Sabbaticals have a life of their own, meaning that as much as we like to think of them as intellectually organized searches, our passions and interests draw our eyes to a particular color in a large jewel that captivates us to behold it longer and longer. If you take the leisure to look at the literary and artistic jewels of theology, “the study of God,” go where your soul’s enthusiasms take you. Because I wanted to take some graduate courses on my sabbatical, and I was late applying, I ended up with two history courses not of my choosing but which opened my eyes to new realities, particularly a course on Catholic-Episcopal ecumenical ventures prior to Vatican II that sparked in me an interest in interfaith experience, Jesus’ prayer in John’s Gospel that “they all may be one.”
Theology is a family of subsets. When you are choosing the kinds of books and other material you would like to pursue, you can do so in the fashion of someone entering a seminary or a master’s program in a major Catholic University. St. Vincent de Paul’s regional seminary has a rich, almost overwhelming curriculum [scroll down to page 52] for seminarians from Florida and South Georgia. If nothing else, viewing a curriculum gives an idea of the large number of choices in the study of theology, choices you might not know you had, such as medical ethics, philosophy, pastoral counseling, sacraments of initiation, etc. When safety permits, visit a Catholic graduate school if you are lucky enough to live near one, just to sniff it out for independent studies, libraries, lectures and other events open to the public, etc. On the other hand, sometimes you just come upon a theology book from any specific subject and you jump right in, like a kid in the bakery snatching the cupcake with the most frosting. A good text in theology [or any other discipline, for that matter] will be so well footnoted with a rich bibliography that you can organically spin off into other related texts that grab your fancy. If you start your sabbatical with Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World by Eric Metaxas, for example, your curiosity may take you backward into later medieval times and how the Church fell into disarray, or forward toward the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the reform Council of Trent. I would suggest that early in the sabbatical you do go out of your way to touch base with the New Testament, particularly the four Gospels. Vatican II’s primary agenda was a refocusing upon Christ as the full expression of the God who loves us. Every bit of theology written and taught today is impacted by intensive Scripture scholarship. A good measure of your Gospel acumen is your handle on why the four Gospels are different, and what aspect of Christ’s message is emphasized in each Gospel. If you have no experience in college level scripture study, an introduction such as Paulist Press’s Invitation to the Gospels [2002] can be very useful and dependable, or for the more ambitious, Father John Meier’s A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. [1991] On the other hand, diving directly into an excellent text and commentary of your favorite Gospel might be more intriguing and get you off on a good start. I used Francis Moloney’s The Gospel of Mark [2002] in the Café Blog a few years ago; the narrative was intriguing scholarship, but he did not include the Gospel text itself. When buying a Scripture book, check to see that the full text is included with the commentary; otherwise, you’ll need your bible on your other knee, which can be cumbersome. So, let’s hit the mall with the touch of a mouse, so to speak, to do a little window shopping. Our first stop is Paulist Press, a primary apostolate of the Paulist Fathers. The Paulists were founded by Father Isaac Hecker in the mid 1800’s and devoted themselves to preaching and publishing in the name of Catholic evangelization. To serve the entire Church, Paulist offers a wide range of publications and products. The Paulist Biblical Commentary is a new reference gem. This is a good publisher to subscribe to its printed catalogue, which I have here next to me. The quarterly catalog via snail-mail offers a better view of Paulist’s best resources. Paulist offers “The Catholic Biblical School Program,” an extended study guide to the full Bible over several years, and reasonably priced. Moving along, we come to Liturgical Press, known from its founding in 1920 as the ‘Collegeville Press.” LP began as a monastery in Minnesota and became one of the first institutions in the United States to study reform of the liturgy; consequently, its publications focus on Liturgy, Scripture, and Parish Life. To find its publications this link proceeds to the book section. LP continues to this day with imaginative energy in scholarship. Its Wisdom Commentary series on books of the Bible draws from feminist theology and experience. Continuing along, Catholic University of America Press, my alma mater, publishes some of the most advanced theological works available in English. If you think you know everything, browsing its spring catalogue will bring you back to earth. In my years there, I was more frequently found in the Rathskeller than with these volumes of advanced erudition. However, I may purchase one new offering in this spring’s catalogue, A Guide to Formation Advising for Seminarians [p. 12]. I would like to see how today’s seminarians are counseled and evaluated compared to my seminary experiences of a half-century ago. [Simple answer: we weren't.] Returning home and looking at the books on my desk at this moment, they were published by a wide variety of other universities and firms, including Yale University Press, Eerdmans, Orbis, and W.W. Norton, to cite several. Some of the best treatments of things Catholic have come from outside the world of Catholic publishing; I have included some secular samples including Eerdmans’s and Norton as examples. Yale's Divinity School is world famous. Nearly all publishers mentioned in today’s post will send you free updates on books in your field[s] of interest that are just going on the market--even if you don't buy, you can stay connected to trends in religious academia. I admit that the price of books can be problematic. There are a few things you can do to reduce the price. When I receive a notice for a book that I need for the Café posts or my own interests, I check with Amazon to see how the publisher’s price compares with Amazon’s. Usually, Jeff Bezos has it for a few dollars cheaper and Amazon Prime can usually overnight the purchase. Often, though not always, a sought after book comes in multiple formats, too. I prefer paperback because, among other things, I mark up books I use. Kindle is often cheaper than hardcover or paperback. Amazon also networks with many small local bookstores who can sell the same book, used, at considerable savings. This is particularly true with older texts. That said, I do have qualms of conscience about buying from "big box" bookstores rather than Catholic publishers directly. Just one man’s opinion, but if you are reading a text of particular helpfulness to yourself and/or your work, you might do better with hardcover or paperback. It is probably a book you will refer to down the road, and you may want to mark it up and make notes. In doing the Café blog, I learned quickly that it is easier to retrieve a book quote from a shelf than to try to find it in my Kindle app. Feel free to contact me with any questions. The next post will be in the book review stream; the next sabbatical post will be around Wednesday or Thursday.
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What I am laying out here is a blueprint, a utopian one at that, for anyone who finds themselves in home restraint due to the Corona virus or any other reason. I fully understand that you have other pressing concerns in your life, so take from these posts what would help you maintain your sabbatical as best you are able. If I can personally assist anyone, feel free to reach me at tjburns@cfl.rr.com
Given what I have seen over years of counseling, many professionals cannot do their best work or take adequate care of themselves in every sense because “too many things get in the way,” a softer way of saying “I believe I am not in control of my own life.” I have a code I use for my own private session notes, CTC, or living from “crisis to crisis.” CTC is a prime factor in failing to pray, exercise, prepare healthy meals, and maintain healthy relationships. A sabbatical provides the leisure to chart each of these factors into regular rituals of daily living. I have long believed that successful people have a passion for their field, and this is no less true in Catholic life and ministry. Moreover, passion for union of God is the ultimate motivator of life. Theology is literally the study of God, or as others have put it, “faith seeking understanding.” Our own kiddie catechisms of years ago described our purpose on earth as knowing, loving, and serving God in this life, and living with Him in the next. A sabbatical is down time for personal scrutiny, determining who we are and what we are doing. Never be embarrassed to admit that your idealism in search of God has flagged, that one’s religious life has gone to the dogs, that ministry and catechesis have become repetitive duties for a surviving paycheck. If this is what you discover in the early days of your sabbatical meditations, do not be afraid. There is a lot of talk about people leaving the Church and abandoning the sacraments, and probably losing heart in God. But the onus always seems to fall on the departing. What about our Church as a whole? We are a divided Church, a sinful Church, in many respects. Division is never a thing of beauty, and certainly not an object of admiration. Despite the public labors of a most unusual pope, there is dissatisfaction with him because he does not do everything “by the book.” Currently, at least in the United States, the institutional Church preoccupation has been getting the “correct answers” out to the remaining faithful. I actually saw a blog post from a catechist asking how to explain to a little boy the difference between “love” and “lust” as he prepares for his first confession in second grade. Yes, it may be that you’ve lost the love you once cherished, but I would wager that the object of your love is much obscured in the traditional places we have been taught to look. “Knowing, loving, and serving God.” We who are or have been married can easily apply knowing, loving, and serving with our spouses. It is a curious thing that the word “knowing” as applied to God is a synonym for sexual encounter in the Bible. Think to the early stages of a wholesome love affair—every aspect so consuming. But sustaining this love requires constant togetherness. Kenny Rogers, the popular singer who died this weekend, admitted to an interviewer that his four marriages all failed because he put business first. Catechetics makes the same mistakes. Just yesterday I came upon a post on a religious education site: “Favorite tips and tricks for teaching children the procedure for First Reconciliation. We do practice Reconciliation twice, have them put the parts of reconciliation in order, watch the Brother Francis "Forgiven" video but every year Father tells me the kids don't know what they were doing.” What we have here is a sacrament of anxiety, not healing. Business before beauty. Because God is “totally other,” all talk of God is analogy, or as Webster puts it, “a comparison of two otherwise unlike things based on resemblance of a particular aspect.” The historical Jesus himself is the only perfect theological statement: “Phillip, he who sees me sees him who sent me.” By implication Jesus, himself human, is defining the divine presence in each of us, putting us in that restless place where nothing makes us perfectly happy except communion with the God who made us and loves us. Good theology is the language of loving effort. The study of theology brings wisdom to its serious students. I am grateful to the publication Lay Witness for this quote: “Plato once remarked that if wisdom were visible, the whole world would fall madly in love with it. Although wisdom is not visible, beauty is. And this is why, for Plato and many other philosophers, in loving beauty, people are moving in the direction of wisdom. The important implication here is that we human beings simply cannot do without beauty. The Russian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev once said, "Beauty will save the world." As to setting sabbatical goals, the best I can offer is finding the love and beauty of God in your life and/or ministerial circumstances, setting out on paths of those who have searched for divine beauty before us and who do so successfully today. I will put some road markers up in the next few posts, and at some point, describe my own 6-month sabbatical in 1993 with its highs and lows. We can walk through a library of Catholic study that may prove helpful, but the nice thing about a sabbatical is your command of the pace and the menu. In his love, God will prompt you to your heart’s longing. Next post: Thursday, some practical housekeeping. Even the Black Plague [1347-1352] came to an end, awful as it was, and I believe that as a Church we shall go back to work, too, at some future time when it is safe to do so. I don’t think it will be soon, though, and I don’t think there will be a “normalcy day” where everyone runs from the shelter of home into the public marketplace and starts engaging with the living ministers of the church again. Were I a pastor today, I would tell my hard-working staff and volunteers to go home on a [paid] sabbatical. On second thought, I would recommend a sabbatical to every adult Catholic facing the question of what to do with enforced time off.
Webster’s defines a sabbatical as “a leave often with pay granted usually every seventh year (as to a college professor) for rest, travel, or research.” This is a period when professionals refresh their minds and commitments to their fields, read the insights of colleagues, perhaps take a course of their choice, and even create some contribution to their field. [College professors write their books on sabbaticals.] A sabbatical is a time to break free of the shackles of the phone and its evil partners, absent one’s self from the employment environment, and live by one’s own schedule. It is customary to submit a plan of study and goals to the employer and make a private or public summary of what one has researched during the sabbatical, which is a reasonable requirement. I am struck by the inclusion of “rest” in Webster’s definition of sabbatical, because most professionals I encounter in counseling appear to be in good need of it. For many years I was a United Health Care Employee Assistance Provider for, among other populations, everyone on my diocese’s health insurance plan. The term “burnout” does not adequately describe the range of job-related symptoms presented by Catholic ministers, including priests. I don’t need to describe each stress in detail, but in the past few weeks I have seen many blogsites with posts from catechists who are literally frantic that they can’t get materials for sudden religious education homeschooling demands brought about by Corona closings. Another poster was deeply grieved that there were no hours for confession in her church; an elementary knowledge of Penance and Canon Law would have calmed her. Before World War II Saint Maximilian Kolbe wrote: "Whoever can, should receive the Sacrament of Penance. Whoever cannot, because of prohibiting circumstances, should cleanse his soul by acts of perfect contrition: i.e., the sorrow of a loving child who does not consider so much the pain or reward as he does the pardon from his father and mother to whom he has brought displeasure." Worry is an enemy of spirituality and a roadblock to effective ministry. Consider this: You can’t take responsibility for a pandemic, nor can you take responsibility that your diocese or parish does not provide on-line resources for you to tap immediately for the next several months. Some years ago, my own pastor picked up the bill for every parishioner to access Formed, the NETFLIX of family faith formation. So, relax. It is a subtle form of narcissism to believe that the Church cannot survive without your 24/7 helicopter ministerial surveillance. Let the people who get paid to supervise you take the responsibility. What the Church will need come next fall is a cadre of renewed and rested ministers, enriched by time to pray, healthier from time to exercise and eat nutritious home cooked diets, better qualified for ministry by virtue of a challenging study of theology. In other words, let’s consider the model of Church sabbatical, ministers and laity alike. The days holed up at home may take on a refreshing hue if you think of them as that opportunity to escape into the various branches of religious experience and theology, places you've always wanted to go. Tomorrow I will provide an overview of how to construct your personal sabbatical plan, and on Wednesday I will connect you with books from every corner of the theological world. The Café is one place that will remain open and with you as we together transverse this unexpected sabbatical. While at sea earlier this month, I had the opportunity to read cover to cover Lori Gottlieb’s best seller, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed [2019]. Gottlieb had written extensively before; this book was well-reviewed by The New York Times, and I was in the mood to study how other therapists were addressing what I see in my current practices. All of us who work with the public in any meaningful way—and that certainly includes church ministers—can fall into repetitious and unproductive “routines” or slip into that “one-size-fits-all solution” for everyone that life brings into our ambit.
In parish settings a staff will encounter assistance of many kinds, such as engaged couples seeking marriage, annulments, funerals, religious education and RCIA families, counseling and/or confession. It is possible, almost inescapable, to get fixated on the formalities, necessary as they may be, such as gathering necessary documents for youthful sacraments or walking through the various stages of an annulment. Some pastors are notorious for fixating on results, e.g., the numbers of candidates in the RCIA program or tallies of registrations for religious education programs. The pressure percolates down to parish staff/ministers, most of whom were attracted to Church ministry to engage souls into the communal life of Christ’s church and would probably want time to do more face-to-face personal evangelizing and less filing and traffic directing. If it is any comfort, therapists have similar paper pressures and depend upon a variety of software programs like Therapy Notes, which I used in my private practice. One of TN’s features is an automatic email and/or phone system that reminds patients of appointments, depending on how much you want to pay. The point of Gottlieb’s self-revelations and lengthy case studies is the demonstration of the depths of human experience and suffering, and I have to say this is one of the best mental health reads for the general public since Listening to Prozac in 1993. Gottlieb takes us through a year with six different patients [and her own psychotherapy] so the slow process of therapeutic change can be observed and understood. At the heart of each patient’s presenting collections of symptoms—depression, grief, narcissism, marital distress—is a misunderstanding of the self. We all carry a life script within us [i.e., who we think we are], and what usually brings a patient to “talk to someone” is the life script jumping the tracks—by trauma, by business or career failure, by a failed relationship, by substance abuse—the list is endless. But as Gottlieb wisely observes, a crippling blow from the past also means a painful loss of the personal future one has crafted through life. If you think about it, much of Church work is about life change, bad and good. I hear from many religious education directors and personnel how parents present children out of the blue for baptism, first confession, first communion, confirmation. Then, after the rites, those young people become invisible again. Pastors get requests from couples to witness the renewal of their wedding vows, not at the usual 25th or 50th anniversary markers, but at odd anniversary years such as seven years or thirty-four years. The question we ought to ask—ourselves—is why now? What flags a Catholic mother to herd her children into the DRE’s office, breathless, baptism certificates in hand, to “regularize their standing in the Church?” The bureaucrat in us rejoices with the impression that a lukewarm family is back in the fold, a numerical success. Don’t fall into the trap of failing to consider why this family has chosen to make this move now. Research into the subject of individuals leaving the Church has found that some of those leaving the church do so because they have never felt personally engaged in the church, the liturgy and its members. At some level, perhaps even microscopic, the folks who engage us want to be a part of us. Regard them as brothers and sisters. I am not advocating that we turn pastoral work into Freudian psychotherapy. But I do believe that church life and ministry must be personal and supportive, particularly the structured and routine programs. Take the example of the mother with the children who need all their youthful sacraments. I might ask what her hopes were for the sacramental life of her children. She might say, “I don’t want them to go to hell.” A little tardy, perhaps, but a good reason, nonetheless. My response; “you’re a good mother to do this.” “Avoiding hell” is her vocabulary for salvation. When one is bound to the textbook language of catechetic textbooks, one misses the sincerely stated if unconventional language of a mother’s love for her children. Some church ministers use the occasion to scold the parent or quote the catechism. And we wonder why we lose them. This mother’s encounter with the church leads to two roads: we would like to see her and her children with us after the initiation sacraments. And, if we apply the “why now?” rule, what is the story behind a mother--who clearly believes the doctrine of hell--bringing her children, perhaps as old as 14, to the saving waters of Baptism now? There is more to this story. I might comment off the cuff that with her children she must have a busy life. It is a hypothesis, of course, but an innocent one. The responses can be varied and quite revelatory. [1] Some people say thank you. [2] Some defer the compliment with self-deprecation on the grounds that parenting is a duty that doesn’t deserve pats on the back. [3] Some will say, in a variety of ways, that the key people in their lives don’t realize how hard it is to be a good mother—almost always the spouse and/or the doting mother-in-law. [4] Some suffer from a chronic form of depression or dysthymia, and the effort of parenting, let alone reaching out to the church, is Herculean. But I need a separate category for those carrying pain from the Church. There is often generic and/or specific predisposition of anger among those who approach the Church—and this number is dwarfed by those who stopped coming altogether. It is a good idea to approach all pastoral engagements with the idea that this may be the last chance to restore faith in the institution, and the last gasp of hope for a Catholic reaching out. Besides the major “institutional hurts” of clergy abuse and an assortment of complex disciplinary hurdles, a large number of respondents to pollsters—and clients in my offices—report difficult encounters simply “doing business with the Church” in some period of time in their personal history. But going back to the example of the mother and children, I might say to the mother that “our late afternoon hours for religious education might be inconvenient for a family,” particularly a single-parent family. I might also get the sense that this mother is socially isolated and might enjoy a church relationship that brings her an oasis of solace in her busy world. In that case, I would ask her if she would like someone [preferably another mother or grandmother] to stop in with a Starbuck’s from time to time and bring her material and assistance in catechizing her own children. Conversion here is built upon acceptance, upon hearing the needs of those who seek God’s grace, even in circuitous routes. To borrow from St. Thomas Aquinas’s principle that nature builds on grace and grace builds on nature, psychology listens to grace, but lived grace is reinforced by the principles of psychodynamics. The key to healing in a relationship, as Carl Rogers famously put it, is “unconditional positive regard.” I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving this weekend. On the morn of the holiday my wife and I offered Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours, and I took a four-mile early morning walk in anticipation of a day of wonderful eating ahead. [I rediscovered my romance with pecan pie on Thursday...and Friday...and Saturday.] The Roman Missal of the Mass, from which the Hours get their daily theme, listed November 28, 2019, as the Thursday of the 34th Week of Ordinary Time. Yes, for all the signs of the Christmas Season everywhere you looked, including Al Roker at the Macy's Day Parade, the Church concluded its liturgical year in Ordinary Time Saturday afternoon, November 30, around 4 PM, with the first Vespers of its new year and the mysterious season of Advent breaking forth.
The Advent season of 2019 runs from the evening of Saturday, November 30, and extends through the early afternoon of Tuesday, December 24, encompassing the four Sundays before Christmas. Advent is one of the most misunderstood seasons of the Church year, perhaps because of its complicated origins. To begin with, the feast of Christmas itself was established in the Roman west in the mid-fourth century. The Eastern Christians celebrated the Epiphany as its primary feast of the Incarnation, and the Eastern practice of baptizing on January 6 caught on in Gaul [France] and Spain as well. Consequently, the earliest traces of an Advent season had something of a catechumenal flavor, a preparation for meeting the incarnate Savior come to earth in the waters of baptism. The first record of a “fasting” or penitential pre-Christmas season has been traced to Tours in modern France around 490 A.D., and a practice known as “St. Martin’s Lent” [from the Feast of St. Martin of Tours on November 11 until Christmas] became a template for a more penitential atmosphere through Advent. Pope St. Gregory the Great [r. 590-604 A.D.] formalized the time and theology of this season, Gregory’s directives make clear that he envisioned Advent as a season of preparation for the celebration of the first coming of Christ, his historical birth, and he deemphasized the apocalyptic aspect of Advent as a time of wonder and expectation of the Second Coming. Later, the Irish monks, Christianity’s first confessors and moralists, envisioned the Second Coming as a time of grim judgment and punishment, reinforcing a penitential strain. The tradition of purple vestments—the same color worn during Lent—dates to this era. But since the time of Gregory, there has been a schizophrenic understanding of Advent in the Church, a tug of war between which of the two comings of Christ should be emphasized. This question has greater pastoral and catechetical implications than generally appreciated. I suspect that most folks who came to Mass this Thanksgiving weekend and who saw the purple colors of Advent assumed [and they were not grossly incorrect] that the liturgy of the First Sunday of Advent begins a time of focus upon the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. However, the readings at this weekend’s liturgy of the First Sunday of Advent [year A] are as future oriented as any collection in the liturgical calendar. We have apocalyptic readings this weekend galore, including a segment of St. Matthew’s Chapter 24, often called his “little apocalypse.” The same futuristic strain runs through the second and third Sundays of Advent. There is a specific date in the Roman Missal/Lectionary when the Scripture emphasis shifts from the Christ yet to come back to the historical event of his birth. That date is December 17, where the Gospel of the day proclaims the genealogy of Christ, and subsequent days narrate the events leading to Bethlehem. The Gospel of the Fourth Sunday of Advent is Matthew’s description of the birth of Christ, a text which may be used at Christmas Masses themselves if a pastor chose to do that. [Most churches use St. Luke’s Christmas account at all the December 24-25 Masses, though there are multiple choices.] This division of Advent observance into two distinct moods—expectation of apocalyptic drama and consolation at Jesus’ birth among the poor—is reflected in the Mass Lectionary of Pope Pius V, the Roman Missal in use from 1570. After Vatican II and the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy [or Sacrosanctum Concilium], the new rite of Pope Paul VI was promulgated around the world in 1969, under the instructions of the “General Norms for the Liturgical Church Year.” In its instruction regarding Advent, the General Norms had this to say [para. 39]: “Advent has a twofold character: as a season to prepare for Christmas when Christ's first coming to us is remembered; as a season when that remembrance directs the mind and heart to await Christ's Second Coming at the end of time. Advent is thus a period for devout and joyful expectation.” There is an old joke, “did the people of the middle ages know they were living in the middle ages?” Historians tell us that Christians who put their minds to such things back then did believe they were living in middle times, between the first coming of Christ recorded in the Gospels, and the dramatic Second Coming of Christ in glory to render judgment and gather his own. The mood of the sacred liturgy of Advent hovers between what we have been given and what is yet to come in the judgment of God. Too much preaching and catechetical fixation on the first coming of Christ obfuscates the second. An advent for adults brings emphasis to the future. We cannot envision its details, but we can grasp that—as stated in the Nicene Creed—Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead. The Gospel’s apocalyptic language, particularly Matthew’s Chapter 24, make it clear that while the first coming of Christ puts us in the place of the Bethlehem shepherds, filled with passive wonder and awe, the Second Coming will be shaped—for good or for grief—by our active response or neglect of the first. A lifetime of religious ministry, study, and teaching has convinced me that the academic discipline of theology is the process of interpreting mysteries beyond human comprehension with clumsy words. This does not discourage me from theological pursuits, but the thought keeps me humble. In following blogsites of catechists, and the Catechism itself, I see terminology and statements claiming a finality that is premature. I think this is particularly true with matters of death and what may lie beyond.
In the history of the Catholic Church November has been designated as the month to reflect upon “the last things,” i.e., death, judgment, destiny, the Second Coming of Christ. Theologically speaking, November is the month of “eschatology,” the branch of theology devoted to matters of the future. Eschatology is not discussed much in adult education or parish life, probably because none of us are too enthused about talking of our own deaths, judgments, and eternal destiny. Another reason we hesitate to ponder “the last things” is the way the later books of the Judeo-Christian Bible depict the future. There are many literary forms employed in the Bible; one of them is “apocalyptic style.” Wikipedia’s definition of apocalyptic literature is not bad: “As a genre, apocalyptic literature details the authors' visions of the end times as revealed by an angel or other heavenly messenger. The apocalyptic literature of Judaism and Christianity embraces a considerable period, from the centuries following the Babylonian exile down to the close of the Middle Ages.” Jesus himself uses apocalyptic language to describe the end times in the three synoptic Gospels; in fact, Matthew 24 is often referred to as the “little apocalypse.” St. John’s Book of Revelation is entirely apocalyptic in its literary composition. Apocalyptic literature is so dramatic and mysterious that since the Enlightenment and the modern era there has been a tendency to approach such passages as Matthew 24 as literary outliers, somewhat exaggerated language to point us in the direction of preparing for our future death and judgment. Scholars today share the belief that Matthew 24, and similar passages in Luke and Mark, were inspired by the dramatic fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 A.D. The Gospels were composed after this catastrophe and borrowed many details of the actual event for insertion in standard apocalyptic format. Apocalyptic language is often employed in times of fear and persecution, so its appearance at a time of Roman persecution of Christians—most notably in the Book of Revelation—certainly makes sense. As the centuries passed, the Church maintained apocalyptic imagery in describing life after death and incorporated some of it into its formal decrees [though Jesus never spoke of Purgatory, or Limbo, for that matter.] Depictions of the glories of the saved and the torments of the damned were the inspirations for the preaching and the art of the Medieval and Renaissance Era. If you have been fortunate enough to see Michelangelo’s apocalyptic panorama in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, just the eyes of the damned speak volumes. It is little wonder that in Luther’s day the sale of indulgences—promises of forgiveness and remission of punishment for every sin committed in one’s life—would be eagerly pursued, though as historian Kevin Madigan writes in Medieval Christianity, [p. 435], a large number of Christians were taking a more cynical approach toward indulgences and confession and despairing of the salvation process altogether. It should be remembered that for most of the Old Testament era, the concept of life after death was unknown to Israel. Reward and punishment were a matter of this life only. Thus, in the Book of Genesis, God promises Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore. There is no mention of heavenly reward. Favor from God was bestowed in terms of this life’s riches—prosperity, numerous descendants, and the esteem countrymen. It is not until the writing of the Bible’s 2 Maccabees 12: 43-46 that we see a statement about death, those who die in sin, and what we can do to help the dead. The Books of Maccabees [a portion of which will be read at this weekend’s Mass, November 9-10] describe the revolt led by Judas Maccabeus and his brothers to overthrow the sacrilegious religious persecution from Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria. The events described occurred around 165 B.C. and the books were composed about 100 B.C., very late in the pre-Christian era, and as the Gospels would later record, there were still many Jews in Jesus’ lifetime who found Jesus’ teaching of eternal life ridiculous. [See Luke 20: 27-40, which happens to be this weekend’s Gospel] 2 Maccabees 12 describes how the surviving Jewish warriors tended to the bodies of their fallen brethren in battle and discovered to their horror that the dead men were wearing amulets dedicated to pagan gods, a grave violation of God’s covenant to trust no other gods. Judas’s management of this grim scene reflects an evident and significant shift in thought from the days of Abraham, two millennia in the past. While acknowledging the gravity of the sin, Judas articulates a new practice: “He [Judas] then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection in mind; for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus, he made atonement for the dead that they might be absolved from their sin.” I should add that this passage from 2 Maccabees is one of the choices authorized for funeral Masses in today’s Catholic Lectionary. Protestants do not recognize Maccabees in their biblical canons, possibly due in part to Luther’s opposition to the sale of indulgences. The New Testament teaching on life after death and glorious resurrection evolved in stages, since for several decades after Jesus the infant church believed that the Second Coming was arriving momentarily. The first discovered Christian prayer reads: “Come, Lord.” The first written book of the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians [51 A.D.], is St. Paul’s response to the fear of many that if some had died before the Second Coming, they would not be taken up into glory. Paul emphasizes that the baptized dead would be called from their tombs ahead of the living to share the infinite wonder of the fulfillment of the kingdom of God, won by the death and resurrection of Christ. Two things to note: [1] the apocalyptic tenor of these early days of the Church, and [2] the absence of the term “soul,” which did not come into theological play until the Christological councils of the fourth and fifth centuries. The earliest Christians were Jewish converts who retained the unity of a human being. The idea of “soul” did not enter Christian theology till Greek philosophy impacted the Christological councils of the fourth and fifth centuries. By the Middle Ages Christian anthropology defined a human as possessing a body and a soul. Thanks to St. Augustine—and probably collective common sense—it was agreed that all humans had sinned. But Augustine held that all of us inherit the sin of Adam, i.e., Original Sin, which can be forgiven only through baptism [though the official Church has gone to considerable difficulty to open salvation possibilities to such populations as infants who are not baptized due to the neglect of others; no more “limbo.”] Augustine believed that original sin was biologically inherited from Adam and Eve, and thus, that this sin was passed on through sexual intercourse, an interpretation that has hamstrung many branches of later theology. It is safer to say that every human is born into an incomplete world still in need of the redemptive power of Christ. Baptism, pastorally speaking, does not so much forgive a specific inherited misdeed as it embraces a human into the saving body of Christ, his Church on earth, and begins his journey to a glorious life beyond the grave. Catholicism, by the way, recognizes the saving power of baptism in all Christian churches, while acknowledging that the full saving dimensions of God subsist in the Roman Catholic Church. This Vatican II terminology was the result of much debate which continued to make news as recently as 2007. Created as we are with free will, our choice to embrace in faith and conduct the example of Christ and to do his will to the best of our ability is the only determinant of our destiny. That there is life after death at all, and that Christ will take us to post-life glory, are the two ultimate beliefs we are called upon to make. Call it just my impression, but I don’t think my culture stops to think about this. Or, we have collectively domesticated conversation about death possibility by talking about it with congenial scientific tone: how common to hear at funeral events clergy and laity alike speak of the dead as “up in heaven free of sickness and playing 27 holes every day in perfect weather.” The funeral setting is probably not the most charitable time to raise the possibility [actually, the probability, objectively speaking] that everything in golfing Uncle Harry’s life—his personhood and his future, as well as his 5 stroke handicap—will end up in an urn on the fire place till the house is gutted and remodeled. I long for the day when a preacher stands up to announce that there is a real chance there is nothing after death…and that the heart of belief is in a Savior who was raised from death by his Father for his perfect love. So much of Catholic life is arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, when we ought to be calling forth an adult faith instead of coasting along on “givens.” The awe and joy of the witnesses to the risen Christ were not just celebrating the Savior’s good fortune; his resurrection shocked and amazed them because they knew that Easter was about them, and what they might hope for in faith. They also knew what they must do…and so many of them died as martyrs of witness for preaching a very inconvenient truth. . The two realities we need to address are the very genuine possibility that there is nothing for us after death besides decay or ashes, and that even if there is life after death as Christians profess to believe, our participation in it rests upon our body of work in this life. I don’t like to be cold [too many Buffalo memories], and on those rare Florida nights when the temperature hovers near freezing and I am adding a second blanket, I stop and think about the many cold poor in my area—transients and those with no heat. I feel pain for them. But my next thought turns to myself and my destiny. Jesus has made it very clear that future life depends upon actual imitation of his good works. As St. Luke puts it, “Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” And that brings me a chill that no blanket can erase. I received a note from one of our readers who put this question to me: “What experience can you offer regarding the difficult issue of communicating with the diocesan chancery regarding a sadly unmotivated and essentially incompetent pastor? We have two parishes and one priest. Both parishes have thoroughly assessed our problems and are in agreement that it is essential to move forward.” The writer, probably in communion with other concerned parishioners, consulted the Church’s 1983 Code of Canon Law, notably codes 519 and 528-530, though a reader may want to look at the entire section concerning pastors to see the present day “legalese” of parish-diocesan life.
I approached this question not only from the point of view of communicating with the chancery [I will return to that] but with the description of the pastor as “sadly unmotivated and essentially incompetent.” The expression “sadly unmotivated” suggests to me an internal struggle—from depression, to exhaustion, to aging, to discomfort with the English language, to alcoholism, to a crisis in faith itself, something akin to what Mother Teresa, Thomas Merton, and many other holy persons have wrestled with in their ministerial church lives. It may also be that the pastor has yet to engage with his people to the degree that he feels better about his pastoral assignment. It is not clear how long this particular pastor has served in his present position. The best recent research on the assessment of candidates for the priesthood has isolated two key dispositions of absolute importance for priestly life and ministry: a generally favorable disposition toward people, and self-control. There are many priests who simply do not feel warmed and energized by parochial interventions, due to shyness, low self-esteem, poor conversational skills, or an inherent distrust of people, as in “what do they want from me now?” I might add here that many of our new priests are coming to U.S. soil from different countries with different ethnic and cultural vision of the function of a pastor, unaccustomed to bringing the counsel of the membership into their administrative style. I note, too, that in the case cited above, the same pastor is responsible for two parish communities. In church-talk, such arrangements are called “sacramental circuit riding” and impede the pastor’s opportunities to invest in the interpersonal ministry that Canon Law so strongly recommends. The term “essentially incompetent” noted above covers a great deal of territory, and before any discussions with diocesan officials, it is important to spell out precisely what is meant by “incompetence” in this circumstance. Major incompetence might include matters involving construction, budget, questionable hires, lack of financial transparency, poor preaching, frequent absences, issues involving the parish school, inadequate programs such as adult and youth faith formation, etc. Incompetence could also be inferred from an evident and potentially scandalous pattern of rudeness up to and including verbal assault of parishioners. Canon Law is not clear on what to do in such circumstances. It only mandates a parish finance board, with consultative responsibility only. A pastor is bound to hear it, but he is not bound to follow its advice. In truth, all my life I have encountered pastors who rarely or never meet with their finance boards. My parish has a finance board but the membership, minutes, etc. have not been posted in any public parish forum since I joined the parish in 1996. Parish Councils can be an important tool in parish life, but despite popular belief, there is no Church law stating that a parish must have a parish council, though individual bishops can mandate their existence in their dioceses. Many churches do have such bodies, and I feel they are useful in keeping the administrative staff of the parish—and notably the pastor—informed of needs and concerns. However, parish council members rarely have the skill and background in the area of ecclesiology, or Catholic learning in general, to originate new insights into a parish’s ministerial life. On the other hand, councils can be motivating forces in the execution of diocesan or pastor’s initiatives, such as in developing family-based faith formation programs. The letter above indicates that “both parishes have thoroughly assessed our problems.” I had several initial questions when I first read this, the first being the breadth of involvement of each parish in the discussion and analysis of the problems at hand. For example, did the parish councils of both parishes meet one or more times for discussions without the pastor’s knowledge? The second question involved the true scope of concern within each parish. I have never known a parish—including the ones I pastored—where there was 100% unanimity about the pastor’s skills, styles, and priorities. A sitting pastor may be problematic for some and a godsend to others, a poor preacher but a wonderful confessor/counselor. In taking action which may be interpreted by some parishioners as an attempt at ouster of the current pastor, the danger of dividing the parish may be a real threat, and the last state of the parish, to paraphrase the Gospel, may be worse than the first. Breadth of agreement is highly elusive to measure. A third question, referring to material in this post above, is the criteria used in such discussions over involving the chancery. The Café reader who sent me this question had gone to the trouble of researching pastoral responsibility in Canon Law, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, our catechetical impact over the past few decades does not prepare most Catholics on the nuts and bolts of ecclesiology, and parishioner colloquies often collapse into strong emotion rather than firm matters of law and practice. My correspondent did tell me later that a legitimate church authority with long experience is guiding resolution of the issue, which is a good thing. Chanceries have changed a great deal over my lifetime. When I arrived here in Orlando 40+ years ago, when I had a meeting with the bishop or some committee, I would always make the rounds and visit all the department heads to chew the fat and give a quick update of field conditions. Nearly all the “secretariat heads” were part-time or full-time priests of the diocese at that time who understood the nuances of parochial life. Over the years, with diminished clerical manpower, our chancery—and probably most others around the country—depends more upon lay professionals and time management. Some directors are excellent, but in other cases it is hard to find lay personnel with all the college/professional background one would hope for. CARA research recently indicated that only about 17,000 laity are involved in college level preparation for careers in Catholic management and ministry across the country. Another point worth remembering is the small pool of priests available to a bishop for assignment or replacement. These changing realities are worth keeping in mind when any individual or group is attempting to resolve a local problem with assistance from the chancery. Priests, like most of us, need to feel loved and appreciated. If there is a major character flaw that impedes a pastor’s execution of his duties, it is often hard to know if one is seeing some form of personal toil, or a true personality disordered cleric. As a rule, I would assume the first, and as an individual or a pastoral body [e.g., finance board, school board, etc.] I would inquire of the priest’s pastoral burdens and ask if there are ways we can collectively assist in helping him meet his public burdens. If nothing else, his morale may be boosted by a kindly overture. Even if he declines any help, you have delivered in a gentle fashion the truth that his pain is evident to parishioners, that he is not effectively hiding whatever his inner crosses may be. In communications with the chancery, the same style of concern needs to be conveyed. Precision in describing problems is best delivered with a parish’s concern for the good health of its pastor. Chancery staffs form opinions of the diocesan parishes, and an approach with a good heart goes along way in maintaining good relations with the bishop and his advisors. Any reader of the Café is welcomed to submit a day’s post [300-1000 words] and I will work it in with minor editing, mostly just clarifying terms. I received a captivating offering from a very old friend who started in the seminary with me in September 1962. Matt went on to military service and a long business career, and in recent years has given much time to the physical and mental recovery of wounded vets by introducing them to the tranquility of fly fishing. [It is always tranquil when Matt casts a fly.] He is a lector in his local Catholic church and has had a front row seat to the scandals surrounding diocesan cover-ups of child abuse. So much has been written about our current crisis, but Matt has some genuinely original insights that point the Church in the right direction of true reform. Numerical footnotes are mine for sources and follow-up
_____________________________________________________ As a species our desire to gain and hold power over other souls seems limitless. Sadly, in the meantime we seem to forget Jesus, in particular, and Christ in general, disdains that kind of dominion. [1] Priests, like the rest of us, have largely been coopted by this urge. [2] And we have collaborated as pitiful sheep. To have power over someone is the most dangerous kind. It reeks of manipulation and invites abuse of every moral description. Likewise, there is something infantile in many of us that wants to be dependent. It’s painful to see. [3] My point is Christians of the Roman Catholic type have collaborated in our own interment. Fear of confrontation with our clergy is loaded with a subtext that may have been written in good faith but has become terribly distorted. The power of Christ has become more unrecognizable in the power of the clergy. [4] Priests have far exceeded their job description which in Matt-talk is to minister to and facilitate the sanctity of their local souls. A good deal of our interactions with our priests are functional not transactional. [5] We treat them as sacred things, but never enter their sacred space. And vice versa. We rarely challenge them or try to elicit a human response. We tread lightly. They use distance when confrontation is imminent. [6] But we and they must be more if the priesthood is to be a conductor of light. When have we ever seen a parishioner confront a priest who has distorted or misused the Gospel? And with the proper authority, how often do we see priests actively seeking to gather sinners to the Church with love? Chastity is a gift that cannot be given by men. [7] It’s crazy to think each priest has this gift or even desires it - if it means refraining from sexual intercourse. Welcoming married priests or priests who will be become married seems inevitable. [8] And why not women priests? It should mostly depend on their character and holiness. [9] Footnotes: [1] “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." [Matthew 20:28] [2] “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you super add the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.” The famous quote of England’s Lord Acton, one of a minority of Catholic laymen who saw danger in the proposed declaration of papal infallibility in 1870. [3] The corporate responsibility of lay Catholics in parishes for decades of child abuse is an undeniable fact, albeit an uncomfortable one. There are many factors to consider, including the Church’s own teaching that priests are ontologically different from other people by virtue of Holy Orders and thus live on a different plane than the rest of the baptized, essentially making them beyond human reproach. Matt’s use of the phrase “pitiful sheep” embodies several other factors as well; our unhealthy dependency—one might call it transference in Freud’s terminology—on priests, and our unwillingness to follow our gut and report suspicions to local law enforcement. There is a goldmine of data and research waiting to be mined into a thorough study of this aspect of the crisis. One other point to consider is the sad state of catechetics and adult reading. Most Catholics do not engage in current professional theological journals and writings on the Church and their rights and duties as baptized, even though most Catholic laity, particularly the college educated, are certainly equipped to do so. [4] Matt underscores the difficulty of honest confrontation with clergy. The pain of a Catholic—who believes sincerely in Apostolic succession and governance—addressing a cleric in fraternal correction is hard. The layman feels theologically unprepared and, in some cases, almost blasphemous, though in fact neither of these things are true. [5] Matt’s observation that encounters with priests are functional and not transactional is true on many levels. At the top of the pyramid is spirituality: we use the term “receive the sacraments” as if we are not spiritually engaged with the priest who “administers them.” Another writer asked me this weekend if I thought most priests believed in Transubstantiation or Real Presence. We don’t know because we rarely have the kind of pastoral intimacy to talk about it. [6] Many—not all—priests are psychologically and theologically unprepared to engage with adults their own age. Period. See this piece from a sermon at St. Mark’s Church in Philadelphia, “Chalices, Not Callouses.” [7] Chastity—understood theologically as a renunciation of married life--is a charism or gift of the Spirit bestowed upon those seeking to dedicate their lives to an intensification of their initial baptismal vows. Specifically, solemn vows of chastity are taken by members of religious orders living in common, be they men or women. Chastity is also a generic term for the sexual virtue of proper behavior in any state, priest or lay. The language of Church teachings sometimes confuses chastity with celibacy, a legally binding solemn promise not to marry but rather to devote one’s life to the service of the Church in the ministrations of the sacraments. [8] Matt’s point about priests and celibacy is buttressed by the experience of Eastern Rite Catholic priests and Protestant ministers who convert to Catholicism and priesthood, two distinct groups of validly ordained married men. The Western Roman Catholic practice of strictly observed priestly celibacy dates to early in the second millennium, a time when clerical concubinage was a common circumstance. [9] The question of women’s ordination is considerably different from that of married male clergy, and too involved to elaborate. But at least two things need to be figured out: does the sacramental presence of Christ at Mass, the reenactment of the Last Supper, require a male person to be a valid sacrament? And two, if the governance and church law of women’s community were entrusted to women, as I believe they should, would there be a pressing need for women to absorb the clerical state? It seems like we’re mixing dilemmas, so to speak. But if anyone would like to bring more heat and light, the Café is always open. Submissions or suggestions can be made from the home page of the Catechist Café, at the email spot. And thanks, Matt! THE FIRST MORAL CONSIDERATION:
The “final collection” is your last one, the distribution of your estate upon your passing. I have never come across an ecclesiastical directive about the spiritual side wills and bequests to charity, but I have always assumed that the same principles of tithing and charitable gifts that apply to the living also apply to the dead. After all, it is the living—with appropriate professional assistance, hopefully—who write wills and trust that their intentions will be upheld in civil court of law. But let’s start with a basic moral consideration, leaving a properly registered will. For practical purposes, everyone already has a will. If you did not write and swear out your own before you die, then you are using your state’s template as the default. Drawing from my own professional and personal experience and reviewing recent literature on the subject, it strikes me that failure to tend to a personal will can be a serious moral breech in the religious sense. There are a great many scenarios that unfold when one dies intestate, and none of them are good. At the very least, the immediate blood or civilly registered legal survivors [e.g. by marriage or adoption] will need to retain counsel to sort out the division of assets. States have various laws about who may present themselves to the court to serve as the executor and overseer of the survivors’ share of the estate. I think we have all lived long enough and watched enough “Law and Order” to know about the family strife that results from money. The legal designation of an executor is probably as important as the writing of the will itself. In cases without wills, courts have a pecking order for appointing an executor, with the discretion to choose, for example, whom it believes to be the most competent member of a family of siblings; the law does not require the automatic appointment of the oldest sibling. That can be a shock and a further disruption of the family. What happens more frequently than you think is that the oldest sibling has serious substance abuse issues, a criminal history, failed businesses, etc., which are legal impediments to exercising executorship in many states. Morally speaking, basic Christian charity demands of my generation that we leave our estates in the simplest possible condition for our families to deal with after our deaths. When our son was killed suddenly years ago, we used the occasion to engage with an estate attorney practice for ourselves, and we soon had legally drawn directives for every possible end-of-life contingency. The entire range of paperwork came to a full loose-leaf binder which I jokingly called “the atomic football” after the briefcase of national launch codes that always accompanies the president of the United States. When, for example, do you want your plugs pulled in the critical care unit? Who makes that decision? It is all in the book, or now in the cloud, ready for the attorney to advise our executors should it come to that. A few more ethical points: even when a will is properly executed, the beneficiaries receive the liabilities as well as the assets of the estate. This is above and beyond federal and state inheritance taxes. There are an infinite number of scenarios where survivors inherit costly obligations. If your parents’ house has had no improvements since Eisenhauer was president, the cost of bringing it up to code, let alone prepping it for resale, can be significant. [Why do the “Property Brothers” avoid old houses?] Just for the heck of it, I looked up the two-story house I grew up in during the 1950’s and discovered that it sold last month for $4000. If my family still owned the house, we would be upside down, so to speak. I am familiar with a case where a man left his business to his children when the company was millions of dollars in debt. Again, there would seem to be a moral issue involved with tying up estate responsibilities to the best of one’s abilities while still alive and competent, lest they be passed along to the next generation. On a real but more humorous note, there comes a time when we older folks admit that the younger generation is not interested in our “stuff.” The term “downsizing” gets tossed about a lot, but at the end of your day your kids are going to call the St. Vincent de Paul van to haul off your treasures. The kind thing is to do that yourself before you leave the earth. Estate planners advise that precious items be appraised; most of the time our “collectibles” are simply collecting space. I have learned that the hard way with books and sports memorabilia. There are spiritual blessings to simplicity, and your family will quietly thank you in their prayers when that day comes. THE SECOND MORAL CONSIDERATION This leaves us with the question of charitable giving when disposing of an estate. The issue of percentage is a personal one; the pastoral presumption would suggest an amount proportionate to the degree of passion one has had for the Church and special charities throughout one’s lifetime, and the wish that such ministries continue long into the future. I would be lying if I denied that events in the Catholic Church over the past twenty years have changed the playing field. The needs of the Gospel mission weigh heavily upon us all but it suffices to say that a donor need exercise due diligence in the designation of charitable giving, during one’s life and beyond in the instrument of a legal will. (One need only look to last week’s fiasco involving Bishop Bransfield in West Virginia as testimony for the need to donate cautiously.) Many church institutions—parishes, schools, etc.—have closed their doors over the past several decades for a multitude of reasons, including fewer priests, abuse settlement costs, and declining participation. Catholics have willed money to the endowments of these institutions. If you are inclined to leave money to scholarship endowment, for example, for your local Catholic school, it is wise to understand how the diocese and/or board of directors will use your gift if the institution closes or is merged. You can have your attorney, after conversation with the diocesan development office, arrange for your gift to be redirected to another diocesan-wide endowment for Catholic schools, if such an instrument exists. You can designate your gift as a “restricted bequest,” meaning that the Catholic diocese or institution must use the money as the donor instructs, rather than assign it to "general operations." Making out a will is a spiritual exercise, no matter how small or how large the bequest. It requires the donor to concretely address what he or she believes are the most critical needs of the Church and of society at large. It is easy to overlook some of the ministries which continue to enrich the Faith: the religious orders that educated us [at considerable discount], Catholic health care facilities, Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities outreach in one’s own diocese, missions [particularly those sponsored by one’s own diocese], Catholic journalism, and the list goes on. I am citing Catholic institutions, but one can look beyond denominational headings to such worthy causes as Amnesty International. My passion over many years has been the theological formation of catechists, and I am currently looking for a way to set up a postmortem gift or endowment. This is easier said than done, as my diocese’s training program has been in disarray for a few years now and I am looking for an agency of the diocese that would carry out my wishes. My attorney asked for a little more “meat on the bones” for this item back twenty years ago, and I better get cracking if I am serious about this. Gift-giving contains a big element of faith. A donor can control the amount, but once the gift is made, there are no guarantees the dollars will do exactly what you hope they will. The needs and missions of the Church change over time; the object of your charity may cease to exist, like the Catholic girls’ high school in my family’s current place of residence. The gift may be mismanaged or even fraudulently used, as in the case of the West Virginia bishop cited above. Years ago, I had a friend in the chancery, the director of development. When soliciting large gifts from reluctant donors was tough, he would remind me: “Tell your people that their gift is to God; if you mismanage it, you the pastor will burn in hell for all eternity.” He was right: the gift is to God, and the giver is blessed. Woe to those who poison the trust and abuse the gift. I have not addressed a large number of ancillary considerations including personal competence and aging, taxes, trust arrangements [a married couple can form a revocable trust which bypasses the need for probate when one spouse dies], nor such things as estate taxes, which vary from state to state, nursing home insurance, etc. I have simply offered moral considerations in this post, not legal advice. Please retain your own legal counsel in planning for your own circumstances. Capital Campaigns, and wills/bequests, are a different breed of Church giving that require a considerable amount of serious reflection, probably much more than we routinely bring to the weekly Sunday Offering. Two considerations take special precedence. First, the participation [or non-participation] in a multi-year commitment to a Church sponsored campaign is one of the few times that laity can express themselves in a significant way regarding the direction and priorities of Church dioceses or parishes. Second, if I may coin a phrase here, “the soul follows the money.” A financial gift of considerable magnitude establishes a relationship of love and involvement with the object of the gift, the ministry itself, a relationship that does not die with the last installment.
There is a wealth of reliable data now available to track Catholic giving and involvement in the twenty-first century, which began with the Spotlight clergy abuse reporting in Boston in 2002 and continues through the recent defrocking of the American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. I posted several weeks back that while Catholics continue to donate to their parishes, they are considerably more reluctant to pledge and donate money going outside the parish, particularly to dioceses and “second collections” to outside causes. However, it is also true that recent Church scandals—along with other resentments toward the Church--are spiking another trend today last seen in 2002, that perhaps as many as a third of registered Catholics entertain thoughts of leaving Catholicism for other Christian communities, per a study released last week by PEW research. Aside from the major issue of personal Catholic alienation, it is inevitably true that there is a proportionately smaller pool of donors than a generation ago, with a more critical eye toward the practice of large gift-giving. Catholic institutions undertaking annual bishops’ appeals and capital campaigns today are doing so against a stiff wind. I’ll start with the annual bishop’s appeal, in my diocese referred to as Our Catholic Appeal. From what I can see, most dioceses in the U.S. hold their appeals just before or during Lent. This is my forty-first annual appeal in the Orlando diocese, and even before the scandals broke, there was always some ambivalence about the campaign, ranging from the assessment goals assigned to each parish to the nature of where the funding actually goes. Orlando is honest in that it does not use the word “Charity” in its official title; administrative charity is listed as one subset of a wide range of diocesan operations—from the office of schools to the needs of elderly priests to assistance with seminarian tuition to liturgical and catechetical training. A better way to think of the annual diocesan drive is maintenance of the diocesan structure, including all the offices and services required by Canon Law. That would include the time-consuming processing of annulments, risk management, employee benefits and retirement portfolio administration, etc. Not “sexy items,” to be sure, but try living without accreditation of Catholic schools or trained catechists in your parish. Theologically speaking, the diocese and the parish are joined at the hip as executors of the bishop’s apostolic mission to preach the Gospel. The religious principles that underlie this union of mission are rarely the subject of a Sunday sermon or adult education class, but participation in the work of a bishop/diocese falls under that branch of theology called ecclesiology. I have a link here to the Diocese of San Jose, California, an outline of its ecclesiology course for catechists and teachers that makes the full organic union of the Church clearer and provides justification for a bishop to seek the financial assistance of the faithful in the administration of the diocese. I have heard through the blog and email that some Catholics worry about the use of their diocesan donations in general to meet legal costs and settlements of child abuse cases. I can’t speak for every diocese; to address this, one would need to consult with his or her home diocese’s independent financial audit on-line at the diocese’s website to determine if this is true, and then proceed as your conscience dictates. If a diocese does not have adequate transparency about its finances available to its donors, that is a major issue in the relationship between a Catholic and his or her bishop that needs discussion, and in some circumstances a donor may find a more edification in a direct gift to another specific entity of the diocese [such as a restricted gift to a Catholic high school] or the Church at large, such as Catholic Relief Services, or toward the retirement costs of the religious community [or communities] that educated you. In fairness, bear this in mind. By the time the abuse crisis became general knowledge, $2 billion in settlements, suits, and services had already been paid out. We often overlook the responsibilities of every lay member to become well-informed on Church finances or, for that matter, the full range of administrative policies that impact our churches. If preaching in your diocese is generally poor, how many of the baptized have written or addressed bishops with the message that “your seminary just isn’t cutting it?” The target of the child abuse investigations has shifted to bishops, i.e., what did they know and when did they know it? But Catholic adults worried about such things throughout my childhood and shielded us from certain “odd clerics” who rotated through the Buffalo Diocese. [Perhaps more to the point, we harbor funny uncles in our own families, too.] One could argue that if collected moneys are going to settlements and victim relief, this may be an appropriate form of wholesale diocesan penance for silence in the face of an overly clerical culture. Just one man’s opinion. Capital campaigns, on the other hand, are not annual. You will encounter them a few times in your life. They are unique intense fundraising events for specific needs and future expansion. I liked the definition provided by the Society of Non-Profits: “Nonprofits use capital campaigns to raise money for large capital projects (construction of a new facility, renovation of existing facilities, purchase of equipment, furnishings, etc.) They use endowment campaigns to build an endowment fund (a reserve fund to take care of emergencies and assure the organization's survival). An organization need not be large to conduct a capital or endowment campaign, but it does need to be well established and financially healthy.” [Emphasis mine.] From years of observation I can say that many parishes and schools run “from paycheck to paycheck” [or Sunday collection to Sunday collection] and nearly any unexpected capital expenditure has a “crisis” element. Parishes with frequent special appeals are probably working with unrealistic budgets, if they are living within a budget at all. As one professional explained it to me, “no major donor will open up for a penniless instrument.” The previous paragraph underscored the reality that a capital campaign cannot rescue a failing parish. Again, it is obvious that all parties—bishop, pastor, parishioner—need be in constant honest dialogue about a parish’s health on a regular and continuing basis, to the point where future options take on clearer focus and less divisiveness. Hence the need for the annual public accounting. There are multiple types of capital campaigns. In my own head I break them down along the lines of new church construction, school construction, and major improvement needs. New churches are an “easy sell” in the sense that everyone expects a parish to have a church, and for most parishioners the church building is the only brick and mortar facility they will expect to use in their lifetime. However, there are some hurdles: many expect a new church to look like the edifice of their childhood, a style and layout which has been outdated by the directives of Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium [though SC is often ignored in church design.] And few people understand how costly churches really are. I coordinated two new church campaigns in my life as a pastor and participated in two as a layman. [My next capital gift will be coming from my will.] From either side, they are grueling events that if done properly will ask a donor for more money than has ever been asked of him or her before. There is no getting away from the fact that, as in most businesses, major investors want to deal with the executive, which in a diocese would equate to the bishop for a diocesan-wide capital campaign, or a pastor in a parish capital campaign. It took me a long time to understand this. As a young pastor, the solicitation of major gifts did not come naturally to me, and in my first campaign I refused to do it on the grounds that it offended our parish’s collective sense of egalitarianism. The campaign flopped in the sense that we did not raise enough to get diocesan clearance to start. Three years later, we conducted a phase two after I was thoroughly schooled by a major officer of our local annual Jewish appeal. We doubled the gifts of the first campaign and built the church in 1988. [As an aside, nobody could foresee at the time that the publicity director for the second campaign would go on to fame in 2001 as the writer of “Menopause: The Musical.” The world of big-time fund-raising.] School capital campaigns tend to focus on long-needed enhancements of schools built in the post-World War II era; only 16 new Catholic schools were built in the U.S. last year per the NCEA. While much brick and mortar go into these renewals, the more critical improvements are those harder for the public to see, i.e., raising standards to meet the higher costs and expectations of private faith-based education. This includes access to the advanced technology expected of graduates who hope to attend the major colleges; the research resources [or what we used to call the library], competitive salary and benefits to attract the best and the brightest in faculty and staff, and two particular priorities: quality religious instruction for the full faculty at the college level, and the establishment of permanent endowments for the sole purpose of tuition assistance. Capital campaigns for schools must make the case for the subtle range of needs that are much less visible than, say, re-sodding the sports field. Catholic schools themselves are the subject of considerable debate and have been so through my entire adult life. Many [most?] Catholic families assume they cannot meet the challenge of tuition. Bishops and pastors disagree on whether Catholic schools are leaven in the community, enclaves of Catholic orthodoxy, or white flight destinations from public education. These are the kinds of questions that need thrashing out locally before a capital campaign becomes a public reality, but I fear that the instructional buildings themselves will fall before there is general agreement on Catholic educational philosophy. [See Kansas City, Kansas] There are two points still to be addressed in this stream, diocesan capital campaigns [different from and more intense than the annual bishops’ appeal], and legal wills/bequests. Each deserves a separate post. But don’t worry. The “wills/bequests” post will not carry the title “shrouds have no pockets.” |
Professional Development...
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