Category: The Church

Over at Catholic Exchange (via Crisis Magazine), Brian Saint-Paul tells us of a new Catholic dissident organization (yippee, another one) that hopes not only to reform the Catholic Church in the United States, but to actually overthrow it.

Take Back Our Church (founded by ex-Jesuit Robert Blair Kaiser) plans on fomenting a kind of spiritual insurrection that will result in a home-grown American Catholic Church that does not answer to the Pope (or anyone else, I assume). Why, or how, they would refer to this as a Catholic Church is somewhat mysterious, but let us press on…

Kaiser is the author of a book titled A Church in Search of Itself: Benedict XVI and the Battle for the Future, the thrust of which Saint-Paul sums up for us;

"The Fathers of Vatican II ushered in a golden age of openness, tolerance, and progressive action. Unfortunately, the dark forces of John Paul II and his diabolical collaborator, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, clamped down on this movement of the Spirit, dragging the Church back to the Dark Ages…"

I know some Rad Trads who may be surprised to hear that…

"In light of this, thinking Catholics need to reclaim their Church — and maybe even start an American Catholic Church of their own."

So, look out, Catholics! Kaiser aspires to be the spiritual Guy Fawkes of the New Catholicism, blowing to smithereens the stuffy parliament of the old Catholic hierarchy in America.

This is the exact opposite of a grass-roots movement (though grass may well be involved). A true grass-roots movement takes shape because large numbers of people share the same idea, want the same things and can make common cause with one another to create change. Kaiser is a contributing editor of Newsweek, and the membership of his organization stands at 580. This is an elitist movement, germinated in the hot-house of American media culture.

Kaiser proposes;

"We will write a Declaration of Autochthony (let’s see you pronounce that), one that will challenge our priest-people and our people-people to work out a constitution for the American Church that carefully puts aside the Rome-based secretive, half-vast, culturally-conditioned legalisms codified in canon law in return for the kind of servant Church envisioned at Vatican II."

Never mind that Kaiser would probably run screaming from the room if you showed him any of the actual documents from Vatican II… (I’m melting! I’m melting! Oh, what a world!…)

I find it hilarious that this guy hopes to craft a Constitution after coining such terms as "people-people".

I am also finding it harder to keep track of all these dissident groups. It’s confusing. I mean, if We Are Church, why would we need to Take Back Our Church? Why does FutureChurch pine for the good old days of Vatican II?

In a way, I am always a little excited to hear about someone planning to start some sort of independent American Catholic Church because it makes me hopeful that, were such a monstrosity actually to come about, all the kooks would flock to it and leave us regular Catholic folk in relative peace. But then I remember that such a split would no doubt grieve the Holy Spirit, and possibly cause the loss of a great number of souls, and I come back to my senses.

No, better for all concerned if the dissidents never achieve their goals.

Kaiser is on a roll, though, and hopes to expand his organization’s meager membership by having all current members e-mail their friends and encourage them to join. You know, like Amway.

Ooh! I shiver as a Shadow grows in Mordor…

GET THE STORY.

I had never heard of Fr. John Duryea but apparently he made quite a splash in the 1970s when he announced to a California congregation that he had committed the Intolerable Sin: he had fallen in love.

Well, that’s how he put it anyway. More to the point, he became involved in an illicit relationship with a woman twenty-four years his junior and eventually would be excommunicated, receiving the letter of excommunication on his wedding day.

On July 22, 2006, the feast of St. Mary Magdalene, John Duryea died.

"Over the past two years, Duryea suffered from deteriorating vision and hearing, although he was still able to walk daily until recently. He was suffering from a rare form of cancer, and family members said he chose a ‘self-directed death,’ [translation: suicide] which Eve DeBona [his wife] said should be legal and acceptable as a ‘much kinder’ way of passing. she was holding his hand when he died. He composed a letter/e-mail to friends the day prior to his death, in which he said, ‘I will go soon. Of all the images I take with me, the strongest are of my beloved mountains.’"

GET THE STORY.

The missive Duryea composed can be read in its entirety on his stepdaughter’s blog. Here is an excerpt:

"I wish to die now, because life is getting too painful for me. I have dermato-fibrosarcoma protuberante, a rare kind of cancer. In addition, my growing blindness and deafness and weakness give me the feeling of being in a fog all the time, and cut off from people, especially my family. This is so unlike my experience of life.

[…]

"From beyond death, I do not wish to reincarnate; I do not wish to return to this earth to face the tangled-up affairs of the world. But I do wish to remain a priest. In my experience, communication between the living and the dead has not been adequate. I would like to foster that communication, with my helping love.

"May God guide you as you have to deal with the present chaos of the world. May God bless Dr. Kevorkian who is suffering in prison because of his love and care for people who wanted to choose the time and means of their deaths. May God bless the state of Oregon, which now offers people this freedom."

GET THE POST.

AND A RELATED POST.

(Nod to Katie Allison Granju for the blog links.)

What struck me most — repulsed me, really — was how this former priest’s choice to do away with himself has been entirely whitewashed with terms like "self-directed death" and "a much kinder way of passing." While the family’s use of euphemisms is completely understandable and while my sympathies and prayers for comfort and healing go out to them during their time of grief, the news account of Duryea’s death does not even mention the word suicide. Just as abortion has been euphemized into social tolerability, so the reality of suicide is now being layered over with neologisms.

In the end though, John Duryea has received his wish "to remain a priest." He is indeed a priest forever. May God have mercy on his soul and may he rest in peace. Please keep him in your prayers. From the stories of his life and death, it sounds like he needs them.

St. Mary Magdalene, apostle to the apostles and patron of repentant sinners, pray for him.

A reader writes:

A friend is questioning why the ordination of women is not allowed in the Catholic Church, and I referred him to Ordinatio Sacerdotalis from 1994 and Cardinal Ratzinger’s response from 1995.  In the Cardinal’s response, there is a reference to a “dubium,” which begins “Whether the teaching that the Church has no authority . . .”

My Latin isn’t very good.  What is a “dubium”?  Is it a “doubt” or something “doubtful”? And what does it mean in this particular context?

A lot of folks have this question, because a kind of shorthand ecclesiastical jargon is being used here. Normally these documents don’t make big headlines, and so most folks aren’t familiar with them or the terminology associated with them, but here’s the scoop:

The full name for this kind of document is a Responsum ad Dubium, which in Latin means "A Response to a Doubt" or, somewhat more freely, "An Answer to a Question." They’re a kind of Vatican Q & A that the Holy See uses to clarify certain issues.

Since Responsum ad Dubium is kind of a mouthful, though, one of them may colloquially be called a Responsum or a Dubium, even though the latter doesn’t make much sense when translated literally as "Doubt."

Incidentally, the plural forms of these would be Responsa and Dubia.

Hope this helps!

There’s a new bishop in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph (Missouri) and the National Catholic Reporter is unhappy. No charges yet that this Opus Dei bishop is looking around for an albino assassin, but he has been shaking things up at his diocesan center:

"[Bishop Robert] Finn, 53, a priest of the St. Louis archdiocese and a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement, was named coadjutor of the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese in March 2004. The diocese comprises 130,000 Catholics in 27 countries of northwest Missouri. He succeeded Bishop Raymond Boland as ordinary on May 24, 2005. Within a week of his appointment he:

• "Dismissed the chancellor, a layman with 21 years of experience in the diocese, and the vice chancellor, a religious woman stationed in the diocese for nearly 40 years and the chief of pastoral planning for the diocese since 1990, and replaced them with a priest chancellor.
• Cancelled the diocese’s nationally renowned lay formation programs and a master’s degree program in pastoral ministry.
• Cut in half the budget of the Center for Pastoral Life and Ministry, effectively forcing the almost immediate resignation of half the seven-member team. Within 10 months all seven would be gone and the center shuttered.
• Ordered a ‘zero-based study’ of adult catechesis in the diocese and appointed as vice chancellor to oversee adult catechesis, lay formation and the catechesis study a layman with no formal training in theology or religious studies.
• Ordered the editor of the diocesan newspaper to immediately cease publishing columns by Notre Dame theologian Fr. Richard McBrien.
• Announced that he would review all front page stories, opinion pieces, columns and editorials before publication."

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Bill Cork for the link.)

And that was just within the first week! Developments within the first year include this one, my personal favorite:

"Finn upgraded a Latin Mass community, which has been meeting in a city parish, to a parish in its own right and appointed himself pastor. … Later, he asked the parish that the Latin Mass community will be leaving to donate $250,000 of the estimated $1.5 million the Latin group needs to renovate the old church Finn gave them."

May his tribe increase!

In the comments section of a post by Mark Shea that took note of a blogger’s letter in response to a priest who waxed conflicted about homosexual identity and same-sex marriage in a parish bulletin, Chris Durnell offered some words of wisdom worth reprinting here so they are not eaten by Haloscan at some point down the line:

"The very real distinction between one’s public responsibilities and private feelings has been very overriden [sic] these days. Few seem to notice or care that the office one holds is not for one’s private use, but to fulfill the obligations of that office."

Amen.

Hey, Tim Jones, here.

1968 was the year that I “got saved” in the Baptist church and was baptized. I was seven, and at the time I’m certain that I thought everyone was a Baptist.

Even if I had been a Catholic at the time, though, I would have been too young to take note of the portentious “Truce of 1968”. Like the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam, it was one of those historic events of which I was blissfully unaware, but the effects of which would resonate through the rest of my life.

In THIS ARTICLE over at Catholic Exchange, George Weigel explains The Truce;

“In 1968, Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle of Washington, D.C., disciplined nineteen priests who had publicly dissented from Pope Paul VI’s teaching in the encyclical Humanae Vitae. Three years later, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy decreed that Cardinal O’Boyle should lift canonical penalties against those priests who informed the cardinal privately that they agreed that the Church’s teaching on “the objective evil of contraception” was “an authentic expression of (the) magisterium.”
The Congregation explicitly avoided requiring that the priests, who had dissented publicly, retract their dissent publicly. A new biography of O’Boyle, Steadfast in the Faith (Catholic University of America Press), suggests that the decision not to require a public retraction was made by Paul VI himself.”

To many who were adult Catholics at the time, the “Truce” was a watershed moment, in a decade of watershed moments.

At the time, it was one of a number signs that the Church hierarchy lacked the will or the courage to discipline dissident priests and bishops. It appeared to be almost paralyzed with fear of schism.

They appeared to be intensely concerned with keeping the modernists in the Church, with the result that we now have a Church full of modernists, each worshipping his own conscience.

Weigel’s opinion is always worth reading, and for me, learning about The Truce was a valuable history lesson.

GET THE STORY.

John Allen (last John Allen-based piece this week, I promise) has an interesting interview with the rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Fr. Stephen Pisano.

The occasion of the interview is the release of the Gospel of Judas (with which Fr. Pisano isn’t as familiar as one might like) but it ranges considerably beyond that and includes a discussion of B16 and Scripture as well.

Ironically, I thought one of the most insightful things in the interview was actually a statement by Allen (in blue, below) which I thought captures something in a particularly crisp way.

EXCERPTS:

Hearing about these rival gospels, the average person may think, ‘My Gosh, the gospels [in the Bible] had it wrong.’ How should we understand claims like that?
They’re simply not true. That’s the short answer. These other Gnostic gospels haven’t really changed our view of things, and one more isn’t going to do that either. This is literature that came from a particular sect, a particular group, which followed this Gnostic philosophy. One of the things that is important to see, I think, is that we’re in the second century. This is really a very short time after the death and resurrection of Jesus. In this period of the early church, Christian theology as we know it today was really in its infancy. We shouldn’t have the idea that already in the second century we had something developed like the Catechism of the Catholic Church. That’s something that is the result of thousands of years of theological reflection. If we try to put ourselves back into the mentality of the second century, the early believers didn’t really know yet what to believe, what context to put their belief in, and I think there were a lot of attempts to express the faith and to find a philosophy that fit in with the resurrection faith. Some of these attempts bore fruit and became part of mainstream Christian theology, and some were dead ends. This is one that was a dead end. The proof of that, or the indication of it at least, is that you have Irenaeus writing around the year 180, and already then he is condemning this very approach to Christian theology. If it was condemned and seen as deviant already in the second century, I don’t think it’s something that is going to come back and be seen as relevant today.

Would it be fair to say that the ‘Gospel of Judas’ gives us new insight into second century Christianity, and the varieties of theological reflection that were going on, as opposed to any new insight into the historical Jesus or the historical Judas?
Very much so, certainly it would be the former. One of the things that is really a big lacuna is our knowledge of the second century. We do have these Gnostic gospels and some other writings from around that time, but really we don’t have all that much that tells us about the second century, so anything that comes to light pertaining to that period is all to the good from the point of view of our historical knowledge. It’s very helpful.

Bottom line: No one’s faith should feel threatened by the ‘Gospel of Judas’?
No, by no means.

The church’s traditional teaching that Judas’ betrayal of Jesus was a sinful act is not going to be challenged by this discovery?
I don’t think so. One interesting question, though, is whether Judas had full knowledge of what he was doing when he betrayed Jesus. From what we can gather from the gospel accounts, he had full knowledge that he was betraying Jesus. But did he have full knowledge that he was betraying the Son of God? That’s more difficult to say. If you look at the way all the apostles are portrayed in the gospels, during the earthly life of Jesus, they appear not to get it. They ran hot and cold … how they saw Jesus, and what they believed Jesus to be during his earthly life with them, is very difficult to discern. After the experience of the risen Lord, whatever that experience was, and after Pentecost, then the apostles seemed to be begin to really understand what was going on. We have to understand that the gospels themselves were written in light of that experience of the resurrected Jesus and the experience of the Spirit at Pentecost. So, did Judas know he was betraying the Son of God? I don’t know that we could say that. … Whether he saw Jesus basically as a political leader, a subversive leader who was going to lead the Jewish people against the Roman yoke, and then realized that wasn’t Jesus’ intention, is hard to say. We don’t really know what he thought about things.

But we do know he betrayed somebody for money, so that at least on the basis of the canonical gospels, it’s hard to make a hero out of him.
That’s right, yes, indeed.

[O]ne of the ways in which the Judas story has fueled anti-Jewish prejudice over the years is that he was the original traitor, and some feel that if you can rehabilitate Judas, you would reduce Christian anti-Semitism.
There is an extended debate about the responsibility, or the culpability, of the Jewish people in the death of the Jesus. I think that two things have to be noted there. One is simply a fact from the early expressions of faith, in both the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, that in both of these texts it says Jesus suffered ‘under Pontius Pilate,’ and there’s no reference to the Jews at all. From a broader theological point of view, which has always been, I think, the point of view of Christian theology and Christian faith, the ultimate answer to the question, ‘Who is responsible for the death of Jesus?’ is, ‘Every person who is a sinner.’ No matter what their particular religious affiliation is, Jesus came to free all people from sin. One can say that the cause of Jesus’ death is really the sinfulness of the human race.

In other words, attempts to rehabilitate Judas are not going to have any particular impact?
I don’t think so, no. That’s in addition to it being an impossible task.

GET THE STORY.

Aside from Allen’s line that I put in blue, one of the things that I found interesting about this was the idea that some people have of rehabilitating Judas as a way of combatting anti-Semitism. That may play a role in explaining the attempts to rehabilitate Judas in the 20th century. In a surprising number of books and films–both fiction and non-fiction–people tried sympathetic portrayals of Judas (see, e.g., Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth). Perhaps the desire to combat anti-Semitism in the wake of the Holocaust played a role in the sudden rash of pro-Judas sentiments in the media (alongside a general 20th century desire to be perverse).

John Allen (yes, I know this is kinda turning on to John Allen week, but he’s a good source and I’m doing a bunch of pre-blogging since I’m going to have to be offline for a few days and I don’t want to just leave the blog inactive) has an interesting interview with the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, Francis Rooney (pictured).

EXCERPTS:

In the struggle against terrorism, most people are on board in terms of ends. The debate is over means. Have there been exchanges between you and the Holy See on that question?
Obviously, everybody hopes there won’t be any more wars. Like I said, the Holy See is supportive of our nation-building efforts in Iraq, and hopes that the seed of some kind of pluralistic, tolerant society, if possible, will be an example to other countries in that area.

Has there been any additional conversation between you and the Holy See about when the use of force is justified to try to curb terrorism?
No. The subject hasn’t come up. I haven’t seen any particular reason to raise that at this point. When we talk about Iran, the Holy See has been clearly supportive of all the nations working to avoid a nuclear armed Iran. There’s really nothing to talk about at this point. I think we all agree that a war in Iran would be a horrible thing. The fortunate thing is, the Holy See is willing to speak up about the right of Israel to exist. The Holy Father opposed President Ahmadinejad’s comments. We’ve encouraged them to be strong, to continue to speak up, because that shows Iran the whole world is united against them having nuclear weapons and threatening their neighbors.

You haven’t heard anything from the Holy See to the effect of, ‘Please don’t use force in Iran?’
No.

You mentioned religious liberty, another core theme of interest to the Holy See, especially these days in the context of the Islamic world. Benedict XVI seems a bit more outspoken on Islam than John Paul II. Some welcome that, others worry that it will heighten tensions. What’s your reading?
I think the evolving consensus that the church needs to be clear and strong that religious freedom is a two-way street is unimpeachable. I haven’t heard anything from my government to oppose that. We’re for religious freedom of all stripes. When you apply that principle, you have to say that for Saudi Arabia to say, ‘There can’t be any churches,’ is an issue. I believe even Secretary Rice is starting to address that, and I think the President’s comments that pluralism in Iraq should germinate pluralism elsewhere, is all playing into that same thing. You can’t have it two ways.

You would agree that there’s a stronger line under Benedict XVI?
Absolutely. I think they’ve hardened up. I think they’ve gotten clearer. They’re focusing on this reciprocity doctrine. They’re also focusing on the possibilities of working together in non-doctrinal areas, which I think is smart. It’s kind of hard for people to hate each other who have worked together building a Habitat for Humanity house, that kind of team-building concept, which can be applied in pastoral care, in AIDS relief. There are also the life issues, where the Catholic Church has been on the same side with Islam before the U.N. Maybe there are some things like that they can work on together. I think that’s part of their thinking, and that’s all great.

I thought the interview overall was quite interesting and insightful. I’m not happy about everything I read–partly because Ambassador Rooney puts a political spin on a few points, which is what you’d expect from a political appointee–but it’s well worth reading.

GET THE STORY.

Part Two

As promised in my post Overcoming Temptations to RadTradism, here are some more ideas for taming the spiritual fruitchucker in you. (For those of you who may have missed the article that inspired the spiritual fruitchucking metaphor, click here.)

Once again, more suggestions, in no particular order.

Accept that you don’t Know It All. In my original article in this series, Surviving Sunday Mass, I led into this series by recalling the problems at a recent Sunday Mass in my parish. Turns out, not all of the problems that bothered me actually were problems. At least one thing that occurred was a legitimate option. Which goes to show that however well informed you think you are about the Catholic faith, it is possible (indeed, even likely) that you may have some misconceptions. When you become upset at a perceived abuse in the Church, assuming that there is a possibility that you could be mistaken about what the faith requires can spare you a lot of frustration and resentment. And acknowledging that popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, and religious are more likely than you to be better informed about what the faith requires is a simple act of humility.

Don’t rely on hearsay. Awhile back I read a post by a St. Blogger who was fuming because he had stumbled across an online article reporting on an apparently dubious action taken by a province of a religious order in dealing with alleged abusive members in their ranks. In reading the article to which my fellow St. Blogger referred, I too was concerned, but, unlike my fellow St. Blogger, I personally knew a member of that religious order’s province and so I asked him about the story. His explanation of the province’s action threw entirely new light onto the story and made the previously mystifying action reasonable.

The moral of this story is not to try to track down the Other Side Of A News Story. You probably won’t have the kind of contact I did with an insider willing to speak to you “off the record.” You also probably won’t have the time or resources to invest in researching all such stories like that on your own. The take-away lesson here is to be dubious of what you read in the media. Even when a journalist has all of his factual ducks in a row — which is not always the case — he may be unable to obtain comment from all parties to the story. Especially in the case of religious news stories, authorities with a diocese or a religious order may be unwilling to speak to the media — not out of a nefarious desire to cover up truth but because they are unable to comment on a particular case for any number of justifiable reasons. It will be far easier on your spiritual peace to assume that there is a reasonable explanation that could be offered if the circumstances existed in which it could be offered than to allow yourself to become scandalized over every headline you read on the Internet.

Seek out the good. In the comments to Surviving Sunday Mass, some commenters were perplexed over why I should be grateful that my parish has far fewer liturgical abuses than others. The implied concern was that I should instead seek out liturgical perfection and be satisfied with nothing less.

Liturgical perfection is a meritorious goal. No denying that. But when a parish that has had significant problems is making strides toward liturgical orthopraxy to nitpick over the wrinkles that remain rather than appreciate the work that has already been done is uncharitable. It’s one thing to continue to hope for more ironing; it’s another to refuse to be satisfied with nothing less than instant transformation according to your specifications. Sure, if I were a pastor, there would be things that I’d do differently at my parish than are already done. Fortunately for the parish, that’s never going to happen. And fortunately for me too, because then I’d be on the field exposed to “quarterback sacks” rather than calling the plays from the comfort of my armchair.

Appreciate the concept of spiritual fatherhood. A religious order priest once told me the story of how a parish that was staffed by his religious order decided to offer a pre-Vatican-II Latin Mass to their parish. The priests became more and more concerned because RadTrads in the parish were causing problems because they had to share the parish with “Novus Ordo” Masses. Finally, when the RadTrads demanded that only hosts consecrated at the Latin Mass be offered at the Latin Mass — they did not want hosts consecrated at a “Novus Ordo” Mass — the priests had had enough. In short order the pre-Vatican-II Latin Mass was cancelled and the RadTrads were further embittered over what they perceived to be “persecution.”

But look at it from the priests’ viewpoint: They are spiritual fathers charged with developing Christians into spiritually-mature adults. As an analogy, let’s assume that you were a parent and in your home your family had very specific ideas about what they would eat for dessert. Because you love them, you usually try to accommodate the children’s desire for Haagen-Dazs. But one night you run out of Haagen-Dazs and all you could offer was no-frills, off-brand vanilla. What would you do if your children screamed for Haagen-Dazs and refused to be satisfied with the dessert that you offered? If it were me, the children would be lucky to get fruit for dessert that night, and that would probably be the last they’d see of Haagen-Dazs for quite awhile.

This is an imperfect analogy, but the point is this: Sometimes the otherwise inexplicable actions of the Church become more clear when we remember that clergy are not our employees who must be expected to provide us with what we demand but our spiritual fathers who are charged to provide us with what we need — whether or not we want it.

Please feel free to contribute your suggestions to the combox.

Part One

As promised in my post Surviving Sunday Mass, I want to offer suggestions for overcoming temptations to radical Traditionalism. If you too have struggled with temptations to spiritual fruitchucking and have so far triumphed, please feel free to add your suggestions.

First, to deal with a bit of “old business” from the combox for Surviving Sunday Mass:

What is my definition of radical Traditionalism? Unlike a devotion to the ancient Catholic customs and disciplines of the Church, radical Traditionalism is when a Catholic allows himself to become so disillusioned with genuine problems in the Church, such as liturgical abuses, and begins to reject the Church’s authority to regulate the Church’s customs and disciplines. RadTrads are most commonly found attending schismatic and “independent” Catholic chapels, but can also be found filling the pews of indult Tridentine Masses. I must quickly add that not all (or even most) indult attendees are RadTrads — for example, I personally know a number of Traditionalists who can in no way be termed “RadTrad,” who simply prefer the Tridentine liturgy, and who dislike the black eye given the movement by RadTrads. But I can say that the RadTrads are likely to be at least part of the reason many bishops hesitate to expand permission to celebrate the indult Tridentine or to form indult Tridentine parishes.

Another reader said:

"Are you really of the opinion that Catholic Traditionalism is a sin which temptations to must be guarded against, or even a disease for which you must search for a cure or an innoculation?

"Words fail in the face of such condescension."

No, I’m not of that opinion because I believe that a sharp distinction must be made between Catholic Traditionalism (which is a spirituality allowed by the Church) and RadTradism (which is a movement of Catholics who have allowed themselves to become so angry that it has disturbed their spiritual peace). RadTradism is a distortion of genuine Catholic Traditionalism and should not be confused with it. Just as the so-called Spirit of Vatican II is a distortion of the Church since that council, so we might call RadTradism a false Spirit of the Council of Trent.

Now, on to a few of my suggestions, in no particular order.

Don’t church-shop.  Recently, a gentleman contacted Catholic Answers asking if he could register at a parish outside of his diocese because “all of the parishes in his diocese” were allegedly so problematic that he felt could not worship as a Catholic in his own diocese. The only church at which he felt “at home” and “spiritually fed” was in a neighboring diocese. I told him that he was free to register at any Catholic parish he pleased, but I also cautioned him against the church-shopper attitude. Being “at home” in a parish is simply a matter of attending long enough to become part of parish life and Catholics are “spiritually fed” through valid sacraments. Privately, I highly doubted whether he had actually attended “all” of the parishes in his diocese and so could even make such a judgment about his ability to attend them. It was more likely that he was making an over-generalization about his diocese based on an overall impression of the diocese.

Church-shopping can be justified in certain cases, such as when you need to make sure that your children are properly educated in the Catholic faith, or when the problems in the parish completely outweigh any benefit the parish provides. But church-shopping to find a parish that you think will be heaven on earth can lead to RadTradism. Parishes are rarely static — pastors are reassigned, liturgy committees change hands, DREs come and go — and a parish you think will satisfy you could shift toward laxity within a few years. If you too easily throw in the towel and move on, where will your roaming end? For a former cyber-acquaintance of mine who was so disturbed by abuses at parishes he visited in his diocese, his roaming in search of heaven on earth eventually ended in sedevacantism.

Support your priests. A few years ago, a parish in Texas was outraged by the apparently unjust reassignment of the pastor. (I use the qualifier “apparently” because the only information I have on the case was what appeared in the blogosphere.) A member of the parish called Catholic Answers soon after the reassignment, distraught that the majority of the parish’s congregation had left to follow this priest to his new assignment. He was disappointed that the new pastor had adjusted certain traditional practices the previous pastor had adopted, but his main concern was how he could support the new pastor who was facing a terrible situation. This gentleman knew that any new pastor thrust into such a situation would have had a difficult job and he wanted to give this pastor the support he’d have hoped would be there if his own son were a priest facing such a situation. I was mightily impressed with this gentleman’s Catholic spirit. He could have followed the crowd to the new parish, but he felt it important to support the new pastor. And, perhaps because of that, he may have been unwittingly guarding himself against RadTradism.

Get to know your priests and religious. When a priest or religious is just a face on the altar or in the classroom, it is easy to depersonalize them into cogs in a “Vatican apparatus.” When you invite them to a meal, bring them Christmas cookies, get to know them on a person-to-person basis, you are inoculated against a tendency to believe the worst about people with whom you might disagree. One of the reasons I am generally optimistic about the state of the major religious orders is because I’ve met great Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, and even Jesuits. As a Dominican friend once put it, the troubles in the major orders are like a microcosm of the troubles in the universal Church. Being able to think in terms of concrete individuals whom you know and love can keep you from brooding over abstractions like Those Darn Jesuits.

Pray for spiritual peace. Feel free to use my prayer, “Lord, please don’t let me become a spiritual fruitchucker!” But pray for grace to overcome temptation. Without grace any struggle against temptation is futile.

Examine your conscience. Many RadTrads lamented bitterly over John Paul II’s decision to examine the conscience of the human element of the mystical body of Christ and repent of the sins committed by that human element throughout Christian history, rather than implementing their proposed method of dealing with dissent: Kicking butt and taking names. But if we expect God to grant us the grace to overcome the dissent, we must first be willing to repent and seek forgiveness. This is true on the universal level and on the personal level. If your parish disappoints you, first examine your own conscience to see whether you are yourself a part of the problem.

More suggestions to follow later.