|
OLD THERAPISTS DON'T DIE...THEY ANALYZE RELIGIOUS LIFE
Sometime this year I must decide whether to renew my mental health counseling license with the Florida Department of Health, or to change my status from active to retired. If I choose to continue holding an active license till the spring of 2029, when I will be 81, I will need to take 30 to 36 classroom hours in recent developments in the field of psychotherapy. Some of you may remember my posting last January [2025] about attending the state counselors’ convention. [If you are curious about the offerings at such a convention, here is the 2026 curriculum that I am not attending this year.] I was disappointed in last year’s mental health event. Most of the presentations focused on a narrow range of clinical concerns, mostly post-trauma stress, and it was clear that the evolution of the insurance companies toward reimbursing only short-term treatment was impeding the work of most of the practitioners I met. [I went to the 2025 convention in part to learn how my practicing colleagues were treating transgender issues. There was no discussion about that.] When I closed my practice in 2014, United Health Care was requesting that I have my patients undergo a paper-and-pencil symptoms exam every six sessions to receive third-party reimbursement. When treating mood disorders like depression, my clinical concentration, I found that often a patient was feeling quite poorly around the sixth session, acknowledging for the first time plausible causes for their pain and recalling their roots. Also, many clinical antidepressants do not produce symptom reduction for four to six weeks. If Rome can’t be built in a day, it certainly can’t be rebuilt in a day, either. The same is true with human beings who [often courageously] bring a lifetime of pain into a counselor’s office. Or, for that matter, into the confessional. CONFESSION AND COUNSELING Reading James O’Toole’s For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America, and Irwin Yalom’s The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients, has prompted me to think of how much the confessor and the therapist can help each other, must help each other, in healing the pain, loss, and confusion that every one of us experiences when we have the courage to step out of the world for a time and taste the reality of God’s existence. Without this profound awakening within ourselves, evangelization will never get off the ground. In fact, it would be a dishonest venture. O’Toole’s book on Confession concludes [p. 276] with his observation that “the older form no longer speaks to the great majority of Catholic laypeople; a new form is needed…church leaders and theologians neglect their duties if they do not begin the long work of articulating [a new form].” I agree, and there are several things we can do immediately to stop the hemorrhaging. There are significant similarities between the challenges faced by confessors and mental health professionals. Some might argue that the sacrament heals the soul and the counselor heals the body and mind. But in truth how can one make that distinction? Medical research over the past century has isolated a variety of neurotransmitters in the brain that impact thought and behavior. Ironically, Church language itself depends heavily upon what we might call psychological strategies. For example, in confession we are instructed to put forth our sins with information about the number of offenses, our intentions in the act, and our contriteness. A competent confessor can gather an initial sense of the penitent’s spiritual status from the manner the information is offered up, although it must be remembered that the typical confessional encounter is extremely brief. In a perfect world, a confessor with the same penitent over time would gain better insights into the penitent’s life—and thus obtain information that would enable better spiritual counsel and appropriate penances. We will come back to that point. Counselors and priests have different challenges, too. If a prospective mental health patient has health insurance with a major provider, he or she can go into the company portal on-line and shop for any or all mental health therapists in the region and, in a sense, create their “ideal counselor” by their instincts. United provided us providers with 24 areas of expertise to claim on our personal sites. Some therapists claimed all 24! I listed three: Mood Disorder, Couples Counseling, and Christian Counseling. A funny thing: several couples told me they came to my office because I was a Christian marriage counselor. “We figured that as a Christian; you’d try to keep us together.” Counselors, using their clinical training, can ask many more in-depth questions than priests in the confessional. One obvious reason is time: a therapy session, historically, covers fifty minutes of encounter. Priests are often constrained by assigned times and/or waiting lines unless a penitent makes a special request to meet the priest outside of assigned confessional hours. As James O’Toole notes in For I Have Sinned, for over a century, probably back to the days of St. Alphonsus Liguori and St. John Vianney, Catholic moralists have debated how far a confessor can probe about personal conduct, most famously when birth control pills, considered mortally sinful artificial contraception, became available for general use in the 1960’s. There was considerable argument among priests whether to inquire of a married person whether the couple was using the pill. In my family’s parish years ago, it was general knowledge which priest asked, and which one[s] didn’t. Those priests who did ask feared that the penitent’s withholding the fact of artificial contraception usage rendered the sacrament invalid and would thus send the penitent to hell. On the other hand, priests and penitents have the benefit of the seal of confession, which despite the efforts of some state legislatures [see Arizona], remains absolute in the Sacrament of Penance. Counselors, on the other hand, are bound to break confidentiality in several circumstances, varying from state to state, generally in cases of imminent or past harm to vulnerable persons. As a counselor I received periodic subpoena duces tecum summons, which means “show up in court with all your patient’s records.” REFORM OF THE PENITENTIAL SACRAMENT BEGINS HERE. In the process of blogging, I receive and review all sorts of Church publications—diocesan websites, parish bulletins and fliers, religious order updates, and every kind of Catholic publication—from Substack to Vatican City. I notice in my reading that there are many segments of Roman Catholicism talking about renewal and refilling the pews. The thing that troubles me is a subtle implication that the pews emptied because of the weakness or arrogance of those who left, that they were seduced by the culture, so to speak. Sort of a “come back and we’ll forgive you.” Research does not support that. I wrote in an earlier post how my dad, then in his 70’s, who prayed the rosary daily and went to daily Mass, told me “I don’t get anything out of confession anymore. I only go because your mother makes me go.” He might have gone more enthusiastically if he knew in advance that he would receive Christ’s love and guidance through the piety and wisdom of a confessor who knew something of geriatric life and the particular crosses of my dad—watching children process through adult struggles, coping with physical pain and infirmities, carrying the trauma of a front-line medic for four years of World War II. Research indicates that the “nones,” those who have left membership in churches of all denominations, do not renounce spirituality, overall. The quote “I am religious, but I can’t deal with organized religion” comes up a lot. Many of my close friends from seminary days express such sentiments, and with good reason—there was little or no emphasis upon developing an internal spiritual life, strange as that may seem, in our seminary years. [Another post for another day.] If Penance is to take its place as an integral rubric of Catholic life, its connection to Baptism—to what Baptism itself ultimately means—must be restored. In the present day, Penance is still held captive to the moral manuals—a juridical release from divine punishment—isolated from the broader experience of collective Church faith, the liturgical calendar, and most important of all, the tangible experience of God’s love. In psychological terms, confession is the admission of deeds without full context of the acts or the larger narrative of an individual’s personal faith and life. By coincidence, next Sunday [January 10-11] is the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus. It is one of the episodes of Jesus’ life reported in detail by all four evangelists. Matthew’s Sunday Gospel text includes this: After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened for him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Did Jesus need to be baptized, we asked our elementary school teachers seventy years ago. Matthew himself, in the same Sunday text, reports a debate between John the Baptist and Jesus about the propriety of John’s baptizing Jesus. Jesus replies, “Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Fitting for us. By John the Baptist’s ritual, the heavens were opened for Jesus, he beheld the Spirit of God and was acknowledged to be God’s pleasing Son. Was this baptism a prototype for all Christians? Given that the Apostles baptized 3000 on Pentecost, the “Birthday of the Church,” we are reminded of something so casually forgotten: the lives of each of us, and the collective life of all the baptized, pivots around baptism, when God affiliated each of us and all of us with an unimaginable love. WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR PENANCE? I can only guess. I do have hopes along these lines, though. Penance, in its present form, looks disjointed from the rest of church life. Think of the traditional confessional, which symbolizes the religious and psychological detachment of this sacrament from the liturgical stream of saving waters. Would it not make sense for each penitent to walk with the confessor to the baptismal font, where the penitent professes the Faith and is sprinkled with the baptismal waters of life as a fitting conclusion to the sacrament of forgiveness? In theologizing about the Sacrament of Penance, the Church needs the input of psychology for multiple reasons. Psychology does not have the answers to all questions; it is not a substitute for religion. But if the goal of Penance is to bring people to their full baptismal identity, psychology has much to offer. Take the topic of human development. For example, most theories recognize a period of young adulthood wherein a human sorts out major decisions about purpose of life, such as career path, relationship bonding, coping with the unknown, and perhaps gender identity. Morally speaking, are we stuck in the Manualist Era of acts and punishments where one size fits all? Would a confessor do better to ask broader questions about the penitent’s present-day lifestyle vis-à-vis his or her identity with Jesus Christ through Baptism? Open ended questions, the therapist’s best friend, can lead to deeper and realistic discussions which in turn may awaken a greater hunger for God, or at least add grace to the search for identity. It will be a half-century before the numbers of newly ordained clergy replace what we have lost in my lifetime, and we have no guarantee that such an ambitious hope is even possible. I know that bishops are worried about finances and staffing, but it is time now for a “plan B.” The Ritual of Penance contains a format for “general absolution.” That is, a biblical service whereby the celebrant extends absolution to a congregation without personal confession. The United States bishops have essentially buried this rite on the grounds that it is only to be used in an emergency. Personally, I think the bishops fear a “cheap grace” misuse of the rite to avoid the embarrassment of confessing directly to a priest. When did shame become an essential part of the rite of Penance? All the same, the General Absolution rite does not provide for the personal direction every baptized person deserves, which leads me to comment on the practice of spiritual direction. In the last several decades I have observed a growth in training programs for spiritual directors, servicing mostly a lay student body of future directors. A few months ago, while on retreat, I requested a conference with a lay spiritual director on the staff. I spent at least 90 minutes with her as she sliced and diced my personal spiritual condition at that moment. Later I thought to myself that if every lay spiritual director were as competent as she, we would have a new energy with which to celebrate our common faith and serve the world. Is it possible? I discovered that my neighbor to the north, the Diocese of St. Augustine, Florida, has a particularly useful site describing spiritual direction, a list of available directors, and an inventory of diocesan approved sites for training. This is indeed hopeful. The website states that spiritual direction is not psychological counseling. It would be my hope, however, that basic counseling principles from works such as Yalom’s cited above would be included in the curriculum. Teaching faith and sharing a faith walk require different shoes. This concludes formal posts around the book For I Have Sinned. And I think I have sinned by neglecting other streams on the Café post. Come back soon! For my penance, I will now proof-read all 2308 words above.
0 Comments
Centuries ago, the seasons of Advent and Lent were observed with similar gravity, i.e., intensive fasting, penitential Scriptural and liturgical tones, etc. Have you ever noticed that both Advent and Lent have a break from the gravitas—a midway Sunday in rose color vestments, as we had last weekend [December 13-14, Gaudete Sunday] and on the Fourth Sunday of Lent [Laetare Sunday]? My household certainly observed Advent, though we did hang stockings on the night of December 5, in the hope that good St. Nick would give us a foretaste of Christmas joy. [Tangerines and fudge, usually.] We got away with our own little pre-Christmas celebration because the visit came from a saint, Nicholas of Myra, in modern day Türkiye. Nicholas was quite a character: tortured by the Romans, he survived and was a voting member at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., which formulated our Mass Creed today. It is fairly certain that during the council he encountered Arius, the heretic who denied the divinity of Jesus, and smacked him across the face. The secret gift-giving on December 6 has come down to us from Nicholas’ practice of leaving bags of money on the windowsills of young women for use as their dowry, so they could marry and not resort to prostitution. [See, we never hear the good stuff in catechism class.]
Unlike Lent, Advent did not have the daily adult fasting rule except for the three Ember Days which, coincidentally, are this week as I write, December 17, 19, 20 this year. See the U.S. Bishops’ explanation of Ember Days here; these days are still observed but without the obligation of mortal sin attached, as they did when I was growing up. The Ember Days used to catch your attention, coming as they did four times per year with fascinating prescriptions. The Ember Day Masses in the old missal included multiple Scripture readings, unusual for that time. I haven’t heard a parish explanation or announcement about the Ember Days since I was about 15. All of that said, my mother was still disgruntled with all the pre-Christmas celebrations and decorations in the neighborhood and on TV, etc. Even among us kids, she suspected that our spiritual devotions, such as they were, focused too much upon the coming of Santa and a generous haul from his workshop. To tell you the truth, in the third grade I worried more during Advent about what Santa thought about me than Jesus did. Meanwhile, my mother would pronounce annually—usually around September—that “this year we were going to have a ‘spiritual’ Christmas.” That sounded ominous to us little kids, until I learned to say, “Next year, ma, next year. Promise.” My mother lived to be 94, and in my adulthood, I never thought to ask her what “a spiritual Christmas” would have looked like. Even today I think it meant fewer toys, more rosaries, and only God knows what else—some monasteries around the world still practice self-flagellation. We’ll never know. Third grade was the tectonic shift year as I moved on from Santa [but not the gifts] to intensive Church involvement, with allowances for age, of course. [At the bottom of this post, I have a funny story about my last Christmas with Santa.] In the third or fourth grade “Santa” brought me a leather-bound adult daily Missal. I started going to Mass every day even on Saturday mornings and summer vacations and soon became an altar boy. I have to say that the missal was very useful and yet it raised questions about Advent and Christmas. ADVENT, AS SEEN FROM SCHOOL AND PULPIT, c. 1956 I should note here that I am recalling a time when the Mass was offered entirely in Latin if you can imagine. That included the [then] two Scripture readings, one from St. Paul, and one from the Gospels. The Lectionary as we know it today did not come into existence till 1970. The readings were the same every year, no A-B-C cycles back then. In the 1950’s I believe the Gospel might have been read occasionally in English—by one of the associate pastors—at the conventual or parish high Mass. But as a rule, you never heard English at Mass except during the sermon [which was sometimes skipped] and the announcements…as on one Christmas in the 1950’s when my pastor read, at all the Christmas Masses, including the children’s Mass, a letter from Buffalo’s Bishop Burke instructing all Catholics to avoid a downtown movie theater which was showing the film, “Baby Doll.” Buffalo already had a thriving burlesque house, “The Palace,” so I figured this must be a really naughty movie to get a Christmas warning. [It was a morally troubling movie, I learned today, but not for the reasons you might think.”] As a youngster I got the drift of the Gospel arrangement in the liturgical year: it paralleled Jesus’ life. I had no understanding of St. Paul, his texts, and their placement in the Missal. The Gospels for the Sundays after Pentecost [today’s “Ordinary Time”] covered Jesus’ life till the end of October with the Feast of Christ the King on the last Sunday of October. November Sunday Masses were “fill in Gospels” because of the moveable date of Easter, but “The Last Sunday after Pentecost in late November ended, I thought, the biography of Jesus with Matthew's awesome telling of the end of the world. So around comes Advent--new beginning, turn toward joy and Christmas. The vestments switched from green to purple, Catholic calendars reminded us that we were entering a new liturgical year. Our Catholic school teachers taught us ahead of time about the coming of Jesus and the season of Advent. There was no Advent wreath in my church; the practice was introduced into the United States in the 1930’s by the Lutherans, actually, who invented the practice in Europe in the 1600’s. More likely than not, my parish’s sermon on the First Sunday of Advent in 1956 or 1957 outlined what we should do during Advent, specifically, to be good and to prepare ourselves for Jesus’ coming, however one interpreted that. Confession was implied in that preparation, but beyond that, life went on as usual in the parish. When I used my missal for Advent the first time, I assumed that the Advent Gospels would be a build-up to the birth of Jesus, and I was looking forward to that. Imagine my shock at discovering, on the first Sunday, that the Gospel had nothing to do with the biblical countdown to Bethlehem. Rather, the text was a repeat of the previous week’s Gospel, from Matthew 24, about the terror of the last days. [Ironically, that same text was read this year—2025--from Cycle A in the reformed lectionary!] I felt somewhat let down, but I had high hopes for the next week, the Second Sunday of Advent. But the Gospel of that day, Matthew 11: 2-10, told of John the Baptist in prison, an event thirty plus years after Bethlehem. With my disappointment mounting, the Gospel of the Third Sunday of Advent featured a debate between the scribes and the adult John the Baptist. And, to close out the Advent Sundays, Luke’s Gospel consisted of a sermon by the adult John. Not a word, at least in my understanding, of the Christmas narrative we learned at home and in religious instruction. Notice I did not mention preachers; in their honest moments they will tell you even today that preaching during Advent was/is a bear. I cannot remember a single Advent sermon I preached in twenty years; that may be a blessing in disguise. I don’t recall ever giving a scold sermon during Advent—decrying materialism and too much partying before December 25, because I knew no one would take it seriously and I saw no point in spending credibility on a lost cause. SO, WHAT DO WE MAKE OF ADVENT? It was not until I attended graduate school that the season of Advent with its liturgies and Scripture readings were explained in a way that addressed my youthful puzzlement. I will start with that. Advent is indeed a united season, observing the coming of Jesus. But Advent focuses upon the two comings, so to speak. The beginning of Advent focuses upon the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time. It carries forth the theme of the year ending before it. The Second Coming is such a cosmic event that the evangelists struggle to find words for it. Jesus himself uses several similes, including the parable of the great king who divides the human species into the sheep and the goats. The reason for God’s unfathomable act of creation is expressed in Jesus’ own words: “And I, if I be lifted from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” God has given everyone that choice to bond with Jesus as he reveals himself in the Gospels, to accept his invitation. It is a choice that must be made in brutal honesty [“many will cry out, Lord! Lord!”], without reservation, at many points in our lives, a choice that governs every one of our major decisions. It is not an exaggeration to say that Advent is very close in spirit to Lent. John the Baptist—highlighted in Advent--preached a forgiveness of sins so that we might be ready to be counted among the elect. Were I preaching today, I think I would place emphasis upon the urgency of honest reflection upon how much I need to be in step with the One whom God has sent. I don’t have a clear answer for how we integrate and celebrate the Second Coming of Christ in glory during Advent; perhaps the point of the first part of Advent is to impart the nature of divine time, that our clocks are all running toward a future time when God will embrace his universe and his faithful souls in a glory we cannot imagine. A logical question involves the Advent timeline. Wouldn’t it make more sense to open the Church Year, including the Advent season, with the humble but miraculous events of Jesus’ birth, and then go into the future promise of universal glory down the road? In the seventy years since I first wrestled with the Advent liturgies, I’ve come to some fresh thinking on the matter. Put simply, the birth of Jesus would have been noted in the Roman Empire as just another number for its census takers. There must be a setting for the coming of this child, which both Matthew and Luke provide as best they can. When the Angel Gabriel announced God’s mission for Mary, she was right to ask, “How can this be?” She was not stubborn or insolent. Rather, she represented all of us in asking “what is this marvelous event to unfold before our eyes?” Of course, as we now read the liturgical Gospel accounts of Jesus’ arrival in the second half of Advent [which began on December 17] and continue through Christmas and Epiphany, it is hard to overlook that the origin of the human Jesus—i.e., the Christmas narrative--was filled with worry and pain of all sorts. Matthew reports that babies were killed as King Herod sought Jesus to kill him, for example. Every priest ordained has a standard sermon in his file for Advent about the celebrating and materialism of Christmas, particularly as it begins earlier every year and swamps the observance of Advent. And it is true that Christmas spending is a pillar of the U.S. economy, that we give and receive a lot of gifts we don’t need, that we eat and especially drink more than we should. You must have heard this before. But at the same time, we can hardly absorb the Scriptural message of Advent without an impulse to celebrate. Christ now and Christ to come; there would be something terribly wrong with us if our redemption in this life and promise of endless future glory did not call forth an impulse to rejoice. Remember Luke 15:22ff: Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to celebrate. As Advent unfolds, we should celebrate, too. A childhood memory: Back in third grade I was on the cusp of belief in Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve my maternal grandparents hosted an annual low-key party for their children and families. We began every year with the Rosary, prayed with various levels of tolerance by children less than twelve hours before Christmas morning. Then there was a one-gift exchange and cookies and punch. I think—I’m not sure—that December 24 was a day of fast and abstinence, so the adults just chatted while we ate cookies. I was having a fun time, and I was not happy to go home—three blocks away—at 9 PM. I grumbled and piled into the car for the short ride home. This being East Buffalo, we passed three bars on the short ride home along Filmore Avenue, all of them open for business. As we passed the largest one, I was shocked out of my boots and mittens. There, in front of the drinking establishment, stood Santa Claus. And Santa was smoking a cigarette. I was pretty young, and no Einstein certainly, but I’m in a panic because Santa is probably 600’s from my house. I was sure that when he finished his Camel’s he’d be in my house very soon, and he might not stop if we weren’t there. My father was very nonchalant about the crisis, and by some miracle we got to bed before Santa arrived. This, of course, got me to thinking previously forbidden thoughts, that there might be more to this “Santa Claus” deal than I had been told. And I suppose that this episode was a painful if vital step in my psychological development. It was like finding out later in life that wrestling is fixed. For starters, a serious study of the question of ordaining women to the sacramental order of diaconate involves just about every branch of Catholic Theology—Scripture, History, Sacraments, Ecclesiology [or “the nature of the Church”], the evolution of Church Law or Canon Law, and I know I have forgotten several other segments of Church academia. By the way, the best summary of sacramental development through the twenty-first century remains Joseph Martos’ Doors to the Sacred: A Historical Introduction to Sacraments in the Catholic Church. Make sure you obtain the 2014 or most recent edition as a valuable reference in your religion library.
Perhaps the most useful way to organize the discussion is by looking at the questions piece-by-piece, so long as we remember that the whole is not always the sum of its parts. SCRIPTURE: The New Testament was not written immediately after the happenings of Jesus’ life and death, but only some years later as the earliest Christians reflected upon life of Jesus and his impact upon them. Early Christians did not break from Judaism and for several decades worshipped in the Temple in Jerusalem under the aegis of the Jewish chief priests, men. Christians also celebrated a weekly meal commemorating the Lord’s resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 11, written in the mid-50’s A.D., Paul gives us an outline of this Resurrection feast that sounds quite like a primitive rendering of the modern Mass. But there is no mention of who would lead such a celebration, or who would preach or bear witness at these times. Paul was more engrossed in the segregation of rich from poor members at such meals in this Corinthian text. St. Luke, writing a generation later in the Acts of the Apostles, points to a more distinct structure of preaching and other ministries in his commentary on the early days. In Acts 6, the Twelve were faced with complaints that bread distribution to Hebrew Christian women was more generous than those to Hellenist [Greek] Christian women. The Twelve respond with this: “It is not right for us to neglect the word of God to serve at table. Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task, whereas we shall devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.” Interestingly, the text does not call these seven appointees “deacons” as a class, nor does it really distinguish these seven from the Apostles themselves, i.e., the Twelve. The Paulist Biblical Commentary [p. 1199 ff] actually suggests that the designation of special servants was written as a springboard of sorts for one of these seven, Stephen, whose fiery sermon before the Jewish Sanhedrin [Acts 6:8 ff] led to his becoming the first Christian martyr. Reading Acts makes clear that Stephen—and probably his cohorts—did not spend their days simply waiting on tables. Martos notes that the Stephen model of service to the poor and preaching continued until the third century when the number of converts required a bureaucracy, so to speak, of fulltime assistants to the bishop, which ultimately became a sacramental/liturgical state. A text from Romans [16: 1-2] appears in recent Catholic writing as a possible example of a “woman deacon.” Here is the text in detail: “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, deacon of the church in Cenchreae. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.” I am a little uncomfortable with equating Phoebe’s role in the 50’s A.D. with what we understand today as a formal sacramental deacon, since today’s definitions of the Sacrament of Orders did not develop till well into the second, even the third, century. Moreover, Paul describes her ministry as one of direct service. As I think of it, one could argue that Phoebe was a prototype of what Pope Francis hoped his clerics in our day would be. I should note here, though, that the Catholic Liturgical Press is turning out a 60-volume series of interpretations of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures from a feminist scholarship perspective. From the homesite: “The Wisdom Commentary series is the first scholarly collaboration to offer detailed feminist interpretation of every book of the Bible. The sixty-volume collection makes the best of current feminist biblical scholarship available in an accessible format to aid preachers and teachers in their advancement toward God’s vision of dignity, equality, and justice for all.” I have read St. Luke’s Gospel commentary from this series at considerable profit, and this style of scholarship does gently underscore the reality that the entire New Testament corpus comes to us from males. But in the final analysis, given the social mores of people in the New Testament era, in the discussion of the diaconate it is probably more fruitful to examine the interpretations of Church life as the centuries unfolded. THE WAXING AND WANING OF WOMEN’S MINISTRY THROUGH HISTORY Some years ago, I was making retreat in a Trappist monastery when I caught sight of a woman monk in full habit. As it turned out, she was making retreat as I was—her community was on a different timetable--but the relationship of adults in monastic life raises interesting and enlightening questions for what might be possible as the Catholic Church evolves. Monastic life did not evolve from the Sacrament of Orders. It evolved from Baptism, the primordial sacrament, and the consequent desire to live a life of fulfillment of the baptismal promises without the allurements and distractions of a lukewarm society. The earliest roots of consecrated life seem to go back to the 200’s and 300’s A.D. Certainly the fourth century was a watershed moment for flight from Rome and other cities, once the Emperor Constantine designated Christianity as the state religion and the Church acquired many of the “bad habits” of the rich, leisured classes. I believe it was St. Jerome, while he was living in Rome, who complained about rich women dressing their pet monkeys in gala costumes and bringing them to Mass. A deeply committed Christian would leave such an environment for the solitude of the desert or the mountains. Women and men appeared to have sought private, prayerful solitude in about equal numbers, and lived equally austere conditions to draw closer to God. From Constantine’s era till the thirteenth century—roughly, a millennium—Christianity was enhanced and sanctified by the monastic movement, which by the Council of IV Lateran in 1215 thrived nearly everywhere in Europe. It is often overlooked that women equaled men in monastic lifestyle and enthusiasm. St. Benedict [480-547], founder of the Benedictine Order of monks, composed a monastic rule that remains the basis for monastic communities to this day. St. Scholastica, his sister [or colleague, depending upon a variety of Dark Age translations] founded the Benedictine Sisters, employing Benedict’s rule. A fruitful study of monastic liturgical life would be immensely helpful here. Although some monasteries housed men and women, most were single sex. Did the abbess in a woman’s monastery perform the same rites her male counterpart performed in his monastery? That would include the “chapter of faults,” inaugurated by Irish monks, in which each monk at day’s end confessed faults and failures to the abbot and was blessed/forgiven. The chapter of faults evolved into the form of the Sacrament of Penance we use today. Did abbesses exercise this ministry? Continuing, who preached in women’s monasteries? Even allowing for the likelihood that Mass was offered less frequently than it is today, there were feasts and rites that called for preaching. And since we’re heading down this road, who actually celebrated Mass in monasteries of women religious? On that last point, Benedict frowned upon male monks visiting female monasteries. As an example to all monks, he himself visited his sister Scholastica once a year, and returned to his monastery before nightfall. The two monasteries were a mere four miles apart, per his biographer St. Gregory the Great. I must think that, in those many confusing centuries we call the Dark Ages, if you told me the old Latin phrase mater artium necessitas [“necessity is the mother of invention”] was never invoked, I would have trouble believing it. We don’t know precisely how the varied times and circumstances were navigated across the Church. However, one of the outcomes of the Council IV Lateran [1215] was the order from Pope Innocent III that all parts of the Church clean up their acts [such as priests giving up their concubines.] Reforms of monasteries were mandated as well. Interestingly, Francis of Assisi attended this Council, and by the time of his death in 1226, the Poor Clares, the women followers of Francis’ way, were living a strictly cloistered life in the style we now understand the word “cloistered.” Male friars were free to move about and minister to the public without the constraints of the cloister wall. AN AMERICAN MODEL: Limited time necessitates some generalities here, the main one being that from medieval times till “modernity,” however one defines that, most women in consecrated life were not public figures but rather “cloistered.” Preaching, the theological backbone of the diaconate, was not standard fare for the lifestyle and ministry of women religious. The eventual establishment of the United States in the eighteenth century provided something of a clean slate for the Catholic Church. Granted, many Americans distrusted Catholics as “foreign agents” when our country was founded and for years afterward. If there was a single balm for this wound, it was the witness of Catholic religious women, who migrated across the Atlantic in growing numbers through the nineteenth century. Sisters migrated here from Europe, primarily Ireland, not to establish cloistered convents but to undertake public apostolic work, for which there was desperate need as Catholic immigrants came to American shores in ever increasing numbers. Beleaguered missionary bishops and priests in the U.S. were hardly disposed, for the most part, to restrain the public ministerial efforts and planning of communities of sisters who demonstrated remarkable versatility and dedication. It is not always appreciated, for example, how many sisters served as nurses and comforters at nearly all the major battle sites of the Civil War. They served both Union and Confederate encampments while becoming something of a “Catholic face” to thousands of veterans. This ministry would expand to hundreds of hospitals in the U.S. well into the twentieth century. The other major ministry of women religious was education. In 1884 the Plenary Council of Baltimore mandated a Catholic school for every parish in the United States. As late as 1965 about five million minors were enrolled in Catholic schools, not counting collegiate and graduate contributions. And for the most part, it was women who “unpacked the Word of God” for the young baptized in the U.S. who grew up to become us. That sounds like existential Faith preaching to me. That fact must be worked into the discussion/equation. One of the ironies of Vatican II was its efforts to address the priest shortage in the Amazon Basin and other distant parts of the world through the restoration of the permanent diaconate, married men who would preach, baptize, and perform marriages and blessings. Good intentions but the outcomes were quite unexpected. In South America, the ministry of “catechist” was already well established and evidently much respected, because there was no gold rush to diaconal ordination. Meanwhile there was a rush of older candidates in the U.S., such that the greatest concentration of permanent deacons in the world is found in the Archdiocese of Chicago, where 1400 men were ordained deacons since 1972, nowhere near the Amazon. A 2018 article from the Chicago Catholic reports that “about 99 percent of deacons work outside the church.” There is something wrong with that picture; I can’t quite put my finger on it, but in any case, discussion of the diaconate must begin with a thorough examination of the years since Vatican II alongside any other discussion on the diaconal sacrament. MY THOUGHTS ON WOMEN AND ORDINATION? I’ve probably written too much history here already, so I shoved all the books to the floor: it is just me with my thoughts. To start, it has been my good fortune through my life to have known, befriended, and worked with a number of women who would have made excellent Catholic priests, even bishops. In fact, one of my friends in the Lutheran Church has just completed her studies for the priesthood of her faith. I will be very interested in her observations about her new role. The least I can say is that the discussion about ordination is not a matter of character, skill, or spirituality. Pope Leo XIV has expressed himself on the subject, and I do respect his judgment and the way he presents himself. He has made himself clear that the ordination of only men to the priesthood is a profound teaching of Catholic hegemony, i.e., the theological teachings of the universal Church. Our tradition has held that the maleness of the celebrant of the Mass is a necessary and integral component of the “outward sign” that gives a sacrament its power to save. That concept has been on my mind for many years. On the other hand, the pope has expressed interest in key concepts regarding orders and lay church life. For starters, he is committed to the process of synodal meetings begun by Pope Francis in which the life experiences and challenges of all baptized Catholics are given voice. [Honesty compels me to say that many American bishops ignored the world-wide synodal process during its first phase a few years ago. I don’t think Leo will tolerate this neglect the second time around.] Second, Pope Leo, when asked about women’s ordination, has been very clear that he does not favor the Church’s entanglements in the waves of trends and politics of secular society. In other words, the focus of the Synod will be the imitation of Christ and our struggles to live that baptismal consecration across the board, and not with national or regional social trends. Third, Pope Leo has stated that before other questions are addressed, the Church must face the problem of clericalism, the excessive narcissism of many ordained men which poisons the wells of honesty and shared ministry whenever it rears its ugly head. See this excellent essay on clericalism from the New Hampshire Catholic paper, as fine a summary of clericalism as you will find. Clericalism over the years has damaged and hindered morale of many women’s religious movements, pastors and bishops so fearful of imaginary encroachments into their “territory.” Another good friend reminded me this week that the ultimate biblical definition of “deacon” is service—as in distributing bread among Hebrew and Hellene women per Acts 6. And my wife Margaret suggested to me that there might be a new rite by which lay men and women dedicate themselves to intense lives of prayer and charity. This is the kind of thinking and discussion that the Synod was intended to hear and provide wisdom for Pope Leo and his successors. I guess the thing for me to do, at my age, is to work hard for the younger generations that they may find a Spirit-filled Church eager to welcome their talents and charisms in ways we might not even imagine yet. THERE ARE FOUR GOSPELS AND FOUR PASSION NARRATIVES, NOT JUST ONE
Being that this week is Holy Week, and we heard the majestic proclamation of St. Luke’s Passion on Palm Sunday, I got to wondering about the four evangelists—Sts. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John—and how stunningly different each Gospel is. We tend to think of the four collectively, written together—four accounts of the final year of Jesus’ life—with the consolation that if you’re read one—or even three—Passion accounts, you’ve milked the stories of everything you need to be saved. Mark, Matthew, and Luke, brought us the biography of the Christ with a uniformity we carry in our heads as our “default” story of Jesus. The Gospel writers were not literalists, to be sure, as Sts. Luke and Matthew write their Infancy narratives in separate ways. But nobody wrote like St. John, whose narrative of the Passion is proclaimed annually at the Good Friday Rite [this year, on Friday April 18.] THE WILD CARD KNUCKLEBALL GOSPEL The accepted sequence of the writing of the four Gospels looks something like this. St. Mark: 60’s A.D., first written, before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. St. Mathew: 80’s A.D. Used Mark and independent Q-source, viewed Jesus as the new Moses. St. Luke: 80’s A.D. Used Mark and Q-source, viewed Jesus as universal savior. But then we come to St. John, where every page has a twist or a dip that makes us back off home plate and try to figure out what it will take to get a grip on such a pitch. Bob Uecker, the late catcher, humorist, and broadcaster, described catching a knuckleball: "The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and pick it up." There is a theological message here. St. John’s Gospel is unconventional, and we need the time to digest the major and the minor differences of this Gospel from its three predecessors. [Note to Good Friday lectors: give us an opportunity to process the nuances.] For starters, we are not sure who, precisely, is the name attached to this brilliant Gospel. For centuries we assumed it was an apostle named John. The Gospel itself refers to “the disciple whom Jesus loved” but without a reference in the text to John. The “John” who is named in the text is referred to as one of the two boanerges, “the sons of thunder” who, along with his mother, lobbied for places to the right and the left of Jesus when he returned in glory at the end times. In the modern era of Biblical scholarship, possibly the best American Biblical scholar of the twentieth century, Father Raymond Brown, wrote The Community of the Beloved Disciple [1976] in which he speculated that the church of the late first century was already splintering to a degree over personalities and primitive doctrines, including a sect loyal to “the disciple Jesus loved,” not the successor of St. Peter. [See John 21: 15-23 on the “chain of command” in the Church.] By the time John [and I will continue to use this name throughout] had died, his loyal and gifted disciples compiled his reflections about Jesus’ works and teachings along with his probable thoughts on issues in their time. This is so true of the Last Supper; an episode of John’s Gospel account of that sacred meal is proclaimed during the Holy Thursday Mass. Stop and consider how much history had transpired over seventy years, from Jesus’ Resurrection to the time this Gospel was written, a period of at least seventy years. Certainly, all the Apostles were dead. The Church had evolved from a small community of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem to a worldwide vision of converting the Gentile world centered in other major cities, notably Rome; Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D.; there were doctrinal errors developing, most notably that Jesus was only divine and not human, a movement call Gnosticism. How would these writers compile their understanding of Jesus and the disciple whom he loved? Clearly it would take some out-of-the-box inspiration to address Christianity as the second century of the Church began. Without sounding irreverent, someone with a handle on a knuckleball. JOHN’S PASSION NARRATIVE The Good Friday narrative for the Catholic Liturgy proclaims Chapters 18 and 19 only, but we will treat the entire Passion here. Traditionally Christians consider the Passion as beginning with the Last Supper. Right from the beginning John rethinks this narrative outside the box. He states in the very opening line of 13:1 that the disciples’ Last Supper was “before the feast of Passover;” the laws of fasting and cleanness in preparation for the Passover meal do not, in John’s narrative, begin until the next day. Thus, on Good Friday we find in 18:28 that “[the Sanhedrin itself] did not enter the praetorium in order not to be defiled so that they could eat the Passover that night, i.e., Friday]. John has a greater reason for moving the Passover back one day—a brilliant gambit we will unpack further down the narrative. John is the only evangelist who does not describe Jesus’ designation of the bread and wine as his Body and Blood. Instead, he substitutes the washing of the disciples’ feet, a major staple of the Holy Thursday Evening Mass. [John 13: 1-20] John may be drawing from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians the theme of receiving the Eucharist unworthily. This would make sense because after the washing of the feet John records Jesus as “deeply troubled” and saying “Amen, Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” [John 13:21] This scene reminds us, too, of how deeply painful to the early Christians was betrayal of the Way of the Messiah. We don’t talk about that much in today’s Church, i.e., betraying the good of our neighbor. But one of the most haunting musical pieces of Church music was composed in 1585 as Catholics were abandoning the faith and moving to Protestant worship and belief. The song, written originally as a response to the First Reading for the Holy Thursday Mass, is called Judas Mercator Pessimus or “Judas, Most Wicked Merchant.” [You can hear it sung, with the English translation, here.] John uses sun positions in the sky as theological clues. Bright sun and closeness to noon are symbols of God’s intense presence. After Judas has been singled out by Jesus’ handing him the morsel, “He took the morsel and left at once. And it was night.” [John 13:30] If you think back a moment, Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman at the well at noon in John 4, but Peter’s eventual threefold betrayal occurred in the dead of the night. Pilate’s exclamation of Jesus at the end of the trial, Ecce Homo, or “Behold the man!” took place at noon on our Good Friday. [John 19:14] Having washed the feet of his disciples and dismissed his betrayer, Jesus delivers a five-chapter sermon to the eleven that summarizes his law of love and his prayer to the Father that all may be one. Likely, this sermon is a combination of teachings that Jesus delivered during his intimate moments with his chosen ones; the authors/editors wisely put this lengthy reflection on the heels of the Crucifixion as something of an explanation of Jesus’ coming self-giving upon the cross. I can’t do justice to the sermon text in its entirety, but it is important to recall that Jesus talked about the coming of the Holy Spirit [or “Spirit” in the text]. Hold that thought as we move into the next day. As we move to the post-supper arrest and subsequent events [John, Chapters 18 and 19] we will notice that despite his predicament, Jesus oversees everything [John 18:4]. This is a long way from the Crucifixion scene in Mark’s Gospel forty years earlier where Jesus cries, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”? What was happening at the time of John’s composition [c. 100 A.D.] was the early Church’s developing sense of what we call today, “The Holy Trinity,” though it would take 200 to 400 years to find the right creed words to profess our belief in God’s trinitarian being at Mass, i.e., the Nicene Creed [325 A.D.] John’s Gospel lays out the nature of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This newfound wisdom of the Johannine Gospel’s authors explains why the garden scene in the Kidron Valley is absent all the internal anguish expressed by Jesus in the other Gospels—no report of sweat “like drops of blood” as St. Luke put it in his Palm Sunday Gospel last weekend. Jesus is ready to reveal his Father and the Spirit to Pilate, the Sanhedrin, his Jewish brethren, and eventually to the four corners of the earth. When the soldiers approach and ask if he is Jesus of Nazareth, he replies “I AM”—the same name God used to introduce himself to Moses…and the soldiers fell to the ground, just as Moses had been overcome. [John 18: 6-8] When Jesus is arrested, he is followed from a distance by Peter and “another disciple,” usually identified as the disciple whom Jesus loved. This unnamed disciple knew his way around; the text states that he was “an acquaintance of the high priest.” [John 18:16] I have to say, this is a peculiar report, that the beloved disciple is an acquaintance of the man seeking Jesus’ death. It is also worth noting that Jesus is first interrogated by Annas, and then by Caiphas. And while the audience with Annas is remembered for Jesus’ mistreatment during the interrogation, it should also be noted that Jesus replied with dignity in defense of the truth. [John 18:23] in stark contrast to Pilate’s later cynicism “What is truth?” [John 18:38] Peter’s three denials are hung out for all to see; his betrayals meet the scholarly rule of multiple attestation: events reported in all four Gospels are considered to have a high historical probability. Given the timing of this fourth Gospel, there was some risk in highlighting Peter’s vulnerability, given one of the text’s purposes of restoring and maintaining good order and the authority of community leaders. It is quite possible that John 21: 15-19 was inserted as a counterweight to Peter’s previous betrayal, where Jesus asks Peter three times if Peter loved him. Again, the authors are trying to bring the disciples of the beloved into a peaceable communion with the whole church and the succession line from Peter. Pilate has the unenviable task of passing judgment on Jesus. There is one piece of historical data that often gets overlooked: the trial and crucifixion of Jesus took place during the time of Passover. In Anthony Saldarini’s excellent text, Jesus and Passover [1984], the author describes what Passover in Jerusalem would have been like in Jesus’ day: there is one statistic that stands out. In normal times the population of Jerusalem was 10,000 people. During Passover, it swelled to 100,000. Not that this figure excuses shoddy neglect of due process, but it does assist us in understanding Pilate’s dilemma. Another factor here is a strong opinion among scholars that there is a subtle but real strain of antisemitism in John’s Gospel and some other New Testament texts. See Matthew 27:25, “And the whole people said in reply, “His blood be upon us and upon our children.” Pilate may have felt his hands tied in condemning Jesus, but he was not happy about it. This is evident in his reaction to Jewish leaders who demanded that the sign on the cross, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” be amended. Pilate’s retort will last forever in history, Quod scripsi, scripsi. “What I have written, I have written.” [John 19: 21-22] The authors of John record that Jesus carried his cross alone to Calvary. [No Simon of Cyrene.] Once the crosses were erected, we come upon events that, like a knuckleball, will scramble your “comfortable stance of knowledge” about the meaning of the crucifixion forever. This Gospel records who is standing at the foot of the cross as Jesus lingered between life and death: four women and the beloved disciple. One of the women is Mary, Jesus’ mother. John’s Gospel is the only one to identify Mary at the Calvary scene, and there is a reason. We are familiar with how Jesus—in command despite of his rapid decline to death—constitutes a new family among those beneath him. Jesus has selected the time for his wine: when he is “aware that everything was now finished [John 19:28], he asks for wine. But why now? Probably to fulfill a promise found in St. Matthew’s text: “But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. [Matthew 26:29] The time had come. Having offered himself in perfect love as man and God, Jesus has ushered into time the new Kingdom of God. The Gospel text states that having finished the wine, Jesus declares: “It is finished… …and bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.” [19:30] This is the Pentecost moment in John’s Gospel, the fulfillment of sending the Spirit upon the earth. Now consider what is happening in the Temple simultaneously. The Temple had closed around noontime so that the priests could slaughter lambs throughout the afternoon for each family in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover meal that evening. As the Passover lambs are being cut, a soldier on Calvary pierces the side of Jesus…John’s Gospel had been laid out timewise that these two events would occur simultaneously! The marriage of the old and the new. And when the soldier pierced Jesus’ side, “immediately blood and water flowed out.” [19:34] In the early Church, blood and water were symbols for the Eucharist and Baptism. The new community of God’s Kingdom was constituted at the foot of the cross. Everything came together on Good Friday afternoon. In a sense, God saved his best Gospel inspiration till the end. A new community constituted by the outpouring of the Spirit took wings. If you attend Good Friday Service in your church or read/reflect upon the Johannine Passion narrative at home, let the power of this narrative stir your soul to gratitude, joy, and hope. Follow the sun. 1067 "The wonderful works of God among the people of the Old Testament were but a prelude to the work of Christ the Lord in redeeming mankind and giving perfect glory to God. He accomplished this work principally by the Paschal mystery of his blessed Passion, Resurrection from the dead, and glorious Ascension, whereby 'dying he destroyed our death, rising he restored our life.' For it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth 'the wondrous sacrament of the whole Church."' For this reason, the Church celebrates in the liturgy above all the Paschal mystery by which Christ accomplished the work of our salvation.
I can see that a Catholic attempting a self-study of the Catechism might be inclined to bang his head against the wall after attempting to decipher para. 1067, the second paragraph of the Catechism’s treatment of the liturgy. In the earlier post in this stream two weeks ago [scroll down], I pointed out that Pope John Paul II expected the local churches to teach the catechism to Catholics with personnel who had been appropriately trained and commissioned for this sacred task, that a “translating process” take place to create local catechetical aids, and that the Catechism truths be taught in a manner that connects the listener to the body of Christ’s followers, with respect for the age, education, and culture setting of the listeners. Para. 1067 covers a great deal of territory, so I will attempt to break it down into digestible pieces. There are three distinct themes in the text: [1] the relative place of the Old Testament or Hebrew Scripture next to the New Testament; [2] the relation of Christ’s death to the sacramental life of the Church we engage in today, and [3] our loss of emotional realization that Christ as the savior of the world. The first sentence of para. 1067 can be misinterpreted as depicting the Jewish history as a warm-up to the Christian era heralded by Christ, which is a common misconception, for the Hebrew Scripture is of one weave with Jesus, God and Man. For starters, Jesus was born and died a Jew. He was even buried under Jewish law and custom. There is no evidence that Jesus intended to start a new religion. He drew his identity from his Israelite heritage and his chosen disciples were Jews—twelve, in fact, after the twelve tribes of Israel. The Acts of the Apostles details how after the Resurrection and Pentecost events, Peter, John, and Stephen [and others of Jesus’ intimates] maintained their ties with the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus never separated Jewish history and tradition from the idea that the Kingdom of God was at hand. He saw the future as the fulfillment of Israel, not its demise or replacement. There is no denying that Jesus was critical of structures and attitudes of his native faith, i.e., excessive legalism, commercialism at the Temple, loss of a missionary spirit, easy divorce, and—most of all—a complacency of faith. [Ironically, many of the same afflictions impact twenty-first century Catholicism.] It was his fidelity to Jewish history and the morality of the prophets that led to Jesus’ execution. Several New Testament authors have foisted Jesus’ crucifixion om the entire Chosen People, which is absurd and utterly dangerous. [For example, St. Matthew records the Good Friday crowd as crying, “Let his blood be upon us and upon our children.”] Christians of following centuries—to this very day—find such writing as justification for antisemitic attitudes and behaviors. Unbelievably just two decades after the Holocaust, Vatican II [1962-1965] found it politically difficult to formulate a document of reconciliation with the Jews. The justification during Vatican II for remaining alienated from the Jewish Faith—which endures in many quarters today—is that Jews still await a savior, that Jesus is not recognized as the Messiah. One journalist put it this way: “But one awaits the return of the Messiah who died and rose from the dead and is recognized as Lord and Son of God; the other awaits the coming of a Messiah, whose features remain hidden till the end of time; and the latter waiting is accompanied by the drama of not knowing or of misunderstanding Christ Jesus.” But thanks to the heroic efforts of Boston’s Cardinal Richard Cushing, The Council did finally produce the document Nostra Aetate [“in our time”] in 1965; the shortest of all Vatican II statements, the full text is here. The second part of para. 1067 focuses upon Jesus as our Savior by virtue of his Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension. In fact, the paragraph quotes from the Roman Missal of 1970, “dying he destroyed our death, rising he restored our life,” the congregational response to the consecration of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. Before the Council Catholics participated in the salvation of the cross by attending Mass. It is worth remembering here that we old timers were raised in a Church that defined the Mass as “the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary.” We came to Mass to participate in the saving grace of Christ’s death, particularly in the reception of Holy Communion [preceded by confession, if necessary.] One might say that before Vatican II the word “salvation” was as likely as any to fall from our It was after several centuries of historical, biblical, and sacramental research that the Church began to incorporate the words “celebration” and “community” when speaking of sacraments, particularly the Eucharist. For example, it was common for priests to celebrate Mass alone if not required to meet a congregational obligation like a public parish Mass. If you have visited large medieval or renaissance churches in Europe, for example, you noticed that both walls of the church are lined with impressive side altars. Even in my seminary, built in 1904, there were enough altars for ten priests to offer Mass at the same time, not counting the seminarians’ Mass at the high altar. But by the time I left this old seminary in 1968, all the seminary professors were offering Mass together, “concelebrating,” and we in the pews were singing the parts of the Mass [often to guitars] and sharing the bread and the cup at communion. The pastoral thinking regarding the sacraments turned to the baptized congregation coming together in tangible, social expression [e.g., the congregation wide Kiss of Peace. We were celebrating what Christ has done for us, not just upon the cross but by conquering death and sending forth his Spirit. As a T-shirt of the times put it, “We are Easter People—Alleluia is our song!” For those of us who lived through that era of change in the 1960’s and 1970’s, official worship went through this tectonic shift. I was ordained in 1974 and thus never celebrated the “old Mass”, but I became a pastor and listened to complaints about the changes in the Mass for twenty years. Unfortunately, Vatican II’s theological reasoning behind the changes was never made clear from the pulpit or through religious education or it was done poorly, with little care for the spiritual sensitivities of the faithful. Truthfully, having been trained and ordained to “build community” through the sacraments, it is only in recent years that I have come to appreciate how plastic the word “community” really is. Which leads me to the third point of 1067. This paragraph of the Catechism ends thus: “For this reason, the Church celebrates in the liturgy above all the Paschal mystery by which Christ accomplished the work of our salvation.” Per Wikipedia, “the term ‘liturgy’ in Greek literally means to ‘work for the people, but a better translation is ‘public service’ or ‘public work,’ as made clear from the origin of the term as described above. The early Christians adopted the word to describe their principal act of worship, the Sunday service (referred to by various terms, including Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion, Mass or Divine Liturgy), which they considered to be a sacrifice. This service, liturgy, or ministry (from the Latin "ministerium") is a duty for Christians as a priestly people by their baptism into Christ and participation in His high priestly ministry.” We are in something of a conundrum here when talking about the sacraments, our liturgy. The references to worship in the New Testament era are rare. What we have looks like this: the first Christians worshipped in the Temple, and then on the first day of the week convened to recount memories or recollections of Jesus, shared the bread and cup as Jesus had commanded, and then partook in a community meal. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians [1 Corinthians 11], written in the mid-50’s A.D., gives indication, alas, that the community fest at the end was not always an edifying experience and needed catechetics. Sacraments will always present a mystery with roots in the past, present, and future. Present day Eucharist, for example, is afflicted with a weekly blandness because [1] Catholics have little or no consciousness of their Judeo-Christian roots, and [2] a fuzziness about the future takes the urgency out of our sacramental experiences of the present. Why repeat Christ’s saving death every Sunday, for example, if—as is quite common—many do not believe in hell or purgatory, or the consequences of conduct beyond the grave. Thus, ignorant of our history and assuming an easy destiny, we have focused for years now on our present—the celebratory factor—which falls flat most Sundays because, well, we bypass the urgency of past and future. There is little to celebrate if Christ’s death and resurrection are not at the center of things. Our young people understand this at some level, and many go off seeking experiences of the Lord that cut to their souls. I don’t know how to fix the rest of us…except to refer to the examples of the monks, who not only pray frequently but devote significant time each day to reflection and study of our sacred texts…and thus eat and drink the Eucharist because they know their lives depend upon it. Paragraph 1066 is posted here as a sample of the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s language and style. It is also the opening paragraph of the Catechism’s teaching on the seven sacraments. 1066 In the Symbol of the faith the Church confesses the mystery of the Holy Trinity and of the plan of God's "good pleasure" for all creation: the Father accomplishes the "mystery of his will" by giving his beloved Son and his Holy Spirit for the salvation of the world and for the glory of his name. Such is the mystery of Christ, revealed and fulfilled in history according to the wisely ordered plan that St. Paul calls the "plan of the mystery" and the patristic tradition will call the "economy of the Word incarnate" or the "economy of salvation." THE PURPOSE AND USAGE OF THE 1993 CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: I feel sorry for well-intentioned Catholics who attempt to tackle major Church documents for the first time. Paragraph 1066 here, the first of the Catechism’s teachings on Sacraments, cited above, is poetic and florid, employing terms and phrases we don’t use in Church parlance every day. There are reasons why formal documents of the Church are composed in this way, the primary one being that such documents from the popes or councils go into the Church’s collection of teachings over the centuries, a body of collective faith documents known as Church Tradition. Such documents call for a classical, timeless linguistic setting, in Latin. Like nearly all major Church documents of the modern era, the Catechism is very lengthy. It is a work you would see in the reference section of your parish bookstore, along with the Bible and the Weekday/Sunday Mass missals. I see on social media that some Catholics believe the Catechism must be read cover to cover, but this is not the case. In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is not a catechism in the way that local churches—including American ones—understand the term. In the United States, at a plenary council or synod of U.S. bishops in the 1880’s in Baltimore, the decision was made to erect a Catholic school in every parish in the country. Along with this was a call for a national [American] catechism for classroom use. And thus, the Baltimore Catechism was born, and it remained in use until the 1960’s, when Vatican II called for a theological reorientation of catechetics across the board. The Baltimore Catechism was short and to the point, about 100-pages of principles and practices of the faith interspersed with illustrations, pious ferverinos, and prayers. We learned the Q&A format much like the multiplication tables, memorizing formulas that we would, hopefully, carry with us all our lives. “Why did God make me? God made me to know, love, and serve him in this world, and to be happy forever with him in the next.” As Wikipedia records, catechisms of this sort go back to the 1500’s and much credit has gone to St. Robert Bellarmine, a Vatican scholar of that time. It was during the 1500’s that educated priests and laity in Italy formed an association to teach the new catechisms to children: the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, or good old CCD. [I still use this old label for religious education with fellow senior citizens, and it is so much easier than the terms we use today.] In the introduction to the 1993 release of the Catechism, Pope John Paul II himself explains that “This catechism is given…that it may be a sure and authentic reference text [emphasis mine] for teaching catholic doctrine and particularly for preparing local catechisms…This catechism is not intended to replace the local catechisms duly approved by the ecclesiastical authorities, the diocesan Bishops and the Episcopal Conferences, especially if they have been approved by the Apostolic See. It is meant to encourage and assist in the writing of new local catechisms, which take into account various situations and cultures, while carefully preserving the unity of faith and fidelity to catholic doctrine.” This is an intriguing instruction by the pope which impacts the role of the Catechism, to be sure, but equally, provides insight into the pope’s thinking and teaching about catechetics and faith sharing in general. The 1993 Catechism or CCC was never intended for instructional use in an educational or faith formation setting as a stand-alone teaching text. The pope assumed that each diocese or parish was already developing full faith formation resources for cradle to grave Catholics, with the new Catechism serving as both inspiration and guard rail in the handing on of Sacred Tradition. He also assumed that the handing down of the Faith is a venture of the local church, specifically the diocese, taking place in a communal fashion. Canon Law identifies the bishop as the senior catechist in his diocese, assisted of course by clergy and laity. The pope’s acknowledgement of “various situations and cultures” recognizes that the perfect revelation of God comes to imperfect people and communities who must wrestle with what a famous scholar called the Bible, a two-edged sword. The Catechism or CCC has been with us now for 32 years. It is still a work in progress. In 2018 Pope Francis reversed the Catechism’s teaching on capital punishment in para. 2267, stating that the execution of criminals undermined the Church’s professed faith in the sanctity of all life. Paragraphs 2357-2359, on homosexuality, probably need a rewrite down the road to address the personal circumstances of those in monogamous same-sex relationships. But for the moment, let’s look at the Catechism and its presentation of the Sacraments, now and in the future. BUT GETTING BACK TO SACRAMENTS, STARTING WITH CATECHISM PARAGRAPH 1066…. Sacraments—all seven—are the greatest works of the Church. They are, in fact, the Holy Spirit living and acting among us in the human material world. We often think of sacraments as solely divine, internal, metaphysical encounters with God. But in fact, the proper celebration of any sacrament is earthy, material, and communal, centered around the Biblical proclamation of how Christ is working among us in that event. Even Penance, which we think of as a “private act,” is a sacred point where the transcendent God visits his people, even if the sacramental celebration is focused upon one person. For that one person in the confessional is committing to deeper faith life in the Church, and we are all richer for that. But even with the Catechism and three decades past, there is no strategy from the universal church or individual dioceses on how to promulgate, unpack, and preach the essential Tradition of the Church. I haven’t posted much lately on sacramental theology, the Catechism’s specific emphases on the sacraments individually and collectively, or on the ways we teach and learn about sacraments, a learning process that should continue throughout life, and not as a passage through childhood. Of course, we must take into consideration the “condition” of the Church in the United States, which is different from the days of Vatican II in 1965 and even from the days of the Catechism’s release in 1993. Studies of the Church from a sociological vantage point are on the rise. Early this AM I received notice from America Magazine of a release of a new work, Catholicism at a Crossroads [2025], which, thanks to the army of Amazon Prime drivers, will be on my front porch by 9 PM tonight. I am anxious to see what four of the best Catholic sociologists have to say based upon several years of interviews and inventories, and how they interpret this data. We know there is a priest shortage that will endure through much of this century. It is time to stop saying “priest shortage,” so that we won’t spend the next century sitting around like the Gospel virgins trimming their lamps. There is no “bridegroom” coming to rescue us. We have all been baptized to do the work in the Spirit’s will, including the manner we can select our priestly ministers. St. Augustine, the venerable father and teacher of the Church around 400 A.D., was drafted by his people to become their bishop—held in house arrest till he agreed! When I was young, we prayed for the Lord to send missionaries into the Amazon Region, Bolivia, and the Communist-atheist countries to make converts through the sacraments. The reason I’m backing off the term “priest shortage” is because we have—now—a greater shortage that presently goes unacknowledged, i.e., church professionals. I am speaking here of the titles you see in your bulletins [or don’t see.] That would include the parish director of faith formation, a position in many parishes that needs multiple personnel. We just lost our director in my parish, a charismatic and effective deacon, who joined an extraordinary new Catholic high school—a Cristo Rey High School—in the City of Orlando. Just for the heck of it, I looked up our parish posting for the now-vacant position in my parish, on our diocesan employment website. I did not know whether to laugh or cry. The responsibilities are far beyond the time capacities of the director; here is a red flag, too: “The omission of specific statements of the duties or functions does not exclude them from the classification if the work is similar, related, or a logical assignment for this classification. Other duties may be required and assigned.” You don’t need an interpreter for this one. A pastor is bound by no legislation in terms of the open-ended work expectations he may place upon any church employee. Fifteen years ago, as an EAP provider to my diocese in my psychotherapy practice, it was sad to hear the discouragements and the depressions of lay employees in churches. I would get truly angry in the therapist’s office that there is no true due process to protect church employees from arbitrary church officers who demanded too much, or who did not maintain a congenial work environment, or who could fire at will. Strange thing that we never hear a sermon [or even mention] of Pope Leo XIII [r. 1878-1903], who taught that worker exploitation was a problem that must be faced by the State and the Church, along with the social responsibility of employers. Personally, I favor contracts for all church employees with independent HR services available. I won’t be around to see what parish life is like in the U.S. in 2050, or 2100 for that matter. But for those who will live in that world, it will be necessary to honestly and critically review the Church’s recent past and the crises of the present; more specifically, to assess the successes and failures of the implementations of Vatican II—and it is OK to say out loud that we botched a good deal of the conciliar reform, to the detriment of Church unity. In our hurry to experiment with the Novus Ordo, i.e., the Mass Missal of 1970 promulgated by Pope Paul VI, we overlooked both history and charity. Pope Pius V [r. 1566-1572], when he mandated the Roman Latin Rite Missal [the one we old timers grew up with], allowed for geographic regions in Europe to continue worshipping in their previous rites if they dated back to 1370, two centuries before Pius issued the universal Latin Mass of 1570. You wonder: could Pius V’s generous consideration of the faithful’s devotional needs been repeated by Paul VI in 1970 by allowing use of the Tridentine Rite? Did we even stop to consider it? Would we have the conservative-liberal divisions within Catholicism had we listened to each other in the 1960’s? You can have magnificent Church Councils throughout history; you can have the best Catechism in the world. But both must be “received” by the folks in the pews and the preachers in the pulpit. A Lenten meditation might be: “Do I honestly love Jesus’ Church enough to invest my body and soul into the Church’s survival?” We will pick this up in two weeks. Did you meet your obligation to attend Mass on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, or were you frantically searching on-line for a local 11 PM Mass yesterday, December 9? And I would lay heavy odds that if you went to Mass yesterday, you may be rightfully confused about exactly what you celebrated. Two problems: the definition of a “holy day of obligation” in general and the precise meaning of the feast of the Immaculate Conception.
Let’s start with holy days. The Boston Pilot, Beantown’s Catholic newspaper, carried a detailed piece on November 27 explaining the Roman Catholic list of feasts to be observed universally as days of common worship at Mass [aside from Sundays, the primordial feast days.] It is an interesting list: Canon 1246 of the Code of Canon Law tells us that "the Lord's Day, on which the paschal mystery is celebrated, is by apostolic tradition to be observed in the universal Church as the primary holy day of obligation" -- that is, a day where the faithful are obligated to attend Mass. "In the same way, the following holy days are to be observed: the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Epiphany, the Ascension of Christ, the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, the feast of Mary the Mother of God, her Immaculate Conception, her Assumption, the feast of St. Joseph, the feast of the Apostles Sts. Peter and Paul, and the feast of All Saints." As you may notice, Canon Law’s list of special days of obligatory Mass attendance is longer than our current American list of obligatory observances—the Epiphany, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ [Corpus Christi], St. Joseph, and the Apostles Peter and Paul are not obligatory in the U.S. But let’s read the law further: “[T]he same canon goes on to add: "However, the Episcopal Conference may, with the prior approval of the Apostolic See, suppress certain holy days of obligation,” meaning that the U.S. Conference of Bishops has some authority to remove the “obligation” from Mass attendance from some feasts. For example, the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19 does not carry a Mass obligation. Over the last several decades the USCCB has received permission to transfer certain feasts to the closest Sunday. Thus, in the U.S., the Epiphany is always on a Sunday, as is the Ascension [in most dioceses], and The Holy Eucharist [Corpus Christi]. Some of you may remember when most U.S. dioceses moved Ascension Thursday back to the next Sunday, permanently. It caused no little stir because most of us were raised on St. Luke’s Gospel, which reported that Jesus remained on earth for forty days after the Resurrection. Moving the feast seemed to imply that Jesus remained on earth forty-three days, though in truth Luke is the only Evangelist who mentions “forty days.” But some dioceses, including Boston, still observe the Ascension on Thursday. Margaret and I got caught in a peculiar situation traveling to Boston from Orlando. The Orlando Diocese, like most in the U.S., celebrates the Ascension on the Sunday before Pentecost, or the Seventh Sunday of the Easter Season. Consequently, we were not obliged to attend Mass on Thursday, the day before our trip. But Boston observed the Ascension on Thursday. So, when we attended Saturday evening Mass in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the missalettes were set to the Seventh Week of the Easter Season, as Boston had celebrated the Ascension several days before. We missed the observance of the Ascension for that year. This year the feast of the Immaculate Conception fell on a Sunday and was transferred to Monday, December 9. The Second Sunday of Advent takes precedence in such cases. In years past, the obligation to attend the Feast of the Immaculate Conception transferred to Monday was dispensed in such circumstances, but the Vatican recently ruled that all the faithful are obliged to attend Mass on Monday when the transferred feast celebrates a mystery of Jesus or Mary. In Ordinary Time—i.e., outside of Advent, Lent, and Eastertide--holy days can be observed on Sunday if they fall on Sunday. All Saints, for example, always trumps a Sunday in Ordinary Time. Truth compels me to admit that, obligation or not, the Holy Days have never been well attended, Christmas being the obvious exception. As I understand it, the concept of a “holy day of obligation” engendered more enthusiasm from early medieval times when the serfs were given a holiday from their farming to attend Mass in town and then feast and enjoy “morality plays.” In surveying the online literature about holy days, one constant about them is “freedom from work.” There were as many as 36 holy days until the Industrial Age and modern banking and commerce made that number prohibitive when factoring in the bottom line of corporate profits. Consequently, the social reinforcement element of holy days—holidays! -- is no longer there. In fact, the opposite has resulted: the faithful find themselves scrambling to attend Mass around the pressures of their job and family obligations. A weekday Mass is now, ironically, work. To add to our current dilemma, there is not exactly a groundswell of energized piety around some of the current holy days. Today’s feast, “the Immaculate Conception,” is an excellent case in point, as it commands considerable reflection to sort out what exactly we are celebrating. Wikipedia provides a good summary of the history of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which was not declared until 1854 when Pope Pius IX stated: We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful. The development of this doctrine is a logical result of St. Augustine’s fifth century teaching all humans born on this earth are the biological inheritors of the guilt of Adam’s sin. Consequently, sexual intercourse between a husband and wife was viewed as a conduit of sin, which is why we rushed newborns to baptism. Christians, as far as we can tell, always believed that Mary was sinless in her own conduct, but as Augustine’s thinking took root, one had to admit that Mary was not sinless since she inherited original sin at the time of her conception. It took about fifteen hundred years to address this contradiction to the satisfaction of the universal Church: the idea that God intervened and exempted Mary from the reality of original sin [“a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God”]. Mary was conceived in the natural act by which all of us came to be, but God protected her alone from inheriting the sin of Adam, given her destiny to become the Mother of God. The Church came to the formulation of this doctrine, the Immaculate Conception, through prayer, logic, and popular devotion to Mary, a good example of the continuing work of the Spirit in the life of the Church. The doctrine and feast of the Assumption, another Marian holyday of obligation celebrated in August, is not recorded in the Scripture, and found expression from the organic life of the Church. There is no literal Scriptural reference to the reality of the Immaculate Conception, and as a result, the Church has had to use another Gospel text for December 8: St. Luke’s account of the conception of Jesus, when Mary gave her “yes” to the Angel Gabriel to mother the child of the Holy Spirit. As one might expect, when most Catholics hear the term “Immaculate Conception,” they tend to think of Mary’s marriage to Joseph and the conception of Jesus. As Luke makes clear, the Holy Spirit is the father of Jesus in every sense of the word. Wouldn’t it be pastorally more meaningful to call December 8 [or March 25] “Incarnation Day,” a celebration of the mysteries of God becoming man which would embody Mary’s exemption from Original Sin and the Annunciation? Holy Days will always be plagued by the reality that we do not fully understand the fact or the piety of the meaning of the day. As one author put it, holy days are marked but not celebrated by the wide body of the faithful. “All Saints” is celebrated on November 1, but imagine if the Mass obligation were applied instead to November 2, “All Souls Day?” I would bet that Mass attendance would be quite respectable because we all have loved ones who have died. Moreover, imagine if some of those Masses were offered on the grounds of Catholic cemeteries? The emotions of grief and hope would form a visceral engagement to Eucharist and the community of the universal Church. We still have work to do. I was at a social recently with a group of active Catholics who were lamenting the quality of preaching in their respective parishes. Having been a preacher myself for twenty-some years I keep my mouth shut, in part because my former congregations would probably give me mixed reviews, too. But recently I decided to make preaching the subject of discussion here at the Café site, because there is considerable confusion among clergy and laity about exactly what should happen in that space between the Gospel and the Profession of Faith. In the 1960's the U.S. Supreme Court was considering an indecency case; Justice Potter Stewart observed that while he could not define obscenity, "I know it when I see it." Do we know good preaching or poor preaching when we hear it?
BACK IN THE OLD DAYS: I looked at the evolution of explanations of what we call the “preaching” at Mass. A pre-Vatican II daily Missal [i.e., prior to 1965] describes this space as a homily, as in “the priest explains the Word of God for us.” A critical part of the explanation was a translation: the Tridentine or pre-Vatican II Mass was celebrated in Latin, and the Gospel was read in the vernacular [e.g., in English] after the solemn singing of the Latin text. As I recall, liturgical law did not demand a sermon but strongly encouraged it on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. I can clearly remember that some priests interpreted “explaining the Word of God” rather liberally, focusing on everything from pious devotions to parish finances to the need for confession to “the last things,” i.e., heaven, hell, and purgatory. In my parish I was in the second grade in 1956 when our monsignor preached that no one should see the morally objectionable film “Baby Doll” then playing in theaters in Buffalo. [“An immature, naive teenage bride holds her anxious husband at bay while flirting with an amorous Sicilian farmer.” [per IMDb] Unfortunately, it was the Christmas morning Mass when he delivered this message. It is probably fair to say that what Catholics heard in the years before the Council was a brief exhortation to be prayerful and good, a “pious exhortation,” as a rule. It is also true that “professional preachers” were invited into parishes, particularly for annual parish retreats and Forty Hours devotions, etc. Often the visiting preachers were members of religious orders who specialized in parochial renewals and perfected multiple crafts in communication style and composition. One of the highest-rated television shows in prime time during the 1950’s, if you can imagine this, was “Life is Worth Living,” a half-hour spiritual exhortation/reflection/instruction from Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, an auxiliary bishop of New York City. He was to preaching what Johnny Carson was to comedy: he understood “connectedness” as well as any public performer. He mixed devotion with poetry, theology, and even humor. I still remember his accounting of a letter he received from an actress who wrote that she was listening to his show while applying her facial make-up to go on stage. She said she was moved to return to religion by his words. Sheen, with a perfectly straight face, looked into the camera and said: “The first instance of grace after grease.” Sheen’s program won awards and maintained high ratings, even more remarkable as his broadcast competition in that time slot was the number one rated “Milton Berle Show.” But Berle and Sheen were good friends and “Uncle Milty” as he was known would often joke that he was changing his name to “Uncle Fulty.” [Bishop’s Sheen’s program was ended in 1957 by Sheen’s superior, New York’s Cardinal Spellman, who literally hated his auxiliary, Sheen.] There is a doctoral dissertation waiting to be written on the impact of Bishop Sheen’s preaching on parochial life in the United States. Whether a Catholic attended Sunday Mass or not, he or she would have been exposed to the captivation of good preaching at least a few times during the run of “Life is Worth Living.” I doubt that many Catholics expected their parish priests to replicate the effectiveness of Bishop Sheen, but at the same time they [and I] had some clue to the spiritual magic that certain men could summon in the pulpit. When I “played Mass” as a kid, I always preached, so I must have gotten something from my parish priests. A CURIOUS CONTRADICTION OF DEVELOPMENTS: You can look at all sixteen documents of Vatican II [promulgated between 1963 and 1965] and find a call to all Catholics to turn to the Bible as the primary text to learn the will of God, to return to the atmosphere of the Apostolic era. This was, to borrow a biblical phrase, “a hard teaching.” The old joke described the Catholic family bible as the repository for family documents, stocks and bonds, and there was truth in that. Even after Pius XII [r. 1939-1958] encouraged Catholics to study the Bible, there was parochial reluctance to do so, particularly where the Hebrew Scripture or Old Testament was concerned. Regrettably, antisemitism permeated Catholicism as it did much of American society. It is also true that Catholics in general regarded emphasis upon the Bible as a “Protestant thing.” Before the 1960’s you could miss the entire Liturgy of the Word and still get credit for attending Mass, because only Catholics had the true presence of Christ in the Consecration and reception of Holy Communion. When the Vatican II fathers labored to put the Scripture at the center of Catholic/Christian life—the sacraments, after all, take their very meaning from the sacred scriptures-- there was considerable grumbling that Catholicism was “turning Protestant.” The renewed emphasis upon the Scripture was applied to all the sacramental rites, but none with more vigor than the Eucharist itself. The Mass expanded from two to three readings, adding a passage from the Old Testament to the calendar of Masses. The Mass readings were richly expanded to the three-year cycle we have today, and as we know, the readings are proclaimed in the local language, no longer in Latin. Such drastic changes of a half-century ago would have theoretically altered the nature of the sermon and the identity of the preacher-homilist at Mass. But here we are in 2024, and researchers still report that Catholics are more dissatisfied with preaching than most any other aspect of parish life. What happened? AN UNCERTAIN TRUMPET: The reform documents from the Council, as well as sixty years of follow-up directives, were long on exhortation to preach energetically, but short on specifics. A commentary on the Roman Missal instructs: “For in the readings, as explained by the Homily, God speaks to his people, opening up to them the mystery of redemption and salvation, and offering spiritual nourishment; and Christ himself is present through his word in the midst of the faithful. The reading of the Gospel constitutes the high point of the Liturgy of the Word.” And in another place, “The Homily is part of the Liturgy and is highly recommended, for it is necessary for the nurturing of the Christian life. It should be an explanation of some aspect of the readings from Sacred Scripture or of another text from the Ordinary or the Proper of the Mass of the day and should take into account both the mystery being celebrated and the particular needs of the listeners.” I was in the Franciscan major seminary when the first directives on preaching were coming into our classrooms. Collectively, they were rather thin gruel for 22-year-old students who were cutting our teeth in public ministry—in my case, working on retreat weekends with Catholic high school students and religious education programs in the Washington, D.C. area. Looking back, we worked with some of the best high schools in the Capital area: Georgetown Visitation, Trinity High School [where “The Exorcist’ was filmed], Seton High School, and a number of suburban Maryland and Virginia high school religious ed programs. I guess the counsel we received from our mentors and superiors was “keep them enthused and attached to the Church.” We loosely followed a teen retreat program model called TEC or “Teenagers Encounter Christ” which I discovered today is still in use around the country and considerably expanded. But even today the TEC website describes its preaching mission in generalities: TEC begins with a retreat that offers a powerful, life changing encounter with Christ. Christ’s Paschal Mystery is shared through a dynamic sequence of peer reflections, small group discussions, sacraments, recreation, prayer, and respectful support. Team members share the gospel with retreat participants who in turn go forth and continue to share with others. It was up to each of us, as young aspiring preachers, to craft that invitation in the confines of our strength and weaknesses and the personalities of our clientele. I learned early that there is a strong psychological component to the ministry of preaching—you are not just conveying a body of information, but also opening yourself—connectedness—to your congregation. You become one with them. BUT THERE IS MUCH MORE: To tell the truth, evangelical Protestant theologians—most notably Karl Barth—seem to have a more powerful and concrete definition of preaching and preachers than their Catholic counterparts. Barth [1886-1968] wrote: Pastors [preachers] are sinners. They are unprofitable servants with all their words even though they do all that they are under obligation to do (cf. Luke 17:10). Nevertheless, they are servants of the Most High (cf. Dan. 3:26). They speak in his name. They carry out his commission, which is a reality even today. No matter how well or how badly they do it, this in the presupposition of listening to them…. They know fear and trembling whenever they mount the pulpit. They are crushed by the feeling of being poor human beings who are probably more unworthy than all those who sit before them. Nevertheless, precisely then it is still a matter of God’s Word. The Word of God that they have to proclaim is what judges them, but this does not alter the fact – indeed, it means – that they have to proclaim it. This is the presupposition of their proclaiming it.” In Roman Catholic theology, a Catholic priest becomes an alter Christus [“another Christ”] when he consecrates the bread and wine as Jesus did at the Last Supper. Barth would argue that, in so many words, the preacher in any Christian denomination speaks in God’s name and makes known the concrete judgments of God. Little wonder that there is fear and trembling in Barth’s theology of preaching. Barth, a Reformed Calvinist, becomes much more understandable to Catholics when we remember that in 1935, he was deported from Germany to Switzerland for preaching against the evils of the growing Nazi government. Interestingly, around the same time, the Catholic bishop Angelo Roncalli was diplomatically expelled from Rome to Bulgaria for decrying the fascism of Benito Mussolini. The silence of so many bishops in Europe in the face of the totalitarian menace was one of the prime reasons for the calling of Vatican II by Pope John XXIII in 1959, the very same Angelo Roncalli! A Catholic theologian pointed out to me that in Barth’s thinking, a congregation should be so moved to conversion by a sermon that they wish they could be baptized again at its conclusion. It is no accident that in much of Christianity—and certainly in Catholicism—we make the Profession of Faith, the Nicene Creed, the same creed professed at Baptism, immediately after the sermon. I think of Barth many weekends at Mass as we rumble half-heartedly through the Nicene Creed. WHAT CATHOLICS SAY THEY NEED: I was at a dinner party recently when I realized that I was the only person at the table who did not hold a doctorate degree—and, no, two master’s degrees do not equal a doctorate, as my Ivy League doctor/wife reminds me when I get on my high horse. For years now I have been hearing from professionals in many fields that sermons are sandwiches thin on the meat. The clerical excuse used to be—and may still be—that the “simple faithful” would not understand a sermon with either academic thought or moral conviction; put another way, we address the lowest common denominator. Barth, whose Church Dogmatics runs to about 9000 pages, was correct that preaching requires both study and the passion of faith, i.e., Biblical reflection upon the human condition. It is a curious thing that in an American presidential election year where public morality is a major issue, not a single moral issue comes up in homilies, and this although Pope Francis preaches regularly—and controversially—on a wide range of issues, from ecology to abortion to refugees to human sexuality to acts of war. It may be that with our country sharply divided, most pastors and preachers believe that to wade too far into Biblical/Church moral teaching runs the risk of alienating members at a time when we have already lost a good number of our confreres in the Catholic family. I was a young pastor when John Hinkley shot President Ronald Reagan and two others. The following Sunday I preached on the need to reflect upon the proliferation of handguns. As you might expect, I received my share of strong criticism. After all, this is Florida, the land of open carry. Looking back, I might have done better to wait until my own anger had cooled down and I could have drawn more from the generally good rapport I enjoyed with my people. Another issue which challenges preachers is the complexity of moral teachings of the Church [and the state, for that matter.] My moral professor advised us that at times in our ministry the issues would not always be “yes or no” or “good and evil.” “Sometimes your choices are evil versus less evil.” I raise this question because ten states have some form of constitutional proposal on the November ballot dealing with the issue of abortion, including my state of Florida. In 2022 Catholic News Agency ran a lengthy piece on the moral complexity of some prenatal cases, notably involving ectopic pregnancies and cancer: A Catholic woman is allowed to undergo life-saving treatment — even if it means that her unborn baby will die indirectly as a result of that treatment, according to the U.S. bishops’ directives. The intention and action, here, is to save the mother’s life. It is not to end her baby’s life through abortion, or “the directly intended termination of pregnancy.” “Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child,” the directives read. For a more complicated case, see this 2010 study from America Magazine. A total ban on every procedure to save the life of the mother--as some states legislate in their abortion codes—actually lacks the traditional wisdom of the Church in these tragic and delicate cases. Clearly, no homilist would or should go into such details from the pulpit. However, it is certainly appropriate to exhort Catholics to study moral issues closely and to integrate resources such as books, journals, and websites into the homily and subsequently into the adult education ministry of the parish. The Catechist Café itself was developed to address adult education and discussion in the Church. FINALLY, SOME FRANK OBSERVATIONS FROM THE PEW: One man’s thoughts…and you can refute them as you wish. Preachers, particularly priests, do not seem to read. In thirty years, I have heard exactly two books mentioned in a sermon in my present church. There ought to be book quotations and recommendations from the pulpit—and in church bulletins-- on studies of Scripture, Spirituality, Church History, Morality, etc. Introduce the major Catholic publishing houses. There are a lot of Ph.D.’s in the pews who can master St. Paul, St. Augustine, and Thomas Merton, and would eagerly do so. I think that most Catholics regardless of their education would be honored and motivated if their preachers considered them smart. A sermon should not be ego centered. I was guilty of this; from my sermons my parishioners knew I lived and died with the Buffalo Bills and that I attended the Daytona 500 every year, among other things. A preacher can feel “too much at home” particularly if he has lived with his congregation for some years. Pope Francis recently stated that a sermon should last no longer than ten minutes. Ten minutes goes by very quickly. Get down to business. Talk about the golf at coffee and donuts. Deacons prepare more diligently than priests. In part, this is due to the deacons’ self-realization that ordained ministry is a life-long school of the study of the holy. They have more in common with monks, for whom religious study is embedded in daily spirituality. Priests, I fear, believe that graduation from the seminary will hold them intellectually for a lifetime. The three deacons in my parish read/proclaim their sermons. I didn’t always agree with this method at first, but today, when one of our deacons opens his homily folder, the same thought comes to everyone: HE’S PREPARED! People respect the preacher and the message when they see the sweat that went into it. We do not live in a bubble. It would be a pleasant change to hear mention of the culture outside the Church bookstore. I would wager that many Catholics would be shocked to know that bestselling novelists Toni Morrison, Dom DeLillo, Walker Percy, Graham Greene, Cormac McCarthy, J.F. Powers, Louise Erdrich, Phil Klay, Ron Hansen, and Alice McDermott are themselves Catholics who weave narratives with the richness of parables. And of course, Flannery O’Connor. Novelists and other artists, at their best, are prophets of our culture. The sermon is a component of a bigger event. It is time we began thinking again of the Mass as a dramatic whole. Aristotle’s [384-322 B.C.] Poetics played a big role in my sacramental formation; his main premise of drama was unity of action. In our circumstances, the sermon’s content and delivery must fit the rest of the Mass like Cinderella’s slipper. Preaching suffers when the rites of the rest of the Mass are ignored or poorly observed. I had recent occasion to read again Sacrosanctum Concilium [promulgated 1963], Vatican II’s decree on the Liturgy. It is a shock to see how the typical American celebration of Mass overlooks the directives of the Council and the Roman Missals. Did you know that the official Church teaching on music cautions against “performance music” [with clapping!?] at Mass and states that the cantor’s role “disappears into the strong sound of full congregational singing?” Or, that there are three identified moments at Mass where the congregation is given silent time for personal reflection and prayer? [During the Penitential Rite, after the homily, and after the distribution of communion.] If the Mass is celebrated in its proper form, an engaged congregation will look to the homily with greater hunger—and most likely energize the preacher to pour out his grace. AN UNCONVENTIONAL STUDENT
My graduate studies in theology involved several three credit courses which were in fact independent studies with the production of a 30-to-50-page paper, under the guidance of a professor of my choosing. I learned one thing in graduate school: when there are research choices, always pick a topic your faculty advisor knows nothing about. I had tried that in 1971 with “Women’s Liberation and the Catholic Church” the year before; then, I was certain nobody on the faculty was reading Simone de Beauvoir or Betty Friedan—not that I was, either, but I was certain there was a window of opportunity in that I could level the playing field with my faculty reader. It worked. I got the A. Now, would I dare try it again in the next academic year? I had noticed in graduate studies than many of my professors in several branches of theology said virtually nothing about the Virgin Mary. There are reasons for this. When the Council Vatican II [1962-1965] convened a decade earlier, the first draft of the documents included recommendations of many additions to the role and status of Mary in the Church. These included the additions of multiple Marian feasts to the liturgical calendar [there were seventeen already in the 1962 missal]; a separate decree on the Virgin Mary in the Vatican II documents; and the most controversial, a declaration of Mary as the “Mediatrix of All Graces.” But most Church fathers at Vatican II did not approve these recommendations for multiple reasons. The title and function of Mediatrix of God’s graces was, on its face, heretical. [God does not need a broker.] A separate full conciliar decree on Mary was also doctrinally questionable, implying that she was not one of the faithful family of the Church but on a higher—almost angelic—plane. Her role was better defined as first member of the People of God, one of us. And in a Church seeking to put more emphasis upon Christ, the Bible, and the Eucharist, the addition of yet more feasts of Mary was viewed as excessive, confusing, and counterproductive. Consequently, among Catholic academics after the Council, this change in emphasis led to a decline in emphasis on Marian theology in many quarters. Perhaps because the drift of seminary academics became more biblically emphasized, I became curious about the standing Marian doctrines and how they could be retrieved or made pastorally understandable in the post-Vatican II era, and particularly as Catholicism was becoming actively engaged in dialogue with other faith traditions. This was particularly true regarding the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, which Protestant scholars have challenged do not have basis in Scripture but were declared doctrines by popes [the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the Assumption in 1950.] Moreover, the Churches of the East—in union with Rome and the Orthodox Church—hold different theologies and understandings of Mary’s final time on earth. So, my project was to reframe the Assumption, and luckily, I found a Capuchin Franciscan who agreed to supervise it. WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT MARY’S ADULTHOOD FROM THE BIBLE? Historically speaking, truly little. Only one of the four Gospels [Luke] details Mary’s role in the motherhood of Christ; Matthew, by contrast, highlights Joseph’s role in the Infancy Narratives, and two Gospels begin with Jesus as an adult, Mark, and John. Over the history of Christianity, the Church has studied both the Hebrew and the New Testament for prophesies and subtle references to Mary. Notable among these is the passage Genesis 3:15 where God curses the serpent in the Garden of Eden: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers.” If you study many statues of Mary, even small ones you might have in your home, you might find that Mary is crushing a snake with her foot, an obvious allusion to Genesis. Similarly, in the New Testament Book of Revelation [12:1-6] there is description of “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth.” Then a huge dragon appears “To devour her child when she gave birth. She gave birth to a son, a mail child, destined to rule all nations with an iron rod. Her child was caught up to God and his throne. The woman herself fled into the desert where she had a place prepared by God, that there she might be taken care of for twelve hundred and sixty days.” This text is an excellent example of biblical apocalyptic literature, inspired poetry about the future, and in this case written by “God’s servant John” under the inspiration of an angel. Note that while the Scripture passes down several references about mysterious significant women, none specifically names Mary of Nazareth except for the Gospels, and even here the information is limited. Over the centuries under the Church's guidance and grassroots devotion of the faithful, the definition of Mary’s role in the divine plan has gradually taken shape in both doctrine and devotion. That Mary is the Mother of God was defined by the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. The doctrine of the virgin birth was defined by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. But the next two declarations were a long time coming, in 1854 and 1950, as the study of Christendom and the Bible moved into the era of historical and scientific method. The Protestant revolt against “unbiblical” teachings and practices had some effect upon Catholic doubling down on its cherished identity with the Virgin Mary. The Assumption, as we saw, has no concrete historical moment in print. [Of course, neither does Jesus’ Resurrection.] Even today, there is still debate about whether Mary clinically died, or whether at the moment of the end of her life she was raised to glory without tasting death by her son in heaven, who would not subject his mother to the grave. For our purposes, let us look at John 19:25-27. This passage describes the Good Friday account where Jesus entrusts his mother Mary to “the disciple whom he loved.” The curious thing is that the Gospel with John’s name does not say that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” was, in fact, John. The best theory on this omission is that John died before the completion of the Gospel and the text was completed by one of his devoted disciples, and as a rule we give that answer when someone asks. Mary, John, and several others were standing under the cross when Jesus poured forth his Holy Spirit in his dying words, and again when the soldier pierced the side of Christ, and water and blood burst out upon them—symbols of sacramental initiation. What we have here on Good Friday is John’s description of the birth of the Church. There is Biblical consistency that this new community of the Son of God gathered in Jerusalem and lived there for the foreseeable future. It is hard to imagine that Mary would distance herself from this community in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, we have no hard information on the deaths of these first members of the early Church, but we do know from multiple sources that relations between Christians and Jews were difficult, sometimes violent, and that Christians emigrated around the Mediterranean. Many devout legends would arise about the final days of the apostles and the community of the early Church, and Mary was not exempt from divine speculation. The most enduring and speculative rendering of her death came from the eastern half of Christianity—today’s Eastern-rite Catholics and the Orthodox—and described Mary’s death by natural causes amid the Christian community in Jerusalem. The apostles and others processed with her body to a selected site, only to be put upon by a Jewish mob. Peter, as the story goes, took his sword, and cut off the ear of one of the attackers. In any case, the story states that Mary was dead and eventually buried, like all human beings. No burial site is known today. Official Church teaching in the East refined this primitive account by affirming that Mary had died but that she was awaiting a glorious resurrection. A solemn feast developed, “The Dormition of Mary,” which became one of the first major feasts as the Church developed its liturgical calendar. [“Dormition” comes from the Greek, “to sleep.”] As centuries of theological disputes continued, there were many who argued that since Mary was conceived without original sin and maintained perfect obedience, she was the sole person who did not deserve to taste death, that she was taken to heaven miraculously though the precise place and moment were unknown to us at this time. Consequently, we Roman Catholics in the West do not celebrate the Dormition but rather the glorious Assumption of the Virgin Mary, Body and Soul, into heaven. If you are interested, here is a link to Pope Pius XII’s declaration of this dogma in November 1950. A SPIRITUAL REFLECTION: Personally, I believe that Mary did die first. I believe in her glorification, too, though I know nothing about its time and place. I may be very wrong here, but I harken back to the fact that Jesus died, really died. His followers buried him. As St. John wrote, “But when they approached the cross of Jesus, they discovered he was already dead.” Despite what a lot of us were taught at some time or other, Jesus was not going through the motions on Good Friday. As he was fully human, his faith was deep but his knowledge of the “other side” was limited, as is ours. The early Church fathers used to say that “What is not assumed is not saved,” meaning that Jesus had to know and experience human life to the full, particularly when he embraced the cross and certain death. Jesus embraced full human life to save it. It is hard to imagine Mary separated from the Community of Christ, i.e., those of us who embrace the prospect of death in faith but also in trust. Mary was a model of obedience and trust; “Be it done to me according to thy word.” As Vatican II taught, Mary is one of us, not an exception in the redemptive process. When the Church established the Assumption as a major feast of the Church, it did so as a way for us to consider our own destinies. On Easter Sunday we celebrate a death and a resurrection. On the Feast of the Assumption, we commemorate a death and a trust. When I was researching for my three credits, I came across a passage from the German theologian Karl Rahner in his treatment of the Assumption. He acknowledged that it is possible the Assumption has not happened yet, but that we know/believe by God’s inspiration that it absolutely will happen. At the time Rahner’s hypothesis seemed “a little out there,” but the annual feast of the Assumption has come to represent for me the need for greater trust in God’s goodness and providence as my own mortal coil continues to rust away. Faith, Hope, Charity. Maybe the order needs to be Faith, Charity, and Hope. Hope is the ultimate step up the ladder. Oh yes, I got the A. I am getting vibes that it is hard to find godparents and sponsors in local parishes. I am a little surprised that the issue of “Godparent shortage” hasn’t worked its way into the upper reaches of current public Catholic conversation in the United States. I can tell you that I have been “drafted” several times over the past two years to prepare adults for Confirmation and accompany them to the Cathedral. I don’t think it is my charm that brings these invitations; rather, the clergy in my parish are finding it difficult to find candidates who meet the canonical requirements. In Catania, Italy, Archbishop Salvatore Gristina issued a decree to end abuse of the godparent tradition. It seems that in the Catania vicinity there were too many situations of families using the sponsorship positions to cement relationships with criminal elements rather than fulfill the “true ecclesial function” of accompanying their godchildren on their journey of faith. [National Catholic Register, 2021]
I doubt that the Mafia is the root of the problem in the United States. Data--sheer numbers and statistics--tell us a great deal. In 1965 there were 1,237,000 infant baptisms in the United States; in 2022 there were 437,942 such baptisms, roughly a two-thirds decline which is even more remarkable when one considers that in in 1965 there were 44.3 million Catholics on the books compared to 66.5 million in 2022. [CARA Database; save database link for your work.] My read on this is that many Catholics are not having their children baptized—for a multitude of reasons we will examine below. Baptism, of course, is the gateway to Christian-Catholic life and the first pillar of what the Church would consider as “being a good Catholic,” a basic requirement for sponsorship for church sacraments. In conversations, clerics raise another factor—many who present themselves as candidates for the responsibility of godparents and sponsors are not validly married in the church and, beyond that, require annulments to reconcile their good standing in the Church. A valid Catholic marriage is an ipso facto requirement for a married sponsor unless he or she is single. In 2020 19,500 full annulment proceedings were begun in the entire country of 17,000 parishes. I am not going too far out on a limb here to suggest that a majority of those who identify themselves as Catholic may be living in invalid unions, sacramentally speaking. Sacramental law and practice are one of those massive superhighway interchanges where liturgical, sacramental, ecclesiastical, and canon law theology interconnect with each other. The identity and character of a godparent or sponsor is defined by each of these disciplines of study and with multiple terms and emphases. Suffice here to say that the Church’s mission, given by Christ in his last encounter with his followers, is “preach the Gospel to the whole world” and bring all to the table of forgiveness and unity that is the Eucharistic community. Preserve the unity of the Church in its longstanding guidance but err on the side of mercy. For today, I thought it might be profitable to review the Catholic Canon Law regarding Baptism. I have two hopes here: [1] the expansion of understanding of Church law and practice for the Catholic general population, and [2] the avoidance of embarrassment to potential sponsors of being declined the office of sponsorship. The following pertinent canons were taken directly from the Vatican’s website: [872] Insofar as possible, a person to be baptized is to be given a sponsor who assists an adult in Christian initiation or together with the parents presents an infant for baptism. A sponsor also helps the baptized person to lead a Christian life in keeping with baptism and to fulfill faithfully the obligations inherent in it. Canon 872 indicates that infants, children, or adult candidates—all candidates regardless of age should be given a sponsor. The law assumes that there will be times when a solitary person of any age may be presented or presents himself/herself for baptism, and in this case the Church should provide a sponsor presumably from the local community if the candidate has not connected with a personal prospective sponsor. The sponsor is expected to work with the candidate in preparing for intense Catholic living. Interestingly, 872 envisions the sponsor working with the parents of the infant or child in reviving the intensity of the Catholic faith family which is the Catholic home. Frequently the parents of the baptismal candidates are still living off what they were taught in the sixth grade [or worse], so it does not take much imagination to see evangelization needs and opportunities surrounding the parish’s celebrations of infant baptisms. Some parishes provide a program of preparation just for the sponsors and parents prior to the baptism. I wish that churches did not refer to these faith sharings as “classes.” The common wisdom of the Church intends a personal union of faith between the godparents and the family [or families] that extends after the baptism. As one Christian website puts it, ““Godparents or sponsors should be willing and able to take on a supportive role in the life of the baptized individual. This may include attending church services together, offering guidance on matters of faith, and being a source of encouragement and wisdom as the baptized person navigates their spiritual journey.” Were I pastoring today, I might consider a baptismal alumni circle of parents and sponsors. An adult candidate for baptism will, under ordinary circumstances, enter the year-long catechumenate of the parish which culminates at Baptism during the Easter Vigil. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has provided a descriptive summary of the process. I have cited the sponsorship instructions here: “Prior to the Rite of Election, the Catechumen may choose one or two godparents, who will accompany the Catechumen on the day of Election, at the celebration of the Sacraments of Initiation, and during the Period of Mystagogia. They are called to show the Catechumens good example of the Christian life, sustain them in moments of hesitancy and anxiety, bear witness, and guide their progress in the baptismal life.” In parishes where the preparatory rites [e.g., the scrutinies] are performed at a Sunday Mass, you might notice that the sponsor walks with the candidate through the ceremony. Here again we see the rich opportunities for sponsors to themselves be born again as they were at the time of their own baptisms. [873] There is to be only one male sponsor or one female sponsor or one of each. The law here assumes that there will be one or two sponsors. Two parties are not required but seem to be customary. The sacramental registry of every parish—the official Church database—has two lines for sponsors, but commentaries indicate that one line can be left blank. Where there are two sponsors, they must be of different sexes. I doubt that this binary gender directive has any subconscious political intent given the current transgender debate that followed years later, but assumes, as most of us would have in 1983, that godparents, in their role as spiritual parents, would be fatherly and motherly in the traditional sense. [874§1] To be permitted to take on the function of sponsor a person must: 1/ be designated by the one to be baptized, by the parents or the person who takes their place, or in their absence by the pastor or minister and have the aptitude and intention of fulfilling this function; [See above.] 2/ have completed the sixteenth year of age, unless the diocesan bishop has established another age, or the pastor or minister has granted an exception for a just cause; A sidebar: Given that research has found the median age of disengagement from the Catholic Church to be 13, and often as young as 10, engaging young members into the work of the Church deserves all our energy. 3/ be a Catholic who has been confirmed and has already received the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist and who leads a life of faith in keeping with the function to be taken on; Subset rule three is one of the most subjective of the guidelines. The law assumes that a godparent is living as we would expect a “good Catholic” to live. An outlandish example of an abuse here would be the selection of Michael Corleone for the role of sponsor by his sister Connie in the first Godfather movie. As Michael professes the baptismal vows at the family christening, his henchmen are eliminating the heads of the four other crime families…and Moe Greene in the massage parlor, lest we forget. “I’m Moe Greene!” But in real life, including parochial life, things are rarely so black and white. I accepted every proposed godparent submitted to me. As a pastor I found myself working with two populations of baptismal candidate infants and children: those from visible and active members of the parish whose general Catholic reputations were without blemish, on the one hand, and families who were virtual strangers to me on the other. As to the second cluster, my experience was that if you are kind to an unattached family at special events—baptisms, weddings, funerals, etc.—they do think to call you for the next “event,” and over the years they feel like this is “their” parish, even if Sundays are not their thing. Who knows? The next pastor might inherit a more vigorous involvement on their part. One scatters, another harvests. Isn’t this true of life? Today I would be more aggressive in my invitation to become involved in the parish faith family, but still with the openness to honor the judgment of the parents. Several parishes are adopting specific ministries of hospitality and outreach to families experiencing the baptismal moment or other “events” including deaths. And I am impressed with the number of “small communities” I encounter, families who meet in each other’s’ homes for prayer, discussion, and social interaction. Some groups around here have lasted 15 to 20 years and generously invite new people to join them. As a very young pastor, I had a men and women’s parish softball team, and I could always invite adults to play who might have nothing else to do with their Catholicism. [After the first season of our city’s church league, the executive board adopted an alcohol ban for all interfaith games. Rumor had it that the ban was directed at my parish…a very real possibility.] Unfortunately, there were and are some obstacles where a pastor is powerless to extend all the hospitality he might wish to, which brings us to 874-4/ not be bound by any canonical penalty legitimately imposed or declared; If you have been following the confession posts on the “morality stream” of the Café, you no doubt remember the discussions of “reserved sins.” 874-4 wanders into this area of latae sententiae [“instant excommunication” or “things we can’t take care of in the parish confessional.”] Pope Francis has greatly expanded the confessional faculty of forgiving abortion to the local parochial priest—abortion is on the list of reserved sins normally reserved to the local bishop because the act of procuring an abortion incurs an automatic excommunication, period, that must be lifted by a higher authority. A far more difficult circumstance is when the chosen godparent by the family was married in the Church, civilly divorced, and did not obtain an annulment before entering a second marriage before a minister or civil authority. This circumstance is common. The penalty of excommunication is not attached; the term “irregular state’ is applied in that the sponsor candidate cannot receive communion in mortal sin; by Church theology a person in an invalid second marriage is having sinful sex outside of a “valid” marriage and thus, objectively speaking, in a state of mortal sin. My guess is that over the past half-century a number of folks in “irregular states” have served as sponsors for a wide range of reasons, very few of them devious. The main obstacle is the need to proceed through the annulment process. [There is an excellent Canon Law summary from the Newark NJ archdiocese of the annulment process here.] In the seminary, I took an elective course, “Divorce, Remarriage, Annulments, and the Internal Forum [the confessional].” For my first ten years or so as a pastor I worked on some annulment cases in my own parishes, but it was very time consuming. I understand why many Catholics shy away from the process. Moreover, annulments can be psychologically difficult. On the matter of requiring annulments for full eucharistic participation, let alone sponsoring roles, I can only confess to confusion, pastorally speaking. Forbes Advisor asked in January 2024: “So, what about the famous statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce? That’s true, but only when it comes to first marriages, half of which are dissolved [civilly]. Second and third marriages actually fail at a far higher rate.” All of us are aware that divorce is a sad reality of American culture. What becomes of practicing Catholics whose marriages fail? For an excellent focus on Pope Francis’ philosophy and recent statistical studies of divorced Catholics, see this April 2021 treatment in America. I tend to agree with Francis, but I can understand the spiritual anguish of Church leaders who disagree with the pope, on the grounds that traditional Catholic teaching on the sanctity of the marriage bond is the last bastion of the institution of marriage. 874-5/ not be the father or mother of the one to be baptized. Interestingly, the Roman rite of the baptism of infants refers to the parents as “the first teachers of the faith…and the best teachers…” 874-5-§2/ A baptized person who belongs to a non-Catholic ecclesial community is not to participate except together with a Catholic sponsor and then only as a witness of the baptism. The language of the law implies that the non-Catholic individual is an active Christian in an organized church. The idea of a Buddhist serving as a witness is incomprehensible. But Baptism is a universal Christian sacrament, so no scandal is given by a Christian witness; his or her presence has a healthy ecumenical tone to it. The name is entered as “Christian witness” in the official registry. The Catholic Church recognizes the baptisms of all Christian Churches which use the Trinitarian formula. [Father, Son, Holy Spirit]. A Christian of another tradition enters the Catholic Church through a solemn profession of belief, Confirmation, and First Eucharist. Can. 875 A person who administers baptism is to take care that, unless a sponsor is present, there is at least a witness who can attest to the conferral of the baptism. Contrast this directive to that of sacramental marriage, which absolutely requires two witnesses besides the priest. In the U.S., and in much of the world, witnesses are mandated by civil law for validity and their signatures submitted to the state. Can. 876 To prove the conferral of baptism, if prejudicial to no one, the declaration of one witness beyond all exception is sufficient or the oath of the one baptized if the person received baptism as an adult. In these cases, there is no civil authority invoked. But see the next canon, 877. Can. 877 §1. The pastor of the place where the baptism is celebrated must carefully and without any delay record in the baptismal register the names of the baptized, with mention made of the minister, parents, sponsors, witnesses, if any, the place, and date of the conferral of the baptism, and the date and place of birth. Don’t lose your copy of your Baptismal certificate. It will tell you where all your sacramental records are stored. This is your Church passport. Demand one if it is not given to you automatically after the rite. It is your or your child’s historical record. You will need your child’s certificate for all subsequent sacraments and perhaps even for the “Catholic rate” at a parochial school. [My baptism certificate includes Confirmation, solemn vows, diaconate, orders, exclaustration from a religious order, laicization, and marriage, for example.] There is a very reasonable chance that your church of baptism will be closed or consolidated down the road if it hasn’t already. My certificate is now in storage at the chancery of the Diocese of Buffalo, having had two churches shot out from under it. Expect a slow delivery. After every major sacrament of your life, record of the event is mailed to the church of baptism. You are asking for a copy of the original issued within the past six months. Somewhere a secretary will go into the archives and copy all your sacramental entries up to the date of the event from the original parish entries. 877§2. If it concerns a child born to an unmarried mother, the name of the mother must be inserted, if her maternity is established publicly or if she seeks it willingly in writing or before two witnesses. Moreover, the name of the father must be inscribed if a public document or his own declaration before the pastor and two witnesses proves his paternity; in other cases, the name of the baptized is inscribed with no mention of the name of the father or the parents. For my first ten years as a pastor, we had neither the 1983 Code of Canon Law nor DNA testing on a wide scale. There were, over my years, a few cases where the father was genuinely unknown due to multiple partners. I would inscribe pater ignotus or “father unknown” in the father’s box. Can the sacramental records of a parish be subpoenaed later in a custody suit? Since the promulgation of the 1983 code, and the subsequent child abuse crisis, the state seems to have more access to parish and chancery records where due cause exists. Today I would assume that anything said or written outside the confessional can be examined by civil authorities, all things being equal. Consult a family civil lawyer in these unusual instances, as in the cases of adults seeking their natural parents after adoption. §3. If it concerns an adopted child, the names of those adopting are to be inscribed and, at least if it is done in the civil records of the region, also the names of the natural parents according to the norm of §§1 and 2, with due regard for the prescripts of the conference of bishops. Given the complexities of adoption, I would discuss matters of confidentiality and privacy with my attorney and my pastor. Can. 878 If the baptism was not administered by the pastor or in his presence, the minister of baptism, whoever it is, must inform the pastor of the parish in which it was administered of the conferral of the baptism, so that he records the baptism according to the norm of can. 877, §1. This refers to situations where an infant is baptized in a hospital or a parish other than his or her “home” parish. The official record must be entered and stored in the “home” parish. If the parents are in the military, all baptismal records are reserved in a special diocese which serves the U.S. service community, the “Archdiocese of the Military Ordinariate” in Washington, D.C. You can be baptized on any military base in the world, but the records will go to the AMO. You can request baptismal records here. Summary of guidelines for godparents and sponsors here, courtesy EWTN. In a few weeks we will look at the pastoral opportunities surrounding the sacraments of initiation. |
LITURGY
January 2026
|
RSS Feed