DETROIT -- "Baptism unites the church, not
ordination," theologian and author Anthony T. Padovano told more
than 1,800 reform-minded Catholics gathered June 10-12 at
Detroit's Cobo Hall.
Addressing the inaugural national meeting of the American
Catholic Council June 11, he said, "The pope does not unify or
sanctify the church and make it catholic or apostolic. This is
the work of the Spirit and the community. The pope is an
institutional sign of a unity already achieved by the faithful.
The pope does not create a community of believers or validate
baptisms or make the Eucharist occur."
Padovano was first president of CORPUS, an organization
originally formed to seek return of married priests to ministry
but now advocating "inclusive ministry," meaning also the
ordination of women.
Most of his talk focused on the fact of changes in the church's
history, the need for such change, and how the sensus
fidelium, the sense of the faithful as to the church's
beliefs and practices, often preceded the recognition by church
authorities that change was needed.
"This consensus of the faithful is never valid if it is forced,"
he said. "In a totalitarian system, force is a factor in
creating compliance. In a believing community, agreement must be
free."
"The church learns, early in its history, that the Spirit is
best discerned in community, in councils, in synods. … Thus the
acceptance of the Gentiles was not credible to the church in the
year 35 and yet became doctrine in the year 50 at the Jerusalem
Council," he said.
...
"There are three magisterial or teaching structures in the
church: episcopal (papal), theological, communitarian," Padovano
said.
"Teaching is formally expressed by the episcopal magisterium,"
he added, but "this teaching is not authentic and cannot be
considered infallible unless a genuine dialogue among bishops
and theologians and the community at large is a substantial part
of it."
He quoted Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman: "The body of the
faithful … and their consensus is the voice of the infallible
church."
"Following Newman's lead, a doctrine not received is not
infallible. Infallibility in teaching depends on infallibility
in believing and receiving, not the other way around," he said.
...
If church authorities were more in tune with the sense of the
faithful over the past 50 years, Padovano argued, church
teaching would now be different on birth control, married
priesthood, ordination of women, same-sex relationships,
ecumenical unity, the clergy sexual abuse crisis, and "on fiscal
accountability and on hierarchical mismanagement."
He also devoted part of his address to the difference between
civil law and church law, "which is closer to theology than to
jurisprudence," noting that the church "officially allows
lawlessness."
Among examples, he cited the refusal of the Eastern Catholic
churches to accept mandatory celibacy and the fact that
"bishops, even the bishop of Rome, did not comply" after the
1917 Code of Canon Law ordered every diocese to hold a synod
every 10 years.
When Pope John XXIII in 1962 ordered that all seminary courses
be taught in Latin, virtually all seminaries ignored it because
many of their professors couldn't speak it and many students
couldn't understand it, and "Rome allowed the contrary custom to
prevail" over the papal order, he said.
"Fasting for a time before receiving Communion is ignored. …
"When eating meat on Friday was prohibited, Catholic countries
in Europe simply did not comply and the law was changed," he
said.
The principle that "in the church, law is not valid unless it is
accepted by the community" goes back 16 centuries to St.
Augustine, he said.
He noted that the final canon in the Code of Canon Law,
governing all the rest, says that "the salvation of souls … is
always the supreme law of the church." That canon shows that the
fundamental intent of all church law "is spirituality rather
than compliance," he said.
...
Calling for greater hierarchical recognition that the faith of
the church "is not entrusted to a few but to all God's people,"
Padovano said, "Once we lose sight of Luke's words that
Pentecost was for 'all,' we create not a Pentecost church, but a
church without Pentecost … [that] has a place for the hierarchy
but not for God's people."
"Why would we want such a church?" he asked. "Clearly Christ did
not. Nor do we." ...
___________________________________________
Rev. Dr. Hans Küng addressed the assemble
faithful in Detroit.
Hans Kung urges
peaceful revolution against Roman absolutism
DETROIT
-- Famed theologian Fr. Hans Kung has called for a “peaceful” revolution
by world Catholics against the absolutism of papal power.
He made the call in a video message June 10, the first evening of a
conference in Detroit of the American Catholic Council.
“I think few people realize how powerful the pope is,” Kung said,
likening papal power today to the absolute power of French monarchs that
the French people revolted against in 1789.
“We have to change an absolutist system without the French Revolution,”
he said. “We have to have peaceful change.”
Kung, who was perhaps the most famous of the theological experts at the
Second Vatican Council nearly 50 years ago, was born in Switzerland but
spent most of his life teaching at the University of Tubingen, Germany.
Now 83, Kung is ecumenical professor emeritus at Tubingen and rarely
travels for health reasons, so his message to the ACC was delivered in
the form of a half-hour videotaped interview with American theologian
Anthony T. Padovano, conducted last year at Kung’s home.
John Hushon, co-chairman of the ACC, said the conference, being held
June 10-12 at Detroit’s Cobo Hall had more than 1,800 registered
participants, from at least 44 states and 13 foreign countries.
In the interview with Kung, played on two giant screens in one of the
convention center’s main rooms, the theologian predicted change in the
church despite resistance from Rome. Vatican II “was a great success,
but only 50 percent, he said.
On the one hand, he said, many reforms were realized, including renewal
in the liturgy, a new appreciation of Scripture, and other significant
changes such as recognition of the importance of the laity and the local
church and various changes in church discipline.
“Unfortunately the council was not allowed to speak about the question
of celibacy, about the question of birth control and contraception. Of
course, ordination of women was far away from all the discussions,” he
said.
“Many documents of the council are ambivalent documents because the Rome
machinery -- the Roman Curia -- was able to stop any movement of reform,
to stop it not completely, but half way.”
“What also I did not expect,” he added, was “that we could have such a
restoration movement as under the Polish pope, and the German pope now.”
When asked what reasons he had for hope of reform in the church today,
he answered that hope today is “sometimes a little difficult” in the
face of a restorationist hierarchy, but “the world is moving on, going
ahead, with or without the church” and “I believe the Gospel of Jesus
Christ is stronger than the hierarchy.”
Referring to current crises in the church -- clerical sexual abuse of
minors, the shortage of priests, alienation of women and youth -- he
said, “Humanity learns most by suffering” -- whether in the church or in
the recent U.S. economic crisis. Even though many economists and others
saw the economic meltdown coming, “it was not possible to have a law in
Congress before the catastrophe,” he said.
He said he thinks at least some Vatican officials are similarly
recognizing that change is needed in the church.
“If we do not learn now, we have to suffer more -- more priests will be
leaving, more parishes will be without pastors, more churches will be
empty” and more young people and women will leave the church or
dissociate internally from it, he said. “All these are indications, I
think, that we have to change now.”
...
The ACC chose Cobo Hall as its venue because this year is the 35th
anniversary of the bicentennial Call to Action conference, a national
gathering of Catholic laity sponsored by the U.S. bishops, was held
there, with Detroit’s Cardinal John Dearden as presider and host.
The 1976 conference, despite its flaws, has been credited with providing
groundwork for and impetus to the bishops’ economic and peace pastorals
in the 1980s as well as greater attention to racism, minorities, family
life, people with disabilities, respect for human life and a wide range
of other pastoral and social justice initiatives developed nationally or
in dioceses in the ensuing years.
_____________________________________________
Grateful to Jerry who forwarded the following article by Tom Fox, NCR.
Fairfield theologian
calls for more humility in the church
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Theologian Paul
Lakeland, addressing several hundred Catholic theologians here today,
called for a good dose of additional humility as our church looks out at
the world.
His talk came on the second day of the 66th annual gathering of the
Catholic Theological Society of America, the largest body of Catholic
theologians in North America.
Lakeland is professor of Catholic Studies and chair of the Center for
Catholic Studies at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut.
In a talk titled, “I want to be in that number: Desire, Inclusivity and
the Church,” Lakeland used both contemporary literature and gospel
imagery, primarily the parable of the Good Samaritan, to build his
humility case.
But first he asked: “Why should we focus on the virtue of humility in a
presentation on the conference theme of “all the saints”? Answering his
question, he said a good reason is that “humility is a defining virtue
of holiness.”
The more important ecclesiological reason for attention to humility, he
said, is that without it any examination of “all the saints” will
inevitably gravitate towards the vice of exclusion.
“Indeed, I feel comfortable saying that many of our ecclesial ills today
are products of the sin of exclusion and can be addressed by attention
to the virtue of humility.”
_____________________________________________
Sr. Camille D'Arienzo
addresses the role of dissent in the Church.
Theologians revisit the
prodigal son
http://ncronline.org/news/justice/theologians-revisit-prodigal-son
… As the keynote speaker
at assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious on Aug. 2,
2008, [Elizabeth] Johnson, a Sister of St. Joseph, spoke of the
universal need to extend and accept forgiveness. Its healing grace, she
asserted, enriches community.
She described a situation
that occurred in 1986, involving her colleague at The Catholic
University of America, Fr. Charles Curran. At issue was his dissent from
Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical condemning the use of
artificial contraception. At the time of its promulgation 18 years
earlier, Curran, a moral theologian, had criticized the encyclical’s
ecclesiology and methodology.
He had contended further
that “spouses may responsibly decide according to their conscience that
artificial contraception in some circumstances is permissible and indeed
necessary to preserve and foster the value and sacredness of marriage.”
Six hundred theologians signed onto that statement. As a result, Curran
was fired from Catholic University; however, after a five-day,
faculty-led protest, he was reinstated.
The Vatican, however, had
not laid to rest Curran’s dissenting opinion. Eighteen years later
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith and now Pope Benedict XV, summoned Curran to Rome.
The theologian emerged from that meeting knowing he had failed to
convince Ratzinger of his position. The disagreement was bound to
engender personal, professional disaster for Curran. His writings would
be condemned, he would not be able to maintain a teaching post in a
Catholic environment and, moreover, his humiliation would blanket other
theologians who shared his views. All of this did, in fact, come to
pass.
Johnson described the way
in which Curran was encouraged to come to terms with his humiliation:
The next day was Sunday.
Bernard Haring, the influential moral theologian who taught in Rome and
was Curran’s old professor and mentor, celebrated Mass in a chapel at
the Alphonsianum for Curran and his six university advisers. The Gospel
happened to be the prodigal son. Looking at Charlie, Haring’s homily
went something like this: At this time the church is the prodigal son.
It is taking your treasure — your training, talent, reputation,
contribution — and wasting it, feeding it to the pigs. The Spirit of
Jesus calls you to be the father in this parable, not rejecting, but
welcoming back the prodigal. Do you forgive the church?
She concluded: “Haring
went from person to person, grabbing them by the necktie or the sweater
and looked them in the eye with this question. The Mass could not
continue until they wrestled with their anger and allowed the Spirit to
move them to a different place.”
Johnson upheld the need for individuals hurt by the church to understand
that forgiveness does not imply condoning. She said, “Forgiveness …
means tapping into a wellspring of compassion that encompasses the hurt
and sucks the venom out, so we can go forward making a positive
contribution, without hatred.” …
Tony Equale responded to
this article. What follows is a portion of his response.
Professional
Catholicism
The article
"Theologians revisit the prodigal son" by Camille D'Arienzo from the NCR
June 9th is a moving call for "forgiving the Church" citing a
2008 sermonette by theologian Elizabeth Johnson. What gives D'Arienzo's
call its emotional punch, besides the irony of Johnson's current ordeal,
is the story of Bernard Haring's homiletic reversal of the traditional
roles of the "prodical Son" recounted by Johnson in her talk. In the
story, Haring asked Charles Curran, a theologian recently condemned by
the Vatican, to treat "the Church" like the Prodigal Son,
"At this time the church
is the prodigal son. It is taking your treasure — your training, talent,
reputation, contribution — and wasting it, feeding it to the pigs. The
Spirit of Jesus calls you to be the father in this parable, not
rejecting, but welcoming back the prodigal. Do you forgive the church?"
The background to Haring's
poignant proposal was that Curran's disagreement with then Cardinal
Ratzinger ... was bound to engender
personal, professional disaster for Curran. His writings would be
condemned, he would not be able to maintain a teaching post in a
Catholic environment and, moreover, his humiliation would blanket other
theologians who shared his views. All of this did, in fact, come to
pass.
For all the talk of
"The Church" in this article, the word is used by D'Arienzo in the usual
incorrect and distracting sense to refer only to the Vatican authorities
... and for all the talk of forgiveness, the forgiveable injustice is
restricted to the personal damage to the "reputation" and "career" of
the theologian. This is a profound distortion that reveals exactly the
Catholic "dilemma" that is unfortunately abetted by "professional
Catholics." For in fact "The Church" has been left out of this picture
altogether on both counts. The one is that the Vatican is not the
Church ... nor is it a "person" able to be forgiven. It is an elite
parasitic protuberance that has fastened itself on the back of the
community and arrogated the right to speak in its name.
And the other is equally
off-center and distorted: the fundamental injustice was not done to the
theologian but to the Church, the people, and it is not
within the theologian's competence to forgive an injury done to the
people. D'Arienzo's myopic limitation of the injustice to the
theologian betrays her own "professional Catholic" perspective. The
damage to the theologian's personal career is secondary here. The
injustice is that the people have been denied access to his/her thought
and the potential support of their conscientious convictions. The
theologian's personal forgiveness of the Vatican serves to aggravate the
damage to the community on two counts (1) it supports a false definition
of the Church and encourages people to maintain that false definition,
and (2) it implicitly approves the condemnation by "forgiving the
Vatican" and accepting its demands. By "condemnation" here I
specifically mean what was condemned. The
theologian's "forgiveness" implies exactly the condonation that Johnson's
talk claimed it did not.
...
Professional Catholics
love their "Catholicism." It defines them and gives them their
careers. Who would they be without that highly prestigious institution
which they love to represent? Why, they would have to maybe just bump
along like the rest of humankind, and look to Jesus and those like him
who have picked up the spirit of his simple message that helps us live
like human beings. Jesus was focused on people ... not on founding or
idolizing an institution. "Professional Catholics" are interested in
the institution, what they like to call "the Church." No wonder they
encourage us to forgive those who guarantee its equity.
_____________________________________________
The following article is also by Tom Fox, NCR.
Respect the Holy Spirit in
church life, theologian says
SAN JOSE, Calif.
-- Maureen A. Tilley, professor of theology at Fordham University,
opened the 66th annual gathering of The Catholic Theological Society of
America here June 9, asking a straightforward question: “What does it
mean to be Holy?”
Her artful talk weaved its way through patristic history, models of
church reaction to sin and disunity, examined recent Vatican handling of
“wayward” brethren, and ended with an appeal to collectively implore the
Holy Spirit for inspiration and direction.
… turning to 20th century church history, Tilley said she saw church
leaders appealing to different “models” of church as they become forced
to accommodate or confront wayward brethren.
She contrasted the way the Vatican, on the one hand, dealt with the
Priestly Society of Saint Pius X and Chinese Catholic Patriotic
Association; and, on the other, with bishops and theologians.
“The desire for unity for the first two cases, the Priestly Society of
Saint Pius X and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, reveal a
model of church that feels it can take care of itself and is focused on
concerns for the welfare of individual souls.”
Vatican disputes with bishops and theologians worked out of a different
model, she said.
Repeatedly John Paul II and Benedict XVI, she said, reached out to the
Society of Saint Pius X and to the Catholic Patriotic Association in
China. That was not the case, however, with the way it handled members
of its on flock.
“For people who are not on the outside or even on the edges, for active
Catholics, the Vatican response to their perceived evil of disunity is
different.” Here, she said, unity demanded “personal holiness which in
turn is recognized, not in the sharing of the Spirit as it once did, but
in adherence to orthopraxis, elevated to the status of orthodoxy.”
Tilley used as examples Vatican treatment of:
-
Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of
Seattle, to whom a coadjutor was assigned who removed him from
diocesan leadership.
-
Bishop Jacques Gaillot who was
demoted from bishop of Évreux, France, to titular bishop of
Parthenia, a place with no Christians in Algeria.
-
Multiple bishops deposed from sees
in the last few years in sub-Saharan Africa.
-
And Bishop William Morris of
Toowoomba, Australia was forced to resign last month
-
Meanwhile, multiple theologians, she said, have had their work deemed
unacceptable to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. “The
response to these men and women has been different. Errant bishops now
find themselves outside circles of power, or out of office, and
theologians find their works condemned without a hearing.”
Tilley asked: “Is the church less able to deal with bishops and
theologians than with schismatics? Do the acts of bishops and
theologians pose more of a threat to the unity, holiness and catholicity
of the church than the Priestly Fraternity or the CPA?”
Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, the answer is ‘yes,’ said Tilley. He says
that “[T]oday we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the
greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without,
but arises from sin within the Church.”
She concluded, saying this phenomenon reveals two different ideas of the
Church as one, holy and catholic at work. “One seems to be confident
that the church has what it takes to care for errant sinners and bring
them back to the fold. The other is afraid that the evil world, outside
the church and especially inside, is able to lure away the sheep.” …
_____________________________________________
The full
version of the following article appeared at
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/latest-news.php#2990
Married baptised
Catholic ordained for Ordinariate
A married Anglican priest who was baptised and raised a Catholic is to
be ordained a priest in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of
Walsingham this Saturday in an apparent exception to the rules laid down
by the Vatican when the structure was established in 2009. Fr Ivan
Aquilina, a cradle Catholic who grew up in Malta, became an Anglican in
his twenties and trained for the priesthood. He was ordained an Anglican
deacon in 2000 and priest in 2001.
_____________________________________________
In Orlando, they are
putting their faith into practice.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/crime/os-homeless-feedings-arrests-20110601,0,7226362.story
Three arrested, accused of illegally feeding homeless
By Susan Jacobson,
Members of Orlando Food Not Bombs were arrested Wednesday when police
said they violated a city ordinance by feeding the homeless in Lake Eola
Park.
Jessica Cross, 24, Benjamin Markeson, 49, and Jonathan "Keith" McHenry,
54, were arrested at 6:10 p.m. on a charge of violating the ordinance
restricting group feedings in public parks. McHenry is a co-founder of
the international Food Not Bombs movement, which began in the early
1980s.
The group lost a court battle in April, clearing the way for the city to
enforce the ordinance. It requires groups to obtain a permit and limits
each group to two permits per year for each park within a 2-mile radius
of City Hall.
Arrest papers state that Cross, Markeson and McHenry helped feed 40
people Wednesday night. The ordinance applies to feedings of more than
25 people.
"They intentionally violated the statute," said Lt. Barbara Jones, an
Orlando police spokeswoman.
Police waited until everyone was served to make the arrests, said
Douglas Coleman, speaking for Orlando Food Not Bombs.
"They basically carted them off to jail for feeding hungry people," said
Coleman, who was not present. "For them to regulate a time and place for
free speech and to share food, that is unacceptable."