Incarnation Reconsidered
The traditional description of Incarnation is that God became man to redeem us from our sins and in particular, the original sin of Adam. This is such a central theme in the practice of Christianity that St. Thomas was willing to argue that if Adam had not sinned, there would have been no need for the Incarnation. Indeed, most of the whole explanation of Incarnation is carried out in terms of atonement and sacrifice.
The only alternative interpretation of the Incarnation that we have comes from Duns Scotus, a Franciscan theologian contemporary with Thomas. The Scotus view is that the Incarnation has been in the Mind of God from the beginning, even before the creation of the world took place. God’s love for mankind is so strong that Incarnation, the union of God and the human race, is the whole reason for creation. Redemption from the sin of Adam should be seen as a subtext of God’s overwhelming desire for communion with his creation.
When both Thomas and Scotus were theologizing in the late 13th century, it may not have occurred to them to consider the relationship of God to the world we know today. God has continued to reveal Himself to us as we learn how to read His creation according to the laws of science. Thomas and Scotus had no knowledge of the long geologic history that had taken place, in which drifting tectonic plates widened the oceans and raised mountains where they collided. They had little inkling of the processes of evolution that shaped and continue to shape life on our planet. They would never see the planets of our solar system through telescopes, would never see galaxies beyond our own, would never learn that the universe had begun in a flash of light and energy.
Yet God had all that in mind as He began to create the world into which His Son would come. So, we may ask, what is the purpose of the Incarnation? I would like to think that it is this. When God becomes human, then the very nature of humanity has to be changed. Evolution of living creatures from inert matter still produces only material creatures. How are they to be able to form a loving relationship with their Spirit Creator? Only if their Creator imbues them with spirit life, giving them the ability to interact with Him.
In language we all understand, the God Become One of Us has given us our souls. Not just souls as the Greek philosophers imagined, pale shades of living people. We have become like God, unbounded by time and space in our spirits, free to become as much like Jesus as we want to be. The Incarnation is God’s offer to be as available to us as He can be without impinging on our freedom to accept His offer.
Consider the words in the opening of the Gospel of John:
But to all who did receive him, to those who have yielded him their allegiance, he gave the right to become children of God, not born of any human stock, or by the fleshly desire of a human father, but the offspring of God himself.
This new understanding of the Incarnation is not a standard one and will probably cause consternation among many Christians. What are we to make of a vague Adam and his original sin? If the human race has evolved as science informs us, who were the first man and woman? Did they bite a forbidden fruit in some garden and lead to our estrangement from God? Or is it possible to think of original sin in some other way?
Original sin might be interpreted as the limitations of the physical world in which humans have evolved. Matter alone does not beget spirit, though material needs and desires may weigh heavily upon the spirit. How might spirit evolve from human flesh without some intervention from God? In traditional Catholic teaching, evolution of bodies is acceptable, but a divine act is required for the creation of each soul. We look to the Incarnation as the direct intervention by God that brings spirit life to all human beings.
We can now read the book of John and understand the words:
No one comes to the Father except by me.
We can understand what the Good Shepherd means by:
I have come that men may have life, and may have it in all its fulness.
We can now read the book of Revelation and make sense of what has been done for us:
Then I, John, saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away,and the sea was no more.
I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race.
He will dwell with them and they will be his people
and God himself will always be with them as their God.
He will wipe every tear from their eyes,
and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away.”
The One who sat on the throne said,
“Behold, I make all things new.”
We can even combine the Old and New Testaments in a way that illuminates the ultimate gift of God to us:
When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be... Then God said, let us make man in our image and likeness... So the Word became flesh; he came to dwell among us....
As a result of Incarnation, every human being has this God-likeness, the spirit life, unbounded by time and space. This elevated status of our being human is not the whole of salvation — what God has done is to give us the capacity for salvation. God does not force Himself on anyone. As human beings, we each now live a spirit life like God’s. How we live it is our own choice. We can live in love with God, or we can live without Him.
God has brought Himself as close as possible to each of us. All that remains is for us to reach out and accept the offer.
Philip Austin Lawless
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
Further Adrift: The American Church’s Crisis of Attrition
Peter Steinfels
It is not often that someone at a New York dinner party calls for a count of religious affiliations, and I cannot recall exactly what led to it. But one guest suddenly said he had the impression that many of those present were Catholics. “Can we have a show of hands?” he asked.
Two of us raised our hands. A third person, who once wrote frequently in the Catholic press, said “no longer,” though as a conservative he continued to sympathize with the church. A fourth person, with whom my wife and I have sometimes worshiped on Easter, Christmas, and other occasions, chose not to make any declaration at all. Finally, the man who asked the question avowed that he had been raised Catholic, “and I hate everything about it.”
Bottom line? Two-and-a-half out of five, perhaps. Par, you might say, for a bunch of overeducated writer-types. Not at all. That’s roughly the proportion you would find at working-class family gatherings or suburban cookouts. In February 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, based on interviews with a representative sample of thirty-five thousand adult Americans, reported that one out of every three adult Americans who were raised Catholic have left the church. If these ex-Catholics were to form a single church, they would constitute the second largest church in the nation.
One in three. Think about it. This record makes the percentage of bad loans and mortgages leading to the financial meltdown look absolutely stellar. It dwarfs the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler. Thomas Reese, SJ, the former editor ofAmerica, recently described this loss of one-third of those raised Catholic as “a disaster.” He added, “You wonder if the bishops have noticed.”
I wonder too. As far as I know, there has never been any systematic discussion of these findings at the meetings of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. They will meet again in mid-November, with an agenda that will deal with many things—but not with these devastating losses.
Of course, bishops are not the only ones who avoid confronting these findings. There are reasons all of us have difficulty doing so, and special reasons that the hierarchy does. After all, among nearly 70 million American Catholics, you can find incredible centers of apostolic energy. You can find saints, charismatic public ones and invisible everyday ones. You can find hypocrites and authoritarians and neurotics and plain old mediocrities. You can find vital parishes and moribund ones. In short, you can find evidence of whatever you’re looking for.
Most of us base our impressions on our networks of family, friends, fellow worshipers, students, and colleagues—or on news sources that rely, at best, on a few experts and church officials, who in turn have their own networks and may or may not be finding what they want to find. The problem with our personal experience and networks—and this goes for the media too—is of course what the sociologists call “sampling error.” Last summer, for example, conservative Catholic New York Timescolumnist Ross Douthat wrote in the Atlantic that “for millions in Europe and America,” Catholicism is “finished”—“permanently associated with sexual scandal, rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ.” The word “finished” evidently struck a nerve. Many commentators on blogs, apart from the predictably querulous or bitter, poignantly described how for themselves or family members a once-strong Catholic faith was reaching some point of no return.
What resonated for me personally was the overall note of grieving. Having written a book about the future of the whole Catholic Church in the United States (A People Adrift), I have increasingly come to narrow my sights. These days I think about that future in terms of my two grandsons, ages ten and seven, the children of Ivy League–educated parents, one Catholic and the other a thoughtful nonbeliever. Sociologically, the track record for successfully passing on the faith in these circumstances is not the best, to say nothing of my own shortcomings as a parent or grandparent. But month after month, year after year, I also see decisions (but mostly nondecisions) by Catholic leaders steadily reducing even further the chances that the faith will be the central reality and priceless blessing in my grandsons’ lives that it was in mine and my wife’s. I realize that I am grieving.
For some Catholics, this grieving has clearly passed beyond anger. It seems to border now on resignation to either a death of faith or withdrawal from the church. For others, it means the impossibility of being in any way a “public Catholic,” whether in their fields of work, their communities, their parishes, or their circles of family and friends. Pray, receive the sacraments, button one’s lips, shrug off the latest self-destructive actions by church officials, and devote one’s talents and resources elsewhere. [See Cathleen Kaveny, "Long Goodbye."]
Such grieving is a very real and painful phenomenon. But I know better than to assume that it and its causes are operating in the lives of most of the Latino Catholics who constitute the majority of my fellow parishioners at the Church of the Ascension on 107th Street in Manhattan. They don’t read the Atlantic. They don’t know or follow many of the concerns that upset Catholics like me. They have other problems. And they are likely the typical Catholics of the future.
Five years ago in the New York Times, I wrote about another, more dramatic example of “sampling error.” When John Paul II died, perhaps only his role in the collapse of the Soviet empire was mentioned more often than his rapport with young people. Having covered the 1993 World Youth Day in Denver and seen firsthand John Paul II’s interaction with youth on other occasions, I can testify personally on this point. But at the very time that this connection was being demonstrated by the young people gathered in Rome for the pope’s funeral, I was reading disquieting data in the book Soul Searching, based on the massive National Study of Youth and Religion. The authors, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, devoted a whole chapter to puzzling over their unanticipated discovery that Catholic teenagers scored lower than every other Christian group, and sometimes even below often secular Jewish teenagers and the self-identified “not religious,” on a variety of measures of religious faith, belief, experience, practice, and involvement. Compared with Mormon and Protestant counterparts, whether black, Evangelical, or mainline, Catholics were less likely to say that their religious faith was “extremely important,” to affirm belief in a personal God, or to report ever having had a powerful experience of spiritual worship.
This all happened on the long watch of the pope who undeniably stirred fervor in many young people. Those who hailed a new day with the advent of a “John Paul II generation” were suffering, I suggest, from “sampling error.” Buoyed by the hundreds of thousands who gathered at World Youth Days, they did not look closely at the millions who were absent. So while our own firsthand impressions and diligent perusal of news sources are irreplaceable, we badly need surveys based on representative samples. Yes, they always suffer from the simplifications necessary to gather and organize large amounts of data, but their findings are checks against our own anecdotal impressions and those from the media sources we favor.
According to the Pew survey, about half of that one-third leaving the church enter the ranks of the fastest-growing religious group in the nation, the “nones,” people who tell pollsters they have no particular religious affiliation, although many hew to surprisingly familiar religious beliefs and practices. The other half of Catholics leaving the church join Protestant denominations (and, more often than not, Evangelical). Catholics becoming unaffiliated stressed disagreement with church teachings, both general teachings and church positions on specific issues like abortion, homosexuality, and treatment of women, and to a lesser extent clerical celibacy. In open-ended questioning, they also stressed hypocrisy and other moral and spiritual failures of church leaders and fellow Catholics.
Catholics becoming Protestants were less apt to stress unhappiness about specific teachings and more likely to pinpoint failures to meet their spiritual needs, frequently stating a general appreciation of their new affiliation and its manner of worship. These former Catholics were also more likely to have been affected by a change in life circumstances, like marrying someone of another faith or moving to a new place. Pew found that the vast majority of Catholics leaving the faith of their childhoods do so before age twenty-four. Those becoming unaffiliated reported having had a weaker faith in their childhood and significantly lower Mass attendance as teens. Most of the former Catholics, especially among those now unaffiliated, reported having just “drifted away” rather than undergoing a sudden change of mind or heart. Relatively few rated the sexual-abuse scandal high among reasons for leaving. That may reflect the calm-between-the-storms moment when the survey was taken. I suspect it also suggests that the scandal often functions less as a trigger to leave than as a confirmation of the dissatisfaction, distrust, or doubt people have already come to feel about the church. Very few, whether now unaffiliated or now Protestant, complained that Catholicism had drifted too far from traditional practices.
Why have I spent so much time on those of Catholic upbringing who have left the church? First, because the numbers are not trivial, to put it mildly. “Catholicism,” the Pew study found, “has lost more people to other religions or to no religion at all than any other single religious group.” In American Grace, their new study of religious polarization and pluralism, Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell quote a member of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Acton, Massachusetts, where it is estimated that former Catholics make up nearly half the congregation. “If it weren’t for people leaving the Catholic Church,” he said, “the Episcopal Church would have died a long time ago in America.” [See William A. Galston, "Getting Along."]
Second, these numbers are not only not trivial—they are not just numbers. They are our siblings, our cousins, nieces and nephews, our friends, neighbors, classmates, and students, our children and grandchildren, even in some cases our parents.
Third, this pattern of loss may well be the wave of the future. Faltering Catholic religious education, declining Mass attendance rates among adolescents, drops in what younger people report about the importance of religion in their lives are the advance signs of generational loss. Unlike the familiar drift from faith of individuals, which may correct itself over the course of a life, the shift of a generation will be felt for decades. And from preboomers to millennials, each generation of young Americans has taken greater distance from organized religion.
In American Grace, Putnam and Campbell describe the late 1960s and early ’70s as a seismic shock, particularly in terms of sexual morality, followed by two aftershocks. The seismic shock we identify with the label of “the sixties.” Between 1969 and 1973, for example, the percentage of Americans believing that premarital sex was “not wrong” doubled from just 24 percent to 47 percent—an astonishing change in four years—and then continued rising to 62 percent in 1982. Putnam and Campbell argue that nothing else is such a strong predictor of religious attitudes as attitudes toward premarital sex.
The first aftershock was the reaction that spurred Evangelical growth, which Putnam and Campbell find actually leveled off in the mid-1980s and early ’90s. That was followed by a second, even greater aftershock, in which young Americans increasingly declared themselves “nones,” largely in reaction to their perceptions of conservative Christians’ denunciations and political interventions.
The divisive factors driving people from Catholic ranks are only magnified versions of those within Catholic ranks. There one sees at work all the hot-button issues that now unaffiliated former Catholics point to, as well as the sharp reaction, especially to teachings on homosexuality and identification with high-octane conservative politics, that Putnam and Campbell conclude are currently driving young people from religion altogether. Within the church, one also sees the longing for effective worship, meeting spiritual needs, and pastoral creativity that many now-Protestant former Catholics, especially Evangelicals, underlined.
Liturgical language, decorum, and participation. Quality of homilies. The shortage of priests. Celibacy. The role of women and their ordination. Transparency and consultation in church governance at every level, from the parish to the Vatican. Anti-Catholicism in the media. Religious identity and the role of the hierarchy in Catholic higher education and health care. Monitoring of Catholic theology. Abortion and same-sex relations, and the even more combustible demand that Catholic citizens and civic leaders be answerable to episcopal judgments about laws regarding these matters.
I list these familiar sources of conflict in no particular order except for the last because I think the growing tendency of prominent bishops to claim authority not only in moral principles but even in rather fine-grained judgments about translating those principles into public policy has tremendous potential for divisiveness. It appears to overturn a stance the hierarchy has long followed and spelled out explicitly in their pastoral letters on nuclear defense and on the U.S. economy. Are these bishops repeating the behavior of Religious Right leaders who have now faded from prominence—but only after provoking, if Putnam and Campbell are right, a strong antireligious backlash among the young?
There are several ways of missing this reality. It is true that the one-third exit rate of Catholics is actually lower than the rate of loss suffered by many other groups. Americans live in a constant religious churn. Almost half change their religious affiliation in the course of their lives. This is even true of the “nones.” One can also point out that Catholicism enjoys numerous converts. A number of people are baptized or enter into full communion at my parish’s bilingual Easter Vigil every year. But most of the losses among Protestant denominations are simply to other Protestant denominations. As for converts, the experience of parishes like mine illustrates “sampling error” once again. We celebrate those coming in the door; we don’t note publicly those going out; perhaps no one notices at all except saddened family members. In reality, three Catholics leave the church for each one who enters.
Then there is the good news about Latino Catholics, whose growing numbers both from immigration and higher birthrates have largely compensated for the losses and maintained the church’s proportion of the population at a more or less steady level. Latinos are much more likely than non-Latinos to say that their ethnicity is a very important part of who they are, and strong ethnic identity is associated with retaining religious identity and lower rates of intermarriage: 78 percent of Latinos raised Catholic remain in the church, compared to 57 percent of non-Latinos. Latino Catholics also express relatively greater agreement than non-Latinos with church teachings on divorce, premarital sex, abortion, gay marriage, ordination of women, opposition to the death penalty, and papal authority. I say relatively greater agreement because, in fact, far less than majorities of either Latinos or non-Latinos actually agree with any of those church teachings even while high percentages express confidence in the hierarchy. What the future will hold depends on variables like whether the nation’s capacity for assimilation is greater than its current hostility to Latino immigrants—and whether cultural differences in styles of worship and pastoral needs will exacerbate the Catholic “white flight” already underway. Finally, Latino Catholics appear increasingly Democratic at a time when the hierarchy appears to increasingly signal an obligation to vote Republican.
The constant religious churn in America, the public recognition of conversions but not departures, and the compensating numbers of Latino Catholics may all disguise the magnitude of the church’s recent losses. Yet for the bishops, something else, perhaps more fundamental, may be at work.
My impression is that bishops are constantly called upon to boost morale and lift up spirits in the face of often daunting problems. Appearances at parishes, reunions, conferences, or conventions are hardly occasions for dwelling on ominous trends, let alone encountering former Catholics. Many bishops bounce from event to event and from crisis to crisis. Except for financial matters, they may have little opportunity to contemplate the Big Picture, even on the diocesan level, let alone the national one. Their diocesan newspapers are rife with boosterism. In addition, bishops generally shun polemics. There are notable exceptions, even a few who may see the one-out-of-three who depart not as lost sheep but as good riddance, dead wood that should be cast into the fire, or even wolves preying upon the remaining flock. Most bishops, however, for good or ill, have reached their present positions by avoiding conflict, and they try to be what they should be, a point of unity for the local church. Findings like Pew’s can certainly unleash polemics. After their release, ultras and even moderates all along the ecclesiastical and theological spectrum flooded the blogosphere with accusations. Everyone else was to blame for the losses; one’s own viewpoint was the sure recipe for stanching them.
These partisan reactions cannot survive the most cursory look at the data, in which issues transcending camps like spiritually compelling worship, congregational leadership, and the need for effective adolescent catechesis rank alongside hot-button issues like abortion, homosexuality, treatment of women, sexual abuse, and episcopal forays into politics.
Having raised the question of the bishops’ awareness of American Catholicism’s crumbling condition, am I in turn blaming it on them? (Blaming the bishops is the one thing truly uniting the Right and Left in the American church.) Well, the bishops have their share of the blame, as do many others of us at every level and on every wing of the church. But it would be inane to hold the bishops or any other specific group in the church responsible for the social and economic forces that dissolved the Catholic subculture, or for “the sixties,” or for the inevitable succession of generations. We can only be responsible for the ways we have responded, or not responded, to such huge shifts—with energy, sensitivity, and creativity, or with timidity, inertia, and stock formulas.
I doubt whether any diocese is without some energetic, sensitive, and creative initiatives to improve pastoral practice, liturgy, catechetics, preaching, faith formation, financial support, social witness, and all the other things that could reverse the current decline. I continue to hear of successful programs, learn of valuable research, meet inspiring individuals, and see ads for attractive guides and educational materials for clergy and lay leaders alike. Yet somehow all these initiatives seem too scattered, too underfunded, too dependent on an always limited number of exceptional talents to coalesce into a force equal to the forces of dissolution.
The bishops are not the only ones who should be galvanizing and multiplying these initiatives; but they are, as they often remind us, the church’s authoritative leaders. They direct resources, human and material. They oversee personnel. They grant approval and signal change. They can make the difference between isolated examples and widespread renewal. It is hard to imagine a reversal of the current trends without a concerted effort on their part.
What exactly should the bishops do? Anyone can find my own views distilled in the “Afterword” to the 2004 paperback edition of A People Adrift. Occasionally I’ve tried to distill this distillation even further. I have emphasized very concrete, practical items—a quantum leap in the quality of Sunday liturgies, including preaching; a massive, all-out mobilization of talent and treasure to catechize the young, bring adolescents into church life, and engage young adults in ongoing faith formation; and regular, systematic assessments of all these activities—as well as theologically more complex and controversial matters like expanding the pool of those eligible for ordination and revisiting some aspects of the church’s teaching on sexuality.
What matters is not this set of proposals—or any other. What matters is merely some kind of acknowledgement from the hierarchy, or even leading individuals within the hierarchy, of the seriousness of the situation. What matters is a sign of determination to address these losses honestly and openly, to absorb the existing data, to gather more if necessary, and to entertain and evaluate a wide range of views about causes and remedies. Is it possible some bishop might mention this at their November meeting?
Peter Steinfels
It is not often that someone at a New York dinner party calls for a count of religious affiliations, and I cannot recall exactly what led to it. But one guest suddenly said he had the impression that many of those present were Catholics. “Can we have a show of hands?” he asked.
Two of us raised our hands. A third person, who once wrote frequently in the Catholic press, said “no longer,” though as a conservative he continued to sympathize with the church. A fourth person, with whom my wife and I have sometimes worshiped on Easter, Christmas, and other occasions, chose not to make any declaration at all. Finally, the man who asked the question avowed that he had been raised Catholic, “and I hate everything about it.”
Bottom line? Two-and-a-half out of five, perhaps. Par, you might say, for a bunch of overeducated writer-types. Not at all. That’s roughly the proportion you would find at working-class family gatherings or suburban cookouts. In February 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, based on interviews with a representative sample of thirty-five thousand adult Americans, reported that one out of every three adult Americans who were raised Catholic have left the church. If these ex-Catholics were to form a single church, they would constitute the second largest church in the nation.
One in three. Think about it. This record makes the percentage of bad loans and mortgages leading to the financial meltdown look absolutely stellar. It dwarfs the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler. Thomas Reese, SJ, the former editor ofAmerica, recently described this loss of one-third of those raised Catholic as “a disaster.” He added, “You wonder if the bishops have noticed.”
I wonder too. As far as I know, there has never been any systematic discussion of these findings at the meetings of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. They will meet again in mid-November, with an agenda that will deal with many things—but not with these devastating losses.
Of course, bishops are not the only ones who avoid confronting these findings. There are reasons all of us have difficulty doing so, and special reasons that the hierarchy does. After all, among nearly 70 million American Catholics, you can find incredible centers of apostolic energy. You can find saints, charismatic public ones and invisible everyday ones. You can find hypocrites and authoritarians and neurotics and plain old mediocrities. You can find vital parishes and moribund ones. In short, you can find evidence of whatever you’re looking for.
Most of us base our impressions on our networks of family, friends, fellow worshipers, students, and colleagues—or on news sources that rely, at best, on a few experts and church officials, who in turn have their own networks and may or may not be finding what they want to find. The problem with our personal experience and networks—and this goes for the media too—is of course what the sociologists call “sampling error.” Last summer, for example, conservative Catholic New York Timescolumnist Ross Douthat wrote in the Atlantic that “for millions in Europe and America,” Catholicism is “finished”—“permanently associated with sexual scandal, rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ.” The word “finished” evidently struck a nerve. Many commentators on blogs, apart from the predictably querulous or bitter, poignantly described how for themselves or family members a once-strong Catholic faith was reaching some point of no return.
What resonated for me personally was the overall note of grieving. Having written a book about the future of the whole Catholic Church in the United States (A People Adrift), I have increasingly come to narrow my sights. These days I think about that future in terms of my two grandsons, ages ten and seven, the children of Ivy League–educated parents, one Catholic and the other a thoughtful nonbeliever. Sociologically, the track record for successfully passing on the faith in these circumstances is not the best, to say nothing of my own shortcomings as a parent or grandparent. But month after month, year after year, I also see decisions (but mostly nondecisions) by Catholic leaders steadily reducing even further the chances that the faith will be the central reality and priceless blessing in my grandsons’ lives that it was in mine and my wife’s. I realize that I am grieving.
For some Catholics, this grieving has clearly passed beyond anger. It seems to border now on resignation to either a death of faith or withdrawal from the church. For others, it means the impossibility of being in any way a “public Catholic,” whether in their fields of work, their communities, their parishes, or their circles of family and friends. Pray, receive the sacraments, button one’s lips, shrug off the latest self-destructive actions by church officials, and devote one’s talents and resources elsewhere. [See Cathleen Kaveny, "Long Goodbye."]
Such grieving is a very real and painful phenomenon. But I know better than to assume that it and its causes are operating in the lives of most of the Latino Catholics who constitute the majority of my fellow parishioners at the Church of the Ascension on 107th Street in Manhattan. They don’t read the Atlantic. They don’t know or follow many of the concerns that upset Catholics like me. They have other problems. And they are likely the typical Catholics of the future.
Five years ago in the New York Times, I wrote about another, more dramatic example of “sampling error.” When John Paul II died, perhaps only his role in the collapse of the Soviet empire was mentioned more often than his rapport with young people. Having covered the 1993 World Youth Day in Denver and seen firsthand John Paul II’s interaction with youth on other occasions, I can testify personally on this point. But at the very time that this connection was being demonstrated by the young people gathered in Rome for the pope’s funeral, I was reading disquieting data in the book Soul Searching, based on the massive National Study of Youth and Religion. The authors, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, devoted a whole chapter to puzzling over their unanticipated discovery that Catholic teenagers scored lower than every other Christian group, and sometimes even below often secular Jewish teenagers and the self-identified “not religious,” on a variety of measures of religious faith, belief, experience, practice, and involvement. Compared with Mormon and Protestant counterparts, whether black, Evangelical, or mainline, Catholics were less likely to say that their religious faith was “extremely important,” to affirm belief in a personal God, or to report ever having had a powerful experience of spiritual worship.
This all happened on the long watch of the pope who undeniably stirred fervor in many young people. Those who hailed a new day with the advent of a “John Paul II generation” were suffering, I suggest, from “sampling error.” Buoyed by the hundreds of thousands who gathered at World Youth Days, they did not look closely at the millions who were absent. So while our own firsthand impressions and diligent perusal of news sources are irreplaceable, we badly need surveys based on representative samples. Yes, they always suffer from the simplifications necessary to gather and organize large amounts of data, but their findings are checks against our own anecdotal impressions and those from the media sources we favor.
According to the Pew survey, about half of that one-third leaving the church enter the ranks of the fastest-growing religious group in the nation, the “nones,” people who tell pollsters they have no particular religious affiliation, although many hew to surprisingly familiar religious beliefs and practices. The other half of Catholics leaving the church join Protestant denominations (and, more often than not, Evangelical). Catholics becoming unaffiliated stressed disagreement with church teachings, both general teachings and church positions on specific issues like abortion, homosexuality, and treatment of women, and to a lesser extent clerical celibacy. In open-ended questioning, they also stressed hypocrisy and other moral and spiritual failures of church leaders and fellow Catholics.
Catholics becoming Protestants were less apt to stress unhappiness about specific teachings and more likely to pinpoint failures to meet their spiritual needs, frequently stating a general appreciation of their new affiliation and its manner of worship. These former Catholics were also more likely to have been affected by a change in life circumstances, like marrying someone of another faith or moving to a new place. Pew found that the vast majority of Catholics leaving the faith of their childhoods do so before age twenty-four. Those becoming unaffiliated reported having had a weaker faith in their childhood and significantly lower Mass attendance as teens. Most of the former Catholics, especially among those now unaffiliated, reported having just “drifted away” rather than undergoing a sudden change of mind or heart. Relatively few rated the sexual-abuse scandal high among reasons for leaving. That may reflect the calm-between-the-storms moment when the survey was taken. I suspect it also suggests that the scandal often functions less as a trigger to leave than as a confirmation of the dissatisfaction, distrust, or doubt people have already come to feel about the church. Very few, whether now unaffiliated or now Protestant, complained that Catholicism had drifted too far from traditional practices.
Why have I spent so much time on those of Catholic upbringing who have left the church? First, because the numbers are not trivial, to put it mildly. “Catholicism,” the Pew study found, “has lost more people to other religions or to no religion at all than any other single religious group.” In American Grace, their new study of religious polarization and pluralism, Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell quote a member of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Acton, Massachusetts, where it is estimated that former Catholics make up nearly half the congregation. “If it weren’t for people leaving the Catholic Church,” he said, “the Episcopal Church would have died a long time ago in America.” [See William A. Galston, "Getting Along."]
Second, these numbers are not only not trivial—they are not just numbers. They are our siblings, our cousins, nieces and nephews, our friends, neighbors, classmates, and students, our children and grandchildren, even in some cases our parents.
Third, this pattern of loss may well be the wave of the future. Faltering Catholic religious education, declining Mass attendance rates among adolescents, drops in what younger people report about the importance of religion in their lives are the advance signs of generational loss. Unlike the familiar drift from faith of individuals, which may correct itself over the course of a life, the shift of a generation will be felt for decades. And from preboomers to millennials, each generation of young Americans has taken greater distance from organized religion.
In American Grace, Putnam and Campbell describe the late 1960s and early ’70s as a seismic shock, particularly in terms of sexual morality, followed by two aftershocks. The seismic shock we identify with the label of “the sixties.” Between 1969 and 1973, for example, the percentage of Americans believing that premarital sex was “not wrong” doubled from just 24 percent to 47 percent—an astonishing change in four years—and then continued rising to 62 percent in 1982. Putnam and Campbell argue that nothing else is such a strong predictor of religious attitudes as attitudes toward premarital sex.
The first aftershock was the reaction that spurred Evangelical growth, which Putnam and Campbell find actually leveled off in the mid-1980s and early ’90s. That was followed by a second, even greater aftershock, in which young Americans increasingly declared themselves “nones,” largely in reaction to their perceptions of conservative Christians’ denunciations and political interventions.
The divisive factors driving people from Catholic ranks are only magnified versions of those within Catholic ranks. There one sees at work all the hot-button issues that now unaffiliated former Catholics point to, as well as the sharp reaction, especially to teachings on homosexuality and identification with high-octane conservative politics, that Putnam and Campbell conclude are currently driving young people from religion altogether. Within the church, one also sees the longing for effective worship, meeting spiritual needs, and pastoral creativity that many now-Protestant former Catholics, especially Evangelicals, underlined.
Liturgical language, decorum, and participation. Quality of homilies. The shortage of priests. Celibacy. The role of women and their ordination. Transparency and consultation in church governance at every level, from the parish to the Vatican. Anti-Catholicism in the media. Religious identity and the role of the hierarchy in Catholic higher education and health care. Monitoring of Catholic theology. Abortion and same-sex relations, and the even more combustible demand that Catholic citizens and civic leaders be answerable to episcopal judgments about laws regarding these matters.
I list these familiar sources of conflict in no particular order except for the last because I think the growing tendency of prominent bishops to claim authority not only in moral principles but even in rather fine-grained judgments about translating those principles into public policy has tremendous potential for divisiveness. It appears to overturn a stance the hierarchy has long followed and spelled out explicitly in their pastoral letters on nuclear defense and on the U.S. economy. Are these bishops repeating the behavior of Religious Right leaders who have now faded from prominence—but only after provoking, if Putnam and Campbell are right, a strong antireligious backlash among the young?
There are several ways of missing this reality. It is true that the one-third exit rate of Catholics is actually lower than the rate of loss suffered by many other groups. Americans live in a constant religious churn. Almost half change their religious affiliation in the course of their lives. This is even true of the “nones.” One can also point out that Catholicism enjoys numerous converts. A number of people are baptized or enter into full communion at my parish’s bilingual Easter Vigil every year. But most of the losses among Protestant denominations are simply to other Protestant denominations. As for converts, the experience of parishes like mine illustrates “sampling error” once again. We celebrate those coming in the door; we don’t note publicly those going out; perhaps no one notices at all except saddened family members. In reality, three Catholics leave the church for each one who enters.
Then there is the good news about Latino Catholics, whose growing numbers both from immigration and higher birthrates have largely compensated for the losses and maintained the church’s proportion of the population at a more or less steady level. Latinos are much more likely than non-Latinos to say that their ethnicity is a very important part of who they are, and strong ethnic identity is associated with retaining religious identity and lower rates of intermarriage: 78 percent of Latinos raised Catholic remain in the church, compared to 57 percent of non-Latinos. Latino Catholics also express relatively greater agreement than non-Latinos with church teachings on divorce, premarital sex, abortion, gay marriage, ordination of women, opposition to the death penalty, and papal authority. I say relatively greater agreement because, in fact, far less than majorities of either Latinos or non-Latinos actually agree with any of those church teachings even while high percentages express confidence in the hierarchy. What the future will hold depends on variables like whether the nation’s capacity for assimilation is greater than its current hostility to Latino immigrants—and whether cultural differences in styles of worship and pastoral needs will exacerbate the Catholic “white flight” already underway. Finally, Latino Catholics appear increasingly Democratic at a time when the hierarchy appears to increasingly signal an obligation to vote Republican.
The constant religious churn in America, the public recognition of conversions but not departures, and the compensating numbers of Latino Catholics may all disguise the magnitude of the church’s recent losses. Yet for the bishops, something else, perhaps more fundamental, may be at work.
My impression is that bishops are constantly called upon to boost morale and lift up spirits in the face of often daunting problems. Appearances at parishes, reunions, conferences, or conventions are hardly occasions for dwelling on ominous trends, let alone encountering former Catholics. Many bishops bounce from event to event and from crisis to crisis. Except for financial matters, they may have little opportunity to contemplate the Big Picture, even on the diocesan level, let alone the national one. Their diocesan newspapers are rife with boosterism. In addition, bishops generally shun polemics. There are notable exceptions, even a few who may see the one-out-of-three who depart not as lost sheep but as good riddance, dead wood that should be cast into the fire, or even wolves preying upon the remaining flock. Most bishops, however, for good or ill, have reached their present positions by avoiding conflict, and they try to be what they should be, a point of unity for the local church. Findings like Pew’s can certainly unleash polemics. After their release, ultras and even moderates all along the ecclesiastical and theological spectrum flooded the blogosphere with accusations. Everyone else was to blame for the losses; one’s own viewpoint was the sure recipe for stanching them.
These partisan reactions cannot survive the most cursory look at the data, in which issues transcending camps like spiritually compelling worship, congregational leadership, and the need for effective adolescent catechesis rank alongside hot-button issues like abortion, homosexuality, treatment of women, sexual abuse, and episcopal forays into politics.
Having raised the question of the bishops’ awareness of American Catholicism’s crumbling condition, am I in turn blaming it on them? (Blaming the bishops is the one thing truly uniting the Right and Left in the American church.) Well, the bishops have their share of the blame, as do many others of us at every level and on every wing of the church. But it would be inane to hold the bishops or any other specific group in the church responsible for the social and economic forces that dissolved the Catholic subculture, or for “the sixties,” or for the inevitable succession of generations. We can only be responsible for the ways we have responded, or not responded, to such huge shifts—with energy, sensitivity, and creativity, or with timidity, inertia, and stock formulas.
I doubt whether any diocese is without some energetic, sensitive, and creative initiatives to improve pastoral practice, liturgy, catechetics, preaching, faith formation, financial support, social witness, and all the other things that could reverse the current decline. I continue to hear of successful programs, learn of valuable research, meet inspiring individuals, and see ads for attractive guides and educational materials for clergy and lay leaders alike. Yet somehow all these initiatives seem too scattered, too underfunded, too dependent on an always limited number of exceptional talents to coalesce into a force equal to the forces of dissolution.
The bishops are not the only ones who should be galvanizing and multiplying these initiatives; but they are, as they often remind us, the church’s authoritative leaders. They direct resources, human and material. They oversee personnel. They grant approval and signal change. They can make the difference between isolated examples and widespread renewal. It is hard to imagine a reversal of the current trends without a concerted effort on their part.
What exactly should the bishops do? Anyone can find my own views distilled in the “Afterword” to the 2004 paperback edition of A People Adrift. Occasionally I’ve tried to distill this distillation even further. I have emphasized very concrete, practical items—a quantum leap in the quality of Sunday liturgies, including preaching; a massive, all-out mobilization of talent and treasure to catechize the young, bring adolescents into church life, and engage young adults in ongoing faith formation; and regular, systematic assessments of all these activities—as well as theologically more complex and controversial matters like expanding the pool of those eligible for ordination and revisiting some aspects of the church’s teaching on sexuality.
What matters is not this set of proposals—or any other. What matters is merely some kind of acknowledgement from the hierarchy, or even leading individuals within the hierarchy, of the seriousness of the situation. What matters is a sign of determination to address these losses honestly and openly, to absorb the existing data, to gather more if necessary, and to entertain and evaluate a wide range of views about causes and remedies. Is it possible some bishop might mention this at their November meeting?
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Praying on Line
Every so oftten folks will tell me that they can't find the time to talk to God. Such time can be anytime - while your shaving, doing your hair, driving to work, folding clothes .... The "time" and place are not important. The conversation and the listening is.
For those who spend time online, the Irish Jesuits have a site that might be useful - a good place to begin the day or to visit during a break.http://sacredspace.ie/ Scroll to the bottom of the page to begin.
For those who spend time online, the Irish Jesuits have a site that might be useful - a good place to begin the day or to visit during a break.http://sacredspace.ie/ Scroll to the bottom of the page to begin.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
It's Been Awhile
It's been awhile since I last posted here ... I'll call it a summer hiatus!
Come the weekend of September 11/12 we will "roll out" the work we have been doing on the strategic plan for the parish. We began this work over a year ago (June 2009) with a parish survey and a parish assembly (October 2009) aimed at getting behind some of the numbers produced by the survey.
Our plan is meant to close the "gap" between the "good" parish we are (as registered in the survey) and the "better" parish we can be.
As we begin this work, it's important to remember that "good" and "better" are relative terms. They are benchmarks along the way to a vision. If my vision of the parish is a that of a quiet, no-waves, community, the "good" and "better" will have one meaning. If my vision of the parish is that of a community looking to be constantly transformed into better disciples who make a difference living the love of God, then "good" and "better" mean something else.
My vision is the latter. One of the four "marks" of the church is apostolic which means that ours is the faith of the apostles and our living of that faith is missionary. The gospel challenges us to be leaven, light and salt for our world. We draw direction and nourishment to fulfill this vocation from the Sunday Eucharist, the "source and summit" of our life in Christ.We go out from Sunday Mass with the zeal of apostles for making Jesus known and loved by word and example, living the love of God in order to make a difference in our world.
St. Francis regularly admonished his friars to "begin again." And so come September, we will.
Come the weekend of September 11/12 we will "roll out" the work we have been doing on the strategic plan for the parish. We began this work over a year ago (June 2009) with a parish survey and a parish assembly (October 2009) aimed at getting behind some of the numbers produced by the survey.
Our plan is meant to close the "gap" between the "good" parish we are (as registered in the survey) and the "better" parish we can be.
As we begin this work, it's important to remember that "good" and "better" are relative terms. They are benchmarks along the way to a vision. If my vision of the parish is a that of a quiet, no-waves, community, the "good" and "better" will have one meaning. If my vision of the parish is that of a community looking to be constantly transformed into better disciples who make a difference living the love of God, then "good" and "better" mean something else.
My vision is the latter. One of the four "marks" of the church is apostolic which means that ours is the faith of the apostles and our living of that faith is missionary. The gospel challenges us to be leaven, light and salt for our world. We draw direction and nourishment to fulfill this vocation from the Sunday Eucharist, the "source and summit" of our life in Christ.We go out from Sunday Mass with the zeal of apostles for making Jesus known and loved by word and example, living the love of God in order to make a difference in our world.
St. Francis regularly admonished his friars to "begin again." And so come September, we will.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Intriguing in Several Ways
Be sure to watch this video to the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=42E2fAWM6rA
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=42E2fAWM6rA
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Staying In Touch
One of the objectives of our strategic goal for effective communications says that we will:
Upgrade the Parish website to make it more user friendly, dynamic and interactive; with the capability to be more attentive to use by Spanish speakers; and assuring it is adequately resourced and maintained.
Preliminary to developing an action plan to accomplish this objective, I met with Jeanne Murray of our Communication Team.
I came away from our conversation with the following conclusions:
1. The present web site is a decent reference source for basic information about IC and the its services and programs.
2. The dynamics of the site are limited to the very timely updating of reference material. Kudos to Patricia Erickson who handles all this.
3. The site lacks interactivity. It’s not yet a resource for people to participate in the work of forming one another for living the love of God. That is, only the blog currently offers people a chance to comment and share ideas. And the blog is poorly advertised and not up-to-date.
4. The site currently lacks the means to address parishioners need to connect with one another. We are a large parish and some folks feel isolated. The web site has the potential of addressing the need for connectivity.
5. Moving forward will require exploration of web resources used by Latino parishioners.
6. Moving forward will require exploration of “age specific” web sources: do ‘teens’ connect the same way as ‘young adults,’ ‘boomers,’ or ‘seniors?’
Some key guidelines to observe:
1. Stating the explicit purposes/goals for maintaining a web site
2. Being intentional about the value are we looking for in the specific resources (e.g., references, social networking) that can be hosted by the site
3. Bridging the various communication tools (e.g., bulletin, web site) we employ to achieve effectiveness on our communication
Some of the resources discussed that need further consideration:
1. The blog: this can be a resource for sharing ideas at length. Various parish committees can use the blog to engage parishioners re: style and quality of worship; reaction to and commentary on homilies and bulletin letters; discussion of social justice initiatives.
2. Wiki: would allow on-line sign-ups e.g., monthly Meal for the Hungry, Monday transport of food to Catholic Charities; service opportunities.
3. Twitter and Facebook: follow activities of the parish and of one another in the interest of connecting parishioners. Cultivate “ambient awareness” ( a new term and concept for me); establish communities of habitual volunteers (e.g., Habitat for Humanity; monthly Meal for the Hungry; CGS parents; Youth Ministry)
4. Use of “feeds” to aggregate what people share
Some of these possibilities carry a yellow flag re: issues of propriety and privacy. But these cautions should not, in and of themselves, discourage consideration.
Likewise, these possibilities pose challenges to the capacity of current technology. Has the web page got what it takes to handle some of these resources?
What are your reactions? Comments? Suggestions for “next steps?”
Upgrade the Parish website to make it more user friendly, dynamic and interactive; with the capability to be more attentive to use by Spanish speakers; and assuring it is adequately resourced and maintained.
Preliminary to developing an action plan to accomplish this objective, I met with Jeanne Murray of our Communication Team.
I came away from our conversation with the following conclusions:
1. The present web site is a decent reference source for basic information about IC and the its services and programs.
2. The dynamics of the site are limited to the very timely updating of reference material. Kudos to Patricia Erickson who handles all this.
3. The site lacks interactivity. It’s not yet a resource for people to participate in the work of forming one another for living the love of God. That is, only the blog currently offers people a chance to comment and share ideas. And the blog is poorly advertised and not up-to-date.
4. The site currently lacks the means to address parishioners need to connect with one another. We are a large parish and some folks feel isolated. The web site has the potential of addressing the need for connectivity.
5. Moving forward will require exploration of web resources used by Latino parishioners.
6. Moving forward will require exploration of “age specific” web sources: do ‘teens’ connect the same way as ‘young adults,’ ‘boomers,’ or ‘seniors?’
Some key guidelines to observe:
1. Stating the explicit purposes/goals for maintaining a web site
2. Being intentional about the value are we looking for in the specific resources (e.g., references, social networking) that can be hosted by the site
3. Bridging the various communication tools (e.g., bulletin, web site) we employ to achieve effectiveness on our communication
Some of the resources discussed that need further consideration:
1. The blog: this can be a resource for sharing ideas at length. Various parish committees can use the blog to engage parishioners re: style and quality of worship; reaction to and commentary on homilies and bulletin letters; discussion of social justice initiatives.
2. Wiki: would allow on-line sign-ups e.g., monthly Meal for the Hungry, Monday transport of food to Catholic Charities; service opportunities.
3. Twitter and Facebook: follow activities of the parish and of one another in the interest of connecting parishioners. Cultivate “ambient awareness” ( a new term and concept for me); establish communities of habitual volunteers (e.g., Habitat for Humanity; monthly Meal for the Hungry; CGS parents; Youth Ministry)
4. Use of “feeds” to aggregate what people share
Some of these possibilities carry a yellow flag re: issues of propriety and privacy. But these cautions should not, in and of themselves, discourage consideration.
Likewise, these possibilities pose challenges to the capacity of current technology. Has the web page got what it takes to handle some of these resources?
What are your reactions? Comments? Suggestions for “next steps?”
Monday, May 17, 2010
A Memo from a Parent
Check the link below for an extraordinary letter written by the Chancellor of the Diocese of Belleville (IL) to his bishop and boss, Wilton Gregory, currently Archbishop of Atlanta.
http://www.stlbeacon.org/spotanskiletter.pdf
http://www.stlbeacon.org/spotanskiletter.pdf
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Catholic Schools
Here is the portion of my weekly bulletin note for Sunday, May 16. I'd be interested in your thoughts.
Our parish school is a 100 yrs old, founded in a day when Catholics in Durham were few. In 1909, parishioners wanted to be sure that as their children acquired the skills to be successful parents and professionals they would also develop the “habits of the heart” necessary to live their vocations wearing the mind and heart of Christ.
That continues to be the only reason a parish should have a school. (After writing this I thought of those Catholics schools serving large numbers of non-Christians. What do people make of these efforts? I have some thoughts but would be interested in hearing yours first.)
Recently, Immaculata was reaccredited by the Southern Assoc of Colleges and School. So we continue to do a good job of educating our students in language arts, social studies and all the rest of those areas of particular interest to the secular accrediting agencies. But how good a job are we doing in the work of instilling the qualities of discipleship? What are the benchmarks of success?
This coming year I’ll be asking the school to explore that question. I’d be interested to know what you think. And for those families with kids in other schools – what are you looking for in the faith formation of those children? What do you look for in children enrolled in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd?
Our parish school is a 100 yrs old, founded in a day when Catholics in Durham were few. In 1909, parishioners wanted to be sure that as their children acquired the skills to be successful parents and professionals they would also develop the “habits of the heart” necessary to live their vocations wearing the mind and heart of Christ.
That continues to be the only reason a parish should have a school. (After writing this I thought of those Catholics schools serving large numbers of non-Christians. What do people make of these efforts? I have some thoughts but would be interested in hearing yours first.)
Recently, Immaculata was reaccredited by the Southern Assoc of Colleges and School. So we continue to do a good job of educating our students in language arts, social studies and all the rest of those areas of particular interest to the secular accrediting agencies. But how good a job are we doing in the work of instilling the qualities of discipleship? What are the benchmarks of success?
This coming year I’ll be asking the school to explore that question. I’d be interested to know what you think. And for those families with kids in other schools – what are you looking for in the faith formation of those children? What do you look for in children enrolled in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd?
Friday, April 16, 2010
A Church in Need of Repentance and Reform
The "abuse crisis" is about many things: it's about criminal acitvity and serious sin; it's about justice and the need for healing; and, it's about being a church that is focused on mission and not maintenance.
Below are two reprints of commentary, one from Thomas Reese, SJ, a Jesuit and former editor of America Magazine. The other from a woman working to ensure dioceses and religious orders maintain safe environments for children.
You may have your own "commentary" and have a need to share it.
The friars are happy to meet and listen and answer questions you might have. Please don't hesitate to call on any one of us if we can be of help.
Below are two reprints of commentary, one from Thomas Reese, SJ, a Jesuit and former editor of America Magazine. The other from a woman working to ensure dioceses and religious orders maintain safe environments for children.
You may have your own "commentary" and have a need to share it.
The friars are happy to meet and listen and answer questions you might have. Please don't hesitate to call on any one of us if we can be of help.
Taking Responsibility
Taking Responsibility
What can European bishops learn from the U.S. sexual abuse crisis?
Thomas J. Reese
APRIL 26, 2010 America Magazine
W hen the story of sexual abuse of minors by members of the Catholic clergy and the story of how that abuse was dealt with by church officials exploded in the United States, most Vatican officials and European churchmen considered it an American problem. Then when Canada and Ireland experienced a similar crisis, it became a problem of the “English-speaking world.” Instead of seeing the crisis in the United States as a warning to put their own houses in order, too many European bishops continued with business as usual, believing that the crisis would not touch them.
Now that the crisis has arrived in Europe, what can the European bishops and the Vatican learn from the U.S. experience?
Begin with the context. The sexual abuse crisis did not start in Boston; it first came to public attention in the mid-1980s with a court case in Lafayette, La. The crisis was covered by The National Catholic Reporter long before The Boston Globe noticed it. It was in the mid-80s that insurance companies told bishops such cases would no longer be covered by their liability insurance. This should have gotten the attention of any prudent C.E.O.
A Long Learning Curve
Before 1985 few bishops handled these cases well. The tendency was to believe the priest when he said he would never do it again and to believe psychologists who said the priest could safely return to ministry. The bishops were compassionate and pastoral toward their priests, while forgetting their responsibility to be pastoral and protective of their flock. They tried to keep everything secret so as not to scandalize the faithful.
Between 1985 and 1992, the bishops began to learn more about the problem. They held closed-door sessions with experts at their semiannual meetings. At one closed meeting, at least one bishop told his brother bishops of the mistakes he had made and urged them not to do the same. The number of abuses declined during this period.
In 1992, under the leadership of Archbishop Daniel Pilarcyzk, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a series of guidelines for dealing with sexual abuse. Data collected by researchers at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice show that the number of abuse cases plummeted in the 1990s, indicating that by that time most bishops “got it.” The guidelines were opposed by Cardinal Bernard Law, however, and ignored by other bishops. The guidelines were not binding on the bishops, and they continued to leave open the possibility that an abusive priest could return to ministry. And at a meeting in St. Louis, Mo., that same year, a group of psychologists who were treating priests urged the bishops to keep open the possibility of returning the priests to ministry.
The scandal in Boston showed that voluntary guidelines were insufficient. It also showed that no one trusted the bishops (or their advisors) to decide who could safely be returned to ministry. As a result, in 2002 the bishops, with Rome’s consent, imposed binding rules requiring zero tolerance of abuse, the reporting of accusations to the police and mandatory child protection programs in every diocese. Under the zero-tolerance rule adopted at their meeting in Dallas, any priest involved in abuse should never be able to return to ministry. In most cases, he was to be expelled from the priesthood, with possible exceptions if he is elderly and retired or infirm. The Dallas rules also required a lay committee in each diocese to review accusations against priests who are suspended from ministry while an investigation takes place. The Dallas rules were controversial in that many priests saw the zero-tolerance rule as draconian. They also feared false accusations and that the rules made them guilty until proven innocent. They objected that Dallas dealt only with priests, not with the bishops who were guilty of negligence.
In any case, it took the American bishops 17 years to figure out how to proceed, from the 1985 lawsuit against the Diocese of Lafayette, La., to the establishment of the Dallas Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in 2002. The European bishops need to travel the same ground very quickly, and the Vatican needs to make zero tolerance the law for the universal church.
What Not to Do
While the Europeans can learn from what the American bishops got right at Dallas, they can also learn from the mistakes the Americans made during the crisis.
From the beginning, the American bishops underestimated the size and gravity of the problem. Prior to 1993, only one-third of the victims had come forward to report the abuse to their dioceses, so not even the church knew how bad the crisis was. Most victims do not want others to know they were abused, especially their parents, spouses, children and friends. Media coverage of abuse by clerics encouraged and empowered victims to come forward as they recognized they were not alone.
Today, Europeans are shocked by the hundreds of cases that are being reported. They should get ready for thousands more. In the United States over 5,000 priests, or 4 percent of the clergy, were responsible for 13,000 alleged instances of abuse over a 50-year period. There is no reason to think Europe is different. Hope for the best, but do the math and be prepared.
The biggest miscalculation the American bishops made was to think that the crisis would pass in a few months. Hunkering down and waiting for the storm to pass is a failed strategy. Unless they want this crisis to go on for years as it has done in the United States, the European bishops need to be transparent and encourage victims to come forward now. Better to get all the bad news out as soon as possible than to give the appearance of attempting a cover-up.
One school in Berlin, a Jesuit school, did the right thing. It knew of seven cases of abuse, went public, hired a female lawyer to go through their files and deal with victims and then wrote to the alumni asking victims to come forward. When at least 120 victims did so saying that they were abused at Jesuit schools in Germany, the foolish concluded that the school had been crazy to issue the invitation. But not only was it the Christian thing to do, it was also smart public relations. No one is accusing the current school administration of covering up. In addition, rather than having three to five years of negative publicity as one victim after another comes forward, they will endure a few months of unwanted publicity before the media move on to something else.
American bishops also made the mistake of blaming the media, faulting the permissive culture and trying to downplay clerical abuse by pointing out that there are 90,000 to 150,000 reported cases of sexual abuse of minors each year in the United States. While there is truth in all this, it is counterproductive for the bishops to make these arguments, which come across as excuses. Rather, the bishops should condemn the abuse, apologize and put in place policies to make sure that children are safe. Nor is one apology enough. Like an unfaithful spouse, they must apologize, apologize, apologize.
Finally, the American bishops excused themselves by saying they made mistakes but were not culpable because of their ignorance. Sorry; this won’t wash. American Catholics wanted some bishops to stand up and say: “I made a mistake; I moved this priest to another parish. I did not think he would abuse again. I got bad advice, but I take full responsibility. I am sorry and I resign.”
If 30 bishops in the United States had done this, the crisis would not have gone on as long as it did. People would have said, “Good, that is what leaders are supposed to do. They get it. With a new bishop we can have healing and move on.”
Bishops have to be willing to sacrifice for the sake of the whole church. It is a scandal that Cardinal Law was the only U.S. bishop to resign because of this crisis. It is encouraging that four Irish bishops have submitted their resignations. Unless the church wants this crisis to go on for years in Europe as it did in the United States, some bishops will have to resign.
Will the European bishops learn from the U.S. experience? I hope so.
What can European bishops learn from the U.S. sexual abuse crisis?
Thomas J. Reese
APRIL 26, 2010 America Magazine
W hen the story of sexual abuse of minors by members of the Catholic clergy and the story of how that abuse was dealt with by church officials exploded in the United States, most Vatican officials and European churchmen considered it an American problem. Then when Canada and Ireland experienced a similar crisis, it became a problem of the “English-speaking world.” Instead of seeing the crisis in the United States as a warning to put their own houses in order, too many European bishops continued with business as usual, believing that the crisis would not touch them.
Now that the crisis has arrived in Europe, what can the European bishops and the Vatican learn from the U.S. experience?
Begin with the context. The sexual abuse crisis did not start in Boston; it first came to public attention in the mid-1980s with a court case in Lafayette, La. The crisis was covered by The National Catholic Reporter long before The Boston Globe noticed it. It was in the mid-80s that insurance companies told bishops such cases would no longer be covered by their liability insurance. This should have gotten the attention of any prudent C.E.O.
A Long Learning Curve
Before 1985 few bishops handled these cases well. The tendency was to believe the priest when he said he would never do it again and to believe psychologists who said the priest could safely return to ministry. The bishops were compassionate and pastoral toward their priests, while forgetting their responsibility to be pastoral and protective of their flock. They tried to keep everything secret so as not to scandalize the faithful.
Between 1985 and 1992, the bishops began to learn more about the problem. They held closed-door sessions with experts at their semiannual meetings. At one closed meeting, at least one bishop told his brother bishops of the mistakes he had made and urged them not to do the same. The number of abuses declined during this period.
In 1992, under the leadership of Archbishop Daniel Pilarcyzk, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a series of guidelines for dealing with sexual abuse. Data collected by researchers at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice show that the number of abuse cases plummeted in the 1990s, indicating that by that time most bishops “got it.” The guidelines were opposed by Cardinal Bernard Law, however, and ignored by other bishops. The guidelines were not binding on the bishops, and they continued to leave open the possibility that an abusive priest could return to ministry. And at a meeting in St. Louis, Mo., that same year, a group of psychologists who were treating priests urged the bishops to keep open the possibility of returning the priests to ministry.
The scandal in Boston showed that voluntary guidelines were insufficient. It also showed that no one trusted the bishops (or their advisors) to decide who could safely be returned to ministry. As a result, in 2002 the bishops, with Rome’s consent, imposed binding rules requiring zero tolerance of abuse, the reporting of accusations to the police and mandatory child protection programs in every diocese. Under the zero-tolerance rule adopted at their meeting in Dallas, any priest involved in abuse should never be able to return to ministry. In most cases, he was to be expelled from the priesthood, with possible exceptions if he is elderly and retired or infirm. The Dallas rules also required a lay committee in each diocese to review accusations against priests who are suspended from ministry while an investigation takes place. The Dallas rules were controversial in that many priests saw the zero-tolerance rule as draconian. They also feared false accusations and that the rules made them guilty until proven innocent. They objected that Dallas dealt only with priests, not with the bishops who were guilty of negligence.
In any case, it took the American bishops 17 years to figure out how to proceed, from the 1985 lawsuit against the Diocese of Lafayette, La., to the establishment of the Dallas Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in 2002. The European bishops need to travel the same ground very quickly, and the Vatican needs to make zero tolerance the law for the universal church.
What Not to Do
While the Europeans can learn from what the American bishops got right at Dallas, they can also learn from the mistakes the Americans made during the crisis.
From the beginning, the American bishops underestimated the size and gravity of the problem. Prior to 1993, only one-third of the victims had come forward to report the abuse to their dioceses, so not even the church knew how bad the crisis was. Most victims do not want others to know they were abused, especially their parents, spouses, children and friends. Media coverage of abuse by clerics encouraged and empowered victims to come forward as they recognized they were not alone.
Today, Europeans are shocked by the hundreds of cases that are being reported. They should get ready for thousands more. In the United States over 5,000 priests, or 4 percent of the clergy, were responsible for 13,000 alleged instances of abuse over a 50-year period. There is no reason to think Europe is different. Hope for the best, but do the math and be prepared.
The biggest miscalculation the American bishops made was to think that the crisis would pass in a few months. Hunkering down and waiting for the storm to pass is a failed strategy. Unless they want this crisis to go on for years as it has done in the United States, the European bishops need to be transparent and encourage victims to come forward now. Better to get all the bad news out as soon as possible than to give the appearance of attempting a cover-up.
One school in Berlin, a Jesuit school, did the right thing. It knew of seven cases of abuse, went public, hired a female lawyer to go through their files and deal with victims and then wrote to the alumni asking victims to come forward. When at least 120 victims did so saying that they were abused at Jesuit schools in Germany, the foolish concluded that the school had been crazy to issue the invitation. But not only was it the Christian thing to do, it was also smart public relations. No one is accusing the current school administration of covering up. In addition, rather than having three to five years of negative publicity as one victim after another comes forward, they will endure a few months of unwanted publicity before the media move on to something else.
American bishops also made the mistake of blaming the media, faulting the permissive culture and trying to downplay clerical abuse by pointing out that there are 90,000 to 150,000 reported cases of sexual abuse of minors each year in the United States. While there is truth in all this, it is counterproductive for the bishops to make these arguments, which come across as excuses. Rather, the bishops should condemn the abuse, apologize and put in place policies to make sure that children are safe. Nor is one apology enough. Like an unfaithful spouse, they must apologize, apologize, apologize.
Finally, the American bishops excused themselves by saying they made mistakes but were not culpable because of their ignorance. Sorry; this won’t wash. American Catholics wanted some bishops to stand up and say: “I made a mistake; I moved this priest to another parish. I did not think he would abuse again. I got bad advice, but I take full responsibility. I am sorry and I resign.”
If 30 bishops in the United States had done this, the crisis would not have gone on as long as it did. People would have said, “Good, that is what leaders are supposed to do. They get it. With a new bishop we can have healing and move on.”
Bishops have to be willing to sacrifice for the sake of the whole church. It is a scandal that Cardinal Law was the only U.S. bishop to resign because of this crisis. It is encouraging that four Irish bishops have submitted their resignations. Unless the church wants this crisis to go on for years in Europe as it did in the United States, some bishops will have to resign.
Will the European bishops learn from the U.S. experience? I hope so.
A Sex Abuse Expert Sees Hope in Pope Benedict
BY TIM DRAKE, REGISTER SENIOR WRITER
Monica Applewhite is one of the foremost experts on screening, monitoring and policy development for the prevention of sexual abuse and risk management for those with histories of sexual offending. Applewhite has spent the past 16 years conducting research and root-cause analysis in the area of sexual abuse in organizations in order to assist organizations in developing best practice standards. Formerly with Praesidium Inc., she helped create an accreditation system for the Conference of Major Superiors of Men to hold them accountable to the highest standards of child protection. She has worked with more than 300 organizations that serve children and youth, including 28 Catholic dioceses, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the U.S. Jesuit Conference, and the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life in Rome. Now director of Confianza LLC, a consulting firm specializing in standards of care and the dynamics of abuse in educational and religious environments she resides in Austin, Texas. Applewhite spoke with Register senior writer Tim Drake.
The sexual abuse of minors is not particular to the Catholic Church alone, is it?
Unfortunately, sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults happens in all organizations that serve these populations. What is distinctive for the Catholic Church is the saliency of the issue. Both Catholics and non-Catholics are interested in reading and hearing about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church for a variety of reasons. In some ways, this is fortunate for those of us who advocate for education and prevention
because it is an opportunity to address the issue within the Church while bringing to light a society-wide problem most people would prefer not to address.
Do you have any thoughts on why this has resurfaced at the time it has?
We have been through several cycles of media attention — first in 1985, then in 1992, again in 2002, and now in 2010. It’s not that we have new cases — the majority of the cases under discussion are still those from the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s — but each time the issue arises we are able to analyze different aspects of the problem that should be addressed, from the harm that is caused, to the discipline for those who offend, to the long-term effects on victims, families and communities, and the need for accountability of leaders. This new wave of interest and new information seems to be focused on the need for scrutiny of the universal Church, not just the Church of the United States, and that is new. One of the positive outcomes of media consideration of the problem is that with each publicized case, more adults and young people both within the Church and outside of the Church are able to talk about their own experiences. The current media attention was sparked by cases in Germany and has led thousands of victims of abuse within the Catholic Church of Europe to come forward and report their own experiences. The German Church has set up a hotline, and thousands of people have already called in to report abuse. I am grateful that the hotline was set up and we can begin to identify the people who have been harmed in this way.
Tell me about your work addressing this issue through Praesidium with the Conference of Major Superiors of Men.
When the bishops of the U.S. issued the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) developed the "Instruments of Hope and Healing." The male religious superiors of the United States made a decision to hold themselves accountable to outside experts in the field through a system of accreditation for religious. CMSM selected Praesidium Inc. to conduct the accreditation visits and hold the religious communities accountable for 25 standards of excellence. My role was to oversee the development of the standards, the system of measurement to ensure that standards were met, and the educational program for the major superiors. We were very strict in our interpretation and verification process. I directed the accreditation program through its first three-year cycle. Is there much of a difference for how these cases are handled by religious institutes vs. dioceses? Yes and no. Both the dioceses and the religious have committed themselves to reporting abuse to the civil authorities, to responding pastorally to victims and to investigating all abuse allegations. In these cases, the dioceses are meant to follow the charter, and the religious are to follow the accreditation standards. Religious are also required to follow the charter with respect to prohibiting all public ministry, but this requirement is also in the accreditation standards. The primary distinction is probably in terms of what happens to the individual priest or religious who is found to have sexually abused a minor. The charter clearly states that clerics who have sexually offended a minor or minors cannot be in any form of public ministry, but the document does not address standards for their supervision if they remain in the priesthood. Religious accreditation actually has specific standards to address the requirements for supervision, support and accountability system for these men.
In the Church’s handling of this issue, can you tell me what the Church has done right?
The Church in the U.S. is the first large-scale organization to take two important steps toward healing and prevention of future incidents of abuse. We are the first to conduct a full prevalence study to determine how many incidents, how many victims and how many perpetrators of abuse there were from 1950 to 2002. The John Jay College [of Criminal Justice] conducted this comprehensive research, and it is published on the USCCB website. Anyone who truly wants to know "the problem" we are facing should review the findings. Secondly, the Roman Church is the first institution of its size to implement a full program of accountability to ensure the implementation of its reform efforts. Again, an outside team, the Gavin Group, has conducted the audits of the dioceses. Large-scale organizational change, deep cultural change simply does not happen without accountability.
Is there much of a difference between what happens when a priest is accused today and what happened prior to 2002 (when the charter and norms were adopted)?
In most situations, no. The reforms of the Church began long before 2002. As laws changed, as understanding of sexual abuse and sexual offenders developed, so did the procedures of the Church in most local dioceses and communities. It was 1992 when the bishops first began following the "Five Principles," which included pastoral outreach to victims, investigations and open communication with communities. Published in 1992, the bishops’ five principles were: 1) respond promptly to all allegations of abuse, 2) relieve the alleged offender promptly of his ministerial duties and refer him for appropriate medical evaluation and intervention, 3) comply with the obligations of civil law as regards reporting of the incident, 4) reach out to the victims and their families, and 5) deal as openly as possible with the members of the community. What changed in 2002 was a dramatic improvement in uniformity, both within and across dioceses and religious communities. The toughest situations have always been when the allegation is against an extremely talented and charismatic priest, religious or lay minister. These are the situations in any organization that are the most divisive, the most difficult and the most likely to be handled improperly. When the allegation seems impossible, in the absence of accountability, there is often a temptation to hope the situation will just "go away." In 2002, listening to stories of victims who were abused by just this type of offender, the bishops and religious superiors made commitments that would end "the exceptions." These commitments and the associated accountability also addressed the fact that some leaders had simply elected not to follow the guidance of the five principles, and that also brought greater uniformity to the handling of allegations.
What criticisms remain regarding the Church’s handling of these cases?
Much of the public criticism of the Church’s early handling of cases stems from a lack of knowledge about the historical context of this phenomenon. I have seen newspaper articles criticizing officials for not reporting acts of abuse to the civil authorities during years when there were no child protective services and the particular behaviors involved were not criminalized yet. It is fair for criticism of decisions made in the ’60s and ’70s to focus on interpretation of moral behavior, weakness in the resolve of leaders or even the disregard of procedures set out in canon law. By the same token, it is essential to separate this from expectations that are based on the laws and standards of today. We began studying sexual abuse in the 1970s, discovered it caused real harm in 1978, and realized perpetrators were difficult to rehabilitate in the 1990s. During the ’70s when we were sending offenders to treatment, the criminal justice system was doing the very same thing with convicted offenders — sending them to treatment instead of prison. At the time, it was believed they could be cured with relative ease. This is a very young body of knowledge, and as we sort through both valid and questionable criticisms, we must consider the historical context of any given episode. Regarding the work that remains to be done, the most pressing concern for me is the lack of protocols to guide the supervision and accountability for priests and religious who have been accused or found to have sexually offended in the past or who have completed their obligations to the criminal justice system. There continues to be a belief that aging and the passing of time will render these men safe. I understand we cannot supervise them if they are no longer a priest or religious, but as long as they are, we should strive to know how they spend their time and whether they are upholding the limits that have been placed on them.
Much criticism has been leveled at Pope Benedict XVI. Do you view that criticism as valid?
From my perspective, deep change in the culture of the Vatican began with Cardinal Ratzinger and has been solidified since he became Pope Benedict XVI. When I began working with priests who had sexually offended, they would sometimes try to intimidate me with threats that if they "sent their case to Rome" to appeal how they were treated, that they would "win." This was in response to my developing systems to hold them accountable for how they spent their time, who they visited and whether the people in their lives were aware of the sexual abuse they had committed. Many times I heard, "You are in violation of my rights!" They clearly felt they had the upper hand. Since that time, and particularly since 2000, the balance of power has shifted. I have since worked with many priests and religious who have sexually offended against minors, and if you ask them today, they would be very unlikely to assume that "Rome" is on their side. Today, clerical and religious sexual offenders recognize they can be laicized for their crimes or for a failure to adhere to obedience. This gives us much more leverage in terms of ensuring adherence to safety provisions. Several men I know have "tested" the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) and found no tolerance for
sexual abuse in the priesthood and no sympathy for the cleric who disagrees with programs of prayer and penance. Evidence of where Pope Benedict XVI stands can be found in the following examples: 1. He was the one who declared the use of Internet and other forms of child pornography to be a delictum gravius (a "grave delict") — the same as a contact offense with a minor. He came to this conclusion at a time when many criminal jurisdictions were still debating the criminality of Internet pornography. 2. When he [became Pope], he appointed Cardinal [William] Levada from the U.S., clearly the country most likely to produce a stringent successor. As the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Levada has continued the legacy of increasingly strong response to sexual offenses by priests and religious. 3. The victims of sexual abuse who met with the Holy Father here in the U.S. were deeply touched by their meeting. They said they felt like he knew their cases personally. It is possible he did or that he has just known so many that are similar. I give great credibility to those victims who met with him personally. If they say he "gets it," I am inclined to believe them. It is also important to know that in Pope Benedict XVI we have the individual who has seen more cases of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church than perhaps anyone else in the world. I believe he knows how serious the problem is, and that he understands the sacrifices that have to be made to fix it. Do you know why then-Cardinal Ratzinger suggested that the cases be handled by the CDF rather than the Congregation for Clergy? I cannot say why Cardinal Ratzinger implemented the system of all cases being handled by the CDF in 2001, but I can speak to my own experience of this change. Prior to 2001, some cases of sexual abuse were sent to the CDF, some to the Congregation for Clergy, some to the Congregation for Religious, and some religious communities sent cases to their own general superiors. As you can imagine, this made for considerable variation in the response and handling of the cases, because the various congregations made their own interpretations and could be more or less inclined toward stringency or
leniency. I was involved in investigations and review of cases to be sent to Rome beginning in 1996. Back then, the process was very slow, and it was difficult to predict whether the evidence would be considered "enough" for a conviction in the ecclesiastical system. Since 2001, the system has become much more uniform. There is a "form" of how to write up the case so that all allegations and the outcomes of investigations are clearly documented. Many trials are held locally, and the process is much faster. Even more importantly, the CDF gives support and credibility to bishops and superiors who are involved in disciplinary procedures, from removal from ministry to laicization. I still believe the rights of priests and religious are respected and upheld, but there is a greater attention to the needs of the community to be safe from harm. In dealing with this issue, you’ve really seen the dark side of humanity and individuals within the Church.
You’re still Catholic, aren’t you? How has it impacted your faith?
This is a question I actually get fairly often. Even though much of my adult life has been spent dealing with sexual abuse in the Church and other organizations, I’m still Catholic. I will share with you that at first it wasn’t easy. I spent about three years struggling with what I learned about the Church … how people were hurt by those they trusted, how leaders would not listen and members of their communities turned away from the ones who had been hurt. The saddest part for me was being turned away myself in the beginning when I offered to help. That was very painful. I cannot say it ever affected my feelings of closeness with God, but I felt an emotional distance from the Church as an organization. It was my work with religious communities that started me on the road back to the Church. I began working with religious and spending whole weeks living in their communities, coming to know the work that they did, listening to the ways in which their ministries touched the lives of so many people. Through this work with religious, the work with victims of abuse, and the development of response systems, I began to feel close to the Church again, to fall back in love. This time was different though. I don’t think I have a trace of "infatuation" with the Church. I love it like you love your spouse after 40 years of marriage. I love it in its faults and failings. I love it all the more for the intensity of its humanness; perfection is not part of the bargain. Once, a few years ago, a religious community set up a graveside service for a survivor of abuse who wanted closure. His perpetrator was deceased. We walked a long way to the cemetery. There, we prayed and let him read his letter. All of us cried and held hands. I think we each cried for different reasons. Yes, my work has forced me to face the dark side of humanity and the Church, but it has also allowed me to witness grace and beauty in those moments when we need it most.
Do you think this is going to end up defining Benedict’s papacy?
Perhaps, but not in a negative way. Now that so much information is coming forward I believe two things will happen. First, we will all be privy to the information we need in order to understand how much Pope Benedict’s resolve and commitment have already changed the system within our Church. We needed a pope that did not mind being considered "tough" and that is what we have. Instead of change happening "behind the scenes," we will know about it. Second, all of the media attention and worldwide interest will give Pope Benedict just the political opportunity and leverage he needs to change the Church culture of silence and protection throughout the world much faster. He won’t have to "sell" change in the way he would have if this had not happened. Many of the barriers he has encountered for more than a decade will be broken down. I believe this will solidify his legacy as the agent of change and restoration of the Church for which he would want to be remembered.
Tim Drake writes from St. Joseph, Minnesota. Beat the mailman! Read the content our print subscribers enjoy even before it gets to their mailboxes with a digital-only subscription to the Register for only $29.95 per year. Or click here to see options for subscribing to the print edition, and get 3 free issues with no risk and no obligation.
http://www.ncregister.com/register_exclusives/change_in_vatican_culture/
Monica Applewhite is one of the foremost experts on screening, monitoring and policy development for the prevention of sexual abuse and risk management for those with histories of sexual offending. Applewhite has spent the past 16 years conducting research and root-cause analysis in the area of sexual abuse in organizations in order to assist organizations in developing best practice standards. Formerly with Praesidium Inc., she helped create an accreditation system for the Conference of Major Superiors of Men to hold them accountable to the highest standards of child protection. She has worked with more than 300 organizations that serve children and youth, including 28 Catholic dioceses, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the U.S. Jesuit Conference, and the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life in Rome. Now director of Confianza LLC, a consulting firm specializing in standards of care and the dynamics of abuse in educational and religious environments she resides in Austin, Texas. Applewhite spoke with Register senior writer Tim Drake.
The sexual abuse of minors is not particular to the Catholic Church alone, is it?
Unfortunately, sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults happens in all organizations that serve these populations. What is distinctive for the Catholic Church is the saliency of the issue. Both Catholics and non-Catholics are interested in reading and hearing about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church for a variety of reasons. In some ways, this is fortunate for those of us who advocate for education and prevention
because it is an opportunity to address the issue within the Church while bringing to light a society-wide problem most people would prefer not to address.
Do you have any thoughts on why this has resurfaced at the time it has?
We have been through several cycles of media attention — first in 1985, then in 1992, again in 2002, and now in 2010. It’s not that we have new cases — the majority of the cases under discussion are still those from the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s — but each time the issue arises we are able to analyze different aspects of the problem that should be addressed, from the harm that is caused, to the discipline for those who offend, to the long-term effects on victims, families and communities, and the need for accountability of leaders. This new wave of interest and new information seems to be focused on the need for scrutiny of the universal Church, not just the Church of the United States, and that is new. One of the positive outcomes of media consideration of the problem is that with each publicized case, more adults and young people both within the Church and outside of the Church are able to talk about their own experiences. The current media attention was sparked by cases in Germany and has led thousands of victims of abuse within the Catholic Church of Europe to come forward and report their own experiences. The German Church has set up a hotline, and thousands of people have already called in to report abuse. I am grateful that the hotline was set up and we can begin to identify the people who have been harmed in this way.
Tell me about your work addressing this issue through Praesidium with the Conference of Major Superiors of Men.
When the bishops of the U.S. issued the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) developed the "Instruments of Hope and Healing." The male religious superiors of the United States made a decision to hold themselves accountable to outside experts in the field through a system of accreditation for religious. CMSM selected Praesidium Inc. to conduct the accreditation visits and hold the religious communities accountable for 25 standards of excellence. My role was to oversee the development of the standards, the system of measurement to ensure that standards were met, and the educational program for the major superiors. We were very strict in our interpretation and verification process. I directed the accreditation program through its first three-year cycle. Is there much of a difference for how these cases are handled by religious institutes vs. dioceses? Yes and no. Both the dioceses and the religious have committed themselves to reporting abuse to the civil authorities, to responding pastorally to victims and to investigating all abuse allegations. In these cases, the dioceses are meant to follow the charter, and the religious are to follow the accreditation standards. Religious are also required to follow the charter with respect to prohibiting all public ministry, but this requirement is also in the accreditation standards. The primary distinction is probably in terms of what happens to the individual priest or religious who is found to have sexually abused a minor. The charter clearly states that clerics who have sexually offended a minor or minors cannot be in any form of public ministry, but the document does not address standards for their supervision if they remain in the priesthood. Religious accreditation actually has specific standards to address the requirements for supervision, support and accountability system for these men.
In the Church’s handling of this issue, can you tell me what the Church has done right?
The Church in the U.S. is the first large-scale organization to take two important steps toward healing and prevention of future incidents of abuse. We are the first to conduct a full prevalence study to determine how many incidents, how many victims and how many perpetrators of abuse there were from 1950 to 2002. The John Jay College [of Criminal Justice] conducted this comprehensive research, and it is published on the USCCB website. Anyone who truly wants to know "the problem" we are facing should review the findings. Secondly, the Roman Church is the first institution of its size to implement a full program of accountability to ensure the implementation of its reform efforts. Again, an outside team, the Gavin Group, has conducted the audits of the dioceses. Large-scale organizational change, deep cultural change simply does not happen without accountability.
Is there much of a difference between what happens when a priest is accused today and what happened prior to 2002 (when the charter and norms were adopted)?
In most situations, no. The reforms of the Church began long before 2002. As laws changed, as understanding of sexual abuse and sexual offenders developed, so did the procedures of the Church in most local dioceses and communities. It was 1992 when the bishops first began following the "Five Principles," which included pastoral outreach to victims, investigations and open communication with communities. Published in 1992, the bishops’ five principles were: 1) respond promptly to all allegations of abuse, 2) relieve the alleged offender promptly of his ministerial duties and refer him for appropriate medical evaluation and intervention, 3) comply with the obligations of civil law as regards reporting of the incident, 4) reach out to the victims and their families, and 5) deal as openly as possible with the members of the community. What changed in 2002 was a dramatic improvement in uniformity, both within and across dioceses and religious communities. The toughest situations have always been when the allegation is against an extremely talented and charismatic priest, religious or lay minister. These are the situations in any organization that are the most divisive, the most difficult and the most likely to be handled improperly. When the allegation seems impossible, in the absence of accountability, there is often a temptation to hope the situation will just "go away." In 2002, listening to stories of victims who were abused by just this type of offender, the bishops and religious superiors made commitments that would end "the exceptions." These commitments and the associated accountability also addressed the fact that some leaders had simply elected not to follow the guidance of the five principles, and that also brought greater uniformity to the handling of allegations.
What criticisms remain regarding the Church’s handling of these cases?
Much of the public criticism of the Church’s early handling of cases stems from a lack of knowledge about the historical context of this phenomenon. I have seen newspaper articles criticizing officials for not reporting acts of abuse to the civil authorities during years when there were no child protective services and the particular behaviors involved were not criminalized yet. It is fair for criticism of decisions made in the ’60s and ’70s to focus on interpretation of moral behavior, weakness in the resolve of leaders or even the disregard of procedures set out in canon law. By the same token, it is essential to separate this from expectations that are based on the laws and standards of today. We began studying sexual abuse in the 1970s, discovered it caused real harm in 1978, and realized perpetrators were difficult to rehabilitate in the 1990s. During the ’70s when we were sending offenders to treatment, the criminal justice system was doing the very same thing with convicted offenders — sending them to treatment instead of prison. At the time, it was believed they could be cured with relative ease. This is a very young body of knowledge, and as we sort through both valid and questionable criticisms, we must consider the historical context of any given episode. Regarding the work that remains to be done, the most pressing concern for me is the lack of protocols to guide the supervision and accountability for priests and religious who have been accused or found to have sexually offended in the past or who have completed their obligations to the criminal justice system. There continues to be a belief that aging and the passing of time will render these men safe. I understand we cannot supervise them if they are no longer a priest or religious, but as long as they are, we should strive to know how they spend their time and whether they are upholding the limits that have been placed on them.
Much criticism has been leveled at Pope Benedict XVI. Do you view that criticism as valid?
From my perspective, deep change in the culture of the Vatican began with Cardinal Ratzinger and has been solidified since he became Pope Benedict XVI. When I began working with priests who had sexually offended, they would sometimes try to intimidate me with threats that if they "sent their case to Rome" to appeal how they were treated, that they would "win." This was in response to my developing systems to hold them accountable for how they spent their time, who they visited and whether the people in their lives were aware of the sexual abuse they had committed. Many times I heard, "You are in violation of my rights!" They clearly felt they had the upper hand. Since that time, and particularly since 2000, the balance of power has shifted. I have since worked with many priests and religious who have sexually offended against minors, and if you ask them today, they would be very unlikely to assume that "Rome" is on their side. Today, clerical and religious sexual offenders recognize they can be laicized for their crimes or for a failure to adhere to obedience. This gives us much more leverage in terms of ensuring adherence to safety provisions. Several men I know have "tested" the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) and found no tolerance for
sexual abuse in the priesthood and no sympathy for the cleric who disagrees with programs of prayer and penance. Evidence of where Pope Benedict XVI stands can be found in the following examples: 1. He was the one who declared the use of Internet and other forms of child pornography to be a delictum gravius (a "grave delict") — the same as a contact offense with a minor. He came to this conclusion at a time when many criminal jurisdictions were still debating the criminality of Internet pornography. 2. When he [became Pope], he appointed Cardinal [William] Levada from the U.S., clearly the country most likely to produce a stringent successor. As the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Levada has continued the legacy of increasingly strong response to sexual offenses by priests and religious. 3. The victims of sexual abuse who met with the Holy Father here in the U.S. were deeply touched by their meeting. They said they felt like he knew their cases personally. It is possible he did or that he has just known so many that are similar. I give great credibility to those victims who met with him personally. If they say he "gets it," I am inclined to believe them. It is also important to know that in Pope Benedict XVI we have the individual who has seen more cases of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church than perhaps anyone else in the world. I believe he knows how serious the problem is, and that he understands the sacrifices that have to be made to fix it. Do you know why then-Cardinal Ratzinger suggested that the cases be handled by the CDF rather than the Congregation for Clergy? I cannot say why Cardinal Ratzinger implemented the system of all cases being handled by the CDF in 2001, but I can speak to my own experience of this change. Prior to 2001, some cases of sexual abuse were sent to the CDF, some to the Congregation for Clergy, some to the Congregation for Religious, and some religious communities sent cases to their own general superiors. As you can imagine, this made for considerable variation in the response and handling of the cases, because the various congregations made their own interpretations and could be more or less inclined toward stringency or
leniency. I was involved in investigations and review of cases to be sent to Rome beginning in 1996. Back then, the process was very slow, and it was difficult to predict whether the evidence would be considered "enough" for a conviction in the ecclesiastical system. Since 2001, the system has become much more uniform. There is a "form" of how to write up the case so that all allegations and the outcomes of investigations are clearly documented. Many trials are held locally, and the process is much faster. Even more importantly, the CDF gives support and credibility to bishops and superiors who are involved in disciplinary procedures, from removal from ministry to laicization. I still believe the rights of priests and religious are respected and upheld, but there is a greater attention to the needs of the community to be safe from harm. In dealing with this issue, you’ve really seen the dark side of humanity and individuals within the Church.
You’re still Catholic, aren’t you? How has it impacted your faith?
This is a question I actually get fairly often. Even though much of my adult life has been spent dealing with sexual abuse in the Church and other organizations, I’m still Catholic. I will share with you that at first it wasn’t easy. I spent about three years struggling with what I learned about the Church … how people were hurt by those they trusted, how leaders would not listen and members of their communities turned away from the ones who had been hurt. The saddest part for me was being turned away myself in the beginning when I offered to help. That was very painful. I cannot say it ever affected my feelings of closeness with God, but I felt an emotional distance from the Church as an organization. It was my work with religious communities that started me on the road back to the Church. I began working with religious and spending whole weeks living in their communities, coming to know the work that they did, listening to the ways in which their ministries touched the lives of so many people. Through this work with religious, the work with victims of abuse, and the development of response systems, I began to feel close to the Church again, to fall back in love. This time was different though. I don’t think I have a trace of "infatuation" with the Church. I love it like you love your spouse after 40 years of marriage. I love it in its faults and failings. I love it all the more for the intensity of its humanness; perfection is not part of the bargain. Once, a few years ago, a religious community set up a graveside service for a survivor of abuse who wanted closure. His perpetrator was deceased. We walked a long way to the cemetery. There, we prayed and let him read his letter. All of us cried and held hands. I think we each cried for different reasons. Yes, my work has forced me to face the dark side of humanity and the Church, but it has also allowed me to witness grace and beauty in those moments when we need it most.
Do you think this is going to end up defining Benedict’s papacy?
Perhaps, but not in a negative way. Now that so much information is coming forward I believe two things will happen. First, we will all be privy to the information we need in order to understand how much Pope Benedict’s resolve and commitment have already changed the system within our Church. We needed a pope that did not mind being considered "tough" and that is what we have. Instead of change happening "behind the scenes," we will know about it. Second, all of the media attention and worldwide interest will give Pope Benedict just the political opportunity and leverage he needs to change the Church culture of silence and protection throughout the world much faster. He won’t have to "sell" change in the way he would have if this had not happened. Many of the barriers he has encountered for more than a decade will be broken down. I believe this will solidify his legacy as the agent of change and restoration of the Church for which he would want to be remembered.
Tim Drake writes from St. Joseph, Minnesota. Beat the mailman! Read the content our print subscribers enjoy even before it gets to their mailboxes with a digital-only subscription to the Register for only $29.95 per year. Or click here to see options for subscribing to the print edition, and get 3 free issues with no risk and no obligation.
http://www.ncregister.com/register_exclusives/change_in_vatican_culture/
Friday, April 2, 2010
Anonymous Postings
When I announced this blog in the parish bulletin, I invited all nature of comment - positive or negative. The only Comments I won't publish are those that are vulgar, ad hominem, or unsigned/anonymous Comments.
That the first two types are inadmissible ought to be self-evident. The third is inadmissible because I think its proper for people to stand behind what they say.
Dan McLellan, OFM
That the first two types are inadmissible ought to be self-evident. The third is inadmissible because I think its proper for people to stand behind what they say.
Dan McLellan, OFM
Monday, March 29, 2010
Thoughts I Can Identify With
I came across this piece in The National Catholic Reporter. They are thoughts I can identify with. I love our church building. It's an elegant and holy place. But it can't compare with the elegance and holiness of the people who fill it!
Fr. Dan
Life of a parish, the real jewels of the church
Mar. 27, 2010
By Melissa Musick Nussbaum
Our parish was “restored,” “remodeled,” “renewed” or “ruined” a few years ago. The verb choice varies according to the liturgical politics of the speaker. If the visitor decries the lack of a tabernacle above the high altar, I know what’s coming as surely as I do if another visitor approves the front three ranks of moveable wooden chairs.
The wooden chairs, like the pews behind them, have attached kneelers, which should please everyone. It doesn’t. Enthusiasm for curved seating is canceled out be dismay for the kneelers. Enthusiasm for kneelers is canceled out by dismay for the curved seating.
And don’t get me started on the doubled-edged sword – or butter knife, depending upon one’s point of view – that is “On Eagle’s Wings.”
As we are in the Age of the Parish Mission Statement, I sometimes think mother church should take a page from Merle Haggard’s song and simply headline out bulletins and bulletin boards with his immortal phrase, “Mama Tried.”
Of course, for the cognoscenti, one need only mention the name of the liturgical consultant who helped us with the work – Fr. Richard Vosko – and the response is immediate and strong. Like a character in a 19th-century melodrama, Vosko’s appearance on the stage elicits either cheers or boos but nothing in between. Indeed, I am told that in some circles he is known, like a liturgical Vlad the Impaler, as “Vosko the Destroyer,” in which case he needs to lose the earth-toned hush puppies and look for a cape.
I mention this because I tend to think of the great divide only when we have a visitor to the parish. The features of the building (so interesting when we were in the planning stage and under construction and when we first moved back into the space) have dimmed for me as the features of parishioners’ faces have grown ever brighter.
I can’t remember the last time I registered the new baptismal font -- an item on the liturgically correct/incorrect checklist -- except to remember the days our grandchildren went down into the water and came up wet and screaming, or the Easter Vigil when the numerous newly adopted children in one parish family went in and came out of the water smiling all the way. I remember other children, other adults in that life-giving bath, all of them greeted with songs and tears and prayers and clean towels.
I remember the coffin of a friend’s son as it lay before the font. Her son had killed himself, and Suicide had become both his fate and his name. The celebrant called out the name given him at his baptism and reminded us that he had died with Christ and so had died, though perhaps himself unable to comprehend it, in the hope of everlasting life.
My daughter turned to me and said, “They’ve given him his name back.” The church had restored his name as its waters had given him life. I doubt a single member of our community that day was remarking upon the size or placement of the font, except to give thanks for its power and its presence.
There are things I do register. I check Sunday after Sunday to see if Helen is in her customary seat near the west side of the church. Since Mitch died, we worry about her ability to make the 8:45 in bad weather. And then I glance across the altar to the section reserved for the deaf in our parish. I want to see Connie there with her son, Roy, and her granddaughter, Katarina. Connie has had some nasty falls, and if she is not at Mass, chances are she is in the hospital.
I look for David and his twins. For Marge and her daughter. For Will. For Barbie. For Jerry, due back from India. For Rita. If Bob is with her, I know he is having a good day. I look for Michelle and Chuck and Barbara, all of whom have suffered and survived.
I look at the choir and see Mike and hear again as he sings the names of our beloved dead each November. I remember the first November when his own daughter’s name was among those he sang. I look for Tom and Michael.
I look for Pat, who, when he is not with us, is ministering at the county jail. I look for Esperanza, who will watch the servers and shove them forward when they forget their jobs.
I look for John Francis, who bounces, and Juliet, who grins, and Jane, who wanders over for a hug.
I scan the entrance for our grandchildren, who clump a noisy counterpoint to the opening hymn as they race up the aisle and into our laps.
I check the back of the church for the dark heads of Mia and Nico bent over the baby’s own dark locks. I can feel peace as I count them like a mother at bedtime or mealtime, each beloved face in its place.
And I know what the visitor cannot -- the life of this parish that was vibrant and strangely beautiful even when we stood together under scaffolding and brought stadium blankets to wear against the chill from unfinished walls and windows.
I’m glad we kept the old windows and grateful we had the statues repainted, but St. Mary’s true ornaments have always been built of the same sturdy stuff as her walls and roof: the people who gather here to pray and to ask for prayer, to praise and to give thanks, to serve God and one another.
The story is told of St. Lawrence that upon his arrest during the Valerian persecutions in the third century, he was ordered to surrender the church riches to Roman authorities. Deacon Lawrence, we hear, went out and gathered people, members of the church, and brought them before the Roman prefect. “Here,” he said to his accusers, “are the jewels of the church.”
I know just what he meant.
[Melissa Musick Nussbaum lives in Colorado Springs, Colo. She is coauthor, with Jana Bennett, of Free to Stay, Free to Leave: Fruits of the Spirit and Church Choice.]
Fr. Dan
Life of a parish, the real jewels of the church
Mar. 27, 2010
By Melissa Musick Nussbaum
Our parish was “restored,” “remodeled,” “renewed” or “ruined” a few years ago. The verb choice varies according to the liturgical politics of the speaker. If the visitor decries the lack of a tabernacle above the high altar, I know what’s coming as surely as I do if another visitor approves the front three ranks of moveable wooden chairs.
The wooden chairs, like the pews behind them, have attached kneelers, which should please everyone. It doesn’t. Enthusiasm for curved seating is canceled out be dismay for the kneelers. Enthusiasm for kneelers is canceled out by dismay for the curved seating.
And don’t get me started on the doubled-edged sword – or butter knife, depending upon one’s point of view – that is “On Eagle’s Wings.”
As we are in the Age of the Parish Mission Statement, I sometimes think mother church should take a page from Merle Haggard’s song and simply headline out bulletins and bulletin boards with his immortal phrase, “Mama Tried.”
Of course, for the cognoscenti, one need only mention the name of the liturgical consultant who helped us with the work – Fr. Richard Vosko – and the response is immediate and strong. Like a character in a 19th-century melodrama, Vosko’s appearance on the stage elicits either cheers or boos but nothing in between. Indeed, I am told that in some circles he is known, like a liturgical Vlad the Impaler, as “Vosko the Destroyer,” in which case he needs to lose the earth-toned hush puppies and look for a cape.
I mention this because I tend to think of the great divide only when we have a visitor to the parish. The features of the building (so interesting when we were in the planning stage and under construction and when we first moved back into the space) have dimmed for me as the features of parishioners’ faces have grown ever brighter.
I can’t remember the last time I registered the new baptismal font -- an item on the liturgically correct/incorrect checklist -- except to remember the days our grandchildren went down into the water and came up wet and screaming, or the Easter Vigil when the numerous newly adopted children in one parish family went in and came out of the water smiling all the way. I remember other children, other adults in that life-giving bath, all of them greeted with songs and tears and prayers and clean towels.
I remember the coffin of a friend’s son as it lay before the font. Her son had killed himself, and Suicide had become both his fate and his name. The celebrant called out the name given him at his baptism and reminded us that he had died with Christ and so had died, though perhaps himself unable to comprehend it, in the hope of everlasting life.
My daughter turned to me and said, “They’ve given him his name back.” The church had restored his name as its waters had given him life. I doubt a single member of our community that day was remarking upon the size or placement of the font, except to give thanks for its power and its presence.
There are things I do register. I check Sunday after Sunday to see if Helen is in her customary seat near the west side of the church. Since Mitch died, we worry about her ability to make the 8:45 in bad weather. And then I glance across the altar to the section reserved for the deaf in our parish. I want to see Connie there with her son, Roy, and her granddaughter, Katarina. Connie has had some nasty falls, and if she is not at Mass, chances are she is in the hospital.
I look for David and his twins. For Marge and her daughter. For Will. For Barbie. For Jerry, due back from India. For Rita. If Bob is with her, I know he is having a good day. I look for Michelle and Chuck and Barbara, all of whom have suffered and survived.
I look at the choir and see Mike and hear again as he sings the names of our beloved dead each November. I remember the first November when his own daughter’s name was among those he sang. I look for Tom and Michael.
I look for Pat, who, when he is not with us, is ministering at the county jail. I look for Esperanza, who will watch the servers and shove them forward when they forget their jobs.
I look for John Francis, who bounces, and Juliet, who grins, and Jane, who wanders over for a hug.
I scan the entrance for our grandchildren, who clump a noisy counterpoint to the opening hymn as they race up the aisle and into our laps.
I check the back of the church for the dark heads of Mia and Nico bent over the baby’s own dark locks. I can feel peace as I count them like a mother at bedtime or mealtime, each beloved face in its place.
And I know what the visitor cannot -- the life of this parish that was vibrant and strangely beautiful even when we stood together under scaffolding and brought stadium blankets to wear against the chill from unfinished walls and windows.
I’m glad we kept the old windows and grateful we had the statues repainted, but St. Mary’s true ornaments have always been built of the same sturdy stuff as her walls and roof: the people who gather here to pray and to ask for prayer, to praise and to give thanks, to serve God and one another.
The story is told of St. Lawrence that upon his arrest during the Valerian persecutions in the third century, he was ordered to surrender the church riches to Roman authorities. Deacon Lawrence, we hear, went out and gathered people, members of the church, and brought them before the Roman prefect. “Here,” he said to his accusers, “are the jewels of the church.”
I know just what he meant.
[Melissa Musick Nussbaum lives in Colorado Springs, Colo. She is coauthor, with Jana Bennett, of Free to Stay, Free to Leave: Fruits of the Spirit and Church Choice.]
Thursday, March 18, 2010
There is no "Christian" Torture
Fr. Steve Patti
published in the Herald-Sun
There is a new book called “Courting Disaster: How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack,” by Marc A. Thiessen. In the book, the author makes the claim that waterboarding, a form of torture that we have become familiar with over the past few years, is not only useful and desirable, but also permitted by the teachings of the Catholic Church. Mr. Thiessen describes himself as a practicing Roman Catholic.
Mr. Thiessen draws on the Catechism of the Catholic Church which states that “the defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to do harm.” In his book he writes: “If this principle applies to taking human life, it must certainly apply to coercive interrogation as well. A captured terrorist is an unjust aggressor who retains the power to kill many thousands by withholding information about planned attacks.” In a recent homily at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church here in Durham, I asked the question: As Catholics, how do we respond to Marc Thiessen’s claim? As Catholics, can we ever justify torture?
It’s a sensitive issue for sure. Almost nine years after September 11, 2001, that day haunts us still. We will never forget the images from that day. I remember a cartoon that appeared in the newspaper a week or so after the attacks. It showed a person looking at a computer screen, right hand on the mouse, ready to click, and on the screen were two words – “freedom” and “security.” Which do you choose? We still wrestle with that question today.
It’s a sensitive issue as well because some of our brothers and sisters or sons and daughters or friends or neighbors have served, and continue to serve, bravely in our armed services.
When torture came up during the war in Iraq, you sometimes heard people say “you have to do what you have to do in times of war.” Or “sometimes what Jesus says in the gospel doesn’t work in the real world. We have to be realistic.”
Whatever we might think about torture or “coercive interrogation,” the teaching of the Catholic Church is that torture is wrong. “The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” a document from the Second Vatican Council, refers to the words of Jesus from the gospel of Matthew, “As you did to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.” The document then powerfully lists what it calls “varieties of crimes” against these brothers and sisters. These include: “all offenses against life itself, such as murder, genocide, abortion, and euthanasia; all violations of the integrity of the human person, such as physical and mental torture, undue psychological pressures; all offenses against human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, the selling of women and children, degrading working conditions where people are treated as mere tools for profit rather than free and responsible persons: all these and the like are criminal: they poison civilization; and they debase the perpetrators more than the victims and militate against the honor of the creator.”
This is strong language. Torture “debases the perpetrators.” In a survey taken in 2005, it was revealed that 74% of Catholics agreed that torture can be justified in at least rare occasions. In my homily, I asked the question, what happens to us (Catholics, or Americans) when we unreflectively accept a policy of torture from our government? I asked the question conscious, and respectful, of the brave military service of our troops. I asked the question, as well, very aware of the evil that was committed against our nation by the terrorists on September 11, 2001. Still, these words from the Second Vatican Council haunt us: are we, in some way, “debased” by our acceptance, or justification, of torture?
As a Franciscan friar, I am drawn to the life and witness of St. Francis of Assisi, who lived 800 years ago in the times of the Crusades. The East was at war with the West. Christians were fighting Muslims. Thousands were dying. St. Francis, drawing from his own experience of the gospel and its call to peace and reconciliation, sailed from Italy across the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt, marched through the Christian/Muslim battle lines, and asked to meet with the Sultan, the head of the Muslims. The soldiers, perhaps surprised by such a bold gesture on the part of this small, dressed-in-rags man, allowed him through. And as the story is told, Francis and the Sultan spoke, respectfully, of each other’s faith, and their own hopes for peace.
Was Francis naïve? Was he a fool for trying something so bold, so risky? Maybe he was. But he took the gospel and its call to radically re-think one’s life, its call to every person to be a bearer of peace and reconciliation, very seriously. As a nation that refers to itself as Christian, can we do the same?
Fr. Steve Patti
published in the Herald-Sun
There is a new book called “Courting Disaster: How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack,” by Marc A. Thiessen. In the book, the author makes the claim that waterboarding, a form of torture that we have become familiar with over the past few years, is not only useful and desirable, but also permitted by the teachings of the Catholic Church. Mr. Thiessen describes himself as a practicing Roman Catholic.
Mr. Thiessen draws on the Catechism of the Catholic Church which states that “the defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to do harm.” In his book he writes: “If this principle applies to taking human life, it must certainly apply to coercive interrogation as well. A captured terrorist is an unjust aggressor who retains the power to kill many thousands by withholding information about planned attacks.” In a recent homily at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church here in Durham, I asked the question: As Catholics, how do we respond to Marc Thiessen’s claim? As Catholics, can we ever justify torture?
It’s a sensitive issue for sure. Almost nine years after September 11, 2001, that day haunts us still. We will never forget the images from that day. I remember a cartoon that appeared in the newspaper a week or so after the attacks. It showed a person looking at a computer screen, right hand on the mouse, ready to click, and on the screen were two words – “freedom” and “security.” Which do you choose? We still wrestle with that question today.
It’s a sensitive issue as well because some of our brothers and sisters or sons and daughters or friends or neighbors have served, and continue to serve, bravely in our armed services.
When torture came up during the war in Iraq, you sometimes heard people say “you have to do what you have to do in times of war.” Or “sometimes what Jesus says in the gospel doesn’t work in the real world. We have to be realistic.”
Whatever we might think about torture or “coercive interrogation,” the teaching of the Catholic Church is that torture is wrong. “The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” a document from the Second Vatican Council, refers to the words of Jesus from the gospel of Matthew, “As you did to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.” The document then powerfully lists what it calls “varieties of crimes” against these brothers and sisters. These include: “all offenses against life itself, such as murder, genocide, abortion, and euthanasia; all violations of the integrity of the human person, such as physical and mental torture, undue psychological pressures; all offenses against human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, the selling of women and children, degrading working conditions where people are treated as mere tools for profit rather than free and responsible persons: all these and the like are criminal: they poison civilization; and they debase the perpetrators more than the victims and militate against the honor of the creator.”
This is strong language. Torture “debases the perpetrators.” In a survey taken in 2005, it was revealed that 74% of Catholics agreed that torture can be justified in at least rare occasions. In my homily, I asked the question, what happens to us (Catholics, or Americans) when we unreflectively accept a policy of torture from our government? I asked the question conscious, and respectful, of the brave military service of our troops. I asked the question, as well, very aware of the evil that was committed against our nation by the terrorists on September 11, 2001. Still, these words from the Second Vatican Council haunt us: are we, in some way, “debased” by our acceptance, or justification, of torture?
As a Franciscan friar, I am drawn to the life and witness of St. Francis of Assisi, who lived 800 years ago in the times of the Crusades. The East was at war with the West. Christians were fighting Muslims. Thousands were dying. St. Francis, drawing from his own experience of the gospel and its call to peace and reconciliation, sailed from Italy across the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt, marched through the Christian/Muslim battle lines, and asked to meet with the Sultan, the head of the Muslims. The soldiers, perhaps surprised by such a bold gesture on the part of this small, dressed-in-rags man, allowed him through. And as the story is told, Francis and the Sultan spoke, respectfully, of each other’s faith, and their own hopes for peace.
Was Francis naïve? Was he a fool for trying something so bold, so risky? Maybe he was. But he took the gospel and its call to radically re-think one’s life, its call to every person to be a bearer of peace and reconciliation, very seriously. As a nation that refers to itself as Christian, can we do the same?
Friday, February 19, 2010
The First Sunday in Lent
Somewhere I read that we reach our peak in our early 30s. After that, life goes downhill. And yet, the other day a 90 year old parishioner I’d stop to chat with excused herself saying she had to get to the Y and the pool! I don’t know what “peak “ is, but I do know that age is no barrier to self-improvement. With that in mind, a suggestion for Lent.
Most of us dread Lent. We’ve been conditioned to “give up” something for 6 weeks and we angst about what that something should be. Then we get the “guilts” when we cop a smoke, eat a chocolate, or have a beer.
This Lent, forget about “giving up.” Instead, add something to your life.
Start off by imagining people who know you talking about you. You’re not there. What do you hope they are saying about you?
Then take a brief inventory of who you are – not your job or whether you’re a mom or dad, husband or wife, son or daughter, neighbor or co-worker. Instead, who you are as a person in these relationships: generous, trusting, available, courteous, honest, good-humored. Then think about which of these characteristics could use some attention. “I could be more courageous and stop lying.” “I could call my brothers and sisters more often.” “I could take myself less seriously.” “I could take myself more seriously and trust my values and convictions.” Whatever.
Now think about what you could do in the next 6 weeks to make better the good you are already are? What could you do to better to appreciate the person God loves no matter what? To make better the person already worth the Cross?
And instead of “giving up,” spend these 6 weeks “growing up” into the person God knows and loves by name, the person God has given to the rest of us so that we’ll have a real-life, flesh-and-blood experience of God’s love for us.
Come Easter, we all dress up. During Lent we make sure that we’ll look as good on the inside as we do on the outside.
Finally … the church has 2 sacraments of healing: Penance/Reconciliation (“Confession”) and Sacrament of the Sick (some still incorrectly call it “Extreme Unction”). Both aim to put back together what’s fallen apart in our lives with God and others. Penance, what’s fallen apart in the ups and downs of everyday life; Sacrament of the Sick, what’s fallen apart because of age or illness. We celebrate Penance/Reconciliation each Saturday from 9AM-10AM and on Tuesday, March 16 at 7PM. The Sacrament of the Sick is available anytime – simply call on one of the friars. The Sacrament of the Sick should always be requested when you are looking at some hospital time. It can be celebrated in your home, the hospital, a care facility, during daily Mass or after a Sunday Mass.
Somewhere I read that we reach our peak in our early 30s. After that, life goes downhill. And yet, the other day a 90 year old parishioner I’d stop to chat with excused herself saying she had to get to the Y and the pool! I don’t know what “peak “ is, but I do know that age is no barrier to self-improvement. With that in mind, a suggestion for Lent.
Most of us dread Lent. We’ve been conditioned to “give up” something for 6 weeks and we angst about what that something should be. Then we get the “guilts” when we cop a smoke, eat a chocolate, or have a beer.
This Lent, forget about “giving up.” Instead, add something to your life.
Start off by imagining people who know you talking about you. You’re not there. What do you hope they are saying about you?
Then take a brief inventory of who you are – not your job or whether you’re a mom or dad, husband or wife, son or daughter, neighbor or co-worker. Instead, who you are as a person in these relationships: generous, trusting, available, courteous, honest, good-humored. Then think about which of these characteristics could use some attention. “I could be more courageous and stop lying.” “I could call my brothers and sisters more often.” “I could take myself less seriously.” “I could take myself more seriously and trust my values and convictions.” Whatever.
Now think about what you could do in the next 6 weeks to make better the good you are already are? What could you do to better to appreciate the person God loves no matter what? To make better the person already worth the Cross?
And instead of “giving up,” spend these 6 weeks “growing up” into the person God knows and loves by name, the person God has given to the rest of us so that we’ll have a real-life, flesh-and-blood experience of God’s love for us.
Come Easter, we all dress up. During Lent we make sure that we’ll look as good on the inside as we do on the outside.
Finally … the church has 2 sacraments of healing: Penance/Reconciliation (“Confession”) and Sacrament of the Sick (some still incorrectly call it “Extreme Unction”). Both aim to put back together what’s fallen apart in our lives with God and others. Penance, what’s fallen apart in the ups and downs of everyday life; Sacrament of the Sick, what’s fallen apart because of age or illness. We celebrate Penance/Reconciliation each Saturday from 9AM-10AM and on Tuesday, March 16 at 7PM. The Sacrament of the Sick is available anytime – simply call on one of the friars. The Sacrament of the Sick should always be requested when you are looking at some hospital time. It can be celebrated in your home, the hospital, a care facility, during daily Mass or after a Sunday Mass.
Strategic Planning
A parishioner suggested that it would help comment and discussion re: the proposed goals of our parish plan if the goals were posted separately. Hence the postings below.
We got a great response from our "pulpit" appeal for folks with expertise in the various aspects of communication. The group met on Feb 3 for an orientations discusssion and will convene again on Feb 24 to begin laying the "platform" upon which to build or improve our various channels of communication.
We also had two "listening" sessions for input on the Seniors goal. We had small numbers but gathered some good information.
Currently, the staff is developing "objectives" aimed at meeting the goals. These will be reviewed by Mar 4. Then we'll create separate "action plans" for executing the objectives.
Your continued comment will help shape this work.
A parishioner suggested that it would help comment and discussion re: the proposed goals of our parish plan if the goals were posted separately. Hence the postings below.
We got a great response from our "pulpit" appeal for folks with expertise in the various aspects of communication. The group met on Feb 3 for an orientations discusssion and will convene again on Feb 24 to begin laying the "platform" upon which to build or improve our various channels of communication.
We also had two "listening" sessions for input on the Seniors goal. We had small numbers but gathered some good information.
Currently, the staff is developing "objectives" aimed at meeting the goals. These will be reviewed by Mar 4. Then we'll create separate "action plans" for executing the objectives.
Your continued comment will help shape this work.
Young Adults
Goal: The Parish will nurture and build support for young adults, in both the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking communities, by providing theological and spiritual formation, leadership development and service opportunities to assure they are welcomed and encouraged as they come together to connect socially and explore living out their Catholic faith together.
Goal: The Parish will nurture and build support for young adults, in both the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking communities, by providing theological and spiritual formation, leadership development and service opportunities to assure they are welcomed and encouraged as they come together to connect socially and explore living out their Catholic faith together.
Accessibility
Goal: The Immaculate Conception leadership team will be characterized by an understanding of, and a willingness to meet, the needs of parishioners, as well as having a dedication to providing timely assistance to those wishing to access information and services available within the parish and the community at large.
Goal: The Immaculate Conception leadership team will be characterized by an understanding of, and a willingness to meet, the needs of parishioners, as well as having a dedication to providing timely assistance to those wishing to access information and services available within the parish and the community at large.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Senior Concerns
“Senior concerns” surfaced in our Parish Survey and Assembly as deserving more of our attention. These concerns run the gamut of issues “seniors” have for themselves and issues facing adult children as they care for their parents. Two “listening sessions” have been scheduled to name specific issues and to get a better understanding of these issues. The first is for “seniors” themselves at 12:45PM on Wednesday, February 10. The second is for seniors and others (e.g., adult children, care-givers) on Wednesday, February 10 at 7:15PM. Cristina Hendrix, a parishioner and a Nurse Researcher/Practitioner at Durham VA’s Geriatrics Research, Education, and Clinical Center (GRECC), and a Senior Fellow at Duke’s Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development will facilitate our discussion. Please spread the word!
“Senior concerns” surfaced in our Parish Survey and Assembly as deserving more of our attention. These concerns run the gamut of issues “seniors” have for themselves and issues facing adult children as they care for their parents. Two “listening sessions” have been scheduled to name specific issues and to get a better understanding of these issues. The first is for “seniors” themselves at 12:45PM on Wednesday, February 10. The second is for seniors and others (e.g., adult children, care-givers) on Wednesday, February 10 at 7:15PM. Cristina Hendrix, a parishioner and a Nurse Researcher/Practitioner at Durham VA’s Geriatrics Research, Education, and Clinical Center (GRECC), and a Senior Fellow at Duke’s Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development will facilitate our discussion. Please spread the word!
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Immaculate Conception Parish
Strategic Plan Goals
VISION
From our worship to our world in the spirit of St. Francis, Immaculate Conception will be a grateful and giving parish making a difference in the lives of others.
STRATEGIC THEMES
• Communicating thoroughly
• Establishing a united parish
• Providing opportunities to serve
• Building community
GOALS
The Sunday Mass Experience
Goal: Immaculate Conception will plan and celebrate Sunday mass as the source and summit of our lives through the full, active, and conscious participation of our people.
Accessibility
Goal: The Immaculate Conception leadership team will be characterized by an understanding of, and a willingness to meet, the needs of parishioners, as well as having a dedication to providing timely assistance to those wishing to access information and services available within the parish and the community at large.
Inclusion
Goal: Immaculate Conception will be a parish where all are invited, welcomed and affirmed, and where diversity is celebrated and a sense of intimacy is cultivated.
Social Justice
Goal: Our parish community will develop and implement a comprehensive and sustained education effort to form laity for living the Church’s social teaching.
Communications
Goal: Immaculate Conception Parish will establish and maintain a progressive, multifaceted and coordinated communications program designed to build community; promote parish unity; and provide timely information on planning, parish activities, and opportunities to serve.
Adult Faith Enrichment
Goal: Immaculate Conception will survey leading adult formation programs to identify best practices, and then implement exceptional and appealing adult faith enrichment opportunities in the Parish.
Stewardship
Goal: Our Parish will seek to deepen its understanding of stewardship as a way of life by promoting a grateful and engaged community of parishioners generously giving of their time, talent and treasure.
Senior Citizens
Goal: We will develop and implement a strategy that is founded on listening to, and providing care for, the senior citizens of our community to assure they are fully vested in, and contributing to, the life of the parish.
Young Adults
Goal: The Parish will nurture and build support for young adults, in both the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking communities, by providing theological and spiritual formation, leadership development and service opportunities to assure they are welcomed and encouraged as they come together to connect socially and explore living out their Catholic faith together.
Grieving
Goal: Our community will expand the present bereavement program into a more comprehensive ministry to broadly serve the related pastoral needs of our parishioners who grieve the loss of a loved ones.
Facilities
Goal: Immaculate Conception, by year end 2011, will have organized for, and begun the process of, developing a facilities use and building plan designed to accommodate the growth of faith formation activity and our office/meeting space requirements.
Strategic Plan Goals
VISION
From our worship to our world in the spirit of St. Francis, Immaculate Conception will be a grateful and giving parish making a difference in the lives of others.
STRATEGIC THEMES
• Communicating thoroughly
• Establishing a united parish
• Providing opportunities to serve
• Building community
GOALS
The Sunday Mass Experience
Goal: Immaculate Conception will plan and celebrate Sunday mass as the source and summit of our lives through the full, active, and conscious participation of our people.
Accessibility
Goal: The Immaculate Conception leadership team will be characterized by an understanding of, and a willingness to meet, the needs of parishioners, as well as having a dedication to providing timely assistance to those wishing to access information and services available within the parish and the community at large.
Inclusion
Goal: Immaculate Conception will be a parish where all are invited, welcomed and affirmed, and where diversity is celebrated and a sense of intimacy is cultivated.
Social Justice
Goal: Our parish community will develop and implement a comprehensive and sustained education effort to form laity for living the Church’s social teaching.
Communications
Goal: Immaculate Conception Parish will establish and maintain a progressive, multifaceted and coordinated communications program designed to build community; promote parish unity; and provide timely information on planning, parish activities, and opportunities to serve.
Adult Faith Enrichment
Goal: Immaculate Conception will survey leading adult formation programs to identify best practices, and then implement exceptional and appealing adult faith enrichment opportunities in the Parish.
Stewardship
Goal: Our Parish will seek to deepen its understanding of stewardship as a way of life by promoting a grateful and engaged community of parishioners generously giving of their time, talent and treasure.
Senior Citizens
Goal: We will develop and implement a strategy that is founded on listening to, and providing care for, the senior citizens of our community to assure they are fully vested in, and contributing to, the life of the parish.
Young Adults
Goal: The Parish will nurture and build support for young adults, in both the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking communities, by providing theological and spiritual formation, leadership development and service opportunities to assure they are welcomed and encouraged as they come together to connect socially and explore living out their Catholic faith together.
Grieving
Goal: Our community will expand the present bereavement program into a more comprehensive ministry to broadly serve the related pastoral needs of our parishioners who grieve the loss of a loved ones.
Facilities
Goal: Immaculate Conception, by year end 2011, will have organized for, and begun the process of, developing a facilities use and building plan designed to accommodate the growth of faith formation activity and our office/meeting space requirements.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
A Few Words About Our Vision
From our worship to our world in the spirit of St. Francis, Immaculate Conception will be a grateful and giving parish making a difference in the lives of others.
Our parish Mission Statement tells who we are. Our Vision Statement tells what we aspire to.
As a parish we are who we are (Roman Catholic community in downtown Durham) and we do what we do (proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ) hoping to make a difference in the lives of others.
We aspire to be a parish that draws its energy from our worship, especially the Sunday Eucharist. In celebrating our Communion with one another and with God, we grow in gratitude for the serving life and saving death of Jesus, and we seek to show our thankfulness in our generosity.
At the conclusion of each Sunday Mass, we are sent (“Go in peace to … “) to our world – the world of family, school, city, work. We’re a parish that understands that what we do is mean to form us as relatives and friends, citizens and workers.
We look to take up this mission in the spirit of St. Francis, a man who found in the Incarnation (the Word made flesh, Jesus) and the Passion, God’s love for us. As Francis advised the friars, we proclaim the gospel first and foremost by personal example, and only after, by preaching.
Our parish Mission Statement tells who we are. Our Vision Statement tells what we aspire to.
As a parish we are who we are (Roman Catholic community in downtown Durham) and we do what we do (proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ) hoping to make a difference in the lives of others.
We aspire to be a parish that draws its energy from our worship, especially the Sunday Eucharist. In celebrating our Communion with one another and with God, we grow in gratitude for the serving life and saving death of Jesus, and we seek to show our thankfulness in our generosity.
At the conclusion of each Sunday Mass, we are sent (“Go in peace to … “) to our world – the world of family, school, city, work. We’re a parish that understands that what we do is mean to form us as relatives and friends, citizens and workers.
We look to take up this mission in the spirit of St. Francis, a man who found in the Incarnation (the Word made flesh, Jesus) and the Passion, God’s love for us. As Francis advised the friars, we proclaim the gospel first and foremost by personal example, and only after, by preaching.
Monday, January 18, 2010
IC's Mission
As our communication team gets up and running, I wanted to have something, in addition to face-to-face conversation, for conversation about our emerging plan and the Mission and Vision of our parish this plan aims to serve.
As I mentioned in the January 24 bulletin, it's important that we’re a parish well-wired not only to what is happening but to why it’s happening, appreciating how our various activities and programs are all in service of our parish Mission and Vision.
Our parish Mission is printed each week on the front cover of the bulletin.
Immaculate Conception Parish is a Roman Catholic community in downtown Durham pastored by Franciscan friars. We are a multicultural and stewardship parish called, gifted and sent to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ through worship, parish-wide faith formation, our parish school, pastoral care, and living the church’s social teaching.
I don't think we've ever had a chance to comment on some key words and phrases.
Parish If, like me, you're a transplant from up north and grew up in a "thick" Catholic culture, you probably think of parish as a piece of territoty. A short drive and you're in another parish. But the church's Canon Law describes a parish as a 'portion of the people of God.' So IC is flesh and blood and not geography.
downtown Downtown here refers both to geography and culture. We're obviously a stone's through from what everyone calls downtown Durham. But "downtown" also refers to a culture that's different from the suburbs or rural parts of Durham. There's a grittiness to the notion of "downtown" as the place where the customs of and courtesies of neighborhoods don't apply. Folks who have lost their berings typically gravitate downtown. That's why Urban Ministries is ideally located where it is. Downtown is also where things happen. It's usually the seat of government and where people gather to make the decisions that shape city/town life. An apt location for our parish.
pastored "Pastor" is Latin for "shepherd." It's an image Jesus used to describe himself. It's both a consolation and a challenge for the friars.
multicultural We are a portion of the people of God composed of folks from a host of cultural backgrounds. In many ways, we're like the Corinthians whom St. Paul loved dearly but who needed constant reminders that theirs was first a unity of faith.
stewardship The core of our spirituality is gratitude. We're ever aware of our blessings, some that have come to us through no effort of our own and others that have come from the hard work we've been given the capacity to accomplish. Our gratitude makes us a generous people, often sacrificial.
called, gifted and sent We share a common vocation ( = calling) to share in Jesus great venture, and we've been gifted (= graced) with the talents we admire in Jesus. Each Sunday, nourshed by Word and Sacrament, we're sent ( = "The Mass is ended, Go ...." ) to fulfill our calling with the graces given to us.
the gospel of Jesus Christ The gospel hangs over our altar. "God so loved the world ... " If our lives don't somehow say that, a lot of people will never know it.
As I mentioned in the January 24 bulletin, it's important that we’re a parish well-wired not only to what is happening but to why it’s happening, appreciating how our various activities and programs are all in service of our parish Mission and Vision.
Our parish Mission is printed each week on the front cover of the bulletin.
Immaculate Conception Parish is a Roman Catholic community in downtown Durham pastored by Franciscan friars. We are a multicultural and stewardship parish called, gifted and sent to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ through worship, parish-wide faith formation, our parish school, pastoral care, and living the church’s social teaching.
I don't think we've ever had a chance to comment on some key words and phrases.
Parish If, like me, you're a transplant from up north and grew up in a "thick" Catholic culture, you probably think of parish as a piece of territoty. A short drive and you're in another parish. But the church's Canon Law describes a parish as a 'portion of the people of God.' So IC is flesh and blood and not geography.
downtown Downtown here refers both to geography and culture. We're obviously a stone's through from what everyone calls downtown Durham. But "downtown" also refers to a culture that's different from the suburbs or rural parts of Durham. There's a grittiness to the notion of "downtown" as the place where the customs of and courtesies of neighborhoods don't apply. Folks who have lost their berings typically gravitate downtown. That's why Urban Ministries is ideally located where it is. Downtown is also where things happen. It's usually the seat of government and where people gather to make the decisions that shape city/town life. An apt location for our parish.
pastored "Pastor" is Latin for "shepherd." It's an image Jesus used to describe himself. It's both a consolation and a challenge for the friars.
multicultural We are a portion of the people of God composed of folks from a host of cultural backgrounds. In many ways, we're like the Corinthians whom St. Paul loved dearly but who needed constant reminders that theirs was first a unity of faith.
stewardship The core of our spirituality is gratitude. We're ever aware of our blessings, some that have come to us through no effort of our own and others that have come from the hard work we've been given the capacity to accomplish. Our gratitude makes us a generous people, often sacrificial.
called, gifted and sent We share a common vocation ( = calling) to share in Jesus great venture, and we've been gifted (= graced) with the talents we admire in Jesus. Each Sunday, nourshed by Word and Sacrament, we're sent ( = "The Mass is ended, Go ...." ) to fulfill our calling with the graces given to us.
the gospel of Jesus Christ The gospel hangs over our altar. "God so loved the world ... " If our lives don't somehow say that, a lot of people will never know it.
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