological humility would know that in the final consummation of all things in God, our confident dogmatic assertions will be seen, not as erroneous, but as inevitably impoverished before that ineffable mystery that is God. Such a pope would not hesitate to give testimony before the world to the truth so treasured by followers of Jesus, but he would readily acknowledge that although the church is “guardian of the deposit of God’s word, and draws religious and moral principles from it...it does not always have a ready answer to every question” (Gaudium et spes, 23).
Eschatological humility comes with understanding as well what it means to belong to, and to lead, a church that is pilgrim-a church that is confident it has set upon the right path and wishes to share that way with others but that knows it has not yet arrived (Lumen gentium, 48). A pope with eschatological humility would know that this pilgrim church need never fear reform and renewal, for it is only by reform and renewal that the church will hobble forward on its journey (Unitatis redintegratio, 6).
Let us pray for a pope who believes that God’s Spirit abides in the church as in a temple and speaks in and through that church’s corporate discernment. Let us pray for a pope who speaks with a conviction chastened by the modesty befitting a pilgrim. Such a pope would truly merit the ancient title, servus servorum Dei, “servant of the servants of God.”
[To read the whole piece, click here.]
From the issue dated April 22, 2005
Pope John Paul II was a force of nature, a man of iron will and passionate spirituality, who was also blessed with a quick wit, a magnetic personality, and a fearless moral temperament.
There can be no gainsaying his extraordinary achievements, both on the world stage and as one of the most compelling Christian witnesses of our time. The millions who poured into Rome to view his body and attend his funeral were the most obvious testimony to the regard in which he was held by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Countless words have now been written honoring this pope, and trying to explain the powerful effect Karol Wojtyla exerted over the sophisticated and the unsophisticated, over believers and nonbelievers, and perhaps especially over those seeking faith in a world where religious answers and religious authority can no longer be taken for granted. In his dying as in his life, John Paul made his love of and devotion to Christ real for others in the most intimate and undeniable ways.
Commonweal has asked commentators of different faiths and philosophical inclinations to reflect on the broad sweep of John Paul’s legacy (page 13). Over his long papacy this magazine has, of course, written extensively about John Paul, and a selection of that material is available on our Web site (commonwealmagazine.org). Like any significant historical figure, this pope will only be truly understood in the course of time. He was, for many of his contemporaries, a figure of paradox, even contradiction. His unwavering defense of human freedom and his eagerness to engage thinkers of all persuasions too often stopped at the church’s doors. He traveled the world confronting tyrannical governments, but refused to listen to those calling for change, or at the very least dialogue, within his own house. He broke down barriers between Catholicism and other faiths, especially Judaism, but seemed determined, in his appointment of bishops and cardinals, not to permit pluralism a place at his own table. He gave the church the most accessible and compelling public face imaginable, yet turned a stony face toward many fellow Catholics.
Perhaps these contradictions are best understood in light of John Paul’s formative experience as a bishop in a Polish church that had to walk a delicate line between accommodation and confrontation in its struggles with a totalitarian regime. It was there that John Paul learned the virtues of church unity, discipline, and loyalty. Without those qualities, the Polish church would have been divided, undermined, and destroyed. Unfortunately, he seemed to take this model of an embattled church-one that could not brook public discord on internal church matters-and to employ it even when dealing with liberal democracy and modern secular culture. Some credit John Paul’s hard line on church discipline and theological dissent with revitalizing a moribund institution and forging a more cogent sense of Catholic identity. His critics note, more often in sorrow than anger, that there is little evidence that the church’s teachings are more broadly followed or deeply held after John Paul’s reign. More worrisome, there is even less evidence that, under his firm grip and long shadow, local churches are producing the kind of leaders needed in his absence.
One of the most acute comments on the pope’s passing was made by the Irish novelist Colm Toibin in the New York Times Magazine (“A Gesture Life,” April 10). Toibin described John Paul’s presence before a crowd of 1 million at the church of the Black Madonna in Poland in 1991. The pope’s hesitant yet sure movements, his practiced but effortless gait, were the work of a great actor, Toibin observed. The novelist was struck especially by how the pope’s facial expressions somehow conveyed humility and pride, loneliness and exhilaration. John Paul was “natural and improvised and also highly theatrical and professional. More than anything, [he] was unpredictable.” At one point during the Mass, the pope held the crowd’s attention for twenty minutes by merely holding his head in his hands. To Toibin’s mind, John Paul’s artful gestures provided “some mysterious example of what a spiritual life might look like.”
Toibin used his novelist’s gifts to render unmistakably what has been one of the most expressive faces of the last century. “His eyes understood and forgave everything,” Toibin writes, but “his mouth and the set of his chin forbade deviation and did not want there to be any change.”
Toibin’s description reminds us that Christ entrusted his church to Peter and his successors, to fallible human beings, not to oracles or gods. John Paul’s was an all too human face, one Catholics looked up to for more than a quarter century, and to whom we have now bid a wrenching goodbye. It is a face the church, and the world, will not soon forget.
April 12, 2005
The following editorial, from COMMONWEAL, April 8, 2005, is worth reading and reflecting on:
The passions of those on either side of the Terri Schiavo tragedy are not hard to understand. Still, whether Michael Schiavo was right to have his wife’s feeding tube removed is not a judgment that people outside the family should second-guess too quickly or easily. The choices involved cannot simply be reduced to the slogan “err on the side of life” or to accusations of euthanasia or death by starvation. Contested by Terri Schiavo’s parents, Michael Schiavo’s decision was rightfully adjudicated in the courts, not in Congress, the Florida governor’s office, or the White House.
Given the inherently complex nature, both medically and morally, of Terri Schiavo’s persistent vegetative state (PVS), the demagoguery of some of her self-appointed advocates, especially certain elements of the prolife community and the Republican Party, has been appalling. Almost as bad has been the failure of the Catholic hierarchy to present the full depth and subtlety of Catholic teaching on this difficult question.
[To read the rest, click here.]
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
[Thought MOJ readers would be interested in this response to my earlier post today.]
Dear Dr. Perry,
I respect Martin Marty and agree with him that "attention-grabbing Catholic
defense leagues" (doubtless a thinly-veiled reference to the organization
headed by William Donohue) sometimes cry wolf.
But if Marty did not find "a single inch of print showing Protestants
attacking the pope or Catholicism" over the last two weeks, then he's missed
commentary by high-profile Calvinists like Dr. James White, and high-profile
Baptists like Dr. Al Mohler, neither of whom can be lumped with "creepy,
crawly commentators at the outer edge of cyberspatial blogs."
White saw the death of the pope as an opportunity for other Christians to
convict Catholics of our alleged doctrinal errors. Mohler complained that
Protestants have been too cozy with Catholics of late, and that the pope
paid too little attention to issues of concern to other Christians. Both
were outspoken critics of Catholicism even before the pope's death, and both
(along with pastor Mark D. Roberts, a frequent guest on Hugh Hewitt's
popular radio show) take a dim view of the renewed Protestant interest in
Mary, the mother of Jesus.
In other words, while Marty is right that Catholicism's harshest critics
come from within her ranks, his optimistic assessment of a thaw in
relationships between Catholics and Protestants, while not unreasonable, may
nevertheless be premature.
Along similar lines, this may be of interest:
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7989
Best,
Patrick O'Hannigan
"The Paragraph Farmer"
For an excellent statement of the case against government's permitting physician-assisted suicide, see this piece by the diocesan theologian for Honolulu, delivered in a homily for the annual Red Mass in Honolulu at the start of the legislative season. I would provide a link to the piece, but I don't have a link. (Do any of you?)
Father Marc Alexander, The Problems With Physician-Assisted Suicide, 34 ORIGINS: CNS Documentary Service 676-680 (April 7, 2005).
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
In this week's TIME, in the concluding Essay--this week by James Carroll--we find the following view:
This may be what you think: John Paul II was the conservative Pope.
His pontificate was marked by a resurgent Roman Catholic
traditionalism, setting the church against liberalizing forces of all
kinds. John Paul II is remembered above all for shoring up structures
of the past.
This is wrong. John Paul II boldly presided over the maturing of political and theological revolutions in Catholicism. Perhaps despite himself, he was a Pope of change, accomplishing two radical shifts—one in the church's attitude toward war and the other in its relationship to the Jewish people. Taken together, those represent the most significant change in church history, and they lay the groundwork for future changes that could well go beyond what this Pope foresaw or even wanted. In each case, John Paul II brought to completion a movement that was begun by his predecessors John XXIII and Paul VI, the Popes of the Second Vatican Council.
In the concluding paragraph of the essay, Carroll writes:
At the millennium, John Paul II expressed sorrow for the two historic crimes of Christianity—the use of coercion in defense of the truth and the tradition of contempt for the Jewish people. But this Pope did more than say he was sorry. He put in place new structures of belief and practice, affirming peace and advancing tolerance, changing the Roman Catholic Church forever.
To read the whole essay--titled The Pope's True Revolution--click here.
[Thought that MOJ readers would be interested in this piece, the first part of which is excerpted below. For the entire piece, click here. From Books and Culture: A Christian Review.]
The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience
Why don't Christians live what they preach?
Once upon a time there was a great religion that over the centuries had spread all over the world. But in those lands where it had existed for the longest time, its adherents slowly grew complacent, lukewarm, and skeptical. Indeed, many of the leaders of its oldest groups even publicly rejected some of the religion's most basic beliefs.
In response, a renewal movement emerged, passionately championing the historic claims of the old religion and eagerly inviting unbelievers everywhere to embrace the ancient faith. Rejecting the skepticism of leaders who no longer believed in a God who works miracles, members of the renewal movement vigorously argued that their God not only had performed miraculous deeds in the past but still miraculously transforms all who believe. Indeed, a radical, miraculous "new birth" that began a lifetime of sweeping moral renewal and transformation was at the center of their preaching. Over time, the renewal movement flourished to the point of becoming one of the most influential wings of the whole religion.
Not surprisingly, the movement's numbers translated into political influence. And the renewal movement was so confident of its beliefs and claims that it persuaded the nation's top political leader to have the government work more closely with religious social service organizations to solve the nation's horrendous social problems. Members of the renewal movement knew that miraculous moral transformation of character frequently happened when broken persons embraced the great religion. They also lobbied politicians to strengthen the traditional definition of marriage because their ancient texts taught that a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman was at the center of the Creator's design for the family.
Then the pollsters started conducting scientific polls of the general population. In spite of the renewal movement's proud claims to miraculous transformation, the polls showed that members of the movement divorced their spouses just as often as their secular neighbors. They beat their wives as often as their neighbors. They were almost as materialistic and even more racist than their pagan friends. The hard-core skeptics smiled in cynical amusement at this blatant hypocrisy. The general population was puzzled and disgusted. Many of the renewal movement's leaders simply stepped up the tempo of their now enormously successful, highly sophisticated promotional programs. Others wept.
This, alas, is roughly the situation of Western or at least American evangelicalism today.
[Again, for the entire piece, click here.]
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