This probably sounds "churchy" which I said I did not wish to write about any further. I try to abstain from ecclesiological controversies swarming around hierarchs like mosquitoes on a sultry evening in June, but I can't stop being Catholic or Jesuit, not now at my age. Besides, I'm just offering a URL. In Catholicese, the acronym could stand for "You read Latin?" And there seems to be interest in articles from "elsewhere" on this topic. I favor "elsewhere", because it helps being "universal" -- a/k/a "catholic."
Robert Blair Kaiser introduced me to Catholica, an Australian journal, whose editor is Brian Coyne. Subscription is free, along with daily email newsletters. Go to:
- Catholic's website: www.catholica.com.au
- Editor's e-mail: editor@catholica.com.au
We Americans, despite our pride to the contrary, are insular people. We think and talk and write a lot about democracy, the Bill of Rights, our way of proceeding in a country of laws not men -- forget the last eight years -- and the great shibboleth we all bow down to, while laughing at those who spout it, The Rule of Law.
And yet, stubbornly, we are as local as the earth we walk on. When we lived in Maine, each morning's walk, along the Atlantic close down to breaking waves rolling in, sprayed us, taunted us to look up and out, to imagine that Europe and Africa are on the other edge of this ocean. Most often, the surf deafened us, and we trudged on home to the daily newspaper and cable TV with talking heads who never stop to listen or think.
When we lived in Colorado, we never thought ocean; we sat and stood in and stared at real mountains. 14,000+ feet high, known as 14ers, dwarf our greatest and highest Mt. Washington in NH, proud of its lofty 6,288 feet.
Never thought Japan, though, when walking the beach at Laguna Beach in southern California, probably because that ocean was on the wrong side. In Maine, while walking south, the ocean is on my left. Besides, the Pacific is so monstrous it covers almost all the world, the part that western Eurocentric peoples think doesn't yet exist.
We Americans are locked-in people, at home in our street, secure in our neighborhood, familiar with our village, small town, or city, forgetful of the name of our county, kind of happy with our state, and critically proud of our country. We stop there, for the world ends at the boundaries of the nation. "America" is our friendly name, sort of a nickname, compared to the stately, superior sound of "The United States of America," which seems to be a cornucopia rather than a country. We prefer "purple mountain's majesty, amber waves of grain" to "rockets' red glare, bombs bursting in air."
Why, then, does Rome, well not Rome but a 180 acre little parcel of it, a walled enclave, called The Vatican, bother us so? Without a military, no private airline, little involvement with either tourism or foreign exchange, how does it reach across huge regions, into great continents, across deep and almost boundless oceans? Its tentacles touch and tickle and tease and trouble every tree and flower and person in every land, be they "a-" people all: a-gnostic, a-theist, a-doring.
How? Easy. For over two thousand years, the petite enclave, a/k/a "A City-State," infiltrated the known world. With moles. They call them Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals. And Nuncios, diplomats sort of, enforcers actually, who hang around to make sure the Ordinary ones with heavy signet rings and crosses hanged from chains of gold, toe the line in Vatican lock-step, that slow and measured pace, unperturbed, rigid and straight, without either deviation or hesitation. Nuncios smile benevolently when all hierarchs, in strange and wild and foreign lands beyond their City-State squeezed uptight by walls, salute with bows, stay glued to the party line and stop dialogue cold in the silence of the pews.
Could any of us imagine the reach and the power, were those 180 acres named Peoria -- Oshkosh -- Uphams Corner? That last one, a/k/a Ward 13, is a small section of Dorchester, a section of Boston, formerly a city-state when Curley was Mayor, a section of Massachusetts, a real state-state, where I grew up.
Along with bored American Catholics, I like to look at The Tablet from Great Britain, and New Catholic Times, Toronto, Canada, plus others from further regions of this planet, particularly editors and writers in the Far East and Down Under.
While it is awesome to think that it was over 50 years ago when I taught at Sophia University in Tokyo, there are still friends there who let me know about the FABC - Federation of Asian Bishops Conference -- a refreshing way to read Church.
An insightful book has pride of place in my little library. Written by Tom Fox, editor at NCR -- National Catholic Reporter -- in 2002,
he entitled it: Pentecost in Asia: A New Way of Being Church. I will never forget two sentences about Asian ideas and theologies, at page 14:
One could honestly call them 'post-western.' More accurately, the Asian leadership saw itself as more interested in engaging the future than rejecting the past.
We are local, but our bishops are more local, towards Rome, locked-in so tight they quote Canon Law at each other for solace. They heed not, however, the sections concerning the rights of others and their own responsibility -- and accountability -- lest they irk Rome and lose their footing on the slippery rungs on the ladder of ecclesiastical ascendancy high, higher, highest, marked by the changing of the colors from black up to purple, through scarlet to white.
We male members, about one half of the whole, are a colorful Church, are we not? From business suits to purple sashes, casual wear to scarlet gowns, blue jeans to white ermine wraps, open-necked T-shirts to Roman choke-collars, topped off by baseball caps, bill up or backwards, to miters, pointy-headed with long tassels.
Few of us wear heavy gold chains from which are hanged gleaming gold crosses as male jewelry for our chests, outside our clothing, to remind us who we are and let everyone else know what we are. None of us use great clubs, seven to nine feet long and tall, gorgeously decorated with inlaid precious metals yet thick and strong enough to go thump with a boom and a bang at every step in our parade of authority and command and power.
It's easy, too easy, to think that it's the gold on the chest and the ring on the finger and the hat and the stick that separates the men from the boys in that part of our Church called Clerics. It's an old Latin word, which used to mean Clerk, and is now restricted Romanly to Clergy. But, again, it's easy, too easy, to think of the only guys who could read and write Latin, or in our more modern times like the low echelon tiers of the workplace, the shuffling old men behind the counters in stores or in the backroom keeping the books. Think of the two different images we get from two cognate words: clergy and clerk.
They are everywhere, dwindling a lot now as the Shakers did. Celibacy normally produces no offspring to be successors, heirs, or assigns. The hierarchs, though, seem to multiply like rabbits. We are up to almost 5,000 of them, and they think they alone are Church. We non-hierarchs number 1.2 billion.
We think that the leaders of our Church should be accountable, not to us on whom they wield their absolute power, but to the Church, the whole Church, the Church universal. As the writer of this article below wrote about their accountability for what they are and do, the "New Code of Canon Law now contained a charter of rights for members of the Church, together with procedures in place to defend those rights."
The article in Catholica is by Frank Purcell. Its title is " Infallible Does Not Mean Unaccountable," and it is at: http://www.catholica.com.au/gc2/fp/003_fp_print.php
Editor Brian Coyne introduces it this way:
In today's commentary Frank Purcell reveals that the Australian Bishops have admitted they have still not implemented procedures instituted under the new Code of Canon Law in 1983 for appeals under the Charter of Rights implemented in that new Code. In the face of the continuing appeasement of the insecurities of a tiny rump of Catholicism at the expense of the broad body of Catholics, Frank Purcell, joins the rising chorus of protest around the world at the direction in which the recent Popes and the Roman Curia appear to be taking Catholicism. He argues that greater procedures for accountability need to be implemented at all levels within the institution.
It is time we exercised that right and hold leaders accountable.
It is also time, the right time, the very best opportune time, for an authentic and genuine American Catholic Council. Its website is at: www.americancatholiccouncil.org
++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment