Civility

Disputation -- Hierarchy vs. People

We are losing it. Our respect for others, our dignity, our cool. We lose our Church. We lose ourselves.

Beginning in January, 2002, we people of God sitting in the pews, long enured to the quietude of pay, pray and obey, could endure it no longer. We began to rise, one by one, to stand and speak truth to power. Hesitant until we found our voices, we grew stronger. And angrier.

We were astonished when our bishops slapped us in the face, spat on our shoes, turned their backs, and locked us out of our parish halls. They stomped off into their walled and locked-down chanceries, whence they accused us of apostasy, heresy, and, what was most egregious to them, disrespect for their authority.

Denunciations dribbled out. Our loudest companions were adjudged dissident and banned from Holy Communion lines. We watched, with sorrow festering anger to fury, as friends from the clergy, who stood with us, were excommunicated. Automatically. Bishops were untouchable, unreachable, impregnable. They had crosiers.

We spat back. Who the hell do they think they are? Where did the Popes find this huge glob of mediocrity? Pompous little martinets, coveting, oh! so heavy on the covet, for promotions from Monsignor to Bishop to Archbishop to Cardinal, and one more jump. Why not? Josef Ratzinger made it, didn't he? And he was a nasty, wasn't he? Our proposals for reform and renewal began to call for election of bishops, abolition of the College of Cardinals, change in the governance structure of Church. We were out to save our Church from hierarchs destructing in the twisted belief that it was their private preserve.

With regret, I am aware that my writing sounds with such a raucous yet hollow tone. The ones most maimed by delirious speaking truth to power are myself and my friends. My heart took on a shell of stone. Hatred soured gorge from deep within. Alone with a computer, I was loud and wordy. Overcome with rage, I ignored my own conviction: rant does not heal; it rends. Forced by a tinge of integrity left in wailings at the wall of self, I knew that it must stop. The excuse came readily: I was pooped out, while Gary Wills, a renowned, eminent, gifted critic with much integrity, said that he was " Poped out." Same thing, I thought.

The high and mighty are unmoved. They speak only to the Pope, themselves, and their faithful on the far right. Wealthy from our widows' mites, they hire expensive yet aggressive law firms, to abuse trial strategies in a litigator version of hard ball. Their bully pulpit is the secular media from which they attack elected public officials, the new President himself, for disdain of "Official Teachings of the Church." Uncowed, they are just as haughty and withdrawn and callous as they were when stripping away the dignity of children abused. Immune to pleas of mothers and fathers and friends for compassion and healing, they petition for disbarment of lawyers filing lawsuits for justice. They are mindless of great millstones piled up against cathedral walls, waiting.

And this, my friends, is the one, true, holy, catholic and apostolic church, Roman version, first led by Saint Peter himself, the rock in whose hands Jesus entrusted keys to loose and to bind. Inspired to go forth and teach all nations, St. Peter, with St. Paul's assistance, did just that. And apostolic succession has continued to do so for two thousand years.

Except, except, we the people are now tired and scared and close to despair on how come there is so much binding and so little loosing from the turning of those keys. We have been revolted and are now revolting.

Trouble is that revolutionaries do not go gentle into that dark night. We fancy we are marching onward in a Delacroix painting. Leaders show up and spur on our angry hopes. Bishops disdain our efforts from the safety of their walls and the protection of Rome. A bewildered Pope bleats, like the sheep his people are, that they do not like him. He is hurt, deep-down hurt, and so, so surprised that he is not loved and honored, as if he were a divinity, like his predecessors, the emperors of Rome before the fall and decline of that empire. His, of course, can never fall, though it has declined in past centuries, and is in a steep one now. In his infallibility, he intends to gather round all those who are right and on the right, for a smaller, leaner one, true, holy, catholic and apostolic church.

According to him and his court, we may be the people of the anti-Christ, not the people of God.

The Song Is Changed

"You can tell they are Christians by their love" is now a doomed refrain: "You can tell they are Christians by their hate."

What happened to us?

• Faith, hope and love.
  
• Compassion and kindness.
  
• Respect and dignity.
  
• Humility and courage.
  
• Generosity and devotion.
  
• Willingness to die for each other.
  
• A sticking together no other groups have ever seen or known.
  

Where are the mottos?

• Ad majorem Dei Gloriam -- For the greater glory of God.
  
• WWJD --What would Jesus do?
  
• Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.
  
• A good shepherd cares for his own.
  
• Hallowed be thy name.
  
• Lord, I am not worthy to receive you.
  
• Come. Follow me.
  

Dysfunctional families know the horror of mindless abuse, sink into a tyrant parent's corruption of absolute power, try to ignore the pain, are unaware that they do not have to bleed, nor live that way. Our Church is a dysfunctional family.

We, all of us, are members of that family. Clergy and laity, priest and father of children, nun and mother of a home, bishop and child at play, must -- not may, nor should -- must stop, breathe long and slow, look square into each others' eyes, hold out hands in that silence, and pray in our hearts that we may love one another.

We are Catholics.

Many of our favorite journals and news sources are writing about the enmity among us, the factions abuilding, the rift of do not do as I do, but what I tell you to do. Professional observers and writers know well how scandal causes surprise, leans into disappointment, begins questioning, erupts in anger, swells up to rage, and losing it, grabs weapons for outright rebellion whose only goal has to be to destroy, not to heal. In a fight to the death, there is only death. Survivors never win. They just survive. Without a Church. Alone. With themselves.

And yet, and yet, we are Catholics.

Civility

The articles described below all call for Civility. A new term, politically correct, not necessarily wispy with the holy nostalgia of candles and incense, but apt. It means, simply:

• Let's be nice to each other.
  
• Let's talk without fists clenched.
  
• Like neighbors.
  
• If not like close friends.
  
• Or even family.
  
• Let bishops be shepherds.
  
• Let people be faithful.
  
• Go to Holy Communion.
  
• Not out the door in tears.
  
• Listening.
  
• Talking.
  
• Courteous.
  
• Considerate.
  
• Gracious.
  
• Grateful.
  
• Polite.
  
• Respectful.
  

Take a look at some of the articles below.

Commonweal's
on the imbroglio at Notre Dame is excellent, and refers to two statements not too well publicized: one by the head of the order which runs the University, the other by a retired Archbishop of San Francisco, both with calm, cool heads and warm, loving hearts.

America's Father John Kavanaugh, SJ, is becoming a favorite with his insights wrapped in compassion and understanding, and the simple, flat, definite way he urges us to grow up and act like adults. He is an outstanding philosopher and friend and priest.

Martin Marty, our gracious Protestant theologian, has been there, done that, speaking to us from the pained experience of having been treated long ago like an outcast pagan by haughty Catholic theologians. He never descended to their level, but lifted them up to his own. The power of example defeats absolute power.

Mirabile Dictu, a CORPUS newsletter is adorned with the simple insight of Cardinal Bernardin on the distinction which separates the politics of Church from the message of the Gospels. It is now the new logo. From Logos?

Let us act with Civility, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary:

"Behavior proper to the intercourse of civilized people; ordinary courtesy or politeness, as opposed to rudeness of behavior; decent respect, consideration."

++++++++++

New Habits of Thought

Ecumenical conversations and encounters

MARTIN E. MARTY APRIL 13, 2009

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11567

Outrages

'We Catholics are in danger of becoming known not by how we love but by how we hate.'

JOHN F. KAVANAUGH APRIL 13, 2009

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11564

++++++++++

March 27, 2009 / Volume CXXXVI, Number 6

EDITORIAL

Obama & Notre Dame

The Editors

http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=2496

++++++++++

www.chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it

by Sandro Magister

Secularism in Danger. Two Cardinals Are Running to its Defense

They are Angelo Scola and Camillo Ruini, both in close agreement with Pope Benedict XVI. Here is how they see the Church's role in the public sphere: if it were silent, for example, about life and death, "it would not contribute to the good of all." Supplemented by a speech from the archbishop of Denver about Catholics and the Obama presidency

19.2.2009

Return to the Council! Of Chalcedon, in 451

A book accuses the Church of being afraid of Vatican II. But some object that there is an even more serious danger: that of obscuring the teaching about Christ from the Councils in the early centuries. An imaginary dialogue between a theologian and one of his students

16.2.2009

Double Disaster at the Vatican: Of Governance, and of Communication

This is the upshot of the lifting of the excommunication for four Lefebvrist bishops. The isolation of Pope Benedict, the ineptitude of the curia, and the misfires of the secretariat of state

28.1.2009

++++++++++

Frank Bonnike,
re: Cardinal Joseph Bernadin:
"...several months before he (Bernadin) died,
he made a public statement to the effect that he had made decisions in his life
which were predicated on the politics of the Church,
that he had also made decisions in his life which were based on the gospels,
and that he regretted ever having made the former
if they were not consistent with the gospel message,
and wanted to apologize for having done so!!"

++++++++++

Conclusion

This ends with a story from a book by John Powell, SJ. In Why Am I Afraid To Tell You Who I Am, he writes about a well-meaning individual who rushes in to help another, who sits, shivering and shaking, on top of the garden brick wall. Instilled with zeal and energy, but without qualifications, the helper does what he can for the poor fellow, stricken with a Humpty Dumpty personality.

But, a terrible thing happens. Despite earnest efforts, Humpty Dumpty doesn't respond. Wobbling from the onslaught of help, he teeters, totters, falls off the wall, breaks up in itsy bitsy shattered pieces.

Father Powell writes,

• "Will you put him back together again?
  
• Can you?"
  

Let us, the loud, angry judges of others, ask,

• Will we put the Church back together again?
  
• Can we?
  

++++++++++