Sentire Cum Ecclesia

At the end of Pratchett’s non-discworld novel “Nation”, he suggests that several things included in the book, such as dodging bullets fired into water, gazing into the heavens through a telescope in broad daylight, and firing cannons made of ice, should not be “tried at home” or “attempted without the help of an adult who knows what they are doing”. But on “Thinking”, he has this to say: “This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you.”

I picked up a copy of this book where you never, never find any Pratchett novels: on a remainder book sale table. I’ve just finished it, and, while not his greatest work, it is one that contains much that might be of interest to readers of this blog, because it is essentially about the relationship between science and religion. In that sense, it fits right in with the debate surrounding the new atheism (“Professor Dawkins” even gets a mention at the end). It is, of course, a work of fiction, but as one reviewer put it

This is a book that truly does encourage its readers, of any age, to question the role of religion and rationalism in their lives, rather than hammering them over the head with a prepackaged point of view, a la the His Dark Materials books or, to a somewhat lesser extent, the Narnia series. It rejects easy solutions to the conflict between the two, and embraces the messiness of human attitudes towards both. The present day coda, in which a character who is quite obviously a blatant authorial insertion speaks directly to the readers’ stand-ins, bemusedly notes the resilience of magical thinking even in our rational age, and leaves it to the readers to decide whether this is a good thing.

The “authorial insertion” at the end has this passage (a bit of a spoiler, but never mind):

‘Everything I know makes me believe Imo [the “God” of the novel] is in the order which is inherent, amazingly, in all things, and in the way the universe opens to our questioning. When I see the shining path over the lagoon, on an evening like this, at the end of a good day, I believe.’

‘In Imo?’, said the girl.

This got a smile. ‘Perhaps. I just believe. You know, in things generally. That works, too. Religion is not an exact science. Sometimes, of course, neither is science.’

That fits with the words of the author himself cited in this review in the Telegraph: “I’m drawn to the stance of the old man in this book, who says that if one doesn’t actually believe, one ought at least to live one’s life believingly!”

There is something in that of Pope Benedict’s “veluti si Deus daretur”:

Does not today’s situation of the world make us think perhaps that he [Kant] might have been right? I would like to express it in a different way: The attempt, carried to the extreme, to manage human affairs disdaining God completely leads us increasingly to the edge of the abyss, to man’s ever greater isolation from reality. We must reverse the axiom of the Enlightenment and say: Even one who does not succeed in finding the way of accepting God, should, nevertheless, seek to live and to direct his life “veluti si Deus daretur,” as if God existed. This is the advice Pascal gave to his friends who did not believe. In this way, no one is limited in his freedom, but all our affairs find the support and criterion of which they are in urgent need.

It also recalls for me the recent “Court of the Gentiles” address of Pope Benedict via video to young people in Paris:

Dear young people, what you can share is not only your experience of life, but also your approach to prayer. Believers and non-believers, as you stand in this court of the Unknown, you are also invited to approach the sacred space, to pass through the magnificent portal of Notre Dame and to enter the cathedral for a moment of prayer. For some of you this will be a prayer to a God you already know by faith, but for others it may be a prayer to the Unknown God. Dear young friends who are non-believers, as you join those who pray in Notre Dame on this day of the Annunciation of the Lord, open your hearts to the sacred texts, let yourselves be challenged by the beauty of the music and, if you truly desire it, let your deepest feelings rise towards the Unknown God.

I am happy to have been able to speak to you this evening for the inauguration of the Court of the Gentiles. I hope you will be able to join me for the other events to which I have invited you, especially the World Youth Day to be held in Madrid this coming summer. The God whom believers learn to know invites you to discover him and to find ever greater life in him. Do not be afraid! As you walk together towards a new world, seek the Absolute, seek God, even if for you he is the Unknown God.

I was going to do a separate post on the “Personal Absolute”, as a way of presenting God to secular young people, but I think you will get what I mean by this post. The first step in opening “non-religious” people to a knowledge of God is surely to encourage them to see that even “if one doesn’t actually believe” there is at least merit in deciding “at least to live one’s life believingly!”

In any case, this is a book about “thinking” and both the atheist and the believer will find its a worthwhile read.

As you can see from some of the posts this afternoon, I have been reading Fr Z.’s blog. Here is another good one: Reason #64675 for the new, corrected translation.

At mass lately, I have been using an iphone app (one day I will post a list of the apps I like to use regularly) to read the Latin original of the Novus Ordo as the priest is praying the current English translation. It is indeed an enlightening exercise. The prayer in English is often hardly even a bare-bones reflection of the original. The first thing you will notice with the new translation is that the priest’s prayers are longer than they currently are. That’s because the current translation leaves so much out.

In this post, Fr Z points to the Here is the Post Communion for the 3rd Sunday of Lent (today) in the Ordinary Form. Note that he points out that this is “a new composition for the 1970MR” – ie. it is post-Vatican II NOT pre-Vatican II. Now see how faithful the current ICEL translation is to the Second Vatican Council:

LATIN (2002 Missale Romanum):
Sumentes pignus caelestis arcani,
et in terra positi iam superno pane satiati,
te, Domine, supplices deprecamur,
ut, quod in nobis mysterio geritur, opere impleatur.

WDTPRS SLAVISHLY LITERAL RENDERING:
Taking/eating the down payment of the sacred heavenly mystery,
and, placed on earth having been filled already with bread from on high,
we, kneeling in entreaty, beseech you, O Lord,
that, what is being accomplished in us by the sacramental mystery, may be brought to fulfillment by work.

NEW CORRECTED ICEL VERSION:
As we receive the pledge
of things yet hidden in heaven
and are nourished while still on earth
with the Bread that comes from on high,
we humbly entreat you, O Lord,
that what is being brought about in us in mystery
may come to true completion.

I had to double-check that I had the correct Sunday.

Here goes nothing…

LAME-DUCK ICEL STILL IN USE:
Lord,
in sharing this sacrament
may we receive your forgiveness
and be brought together in unity and peace.

That isn’t a translation. More than that, the English prayer hardly says anything of significance in the current form. It expresses a nice sentiment, but it doesn’t actually get down to what has just happened in the Eucharist we have received. It completely leaves out the phrase “superno pane”, thus impoverishing our understanding of the Eucharist.

I’m sorry, but the current “translation” just doesn’t cut it.

I recently posted a comment by Stephen K. about the true meaning of “Sentire Cum Ecclesia” – the attitude of Mary’s answer to the Angel: “Fiat”.

Now, from Fr Z, comes another example of what “Sentire Cum Ecclesia” means in reality.

“Two hours on my knees and I should never think of it again.”

St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, is known to have said something about how he would accept the suppression of the Jesuits. The quote is something like:

“Two hours on my knees and I should never think of it again.”

Can anyone come up with a citation? Where? When? To whom?

I actually asked a friend of mine who knows a bit about Loyola and he tells me the quote is “Half an hour on my knees and I should never think of it again.”

Note that St Ignatius of Loyola is the same fellow who came up with the motto “Sentire Cum Ecclesia”. His attitude in this remark (which may, according to my friend, be apocryphal or included in one of the early biographies) exemplifies that motto completely. As we all know, the suppression – unjustly – did take place, although St Ignatius did not live to see that sad day.

When I was in the process of becoming a Catholic, some of my friends said to me “You are becoming Catholic because you are attracted to the Church as it is now. But what if a new pope comes who is completely different to John Paul II and does totally different things, like allowing the ordination of women?”

Well, we do now have a new Pope, and he is not “completely different”, and the ordination of women has been definitively ruled out by the Catholic Church’s magisterium, so perhaps that is not a good example to use. The Church will never ordain women to the priesthood. But there could well one day be a pope with whom I do not feel as comfortable as I do with the current encumbant or his predecessor.

But the fact is that whenever and if ever the Church were to do something that I didn’t personally agree with, would I reject the Catholic Church for this reason? My answer would be the same as St Ignatius’: Half an hour on my knees and I should never think of it again. That’s what it means to “Sentire Cum Ecclesia”.

You may remember that I blogged a few months ago about the Cotoneaster tree that they cut down in “my” courtyard outside my office at work.

As a small act of protest, I took one of the branches and stuck it in the ground with a sign reading “RIP Tree”.

Well, you could have knocked us all down with a feather when one of my co-workers pointed out the the “stick” had sprouted! The Tree Lives!

This is the question that Fr Z. asks on this post here. He gives an example of an Apostolic Nuncio who advised a Russian Orthodox seminarian

“You must not become a Catholic. You have to keep your faith in order to better serve your Church. Now you know us you can dream about going to Rome. You can go to Rome one day in order to study but you should remain a Russian Orthodox.”

Fr Z. also cites the case where St Jose Maria Escriva once told a young jewish girl that she would do better to live in obedience to her parents than to seek to become a Catholic against their will.

It is a good question, and, assuming you, dear Reader, are a Catholic, I would be interested in your answer (I can understand a hundred reasons – most of them wrong – why a non-Catholic would want to disuade a person from converting to the “Roman Church”).

I have only ever once advised someone against becoming a Catholic. That “someone” was my eldest daughter about 5 years ago when she expressed an interest. The reason? As I told her then: “That is a good thing to want to do, but if you become a Catholic, you must come to Mass with me every Sunday. That doesn’t mean you can’t keep going to church with Mum at St Paul’s Lutheran Church, but it does mean that you also have to go to Mass each Sunday.” She didn’t pursue the topic then, and hasn’t asked again.

There were several other reasons I had for disuading her:
1) The fact was I didn’t think she was yet old enough yet to make that decision. If she asked again now, I would be more encouraging.
2) I actually think, given how good St Paul’s catechetical and youth programs are, that she has a better chance of being a practicing Catholic when she is 25 if she continues to be a practicing Lutheran now.

In the mean time, I try to teach them the Catholic faith simply and clearly. They come to mass with me on occasion, both go to Catholic schools, and they have learned to pray as Catholics. Over time, my children are beginning to realise the difference between their church and mine – and this will become clearer to them as they continue their catechesis at St Paul’s. But it has to be a decision they make on the basis of real conviction and knowledge of what they are doing.

This may sound like a “I’ll let them decide” sort of parenting which is so prevalent these days in regard to religious upbringing. But the difference is that I am not failing to teach them in the mean time, so that they will have the proper basis upon which to make that decision later in life. I pray that they do, of course!

So, is there any time when you have dissuaded someone from becoming Catholic?

I think the test is: would conversion profit their salvation? I do believe that everyone who truly knows that the Catholic Church is the Church that Christ established and that it is necessary (to be faithful to Christ) to seek to enter into Catholic communion would do wrong to remain outside it. Then they would indeed be endangering their salvation NOT to convert at the earliest possible opportunity.

But in the case of the Orthodox seminary in Fr Z.’s example, I think we need to take into account that the Orthodox Churches are true Churches with true sacraments and so on. That young man could probably do a lot more good for the Catholic Church as an Orthodox priest open to unity with the Catholic Church than as a convert per se. And I am sure that St JME would have happily baptised the jewish girl if her parents had given their permission. I have no doubt that if one of my daughters were (God forbid) to die tomorrow, they would be assured of their salvation also. But when the time comes, when to act against their conscience in this matter would indeed endanger their salvation, I would be the first to say: Convert now!

I am referring to the Cathblog piece this morning by Sr/Dr Mary Coloe fo the Presentation Sisters: “The Jews are not to Blame”.

Dr Coloe is a professor of New Testament at Australian Catholic University. Now, I have had my differences with Dr Coloe over the years (particularly over Pauline stuff), but on this one I think she is quite right. When I first began reading her piece, and saw that she proposed “liturgical changes” to combat any perceived anti-Semitism, I thought “Here we go”, but actually, her suggested changes are minor and reasonable, yet I think will make a big difference.

I once had a phone call from a Jewish woman who had attended mass a mass for a baptism of a friend’s child. It wasn’t Good Friday, but the Gospel was from St John and there were constant mentions of “The Jews”, as is St John’s characteristic way of referring to the Jewish religious leaders. She became quite upset by this, and more upset when the priest, in his preaching, repeatedly used the term “the Jews” as well in the negative sense. Now this was a woman who was quite open to learning about other faiths, and Christianity in particular, but a mental barrier was put up by that experience. It is an unnecessary barrier, if I might say so.

So, to Sr Mary’s suggestions. She avoids completely the old canard about the EF form of the Bidding Prayer, and goes for two small things that would make a big difference to the way in which the Good Friday liturgy is heard by those present:

1) Don’t have the whole congregation take the part of “the Jews” or “the crowd”. This would properly show that “the Jews” were a smaller group (not all) of the Jewish community at the time. (I must say that I have never felt comfortable being asked to shout “Crucify him” during the Good Friday liturgy anyway. I would be interested from Extraordinary Form experts on what the practice is in that liturgy on this point).

2) Where John has “the Jews”, insert instead “the Jewish leaders”. That is completely in accord with the Church’s – and the Pope’s! – interpretation of the meaning “hoi Ioudaioi” at these points.

I don’t think it would be breaking any liturgical rules to do this – please tell me if I am wrong. It is simply a matter of changing a custom and a translation.

On another point, I am thankful for Mary’s piece because she directs readers to the work of Dr Amy-Jill Levine, and in particular her work “The Misunderstood Jew”, which I have just begun reading myself and intended to blog about. I am sorry to say that on all of the several occasions when Dr Levine has been in Melbourne I have missed her talks, because I think that she represents a very helpful point of contact between Jews and Christians.

Levine is a Jewish New Testament scholar. Yes, that’s right! We were talking about her book at the dinner table last night. Maddy got the “joke” immediately: “A Jewish New Testament scholar? The Jews don’t HAVE the New Testament!” I had related to the children the following story from the introduction to “The Misunderstood Jew”:

A friend on the school bus said to me, “You killed our Lord.” “I did not,”, I responded with some indignation. Deicide would be the sort of thing I would have recalled [Levine’s sense of humour is characteristically Jewish!]. “Yes, you did,” the girl insisted, “Our priest said so.” Apparently, she had been taught that “the Jews” were responsible for the death of Jesus. Since I was the only one she knew, I must be guilty. But at the time I did not understand the reasons for the charge or have the means to address it…

When that horrible trip from school was finally over – and thank heaven these were the 1960’s when mommies met their kids at the bus stop – I was in hysterics. Calming me down, my mother learned what had so traumatized me. She assured me that my friend had misspoken. Calls were made, and – to the enormous credit of the local diocese – this hateful teaching was stopped.

But I became obsessed. I initially concluded that the priest had misinterpreted the Bible. It must have been a translation error, I thought, since even in second grade I knew from Hebrew school that it was easy to make a translation error. So I decided I’d learn to read the Christian Bible (no one told me it was in Greek), find the problem, solve it, and then go on to do other things, like learn how to knit or to establish world peace. That was forty-three years ago; I’m still working. The following year, by the way, was the publication of Nostra Aetate, the Vatican document stating that all Jews are not directly responsible for Jesus’ death.

When I told the girls at the dinner table about the accusation that all Jews were guilty of Jesus’ death, Mia looked at me in utter surprise: “People really think that?” she asked. In general, her mystification was similar to mine when I first heard about that, because I was never raised with this idea either. If anyone was responsible for Jesus death, it wasn’t the Jews, or Rome/Pilate either for that matter – it was us and our sins that put hm there (which, incidentally, is the teaching of the 16th Century Catechism of the Council of Trent too).

In any case, it is high time that our liturgical customs and preaching reflected the teaching of the Church, and not this ancient “blood libel”. I think Dr Coloe’s suggestions worth taking on board. Starting this Good Friday. And I recommend Dr Amy-Jill Levine’s work to all readers of this ‘ere blog. It will go nicely with Pope Benedict’s new book for your Lenten reading.

I have been asked many times by Brian Coyne to write a defense of the motto “Sentire Cum Ecclesia”, but have never actually gotten around to it. In the combox on a recent post, I falsely accused Stephen K. of “not appreciating where I am coming from”. I withdraw that accusation, because in a comment he posted there, he demonstrates that he does “get it”. In fact, he expressed the meaning that the motto “Sentire Cum Ecclesia” has for me better than I could have done myself.

He writes:

Please believe me when I say I do understand where you are coming from. You clearly have a sound Christian formation and have now embraced Catholicism “in toto”. You see the Catholic Church as the true church and the only church. [A caveat here: only so long as it is properly understood that what we are speaking of here is “the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church”, and not a denomination. I fully recognise that the Orthodox Churches are “true particular churches”, and that all who have been baptised and believe in Jesus Christ are my brothers and sisters in Christ’s Church, even if they are in imperfect communion with her] and That church is delineated by conformity-to-the-Popes-and-bishops-in-teaching-concert-with-them (as opposed, say, to the SSPX idea of conformity-with-traditions-of-doctrine [the SSPX is not entirely straight on that score either, of course – see Fr Z’s comments in various places on his blog – as they have their own unauthorised take on said Tradition]). Your wish is to love what the Church does and as she does (I deliberately use the feminine pronoun); you wish to understand things as she does; and you wish to give a personal “fiat” in the manner of the Mary of the Angelus and the saints. You see in the Church – the great, vast, aggregate of fallible humans – a spiritual work of a personal God manifest in the God-man Jesus; you take on wholly Paul’s metaphor that the church, in its human imperfection, is a sign and extension of that “scandal”, “folly” and “stumbling block” that was the ignominious death on Calvary. Thus, you can assert that the Church “belongs” to Jesus in a sense that it is his work, and thus his, and you then would conclude that each and everyone professing to act for or in the interests of the Church should only do what is discerned as the heart and mind of Jesus, and that the only way to discern that is to contemplate on and assent to the teachings of its popes and councils.

I could not have expressed it better myself. My attitude towards the Church is indeed that of Mary to the Angel’s message, namely “Fiat” in every way. Just as she received the Angel as a messenger from God, so I receive the Church with the same “docility” (a word beloved of Pope Benedict XVI, and one that I think should be revived in the vocabulary of the Church).

Stephen goes on to say:

[I was once] one of those who once thought what you did, looking out over Rome and feeling enlarged by a sense of the Church-in-history-and-in-the-eschaton, but who now does not see what I perfectly understand you to think you are seeing. The fact that I do not feel this anymore is no impediment to me appreciating the depth of meaning behind “sentire cum ecclesia”.

Well, I find that sad, and I pray that in time Stephen will find his way back to “Sentire Cum Ecclesia” as I have found my way to it.

He also explains the background to his change of mind, which (as I suspect the case may be for many who find it difficult to own the motto “sentire cum ecclesia”) has its roots in some of the nastier realities of “cultural Catholicism”:

My mother only happened to relate to me the other day how, as a child, she once said to her Anglican uncle, who kept a portrait of his beloved departed wife above his bed, that “she isn’t in heaven because she wasn’t a Catholic”(!). And I remember how I, as a confused 5 year old, knocked the vegemite sandwich out of a little boy’s hand, saying “you’re a dirty Public!” (I was suitably roughed up by his older brother who came to his rescue!).

What do these examples of childish Irish-Australian sectarianism have to do with the attempts by an erudite, articulate webmeister [who, not only demonstrates a theological facility and knowledge that appears superior to many of his Catholic table guests but has made an adult and courageous (and rational) decision to convert – something that the cradle Catholics cannot usually boast] to probe and examine a wide range of religious and theological themes?

Why, simply this: the vast number of census Catholics – even those who attend TLMs – have any variety of combination of imprecise or inaccurate notions of what their religion is all about, or the implications of some of the teachings, and I strongly believe that it behoves the erudite to be careful with language that might foster self-satisfaction or superiority.

He ends by saying: “I hope you now appreciate that I do understand you as much as you understand me.”

I do, Stephen, and I apologise for getting you so wrong. Thank you very much for your contribution.

It would seem a commonplace to find someone who gave up beer for Lent. Here’s a completely different take: giving up everything BUT beer. Now why didn’t I think of that? See more about Mr Wilson’s “Beerfast” here.

More of a steady little stream. I am refer to the article in the National Catholic Register by Tim Drake, “The Lutheran Landslide”. Tim is himself a former Lutheran and the editor of the great collection of Lutheran conversion stories, “There we stood, Here we stand”.

Nevertheless, it is a joy to see that the two ex-Lutherans quoted by Drake in his article are aquaintances of mine. Paul Quist I can call a friend, for it was a joy to get to know him and his wife Carol while they were here in Melbourne studying at the John Paul II Institute. It was actually here at St Patrick’s Cathedral that they were received into the Church at Easter about five years ago (if I remember correctly) by Archbishop Hart. Dr Michael Root, the other quoted ex-Lutheran, is a reader and commentator on this ‘ere blog, so we are glad to see him featured too.

Also mentioned is the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church (ALCC) which, by happy chance of the term “Anglo-” in their title seem to be in line to be included in the provisions for Anglicanorum Coetibus. I am happy to count among readers of this blog one of their bishops, Edward Steele, and Deacon Paul Gustafson. We wish them all the best on the journey into full communion with the Bishop of Rome.

And for a ex-protestant who tried the Catholic Church and found it too murky by far, there is this piece by Rod Dreher. Rod writes:

The main reason why Orthodoxy is so attractive to converts, at least to this convert, is its seriousness about sin. I don’t mean that it’s a dour religion – it is very far from that! – but rather that Orthodoxy takes the brokenness of humankind with appropriate seriousness. Orthodoxy is not going to tell you that you’re okay. In fact, it will require you to call yourself, as St. Paul described himself, the “chief of sinners.” And Orthodoxy is going to tell you the Good News: Jesus died and returned to life so that you too might live. But in order to live, you are going to have to die to yourself, over and over again. And that will not be painless, and cannot be, or it’s not real.

Well, that’s as it should be in the Catholic Church too. Converts to the Catholic Church mustn’t forget that the outcome of the Donatist controversy was to affirm the holiness of the Church even and especially when its priests and members fell below the bar. At the same time, we must keep in mind that these converts were brought up in traditions that did take sin seriously. The teaching regarding sin in the Orthodox Church as Dreher describes it is certainly the teaching of the Catholic Church too. Perhaps we need more converts to remind the cradle-Catholics of this fact…

Actually the comments to the NCR article make interesting reading – as they cover a lot of this – if you have the time.

[HT to Tighe for all these links]

Yesterday, while out on the parking lot at the Fete, I listened to EWTN’s “The Good Fight” with Barbara McGuigan. McGuigan is something of an acquired taste. She looks and sounds like an American TV evangelist, but listening to her you soon discover that she is, as the Scots would say, “a canny lassie”. On this particular program, she was interviewing seven women who were participants of the Feminine Genius Conference. The program focused on the various apostolates of the women involved, and their contribution to the life of women in the Church. The program was replete with talk about “Jesus”, “God”, “the Holy Spirit”, “the Blessed Trinity”, “our Blessed Mother”, and deep love for the Church.

It was while listening to this program that I suddenly realised what it was above all else that deeply disturbed me about another radio program I had listened to the day before, this time a local production from the ABC Sunday Nights with John Cleary. In this particular program, Cleary was discussing the Catholic Priesthood Crisis. His guests were (as described on the website):

Bishop Patrick Power, Auxiliary Bishop of Canberra-Goulburn. Chris McGillion and John O’Carroll are the authors of ‘Our Fathers: What Australian Catholic Priests Really Think about their Lives and their Church’, to be released at the end of the month by John Garrett publishing. Peter J. Wilkinson is the author of ‘Catholic Parish Ministry in Australia: Facing Disaster’. We are also joined by Bernice Moore of Women and the Australian Church, one of the groups that supported Peter Wilkinson’s research.

As I said, I found this program deeply disturbing on many counts. But at first I couldn’t work out what exactly the underlying problem was. After comparing it to “The Good Fight”, I now know what it was.

This group – including a bishop and a priest (they were joined later by phone by a Fr Daniel Donovan from Sydney) – spoke for almost 50 minutes on radio about the challenges and crises facing the priesthood in “the Australian Church”. They did so without ever once mentioning the name of Jesus Christ. Not once.

Unfortunately, there is no transcript of this program on the ABC website. In a moment, I will give the basic gist of the conversation from a rough transcript I did last night on my second listening to the program to check out if my memory had served me correctly. It had. I am now able to articulate the main reasons why this program was so disturbing for me:

1) there is not one mention of Jesus Christ in the whole segment

2) God only gets a mention in the phrase “people of God”

3) the mass is only mentioned as something that people attend, or that “sister can do better than father”

4) no mention of prayer in the face of the crisis (particularly disturbing given our Lord’s direction to “pray the Lord of the harvest”)

5) again, the issue ends with “ownership of the church” – the “people” or the Pope? Just two options. Both wrong.

6) a strong belief that the church and priesthood at human creations and institutions: “we made them, we can unmake them; no need that the future must be like the past”.

7) recognition of a crisis in the church and the need for accountability, but a rejection of an outside assessment of the cause of the crisis, namely the 1998 Statement of Conclusions,

8) cry over the lack of priests, but a rejection of increased priestly vocations as the answer, suggesting rather “human” solutions such as married priests, re-instituting ex-priests, and women priests.

9) and finally a rejection of the current seminarians and new priests as being “the wrong sort”, with accusations of “clericalism”, etc.

All the commentators on the program and the interviewer himself (it always disturbs me how much John Cleary puts his own opinions into the subject of his interviews) seemed to be under the impression that the pope and bishops currently “own the church”. Their solution to the crisis therefore is a call to a revolution so that “the people” take “possession” of the church, even of the role of priests.

It is often said of Conservative Catholics that they are far too fixated with the institutional elements of the Church. Oddly, however, it appears that it is precisely liberal Catholics who have a view of the church which is entirely “institutional”. In complete contrast to Barbara McGuigan’s program, there appears to be no awareness that the Church is a sacred and spiritual community, which relies for its life upon the Triune God, and which exists to give him praise and glory by proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ.

In contrast, I am able to make “Sentire Cum Ecclesia” my motto precisely because I believe that to do so is to follow the motto “Sentire cum Christo”. As McGuigan said towards the end of her program, “it’s all about Jesus”.

Which leads me to wonder, although I don’t normally use such language, whether the guests on the ABC’s Sunday Night program couldn’t do with a decent “Baptism in the Holy Spirit”? A dose of talking in tongues would perhaps remind them of the mysterious force of the Holy Spirit. A “personal relationship with Jesus” (another term I do not usually use) might perhaps inflame their hearts to the proclamation of his saving gospel. In short I wonder, whether the real crisis in the Church is not perhaps a crisis of conversion.

As I said, there is no transcript of the ABC Sunday Night’s program “Catholic Priesthood Crisis” on their website. In case you haven’t got 50 min to listen to the whole program, I have placed my notes on the discussion here. Please leave all comments, however, here on this post.