BEATIFICATION?

Like all of us humans, the late John Paul II was like the moon. He had both a dark side and a bright side. Advocates of his impending beatification focus on the light in his life (and there certainly was a good deal of it) while critics emphasize the darkness. Some wonder if the so-called Devil’s Advocate might have been asleep in the process. Others ask if the whole business of beatification and canonization should be shelved along with the triple tiara and the gestatorial chair.

The bright side of JPII encompasses his courageous opposition to Communism, his efforts to heal the Church’s chronic anti-Semitism, his many trips around the globe, and his outreach to youth. Also his pursuit of personal holiness by such means as the rosary, meditation and self-flagellation (although this latter practice may seem somewhat bizarre in our day and age.)

And what of his shadow side? Fundamentally, his style of governance was that of a commissar. Ironically, he was a mirror image of the Soviet system which he opposed so strongly. It featured a party line, which was non-negotiable. The supreme leader was engulfed by a cult of personality. Apparatchiks were rewarded and promoted. Dissenters were banished to the ecclesial equivalent of Siberia. A pervasive spy system monitored and reported instances of non-compliance, which were promptly corrected or punished. The chain of command featured lesser commissars who echoed the behavior of the man on top of the pyramid. And it was all sanctioned by Almighty God himself.

Like the Soviet system, this style of governance had strengths and weaknesses. It was rigidly centralized, clear, pervasive, and well defined. It inspired great loyalty among many and, of course, deep consternation among others. It paid lip service to Vatican II while subverting many of its key reforms which appeared messy and inefficient. It caused an existential schizophrenia among many clergy and laity.

It created a climate for the great failure of John Paul II’s pontificate – the clergy sex abuse crisis. The Pope was blinded to the predations of people like Marciel Maciel, who as founder of the Legionnaires of Christ, was a fellow commissar and thus above suspicion. Cardinal Law of Boston was rewarded with a sumptuous exile because he too was a loyal apparatchik. That trumped his ineptitude as well as that of numerous other bishops. And Cardinal Ratzinger’s eventual efforts to deal with predator priests were rebuffed because they too, for all their flaws, were sacred persons and valued cogs in the system. Only those clerics who married or veered from the party line were exiled. As long as everyone – bishops, priests, theologians, nuns, laypeople, children – remained observant and subservient, all would be well.

Having a big shindig on May 1st, printing holy cards, erecting statues and naming parishes after St. John Paul seems inevitable. However, the true sadness is the fact that his commissar system seems to have pervaded so many dioceses and parishes with similar regrettable results. Recently, Cardinal George, the retiring head of the American bishop’s conference, gave a farewell address which urged his fellow hierarchs not to shrink from being “strong” in their duty of governance. In other words, to be efficient commissars. So, we can expect a continuing stream of condemnations, punishments, excommunications, public apologies and all the rest of the sad paraphernalia which comprised John Paul’s soviet style pontificate. One wonders if and when his iron curtain will crumble.

Marty Hegarty: 40th Anniversary of WEORC Celebration

This is an testimonial to Marty Hegarty by John Horan at the recent WEORC Anniversary celebration. It is one of the articles on the event in our December newsletter. To receive a copy, just contact us at weorc@comcast.net.

Bill Keannelly, the finest Irish mystic, poet-priest, prophet and standup comedian the Archdiocese has ever produced once said that October is the month during which the membrane that separates the living and the dead is the thinnest and the most permeable.

Think about it. October’s membrane stretches between the bounty of summer and the barrenness of winter. All Souls Day, All Saints Day… the contingency of October makes us mindful of what happens on the dawn side of our last breath.

Membranes are holy places. They are the transition points when we pass from everything we have known to be true to a strange, new world with jarring truths, challenging rogue assumptions and undiscovered possibilities.

I left priesthood on the first Saturday morning in June, 1988 having just presided at my last Eucharist. I moved out of the rectory in a frantic headlong rage, dragging my belongings to a basement apartment on 35th and Seeley.

I’ll never forget grasping the doorknob of my underground residence and thinking, “What have I done to myself?” I had either been training to be a priest or was a priest for 20 of my 34 years. I was jobless, damn near penniless, my rolodex was wrecked (this being the time before Blackberry). I had one black suit that smelled like incense and not a clue about what to do with my life. I was a man up against a membrane.

So I did what everybody in my situation did. I went to see Marty Hegarty. He read me like the Sunday Trib - he knew all my sections; good priest, scared young adult, in love, consumed with guilt, rectory spoiled, clueless, but possessing a pulse.

And then Marty made my membrane thinner; he told me that he wouldn’t find a job for me but that he would help me find the confidence to find a job for myself.

He told me that my natural talents, my work ethic, my integrity, my spirituality - everything that helped me be a good priest; would help me be a terrific employee. He said I would stand out in any work setting but I would have to start at the bottom, and work my way up. He said that I would not get the perfect job right away, but I should start with something, with anything that would pay my bills, and take things from there.

He said that I should trust my ear for “vocare”, for the call of the spirit and that
God would be utterly faithful to me, always and everywhere, wherever and however I would go.

The conversation lasted maybe an hour. Never has someone been so right about so many things in so short a time. When I left Marty, I could see more. A barrier that I thought was impenetrable, was in fact a membrane I could manage through to something new, something equally of God, something essential.

How many thousands more of us has Marty done this for - many face to face, many through the extraordinary WEORC network that Marty and Jim have created and sustained these 40 years? I believe that God has very passionate opinions about how men and women transitioning out of ministry should be cared for, even though God’s church officials don’t necessarily agree and sometimes actually impede. WEORC is the incarnation of God’s loving care for those of us who have crossed through the membrane between our callings, and Marty and WEORC are the caretakers of that crossing.

Some five years later, Marty saved my life. I was fighting a losing battle with depression. Winston Churchill once called depression the black dogs that come at midnight - well, I was living in the kennel. It was a terrible time, a time during which I had to be hospitalized - what a house of horrors.

And when I was released from the hospital, strung together with spit and bailing wire, embarrassed, ashamed and scared as hell, who came to scoop me up and help me make that first unimaginably hard step to wellness, well it was Marty Hegarty - who else? Marty knows about the membrane between despair and hope, between being shattered and finding a way. And I think tonight, how many legions of the outcast, marginalized, broken, hopeless and wounded has Marty scooped up?

Marty has Jesus in his muscle memory. Marty cries easily. Like any Irishman he has bladders behind his eyeballs, but his tears are never trivial. He hungers for justice, he comforts the mourning, he rails against cruelty of stupid institutions. He bleeds daylight out of night.

Marty has Resurrection in his DNA. He knows that tombs are made to be opened and rocks to be rolled away. And he does this all the time. I believe he is in a three way tie with St. Francis and Mother Theresa for the all time leader in Corporal Works of Mercy. That’s our Marty. He knows the barrier between despair and hope is just a membrane to be managed.

And now Marty is engaged in perhaps his finest Opus Dei. He is trying to push through the membrane between our current confused and crumbling institutional Catholic Church and the new Church that is aborning. For Marty, leaving is no more an option than is settling for the current sorry state of affairs. As WEORC has helped men and women transition from ministry to employment, WEORC is now helping the Catholic Church transition to a richer expression of God’s kingdom come.

There are no easy answers. Too many of us are on the brink of calling it quits. But to listen to Marty talk Church these days is to be thrilled about the possibilities to come. He is a spiritual son of Bernanos* - he knows that grace is everywhere. He knows that the travails of today are a thin membrane, penetrable and manageable. Now, Marty always says that this all important transition has to be led by the young, but when Marty talks about the future of Church, there is no one younger in that room than he.

So everyone raise your glass to Marty Hegarty, our best bishop, our phoenix lifting us from our deepest holes, my spiritual dad with his Waterford crystal soul and irrepressible spirit.

Ad multos annos Marty – ad multos annos.

(*Georges Bernanos – author of Diary of a Country Priest)

John Horan was ordained for the Chicago Diocese in 1981 and is married. He was the chairperson of WEORC from 2001-2009. He is currently the president of a Chicago Charter school, North Lawndale College Prep http://www.nlcphs.org/

Saying bishops 'scared,' panelists urge laity to take lead

We have heard discussions before about the “Church Above” - the male, celibate hierarchy with their theologies and agenda, versus the “Church Below” – local level parish interactions, laity, and simpler spirituality. This is played out again and again.

Most recently, on the one hand, Cardinal George seemed practically gleeful in an interview when he spoke about bishops feeling their authoritative oats, saying “ bishops are more prepared to “take possession of their vocation,” not just as teachers and preachers, but as governors who exercise, however reluctantly, “the power to punish.”

On the other hand, a recent Woodstock forum headlined the concept that the Church can only be saved by the Laity. Bishops are unable or unwilling to meet the spiritual needs of the Church. Bishops are scared to enter into dialogue with anyone but themselves because “they do not trust the laity.” The feeling is mutual.

Speaking about the number of cradle-Catholics who are leaving active participation the Church, Rev. Thomas Reese, SJ puts part of the blame on the bishops. He said that church leaders want to blame the exodus of Catholics from the church on sinfulness, dissent, lack of commitment, or other factors, but they are ignoring a major issue. “If this was a retail outlet, we’d say we’re blaming the customers -- and that’s not a way to make your bottom line,” he said. They’re not buying what the bishops are trying to sell.

Here is a link to a cogent report by Jerry Filteau on presentations made by Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ, Dolores Leckey, and Fr. Raymond Kemp at the Philadelphia forum. http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/saying-bishops-scared-panelists-urge-laity-take-lead

New Book by Fr. Alberto Cutie

Rev. Alberto Cutie was not the first, nor the last priest to leave active ministry in the Catholic Church over celibacy. (Of course, anyone associated with WEORC is keenly aware of this). However, Cutie is one of the higher profile priests to recently marry and “swim the Thames” to become an Episcopal priest. He has just published a book on his dilemma and decision. Here is a brief review by Heidi Schlumpf…

Fr. Albert Cutie, the Miami priest who left the priesthood after the paparazzi caught him with his girlfriend on the beach, is in the news again. Now an Episcopal priest, husband (to said girlfriend) and actual father to a teen-aged stepson and infant daughter, Cutie has released a "tell-all" book this month.

Nothing in "Dilemma: A Priest's Struggle with Faith and Love" will surprise veteran church watchers and reformers:

• A number of priests are involved in heterosexual and homosexual relationships, in part because celibacy makes them lonely and starved for intimacy.
  
• Some bishops are hardly the pastoral shepherds they should be to their flocks, including their priests.
  
• Many in the church hierarchy are only concerned with the church's image in the sex abuse scandal.

(Disclaimer: I have not yet read the entire book but am basing this summary and my opinions on news reports here and here.)

Cutie claims he didn't write the book to "settle scores" (it's likely his publisher asked him to) and that he was disillusioned with the church and struggling with some church teaching long before his breaking of his vow of celibacy was exposed.

Yet Cutie had quite the platform even before his scandal. Nicknamed "Father Oprah" because of his successful television ministry, he was likely the most influential Hispanic priest in America. His first book was a bestseller, perhaps in part because it featured on its cover his "Father What-a-Waste" face (as does his new book).

I wish Father Cutie all the happiness in new life. But I wish he had revealed the things he's saying now back when he was part of the Catholic Church. That would have had real impact. Now, it unfortunately sounds like sour grapes.

Heidi Schlumpf is an accomplished journalist and editor. She is currently on the faculty of Aurora Univesity, located outside of Chicago. This blog entry can be found at http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/fr-cutie-too-little-too-late

Rev. Cutie’s website is http://www.padrealberto.com/ .

On Their Way Out

In an America magazine article “On Their Way Out”, William Byron, S.J picks up on a suggestion that their should be a exit-interview for Catholics leaving the Church behind. The rationale is that Church leaders should be concerned enough to learn why large numbers of “Cradle Catholics” no longer find a spiritual home in the Catholic Church. The irony is that bishops don’t care what people think. They think they are the sole founts on truth, and anyone who doesn’t think so can just “go to Hell.” You can find the article at http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=12642

I found the following reader’s response well written and worth sharing…

I am a 51 year old "Cradle Catholic," one of 5 kids raised in a family that went to church every Sunday with parents who made sure we received our sacraments growing up. I am the only one that still attends Mass regularly. I've been active in my church, in music ministry and teaching CCD. And yet I'm on the cusp of leaving as well, for a variety of reasons.

I find Church teaching on gays and women to be immoral, and do not want my son taught that a loving God considers only unmarried, straight men worthy of invoking His presence at Mass. I find the Church response to the pedophile scandal immoral as well - first moving, rather than removing priests, and later insisting that it is all a media-driven conspiracy to undermine Church authority.

In particular I find the politicization of the Church totally unacceptable. I never thought I would see the American bishops oppose providing health care for all - the most shameful homily I've ever heard a Catholic priest give came in the fall of 2009, when he incited parishioners to contact legislators urging them to vote "no" on health care. In opposing health care reform, the bishops have, in my view, forfeited their moral leadership.

Year after year I've listened to the local bishop and priests tell Catholics that abortion is the most important moral issue facing the country and that it must be the primary factor in deciding how to cast our votes in elections. Yet in the 13 years I attended Mass at the local Cathedral, there was not a single special collection devoted to crisis pregnancy centers - not a diaper or jar of baby food was collected. This supposed "priority" also merited no mention in the yearly pleas for contributions to the bishop's Lenten appeal. Moreover, when our bishop decided to undertake a special fundraising effort, it was not to support crisis pregnancy services, but to build himself a fancy mansion to live in next to the Cathedral. What was that moral priority again? These bishops will throw women out of the church for saving a mother's life (Bishop Olmstead), threaten to withhold communion from pro-choice politicians, and make a show of praying the rosary outside of abortion clinics, they will not lift a finger to help women and babies in need, even urging legislators to deny them access to health care. The hypocrisy is nauseating.

The growing emphasis on the Church as institution, rather than the Church as a teacher of Christ, is also a problem. I find that the Church is more closed and inward looking, teaching a faith that can exist only within the church walls, rather than in the wider world - Christ's message was to "go and make disciples of all nations," not, "build walls between yourself and the world."

I also find the growing emphasis on grandeur and finery among the Church hierarchy - ermine cloaks, crowns, lace vestments - a complete contradiction of the Christ who dressed in the simplicity of a Galilean peasant and who was only dressed in fine robes and a "crown" by his tormentors to mock him.

And, given all of the legitimate issues facing the Church in the world, Rome decides that monkeying with the English translation of the Mass is the most important thing it has to do. Is God any less present in the Mass as it is now? Will this new translation improve the "pipeline" to the Divine? Then why bother, if not simply to assert Roman authority? Latin was used in the early centuries of the Church not because it had any special divine significance, but because it was the spoken language of the believers in Rome (assuming they translated the scriptures correctly from the Greek and Hebrew to begin with). This insistence on strict translation of the Latin suggests that the Mass is little more than a magical incantation (see Harry Potter) - say it "correctly," and poof, Jesus appears; say it "incorrectly," and He withholds His presence.

My family and I do still attend Mass regularly, for now, but only because there is a nearby Jesuit parish that emphasizes the Gospel teachings of Christ, rather than the institutional Church. We will see what the future brings.

A reading from the book of WikiLeaks

Even the Vatican didn't go unscathed in the recent WikiLeak revelations. Blogger Justin Sengstock offered up some well-written and insightful reflections on the subject...

A reading from the book of WikiLeaks

Posted by Justin Sengstock on December 16, 2010

When WikiLeaks made its great data-dump of secret diplomatic cables the other week, revealing just how raw the game of international politics can be behind its closed bathroom door, one particular sovereign state flew under the radar for a while. But the inevitable finally happened. Vatican City got WikiLeaked, too.

John L. Allen, Jr., senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, wrote on December 11: “Secret diplomatic cables revealed this morning as part of the WikiLeaks releases confirm that while the Vatican was appalled by revelations of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland in 2009 and 2010, it was also offended by demands that the papal ambassador participate in a government-sponsored probe, seeing it as an insult to the Vatican’s sovereign immunity under international law.”

Therefore the Vatican ruled that the probe be unctuously deferential: “any requests for information should come through proper diplomatic channels.” And this the Irish people resented, as U.S. diplomat Julieta Valls Noyes noted: “Much of the Irish public views the Vatican protests as pettily procedural and failing to confront the real issue of horrific abuse and cover-up by Church officials.”

So it goes. The Vatican would like to be caring. But the institution has become an end goal in itself, and the aura surrounding it must remain inviolate. It is a great power among the great powers. God and the statecraft of Otto von Bismarck are one.

We often criticize institutionalism on practical grounds, for it often hardens the arteries through which noble ideas and efforts might otherwise pass. But it poses a special risk whenever God is involved, as journalist and former divinity student Chris Hedges suggests in his meditation on the Ten Commandments, Losing Moses on the Freeway.

Hedges argues that when people or institutions “sanctify their own power,” promising us that the mystery of God “can not only be known but also manipulated,” they “lead us away from the worship of God into the corrosive idolatry of self-worship.” Our churches, although ostensibly preaching against idols, can become them. “We believe these idols will protect us, never realizing that idols are always willing to sacrifice their own, to ensure their own preservation.”
So the Irish victims discovered when the Vatican insisted on being “pettily procedural.” So victims of abuse everywhere discovered when the successors of the apostles summoned their lawyers, shut their doors, and lowered their shades. Behind those doors and shades they determined whom to sacrifice, to ensure their own preservation—unlike Jesus, who sacrificed himself for our preservation.

I acknowledge that a total indictment of the Church simply because it is an institution would be naïve and hypocritical. I was initiated into sacramental life by a parish in the Diocese of Joliet, Illinois, and I learned my faith at a high school run by Dominican sisters and the Archdiocese of Chicago. I acquired what radicalism I have, and any theory that backs it up, at a Jesuit university. When I speak as I do about the Church as institution, I inevitably draw on resources that the Church as institution has given me.

Yet, as a believer in synchronicity, I must read John Allen’s December 11 reportage alongside Matthew 21:23-27, the Gospel for the Monday of the Third Week of Advent (December 13 this year). Jesus is teaching the crowd when the chief priests and elders approach him, demanding to know by what authority he works. Jesus insists they answer him first: was John the Baptist’s ministry of divine or human origin?

So the officials begin to debate not the answer, but how whatever answer they give will affect them. If they admit John was sent by God, they will look faithless, but if they say John was not, there might be a riot. Thus the priests and elders say they just don’t know, and Jesus refuses to cite any authority.

Worried about their power and standing within institutional Judaism, the priests and elders were on a different planet from Jesus. He simply had to leave them there and move on, because the Gospel is unintelligible to those who cover their behinds.

I do not advocate throwing away Church structures, but I do advocate poking and pushing those who run them, making them constantly attentive to the possibility that Jesus will leave them there and move on. If WikiLeaks happens to help us poke and push this time, so be it.

http://youngadultcatholics-blog.com/2010/12/16/a-reading-from-the-book-of-wikileaks/

The Secret Lives of Priests

Gene Kennedy recentlyoffered a tribute to the parish priest in a NCR column. Often caught between the conflicting expectations and agendas of the Bishops above and the Church below, parish priests generally show a grace under fire. We would like to share the op-ed piece.

BULLETINS FROM THE HUMAN SIDE: NOVEMBER 18, 2010
THE SECRET LIVES OF PRIESTS BY EUGENE CULLEN KENNEDY

After a decade of revelations about sexual and financial scandals among priests, you would think that there is nothing more to learn about these men who were once revered in the Catholic culture and respected in the culture at large.

While it is undeniable that we know more than we care to about the once hidden lives of some priests, there is a far larger and deeper territory that might as well be the cave next to Bin Laden’s even though it can be entered at any time in the rectory just down the street.

This is the largely unexplored setting of the secret lives of the good priests all around us. Sated with lurid reports about fallen priests few people and no reporters have much interest, much less curiosity, about how faithful priests are living, what they are doing, or how they are feeling.

Goodness never gets into the newspapers. Check the headlines on any day’s paper for the common denominator of a negative word – fraud, investigation, death, fire, failure – and we understand why priests who have kept their promises and stayed at their posts are literally too good for words.

Despite the withering fire of the sex abuse wars, they have not deserted and they don’t complain much either. The reason for that may be that their people have troubles enough of their own and they don’t want to hear any of Father’s. No matter what they have been through, we want our priests to be the same as they have always been, on duty, on time, and on the ball.

I experienced a revelation about their secret lives in a letter from one of the finest priests I know. He wrote that “My soul has turned into a cinder, hard dry and burned out. I’d been running on empty for quite awhile, and I prayed but there was no warmth or juice in the communication from the the Great Generous Comedian…. My job means I (work) with people whose jobs occur in a very intense arena of good vs. evil, life and death….I felt saturated with exposure to human evil, suffering and degradation. In two weeks I was exposed to human sex trafficking of children, a newborn infant thrown in the trash by the mother, an unclaimed body of a policeman who died in a nursing home estranged from his family, and ministering to 5 terminally ill people. I’m not complaining, I’m simply saying that I was running on fumes for a long time. The phone would ring and I’d get irritated instantly, ‘What do they want from me now?’

“I love my job, I love my people, and my work is meaningful to my soul but even though I pray I get worn out ….all the exposure to human degradation, accumulates and goes unresolved….I have not set limits to protect myself from absorbing the pain…we are taught just the opposite: Feel it, roll in it, absorb it…

“It’s an astonishing sea change among priests of my generation that we cannot wait to retire. We’re fed up with apologizing for the Church and trying to explain the profound unending nuttiness (e.g., a seminar on exorcism) that just never stops…. We agree that something of God is rumbling among the people of the Church, the Holy Spirit of God seems to be at work, and it will not stop or be defeated.”

The secret lives of our best priests are not dissimilar but it is hard to get to their stories, if they are printed at all, when the front page still streams with variations on clergy sex abuse from all corners of the world.

This priest’s letter made me think that we really don’t know much about the secret, that is, inner life of Jesus either. From what we read in the gospels, Jesus would understand from his own experience what today’s hardworking priests are enduring.

Jesus preached in an era of institutional religious hypocrisy and was followed by crowds of people who had been struck by His words. Each of them wanted something from him, a cleansing of their leprosy, a cure of their illness, the raising to life of a beloved daughter or friend. Like today’s priests, Jesus emptied himself in order to fill those around Him. He went into the desert, as good priests now do “to rest awhile,” but Jesus returned to the city of man, to respond less to sin than to human suffering. And, reflecting the way many priests now feel stranded, the Lord said that the Son of Man had no place to lay his head.

What did Jesus feel and was it really any different from what our best priests do? What did He mean by that mysterious phrase, “Power went out of me,” if not that, as the suffering touched His garments, He experienced the same drain on His energy that our priests feel every day when wounded people crowd around our priests seeking relief for their sorrows. Power goes out of them as the human price for emptying themselves for the sake of others. We discover the inner life of the Lord in the inner lives of our hardworking priests.

There is no secret about this. It is just, as with Jesus, we do not read between the lines of the scriptures to see that Jesus’s mission was to identify with our suffering more than to condemn our sins. That is the essence of the overlooked lives of our good priests, the ones who never get their names in the paper but who are emptying themselves on our behalf every day.