In addition to Mr. Davidson’s inability to present logically consistent statistics, he made a distinction when talking about the adherence of US Catholics to Church teaching that really hit a nerve with me.  He divided Church teaching into two categories: Core and periphery.

The first thing about this that bugs me is that it reflects the mind set of “Cafeteria Catholics”, those people who pick and choose which part of the faith that they think are important.  That of its own right bugs me.  But something specific bugged me even more: one of the items he put in the periphery category.

In the core section were appropriate things like the divinity of Christ, the importance of the Sacraments, the Real Presence, the virtues of faith, hope and love, the need for social justice, etc..  In the periphery section he put things like labor union support, male priests, priestly celibacy, birth control, the death penalty, and specific religious obligations (I’m assuming Holy days of obligation, no meat on Friday, etc.).

Let’s play a game, shall we?  “Which one of these is not like the others”.  We all learned it while watching Sesame Street when growing up.

The issue of only ordaining male priests is the correct answer (and partial credit goes for birth control).  While the rest of the issues have to do with jurisdictional authorities and fallible moral judgments, priestly ordination of only men is an issue that is settled by both Tradition and Scripture.  Let’s go through the items one by one (in order of least firmly defined up):

1. Priestly celibacy: This has always been a matter of Church discipline.  Not only does the Church believe that married priests are morally acceptable, for over 800 years of the Church’s 2000 year history most priests were married.  In fact, there are currently approximately 450 married priests in the US, TODAY!  These are mostly pastors from other Christian churches that converted and went through the priestly formation process.  This is obviously not an infallible issue.

2. Labor unions: While the concept of a just wage is a principle of Catholic social teaching, the specific implementation of that principle is open for much interpretation.  The traditional support of labor unions by the Church was a discretionary one based on specific priests and bishops fallible understanding of how to advance this principle.  There is nothing infallible here.

3. Church obligations: This one is fairly obvious.  The list of Church obligations changes all the time.  The number of Holy Days of Obligation is at a historic low, the no meat on Friday rule has been reduced to only being during Lent, the definition of fasting has been loosened, etc..  While we as Catholics are bound to observe the obligations in place at the time, it is self evident that the Church has the right to change what these obligations are at any time.  Again, nothing infallible here.

4. Death Penalty: While the Pope did strongly condemn the use of the Death Penalty in the western world, he also made clear that this was a moral judgment which could not be made infallible.  He made it clear that the Death Penalty was still morally licit for the purpose of protecting a society.  What the Pope questioned was whether it was necessary in western society for this purpose.  His conclusion was that it was not.  That said, this is a prudential judgment and one that can be (albeit unwisely in my opinion) argued against in good faith as a Catholic.  John Paul’s statements in this regard not only do not carry any infallible weight but there are already infallible statements by the Church stating that the death penalty can be licit in certain cases that he can not contradict.

5. Birth Control: Now we’re getting into some murky water.  While Pope Paul VI did not make a infallible declaration when he released his now infamous encyclical Humane Vitae, anytime an encyclical is released with a singular issue to be addressed, the conclusions of that encyclical should be taken pretty seriously by Catholics around the world.  Additionally there is some debate as to whether the Magisterium has previously infallibly defined birth control as morally impermissible and Humane Vitae is only a reaffirmation of that.  I’m willing to accept that this is not yet a matter of the infallible teaching of the Church, but it is very firmly taught and in my opinion is not part of the periphery of the teachings of the Church (although I am willing to allow that my opinion is debatable).

6. Male Priests:  Finally, we come to the subject that sparked this post!  I will quote from John Paul’s Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (and the entire letter is worth reading): “Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”  To me, language like “a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself” does NOT sound like the periphery.  The reality is that the teaching that men and women have different roles as defined by God and that the role of priestly ordination is a role reserved for men is a settled matter of the faith.

I went through this list not to be a thorn in anyone’s side, but to point out that there is a lot of confusion with many Catholics as to what makes up the infallible teaching of the Church, what is core but not yet infallibly defined and that which is still in development (and may never be central to the faith).  One of the key results of the Second Vatican Council was that it is important that lay members of the Church not blindly follow the directives of the Magisterium but that they embrace the teachings of the Church through a deeper understanding of these teachings.  With this revelation, the father’s of the Church knew that they were opening the door to more people actively questioning the faith.  However, we’ve gone far beyond questioning when we are unable to articulate just what is core and periphery.

I pray that we can delve more deeply into the nature of our Church and the Truths revealed to us through Christ.

As I said in my first post on Congress, there is a wide variety of sessions at Congress, something for everyone.  The trick is making sure you pick the right ones!

This was NOT the right one…

The topic was about demographics of the US Church but with an emphasis on the misperceptions that people have about the US Church.  To this end, Mr. Davidson (who wasn’t the best speaker to begin with), displayed a list of 10 myths that he intended to debunk.  I knew I was in trouble as soon as I read it.  Fully half of the myths I disagreed with being myths.

Additionally, while some of the statistics he quoted may have been interesting in their own right, most of them were VERY poorly applied.  I wish I could remember a specific example but my brain has done me a favor and specifically blocked out most of the session at this point.  The one thing I particularly member was his inconsistency in providing trend data for trend based “myths” and his use of trend based data for time static “myths”.  It might have been that he was trying to use the most “shocking” statistics and really had far more data that he didn’t share, but based on what he presented there was absolutely ZERO logical consistency to the numbers presented.

So my takeaway from this session was simple: don’t EVER go see James Davidson again.

This session, the second session with John Allen Jr., was the last session I had about the worldwide Church and the Vatican.  I was a little worried going in that Allen’s second session was going to have a lot of overlap with the first.  Again I was pleasantly surprised with the exception of a few statistics that were repeated from the first session.  Thankfully those statistics were well worth hearing twice.

This session instead of being about the Pope was about the changing demographics of the Church.  There is no better way to explain than to repeat the numbers John Allen Jr. gave us:

In 1900, there were a little under 500 million Catholics.  Of those, right around 400 million lived in the “global north” that includes Europe, western Asia (like Russia and the Holy Land), the United States and Canada.  That’s fully 80% of the Catholic population at the time.

From statistics taken in 2000, the worldwide Church as grown dramatically to 1.1 billion.  However, literally ALL of this growth as been in the “global south” that includes Latin America, Africa, and southern/eastern Asia (mostly the Philippines and India).  While the “global south” has been experiencing massive growth, the “global north” has been slowly shrinking to around 350 million.  This has resulted in a percentage drop to barely 30% of the worldwide Church.

We, particularly us Americans, like to think of the world in our terms and from our perspective.  We wonder why the Church doesn’t react more quickly to our problems.  It would do us a lot of good to think of the Church in these global terms.  There are twice as many Catholics in Mexico as their are in the US.  The US Catholic population of 67 million makes up 6% of the worldwide Church.  We are quite literally a puny minority in the Church.  As Allen put it: “Hopefully these number will help us to understand why the Pope doesn’t wake up with the problems of the US Church on his mind every morning.”

But despite these trends, the reality is that the clergy of the Church is still very much biased towards the northern Church.  While the US Catholic population is only 6% of the worldwide Church, fully 12% of bishops and 14% of priests are serving in the US.  If we think the priest shortage is bad in the US, we really have no idea.  The problem is FAR worse in other countries.  Additionally the US has twice (15) the number of cardinals than it deserves on a per-capita basis.

It is Allen’s belief (and I have no choice but to agree with him) that while the leadership may still be demographically biased to the north, it is only a matter of time before the leadership’s demographics will shift to reflect the Church as a whole.  This shift will significantly change the emphasis of the Church.

As an example of this was when the document concerning homosexuals in the priesthood came out last fall.  To much of the African clergy it felt like the Vatican was releasing a document saying “the sun is going to rise today” at 11:30 AM.  This analogy fits in two different fashions.  First of all, the global south is more conservative than the northern Church.  This is particularly true with matters of sexuality (and interreligious dialogue) so the statement seemed fairly obvious to them.  But more importantly, the issue of homosexuals just doesn’t show up on their radar.  They’ve got far bigger problems to deal with, ranging from genocide to AIDS (it’s interesting to note that the African bishops strongly support the Vatican’s ‘no condom’ policy) to Muslim repression of Christianity.  They’re dealing with matters of life and death, quite literally.  Just how ‘gay’ you can be before you’re not eligible for the priesthood seems like a trivial matter to them.

So what I took away from this session is that we as American Catholics are in strong need of a lesson in humility.  We are a very small block of the Church and need to remember that the world does not revolve around us.  We need to remember that what is important to us may not be important to the vast majority of the Catholic world.  We need to understand that what Vatican changes may have a positive impact on our local Church may have a negative impact on the Church as a whole.  We need to be generous enough to remember that our problems as American Catholics are insignificantly trivial when comparted to the problems that cause so much suffering in the larger portions of the Catholic world.

Or to steal/paraphrase from our only Catholic president:

“Ask not what the Church can do for you, but what you can do for your Church!”

One of the big takeaways I had from Fr. Reese’s session was from a story he told about an unnamed theologian who was called to Rome to talk with Benedict when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger.  The theologian was obviously nervous and was pleasantly surprised when having dinner with Ratzinger the night before the official meeting.  Ratzinger was relaxed and lighthearted.  He was making jokes and was genuinely interested in the life of the theologian.  As a result, he was a little taken back when the next day at the official meeting Ratzinger had a long litany of complaints and expected corrections.

What struck me about this is how common it is for all of us to assume that those who criticize or punish us do not love us.  As Christians and parents we fully understand the concept when we’re the ones doing the disciplining but as soon as the tables are turned we instinctively assume that the person doing the disciplining does not like us or at the very least is mean-spirited.

I think as Christians we must be VERY conscious about this natural attitude particularly in regards to matters within the Church.  If we are going to be able to spread the Christian message we must be able to live it and this includes both being able to rebuke and take rebukes with charity and love.

 

Fr. Reese is famous for having been the editor of America magazine who was basically asked/forced to step down by the Vatican for being too open to giving print space to voices critical of Church teachings.  I wasn’t originally signed up for this session because I already had two sessions regarding the Vatican and the international Church and didn’t recognize Fr. Reese’s name.  On the bus trip down while reviewing my sessions and the alternatives, I realized who Fr. Reese was and was more intrigued to go to this session.  That said, I was also very hesitant.  I didn’t want to go to a laundry airing session and was worried that’s what this session would be.  In the end I decided to go despite my fears.

I must give Fr. Reese a great deal of credit.  He was gracious towards Benedict and was very careful to give the positives of Benedict’s motivations.  In fact, it was only in the question and answer section when directly challenged in regard to his opinion on subjects which he disagreed with Benedict that he was willing to state his disagreements.  Even then he remained charitable and dealt with the issues sans any ad hominum attacks.

Fr. Reese very much concurred with John Allen Jr. that Benedict has been far more cautious that people expected and had a lot of praise for his balanced approach to date.  He also pointed out what he saw as two areas where Benedict was an improvement over John Paul.

1st he spoke to his willingness to meet with dissident theologians specifically referencing Hans Kung.  He said John Paul did not and would never have met with Kung because he worried that it would appear like he was endorsing or supporting Kung’s ideas.  Benedict on the other hand seems to have a much more open approach and feels comfortable that his words and documents will make it clear what he believes.  He doesn’t seem to fear any sense of guilt by association.  Reese saw this as a VERY positive thing.

2nd he spoke to an idea that I found very intriguing.  He said that dictators FEARED John Paul.  After they saw what John Paul was able to accomplish with Communism, they didn’t want John Paul or the Vatican even talking to people from their countries much less have John Paul come to their country.  Because of this, John Paul had a difficult time making diplomatic inroads with countries like China and Cuba later in his Papacy.  Benedict on the other hand has appeared less threatening to these dictators as can be seen by the recent talks between the Vatican and China.  The result may be very positive for the Church’s ability to make inroads in these countries and ensure that the faithful in the country are protected by civil laws.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised and very glad to have gone to this session as I saw Benedict from a different perspective than I had in the past, one that I’m glad to say only improved my appreciation for Benedict.  May God continue to guide Benedict as he leads our Church!

This was a fairly difficult session because it was so packed with information.  The others who went didn’t like the session much because Fr. Boadt was covering so much biblical territory that they had a hard time understanding.

For me, I was able to keep up… just barely.  It was a re-affirmation that there is SO much structure to the Bible that is not immediately obvious.  The psalms are clearly not just a random collection of psalms but a progression through a spiritual journey that parallels the Jewish struggle to find and defend Israel culminating in glorious praise for God.  It was quite fascinating.

The one thing I took away from this session (beyond the specific information about the structure of the psalms) was the danger of extensive scripture study.  I noticed about half way through the lecture that I hadn’t heard much about God’s authorship of the psalms.  At that point I keyed into listening for him to make any statement about God’s message in the psalms and it never came.  He frequently talked about the writer’s message, but you could tell he was talking about the human writers and seemed to attribute a lot to human development.

I’m not trying to question Fr. Boadt’s faith, particularly because you could tell from his enthusiasm for scripture that he was a man who loved God’s word, but merely to point out that we must be vigilant in not letting our knowledge de-mystify the glories of God like science so often tries to do.  It is a core teaching of our faith that God is the author of scripture.  We must not be too quick to give human motivations to what is in scripture.  Whatever human motivation there is was guided and formed by God Himself.  Whatever insights we may have are just that, insights, and that only when we are called from this earth will we have the privilege of understanding God’s glory in its fullness.

John Allen Jr. is the Vatican corespondent for the National Catholic Reporter and CNN’s Vatican corespondent.  This is a guy who KNOWS the Vatican inside and out.  It was just amazing to listen to him rattle off names and statistics and conversations and documents and meetings and offices in the Vatican and a million other things about the international Church.  I highly recommend reading his weekly column The Word From Rome and also going to see him at whatever conference you might find yourself with the opportunity to hear him speak.

In this session he talked about what Benedict was expected to do, what he has done, more importantly what he HASN’T done and what we can expect in the future.

I love learning about Vatican affairs because I learn so much about the Church that Christ founded.  It’s a REALLY BIG Church doing so much good work and interacting with so much of the world.  It also helps me to put in context the documents that get released and the newspaper headlines that are often so critical of our Church.

What I took away from this session was that all of the commentary from a year ago from various reporters about what Benedict’s election meant for the Church were very much wrong.  Benedict has been far more moderate and cautious that just about everyone gave him credit for.  He’s also been far more personable and “crowd friendly” than many worried he would not be.

Allen pointed out that so much of the criticism for Benedict came from the fact that as Cardinal Ratzinger it was his JOB to disciple dissident theologians.  Many assumed that he would take that job with him to the Chair of St. Peter.  But that is no longer his job.  His job now is to be the voice of Christ for His Church.

Benedict also seems to realize that there is a HUGE difference between the matters of faith and morals and the fallible administration of the Church.  He seems to have far more leniency in dealing with administrative matters, in which a great deal of personal judgment must be used, than with dogmatic matters.  He seems to have no desire to enforce his view of how the Church should be administered on everyone else and leaves much of that to other bishop’s discretion.

And so with so much of life, the sky is not falling, the sun will rise again and all those who prognosticate otherwise are over-reacting.  What is true is that the Church that is founded on 2000 years of Tradition and traditions is not going to yield to the modern pressures to change.  Christ will prevail in His Church.

I know this is off topic from this thread of posts about Congress, but since I previously posted about a new name for my newly purchased sailboat I felt the need to post on a new name idea that came to me.  This one even Wendy likes:

Your Ad Here!

Of course I’ll put it on the bow like the previous name but the great think about the name is that you can put it in odd places that you’d never want to have an ad.  Like on the bottom of the boat where it would only be visible during a capsize.  Or on the bottom of the hiking board (similarly only visible during a capsize).

What do you guys think?

The first session I went to was about Martin Luther King Jr. and what he REALLY spoke.  Fr. Massingale was an excellent speaker, gifted with the ability to shift through the information to the heart of the issues being discussed. MLK (excuse the abbreviations throughout the post) is one of those universally held heroes.  Whenever that is the case, it means that aspects of that person’s life have been overlooked by the public.  No one’s message is that universally liked.  Instead that person’s beliefs get “sanitized” to make it more palatable to the public as a whole.  John Paul II is another example of this phenomenon.  Most try to forget his strong stances against birth control and married priests when they revere him as a great Pope.

MLK was a big believer in government social programs.  Additionally, he had many critical things to say about capitalism and its ability to leave people in the gutter.  In many aspects he had sympathies towards certain socialistic thoughts although certainly not all.  This part of his legacy has certainly been overlooked by the public.

The other aspect that gets forgotten is how much his message was a Christian one.  Although the public likes to think of him as a black leader, he was primarily a Christian pastor who led a Christian movement.  As the words of his famous “I have a dream” speech go: “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”  To him, ending segregation in the south was all about doing God’s will.

And what stuck me about these things is how true he was to the underlying truths of Jesus Christ, even when that meant re-thinking and re-tooling his message or speaking what was unpopular even in the black community.  Fr. Massingale referred to the riots in Watts as a transitional moment in the life of MLK.  He hadn’t been exposed to black repression in communities where there was no physical segregation laws.  When he saw that black repression existed in communities without physical segregation, he saw that ending segregation required more than changing bus and water fountain policies.  That without economic justice, financial segregation would be just as, if not more crippling as, physical segregation.  Again, the Christian message was bigger than just busses and water fountains.

And it made me think: what would King have to say today?  He was a big fan of government programs.  But that was before the day when the radical attack on Christianity in government began.  How would he feel about that today?  Would he have been able to help stem that radical purge of faith from the public square?  If not, would his attitudes have changed to prefer church sponsored programs over government programs?

And it pained me to think that we no longer have his voice.  Instead we are stuck with the voices of comically pathetic people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  Both people with the ‘Reverend’ title but neither of whom deserve it like MLK did.  They are no more ministers than Karl Rove.  They are politicians.

So I left the session praying for another MLK to shine in today’s world.  To have a powerful black voice that reclaims the Christian message he spoke so boldly.  A voice that knows that expediency is a sign of desperation and that desperation is a sign of lack of faith and hope.  Because, in the words of St. Paul: If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31)

Always best to start off posts like this with something lighthearted like a joke.  I heard a few jokes from Congress.  Here’s the best one, told by John Allen Jr., the National Catholic Reporter’s correspondent to the Vatican:

On the Pope’s last trip to America, he arrived a little bit early.  He was able, with little fanfare, to get his luggage and make it to the limo that was taking him to St. Patricks Cathedral.  About 5 minutes into the drive, he rolled down the window and said to the driver:

“I was wondering if you could indulge an old man who doesn’t get to do much on his own.  Could I possibly drive the limo for a while?  I love to drive and haven’t been allowed to in years.”

The driver didn’t see any reason why not so he parked the limo, let the Pope get into the driver’s seat while he got into the back.  The Pope started driving and it was immediately evident that he hadn’t driven in years.  He was going way too slow, could barely keep in his lane and cut off a number of people.  Finally after nearly sideswiping a large bus, a cop pulls him over.

The cop gets out of his car and goes to the driver’s window.  When the Pope rolls down the window, the cop, looking puzzled and without saying a word, goes to the back of the car and opens the rear door.  Again looking puzzled, he closes the door without saying a word and goes back to the driver’s door.  After taking a good look at the Pope he nods his head, shrugs his shoulders and heads back to the cop car.

When the cop got back to the car his partner ask him, “Aren’t you going to write him a ticket?”

“No, I can’t write this guy a ticket.”

“Why not?  Who is it?”

“Well, I’m not exactly sure who it is.  But he’s being driven by the Pope!”