EXCERPT: I got a shock last week when I found myself delivering a series of parish talks on the theme “Parish.” Suddenly I realized that I had never spoken on this topic before – in 35 years devoted to parish work!
If I had really been paying attention, the irony should not have surprised me at all. So what if I tended to take “Parish” for granted, even though it has been the focus of my entire professional career? Church teaching also takes “Parish” for granted. Canon law takes “Parish” for granted. So do most Catholics -- until someone tries to close their parish!
I’m not talking here about our church buildings. People made great sacrifices to build them and take great pleasure in using them. Nor am I talking about the identity of individual parishes. Obviously, Catholics have often invested great pride in their own parish’s schools, teams, and successes – especially wherever one’s parish came to represent community rivalries or ethnic solidarity.
No, I am talking about the phenomenon of “Parish” in general: the entity, the “thing” that has been the basis for normal day-to-day Catholic living for nearly all Catholics. If Tip O’Neill said all politics is local, we could say that all Catholic life is “Parish.”
The irony is that, for hundreds of millions of Catholics worldwide, “Parish” is like the air we breathe: we hardly ever notice it – unless we’re deprived of it.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
#273: A Second Reformation?
EXCERPT: What if, by encouraging conservative Anglicans to join the like-minded Catholic Church, the Vatican eventually encourages all Christians to seek out like-minded churches for themselves?
Suppose some progressive Catholics become Anglicans just because it seems more progressive? Suppose others find the Unitarian more congenial? This has already happened to individuals, but what if it happens with entire congregations and their priests?
Christianity’s first Reformation resulted in people forced to belong to whatever Church their ruler chose. So Northern Europe became Protestant while Southern Europe remained Catholic, and resistors nearly everywhere were persecuted. Hence theological differences not only fractured Christian unity – they validated violence.
Perhaps a new Reformation would peaceably encourage everyone to make their own choice: the Body of Christ as consumer society!
Suppose some progressive Catholics become Anglicans just because it seems more progressive? Suppose others find the Unitarian more congenial? This has already happened to individuals, but what if it happens with entire congregations and their priests?
Christianity’s first Reformation resulted in people forced to belong to whatever Church their ruler chose. So Northern Europe became Protestant while Southern Europe remained Catholic, and resistors nearly everywhere were persecuted. Hence theological differences not only fractured Christian unity – they validated violence.
Perhaps a new Reformation would peaceably encourage everyone to make their own choice: the Body of Christ as consumer society!
Friday, October 16, 2009
#272: Travel Lessons: Cultural and Spiritual
EXCERPT: So now the parishes of Antigonish are being told to pool their own cash to fund a $15 million suit settled by a bishop who has already resigned over a child pornography charge which reflects behavior going back more than twenty years!
"This will bring another element of pain into the situation," Rev. Paul Abbass, a spokesman for the Antigonish diocese said. "We want to find some hope in the midst of all of this, but right now it’s just so overwhelming."
When the Mount Cashel story originally broke in 1989, I was editing a Catholic newspaper, and we covered the story as a "Canadian" phenomenon with fingers crossed, hoping there would be no expansion into the US. Of course, that expansion came all too soon, first in Louisiana, then in Boston, then in dozens of US dioceses. The Vatican, crossing its own fingers, termed it an "American problem."
We have since learned that priestly sex abuse and episcopal malfeasance are not the monopoly of any country or hemisphere.
"This will bring another element of pain into the situation," Rev. Paul Abbass, a spokesman for the Antigonish diocese said. "We want to find some hope in the midst of all of this, but right now it’s just so overwhelming."
When the Mount Cashel story originally broke in 1989, I was editing a Catholic newspaper, and we covered the story as a "Canadian" phenomenon with fingers crossed, hoping there would be no expansion into the US. Of course, that expansion came all too soon, first in Louisiana, then in Boston, then in dozens of US dioceses. The Vatican, crossing its own fingers, termed it an "American problem."
We have since learned that priestly sex abuse and episcopal malfeasance are not the monopoly of any country or hemisphere.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
#271: Spirituality and/or Religion?
EXCERPT:More than one reader has asked me to write about "spirituality" and "religion." My first thought is that both terms come with baggage in tow. For me, "religion" generally means organized religion, and "spirituality" generally suggests spiritual journey. Right away we see the distinction: religion is something you belong to, while spirituality is something you live through. Religion is a visible entity outside you; spirituality is a personal reality within.
My second thought: this topic is the very hinge of a widening generation gap-- the largest since the 1960s. In short, the divide is between (mostly older) people who travel their spiritual journey via the path their religion guides them on, and those (mostly younger) people who prefer, for whatever reason, to find their own spiritual way unguided by any organization.
This oversimplifies, of course, since there are also people living without either conscious spirituality or religion, as well as people attached to religion as an end in itself, going through religion’s motions but oblivious to any inner spirit.
The last group poses a special problem, since their way of life reveals how religion can become an obstacle, rather than in aid, to spiritual living. Their rote religious practice can alienate others from religion, who observe them and judge that religion has become a hollow, empty affair. In extreme cases, observers (especially young, impressionable observers) may see hypocrisy at work when someone’s proclamations of faith do not match their practice, when they talk the talk (of organized religion) but do not walk the walk (of the spiritual journey), when they do not practice what they preach.
Need I say it? For 20th century American Catholics, the dominant dynamic between religion and spirituality -- perhaps the key factor in the generation gap I have noted -- is the perception of hypocrisy within our own Catholic clergy: first by those who preached love but practiced abuse, and second (but more grievously) by those Bishops who accepted their role as shepherd yet secretly loosed the wolves among their own flock.
The great fear is that this scandal has produced not only a single generation gap, but also a gap that will take many generations to heal. If large numbers of the Boomers’ grown children choose not to raise their own children as Catholics, our families and our church could suffer the loss for the foreseeable future.
My second thought: this topic is the very hinge of a widening generation gap-- the largest since the 1960s. In short, the divide is between (mostly older) people who travel their spiritual journey via the path their religion guides them on, and those (mostly younger) people who prefer, for whatever reason, to find their own spiritual way unguided by any organization.
This oversimplifies, of course, since there are also people living without either conscious spirituality or religion, as well as people attached to religion as an end in itself, going through religion’s motions but oblivious to any inner spirit.
The last group poses a special problem, since their way of life reveals how religion can become an obstacle, rather than in aid, to spiritual living. Their rote religious practice can alienate others from religion, who observe them and judge that religion has become a hollow, empty affair. In extreme cases, observers (especially young, impressionable observers) may see hypocrisy at work when someone’s proclamations of faith do not match their practice, when they talk the talk (of organized religion) but do not walk the walk (of the spiritual journey), when they do not practice what they preach.
Need I say it? For 20th century American Catholics, the dominant dynamic between religion and spirituality -- perhaps the key factor in the generation gap I have noted -- is the perception of hypocrisy within our own Catholic clergy: first by those who preached love but practiced abuse, and second (but more grievously) by those Bishops who accepted their role as shepherd yet secretly loosed the wolves among their own flock.
The great fear is that this scandal has produced not only a single generation gap, but also a gap that will take many generations to heal. If large numbers of the Boomers’ grown children choose not to raise their own children as Catholics, our families and our church could suffer the loss for the foreseeable future.
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