Wholeheartedly agree...

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: The Catholic Church has been through this "change with the times" mentality dozens of times before. All things considered, the ones who think it is broken are often liberal journalists who couldn't give a lick about morality, discipline, or self-sacrifice. Many of us are "Ethnic" Catholics...because our parents and grandparents were Catholic. We fell into Catholicism - kind of like the way Bob Davie fell into the head job at ND. This is a lazy Catholicism which breeds apathy and lack of understanding/appreciation for the real Truths of Catholicism. Just as we have seen mirrored in Davie's underappreciation of the Notre Dame tradition. : Apologies to ACROSS (as this is way OT), but I think he would agree with the mostly consistent and uncompromising manner in which the Church has conducted itself over the last 20 centuries or so... : ----------------------------------------------------------------------- : he Catholic Church is doing just fine compared to many of the Protestant denominations that have been so whittled down because of a lack of central authority and rush to embrace the latest nuggets of modern thought and political correctness that they can scarecly call themselves Christians anymore. : : I am all for a leaner Church devoid of dead-weight and cafeteria Catholics. The Church is not a democracy nor should it ever be. Truths should not be changed because of a poll. : : : : : : When I "grew up" and had a family of my own, I finally realized how smart my father really was. : : : I can not make the same statement about the Church. The Church seems just as bewildered and befuddled as it was when I was 16...Rick(and my prayers for ND football are never answered anyway). : : : : : : : Between this world and the next : : : : Jan 25th 2001 : : : : From The Economist print edition : : : : As Pope John Paul II creates what is probably his last batch of cardinals, the Roman Catholic church waits for change. Will it come? : : : : : : : : : : : : Jubilee’s end : : : : : : : : : : : : STEP into London’s Westminster Cathedral at 8am on any morning, and you will find 60 or 70 people attending mass in a side-chapel. The same number appear at the 8.30 mass, and at the 9 o’clock. Most are on their way to work, but they make a deliberate pause for this. And the scene could be repeated the world over. : : : : The business of the Roman Catholic church is not this world, but the next. Most of those morning mass-goers could not tell you the names of two people in the Curia in Rome. They could not care who is up or down in the Vatican horse-race. They cling to the church as a conduit of comfort, grace and, ultimately, salvation. This is all that matters; and, at base, it is all that matters in the Vatican, too. : : : : The church’s long view of human affairs—in fact, the longest possible—makes it a peculiar player on the world scene. Much that it does and says seems clumsy, baffling and, even to some Catholics, inexcusable. Sub specie aeternitatis, matters often look quite different. The problems of the church have always stemmed from the attempt to promote eternal truths through the agency of mere humans in a shifting world. That task gets no easier. : : : : : : : An unruly flock : : : : At the last count, in 1998, there were just over a billion Roman Catholics. Ten years earlier there were around 900m. In almost every region of the world, the Catholic proportion of the population has stayed the same. Despite those large Catholic families, the church is essentially standing still: except in Africa, which remains, as for some time, the richest source of conversions. : : : : Look closer, or apply different methodologies, and the figures start to be discouraging. In Brazil, the biggest and most influential Catholic country in Latin America, the proportion of people calling themselves Catholic fell from 93% in 1950 to 83% in 1991, the most recent census; it is perhaps another ten percentage points lower now. And within that 70% or so, large numbers will be Catholic in name only. In every region, mass attendance has been falling for the past two decades as modern life makes it harder to dedicate Sundays to prayer. : : : : The mass itself has become heterogeneous. In Africa ancient animist practices colour the liturgy, despite Rome’s efforts to remove them. In the developed world, evangelical practices, such as faith-healing and speaking in tongues, have caught on. In Sao Paulo, the rock-star ministry of Father Marcelo Rossi draws as many as 1m people to masses laced with aerobics. : : : : Politically, Catholics do as they please. Countries once thought to be papal lapdogs now think for themselves: Ireland, for example, has legalised divorce, though cautiously. The disappearance of papal censorship, in the form of the Index of proscribed books, has led many Catholics to assume they have complete freedom of thought and expression. Old structures of prayer and penance have predictably fallen by the wayside since they became optional. Notions of heaven and hell are cloudy. Although, whenever Pope John Paul pays a visit, the faithful turn out in their thousands, his writ does not necessarily run inside their homes. Increasingly, Catholics practise their religion on their own terms. : : : : From the moment he came to the See of Peter in 1978, Pope John Paul II was well aware of this. He knew, too, that much of this chaotic dissent among the laity sprang from the efforts of Pope John XXIII in 1962 to refashion the church for the modern world. Vatican II, the first general council of bishops for almost a century, made startling efforts in every direction, from promoting ecumenism to modernising the liturgy to proposing more consultation. Rather than continue along that risky path, Pope John Paul decided, in large part, to retrench. The eternal verities, he believes, can be restated only through a church that does not change its mind. : : : : There is truth in this, of course. The church’s unwavering emphasis on the sacredness of life and the essential dignity of every human person, both favourite themes of Pope John Paul, provides a cast-iron basis for moral action. It enables Catholics to follow a coherent theme of opposition to abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty, and many do. It inspires much charity and social action (if also, sometimes, a blinkered anti-capitalism). The problem comes in the sphere of private sexual conduct: where theological thinking, so carefully honed behind desks in Rome, meets the chaos of human desires in the world outside. : : : : : : : The misery of sex : : : : Two themes, birth control and celibacy, crop up inevitably in any debate on the state of the church. It is sad that they do; they should be marginal. But by mishandling sex, or trying to ignore it, the church has hurt its authority in general. : : : : Birth control was always meant to be handled with more understanding. Catholic teaching on the matter was supposed to be discussed by a special commission in the late 1960s, but Pope Paul VI (not an illiberal pope in many ways) instead wrote it himself, arguing from natural law that the transmission of life should never be obstructed. “Natural” methods of contraception were therefore allowed; artificial ones were not. : : : : It is no exaggeration to say that the church has still not recovered. Birth control was the first issue on which the bulk of the Catholic faithful decided, quite simply, to disobey. It marked a breach in the structure of willing obedience that, once made, could only widen. A Gallup poll of American Catholics in 1999 showed that 80% of laymen, and about 50% of priests, approved of artificial contraception; a poll by the University of Maryland found two-thirds of Catholics agreeing that where their conscience was at odds with the pope, they should follow their conscience. Similar figures can be found all over the developed world. : : : : In the sphere of international policy, the birth-control ruling still marks out the church as an irresponsible and obstructionist voice in any debate on over-population, poverty or, especially, the containment of AIDS. This is a tragedy, since in parts of the developing world the church is often the prime provider of health, education and social services. (In Nigeria alone, it runs almost 300 clinics and hospitals.) The essential work of Catholic doctors and teachers is now undermined by the perception, often untrue, that they will put ideology first. As a result, the church is often not taken seriously on other issues, such as embryo research, where health and ethics collide. In the world at large, as in the private lives of Catholics, the church has lost credibility that it cannot easily recoup. And it knows it. : : : : : : : Wanted: priests : : : : Celibacy, which gets less attention, is an even deeper problem. Again, the attractive theology (that priests give their lives completely to God and their flocks) is undermined by the figures for priestly vocations. Over a decade, these have scarcely moved. In 1988, there were 401,930 Catholic priests in the world; in 1998, there were 404,626. Numbers are rising in Asia, Africa and South America, but falling steadily in the first world. There, as priests die or resign, they are not replaced. In the American archdiocese of Milwaukee, for example, half the parishes are expected to be without priests by 2016. In the developing world, though vocations look healthier, they are quite inadequate for the huge areas that must be served. Some congregations may see a priest no more than twice a year. Everywhere, Catholic schools are losing priests as teachers. : : : : The reasons for this decline are not simple. Many priests leave because they cannot cope with the requirement to be celibate; but perhaps as many leave because of “burn-out” in difficult parishes. Some find they cannot present church teaching on contraception, divorce or remarriage in any way that makes sense to their parishioners. But most seem to leave because they are lonely. : : : : It is true, of course, that in many areas of life Catholics can manage perfectly well without a priest. Vatican II recognised the laity as helpers in the work of salvation by virtue of their baptism; as a result, since the council, lay workers and administrators have streamed into the church, and all sorts of “cells” and “base communities” have sprung up in which laymen can pray together and help each other without benefit of clergy. Yet—that business of the other world again—no layman can perform the central act of the mass, the transformation of the bread and wine into (as Catholics believe) the body and blood of Christ. And that act remains the core and the purpose of the life of the church. Without priests, the whole edifice crumbles. : : : : When the subject of priests is raised, most Catholics are not short of solutions. Many feel that anyone drawn to this difficult and demanding life, an attraction which must be God’s doing, should simply be allowed admittance. Catholics in Europe and the United States, by large majorities, consider that the rule (it is not doctrine) should be relaxed. If it were, this would also go some way towards solving another problem that has gravely damaged the church in the eyes of outsiders: the incidence of priests who are sexually involved with women or children and yet are often left by their superiors, undisciplined, in charge of souls. : : : : The Vatican (to use the convenient shorthand for the pope and his advisers) is unmoved by argument on either of these subjects. On birth control, Pope John Paul has gone to pains to restate the official line. On priests, the shortage is acknowledged, but little else. The Vatican feels that the number of sexually erring priests is exaggerated by prurient media, and that is true; they probably account for less than 1% of the priesthood in Britain, though rather more, by all accounts, in Ireland. It is a matter for the local bishop to sort out—competently, or not. A “permissive” priest in the theological sense is far more likely to be disciplined by Rome than one who sins sexually. : : : : If those issues can be swept under the carpet, so can others. In 1999 a devastating book, “The Changing Face of the Priesthood” by Donald Cozzens, a professor of theology from Cleveland, Ohio, claimed that approximately half of all priests and seminarians in the United States were homosexual. The Vatican ignored it. Although many clergy admit privately that celibacy has to be reassessed, it is not on any official agenda. The ordination of married men has been rejected (though, for a while, in a blatant breach of the principle, married Anglican priests were admitted to Catholic orders). The ordination of women has been removed from discussion entirely, on the grounds that Christ did not choose women as his disciples and that the priest, who acts in loco Christi, cannot be female when Christ was not. It makes good sense in Rome; less outside it. : : : : : : : The slap of authority : : : : From this point of view, there is no doubt that the pontificate of John Paul II has been frustrating. A strong and charismatic pope, idealistic, inspiring, and one of the cleverest men ever to hold the office, has used his strength chiefly to reinforce the church’s most conservative tendencies. First, because he wants to travel the world as a freewheeling pastor (a role he excels at), he has delegated power to the Curia, the central church bureaucracy that exists to serve the pope. This has given many elderly conservatives their heads. Second, the pope has kept a sharp eye on appointments of bishops. Candidates who cannot pass a basic litmus test, such as toeing the line on birth control, are rejected. Bishops already in place find that their five-yearly mandatory journeys to Rome are used less for friendly consultation than to restate the line they should be taking. In any case, since many third-world bishops are still trained for the priesthood in Rome, they effortlessly bring Rome-centred attitudes back to their dioceses. : : : : Tight control of the bishops draws less press attention than the very rare occasions when uppity theologians are silenced, but it has much more impact. Rather than cutting off one line of thought in a small academic circle (or, as can also happen, giving extra publicity to peddlers of views of doubtful value), it stifles innovation at the level of the faithful in their parishes. : : : : When bishops and priests talk about the changes they long for under the next pope, “collegiality” and “subsidiarity” are often mentioned. One of the promises of Vatican II was that the church would become more open and consultative, drawing on the wisdom and experience of local parishes; salvation would become a joint effort in which pope, Curia, bishops and even laity (“the People of God”) were working with, and learning from, each other. : : : : In his most recent apostolic letter, issued on January 6th, Pope John Paul noted that this was the sort of church he too wished to see. Many were surprised, but took it as a good sign that the uneasiness with centralisation had been noted. The pope also said he wanted more consultation. Some subjects will be easier to discuss than others. Morris West, a Catholic writer, put it best: “The church will lose many souls because men in authority want to save their faces, and sometimes to save the faces of dead men.” : : : : Ecumenism has also suffered from the emphasis on papal authority. The effort to be friends with other churches and religions potters on, but as a distant dream. Women’s ordination has shattered the dialogue with all but a rump of Anglicans, though both sides try to deny it. Last September a document known as Dominus Jesus, signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, the pope’s chief enforcer of doctrine, insisted that the Catholic church was superior to all others. The pope has tried to soften it, thereby giving the lie to those who say he is in the hands of hardliners; but ithas not been repudiated. : : : : In recent years there have been several apologies, including an astonishingly broad one by the pope in March 2000, for the persecution of other faiths by members of the church. The sharp-eyed noticed that there was no apology for the doctrines that justified those actions. Those who had suffered, or their descendants, thought the gesture half-hearted. Jews have generally found the pope both sympathetic and obtuse. Muslims have made small progress with him. The eastern Christian churches have felt offended, with reason, at the attempts of Rome to proselytise in Russia, a particular crusade of this Polish pope. Some Hindus have been appalled by the pope’s open call, on Indian soil, for conversions in Asia. Although he has gained much credit for being conciliatory, Pope John Paul cannot be a pluralist any more than he can be a democrat. : : : : : : : Apostolic successors : : : : The church is now waiting, sometimes with ill-disguised impatience, for Pope John Paul to go. He is frail and shaky with Parkinson’s disease, and no longer manages much church business; but a pope has not willingly retired since the 13th century. In any case, is his successor likely to think differently? That depends on whether the progressive tendency or the conservative gets the upper hand in Rome. : : : : : : : : : : : : The men who must decide : : : : : : : : : : : : Vatican-watchers are reluctant to name names, and the names in any case change constantly, as the gossip does. The received wisdom is that the college of cardinals would prefer an old pope (no risk of another long reign, in which one man imposes his personality too strongly on the church) and an Italian (back to what they know, after the worrying crusader-mentality of a Pole). The pope’s new batch of 37 cardinals, named on January 21st, confirms this thinking. Fully 112 members of the college have now been appointed by him, and presumably share his thinking to a large degree. Nine of the new cardinals come from the Curia, the conservative core. Yet this brings only to 20 or so the number of voting cardinals with a curial background. The rest, who include a block of 26 Latin American cardinals (ten newly named), are freer agents. : : : : If pushed to choose among the red-hats, Vatican-watchers most often come up with Carlo Maria Martini of Milan, a 73-year-old Jesuit “liberal” (insofar as cardinals are ever that), who favours a new council and has dared to suggest that papal authority needs rethinking. A less provocative choice is Dionigi Tettamanzi of Genoa, a popular moderate with a sense of humour and, at 66, a youngster. The secular press, fancying a black pope, tips Francis Arinze of Nigeria. His election would probably be a statement too far for most cardinals. : : : : The most that is hoped for in the next pope is that he might acknowledge the difficulties the church is facing, consult the bishops more, and soften some of the language. (It may help that Cardinal Ratzinger, who is credited or debited with much of the Vatican’s harshest behaviour, has no desire to be kept on.) Yet the next pope could be strongly reformist if he were so inclined. He could, if he wanted, make the Curia a subordinate secretariat again. He could also convene, and nudge in a democratic direction, the synods in which the bishops and their superiors debate the teaching of the church. Simply because Pope John Paul has shown little interest in either does not mean that his successor will follow suit. : : : : The challenge to the church is as clear as it has ever been. It has to prove its relevance to a world in which secularism is triumphant and misery is pervasive, bringing into question both God’s grace and Christ’s message. In certain places, often in response to the surge of evangelical Protestant groups, Catholicism has managed radically to recast itself. Many Catholic lay movements (which Pope John Paul strongly supports) preserve a spirit of tireless social action. : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : John XXIII dreamed that this spirit might also permeate the institutional church. The years since Vatican II have often suggested that this dream was unrealistic, but not always. The secularisation of society has in some ways freed the church. It has long ceased to sit at the centre of the West’s world view, and now lingers somewhere at the edge of it: no longer an authority for an obedient flock, but a sniper and interrupter. Politically, it is powerless; no territory beyond the Vatican, and few of the ties to right-wing regimes and parties that it had until recently in both Europe and Latin America. : : : : Yet with no stake in preserving the political status quo, the church should be able to speak out as a radical voice. And it still has a startling message for humanity to consider, if it can gather again the respect and the manpower to promote it: the message that God is love, and that it is by love of God and neighbour that mankind is saved. : : : :

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