Sentire Cum Ecclesia

Dear Friends

You are invited to an important book launch of  A NEW WINE & FRESH SKINS: Ecclesial Movements in the Church, writeen by Bishop Julian Porteous

Tuesday,
7 September
4.30pm until 6pm

Australian Catholic University campus,
St. Patrick’s Campus,
115 Victoria Parade, Fitzroy

To be launched by Steve Lawrence, Director, Identity & Mission,
Australian Catholic University, Melbourne,

Rsvp – anthony@connorcourt.com

Information about the book click here.

Well, here’s a novel attempt at negative politics: Public-Commentator-For-Ever Mr Paul Collins, writing in Eureka Street (“Abbott and Santamaria’s undemocratic Catholicism”), attempts to conjure up the ancient spectre of B.A. Santamaria to discredit our Opposition Leader (and aspiring PM) Tony Abbott.

As Gerard Henderson’s reply to this article (“Defending Abott and Santamaria”) shows, there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors involved in Collins’ argument.

Basically, it goes like this:

1) Mr Abbott is a self-declared disciple of B.A. Santamaria
2) B.A. Santamaria was an “integralist”
3) “Integralism” was an authoritarian political ideology that sought to impose a narrow interpretation of Catholicism upon citizens’ freedom of conscience
4) It was therefore just like Italian Fascism
5) SO: VOTING FOR TONY ABBOTT WOULD BE LIKE VOTING FOR CATHOLIC FASCISM!

Umm… As the Bard wrote: “Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence!” (The Scottish Play: Act 3, Scene 4)

[Post Script: Actually, the funniest bit in Collins’ piece is the very last paragraph, where he writes:

I am not claiming that Abbott consciously follows Santamaria’s integralism. But there is always the danger of osmosis, of absorbing attitudes without realising it. If I were a politician — or an archbishop — I’d want to put considerable distance between myself and the most divisive man in the history of Australian Catholicism.

Perhaps Mr Collins thinks that Mr Abbott has been sleeping with a copy of the works of B.A. Santamaria under his pillow!]

I highlighted a little while back our Tracey’s article on Pope Benedict in The Tablet. Well, this time they have Eamon Duffy (he of “The Stripping of the Altars” fame) writing on Pope Benedict’s attitude toward the liturgy.

Much of it is purely descriptive, rather than evaluative, such as this paragraph:

Clearly, these opinions place the Pope as a theologian at right angles to a good deal that is most characteristic of the post-conciliar liturgy. We now have a Pope profoundly unhappy about much of what goes on in our parish churches Sunday by Sunday. In his view, the liturgy is meant to still and calm human activity, to allow God to be God, to quiet our chatter in favour of attention to the Word of God and in adoration and communion with the self-gift of the Word incarnate. The call for active participation and instant accessibility seem to him to have dumbed down the mystery we celebrate, and left us with a banal inadequate language (and music) of prayer. The “active participation” in the liturgy for which Vatican II called, he argues, emphatically does not mean participation in many acts. Rather, it means a deeper entry by everyone present into the one great action of the liturgy, its only real action, which is Christ’s self-giving on the Cross. For Ratzinger we can best enter into the action of the Mass by a recollected silence, and by traditional gestures of self-offering and adoration – the Sign of the Cross, folded hands, reverent kneeling.

In this passage, one gets the feeling (from the way Duffy has worded the passage) that he agrees with Ratzinger on this emphasis.

Only at the very end do we get a slight attempt at an evaluation of Pope Benedict’s liturgical path:

It is Pope Benedict’s hope that the free celebration of the old Mass will help reconcile to the wider Church many of those who view Vatican II with deep suspicion. It is possible, however, to sympathise with many of the Pope’s liturgical instincts and preferences, while fearing that his gesture, and the manner of its making, will be read by many as a sign of his own reservations about the work of the Council, and thereby help entrench such reservations at the heart of the Church’s worship.

Marcu Grodi often talks about the “Verses I never Saw” in Scripture when he was a protestant. I could make my own list, and if I did, I would have to include a passage that Fr John Fleming referred to in a homily on the weekend.

Fr John was preaching at a solem mass for the celebration of the silver anniversary of ordination of a good friend of mine, and his topic was naturally the priesthood (although, of course, being the the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, this also was included in the homily). He used a number of biblical passages to illustrate the doctrine of the priesthood. I can’t just for now remember all of them, but one of them was 2 Corinthians 2:10.

In the RSV, this passage reads:

“10 Any one whom you forgive, I also forgive. What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, 11 to keep Satan from gaining the advantage over us; for we are not ignorant of his designs.”

Naturally, therefore, without consulting the Greek text, this verse would not necessarily leap out at one as being about the priesthood. But Fr John pointed out that that Greek text says that St Paul forgave sins “en prosopo Christou”.

“Prosopon” in Greek literally means “face”. In the Trinitarian debates of the 4th Century, the Greeks used it to translate Tertullian’s use of the latin term “persona” for what we now commonly refer to as “the Persons” of the Holy Trinity. Working the other way, when Jerome translated made his new Latin translation of the bible, he used “persona” to translate “prosopon” in 2 Corinthians 2:10, thus making the text read:

“10 cui autem aliquid donatis et ego nam et ego quod donavi si quid donavi propter vos in persona Christi 11 ut non circumveniamur a Satana non enim ignoramus cogitationes eius”

. In English translations, both the Douay-Rheims and the King James Bible follow suit in translating “en prosopo Christou” as “in the person of Christ.”

As you can see, this certainly lends strong support to the Catholic doctrine of the priesthood (cf. CCC p1548 quoting 24 Pius XII, Mediator Dei: “Now the minister, by reason of the sacerdotal consecration which he has received, is truly made like to the high priest and possesses the authority to act in the power and place of the person of Christ himself (virtute ac persona ipsius Christi).)

However, let us just pause for a moment and ask: did Paul mean what we mean today when we say “in persona Christi”? You might well ask “Who can tell?”, but we have more to go on than that. One interesting fact to note is that our modern use of the word “person” derives directly from the use of that latin word during the Trinitarian controversies of the 4th Century previously alluded to. Before those discussions, “persona” literally meant “a mask”; it was a word that came out of the dramatic arts, where actors used masks of the “faces” of the characters they were depicting.

This means that in the original pre-4th Century use, the latin “persona” meant roughly the same as the Greek “prosopon”, namely “face”. I don’t know of any English translation of 2 Cor 2:10 that speaks of Paul forgiving sins “in the face of Christ”, but this is literally what is meant by the passage. In Hebrew, the very common phrase “lipne adonai” literally meant to be “in the face of the Lord”, that is, in his presence (as in Psalm 95:6 – where Jerome translates “ante faciem Domini”). It seemeth to this humble commentator that Paul is using the exact same Hebraism translated into Greek: “in the face of Christ” meaning “before his face” or “in his presence” – hence the RSV translation and that of most modern English bibles, Catholic and Protestant. (Nb. the one thing mitigating against this argument is that the Greek Septuagint usually translates “lipne adonai” as “enantion kuriou”/”over against or opposite the Lord” rather than the literal “en prosopo kyriou”). Interesting that Martin Luther (himself an OT and Hebrew scholar) translated the passage as “es vergeben um euretwillen vor Christi Angesicht“, which is literally “before the face of Christ”.

What is the upshot of all this? It is interesting that Jerome does not use the noun “persona” anywhere else in his translation of the New Testament (and only incidentally in three places in the Old Testment). I believe that by translating “prosopon” as “persona” he was very deliberately using the new meaning that the word “prosopon” had aquired in the previous century – but which it did not have prior to this nor in the time of St Paul. (Unfortunately I don’t have available to me any text of the Vetus Latina used prior to the Vulgate. It would be enlightening to see how 2 Cor 2:10 was translated there.)

Does that mean that Fr Fleming was wrong in his exegesis of this passage in relation to the priesthood? No, not at all – for the doctrine is still very much there even if we translate the phrase “in the presence of Christ”. For to claim to forgive sins “in the face of Christ” certainly carries the objective meaning that Paul believed himself to be forgiving sins with the full authority of Christ and acting in Christ’s stead. It is the equivalent of Jesus’ own promise to St Peter that “whatsoever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven”, ie. if you forgive someone’s sins on earth, they will be loosed in the presence of God as well. What we see in Jerome’s translation, and in the later western understanding of this text in general (and it is worth noting that in his homilies on 2 Corinthians, the Eastern Church father, St John Chrysostom does not give the phrase “en prosopo Christou” the weight of “in persona Christi”), is a legitimate plumbing of the depths of Paul’s statement within the life of the Church and under the guidance of the Holy Spirt, even though it is not directly apparent on the surface reading of the text.

No wonder I had missed it in the past!

Well, you can hardly expect a monarchist like me to say “Tim Fischer for President“, can you?

By now, all regular guests at this table will be familiar with “The Schütz Model for a Elective Australian Constitutional Monarchy” (if not, take a moment to look at the side bar on the right towards the bottom of the page). I know that most people have taken my suggestion as a kind of amateurish joke, but seriously the more I think about it, the more I think it could work – especially because it would ensure a truly worthy candidate for the position.

There have, over the years, been some silly suggestions for the “First Australian President” (eg. Dick Smith!). But Tim Fischer has been in town just recently, and having the opportunity to catch up with him once again has reminded me what a really great Australian statesman he is.

It was good to hear from Tim what’s been going on in Rome and the rest of the world. I have the impression that to appoint someone as Ambassador to the Holy See is, in effect, to appoint them as Ambassador to the rest of the World. Tim certainly has a lot of interests in a lot of areas, from his well known love of trains, to his great interest in the little kingdom of Bhutan, to his very very serious dedication to the preservation and protection of the world’s food resources.

For a bloke who came up through the Australian political ranks, the most wonderful thing about Tim is that he is a really genuine decent and friendly fellow. It is obvious that he went into politics for the sole reason that he likes people, and wants to make a positive impact on the world.

Recently I heard someone say that “You can change the world”, and I thought to myself, rather cynically, “Yeah, just not very much”, but I reckon Tim has done his fair share to make a difference.

If we ever found ourselves in a world where – contrary to Monty Python and in line with my constitutional model – you got to “vote for kings”, I would vote for Tim. In the mean time, maybe he could be considered for our next GG.

Well, its been five years since Roger Schütz (no relation, aka Brother Roger) died under cruel and tragic circumstances. Along with Martin Luther, Elijah, Our Lady, Bishop Elliott (the Archibald Portrait), Pope John Paul II, Blessed Mary of the Cross and Cardinal Newman, his picture adorns my little “iconastasis” wall in my office. There have been many speculations about why it was that Cardinal Ratzinger communed Brother Roger just a few months earlier at Pope John Paul II’s funeral, but in the light of all the commentary and information available, I think the answer is a fairly simple one: Brother Roger was Catholic. Now there is a statement that I am sure will keep the combox full for a little while, but I base my opinion on the fact that John Paul II’s funeral was not the first time that Brother Roger received Catholic Communion, and that it was, in fact, a regular practice for him both in his own community at Taize and whenever he visited the Holy Father in Rome. He was, of course, in a very unusual situation, almost without parallel in the Church.

Despite its origins, Taize as a community is not officially affiliated with any Protestant Church, and (as I understand it) the majority of the brothers today (including the current prior) are Catholic. Since John XXIII, Taize has had a very positive relationship with the Holy See. Again, as far as I know, although Brother Roger was technically speaking an ordained reformed minister, he did not celebrate the reformed sacraments or excercise his ordained ministry in any way in his role as prior of Taize. I guess, again technically speaking, you could say that I am an ordained Lutheran pastor. The difference between Br Roger and me is that I made my entry into the Catholic Communion publicly, whereas his entry into the Church’s communion was unofficial and private. Another difference is that I have received the Catholic sacrament of confirmation, and there is no evidence that Brother Roger ever did. So in my mind that puts him rather in the same position of any Catholic child who has received first communion but has not yet been confirmed. Perhaps one could say that he was (even in his advanced old age) still on the path of an initiation that was begun but never completed.

I can understand why that was, and obviously so did the Holy See, even though the Catholic Church never publically (and still does’nt) claim him for herself. John Allen reports on a positive tribute to Brother Roger in L’Osservatore Romano marking the fifth anniversary of his death. According to Allen, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone writes in his message to Br Alois that:

Brother Roger was “a tireless witness to the gospel of peace and reconciliation” and a “pioneer on the difficult journey towards unity among the disciples of Christ.” …Pope Benedict wants to express his “spiritual closeness” to Taizé, Bertone wrote, and his “union in prayer.”

Even more interesting was this comment:

In some ways, Bertone referred to Schutz almost as a saint, writing that “now that he has entered into eternal joy, he continues to speak to us.”

But for the fact that Brother Roger was never officially confirmed as a Catholic, he lived a life which (again in my own humble opinion) certainly would have put him in line as a candidate for sainthood HAD he been a “signed-and-sealed” member of the Church. Brother Roger was certainly an exemplar of what it means to live a life of “spiritual ecumenism” according to the teachings of the Church.

Here is something Pope Benedict said five years ago on his visit to Cologne for World Youth Day soon after Brother Roger’s death which illustrates this point:

We cannot “bring about” unity by our powers alone. We can only obtain unity as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, spiritual ecumenism – prayer, conversion and the sanctification of life – constitutes the heart of the meeting and of the ecumenical movement (cf. Unitatis Redintegratio, n. 8; Ut Unum Sint, 15ff., 21, etc.). It could be said that the best form of ecumenism consists in living in accordance with the Gospel.

I would also like in this context to remember the great pioneer of unity, Bro. Roger Schutz, who was so tragically snatched from life. I had known him personally for a long time and had a cordial friendship with him.

He often came to visit me and, as I already said in Rome on the day of his assassination, I received a letter from him that moved my heart, because in it he underlined his adherence to my path and announced to me that he wanted to come and see me. He is now visiting us and speaking to us from on high. I think that we must listen to him, from within we must listen to his spiritually-lived ecumenism and allow ourselves to be led by his witness towards an interiorized and spiritualized ecumenism.

I see good reason in this context for optimism in the fact that today a kind of “network” of spiritual links is developing between Catholics and Christians from the different Churches and Ecclesial Communities: each individual commits himself to prayer, to the examination of his own life, to the purification of memory, to the openness of charity.

The father of spiritual ecumenism, Paul Couturier, spoke in this regard of an “invisible cloister” which unites within its walls those souls inflamed with love for Christ and his Church. I am convinced that if more and more people unite themselves interiorly to the Lord’s prayer “that all may be one” (Jn 17: 21), then this prayer, made in the Name of Jesus, will not go unheard (cf. Jn 14: 13; 15: 7, 16, etc.).

St Roger of Taize? I think the idea has merit. But you might disagree.

I have just discovered something wonderful: The National Library of Australia’s online database of Australian Newspapers from 1803 to 1954 (also available here). It really is a treasure trove! Here is an “old story” from The Mercury (Hobart) Monday 27 November 1933:

BIRTH CONTROL
FOR at least a century and a quarter, the question of birth control has come periodically under notice. About the beginning of the eighteenth century some persons who today would be called “economists,” and would hold positions on the teaching staffs of universities, made calculations and published them about the effect of the birth rate. They showed conclusively that unless something drastic were done the world would starve to death in less than 50 years…

The calculation was simple. They took the available figures regarding the increase in the birth rate and the figures relating to thc increase of the production of food, and were able, without difficulty, lo show that in another half century the world would be strewn with the skeletons of those millions who would have died. Absurd as that may sound today, the publication of these stories created a veritable panic in England and in other countries.

In these later days, since the discovery of what is called thc “science”‘ of eugenics, there is an agitation for compulsory birth control on the part of those who are supposed to be physically or mentally, or morally, unfit to breed human beings. The German Government is tackling the problem valiantly, but with the knowledge we have of Nazi ideals we may be permitted to wonder whether the selection of those, who may or may not have a part in bringing children into the world will be entirely judicious.

But now comes a new story which brings us back to the original idea. The people of the East are urged to restrict their population increases because thc rate is too high, and there is not enough food for them all. Control of money, control of trade, control of production and of prices, control, in fact, of every mortal thing in the life of men and women from the cradle to the grave is the keynote today of every policy put forward for the salvation of the world.

And now that it is said that there is too much production of food for the world, the cure is to be found in a still further restriction of the number of persons to be available for its consumption. Between eugenics and economics, this old world of ours is getting into a strange tangle of notions and plans.

Take good note of the date of this article. And then read this one on the same page:

BIRTH CONTROL
Threat from the East
Vital Need of Civilisation
London. November 25.

“With India’s increase of 34,000,000 persons in tho last 10 years, and Japan’s four babies a minute in 1932, it ls time the red traffic light was turned eastward,” says the president ot tho Birth Control International centre in a cablegram to the London conference discussing birth control in Asia under tho presidency of Lord Horder.

Professor Carr Saunders declared that birth control was a vital need of modern civilisation, but the problem was how small the family should be. It could be harmonised with communal needs. If there was not birth control the result would be disastrous. The leading question was whether the human race could be trusted with birth control, as there was danger of contraception threatening civilisation.

Dr. Dugsdale, a pioneer of the movement, said that over-population was tantamount to an excessive death rate, and abbreviation of the life span, owing to insufficiency of necessities and comforts. It was significant that both the
birth rate and death rate In Japan had increased since the era of Industrialisation. Limitation of the birth rate in India, China, and Japan was essential for the world’s peace and tranquillity.

Mr. Eguehi, a Japanese delegate, said that his countrymen were interested on birth control. lt was easy for Westerners to scoff at Japan because of a low standard of living, but Japan would be only too glad if Britain had any scheme for bringing Japan’s standard of living on equality with the West.

Again, note the date… Who was it who said that those who do not learn from th mistakes of history are condemned to repeat them?

Friday week ago, I turned up for confession at the Cathedral, to find a line up of about 20 people (all but two of them male). I was astounded. Not only that, but while I was waiting, another ten turned up. It was like St Francis’ Elizabeth Street in rush hour. And the people were of all ages and all walks of life. On one side of me in the line up was a young bloke in workboots, and on the other side was a bloke of about my age in a suit.

Don’t tell me that people don’t want to go to confession. But as I have said before, people who want to go to confession are greatly aided when priests:

1) Make confession available more often than just for half an hour on Saturday morning
2) Make sure that the confessional is manned at the time advertised
3) Take steps to ensure that the sacrament can be received anonymously

On top of that, here is a reflection from Fr Z on the matter:

My ASK FATHER entry (“Quaeritur”) from a lay person asking about the lack of confession times, prompted not only lots of comments, but also emails, from lay people and from priests.

Here is a note I received from a priest reader (my emphases and comments):

That’s an issue [lack of scheduled confession times] I’m dealing with here in my new assignment. The previous pastor had Confessions scheduled at 5 PM, with Mass at 5:30 PM. Oh, and Confessions “by appointment”, of course. The parishioners tell me that he was rarely, if ever, actually in or near the confessional at 5, and was usually busy getting things ready for Mass at 5:15. One of the first changes I made, by the way, was to move Saturday confessions to 4 – 5 PM, and I will be there every time it’s scheduled.
In addition, appointments are still welcomed.

I’m sure the official reason for the limited availability was lack of demand for the sacrament, but I don’t think that was the only reason.

Yesterday, a parishioner told me that they hadn’t heard any homilies calling something a sin throughout the previous pastor’s tenure in this parish. Why weren’t parishioners making use of the sacrament? They don’t believe that sin exists any more. Why don’t they believe that sin exists any more? Father wasn’t preaching on it. [Do I hear an “Amen!”?]

[QUAERITUR:] How do we as priests fix this problem?

First, preach on sin and the necessity of Confession. Sin exists, and it is a serious matter that is being ignored in our culture. If we don’t preach on it, the parishioners won’t hear it.

Second, make Confession times convenient for your parishioners, publicize them as widely as possible, and be there. Even if you spend the hour praying and doing spiritual reading, the parishioners need to be sure you’ll be in the Confessional when they come. If you’re not there when they show up, they may not be as persistent as the reader above. They might come back a second time. Maybe, but it’s more likely that they won’t even bother. If you don’t make Confession a priority, they won’t either.

This is a problem which puts the souls of our parishioners at risk. We as priests need to do everything we can to eliminate this problem.

My priest correspondent has hit the nail directly on its little flat button.

And this tale he tells is not rare.

I was once in a parish where the pastor clearly had contempt for confessions (and for priests who wanted to receive them). They were scheduled for one half hour before the Saturday evening Mass. The priest who was to say the Mass was to hear confessions. But, he demanded that the priest be in the sacristy 15 minutes before Mass. That cut the time in half. Furthermore, he not only had me in residence, but invited in an old friend to say the Saturday Mass every third week. That meant that I would have the chance to hear confessions for 15 minutes every three weeks. There were always lines at my confessional. People would beg me to hear longer when I got out to go to the sacristy. Once I did hear longer, until about 5 minutes before Mass. The pastor screamed at me – literally screamed – in the sacristy, in front of lay people, using vocabulary that verged on violating the 1st Commandment as well. Not only a control freak, but a sign of his hatred for the confessional (and for me). This is the situation for many a younger priest under the eyes of aging-hippie pastors. This is the state of affairs of lay people as well. I am often amazed that so many people are still as faithful as they are, given what we priests have done to them for so many years.

By contrast, I know a priest in his 80’s who hears confessions before every daily morning Mass and before all Masses on Sundays. And when there is a visiting priest to help with Sunday Masses, he hears confessions during Mass (which is both licit and laudable) up to the Offertory.

If priests are reading this – and you are – consider well your own salvation in attending to the confessions of the faithful.

They’re running a caption competition over there on Catholica. Personally, I think this attempt is fairly good for a start. Anyone got any better suggestions?

I have been asked to give this event a plug and am happy to do so. I listened to Bernie filibuster back during the abortion debate in the Victorian Parliament. A very skilled speaker – although he failed to persuade his fellow members! (In his defence, they had all made up their minds already!)

Bernie Finn, Victorian MP, is giving a talk on “Pro Lifers In Politics, We Need More of Em” on Friday October 22 at 7pm.
The venue is St Anthony’s, Power Street, Hawthorn. The talk will be in the hall. The cost is $10 and the proceeds from the night will go to Pro Life Victoria. You can rsvp at marklachal@live.com  or ring 0408 733 794 0408 733 794