EXCERPT:
It did my heart good to learn of this month’s canonization of Mary MacKillop as Australia’s first saint.
Since entering full-time ministry at the tender age of 23, I have had more than my share of run-ins with men (and occasionally women) whose ecclesiastical rank allowed them to throw their weight around with impunity. And since I don’t do docile, such run-ins were never pretty for me. Mary MacKillop’s canonization offers sweet vindication for Catholics like me – and a valuable lesson for everyone else.
For her sainthood exposes a common mistake made by many Catholics, who think that if one’s behavior or thinking meets with the disapproval of a priest, bishop, cardinal, or Pope, one must be doing something wrong. Such misconception is surprisingly common, even in the wake of appalling scandal.
You see, Mother Mary made her bones as founder of the Josephite sisters, Australia’s first native religious order, dedicated especially to the education and welfare of poor, orphaned, or at-risk children.
But in 1871 she crossed the line when she, (in concert with other Josephites) accused one Father Keating of sexually abusing children – an unspeakably, even unthinkably shocking charge in those days (alas! No more).
Keating was promptly dispatched back to the Old Sod, under the PR-friendly “cloud” of drunkenness. But Mother Mary’s transgression did not go unpunished. Father Charles Horan, the local vicar general, and a friend of Keating’s, contrived to impose new restrictions on the Josephites and got Bishop Laurence Sheil to agree. When MacKillop refused to comply, the Bishop called it “insubordination” and excommunicated her, as described in the Adelaide Advertiser:
Though the Josephites were not disbanded, most of their schools were closed in the wake of this action. Forbidden to have contact with anyone in the church, MacKillop lived with a Jewish family and was also sheltered by Jesuit priests. Some of the order's nuns chose to remain under diocesan control, becoming popularly known as "Black Joeys"…Later, an Episcopal Commission completely exonerated her.
So Mother Mary MacKillop, now sainted, joins an estimable band of Catholics banned by their bishops from the sacraments, or condemned for a lack of loyalty or fidelity, who in the end proved to be heroic daughters and sons of the Church.
Of course the Mother of all such insubordination is the maiden Joan of Arc, first excommunicated for her refusal to recant dangerous views, then condemned for heresy and witchcraft, and finally burned at the stake–only to be posthumously “rehabilitated” and declared patron saint of France by popular acclamation.
For better or worse, somewhere at the core of our Catholic tradition is this paradox: many of our tradition’s heroes have suffered martyrdom or at least banishment, and not a little of that suffering has been at Catholic hands.
So running afoul of the Catholic hierarchy by itself proves nothing, except that the hierarchy has a problem with someone’s thought, speech, writing, or behavior. Which may in fact be their own problem, not the Church’s
Sunday, October 31, 2010
#309b: The President's Religion and Our Future
EXCERPT:
The preoccupation with a president’s religion is somewhat recent. When Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952, for example, he was not even baptized. But once Billy Graham persuaded him to be baptized, presidents ever since have felt obliged to offer some explanation of their faith.
But here we have something new: people questioning a president’s faith even after his public explanations. Are they convinced he is lying -- or have they merely ignored his own words? If so, their ignorance is hardly innocent. Ignoring Obama at Notre Dame, at least, required very big blinders and very thick earplugs.
These same folks even question of Obama’s citizenship, despite the conclusive evidence of his Hawaiian birth. Some, confused by his name (especially “Hussein”), thought he was an Arab. Some might even know his father was Muslim. But none of these facts are relevant.
What worries me here is that deliberately ignoring the relevant facts fuels unspecified fears, prejudices, and even hatreds. Questioning Obama’s religion doesn't really matter, even if one believes him to be Muslim, unless one fears or suspects Muslims in general.
The battle over the so-called "Ground Zero mosque” or attacks on mosques in Boston or Minnesota don't matter either, except that millions of Americans remain deliberately ignorant about Islam, persisting in bigoted stereotypes that echo America's history of the anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-immigrant nativism, and racism.
I have long written that America’s future is to become the world’s most multi-religious society. But that future will challenge white Christian Americans to accept their national destiny: they began as the dominant demographic group in America, but soon they will themselves become a minority.
When that happens, white Christian Americans can only hope that the new majority will be less intolerant and belligerent to them than they have been to others. But for that to happen, our national ignorance must end.
This is a multipronged challenge. Our schoolchildren need to study religion. Adult Americans need to become more knowledgeable of their own and others’ faiths. We must not let fear or flag-waving dupe us into ignorant rants, seduce us into fake crusades against fabricated threats, or stain the honor of our heroic youth with lies, as if an ignorant people will be placated or even pleased.
Catholic tradition has long acknowledged that some wrongdoers are incapable of understanding the immorality of their actions. The condition is called "invincible ignorance." we can only hope and pray it will not become a national contagion.
The preoccupation with a president’s religion is somewhat recent. When Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952, for example, he was not even baptized. But once Billy Graham persuaded him to be baptized, presidents ever since have felt obliged to offer some explanation of their faith.
But here we have something new: people questioning a president’s faith even after his public explanations. Are they convinced he is lying -- or have they merely ignored his own words? If so, their ignorance is hardly innocent. Ignoring Obama at Notre Dame, at least, required very big blinders and very thick earplugs.
These same folks even question of Obama’s citizenship, despite the conclusive evidence of his Hawaiian birth. Some, confused by his name (especially “Hussein”), thought he was an Arab. Some might even know his father was Muslim. But none of these facts are relevant.
What worries me here is that deliberately ignoring the relevant facts fuels unspecified fears, prejudices, and even hatreds. Questioning Obama’s religion doesn't really matter, even if one believes him to be Muslim, unless one fears or suspects Muslims in general.
The battle over the so-called "Ground Zero mosque” or attacks on mosques in Boston or Minnesota don't matter either, except that millions of Americans remain deliberately ignorant about Islam, persisting in bigoted stereotypes that echo America's history of the anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-immigrant nativism, and racism.
I have long written that America’s future is to become the world’s most multi-religious society. But that future will challenge white Christian Americans to accept their national destiny: they began as the dominant demographic group in America, but soon they will themselves become a minority.
When that happens, white Christian Americans can only hope that the new majority will be less intolerant and belligerent to them than they have been to others. But for that to happen, our national ignorance must end.
This is a multipronged challenge. Our schoolchildren need to study religion. Adult Americans need to become more knowledgeable of their own and others’ faiths. We must not let fear or flag-waving dupe us into ignorant rants, seduce us into fake crusades against fabricated threats, or stain the honor of our heroic youth with lies, as if an ignorant people will be placated or even pleased.
Catholic tradition has long acknowledged that some wrongdoers are incapable of understanding the immorality of their actions. The condition is called "invincible ignorance." we can only hope and pray it will not become a national contagion.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
#309a: Is Invincible Ignorance Catching On?
EXCERPT:
I cringe every time I pass the monument. It stands outside a town hall just north of Boston. It honors a native son killed in action in Iraq in 2006, but the inscription begins "The Global War on Terror."
It’s a lie, of course: Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, posed no terror threat to us: no Al Qaeda, no Taliban, no WMDs. This inscription disserves that young serviceman by defrauding his sacrifice. To me, this inscription is symbolic of a frightening tendency to bend reality to our feelings while stubbornly ignoring the facts.
There is, of course a lot of comment these days about the ignorance of Americans. The recent Pew research study found that, in an age when so much of politics is faith-based, most Americans suffer broad ignorance about religion -- their own as well as the faith of others.
After 35 years in ministry I'm not surprised: I still meet people who think "Christ" is Jesus' last name, who think he spoke Latin at the Last Supper and wrote the Ten Commandments. For many years I thought this simply sad, but I now agree with James Carroll that -- especially since 9/11 -- such ignorance is dangerous.
Lacking the facts about faith, people often fill the gap with stereotypes and prejudice. Ignorance breeds bigotry, and bigotry easily feel fuels hatred and violence.
Such ignorance is partly understandable, even natural. After all, people should learn about religions the same place they learn everything else--in school. But American schools have jumped from one radical extreme to the other without ever finding of a moderate, happy medium.
Before 1962 US public schools actually practiced religion--specifically, Protestantism. Daily, my first grade teacher read the King James Bible (then prohibited for Catholics), then led the "Protestant version" of the Lord's Prayer. No one questioned having us Catholics and Jews join a de facto Protestant prayer service.
After the Supreme Court outlawed such prayer in 1962, schools swung to the opposite extreme: they stopped practicing religion and began ignoring it. They never considered that the most appropriate way for public schools to treat something as important as religion was neither to practice it or to ignore it, but to study it like any of the subject.
The result is obvious: Americans grow up learning language, math, history, and science, but most Americans never learn anything about religion. Some receive indoctrination in their own church. Some get to study religion at religious schools, or comparative religions at college. But few Americans can write a full page about a religion not their own.
Unfortunately the First Amendment, intended to guarantee everyone freedom to practice their own religion, is often misused as an excuse to reject religion -- not one religion, but religion in general -- from the public forum. As long as this misuse persists, so too will our ignorance of religion.
But our schools’ failure does not explain why Americans are ignorant, not only about religious history, but also about the facts of current religious issues--especially since religious issues get so much media attention.
I cringe every time I pass the monument. It stands outside a town hall just north of Boston. It honors a native son killed in action in Iraq in 2006, but the inscription begins "The Global War on Terror."
It’s a lie, of course: Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, posed no terror threat to us: no Al Qaeda, no Taliban, no WMDs. This inscription disserves that young serviceman by defrauding his sacrifice. To me, this inscription is symbolic of a frightening tendency to bend reality to our feelings while stubbornly ignoring the facts.
There is, of course a lot of comment these days about the ignorance of Americans. The recent Pew research study found that, in an age when so much of politics is faith-based, most Americans suffer broad ignorance about religion -- their own as well as the faith of others.
After 35 years in ministry I'm not surprised: I still meet people who think "Christ" is Jesus' last name, who think he spoke Latin at the Last Supper and wrote the Ten Commandments. For many years I thought this simply sad, but I now agree with James Carroll that -- especially since 9/11 -- such ignorance is dangerous.
Lacking the facts about faith, people often fill the gap with stereotypes and prejudice. Ignorance breeds bigotry, and bigotry easily feel fuels hatred and violence.
Such ignorance is partly understandable, even natural. After all, people should learn about religions the same place they learn everything else--in school. But American schools have jumped from one radical extreme to the other without ever finding of a moderate, happy medium.
Before 1962 US public schools actually practiced religion--specifically, Protestantism. Daily, my first grade teacher read the King James Bible (then prohibited for Catholics), then led the "Protestant version" of the Lord's Prayer. No one questioned having us Catholics and Jews join a de facto Protestant prayer service.
After the Supreme Court outlawed such prayer in 1962, schools swung to the opposite extreme: they stopped practicing religion and began ignoring it. They never considered that the most appropriate way for public schools to treat something as important as religion was neither to practice it or to ignore it, but to study it like any of the subject.
The result is obvious: Americans grow up learning language, math, history, and science, but most Americans never learn anything about religion. Some receive indoctrination in their own church. Some get to study religion at religious schools, or comparative religions at college. But few Americans can write a full page about a religion not their own.
Unfortunately the First Amendment, intended to guarantee everyone freedom to practice their own religion, is often misused as an excuse to reject religion -- not one religion, but religion in general -- from the public forum. As long as this misuse persists, so too will our ignorance of religion.
But our schools’ failure does not explain why Americans are ignorant, not only about religious history, but also about the facts of current religious issues--especially since religious issues get so much media attention.
Friday, October 8, 2010
#308: A Conversation With the World
EXCERPT:
The seismic jolt of Vatican Council II (1962-1965) meant little to Americans Catholics until the first shockwave reached our shores—exactly 45 years ago this week.
This is the moment when Pope Paul VI broke all tradition and precedent (the pope had been, quite literally, the “prisoner of the Vatican” for the previous 94 years) by traveling across the Atlantic to deliver his Church’s message to the world.
The scene was the stuff of high theater...
…Now this “Pilgrim Pope” stood before the General Assembly, the first Pope to visit the New World, and spoke in French.
Paul appealed to outlaw all nuclear weapons, issued his famous cry: "Jamais plus de guerre!”(Never any more War). He also urged more concerted action on hunger. And he even advised the UN to admit Red China.
Most surprising and significant of all, however, were the Pope's extended remarks about his own Church and the UN itself. He began by giving the Catholic point of view:
Like a messenger who, after a long journey, finally succeeds in delivering the letter which has been entrusted to him, so we appreciate the good fortune of this moment, however brief, which fulfills a desire nourished in the heart for nearly twenty centuries. For, as you well remember, we are very ancient; we here represent a long history; we here celebrate the epilogue of a weary pilgrimage in search of a conversation with the entire world, ever since the command was given to us: Go and bring the good news to all peoples.
Next, he challenged the UN to an extraordinarily exalted view of its own mission:
Now, you represent all peoples...The edifice which you have constructed must never fall; it must be perfected and made equal to the needs which world history will present. You mark a stage in the development of mankind from which retreat must never be admitted, but from which it is necessary that advance be made.
The Pope paused. Then, in the measured tones of the career diplomat he was, he sharpened his point by comparing the UN's global mission to Catholicism's:
You are a bridge between peoples. You are a network of relations between states. We would almost say that your chief characteristic is a reflection, as it were, in the temporal field, of what our Catholic Church aspires to be in the spiritual field: unique and universal. Your vocation is to make brothers not only of some, but of all people.
Finally, he argued that Catholicism’s concern with humanity's spiritual needs should link, rather than separate, the two organizations:
This edifice which you are constructing does not rest upon merely material and earthly foundations, for thus it would be a house built upon sand; above all, it is based on our own consciences. The hour has struck for our "conversion," for personal transformation, for interior renewal. We must get used to thinking of humanity in a new way...With a new manner, too, of conceiving the paths of history and the destiny of the world...The edifice of modern civilization must be built upon spiritual principles which alone can, not only support it, but even illuminate and animate it.
It was October 4, 1965. Vatican II would end just eight weeks later, but until now it had remained a distant blip on most Americans’ radar. Millions saw the TV coverage of the pope landing in New York, the pope meeting the President of the United States, the pope before the UN, the Pope saying mass at Yankee Stadium. Paul had used this speech to announce the Council’s agenda in the most public way imaginable.
The implications of the seismic shift we have witnessed in Catholicism since Vatican II cannot be fully understood without accounting for the prior model being left behind. What was it, exactly, that was being changed, lost, abandoned, rejected? And what was supposed to replace it?
The world has never had a global religion. In fact, the overwhelming majority of religions in human history have never extended beyond the clan, tribe, or local region where they began…In all of history, in fact, only a handful of religions have expanded beyond local culture to become known as "world religions." But even these show marked geographic and cultural limitations...
Christianity did attempt global status once, but its bid was based on a faulty strategy that ultimately limited and even weakened its influence. The turning point was the conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity in the early 4th century. Christianity...now adopted Greco-Roman culture as its sponsor…Christendom, became the cultural vehicle for expanding the Christian mission. As this European culture was exported across the globe via colonialism, Christianity went with it, replacing native religions wherever it went.
...But the strategy was doomed, because the attempt to Europeanize the whole world could never succeed.
Indeed, the last half of the 20th century saw…The movement of the Third World to throw off colonialism and its alien European culture
At Vatican II, the Catholic Church, in the very act of abandoning Eurocentrism, committed itself to a second attempt at making Christianity the world's first global religion. This time, however, the strategy was quite different: if there could be no global culture, if Eurocentrism was dead, then the alternative was obvious. Christianity must evolve into a religion tied to no one culture, capable of opening and adapting to any surroundings, aiming to influence without first dominating.
In Paul’s vision (inherited from John XXIII), if Vatican II's global gamble succeeded, Catholicism would lead Christianity into a position of new prominence. Already the world's largest religion, Christianity would become the world's first truly global religion -- the "Light of Nations" (Lumen Gentium), shining with vast influence as the world's "expert on humanity" to promote a "civilization of love" and a “culture of life.” If Vatican II failed, Catholicism could lose its own identity.
Forty-five years later, that gamble’s outcome remains unknown. But the “conversation with the entire world” evoked by Paul VI has blossomed, under the papacies of John-Paul II and Benedict XVI, into a permanent dialog aimed at the good of all humankind.
The seismic jolt of Vatican Council II (1962-1965) meant little to Americans Catholics until the first shockwave reached our shores—exactly 45 years ago this week.
This is the moment when Pope Paul VI broke all tradition and precedent (the pope had been, quite literally, the “prisoner of the Vatican” for the previous 94 years) by traveling across the Atlantic to deliver his Church’s message to the world.
The scene was the stuff of high theater...
…Now this “Pilgrim Pope” stood before the General Assembly, the first Pope to visit the New World, and spoke in French.
Paul appealed to outlaw all nuclear weapons, issued his famous cry: "Jamais plus de guerre!”(Never any more War). He also urged more concerted action on hunger. And he even advised the UN to admit Red China.
Most surprising and significant of all, however, were the Pope's extended remarks about his own Church and the UN itself. He began by giving the Catholic point of view:
Like a messenger who, after a long journey, finally succeeds in delivering the letter which has been entrusted to him, so we appreciate the good fortune of this moment, however brief, which fulfills a desire nourished in the heart for nearly twenty centuries. For, as you well remember, we are very ancient; we here represent a long history; we here celebrate the epilogue of a weary pilgrimage in search of a conversation with the entire world, ever since the command was given to us: Go and bring the good news to all peoples.
Next, he challenged the UN to an extraordinarily exalted view of its own mission:
Now, you represent all peoples...The edifice which you have constructed must never fall; it must be perfected and made equal to the needs which world history will present. You mark a stage in the development of mankind from which retreat must never be admitted, but from which it is necessary that advance be made.
The Pope paused. Then, in the measured tones of the career diplomat he was, he sharpened his point by comparing the UN's global mission to Catholicism's:
You are a bridge between peoples. You are a network of relations between states. We would almost say that your chief characteristic is a reflection, as it were, in the temporal field, of what our Catholic Church aspires to be in the spiritual field: unique and universal. Your vocation is to make brothers not only of some, but of all people.
Finally, he argued that Catholicism’s concern with humanity's spiritual needs should link, rather than separate, the two organizations:
This edifice which you are constructing does not rest upon merely material and earthly foundations, for thus it would be a house built upon sand; above all, it is based on our own consciences. The hour has struck for our "conversion," for personal transformation, for interior renewal. We must get used to thinking of humanity in a new way...With a new manner, too, of conceiving the paths of history and the destiny of the world...The edifice of modern civilization must be built upon spiritual principles which alone can, not only support it, but even illuminate and animate it.
It was October 4, 1965. Vatican II would end just eight weeks later, but until now it had remained a distant blip on most Americans’ radar. Millions saw the TV coverage of the pope landing in New York, the pope meeting the President of the United States, the pope before the UN, the Pope saying mass at Yankee Stadium. Paul had used this speech to announce the Council’s agenda in the most public way imaginable.
The implications of the seismic shift we have witnessed in Catholicism since Vatican II cannot be fully understood without accounting for the prior model being left behind. What was it, exactly, that was being changed, lost, abandoned, rejected? And what was supposed to replace it?
The world has never had a global religion. In fact, the overwhelming majority of religions in human history have never extended beyond the clan, tribe, or local region where they began…In all of history, in fact, only a handful of religions have expanded beyond local culture to become known as "world religions." But even these show marked geographic and cultural limitations...
Christianity did attempt global status once, but its bid was based on a faulty strategy that ultimately limited and even weakened its influence. The turning point was the conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity in the early 4th century. Christianity...now adopted Greco-Roman culture as its sponsor…Christendom, became the cultural vehicle for expanding the Christian mission. As this European culture was exported across the globe via colonialism, Christianity went with it, replacing native religions wherever it went.
...But the strategy was doomed, because the attempt to Europeanize the whole world could never succeed.
Indeed, the last half of the 20th century saw…The movement of the Third World to throw off colonialism and its alien European culture
At Vatican II, the Catholic Church, in the very act of abandoning Eurocentrism, committed itself to a second attempt at making Christianity the world's first global religion. This time, however, the strategy was quite different: if there could be no global culture, if Eurocentrism was dead, then the alternative was obvious. Christianity must evolve into a religion tied to no one culture, capable of opening and adapting to any surroundings, aiming to influence without first dominating.
In Paul’s vision (inherited from John XXIII), if Vatican II's global gamble succeeded, Catholicism would lead Christianity into a position of new prominence. Already the world's largest religion, Christianity would become the world's first truly global religion -- the "Light of Nations" (Lumen Gentium), shining with vast influence as the world's "expert on humanity" to promote a "civilization of love" and a “culture of life.” If Vatican II failed, Catholicism could lose its own identity.
Forty-five years later, that gamble’s outcome remains unknown. But the “conversation with the entire world” evoked by Paul VI has blossomed, under the papacies of John-Paul II and Benedict XVI, into a permanent dialog aimed at the good of all humankind.
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