Times they are a changing(1)

From time to time we all need to look around and see where we are going. We need to do so in the Church as well as in our personal lives. At my age we will find that things have changed not once but many times and we must constantly reevaluate these changes.For the next few days I plan to share my vision of how the church in Florida has changed in thr last fifty years. I would love to get your feedback.

I said before that one can never go back, but an institution and its leaders can go backward. To my mind the community that is the Church in Central Florida has not gone backward. Its members are still active and committed to living and sharing their faith in their communities. Many priests and many parishes, despite the handcuffs of a rigid ecclesiastical bureaucracy, are doing truly wonderful things to help the poor and needy, the migrants and the homeless, to support missions abroad, to

Listen and get involved

I forget now what I wanted to tell you! How often do we find ourselves in this position? It can be very frustrating as we lose a thought that we felt a moment ago was significant enough to share it with another. To make it worse we were probably interrupted by someone sharing a valuable insight into the dog's need to take a walk! Why do people always interrupt me on those rare occasions when I'm thinking? These rare thoughts are such precious gems of wisdom so thoughtlessly squandered.

And we then waste so much time trying to regain that momentary, fleeting vision, so fleeting that we did not have time to put it in words. I can drive all the way to Orlando trying to recall it without success, unless I'm distracted ny my wife's screaming: "Billie, the light is red". Now I'll never have the opportunity to share with Mario Rubio how to solve the country's economic problems.

It's a sad fact that brilliant minds cannot get a hearing when boring blow-hards grab the floor and

laicization & bishops

We’ve talked about “laicization” and the dismissal of priests from the active ministry, but it might be interesting to dig a little deeper into what the implications are. Back in grade school I learned that three sacraments cannot be repeated, they are conferred permanently. As I recall the image was that they put an “indelible mark or stain” upon our soul, somewhat “like indelible ink”. These sacraments were Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders. Their effects were irreversible. I’m not a Graham Greene fan and I’m not suggesting that he is an expert on the details of Catholic sacramental theology, but I seem to remember that this was a basic element in his depiction of the “whiskey priest”. This was a distinction between “ex opere operato” and “ex opera operantis” in traditional theology, a distinction between the work done and the one who did the work.

So it seems that laicization does not deprive the priest of his priestly powers, specifically the power to preside at the celebration of the Eucharist, it merely forbids him to do so. Given that the penalty is usually imposed as a consequence of the priest’s disobedience to an order from a superior, bishop or pope, such a prohibition is unlikely to prevent him from doing what his conscience tells him is

Canonizing John Paul II

Apart from the fact that we are all called to be saints and that canonization merely recognizes officially that the subject has heroically fulfilled his responsibilities in the role to which God has called him, the process of canonization is primarily intended to present the subject as one worthy of emulation by the faithful. The Vatican has announced that Pope John Paul II will be beatified (the first step to canonization) in the near future, probably on May 1st.

Several questions arise about the whole process which has been fast-tracked by dispensing with the traditional delay of several years before beginning the investigation of the candidate’s life and

Church leakage : personal & institutional failures

A recent report by the Pew Foundation says that one in three Catholic school graduates have left the Church and that 10% of the members of Protestant churches are former Catholics. Somehow I doubt that 10% of Catholics are former Protestants. The leakage figures are alarming and exceed my own experience in Florida, but they may be true nationally. If 30% of a school’s enrolment each year dropped out before graduation we would demand a shake-up in the school’s staffing. But that is what these figures tell us about the Church. Either the staff or the system is at fault  (or  both)..

The Pew report on “:Leaving Catholicism” shows that half of those who left the Catholic Church joined other churches. Of these “ 71% said that they left the Church because their spiritual needs were not being met.” Richard Gaillardetz, professor of theology at Toledo University, explains this as “because the quality of Church life is poor and church leadership is inattentive to their real pastoral concerns.” By “quality” he seems to refer to

Laicization of a priest.

This week Fr. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest, a Vietnam veteran and a well-known peace activist, was notified by his superiors in the Maryknoll order that he must withdraw his views on the ordination of women as priests and cease all involvement in, support of this cause. If not he would be reduced to the lay state and excommunicated from the Church. He would cease to be a priest and no longer  allowed to celebrate the Eucharist. This was an order that had come down from Rome.

 Without mentioning that Pope Benedict XVI has written that man's conscience is the final arbitrer of the morality of his action, superior even to directives from the Pope, and that one is bound to obey it, this was the order. When he was ordained

Little Details in the Liturgy

I have commented before on how the Liturgy has lost the joy and spontaneity of the celebration of God’s love that prevailed in the post-Vatican II era. Everything seems to be structured, restricted, mandated, every action choreographed. We seem to be returning to a meticulously rehearsed play where the congregation is once again an audience rather than participants.

A couple of details in recent weeks have occasioned my unease. It started some weeks ago when our pastor suggested that we sing parts of the Mass in Latin, the Kyrie (actually Greek), the Gloria, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. I’m not sure why we changed. Since we have many Hispanic Catholics, singing some parts of the mass in Spanish would make sense, but other than the priests and a few octogenarians, no one knows Latin. Of course it might encourage the

What you can do if no one will listen…..

We have all been frustrated at times by injustice that we feel incapable of correcting. Not merely do we feel powerless to challenge the system ourselves but we have no idea how to get anyone to listen to us.

I ran into this system with our local city authorities recently. The city refused to return s deposit I had made to get my utilities hooked up in spite of an admitted agreement to return the deposit after a specified period of prompt payment of my bill. When the time came the city manager was very pleasant, admitted that we had a contract but said the city council had decided not to live up to its

Why am I a Catholic?

After one has spent pages detailing the failures of the Church, primarily the hierarchy, to live up to the ideals of Christianity, it is necessary to say why I am still a practicing Catholic. Every day I run across people who ask “why if you feel that way are you still a Catholic?” The simple answer is Peter’s: “Lord, to whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life!” But those words are increasingly difficult to distinguish in all the clamor and debate today. As one realizes that the Church only gives us the principles but we must make our own decisions as to their application, right and wrong are no longer simple obedience to another human, be he bishop or pope. Before God it is my decision, not theirs. And that is what my faith comes down to: it’s God and me and no one else

There are others who have supporting roles: my parents who shared their faith with me and my brothers as we recited the family rosary each night, my god-parents, my aunt and uncle, and some priests from my childhood. And my wife by the love she shows me each day, a tangible image of God’s unconditional love. But my Christian dignity is as an individual for whom Christ died and I am privileged to make the choice to respond to His love in love and trust and faith.

That’s not exactly the question I set out to answer. I suppose some may feel I’m too lazy to change or too stubborn or too dumb, that I don’t know any better. I don’t! I believe that Christ is the divine Redeemer, the Son of God. I’m not even sure what that means, which is what faith means, but I believe. And I believe that He lives not just with the Father in Heaven but also in His Church, His community of believers here on earth.

Trust betrayed

The NCR reported last week that Fr. James Connell, vice-chancellor of the Diocese of Milwaukee Wisconsin diocese, had publicly spoken from the pulpit and apologized to his parishioners on November 13-14 for his failure to address the issue of clerical pedophilia. His remarks evinced the frustration felt by many priests about the scandals of the last decade. Hopefully many more priests will follow his lead. Many of the abuses predate that period but the public revelation of the scandals, not just the abuse but the prevarications and outright lies by members of the hierarchy at every level in covering up the crimes of their fellow priests and bishops, is what is most heinous and most distressing to the ordinary Catholic.

Some apologists try to excuse these crimes by saying that it was a different time with different standards. The same argument would justify the massacre at Wounded Knee, lynchings by the Klan, Nero’s persecutions or the Holocaust. Let’s just stop a minute and think things through to their logical conclusion.