Sentire Cum Ecclesia

Monsignor (soon to be Cardinal) Walter Brandmueller

Among the new cardinals announced by Pope Benedict XVI for the November 24 consistory is a priest who is over 80 (and therefore not entitled to vote in a papal election), Monsignor Walter Brandmüller, former president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences. This cannot be seen as anything other than a papal approval for Mons. Brandmuller’s historical work. I have read his book “Lights and Shadows: Church History among faith, facts and legend”, and can highly recommend it.

I have been a little dismayed in the last 24 hours listening to the angry words of Woodside residents in South Australia reacting to the Federal Government’s announcement that disused military accomodation in the Adelaide Hills will be used as an on-shore assylum seeker detention and processing centre. I have been listening to the radio news, and haven’t found a lot of it in the print media, but you could see here, here and here for more information.

I can understand the Woodsiders’ frustration at lack of consultation. Apparently Julia Gillard was in Woodside recently, and entirely failed to mention any plans for the establishment of the centre. I can understand parents concerns that the children of the assylum seekers will be sent to the local schools. This isn’t an issue of racism, but an issue about a school system already overstretched. The local community is entitled to ask about extra funding and expansion of the schools to take an additional 200 students with very special needs. And I can also understand members of the community being angry about the fact that 10 million dollars will be spent on the centre, including 24/7 medical and dental services – when similar services for the locals exist only in their dreams.

All this I can understand, and all this reflects badly on the Federal government. But I have been deeply saddened to hear, in much of the rhetoric eminating from the public meeting at Woodside, such ugly words directed against the assylum seekers themselves. I had not thought that the “stop the boats” slogans had been quite so effective. I hope that the Christian community of Woodside and their pastors will be able to lead the community in general into a more welcoming embrace of the stranger.

My friend Paul Taylor drew my attention to this page from the US National Association of Pastoral Musicians.

Here you can listen to the singing of the chants for the new English missal (unfortunately, no Credo). A great learning resource!

There is a breathtaking article in the Herald Sun today. Here it is with [my comments]:

No shame in aborting unborn life
Susie O’Brien
From: Herald Sun October 19, 2010

CHOOSING to terminate a pregnancy is better than ending up as a bad mother who hurts or neglects her kids. It’s time we realise that having an abortion doesn’t mean you don’t care about the unborn life you are carrying. [That’s the thesis. Now for the rationale, such as it is.]

Women abort potential babies because they would prefer not to be a mother at all, rather than be an inadequate parent. It’s not that they don’t care about the unborn child, it’s because they care so much. That is the startling finding that emerges from groundbreaking new Victorian research. [They learnt this from “research”?]

In the aftermath of the Queensland case that saw two young people put on trial for taking legally available medication to terminate a pregnancy, it’s time to reassert the rights of women who choose to have an abortion. [Is it? Remember the thing about rights: if someone has an authentic right, we have an absolute duty to provide it.]

Although Tegan Leach, 21, and her boyfriend, Sergie Brennan, 22, were acquitted, thousands of women are still made to feel like criminals because they choose to terminate a pregnancy. [Note the importance of feelings, note too the equation in this article between legal and moral/ethical.]

However, a startling new Melbourne study lifts the veil of secrecy on this issue, uncovering both the complex decision-making women go through, and the guilt and judgments they have to endure from doctors and others. [“guilt and judgements” – the true crime]

There is still a feeling in society that a woman who has an abortion is blithely ending the life of another potential human being. [Again, “there is a FEELING”. I don’t know whether the person who performs an abortion is doing it “blithely” or not, but the reality that a real (not only “potential”) human life is being ended has nothing to do with “feelings”.]

It’s said she’s selfishly putting herself before the needs of her unborn baby, or just using abortion as a form of contraception. [That may or may not be the case. The motives may be many.]

Let’s face it, lots of people have had abortions, but would never talk about it, and can find it hard even using the A word. Some hide their experience as a shameful secret from their loved ones for years. [Let’s face it, lot’s of people do it, so it must be okay, yeah?]

There are even still lines of people placarding abortion clinics, willing to call her a baby killer to her face. [“Even still”? In this day and age…]

And let’s not forget that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott in the past has condemned the abortion rate, saying that he was concerned about an “abortion epidemic” and doesn’t “much like abortion, full stop”. [No, don’t forget him. How dare he!]

Now I don’t think anyone should be celebrating their abortion, or shouting it from the rooftops, but women shouldn’t feel bad about pursuing a courageous, legal course of action. [If it is “courageous”, it should be “celebrated”, no? But just because it is “legal” doesn’t make it moral.]

Yes, it is a big, important, life-changing event that should be taken seriously – but let’s get off the guilt-trip. [Because after all, guilt is the real bad here, not the killing of an unborn human being.]

In the only study of its kind in recent years, researchers spoke to a group of 60 Victorian women aged 16 to 38 who rang a Royal Women’s Hospital pregnancy advice service for help about their reasons for considering an abortion. The research team was led by Dr Maggie Kirkman from the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Women’s Health and Society.

The group was hand-picked [so not random, huh?]to include women who were 16-18 years old, rural wome, and women who had rung the advice service in their second trimester (12 to 18 weeks). All but five went on to have an abortion.

Women in this position – and, yes, this includes me ( I have written previously about the fact that I had an abortion 20 years ago) [Right. So may we be excused for thinking that this article is some attempt to come off your own guilt-trip? A sort of “Oprah” confession? You want we should cheer you?]– were thoughtful and painstaking in their deliberations.

In making their decision, they assessed their capacity to be a good mother and provide for their child. They also took into account their relationships and the role of the father and the impact on other children. Many of the women had multiple reasons, and went through a complex process of making a decision, and weighing up the options. As one teen, Prue, said, she thought it was better to have an abortion than be a bad mother. [Because, like, you know, its better to just put an end to thier lives here and now, rather than have us all suffer later, you know?]

It might sound counter-intuitive, but it actually makes perfect sense. [???!!!!????]

We also shouldn’t harshly judge those seeking abortions in their second trimester. [No, you are right, we shouldn’t judge anyone (not the least because that might make the guilty actually FEEL guilty). Judge not and you will not be judged and all that. But we can point out faulty thinking and bad rationalisations and wrong reasons and evil actions. Love the sinner, hate the sin.]

One woman interviewed, Abigail, didn’t realise she was pregnant until this time, and decided to have an abortion because she had been drinking heavily and feared for the foetus’s health. [How curious. A kind of prenatal euthanasia…]

“You know, you don’t just have a child because you can,” she told researchers. [Um…?]

But it’s still not easy, and I think it’s important to acknowledge this. Out of the 60 women, only three made the decision quickly or with any ease. [You’re right. You actually have to work very, very hard to convince yourself that a really, really bad idea is a good one. And you won’t feel good about it, because you like me and everyone else actually have a conscience which tells you not to do what is wrong, but to do what is right. And you are trying to make these young girls feel better by simply telling them “It’s not wrong” in the first place.]

In her paper, published in the November edition of the international Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare Journal, Dr Kirkman reports that women still feel stigmatised by doctors and others “both for being inappropriately pregnant and for terminating the pregnancy”. [So, how can we help people to be “appropriately” pregnant and KEEP the child?]

Now, around 80,000 women claim Medicare rebates for abortions in Australia each year, with about one in five women terminating a pregnancy at some point in their lives.

As I say, it’s not really a cause for celebration, but neither is it a cause for great shame or sadness. [You are right, it isn’t a case for celebration, because it is a tragedy. But unless you acknoweldge what a tragedy it is, if you want to cover it up and call it “courageous” and “smart”, then why not celebrate it? I will tell you why. Because you have a conscience which can’t quite get over the fact that there is indeed something wrong with abortion.]

There are so many parents out there making bad decisions or hurting their kids – ranging from the woman who drove kids home in the boot, to Robert Farquarson, to the South Australian parents who starved their kids then made them beg for dog food. [All of these are horrific, but than God, rare occurences. The occurence of child abuse in the community is high, but no where near as high as the abortion rate. The parenting instinct kicks in for most parents. In the mean time, this argument amounts to “We’ll hurt them now so we don’t hurt them later”.]

So it doesn’t make sense to harshly judge those who make a positive decision that they are not ready to be parents. [They should have thought about this before they had the sexual intercourse that resulted in them being parents. Once the conception takes place, bingo: you’re parent. If you fail to care for the child in the womb, you are no morally better than one who doesn’t care for the child after birth.]

Isn’t it better to end the pregnancy than be a parent when you know you are not ready for it? [You want it short and sweet sister? The answer is NO.]

Cartoon by Bruce Petty, The Age, 18/10/2010

The above cartoon did cause a little chuckle, I must admit… (Note the nuns in brown habits frolicking outside the window).

Saints really are “good news stories”, and Saint Mary has been one for the Church in Australia. But I must admit that if I hear one more person say that she is “a saint for all Australias” or that she “belongs to Australia”, I will… well, I don’t don’t know what I will do. Probably just groan and put up with it. The fact is that Saint Mary is who she is, and belongs to Who she belongs to. When she chose her new name in religious life, she didn’t choose “Sister Mary of All Australia” or “Sister Mary of the Battler” or anything like that. She chose “Sister Mary of the Cross”.

The Cross. That “emblem of suff’ring and shame” as the old song has it. Why has there been so little focus on this in recent days? Have we been ashamed of the Cross? The very least that could have been said is about how she bore her own “crosses” in her life – but for Saint Mary “the Cross” was the Cross on which the Sacred Heart was pierced (remember the full name of her order, and the fact that Fr Woods was a Passionist and you will get a good clue to all this). The Cross which proclaims the salvation which is in Jesus Christ and in no other. So very little commentary surrounding the canonisation has mentioned Jesus Christ. That isn’t the fault of Catholic doctrine, nor is it the fault of Mary, but it might just be the fault of those who are hungry for a good news story and an “Australian hero”, rather than for an opportunity for evangelisation.

All sorts of people are wanting to co-opt her at the moment. There is the suggestion in today’s Age (from a Jesuit at America Magazine no less) that she become the patron saint of those who have been abused. Well, maybe. But I’m not particularly sure what makes Saint Mary of the Cross any more suitable for that job than any other saint. I would have thought that Saint Maria Goretti would have been the most likely candidate for that portfolio.

Then there is all this business of miracles and prayers. Someone asked me at my class tonight: how do the saints know we are asking them to pray for us? Do they watch over us? Are they omnipresent and omniscient like God? As far as I know, the answer to the last question is “no”. The saints “hear” our “prayers” (technically our “requests for their intercession” – Catholics may “pray” to the saints, but they never offer “intercessions” to anyone but God) spiritually, as an outcome of their complete communion with God in Jesus Christ. They, like us, are in the one communion in Jesus Christ – a communion which not even death can sever (Romans 8). Christ is not simply the mediator between the saints and God, it is his Spirit that joins all the saints, living and departed, into a single communion of love, such that he is the connecting point between the saints themselves. It is in this communion of charity in Christ that the saints “hear” our requests for their intercession. This is an area of theological reflection that deserves a great deal more reflection.

Which brings us back to Mother Mary. Mary was once an Australian. Whatever else we may retain of our personality in heaven, the one thing I am pretty sure we will not retain is “ethnicity” in the sense of nationalistic or racial distinction from one another. The Virgin Mary and the Apostles were once all Jews, Newman was an Englishman, Padre Pio was an Italian. Now they are all fully and simply “human”. Mary too is a saint for the universal Church. She belongs to the Cross of Christ, not to Australia. Surely that is what St Paul was on about in Galatians 3 when he said that there is now “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female”? It is what Mary is now, more than what she was then, which is important.

On the Compass coverage of the canonisation last night, Geraldine Doogue interviewed the Secretary of the Bishops Conference, Fr Brian Lucas. He insisted that Mary was “a woman of the Church” and could not in anyway be painted as “a rebel”. Needless to say, Geraldine just about choked on this assertion and begged to differ. Fr Lucas, however, wasn’t having any of it.

My friend, Andrew Rabel, filed a report for “Inside the Vatican Newsflash” (my link for this isn’t working – sorry). Here’s some of what he wrote:

With the news that Australia was to have its first saint canonized on October 17, the normally secular country has erupted with joy. But it seems that many are more interested in a false conception of Mary, and perhaps this is a reflection of attitudes that have prevailed following the Second Vatican Council.

For instance, looking on the website romancatholicwomenpriests.org, a blog by Bridget Mary says, “Pope Benedict will canonize Mother Mary MacKillop, an excommunicated nun. Perhaps, this Pope is offering hope to the many thousands of Catholics who have been excommunicated, including women priests. Excommunication is not a barrier to canonization.”
Yes, but Mary Mackillop’s excommunication was lifted a few months later by the very bishop who performed the sentence, realizing he had been badly advised.

Following the tensions that came in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, there has been the tendency for different factions in the Church to use a person like Mary MacKillop to bolster their own cause.

…Mary MacKillop was far from being a rebel. She was a woman of deep fidelity and loyalty to the Catholic Church. …In 1873 when MacKillop met Blessed Pius IX at the Vatican, in an attempt to gain approval of her order by the Holy See, she recognized her lowliness in having been excommunicated (albeit falsely) and said that meeting the Holy Father was a day that was worth years of suffering.

…Unfortunately, people today who resist Church authority in matters like women’s ordination or contraception etc …use Mary MacKillop as an example to justify these actions. They say “She was disobedient and payed the price for that. Now the Church has made her a saint because of this”.

For starters, Mary MacKillop founded her order of nuns to teach the Catholic faith to the poor children of Australia. She knew that in this emerging waspish country the faith was under attack by people of influence who wanted secular education only. Her resistance to Bishop Sheil’s edict had nothing to with disobedience, as such. She had made religious vows to live her life in a certain manner, with the principle of self-government that he had agreed to. Suddenly when things had not gone to his liking, he had no authority to tell Mary to conduct her community differently, and this was the advice she had been given by her Jesuit confessors who had been trained in canon law. Bishop Sheil had limited knowledge of these areas.

The Holy See approved the rule, with a few modifications, but most importantly they gave approval to her principle of self-government, and they were to be supervised directly by the Holy See. Later on the successive bishop of Adelaide, Christopher Reynolds still tried to get the Sisters to follow him and when they wouldn’t, banished Mary to Sydney. Fr Paul Gardiner SJ, a postulator of the Cause, always regarded this episode as worse than her excommunication, as it involved outright calumny. (A nun who falsely accused Mary to the bishop of being a drunkard, because of the brandy she was taking to deal with painful periods!) Bishop Reynolds had no right to do this, as the Rule now approved by Rome, stated they were not under the authority of the local bishop.

…But when all is said and done, the key to understanding Mary MacKillop is that she was a person of holiness. …Yes the canonization of Mary MacKillop is very sorely needed, because we don’t need another sports star or celebrity. We need a saint.

Saint Mary was a “rebel” only in the sense that she was determined to be faithful to her vocation and to live faithfully according to the call of Christ despite the obstacles of many sinful people both inside and outside the Church. At no time was she ever a “rebel” against Christ’s holy Church. Those who try to coopt her to any movement of dissent in the Church are horribly abusing the memory and example of this holy woman.

Here’s a bit of fun with a serious point to it, which I picked up on my iGoogle media alerts. Danielle Bean, a Catholic author and mother of eight, is editorial director of Faith & Family magazine and Faith & Family Live, and she has written a blog post at the Washington Post entitled “Catholicism’s scandal of ignorance”. She refers to an online quiz by Pew Forum in the US. The quiz is described as follows:

How much do you know about religion?
And how do you compare with the average American? Here’s your chance to find out. Take our short, 15-question quiz, and see how you do in comparison with 3,412 randomly sampled adults who were asked these and other questions in the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey. This national poll was conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life from May 19 through June 6, 2010, on landlines and cell phones, in English and Spanish. When you finish the quiz, you will be able to compare your knowledge of religion with participants in the national telephone poll. You can see how you compare with the overall population as well as with people of various religious traditions, people who attend worship services frequently or less often, men and women, and college graduates as well as those who did not attend college.
For a full analysis of the findings of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, read the full report.

Okay, I thought, I’m game. there are 15 questions, including two US legal questions that are not hard to guess the answer to – IF you know something about the State as well as “religion”! I actually scored 100% – 15 out of 15 – putting me in the top 99% of the population (remember that the public in this case is the American public…)

There is a full analysis here of the results of the Pew Forum survey (not the online play one, but the real one). But as Danielle Bean points out, the really terrifying thing is the way practicing Catholics have answered the question regarding the doctrine of the Eucharist. This page gives a complete breakdown of the way the real survey respondents answered the 15 questions in the online survey. In regard to the question 6 (“6. Which of the following best describes the Catholic teaching about the bread and wine used for Communion? •The bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. •The bread and wine are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”) we are told that only 40% of the American population answered correctly. Only actual Catholics answered the question correctly at a level significantly higher than this average, but even that was only 59% for “white Catholics” and 47% for “hispanic Catholics”. The doctrine of transubstantiation is a defining doctrine of Catholicism. With Mrs Bean, I agree that the fact that less than two thirds of American Catholics are aware of this is a little troubling at least. Mrs Bean writes:

For me, the saddest part of the Pew Forum survey results is the abysmal ignorance of many Catholics with regard to the tenets of their own faith. Specifically, the fact that “45% of Catholics do not know that their church teaches that the bread and the wine become the body and blood of Christ” is a scandal.

This is especially pathetic because the Eucharist — Christ’s real presence under the appearance of bread and wine — is one of the primary ways in which the Catholic Church differs from Protestant churches. Many converts to Catholicism, especially well studied ones, will tell you that it was the sacraments, and specifically the Eucharist, that drew them to the Catholic Church in the first place. God built us for union with him. We long for Christ, and it is in the sacraments that we find that union.

One of the enduring effects of the sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic Church is that it is now definitively “not cool” to be Catholic. I don’t know who the people were that responded to the Pew Forum survey, but every week I grow in confidence that those who fill the pews around me at Sunday Mass are there because they true believers.

Week after week, we come because we believe that Church is more than a social institution and a product of our times. Even if it has become a social scarlet letter, we need Jesus Christ, and we know where we will find him: In the Catholic Church. In the flesh.

Well said. There is an interesting reflection on the Pew Forum’s pages:

Factors in Religious Knowledge

What factors seem to contribute to religious knowledge? Data from the survey indicate that educational attainment – how much schooling an individual has completed – is the single best predictor of religious knowledge. College graduates get nearly eight more questions right on average than do people with a high school education or less. Having taken a religion course in college is also strongly associated with higher religious knowledge.

Other factors linked with religious knowledge include reading Scripture at least once a week and talking about religion with friends and family. People who say they frequently talk about religion with friends and family get an average of roughly two more questions right than those who say they rarely or never discuss religion. People with the highest levels of religious commitment – those who say that they attend worship services at least once a week and that religion is very important in their lives – generally demonstrate higher levels of religious knowledge than those with medium or low religious commitment. Having regularly attended religious education classes or participated in a youth group as a child adds more than two questions to the average number answered correctly, compared with those who seldom or never participated in such activities. And those who attended private school score more than two questions better on average than those who attended public school when they were growing up. Interestingly, however, those who attended a private religious school score no better than those who attended a private nonreligious school.

In other words, education, education, education. If there is one thing that the canonisation of Saint Mary of the Cross should remind us, it is of the importance of education in the faith.

Pastor Weedon sent me this link to a post on his blog about a pastors conference he attended with a couple of very good speakers, Rev. William Cwirla (“The Art of Dying”) and Prof. Jeff Gibbs (“Resurrection”). The topic certainly gets to the heart of the matter.

In his email to me, Pastor William rightly noted my fondness for N.T. Wright (mind you, I don’t think Wright fully grasps what Ratzinger was saying in his book “Eschatology” on a number of points). He writes:

I remember in a Wrightish way you objected to the line “mount triumphant to the skies.” [In the German funeral hymn “This body in the grave we lay”] After this presentation, checked out the German and it is not there. Rather, simply raised again in incorruption! Wright would likely be happy with that, no?

Indeed! Schütz too!

There are a number of issues that Pastor Weedon reports on that some may find suprising, for instance, prayer for the dead in Lutheranism.

The substitution of the meta-narrative that has prevailed through so much of Christianity – where “heaven” is the goal and death is just the gateway to heaven, and can stop the story without reckoning with the Appearing of our Lord and the joy of resurrection on that day – is perhaps the main culprit in the loss of prayer for the dead among us. We forget that the dead await the Resurrection – and the martyrs under the altar impatiently! “How long, O Lord?”

One of the strengths of Lutheran theology (and Anglican also, as in the case of Tom Wright), is that its best practicioners are strongly aware of the necessity of constantly callibrating their theology with the New Testament. Catholic theologians also, at their best, are aware of this necessity. As Tom Wright so brilliantly demonstrates, there are always new possibilities, fresh insights, thrown up by this process. Catholic theologians have the additional task of calibrating their theology to the ongoing tradition as well. This is a challenge all of its own, but no less capable of fruitful outcomes. Hence my comment earlier about Wright not being as successful as Ratzinger in grasping some of the authentic New Testament perspectives that actually were preserved in the on-going tradition.

Thanks, in any case, for this report, Pastor Weedon.

Well, it is raining buckets here in Melbourne, the birthplace of (very soon to be) Saint Mary of the Cross (aka Mary MacKillop). God must be very confused at the moment: for years we have been praying for rain, but not a few are now praying for fine weather for Sunday’s festivities (see here for full details).

The Catholic Weekly (Sydney) has this picture in their 17 October edition:

At first I thought “Isn’t that nice? Some Sisters of St Joseph have decided to celebrate the canonisation of their founder by donning the habit that she gave them to identify them and their mission.”

Silly me. The youthfulness of the “sisters” should have been a dead give-away. (In the early years of the order, most of the members were under 30, and in fact many of them under 21. Not anymore.) In fact these “sisters” are the cast of the Mary MacKillop musical stage production, on an outing on the “Mary MacKillop” ferry in Sydney Harbour. You must agree though, that their happy smiling faces and the instant “brand” recognisability of the habit are a good advertisment for more than just the musical. (BTW, did you pick up in the Compass program on Sunday the business about the “Black-” and “Brown-Joeys” working to bury the hatchet on their ancient division – with the consideration that perhaps they might now call themselves the “Green Joeys”? Thankfully that idea went in the waste paper basket.)

Still, wouldn’t it be a nice thing if on Sunday all Josephite sisters were to dust off the old habits and don them in honour of the canonisation of their founder?

Fr John has written in to make us aware of his new book, Dignitas Personae Explained:

Dear Friends

My new book is now available for pre-order at http://www.connorcourt.com/catalog1/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=7&products_id=149

The book deals with the Church’s teaching on reproductive technology and related issues. It is aimed at the intelligent layperson. [ie. all readers of Sentire Cum Ecclesia! – David]

I would be grateful if you would spread the news. It will be particularly useful to priests, doctors, nurses, students, and teachers both at High School and University/College.

Fr John