NCR, Daniel Burke, 10-04-2010 “Catholics Face ‘Mutiny’  over Teachings on Gay Marriage’

Catholics face 'mutiny' over teachings on gay marriage

By Daniel Burke, Religion News Service

WASHINGTON -- For 13 years, Fr. Joseph Palacios lived, prayed, and studied with the Jesuits. But he left the Roman Catholic order in 2005 because he would not profess a vow of obedience to the pope. Now, the 59-year-old priest and adjunct professor at Georgetown University is again at odds with the church’s hierarchy, this time on one of its signature issues: the definition of marriage.

Ray Bronk’s Observations

The Luddite tendencies of official RC teaching never cease to amaze me. That homosexuality--naturally occurring in the human species forever--should be declared "unnatural", despite the findings of medical science, is an example of the intellectual gymnastics required by the church's teachings on sexuality. The vehemence with which the "official" church teaches that contraception; remarriage after divorce; married priests and bishops; ordination of women and GLBT persons; true equality for GLBT people; and abortion are all seriously sinful and lead potentially to eternal damnation make one wonder what the "Good News of God in Jesus Christ" is. The radical obsession with and prominence of sexuality in the official teaching of the church make one wonder if the Incarnation took place in order to control people's sex lives. Surely the "Good News" is more about justice, peace and love than it is about exclusion and damnation. Fortunately for the church, the majority of practicing Catholics in the US reject most of this teaching in the expression of their opinions and in their daily lives.

Welcoming former Roman Catholics into the Episcopal Church

18. X. 2010

From the desk of the Rev. Prof. Harold R. Bronk, Jr.:

I believe that it is time for the Anglican Communion and, most especially, the Episcopal Church in the US, to welcome into this branch of ‘Christ’s holy catholic church’ those disaffected former Roman Catholics who are no longer able in good conscience to remain in the Roman Communion.

Pope Benedict XVI, by offering disaffected ex-Anglicans a place in the Roman Catholic Communion, has raised the issue—indirectly—of what we Anglicans can do about disaffected former Roman Catholics without proselytizing.

In an article in the National Catholic Reporter, January 11, 2010, Fr. Richard McBrien, Professor of Theology at Notre Dame University, wrote: “In late February 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a major survey that found that nearly a third of U.S. Catholics have left the Catholic church. Some have joined other churches, but most have simply slipped from active membership in the Catholic church to become part of a group once described as "lapsed Catholics." This means that about 10 percent of all Americans today are former Catholics. “ It also means that most of the some 20,000,000 former Roman Catholics have not yet found a spiritual home.

In the Episcopal Church they will find a reformed Catholic church (the third largest Christian church in the world) that already exemplifies many of the characteristics that they had hoped to see in the Roman Catholic Church as a result of the Second Vatican Council:

·      A democratic church in which every office holder—lay or clergy—is elected by the people. From the parish priest to the diocesan bishop to the national presiding bishop, all are elected by the chosen representatives of the clergy and laity.

·      The Eucharistic liturgy with the Sacrament of Holy Communion as the principal act of worship on Sundays and major saints’ days. All baptized Christians are welcome to receive Holy Communion. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is available on an ‘all may; some should; no one must’ basis.

·      The freedom of clergy to marry.

·      Admission to Holy Communion of divorced and remarried people without annulment of the previous marriage.

·      Full equality of women including their admission to all of the ordained ministries of the Church: diaconate; priesthood; and episcopate.

·      Full equality of all people regardless of their sexual orientation.

·      Artificial contraception is not considered to be sinful; the freedom of women to follow their own informed consciences in regard to the termination of an unwanted pregnancy is approved by a majority of Episcopalians and is not censured by the church. Children and adults are taught the Christian faith in order to apply it to their own lives; priests and trained spiritual directors are available to assist them in their decision-making.

The suggestion that I make above is also based on my own personal experience of both Communions. I was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1954. I left the ministry of the Episcopal Church in 1959, became a Roman Catholic, and—after four and a half years of postgraduate study at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Tuebingen, Germany—was ordained as a married Roman Catholic priest in Germany. I subsequently returned to the Episcopal Church and was restored to the Episcopal priesthood in 1992. In Tuebingen, I studied with a number of prominent Roman Catholic theologians, including Prof. Hans Kueng and then Prof. Josef Ratzinger; I attended a session of the Second Vatican Council and followed its deliberations closely; and I have continued to have many Roman Catholic priest friends and acquaintances, theologians among them. I share with many of my Roman Catholic friends—both practicing and no longer practicing—a concern for the spiritual welfare of those who have left the Roman Communion but who have not found a church within which to continue their Catholic faith and practice. I believe that ignorance of the reformed Catholic nature of our church prevents many former Roman Catholics from finding a new spiritual home among us. I believe that we have an obligation to address their plight and that the Pope’s offer to former Anglicans allows us to reciprocate in the same spirit of concern—on our part—for the welfare of former Roman Catholics.

I propose that the Episcopal Church engage in a campaign at the national, diocesan, and parish level to inform former Roman Catholics that “we recognize [them] as [members] of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, and we receive [them] into the fellowship of this Communion”. Former Roman Catholics already in our church, including clergy, could be enlisted to help others understand the needs of former Roman Catholics as they seek further information about our church. I—and, I am sure, others—have conducted workshops and seminars to explain the similarities and differences between our church and the Roman Catholic Church. Most of us, I am sure, would be willing to do that at the diocesan and parochial level as we welcome former Roman Catholics to become part of our church.

Using the figures provided by Fr. McBrien, there are c. 800,000 disaffected Roman Catholics in eastern Massachusetts [i.e., within the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts] most of whom have not found a spiritual home.  

There is no need to create separate ‘ordinariates’ [as the Roman Church has done for former Anglicans] for our former Roman Catholic sisters and brothers—they will feel at home with the liturgy of the Episcopal Church: it is practically identical to the liturgy that they have become accustomed to in the last three generations since Vatican II.

  

Response to an article by Daniel Burke, National Catholic Reporter, 10-04-2010 on RC bishops attempt to prevent legal marriages for LGBT people

The Luddite tendencies of official RC teaching never cease to amaze me. That homosexuality--naturally occurring in the human species forever--should be declared "unnatural", despite the findings of medical science, is an example of the intellectual gymnastics required by the church's teachings on sexuality. The vehemence with which the "official" church teaches that contraception; remarriage after divorce; married priests and bishops; ordination of women and GLBT persons; true equality for GLBT people; and abortion are all seriously sinful and lead potentially to eternal damnation make one wonder what the "Good News of God in Jesus Christ" is. The radical obsession with and prominence of sexuality in the official teaching of the church make one wonder if the Incarnation took place in order to control people's sex lives. Surely the "Good News" is more about justice, peace and love than it is about exclusion and damnation. Fortunately for the church, the majority of practicing Catholics in the US reject most of this teaching in the expression of their opinions and in their daily lives.

Response to John Allen’s article in NCR, April 2, 2010

John, I don't know if you read these comments; I hope you do. 'Is there room for a middle ground?' you ask. Let us continue to hope so because if there isn't then rational discourse will have disappeared along with a respectful listening to those with whom one disagrees. True knowledge depends on speaking what we believe to be the truth, listening to others' arguments, revising our opinions, and articulating the next level. In rational discourse, there is no 'final' truth; only increasingly accurate approximations of truth. But, then, there is also no final act of justice, no final loving.
After the Second Vatican Council, the Pope and the papal curia could have moved forward toward decentralization and greater democratization of the church. None of the post conciliar popes have chosen to do that. The present crisis around the pope's possible involvement in the covering up of priestly sex abuse when he was the archbishop of Munich and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has to do, in part, with the separation of the figure of the pope from the life of the person who becomes pope. The donning of the white apparel from the moment of his election (a 16th century custom); the changing of the name of the person elected (not an ancient custom); the seclusion of the pope as the 'prisoner of the Vatican' up until Woytyla; and the radical separation of the pope from the ordinary life of people all contribute to the mystification of the papacy. Josef Ratzinger, like his predecessors from the middle of the 19th century, has disappeared, has been obliterated by His Holiness, the Holy Father. The demythologization of the papacy would help us to accept the mistakes in judgment made by the person before his election to the papal office as well as mistakes made in office. 'Papal infallibility' is so carefully proscribed as to be almost non-existent; it certainly does not apply to either ordinary, every day utterances of the pope or even ordinary official statements on faith and morals. Admission of errors made during his administration of the archdiocese of Munich and his prefecture at the CDF would go a long way toward helping us to understand better the man who has been called to the highest office in the largest Christian Church in the world—and to support him with our prayers.

Response to Fr. Michael Crosby NCR Mar 30, 2010

Reading Fr. Crosby’s response to Sr. Sandra Schneider’s article on ‘ministerial religious life’ was one of those ‘grace-filled’ moments that we enjoy all too rarely. As a secular priest who has no vocation for celibacy, poverty, or obedience in the ‘religious order’ sense of those terms, whose ministry has been mostly teaching at a university, I read Sr. Sandra’s articles [devoured them, I guess] at the level of spiritual reading. She caused me to reflect upon my own ‘ministerial’ life as priest and professor. Is my life less ‘ministerial’, less ‘religious’ than the lives of my sisters and brothers in ‘religious orders’? I hope not. And now, Fr. Michael’s article in response to Sr. Sandra’s. What I find is a ministerial religious continuum along which we all find ourselves—and that our lives together form a messy kind of ‘community’ along Fr. Michael’s fourth model.

There is a tension between the universal call for all followers of Jesus to minister to others according to their needs, and the institutionalization and control of those ministries by a hierarchical, authoritarian, patriarchal sector of the church. At least since post-Constantinian times, the church seems to consist of at least two ‘types’ of Christians: ‘conventional’ Christians who uninterestedly and minimally do what they are required to do in order to maintain their ‘membership’; and ‘intentional’ Christians who see themselves as engaged in their ministries because they are religious. Francis of Assisi is a good example of the latter. As a layman, he did not seek official recognition by the institutional church but was persuaded to receive tonsure thereby coming under the jurisdiction of the church. This can be seen as the church using its power to dominate and control a religious movement that challenged the institutional church’s authority.

I agree with Fr. Michael’s criticism of the anachronistical ‘proof-text’ approach to justifying later developments. Whatever ‘leaving one’s possessions and not marrying’ may have meant among the early followers of Jesus, it is difficult to trace a direct connection between that and the development of the lives of the ’desert fathers [mothers?]’ and other forms of ascetic life, largely in the eastern church. Despite pre-Benedictine ‘religious’ examples [e.g., pre-Benedictine Farfa in Italy], the Benedictine model dominated the development of ‘religious’ life in the western church; and it was not focused on ministry to the world outside the monastery. Women’s religious orders followed the same model. Not until the thirteenth century do we find Francis and Dominic founding orders designed to ‘minister’ to the world outside the cloister. And women were not permitted to follow their brothers in that vocation: Franciscan and Dominican nuns were required to live the same cloistered lives as their Benedictine sisters. The establishment of women’s religious communities to serve ‘ministerial’ needs in the world outside the convent is a relatively new development [18^th century?] and certainly one that finds inspiration in the women of the original community gathered around Jesus.

The desire [even need] that we have to ground all that we do in reference to the original ‘Jesus community’ is understandable. If we see the New Testament as being the Word of God, then we want it’s authority for what we do. But, like the early Christians who wrote the ‘New Testament’, perhaps we need to look to our experience of the living ‘Word of God’, Jesus himself, in our midst, for the inspiration of the ways in which we live out our Christian lives. As the ‘proof of the pudding is in the eating’, so the ‘proof of our Christian lives is in their living’.

Whether as ‘religious’ or just ‘intentional’ Christians, we are to live our faith daily, always seeking, being challenged, never absolutely certain about tomorrow’s Christian life, but certain that we walk ‘surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses’ and accompanied by the living ‘Word of God’, Jesus himself.

    

Response to article on excommunications in Phoenix abortion case-NCR 18 May 2010

This case is an example of how incorrect language leads to incorrect actions. The phrase "unborn child" was--apparently--used by the religious authorities to justify the excommunication of Sr. McBride and others who concurred with the termination of the pregnancy. There is no such being In either canon law or civil law as an "unborn child". An embryo or fetus only becomes a "child" upon birth; until then it is human tissue and does not qualify--either in church or civil law--for the status of being a "person". Only "persons" are subject to the law and its protections. Bishops, priests, lawyers, judges, and others involved in making critical decisions such as the one at issue in this case have a moral obligation to make "informed" recommendations in such cases. The use of the term "unborn child" reveals a level of ignorance--at best--or deliberate obfuscation that serves no one except ideologues.

The circumstances in Roman Catholic moral theology in which the death of an embryo or fetus is morally acceptable as a result of an allowable medical intervention are arcane at best and certainly beyond the expertise of most of the people engaged in the kind of emergency decision making required in most such cases. The excommunication of Sr. McBride and all others who participated in advising or performing the termination of pregnancy in this case--including the pregnant woman!--is a prime example of the kind of second guessing and uncharitable arrogance and lack of basic Christian concern for the welfare of others that characterizes many of those who are in leadership positions in the church.

Would it really have been a better expression of the Christian message to allow the pregnant woman to die along with the 11-week old embryo?

Response to an article by Fr. R. McBrien in the National Catholic Reporter c. 02-24-2010

Some interesting comments--someone seems to have hit a nerve! But, getting back to what Fr. McBrien was writing about: internal divisions within the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion--or the Roman Catholic Communion and the Anglican Catholic Church. I admire and have always benefited from Fr. McBrien's writings: theologically acute; readable; appealing to the only authority really worth having--moral authority. I agree that the Anglican Communion (the third largest Christian body in the world after the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches and which also considers itself to be an authentically Catholic Church) must deal with the problem of the status of gay and lesbian people in the Church and in the world. There are questions which, once raised, must be addressed without hesitation: slavery, civil rights, the equality of women are all examples; one could go on to hunger, disease, housing, education, medical care. The point is that the place and role--the radical equality--of gay and lesbian people in the Church and in the world was raised and continues to be raised. Martin Luther King's "Why We Can't Wait" is an eloquent response to those who would rather postpone or simply not deal with the question. Scientific knowledge and medical opinion based upon it provide no foundation for the opinion that gay and lesbian (as well as bi-sexual and transgendered) people are aberrant or perverse: they occur in nature just as heterosexual people do. The incidence of their occurrence may be less than that of heterosexual people, but they are just as "normal". Once we accept the arguments of science and medicine--and those who do not offer no convincing opposing  views--the consequences of that acceptance seem reasonably clear: discriminating against gay and lesbian people is contrary to our Christian commitment as well as their rights in a just society--or just church, for that matter. And, so, Anglicans have no choice but to insist on addressing the "homosexuality" question and responding to it out of convictions based on rational discourse as well as faith.

As to "bad" or "lapsed" Roman Catholics. My experience, admittedly anecdotal, is supported by the studies that have been done: there is little homogeneity. Some have left because of individual and personal experiences of priests or ecclesiastical authorities that angered or offended them in some way. Others have left because they could no longer in good conscience accept what was offered to them as the "church's teaching". Others have simply found the Church to be irrelevant to their lives. In my experience, most of the former Roman Catholics (or about-to-become-former Roman Catholics) with whom I have some relationship have left or considered leaving around disagreements with the church having to do with sexuality: artificial contraception; marriage of the clergy; ordination of women; admission to communion of divorced and remarried people; women's freedom of choice about abortion; and the place of lesbian and gay people in the church. According to almost all of reliable studies, the majority of practicing Roman Catholics in the US disagree with the Roman Catholic Church's teaching on all of these issues (except, perhaps, on the question of freedom to choose to terminate a pregnancy); and, yet, they remain in the church and do not consider their rejection of the church's teaching to be an obstacle to being faithful Catholics. As one of them said to me recently, "Did the Incarnation really take place in order to control people's sex lives?" Many who have left the Roman Catholic Church, however, found themselves unable to be members of a church that teaches what the Roman Catholic Church teaches.

Perhaps, in the Anglican Communion/Roman Catholic desire to find a middle ground that may increase our participation in our Lord's desire that the Church be one, we should encourage (as Pope Benedict XVI has done) Anglican dissidents to join the Roman Catholic Church and Roman Catholic dissidents to join the Anglican Communion. I have not heard the Archbishop of Canterbury explicitly welcome dissident Roman Catholics to become part of the Anglican Communion, but I am certain that he would not be displeased if that were to take place. Maybe then we would experience a cross fertilization that would eventually lead to a renewed ecumenical desire.