In a recent column for the Chicago Sun-Times, Andrew Greeley offered an intriguing mix of interesting observation and utter cluelessness:
“The genius of the Catholic heritage is that it believes that God is present in creation, in the objects, and events, and people in the world around us, in the processes of nature, in the relationships among humans, in the great events that mark the human life cycle. The Catholic imagination is characterized by metaphors, a whole rain forest of metaphors that tell us what God is like. The Catholic tradition—at its best anyway—revels in sacraments and festivals at which it believes God is present in a special way. Hence, music and art and architecture and poetry and story and ceremony are (or should be) at the center of Catholic life. . . .
“Somehow or other, in our Calvinist and pragmatic American culture, we have lost much of this element in our tradition. Those festivals that used to be great community celebrations are maintained in the calendar only as days we must go to Mass under the pain of mortal sin. Most people find what they think is a valid excuse—or pay no attention.”
Yes, it’s true that much of the festival aspect has been drained from feast days. But honestly, how many times have you heard a priest or bishop say, “Be there under pain of mortal sin!” And, if it comes to that, how many people go thinking, “Whew! Dodged another mortal-sin bullet!”
Greeley is a sociologist, so I suppose it’s understandable that he looks at things in this light, but I don’t go to Mass (including holy days) either for the reasons he attributes to these phantom bishops nor for his reasons. I don’t go thinking, “Archbishop Brunett, with furrowed brow and hand upraised in ecclesial might, will excommunicate me if I’m a no-show!” Nor do I think, “I must go to Mass to tap in the rich treasury of pre-Christian fertility imagery of Celtic culture and thereby come to know more about what it is to be human.”
I go to Mass because I want to encounter Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. The panoply of that liturgy can enhance or detract from that and I’m always grateful for a well-celebrated Mass. And I have no problem with the Church borrowing tons of stuff from paganism and Christianizing it. It’s part of the genius of the faith.
But there’s something off-kilter about Greeley’s take: It pits a strawman fire-and-brimstone bishop against a sort of Joseph Campbell vision of the liturgy and makes the phantom bishop so ridiculous that you figure you have to embrace the Joseph Campbell vision.
I Think It Was Just Your Stomach, Sister
From the official paper of the Albany, New York, Roman Catholic diocese (www.evangelist.org/archive/htm4/0828walt.htm), here is a news item about the upcoming appearance of Sister Janet Walton, expert in “feminist liturgy”:
“I want to ask certain questions, such as ‘What are the rumblings of today with regard to issues and questions people have about worship?’” she said. “I hope to visit some of these ideas that are now percolating with regard to the worship experiences of today.”
It’s amazing how “experts” in liturgy listen to all that rumbling and never hear anything that doesn’t sound exactly like what they are bound and determined to do anyway. When I listen, I hear something that reminds me of Stan Freberg: “Rumble rumble rumble. Mutiny mutiny mutiny.”
Happily, it’s mutiny against liturgists and a desire to return to real worship and not the regime whose most sacred text is “Peter, try experiments on my rats.”
To Catholic Education What Carob Is to Chocolate
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (www.jsonline.com/news/metro/aug03/165620.asp) reports: “Officials at Marquette University have decided to end what had become a tradition of saying a weekly Mass at the new dental school, the construction of which was in large part funded with state and federal dollars.
“The university’s lawyers advised the school Thursday that the Mass not be continued because it could lead to a state-church separation controversy.”
At least Richard Rich sold his soul for the beautiful land of Wales. Catholic academics do it for money and cubicle space.
We cannot confirm reports that the dental school specializes in teaching a procedure for removing the spine and guts of Catholic academics through their wallets.
Uh Huh
According to the Tacoma News Tribune (August 30, 2003), the Amateur Ghost Hunters of Seattle and Tacoma hosted a two-day conference in Seattle recently.
Reportedly, there were “‘workshops on psychic phenomena and new technologies for investigating them,’ said Dutch Jackson, co-founder of Freelance Supernatural Investigations in Tacoma.”
New technologies? Get your Ectoplasm 3000 Ghost-Spotting Sooper Scope right here, folks. It really really works!
Seattle is, by the by, the most unchurched city in the most unchurched county in the most unchurched state in the union. As such, it is a kind of living laboratory demonstration of the fact that people who stop believing in God don’t believe in nothing. They believe in anything.
Whither Intellect in a Culture Besotted on Feeling?
Recently, the hierarchy of Episcopalian Church in the United States took it upon itself to spit in the eye of the worldwide Anglican Church, burn all its ecumenical bridges, and ordain practicing homosexual Gene Robinson as a bishop. Robinson illustrates the challenge that faces Catholics who are attempting to speak to our post-Christian culture. The key to making any sort of appeal to the truth of the Christian faith always involves taking that.aspect of the truth that somebody else grants and then showing how it relates to the truth revealed in Jesus Christ. That challenge is immeasurably greater when somebody—and that somebody a “bishop” like Robinson—says, “Just simply to say that it goes against tradition and the teaching of the Church and Scripture does not necessarily make it wrong.
There are still roads into such a mush-brained thought process as this, but they are considerably muddier and indistinct, since they typically wander off into the Dead Marshes of Feeling as the Ultimate Arbiter of My Personal Truth of the Moment. Moreover, they are made difficult by the fact that people who say such things are post-Christian and not pre-Christian. They have heard the gospel and, realizing they must live it or reject it, chose the latter. They are now marshalling their intellectual defenses (such as they are) against the gospel with the exertion of the will in ways that pre-Christians are not necessarily doing. Apologists who sally forth with faith in the Platonic notion that the problem here is lack of education and that a dose of reason and logic will fix everything are in for a surprise. People such as Robinson are helpful reminders that, ultimately, apologetics never converted a single soul in the history of the world. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. At best, our work as evangelists and apologists is to present the faith and work to remove any intellectual obstacles to it. Our Lord must do the rest, in the mystery of each free human being’s heart.
Solace in Religion? How Pathetic!
The New York Times ran a poll on the second anniversary of 9/11 on the psychological damage New Yorkers were still experiencing from the attacks. Note the symptoms of ongoing psychic harm:
“There continues to be a minority of people who avoid the subway, stay away from skyscrapers, sleep fitfully, find new solace in religion.”
Nice to know the editors of the Times have a view of religion as a symptom of psychological damage that is indistinguishable from a Soviet doctor’s.
From Our Bulging “Celibacy Is the Root of All Evil” Files
Former seminarian Bill Press delivers himself of a whine against celibacy for CNN (www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/03/28/column.billpress/):
“Assigned as a seminarian to teach school in Philadelphia, I soon saw the warning signs among older priests. Again, in my case, no evidence of pedophilia. But a lot of self-indulgence in other ways: heavy eating, drinking, travel, golf, television—all distractions chased to fill an obvious void. Wouldn’t they be better off married?”
Lord knows married men never over-indulge in eating, drinking, travel, golf, television, etc. Yes, only One Thing can fill that void.
Bishops Make Progress
In an article in the October 2003 This Rock, Kathleen McChesney, head of the U.S. bishops’ Office of Child and Youth Protection, wrote that an audit had been commissioned to determine the extent to which the reforms to address the priestly sexual abuse scandal were being implemented. In early January the results of the audit were released, and the news is good: Ninety percent of the 191 U.S. dioceses are in full compliance with the 2002 charter adopted to deal with the issue and prevent future abuse.
The audit, conducted by the Gavin Group of Boston, found the Archdiocese of Boston, the epicenter of the sex abuse scandal, in compliance with the charter. Among the dioceses that have not fully complied are the archdioceses of New York, Anchorage, Alaska, and Omaha, Nebraska.
“One hundred and thirty-one instructions [and] 297 recommendations were issued,” said William Gavin, president of the audit firm. “At the time all of the information was sent to printing, 157 of the 191 dioceses and eparchies [Eastern rite dioceses] had addressed all outstanding recommendations and instructions. Thirty-four dioceses and eparchies still had instructions and recommendations in the process of remediation.”