I found this article very good reading for Christmas and the holiday season.  It gives a very good account of where Pope Francis is heading.  The article highlights the often-quoted comment from the Scriptures that the Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath.  The author Tom Roberts is Editor at Large of the National Catholic Reporter in the US.  John Menadue

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/francis-frightening-inviation-freedom

Repost from 10/10/2015

Recent predictions (and perhaps hopes) about Christianity’s demise in the West have been greatly exaggerated. But to the extent that the faith does disappear, it will be greatly missed, writes Barney Zwartz.

Predicting social trends is usually an inexact science, but England’s influential Spectator magazine has boldly put a precise date on the disappearance of Christianity from Britain: 2067.

If the number of UK-born Christians keeps sinking at the rate it has for the past decade, by 2067 they will be “statistically invisible”, Damian Thompson wrote.

British Anglicans have fallen from 40 per cent of the population three decades ago to 17 per cent last year. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of Christians born in Britain fell by 5.3 million.

Thompson writes:

If that rate of decline continues, the mission of St Augustine to the English, together with that of the Irish saints to the Scots, will come to an end in 2067.

Catholics also dropped in Britain, down to 8 per cent from 10 per cent in 1983, but they are a much smaller minority than in Australia, where they represent a quarter of the population. In both cases, numbers are buoyed by non-Anglo immigration.

Thompson recognises that projection is not prediction, but it is plain that the trends are dire for British believers. Nor are they particularly encouraging for the churches in Australia.

The churches have already had to accept the unpalatable fact that they have largely lost their once-automatic role as society’s conscience, and have become merely one voice in the crowded public square. But this is no bad thing – they are not silenced, they merely have to work as hard as everyone else to have their views heard.

I do not doubt that the number of Christians in Australia’s Census – down to 61 per cent in 2011 from 86 per cent in 1971 – will continue to decline. A large proportion of that 61 per cent are cultural Christians, and as church attendance falls, so will cultural identity.

However, this may well be balanced by other factors, so that the churches will find a new equilibrium. Other social trends are working in their favour.

For example, as an ever-larger proportion of the population lives alone and looks for connections, churches stand out more strongly as an option. Other institutions that served this role, such as sporting clubs or niche groups, are often in sharper decline than the churches. This is shown in an interesting new trend: where a few decades ago people were converted and then went to church, today new members come to church for social connection and other reasons, and then (may) become Christians.

In 2012, the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Health found in its systematic review of all the relevant studies, over and over again, a positive relationship between religion and mental health/well being. This may prove significant. The handbook reports that 93 per cent of 45 studies found that religion/spirituality is related to greater purpose and meaning. 73 per cent of 40 studies found that religion/spirituality is related to greater hope. 61 per cent of 413 studies found lower rates of depression or faster recovery from depression in individuals who are more religious.

In August, the Independent newspaper in the UK reported a study of 9,000 people over the age of 50 which found that the only activity linked to sustained happiness was attending a place of worship.

What does all this mean? I want to make two claims: first, that reports of Christianity’s demise in the West are greatly exaggerated; and second, that to the extent it does disappear, it will be greatly missed.

As Joni Mitchell put it eloquently, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

The churches will have fewer nominal attendees, so that members are more committed. As they continue their good works, but without much of the moralising of the recent past, the faith will become more attractive. It will be like the fourth century – before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and began its fateful courtship of power and authority.

The early Christians’ courage and compassion – for example, staying in cities to found hospitals and tend to the plague-ridden when other citizens fled, as in the time of Emperor Decius – made a profound impression. There have been many like them ever since, going to the darkest and most difficult places, and improving people’s lives.

With their lost moral authority, Christians will lose their social status – a process that is well underway. By this I don’t mean that a Christian doctor or saleswoman will be any less honoured as a doctor or saleswoman, but that their faith will not be seen as meritorious or contributing to whatever else they are.

Already there are many in Australia who despise and condemn believers as irrational and foolish and are quite happy to say so; who talk of invisible friends, flying teapots or fairies at the bottom of the garden. Christians, sadly, have not always been generous when they were dominant, and cannot complain too loudly now.

Part of that possible imitation of the fourth century will be that churches are made up less of society’s stakeholders – those with worldly success, and those who aspire to it. (That was one of the appeals of Christianity as the official religion – it was the side of the winners.) Instead, the believers will be like those the Apostle Paul described in his first letter to the Corinthians: “Think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.”

This brings me to my second claim: that if Christianity were to decline in the West to the extent that some believe, it will be a huge loss. If I accept the claims of atheist spokespeople that the number of real, committed believers in Australia is closer to 20 per cent than 60, as I do, then those 20 per cent are vastly over-represented in the ranks of society’s volunteers, helpers and donors. As one newspaper reported at the time, of the 41 aid agencies that rushed to Rwanda in 1994 to provide support and relief, 37 were Christian. Today in Australia, of the 30 largest charities, 26 are faith-based.

Much of Australia’s social capital over the past two centuries was built by Christians, explicitly motivated by their faith to work not just for themselves but for the community at large. They believed they were called to love their neighbour – all their neighbours – and brought their (now-maligned) “Protestant work ethic” to bear on the problems and challenges of their time. The economy, and in particular the siren call of profit, is the only language that seems to move government or business now. Or at least, it is the most heard.

In his Short History of Christianity, Geoffrey Blainey suggests that rather than dying out, Christianity is set to keep evolving and moving, declining and re-emerging, just as it always has. It’s a faith that has repeatedly reinvented itself, and while no revival is permanent, neither has been any decline.

Despite the recent predictions (and perhaps hopes) of some, history suggests that this age-old pattern is likely to continue.

Barney Zwartz is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity. This article was first published in The Drum on 5 October 2015.

Lord Acton said that ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ It was in correspondence about the then pope’s proposed new doctrine of papal infallibility. It is often overlooked that he added, ‘Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.’

When I was a child, the greatest misuse of priestly power imputed to the ‘RCs’ was the sometimes brutal violence used in the ‘care’ of disobedient pupils, unmarried mothers, illegitimate and ‘removed’ children and orphans in institutions run by nuns, brothers and priests.

Thanks to brave individuals and independent journalists, the sexual abuse permitted and distributed by some of these hands has been revealed in Australian parliamentary inquiries and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

It is unfair to profile the one, Catholic Church for the sins of so many more whose patriarchal culture and authoritarian practices are shared by those who professed to ‘suffer the little children to come unto me … for of such are the kingdom of heaven’.

Yet former bishops and archbishops have told the Commission that, yes, the Church failed its duty, protecting its reputation, wealth and ordained at the cost of children and complainants. Fairfax claimed the Melbourne Response saved the Church at least $62 million, by capping the amount payable to a fraction of what complainants would have been awarded had they not been dissuaded from suing.

It is increasingly apparent that the Church’s moral failure to address the worm in its heart has poisoned the vine. By their fruits you shall know them.

*****

I am a laywoman, and in the Catholic Church could never be ordained.

Like many women, I am active, as a spiritual director and retreat leader. As well, over the last decade I was briefly responsible for receiving complaints about professional standards in the Anglican diocese of Melbourne, and am currently a member of a professional standards committee for one of the Catholic orders. The majority of its members are women. They are laity, busy, unpaid, and without power.

And thereby is some hope. Since Vatican II, successive popes have pledged a greater role for the laity to work with those who are ordained, and Pope Francis has emphasised respect for women religious, and some hope for long-squelched leadership roles for women.

The Vatican bureaucracy is not pleased with this, or with women’s views on small matters such as admitting the divorced to the Eucharist.

There is a traditional culture of brotherhood in the upper echelons of the Church at every level. There is also a natural urge to homosocial reproduction in its instrumentalities.

If I have learned anything from my work with companies and organisations on cultural change, it is that these comfortable cultures need to be broken up, because they are, as Lord Acton said, so readily corrupted. Narrowly defined, corruption means people use their position and authority for personal rather than the church’s benefit (that is, the whole church, not just its office holders).

More broadly, it refers to any violation of ethical and legal rules even when there is no personal gain, as in perjury, turning a blind eye, bending the rules, using violence to silence nay-sayers, wildcards and whistleblowers, or covering up physical and sexual misconduct, theft, and discrimination.

The Royal Commission has revealed a corruption of compassion within the culture of Christian institutions, which strikes at the heart of their mission and spirituality. There is also, within most churches I believe, a culture of acceptance of ‘noble-cause corruption’; that is, illegal actions undertaken to achieve laudable ends, in this case, protection of the institution itself.

This is one of the ills already addressed in the US. In 2014 the Australian Jesuit Province arranged a vist from Kathleen McChesney (pictured with Truth, Justice and Healing Council CEO Francis Sullivan), a former executive assistant director for the FBI, who had been employed by the American Bishops Conference to establish a system to deal effectively with preventing, and protecting children from, sexual and other abuse.

It is evident over ten years that there has been genuine progress in easing out corrupt, incompetent or cowardly church officials there. Even within a clerical culture of loyalty towards brothers and fathers in a hierarchical organisation, it was possible to create a structural and procedural framework which had reduced the actual incidence of offending.

Women do most of the hard work in parishes and form the majority of active parishioners. They know they have no authority. They are outsiders. Some are choosing to ignore what priests say and judge them by what they do.

The best way to change such a culture is therefore to start giving women positions of real influence and respect — outsiders see what insiders cannot, causing interruptions to the easy transitions of assumed and unquestioned authority, and groupthink.

Including women and thusly diversity at every level breaks up consensus and challenges noble corruption-fostering cultures. These challenges will be unwelcome but they are necessary if churches are to embody a gospel of love and protection of the marginalised and undervalued.

Moira Rayner is a barrister and writer. This article first appeared in Eureka Street on 13 December 2015.

 

Weed mats are used to grow a garden.  A weed mat lets us relax and focus on what we want to grow. There’s no need to labour over all the weeds that need pulling, make neat rows and certainly not break up the top soil, destroying the ‘nature’ of the soil.

What we actually want to grow/love/know gets us up each day, like Mary’s “Yes.”

December the month of Advent, waiting on the coming of our God, can be overwhelmed by the ‘glitter of the Christmas tree’. Yet there is a pulsing of hope that is palpable.  Most of us desire to feel connected, be loved, share, to give and receive. But we can be disappointed: too much to do, not enough space, the failure of our expectations to fruit in a meaningful way. Often our deepest need for meaning is left wanting.

St. Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus, says that our choices decide our orientation, what will shape our life. Making decisions is the heart beat of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. Making decisions are a bit like putting down a weed mat.

Recently I attended a gathering of Jesuits and lay who work in their ministries. Two priests celebrated their final vows after twenty years. Each of us there felt their “Yes”, not necessarily as a final vow, but as a yearning to know and follow what is calling us. This “Yes” will hold us, both in the moving toward and the fall away. It will bring us back home. Ignatius referred to the Jesuits as ‘minima compania,’ in other words, we are the least, ‘just’ earthly vessels, limited and fragile, yet in this vulnerability the transcendent power of God is at work.

We are nothing special, but the vow, what we do internally, is something very special. I think it takes a long time to realise that we are ‘minima’.  It is when we let God be God.

One of the priests talked of his experiences of being led gently, both by a mentor who was a big part of his formation, and the people/parishes who shaped him these last 20 years since his first vows.  Such accompanying is not about knowledge but walking beside. We grow into life, we don’t just arrive fully formed. It’s something that our perfectionist and self-reliant striving selves seem to forget.

We know that the story of Jesus is such a story: Mary will search in her heart and say “Yes”; God will show us the way to be become human by giving us his Son, thus becoming pulsing beings listening to the deepest part of our selves. The three wise men said “Yes”, they listened to and followed their hearts, they followed the stars.

Why weed mat?  I think most us can feel pressured to look neat and tidy, with everything ordered.  We have many weeds and we can be unfocused. But now we wait, Christ will come, and the weed mat will help us, not to get busy and lost in the weeds, but with our “Yes”. We are loved as we are. Then a hole is poked through for the seedling to emerge, right there amongst the weeds. We just need to make some room for the little plant, a space for the light to shine through.

Christmas is like that, a mess of all things, but in the midst is the baby Jesus, vulnerable like us. He grows, loved and nurtured by Mary and orientated entirely to his Father. We wait in joyful expectation, knowing that in the chaos we can behave just like a weed mat. It’s the “Yes” in the midst of everything that allows his light to shine through.

We cannot do everything,
And there is a sense of liberation in realising that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well,
It may be incomplete,
But it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s Grace
To enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results
But that is the difference
Between the Master builder and the worker.
We are workers not Master builders,
Ministers, not Messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

(Often called ‘Romero prayer’ written by Ken Untener in honour of Oscar Romero in 1979)

Caroline Coggins is a psychotherapist.

At times I have to pinch myself to be alert to what’s going on right now in the Catholic Church and to fathom the depth of it.

Throughout history, we have seen change come abruptly. It happened in Europe and Japan after WWII.

And in Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall came down when democracies emerged where only tyrannical regimes prevailed.

But in the Catholic Church change comes in a different way.

It doesn’t come by a revolution that sweeps away the old regime and old ways of doing things. Change does not come in the same way as in representative democracies where a new party gains power with a new agenda and new policies.

The closest thing to change in the Catholic Church is the Japanese process of governance in politics and business.

Nothing is decided until everyone involved has been consulted and a stage has been reached where everyone accepts that a change is needed, even if they don’t all agree on the particulars.

The deal is done before the decision is announced, of course. But those who don’t accept the change are not fired because jobs are for life in Japan. They are just ‘redeployed’.

Right now in the Catholic Church, a series of changes is unfolding whose significance will be seen perhaps only years from now and in retrospect. But it had better happen faster than it has in the past because, with contemporary mobility and communications, the speed of change poses challenges to the Church that prefers a languid pace.

Today, if issues are not understood and addressed in any organization including the Church, the lethargy could well induce a terminal illness.

A number of neuralgic points or hot button issues have divided Catholics for decades. These are just three: sexual ethics; centralism in administration and decision-making; and clericalism (which has exacerbated clerical sexual abuse and its cover-up).

Nonetheless, there is an enduring failure to see and name the real elephant in the room – the virtual end of the male celibate clergy, except in the developing world where overstretched priests are being quarried to supply for the deficit of clergy in Europe, the United States and Australia.

The inability to see and do something about that elephant is the source of many of the blockages currently impeding the Church in its mission. At heart, it is the failure to address the terms of ministry needed in the Church today.

One of the distractions from seeing the elephant that blinds the Catholic Church is that its hallmark is “continuity”. That’s historical nonsense, as a casual look at the record shows.

Just take something that affects every Mass-going Catholic today – our understanding of Scripture.

A hundred years ago approaches to the interpretation of sacred texts that we take for granted now triggered harassment from the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition (as it was known till it became the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the 1960s) for many and excommunication for others.

What Pope St Pius X dismissed and condemned in the harshest terms in the first decade of the 20^th Century received fulsome endorsement from Pope Pius XII in 1944. And in that acknowledgement, Pope Pius XII was following a well-tried path for change in the Church that was described by the New Zealand-born Redemptorist moral theologian and canon lawyer, Humphrey O’Leary.

O’Leary was not completely tongue-in-cheek when he observed that change in the Church’s understanding and practice goes through five phases.

It begins when a doctrine or practice is condemned as always wrong – even to the point of being ‘intrinsically evil’ – and is absolutely forbidden.

The next phase sees ‘exceptions’ being made in defined circumstances. Then the exceptions become so commonplace that the official position is one of neutrality: Catholics can make up their own minds in good conscience.

The fourth phase is the suggestion that, among the options, one is preferred or encouraged. Finally, what had been proscribed becomes what all must do and comply with.

The approach to the interpretation of Scripture is a case in point. But there are an unlimited number of instances of this in the history of the Church.

Back to today and the prospects for history-making change.

The Synod Assembly on the Family that concluded last October addresses what is perhaps the most broadly alienating issue across the Church – the standing of the divorced and civilly remarried Catholics and their exclusion from the sacraments.

That issue is already at Stage 2 in O’Leary’s process. The Synod agreed that, though formally against the law, Holy Communion can be given to them under certain circumstances.

That Synod’s flexibility is also the tip of the iceberg for consideration of women’s views in Church conduct. It came to that point after Pope Francis encouraged the Synod to listen to the voices of the Holy Spirit and to the men and women of our time.

And if that continues, the current silence of Church officials on sexual morality will see voices other than male celibates legislating what can and cannot be done.

The next question is ministry.

It is now reported to be the subject of the next Synod. If relaxing mandatory celibacy for clerics is seriously considered it would open up a host of other questions beyond who gets to be ordained. It would have to articulate how office in the service of the Church is recognized and also how gender permissions/restrictions apply and why.

As these issues press for attention, it is not only the relevance of Catholicism that is at stake. It is also its credibility.

When episcopal leadership is shown to be so threadbare as to hide criminal behavior for fear of “scandal”, it is appropriate to ask exactly just what parallel universe Catholic leadership inhabits.

Breaking out of the parallel universe won’t happen overnight. But the writing is clearly on the wall that an absolutely typical Catholic process of change is well and truly underway.

And it will be explained in the usual way: “As the Church has always taught…”

This article was first published in Global Pulse on 15 December 2015. 

The Japanese call it’nemawashi’..John Menadue

“There you go, Peter, today’s pay. Don’t waste it.”

“Thank you, Mr Boss; I can now buy some paint for my cupboard. Have a good night, Mr Boss, I’m going home now.”

“Okay, Peter, see you tomorrow … same time?”

“Yes, Mr Boss, same time, same time: fifty-five past 8 o’clock in the morning.”

It usually took Peter an hour to get home as he navigated the bustling alleys and back streets of Kolkata, passing fruit vendors, beggars, monks, sewerage drains, smoking meats, motorbikes, street kids, temples, magicians, orphaned dogs-cats-and-rats; not to mention the myriad friendly faces ‘who just had to be smiled at’. Really, it was a journey of 1,000 “hellos”, with each greeting accompanied by a gentle, respectful bowing of the head. Peter was always conscious of being polite, which wasn’t at all difficult thanks to an innate fondness he had for his fellow man; a true philanthropist, you might say – if a very poor one. This gentleness flowed from the nurturing and modelling of his beloved grandmother – more on her later.

Generally, it was spot on 8pm when Peter strolled into his tenement building. He was a stickler for punctuality: “Eight-hours-after-12-o’clock-midday is my always homecoming time,” he’d insist with a twinkle in his eye.

The building was a similar age to Peter, thirty-plus years, but not in nearly as good a shape. It stood like a tired old man carrying a heavy yoke. Perhaps if someone blew hard enough it too would tumble over. Socks, towels, t-shirts, electrical cables, TV antennas, and assorted sneakers hung messily from balcony rails and windows betraying the reality within: unforgiving, overcrowded chaos – two-hundred rooms worth.

Usually it was three minutes past ‘eight-hours-after-12-o’clock-midday’ when Peter entered the first floor corridor to commence his settling-down-for-the-night routine. It was all very simple: he’d roll out a Hessian mat, say a quick prayer of thanks, then lie down very quietly next to his cupboard: “The most cleanliest and tidiest cupboard in all Kolkata,” he’d rejoice with anyone who was interested – not many were.

The cupboard, like his gran, was a significant presence in his life, and he dutifully attended to it as if it were the Taj Mahal. Probably his most important duty was its annual Christmas painting: this year, bright yellow; last year, bright green, and the year before that, bright red.

It didn’t make much sense to his neighbours, this attentiveness to an unremarkable cupboard in an even less remarkable building. “I bet,” some passers-by would scoff dismissively, “I bet that’s where he keeps the proceeds from his pick-pocketing and thieving … or maybe he’s got some pet rats!”

Peter hadn’t chosen a good place to sleep either: a busy corridor with lots of people traffic. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to nudge him with a discreet kick, while others would bark, “Why don’t you pay for a room like the rest of us; and who gave you permission to paint that cupboard, anyway?”

“Sorry, sir, sorry, sir,” Peter would reply patiently, respectfully, which tended to disarm his plaintiffs.

“Arrgh, never mind, never mind; but make sure you clean-up your mess.”

Sure, to outsiders it was just a cupboard, but Peter knew otherwise. Indeed, he knew everything there was to know about it including its dimensions – and to the nearest millimetre, thank you very much: “Five foot 3.2 inches long, two point zero feet exactly high, and four foot plus 6.6 inches deep.” 

Despite these modest proportions, Peter’s Christmas painting rituals were long, drawn-out affairs; usually around six hours. Each brush stroke was akin to patting a much loved pet: gentle, slow, and tender. This wasn’t just another chore, rather it was a sacred action: comparable to a sacristan polishing a tabernacle or decorating an altar.

What was also compelling about the cupboard was how immaculately clean Peter kept it; it was literally spotless inside and out. This was in stark contrast to the rest of the building which had been meekly surrendered to the powers of dust and grime and cockroaches and rats and ablutions.

While Peter’s annual working-bees were not to everyone’s taste, especially this year’s yellow, the cupboard certainly offered some respite from the colourless apathy and neglect that abounded.

Peter’s attention to detail was another virtue that could be traced back to the guidance of his grandmother: “If a job’s worth doing, Peter, it’s worth doing well.” He’d first heard that gem when he was about seven.

Indeed, much of his memory was infused with his grandmother’s wisdom and teachings. He adored her: “My bestest and favouritest person in the whole world.”

She was also the one who made sure, unlike the busy, distracted people around him, that Peter knew he was truly loved and truly valued. “The world needs more like you, dear grandson; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

This was a difficult truth for Peter to grasp because every day he was reminded in someway that he was a ‘bit slow’, and very poor.

No wonder, then, the care and attention he afforded his cupboard. After all, that was where his beloved grandmother slept, and it was his duty to keep her safe in a nice, bright place:

“The cleanliest and tidiest cupboard in all Kolkata; Merry Christmas, grandma.”

 

This is a fictional tribute to Peter de Cruz who did indeed keep his grandmother safe as she slept in a cupboard next to him in the corridor of a tenement building in Kolkata, India.

Christmas is a Christian afterthought. The earliest Christian writings (Paul’s epistles and Mark’s Gospel) don’t mention Jesus’ birth. The first to do so is Matthew’s gospel where the author posits the birth simply as another event in the fuller story of God’s salvation of His people. Luke’s gospel has the more discursive story containing Mary and Joseph’s journey to Jerusalem, the stable and the shepherds recognising the newly born “saviour who is Christ, the Lord.” The main story is Jesus’s life, death and resurrection to a new form of life.

A Tony Abbott recent speech claims that Islam’s problem is that, unlike us, it has not had the benefit of a reformation or enlightenment. The oversimplified argument runs: Europe has experienced the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment. Out of this experience has come the modern, secular state with its commitment to human rights. Christianity, being the dominant religion of Europe, has equally benefited from this experience. On the other hand Islam is of Middle Eastern origin and its history did not include these experiences. Hence Abbott’s advice to Islam.

The advice is not well thought through. Islam has had its own watershed experiences. The Sunnis came out on top of the Shia in the 7^th century. In the 10^th century argument between the Mu’tazilites and the Asherites, Revelation in the Quran won out against reason as the source of truth thus reinforcing the power of the Ulema (scholars of Muslim religious law) over the philosophers. Sufism was a new development of the 13^th century. The Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia is the result of an 18^th century puritanical reform movement.

However, Europe, after the Reformation and Enlightenment, is no poster boy for harmony. The Reformation and the Enlightenment promoted rather than protected Europe from conflict. The reformation spawned Europe’s horrific Thirty years War. The Enlightenment led to France’s Reign of Terror. Since then we have had two world wars originating in Europe and plenty of new guerrilla movements like the IRA, Baader-Meinhof and the Red Brigades. We have simply re-defined terror from state-sponsored to group-sponsored.

Further, the history of the Muslim South looks very like Europe’s when you recall the counter insurgency struggle in post-war Malaya, the Sukarno military terror and the Kopassus efforts in East Timor and West Papua. One senses that it is more to do with the haves and the have nots than with belief.

Now it’s the Middle East’s turn. The West, provoked by Islamist guerrilla attacks, has sewn the wind by invasion and reaped the whirlwind. The Islamists are just a new grouping of guerrillas who wave an Islam flag rather than a communist, Christian or nationalist one. How do we sort this mess out?

The common denominator seems to be the closed mind of fundamentalist ideology. We see it in ISIS and Al Qaeda. But we also see it in Donald Trump, the USA Tea Party, the Bolt Report, the black armband historians, the Pell faction in the Vatican and the hard right of the Australian Liberal party instanced by Tony Abbott. Peace entails give and take. If you close your mind you can’t negotiate. It’s all or nothing.

One positive result of the Enlightenment is the development of historical and literary criticism. The historico-critical method can analyse and explain institutions and their literature. It is the opposite of fundamentalism which interprets texts literally and laws as eternal.

The opening assertion of this article – that Christmas is a Christian afterthought – is an application of the historico critical approach.

Fundamentalist Christians read their texts literally. God sent Jesus from heaven with a ready-made plan to set up the Church with all its beliefs, structures, laws and practices. The plan begins with the coming of Jesus. He grows up, preaches his message, picks his followers and gives them the blueprint for the future. The result is the Christianity of today.

But an historico-critical examination of the Christian beginnings and scripture shows that there was a staged evolution of the way Jesus’s followers came into being, organised themselves and developed their belief system. The more you get to know the context and the power play of what went on, the more insight you get into the reasons why it developed the way it did.

The leadership of Protestant and Catholic Christianity opposed enlightenment ideas in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Look at Pope Pius IX’s infamous Syllabus of Errors of 1864. The start of the 20^th century was marked by Pope Pius X’s witch-hunt against “Modernism” and the USA’s Protestant Fundamentalist movement. New thought tends to undermine the power of the ruling group. So, religious hierarchies tend to oppose new thought – whether Christian Islamic or other.

Today’s Christianity is a product of history. So, too, is today’s Islam. Islam would benefit from an historico-critical analysis of its scriptures, traditions, history and institutions. If this could happen, overcoming clerical opposition, it would be liberating for Islam.

Meanwhile, Christmas is a feast of peace. Or is it? The inquisitions, the crusades, the religious wars, slavery, colonial conquest, witch hunts, apartheid, racist pogroms have been dark periods for church as well as the state.

Luke is our most Christmassy gospel writer. His angels greet the new-born saviour with the song: Glory to God in the highest; and, on earth, peace to men of good will. Good will is the key to peace. If Christmas can promote more good will it can then be a feast of peace.

Eric Hodgens is a Catholic Priest who writes a bit.

Do you know the story of the birth of Jesus?

What a silly question!

At this time of year, it is impossible to escape it.

Children remind us in their charming Christmas plays. Shopping centres play carols until we could scream. Television programmers dust off their 1950’s biblical dramas. Churches decorate cribs – the odd donkey even appears in more adventurous parish churches.

But how much of this story comes from the four gospels?

Let’s unwrap some of the shiny paper and see what’s really inside.

Mark, the writer of the first gospel, doesn’t mention Jesus’ birth at all. His story begins with Jesus as an adult. John offers a soaring poem about the Word of God – but no birth. Matthew and Luke tell the story of the nativity, but each from their own particular perspective.

Matthew tells of Joseph’s understandable disquiet about Mary’s pregnancy, but the moment of birth is almost an aside. He gives us the visit of the Magi following a mysterious star, a wicked king with designs on killing the infant, and the refugee escape of the family to Egypt.

Luke tells the story of an angel visiting the young Mary of Nazareth and her faithful acceptance of a puzzling and unknown future; of the girl Mary’s elderly cousin Elizabeth and her future son, John; of Mary’s journey to Bethlehem and the birth of her baby attended by the farm animals; of shepherds and angels; of the baby’s circumcision; and later, of how the boy Jesus is presented in the Temple and subsequently lost.

Intriguing accounts and even more intriguing anomalies. But where do they leave us?

Simple stories are remembered better than complex ones. But sometimes they miss the subtleties. So over time, the remarkable differences between these gospel stories have been scrambled together into one heavily edited – and romanticised – story.

But wait! There’s more. Matthew actually begins his story with an endless list of mostly strange names, the genealogy of Jesus – a sort of first century Ancestry.com.

Remember the (very male) chant – Abraham fathered Isaac, Isaac fathered Jacob, Jacob fathered Judah, Judah fathered Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez fathered Hezon, Hezon fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab… and so on. This is about the place I usually drop off to sleep.

This genealogy, which we frequently ignore, is a remarkable story showing that the family of Jesus arose from a line that included quite dubious and colourful characters, more disreputable than a group of drunken uncles at a Christmas dinner.

If you take the wrapping off some of these stories you find liars, murderers, prostitutes, power-grabbers, corrupt officials – sinners of every sort. Humanity at its worst. Jacob did steal his brother’s birthright. Judah did sleep with his daughter-in-law. David did commit adultery and murder to cover it up. No wonder we protect the kiddies from this part of the Christmas story.

The moral behind the genealogy – if I might stretch myself to suggest one – seems to be that out of this sorrowful saga is born a miracle of grace.

That’s not the whole story, of course. Before the nativity, there were women and men of vision and courage; passionate searchers. There was the sublime poetry of Isaiah, the determined leadership of Moses, the courage of prophets like Elijah who spoke truth to power, and the delicate wisdom of the psalms.

It was from this background that the story emerged of a young homeless couple’s baby born in the filth and stench of an animal shelter. A baby who would soon be part of a refugee family looking for a home.

The Christmas story, as told in the gospels, never avoids the gritty reality of genuine human lives. It never whitewashes its history. Nor should we. We tend to idealise and spiritualise the story – understandably, I suppose. There’s no need to be a total grinch and take the fun, beauty and romance entirely out of the story, but remember – it is a tale told by a Church populated by struggling, bruised, confused and searching human beings. It was ever thus.

Today we need to go no further than honestly face the sea of sexual abuse stories and the damage this has caused in the lives of so many.

Christmas asks us to be open to recognising the sacred in the commonplace, even inside the darkest corners of our lives – the bombed-out cities, families in refugee detention centres, and the marginalised with little food and water, struggling to survive. On Manus Island, in Beirut, in Paris, in Nigeria. In a little boy washed up on a Turkish beach.

Is there no limit to the darkness?

When you untie the ribbons from the story, drop the tinsel and unwrap the shiny paper, Christmas is about a light being seen through the darkness of a very bleak world. It’s about the miracle of grace shining through such brokenness, in the person of a tiny baby.

Monsignor Tony Doherty is parish priest at St Mary Magdalene, Rose Bay.

When Dorothy Parker was told that President Calvin Coolidge had just died, she remarked: “How can they tell?” I was reminded of this while watching the moribund memory of Bishop Brian Finnigan when giving evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Finnigan showed all the tell-tale signs of being physically alive, but his performance in the witness box left his credibility dead in the water. The Royal Commission could tell. At the end of two days of evidence, Counsel Assisting the Commission, Angus Stewart SC accused Finnigan of consistently distancing himself from any knowledge of child sexual abuse by priests in Ballarat, in order to protect himself and the Church. Finnigan said he did not intend to “create confusion”, but the end result was just as confusing as the James Joyce novel.

On 102 occasions, Finnigan said he could not remember things he had written or that had been written by others concerning child sexual abuse by clergy in Ballarat. It even became Monty Pythonesque when he was asked if he recalled his private interview with the Commission just five months earlier on 8 July 2015. Finnigan’s reply was “Yes, I knew I was there.”

Everyone would have trouble remembering details of minutes of meetings taken decades earlier, particularly if the matters discussed were humdrum. However, the matters that Finnigan was asked to recall were far from humdrum. They were allegations of serious sexual crimes by priests in the Ballarat diocese when he was the secretary to Bishop Mulkearns and later one of his consultors. In many instances, he was not even prepared to admit that the minutes and documents recording events were accurate, especially if they cast a slur on himself or the Church. His evidence was in marked contrast to that of his fellow bishop, Peter Connors who was praised by the Commission for being “very frank”.

Bishop Finnigan has composed a new Church Litany, the Memoria Moribunda : “I have no memory of that” ; “I don’t recall”, responses to the vast majority of questions put to him. It was not the first time this kind of litany has been recited. In matters of memory, this was pure Eddie Obeid before the ICAC, but this time coming from a voice box restrained by a plum, and surrounded by a Roman collar.

In a letter of 12 March 1994 to the notorious paedophile, Gerald Ridsdale, Finnigan wrote about Ridsdale’s accusers: “..some of these fellows now see the opportunity to obtain some easy cash”. When Finnigan was asked about this, he said it was “a rash statement, when rushing off things.”

But it was a belief that was quite widespread within the Church at the time, and in many places still is. In 2002 Cardinal Obando y Bravo likened some of the victims of clergy sexual abuse to Potiphar’s wife, seeking to gain “large pay offs on the basis of calumnious accusations.” In 2011, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, made a similar comment in an interview on Colombian CNN.

The accusations against Ridsdale were hardly false. Finnigan wrote this letter some 10 months after Ridsdale had been convicted of child sexual abuse on 27 May 1993, and Finnigan was advising him that the Catholic Insurances representative, Jim O’Connor wanted to speak to him about a number of other victims as well.

Finnigan had a lengthy interview with O’Connor on 20 April 1993. He was asked if it was true. He said,

“Basically, yes, but – well, I suppose I have to say yes…. I just thought it was a very run-of-the-mill interview, so to speak, and I had no idea it was going to be subject to such scrutiny nowadays; I would have probably expressed things differently, but yes, that’s mine, and what’s there is basically what I said.”

Then he said that O’Connor had probably edited the interview. He clarified what he meant: O’Connor had left out the “umms” and “ahhs”.

However, when it looked like some of his answers were coming uncomfortably close to the truth, Finnigan tried to do some of his own editing. In the O’Connor interview, he spoke about parishioners’ complaints about Ridsdale inviting lads around to his place to play pool and for being “overfriendly” with them. Finnigan told O’Connor that he “confronted” Ridsdale about it. When asked about this by the Commission he said that his use of the word “confront” was “a bit over-the-top. I don’t remember – I had nothing to confront him about.” Then the dead parrot of Finnigan’s memory has a remarkable resurrection, and he wonders if O’Connor “might have thought, oh, that’s a good word, and put it in there. I can’t remember using the word.”

In the O’Connor interview, Finnigan said that Fr Frank Madden had told him that he was concerned that some of Ridsdale’s contacts at Edenhope “might have been not just friendly.” It was suggested by Justice McLellan that Madden was telling Finnigan of his suspicions about Ridsdale. Finnigan’s response was to say, “I have no clear memory of what I meant”. He told McLellan that he was “probably making careless statements”, and that this interview was not “under oath”, and that he would “try to tell the truth” more under oath than in an interview with Catholic Insurances. The evidence suggests the opposite.

Finnigan told O’Connor how a woman went to an assistant priest to complain about Ridsdale’s behaviour with boys, but in evidence, his dead memory has another remarkable resurrection, and he said that she didn’t want to talk about Ridsdale at all, but about an annulment of her marriage.

Then Finnigan agreed that his public evidence before the Commission on the knowledge that the Ballarat consultors had about Ridsdale’s offending was more restrictive than the evidence he had given in a private hearing before the Commission some five months before. Once again, his memory improved once there was an opportunity to protect himself and the Church. The Commission now has hard evidence that despite all the claims that the Church has changed, some sections of it certainly have not.

Stewart put to Finnigan that his evidence was consistent with “the description that survivors have given of their experience of church officials in the 1980s, when trying to raise their concerns of sexual abuse of children by priests”. Finnigan’s answer was, “Yes, the response has been appalling.” And so was his evidence.

Kieran Tapsell is the author of Potiphar’s Wife: The Vatican’s Secret and Child Sexual Abuse (2014, ATF Press)

What do Pope Francis, Thomas Merton and Graham Greene have in common?

Like Pope Francis, Thomas Merton and Graham Greene were individuals whose sheer complexity equipped them to address the often contradictory world we live in, in order to find God in it.

The writer and Trappist monk Thomas Merton, the famous British writer, Graham Greene, and our current pope, Pope Francis, have a lot in common. Merton died in 1968 – from accidental electrocution whilst touring in Thailand, and Greene died peacefully in 1991. Both men were converts to Catholicism. Like Pope Francis, Merton engaged in interfaith dialogue. What these three men have in common, however, is that their works reveal them to be visionaries and mystics with a faith message for the world, a message that does not shy away from naming and engaging with the darkness around us.

Graham Greene led an eclectic life, and embraced and dialogued with the complex world around him. After his conversion to Catholicism in the 1920s, he was commissioned to go to Mexico to report on religious persecution there which resulted in him writing one of his famous novels, The Power and the Glory. He was adept at characterising the flawed broken priest or individual who could still bring Christ to others, despite his brokenness. The internal struggle of the soul to find and receive grace was amongst the issues that consumed him. As he so well depicted in another work, The Heart of the Matter, he understood the paradox of how a person’s conscience and love of God, could also lead them to disaster.

Greene confronted and explored the world of international politics, espionage and the world of corruption, (he worked for MI6 at one stage). He took a stand on moral issues – he allegedly quit the American Academy of Arts and Letters over America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.

A serial adulterer and womaniser, he explored flawed and complex interpersonal relationships in his writing, such as in his famous work, The End of the Affair. He was by his own admission, a man who struggled with his own sins whilst balancing a passionate faith. Able to deepen and challenge his own religious and spiritual beliefs amidst a rich and tumultuous life, his flawed and complex nature both informed his writing, and furthered his faith as a devout Catholic.

Both Merton and Greene struggled with the dynamics of interpersonal relationships and the struggle between the human soul, desire and what God’s direction and actions in a person’s life and the world around them, meant. Merton was also flawed, and allegedly quite headstrong in his inner and outer battles, and in his relationship with his monastic community. Books about Merton have been written saying he was not as ‘holy’ as he seemed and his personal diaries also talk about the love affair he had with a nurse for a while during his time as a monk in the 1960s. Yet these revelations are indications of a multi-faceted individual whose humanity fuelled his wisdom. Like Greene, Merton’s life experience and the wisdom he imparted to the world, enriched his faith. This is an example to all of us.

Like Pope Francis, Merton saw the great wisdom of the Tibetan Buddhist and Hindu traditions, or metaphorically how ‘the sun sets in the East’. Whilst some have critiqued this perceived duality in Merton towards the end of his life, it reveals the depth of his quest to follow where God was leading him. Ironically, only days before his death in Bangkok, Merton had an epiphany whilst reflecting on the beauty of Eastern spiritual experience. In contemplating the ‘dharmahaya’ where ‘everything is emptiness and everything is compassion’ he reflected: “I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise”.

In his book Church of Mercy, Pope Francis advises us to read the signs of God in our lives, be guided by the Spirit, and go beyond our comfort zone. Pope Francis’ washing of a female Muslim prisoner’s feet early in his pontificate is a dramatic example of how actions speak louder than words. The subtext of that action could readily be understood as demonstrating how Christ’s love really works. He has not played it safe. He understands the world he is in, and does not separate himself from it. His message is a metaphor for an individual’s spiritual life. He does not want a closed Church, but an open one, and emphasises that “a bruised Church is better than an ill Church”.

Like Pope Francis, Greene and Merton were individuals whose sheer complexity equipped them to address the often contradictory world we live in, in order to find God in it. The lives of such people do not make them saints, yet they do exemplify their status as mystics who contribute to the spiritual development of others.

At a time when religious persecution is rife, when extremists on either side have hijacked and distorted many religious beliefs, in a violent, chaotic and often uncertain world, the lives of people like Pope Francis, Thomas Merton and Graham Greene have a message for us: to embrace the brokenness in the world and in our own lives and find love and God in it. Their message seems to embody what Graham Greene once famously said, “When we are not sure, we are alive”.

Joanna Thyer is a writer, Sydney hospital chaplain, and educator. Her most recent work is 12 Steps to Spiritual Freedom, (Loyola Press, 2014). Source:

http://www.goodsams.org.au/good-oil/what-do-pope-francis-thomas-merton-and-graham-greene-have-in-common

This article was first published in the November 2015 edition of The Good Oil, the e-magazine of the Good Samaritan Sisters http://www.goodsams.org.au/good-oil/what-do-pope-francis-thomas-merton-and-graham-greene-have-in-common

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is about to recommence its case study on the Catholic Church in Ballarat. Last week, the Melbourne Herald Sun reported: ‘Victims of child sexual abuse look set to be grilled by lawyers for Cardinal George Pell in a bid to quash explosive allegations he was complicit in a widespread cover-up.’

Cardinal Pell will have legal representation separate from the legal team appearing for the Church. He will return from Rome and give evidence at the public hearing next month.

I am one of those Catholic priests who thinks that the church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council has done a good job insisting that the needs of victims be paramount. From the start, the council’s lawyers told the Royal Commission that they would not be cross-examining witnesses, testing their credibility, and doubting their evidence of sexual abuse by church personnel.

Wanting to assist with healing for victims and wanting to learn all available lessons about how to avoid future abuse and cover-ups, the Church has been prepared to place second issues of institutional and personal reputation of church officials. The wellbeing of victims has been put first during the church’s conduct of the commission.

Our critics would say this is too little, too late. They may be right. But as a church we are in the business of repentance, forgiveness and making a fresh start.

We were given a fine example recently by the Anglican Archbishop Philip Aspinall who appeared before the commission admitting past mistakes in the conduct of two Brisbane schools, intelligently wrestling with the complex issues, and always putting justice and healing for the victims first.

Things get difficult now that the commission has Cardinal Pell back in its gaze. His reputation is on the line and the commission has spared no effort in scrutinising his past actions. No one else has been called three times before the commission.

The commission even went to the trouble of conducting a private hearing and then a public hearing with the notorious pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale giving evidence. Ridsdale did not come up to proof, clearly causing considerable upset to Justice McClellan and his counsel assisting Ms Gail Furness SC.

The judge reminded Ridsdale the commission could track down proof of anyone having visited Ridsdale in jail between the private and public hearings. McClellan almost seemed to be suggesting that Ridsdale might have been nobbled. In any event, Ridsdale provided no credible or probative evidence.

A month after Ridsdale’s appearance, McClellan explained his reasons for calling Ridsdale and other notorious pedophiles. He not only wanted to get a sense of why these individuals offend.

But in this case study, he thought such individuals had ‘a capacity to tell us of the relationship between themselves and more senior members of their institutions, including the bishop or archbishop if they come from a religious institution. They can tell us if others knew of their offending conduct and help us to understand how the church responded or failed to respond to that conduct.’

Ridsdale told them nothing in the public hearing.

Pell has appeared before the commission in two previous public hearings — in the case studies on the Ellis Case and on the Melbourne response. Each time, the commission found some conflict of evidence between Pell and another witness. Each time the commission preferred the evidence of the other witness, doubting Pell’s recollection.

In the Ellis matter, Pell had a different recollection from Monsignor Brian Rayner, his Vicar General. Rayner gave evidence that he had kept Pell apprised of the dealings between the diocese and Mr Ellis.

Pell stated, ‘To the best of my recollection, I was not made aware at the time of any of those figures or offers. I was not consulted, as best I recall, about what financial amount should be considered. Nor was I made aware of the other factors which appear to have been significant in the way the facilitation process developed.’

The Commission stated, ‘It seems unlikely that, in light of the legal action being foreshadowed, the Cardinal, as responsible for the finances of the Archdiocese and as the Church Authority responsible for ensuring that victims were dealt with justly, would not have sought or been provided with the offers made as part of the facilitation and the outcome.’

The commission found Rayner to be ‘a truthful witness who did his best to provide an honest account’.

In the Melbourne Response hearing, the commission heard from various witnesses about a key parish meeting which related to abuse in the parish of the Foster family. Cardinal Pell had no recollection of the meeting being ‘unpleasant or rowdy’. Pell’s account basically accorded with the evidence of Archbishop Denis Hart and Ms Helen Last who worked for the archdiocese’s Pastoral Response Office.

The Commission found: ‘Notwithstanding these differing accounts, we accept Mrs Foster’s recollection of the events. Given the circumstances of the public meeting and her personal interest in the reading of the letter, she is less likely to recall the events incorrectly.

‘The impression the meeting left on the senior members of the Church is different, but no doubt both Cardinal Pell and Archbishop Hart have attended multiple meetings and recollections as to the impact of the events on the audience may not be as clear for them as for Mrs Foster.’

So twice, the commission has preferred the recollection of others to that of Pell.

At the Ballarat hearing, two victims, Timothy Green and David Ridsdale (a nephew of Gerald, the serial pedophile), made specific allegations under oath against Pell, allegations which had previously been publicly denied by Pell, and which were denied again by Pell in a media statement on 20 May 2015.

Green told the Royal Commission that when a school boy in the change room at the swimming pool in 1974 he said to Pell: ‘We’ve got to do something about what’s going on at St Pat’s.’ He recalls the conversation going like this: ‘Father Pell said, “Yes, what do you mean?” I said, “Brother Dowlan is touching little boys.” Father Pell said, “Don’t be so ridiculous,” and walked out.’

Pell has no recollection of Green at that time, and he has no recollection of such a conversation.

David Ridsdale gave sworn evidence that he called Pell in 1993 to report that he had been abused in the past by his priest uncle Gerald. Immediately after the phone conversation with Pell, David Ridsdale claims to have called both his sisters and said: ‘The bastard just tried to bribe me.’

He gave the commission this account of the conversation with Pell: ‘Me: “Excuse me, George, what the **** are you talking about?” George said, “I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet.” My response was, “**** you George, and everything you stand for.” I hung up the phone.’

Pell says: ‘At no time did I attempt to bribe David Ridsdale or his family or offer any financial inducements for him to be silent. At the time of our discussion the police were already aware of allegations against Gerald Ridsdale and were investigating.’

The royal commissioner has indicated that he wants to make findings in relation to these matters and also into Pell’s more generic claims that he knew nothing and could do nothing when a consultor to the bishop in Ballarat and when auxiliary bishop to Archbishop Francis Little in Melbourne. Pell will give sworn evidence. Undoubtedly he will be cross-examined.

After Green had given evidence, Justice McClellan, inviting cross-examination, warned the church lawyers who wanted to follow their usual practice of not cross-examining victims: ‘I should tell you that I would anticipate we’ll be asked to make findings about some of the matters that Mr Green has included in his statement. It’s a matter for you and those instructing you, but I should put you on notice that that’s a real possibility.’ He issued a similar warning after David Ridsdale had given evidence.

For the sake of Pell’s reputation, his lawyers will need to cross examine Green and Ridsdale testing their recollection and the consistency of their accounts, not about the sexual abuse they suffered, but about their recollections of any church cover-up.

The fact that these men were sexually abused as children is uncontested. The issue is whether their claims that Pell knew or tried to effect some form of cover-up are true and accurate recollections.

Given the high degree of scrutiny applied to Pell by the commission and the media, it’s only fair that he have his lawyers cross examine these two victims who claim that he did not want to know that abuse occurred or even worse, that he tried to cover it up. And it is appropriate given that both Green and Ridsdale have indicated they have no objection being recalled to be so examined.

It is imperative now that all parties be seen and heard in public so that we can all make our assessments of recollection and credibility up to 22 and 41 years on.

Once the commission has addressed the reputation and recollection of Messrs Pell, Green and Ridsdale, we should all then get back to seeing what changes can be made to institutions, especially the Catholic Church, so that the risks of child sexual abuse and of cover-up and inadequate response are minimised as much as possible.

Frank Brennan SJ is professor of law at Australian Catholic University. This article first appeared in Eureka Street on 23 November 2015.

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Francis Sullivan ABC Religion and Ethics 12 Nov 2015 

Ever since the conclusion of the recent Synod in Rome, I have been thinking about the signals of change that Pope Francis is sending. He does it in words and by his disposition.

Observers at the Synod frequently commented on the informal and casual style of the Pope. He mixed easily and readily with participants. He didn’t stand on ceremony and was eager for a chat – more a “first among equals” than some sovereign ruler.

This in itself is a marked difference from previous popes. He personifies what he extols: openness, inclusion and “learning as we go.”

It’s not hard to see how such a disposition pays dividends in a world in which the search for truth and meaning can seem so clouded and even crowded out with competing voices, philosophies and ideologies. The fact that Francis doesn’t purport to “have it all sorted” only deepens his appeal to the rest of us who struggle at times to find certainty and a sure path in life.

Pope Francis has a mantra. He speaks often of the mercy of God, not divine judgement. He wants to remind us of the importance of the human heart, the innate urge to feel for others, understand their plight and seek to help. He wants us to see this as the first and most important of the human responses. This is a disposition that builds bridges and heals wounds; a perspective that seeks to restore relationships, nourish people and promote harmony, not division.

Only this week he spoke of a Church unafraid to question itself, live with doubts and the discomfort of interrogating its assumptions; a place of dialogue, with a willingness to embrace the new and the awkward. A church that seeks to reform through becoming unsettled, unsure but close to people, their circumstances, sense of isolation and travail. A church more like a meeting square than a brick bastion.

This reminds me of what Simone Weil meant by paying attention. She said that in order to get a sense of what is true we need to suspend our own agenda and concerns and shift the focus of our attention on to that we encounter. In so doing, the truth of that encounter, that dynamic within the dialogue, will be revealed.

This is similar to the maxim that listening is the first step towards wisdom. To listen well is to be aware of the voices in ourselves that try to understand another person long before we have actually heard them. Letting go of preconceived perspectives, attitudes and even understandings is the challenge for a pilgrim church if dedication to truth is to be its hallmark.

The irony is that, in becoming disturbed or, as the Pope puts it, “uncomfortable” – maybe even knocked off course – we are strangely on a pathway more to do with God than any human construct of the Divine.

At one level, we should not be surprised to hear a pope speak and act like this. The fact that we are surprised speaks volumes for the institutional persona the Church has cultivated in many quarters these days.

Critics see the Church as being harsh on human nature, uncompromising with its take on the truth and immovable in its attitudes. In its response to child sex abuse, the Church too regularly failed the test of moral leadership, hid behind institutional protectionism and sought to excuse itself as just another institution with some “bad eggs” in the basket.

It spent too long exhausting institutional resources to justify, contextualise and even rationalise away the problem, rather than in humbly admitting its failures as far up the line as they went. The upshot has been in collapse of trust and the consolidation of the public image of a Church that not only speaks of arrogance and indifference, but that also fails to “feel with” those abused and disenchanted.

Too often Church officials wanted understanding before they expressed mercy. We didn’t get the problem before it became a tsunami. We didn’t get what victims and their families were saying and the reach of the tentacles of abuse within the Church. We didn’t get the imperative to cry out in shame and seek atonement. And when we did, it looked too late.

God have mercy!

Francis Sullivan is CEO of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, which is coordinating the Catholic Church’s engagement with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

 

In Greek synod means on the way together – (odos means a way; syn means together). The model is peripatetic– walking around. Aristotle used to walk round with his disciples discussing issues and his school got called the Peripatetic School.

The Synod of Bishops was set up after Vatican II and met in 1967, 1971 , 1974 and 1977 under Paul VI. These were meetings of a representative group of the world’s bishops looking at significant issues selected by the pope. There was genuine consultation but the pope alone wrote the final document. By the time the fifth meeting was held in 1980 John Paul II was pope. He changed the whole nature of the synod and used it as a vehicle to impose his own views. Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop Eric Perkins was shocked on arriving in Rome for the 1980 Synod on the Family only to find that there was no room for considering the findings he had collected from nation-wide discussion groups. In fact the projected conclusions had already been written

Pope Francis called an extraordinary synod last year to prepare for this year’s ordinary synod – so-called because it comes on the normal three yearly schedule. The topic was The Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and in the Contemporary World.

One of Francis’s objectives has been to restore genuine consultation to the synod. He has achieved this. They did talk together. Their consolidated opinions achieved a two thirds majority on every paragraph of the final document.

A contentious issue was admitting divorced and remarried to the sacraments. Could this be softened?

In Greek epeikeia means gentleness or leniency. In church canon law it means a modified interpretation of the law when the law does not fit the circumstances of a case.

The “internal forum” stands in contrast to the external forum of a court where evidence can be proved. When this is not possible a conscientious judgement can be made in the internal forum. This has been a long held procedure in moral theology, but making use of it was authoritatively discouraged and policed under Wojtyla and Ratzinger.

Between epeikeia and internal forum people can work out a solution in their own case. This opens a way to approval of Communion for divorcees. By taking this path the synod bishops saw themselves as opening a door. The trouble is that the horse had bolted long ago. Most remarried divorcees who really want to go to Communion do so – and with their pastor’s encouragement. But restatement of the embargo has been so alienating that many no longer even want to receive. And any decent pastor knows that once they go, they go forever.

Another of Francis’s objectives was to replace the doctrinal watchdog focus with that of pastoral care. The voting shows that a third are hesitant. Still, this is not bad when most of the bishops have been appointed by JP II or Benedict XVI who made ideological support for their narrow view of orthodoxy and orthopraxis a pre-requisite for selection as a bishop.

The pope’s final address commented that the synod had “laid bare the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families” He also referred to conspiracy theories that hindered passing on the Church’s message. This was taken as possibly referring to a letter to the pope from 13 cardinals, led by George Pell, complaining that the synod processes were rigged to favour a liberal outcome.[1] The complaint was a bit rich since all the synods since 1977 were just rubber stamps for the pope.

The pope certainly has an opposition and George has established himself as a leading member.

Conformists do not make good leaders as the current episcopacy shows. The pope is slowly reshaping the episcopacy by trying to select pastoral bishops. Cupich to Chicago and more recently Zuppi to Bologna and Lorefice to Palermo are examples. There is an inbuilt problem here. The pope alone makes these appointments without any real consultation of the local churches. Mind you he is not making a welter of it as is shown by his promotion of Gerhardt Muller in CDF and Robert Sarah to head the Congregation for Worship.

His future appointments will be watched with interest. In a still clerical Church the talent pool is getting very shallow. Will he bring more consultation to the appointment of bishops?

Meanwhile, back at the local franchise the Parish Priest is still king – but not for much longer. The clergy is dying out. PPs need to divest more decision making to laity. Most parishes still have enough willing and interested members. Select a good principal for the school – and one who sees the school as a work of the parish. Appoint good people to be in charge of liturgy, pastoral care, sacramental life and parish finances. Get a good secretary/manager to give them professional support and to run routine parish business. Then pick someone to be the coordinator of it all so that, when Father is gone, the show can still go on.

Finally it is Spring Carnival time. Some tips for the big race. Bergoglio is a long-distance stayer with the rail advantage. Pell has won at some country meetings but is looking tired and may have broken down (https://goo.gl/7AvunR) and Coleridge has found an opening in the pack and is heading strongly to the finishing line. Place your bets. Cross your fingers. Here’s hoping.

[1] The signatories include:

– Carlo Caffarra, now retired archbishop of Bologna, theologian, formerly the first president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family;
– Thomas C. Collins, archbishop of Toronto, Canada;
– Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York, United States;
– Willem J. Eijk, archbishop of Utrecht, Holland;
– Peter Erdo, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest
– Gerhard L. Müller, former bishop of Regensburg, Germany, since 2012 prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith;
– Wilfrid Fox Napier, archbishop of Durban, South Africa, president delegate of the synod underway as also at the previous session of the synod of October 2014;
– George Pell, archbishop emeritus of Sydney, Australia, since 2014 prefect in the Vatican of the secretariat for the economy;
– Mauro Piacenza, head of Apostolic Penitentiary;
– Robert Sarah, former archbishop of Conakry, Guinea, since 2014 prefect of the congregation for divine worship and the discipline

– Angelo Scola, archbishop of Milan, Italy;
– Jorge L. Urosa Savino, archbishop of Caracas, Venezuela.
– Armond Vingt-Trois, archbishop of Paris.

Eric Hodgens is a retired Catholic Priest in Melbourne who ‘writes a bit’.

I was talking recently about the Synod with a very experienced parish priest. He said that if the bishops thought we were all waiting with bated breath for their decision regarding the divorced remarried receiving Communion, then they really do live in cloud cuckoo-land. Nowadays divorced Catholics don’t just hang around waiting for a bevy of bishops to decide. They follow their consciences and do what they think is right, especially if they have talked to a sensible, pastoral priest. Sure, many have understandably walked away from the church, but many have stayed having made their own decisions about going to Communion – the internal forum solution.

So really it’s irrelevant what the Synod decided. Even on the gay issue sensible Catholics already understand that talk about people being ‘intrinsically disordered’ is not only utterly insensitive; it is also ‘intrinsically’ un-Christ-like and evangelically ‘disordered’!

But that doesn’t mean the Synod was a failure. It was a success because it recovered something of the church’s Catholicity. Genuine Catholicism implies a universal, multi-ethnic, non-sectarian church, a community of many parts and differing views. My major criticism of the two popes before Francis is that they were essentially ‘uncatholic’; they promoted a narrow, ‘pure’, sectarian church, the antithesis of Catholicity. That’s why they loved outfits like the Neo-Catechuminate and Opus Dei; they are sectarian in structure and intention.

But the bishop of Rome, as Francis likes to be called, encouraged the synod to be genuinely Catholic and, unlike his predecessors, called on participants to express views that differed from his own. For the first time since Paul VI revived the Synod in 1965, this gathering was actually free. Bishops could speak their minds and weren’t constantly second-guessing the pope.

Perversely, it was the conservatives at the Synod who openly disagreed with the line Francis took who did most to relativise the high papalism that has absorbed the church, lock, stock and barrel since the Counter-Reformation and that reached it apogee in John Paul II. We had the wonderful spectacle of conservatives indulging in ‘cafeteria Catholicism’, i.e. picking and choosing which doctrines and popes they were going to follow and which they weren’t. For instance many preferred John Paul II’s dogmatism to the pastoral emphasis of Francis, claiming that the presumed indissolubility of marriage was more important than Jesus’ unequivocal teaching on mercy, love and forgivness.

Another positive was that the Synod toyed with localism and the idea that one size doesn’t fit all. Being Catholic in sub-Saharan Africa is different to being Catholic in the Middle East, or Asia, or Australia. The spirituality, faith experience, liturgical expressions, moral dilemmas and religious culture of each region is different. So decisions about these issues need to be devolved and the local church needs to assume much more responsibility for its own life. This immediately relativises the Vatican and returns the bishop of Rome to his much more traditional role: that of being the guarantee and heart of the church’s communion and the touchstone of its orthodoxy.

So the great thing about the Synod was not what it decided, but that it happened and participants took the first tentative steps in the direction of realizing Vatican II’s doctrine of collegiality.

But the Synod also revealed some profound weaknesses in contemporary Catholicism. First, the church’s leadership cadre was revealed, at best, as second rate. This is the result of a bench of bishops chosen by John Paul II and Benedict XVI who saw themselves as the church incorporated and bishops as branch managers. Anyone with initiative, imagination, emotional intelligence, or leadership ability was excluded from the episcopate.

Bishops also have lost the sense that they too sit in the cathedra Petri, the chair of Peter as the third century church father Cyprian of Carthage called it. They are the rocks and leaders of the local community and they are called, like the pope, to extend collegiality to their priests and people. For this to happen the local church will have to have a decisive say in their election. The recent practice (it only goes back to the late-nineteenth century) of Rome appointing all bishops has to be jettisoned and power devolved to the local church.

There are two issues the Synod should have tackled, but didn’t: women and contraception. Pope Francis says he wants women to participate at all levels in the church, but he has done little about it. If the church did promote women it would influence equality for women across faiths and in doing so would reduce violence to women and children. The evidence is overwhelming that once women have education, freedom from patriarchal and tribal structures, equality and access to reproductive health services, they make responsible decisions about fertility. This is a real area of weakness for Pope Francis, as the encyclical Laudato si reflects.

The only reason why contraception was sedulously avoided was because the bishops would have to admit that Paul VI was wrong. This is certainly what the vast majority of Catholics in developed countries think, but bishops in the developing world, particularly Africa, see this issue as linked to reproductive health which they caricature as a Western plot to control their populations. So it suits them to side-step it. The African bishops play the same silly game with homosexuality, claiming it is a foreign import and never existed in Africa before. The motive here is to outdo the Muslims.

So for me the Synod was a success and it was the first time since Vatican II that bishops had the opportunity to truly speak their minds.

Paul Collins is a Canberra-based historian, author and broadcaster.  See his webpage at www.paulcollinscatholicwriter.com.au

 

 

Editorial (No.10, October 2015, updated 16/10/2015)  

Catholics for Renewal.

It has been known for quite some time that a number of cardinals and bishops, both in Rome and abroad, are – to put it mildly – uncomfortable with the way Pope Francis’ pontificate is unfolding.

Well, this week it all spilled out into the open when it was revealed that several cardinals – including three top Vatican officials (Cardinals Pell, Müller and Sarah) – wrote a letter to the Pope that basically criticized the way he is running the Synod of Bishops.

One should be magnanimous and give these birds credit for being honest with the Pope and telling him their concerns. (They were not happy that the public found out, which is another story.) But one should also be aware that, at least some of these prelates, are active ringleaders of an opposition to Francis.

As the Vatican II-minded theologian, Enzo Bianchi, noted this week in the Rome daily, La Repubblica, they have at times waged a fierce battle.

Bianchi, who is founder and prior of the Ecumenical Monastery of Bose in Northern Italy, said, “What’s at play here is not Catholic doctrine on the indissolubility of marriage… No, it’s the pastoral dimension, his attitude towards those who make mistakes and towards contemporary society.”

Then he thundered: “Let’s be clear – what scandalizes them is mercy!”

Who knows if Pope Francis read that article on Wednesday after saying his morning prayers and before heading to his two-pronged general audience in the Paul VI Hall (for several hundred sick and handicapped people) and St Peter’s Square (for the rest of the visitors)?

But it did not seem to be a coincidence that, as he began to read his prepared remarks to the tens of thousands of people in the square, he put down his pages and said, “Before beginning this catechesis I would like, in the name of the Church, to ask your forgiveness for the scandals that have occurred recently both in Rome and in the Vatican. I ask your forgiveness.”

To which scandals was he referring?

There have been a few in the last several weeks – like the Polish monsignor and former Vatican official who “came out” and admitted to being in a gay relationship. And there was the former nuncio and defrocked archbishop, also Polish, who died this past summer while awaiting trial for sexually abusing adolescent boys.

Obviously, the Pope was not referring to the scandal of mercy. But he could have had in mind the scandalous behavior of those who, in these days, are leading the opposition to his mission of mercy.

 

**********

Pope Francis does not seem to be overly nervous about those bishops who are not entirely “on message” – that is, those who don’t agree with him on everything or do not share his style of episcopal ministry.

And nor should he be.

He is the first to say – indeed, to promote the idea – that we can accommodate a great deal of diversity within the Catholic community without being worried that it will diminish Church unity.

Still, it is hard to understand how any pope could tolerate blatant opposition to him coming from within the very structure that is supposed to be, principally, at his service – that is, the Roman Curia.

The titular bishops or emeritus diocesan ordinaries that work in Vatican offices are already a bit of an anomaly. They are, in effect, bishops without a people. Their main task should be to support the Bishop of Rome in his universal ministry, not put up obstacles.

There have been uncooperative Curia prelates in every pontificate, but former popes usually kicked them upstairs or sent them somewhere else to neutralize them and thwart their negative influence. Mostly these were officials inherited from their predecessor.

Surprisingly, Pope Francis has not done this, except on very few occasions.

The transfer of the conservative Cardinal Mauro Piacenza from the Congregation for Clergy to the Vatican’s tribunal for the internal forum and indulgences is one example. His removal of Cardinal Raymond Burke as head of the Church’s supreme court, sending him to be the glorified chaplain and cardinal-protector of the Knights of Malta, is another.

But most everyone else Francis found on the upper rungs of the Curia hierarchy when he arrived have kept their jobs.

Part of the reason is that the man who put them there – Benedict XVI – is still around and living in the Vatican Gardens. The ex-pope saddled Francis with people like Gerhard Müller (head of the doctrinal office) and Georg Gänswein (prefect of the pontifical household) after he had already decided (but before announcing) that he was going to resign the papacy.

Francis could have dismissed both of them. Instead, he made one of them a cardinal and kept them both in their jobs. More difficult to understand is why he appointed Cardinal Robert Sarah head of the Congregation for Divine Worship.

None of the three are enthusiastic supporters of the general and overall thrust of this pontificate. They have, at various times, publicly voiced concern over the direction it has taken. More serious, however, is what is happening behind the scenes.

Unfortunately, as long as the retired man in white is still in Rome they won’t be going anywhere.

 

Robert Mickens is a regular contributor with his ‘Letter from Rome’ in Global Pulse. This weekly newsletter was published on October 16, 2015.

A Catholic friend of mine who spent his professional life as a journalist at what was the then rather WASPISH Melbourne Age told me in the 1980s that two sports dominated that paper’s pages – Australian Rules football and Catholic fights.

Cardinal George Pell should have stuck to playing Ozzie Rules. In that game, shirt fronting is the common tactic used to eliminate opponents. It comes down to knocking out an opposing player usually with a side-on, full body smash that leaves the opponent flat on his back.

As a first ruck, Pell was so well known for this tactic that he aroused the interest of the scouts for the Richmond ALF club in suburban Melbourne. They used to survey leading teams in Ballarat where, as first ruck for the Christian Brothers’ St Pat’s College, Pell made his mark.

Pell has never been any good at boxing – in the ring or with shadows. He always telegraphs his punches allowing his many critics and opponents to know the punch is coming and prepare their next moves. He needs the surprise element he had in AFL. He so telegraphs his punches that when they arrive, they land with all the force of a wet sock.

His behavior at the Synod in Rome is yet another instance of failing to read the play and ending up giving his critics and opponents free kicks in abundance. Never noted for his perceptiveness or his timing, this time he has excelled himself.

He led the composition of a letter signed by 13 or 14 participants in the current Synod in Rome – the number is unclear because five who were claimed to be signatories have denied they signed it – to be handed to the Pope BEFORE they Synod began.

It warned the pope that he and they wouldn’t stand for any of what Pell’s mentor, Bob Santamaria, used to call “wishy washy liberal trendy” outcomes from the Synod.

No. They are the men from the “narrow gate and the straight path” that Jesus asked them to follow. Any watering down of “doctrine” in the name of “mercy” would be dismissed out of hand. So, a shot across the bow from Pell and his gang BEFORE the Synod was to be expected.

Talk about missing the target and ahead of time too! The Pope has made it clear for over a year that the Synod is not convened to change doctrine. Anyone who has done Theology 101 knows a Synod CAN’T do that. The Pope’s line in this as in many things is: guys, there’s a thing called reality; it hits us in the face every day; what is the right pastoral response?

There is and always has been a difference between a pastoral response to a reality and what the Church declares in abstraction which for those of an Anglo Saxon heritage apparently means legal fundamentalism: legal universals derived from abstract doctrines.

Cardinal Pell outlawed in both Sydney and Melbourne during his time there what is the resolution of these sorts of issues in the time honored way they have been for almost a millennium. Ever since St. Thomas Aquinas proposed the best definition we have for conscience in the 13^th. Century – the “internal forum” – it has been the common practice of the Church at an operational, pastoral level.

The internal forum is a person’s conscientious facing of their choices, dilemmas and failures before God, seeking of forgiveness for the failures by the remedy offered by the Church (Confession) and getting on with your life as it presents itself.

The pastoral response is what happens on the ground. For example, my parents who were divorced when that just wasn’t done by Catholics – in 1968. My mother proceeded with the divorce, as Catholics did in those days, “because the Parish Priest told me to.” The elderly Irish PP could see what a destructive relationship it was between my parents and that the only solution was to break it up which my father wouldn’t do if the law of the land hadn’t intervened.

There was a relationship breakdown where I learnt that apportioning blame in intimate matters is an absurd application of the analytic mind and the best thing to say was “it didn’t work despite the best efforts of both” and that’s that.

I find comfort in the knowledge that many others have benefitted from such sensitive and intelligent pastoral care in the Church. It is disappointing beyond words when I meet couples not blessed with such care and believe expulsion from the community is a deserved result for a failure the Church can’t forgive.

And as a priest, I’ve never come across a parish that doesn’t have divorcees (and gays for that matter) numbered among the most outstanding contributors to the life of the parish.

Back to Cardinal Pell. He’s never been noted for his intelligent approach to issues. He’s demonstrated very visibly in his appearances before the Royal Commission into sex abuse that he’s short on compassion. His approach to theology and scripture leaves those of us who know a bit about them simply gobsmacked for his virtual illiteracy beyond his capacity to recite catechism answers and the Ten Commandments.

But this time he has excelled himself. He’s created a stir about something that isn’t on the agenda – doctrinal revision – and attacked something central to the pastoral life of the Church: mercy and compassion.

And immediately the letter to the Pope from him and his entourage became public through the agency of a crank in the Italian media and ally of Pell – Sandro Magister – the well known choir of Pell acolytes chimed in: Tess Lawrence in The Australian, Tracey Rowland at the Australian Catholic University, his allies at the London Catholic Herald and all the fanatics on the Catholic Right in the US (who used to quote the last two Popes endlessly to justify their extreme views as authorized by a Pope).

Cardinal Pell has form in this approach. When he was among the Australian bishops at their ad Limina visit to Rome in 1998, he played the hierarchy card and convinced the then Pope and his Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger, that the Australian Church was off the rails. They were surprised at the end of their visit to be forced to sign a statement of conclusions that simply dismayed all but a few who were in on the deal.

A list of shortcomings and failures were listed and a set of remedies proposed to which all were to comply. This document served as the Roman background for the dismissal of the bishop of Toowoomba, Bill Morris, a decade later.

That time he won with secrecy and surprise. To shift codes – from ALF to soccer – this time all we do is to congratulate Cardinal Pell on a masterful own goal! His cosignatories have abandoned him and the reactions of other bishops at the Synod have been anger and dismay.