Tag Archives: Vatican II

Support for Pope Francis Counters “Filial Correction”

Reports yesterday from the Czech Republic describe a letter by Czech theologian and Charles University Professor Tomas Halik in support of Pope Francis and his positions on marriage. Those reports stated that the letter has been signed by “several dozens of personalities” and supported by “hundreds” of others

Signatory Bishop Kevin Dowling (Rustenburg, South Africa)

Here’s the text of the letter, from their website:

Dear highly esteemed Pope Francis,

Your pastoral initiatives and their theological justification are currently under vehement attack by a group in the church. With this open letter, we wish to express our gratitude for your courageous and theologically sound papal leadership.

In a short time, you have succeeded in reshaping the pastoral culture of the Roman Catholic Church in accordance with its origin in Jesus. Wounded people and wounded nature go straight to your heart. You see the church as a field hospital on the margins of life. Your concern is every single person loved by God. When encountering others, compassion and not the law shall have the last word. God and God’s mercy characterize the pastoral culture that you expect from the church. You dream of a “church as mother and shepherdess.” We share your dream.

We ask that you would not veer from the path you have taken, and we assure you of our full support and constant prayer.

Signatory Bishop Paul Iby,(Eisenstadt, Austria)

The letter was released just yesterday – October 17th. Today, website lists 199 formal signatories (including at least six bishops that I can see, from )the original “hundreds” of supporters has become several thousand (4366 at 13:45, BST), and is increasing rapidly –  up by 80 in just the last 35 minutes. It’s also notable that the initial formal signatories are overwhelmingly from the Czech Republic and the adjacent Germany. Past experience (eg, from the German “theologians’ revolt) suggests that as news of this initiative spreads, many more prominent theologians, pastors and bishops from Western Europe, the Americas and elsewhere will add their signatures.

Signatory Dom Erwin Krautler (Bishop of Xingu, Brazil)

When news first broke of the “filial correction”, it soon became clear that not only were the numbers of signatories limited, but their status was low. That is certainly not the case with the counter initiative.  Even in these early stages. signatories include bishops from Austria, Hungary, Brazil and South Africa as well as the Czech Republic, and professional theologians from several universities, including Marie-Jo Thiel, president of the European association for Catholic theology and Professor Thomas O’Loughlin, President of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain.

Signatory Bishop Miklós Beer (Eger, Hungary)



Continue reading Support for Pope Francis Counters “Filial Correction”

US Bishop Calls for Vatican III !

The Californian Bishop Francis Quinn has used the occasion of Pope Francis’ US visit, and the World Meeting of Families, to call in an op-ed opinion piece for the New York Times, for extensive reform of the Catholic Church on three core issues bitterly dividing the Church:   communion for the divorced and remarried, an end to compulsory celibacy for Catholic priests, and the ordination of women.

Bishop Francis Quinn

To achieve this, he proposes a third Vatican Council:

Pope Francis prefers the simple title “bishop of Rome.” So I ask my brother bishop: Should we not convene a third Vatican Council just as ethical and paradigm-shifting as Vatican Council II of the 1960s?

In addition to the three issues dividing the church, this council and future councils would explore the morality of world economies, spiritual life, human sexuality, peace and war, and the poor and suffering.

He does not specifically call for any change in teaching on same – sex relationships, but he has done in the past: he was one of the first to follow Cardinal Schonborn a few years ago, when he said that it was high time that the Church considered the quality of gay relationships, putting aside the obsession with genital acts. Besides, this is implicit in his reference to “human sexuality” as a topic for discussion.

It is of course, significant that Bishop Quin is retired. On the one hand, this means that his opinions will carry little weight among the rest of the hierarchy. On the other, we should remember that it is precisely because he is no retired, that like Bishop Geoffrey Robinson and several others, he is able to speak freely without fear of losing his job – he has none, to lose.  What these men are saying publicly now that they are able to do so safely, many others will be thinking privately, holding their tongues – for now.

But Cardinal Schoborn’s off – the – cuff remarks back then about respect for gay couples, and a rethink on those divorced and remarried, have since achieved much wider currency, and were widely discussed at the last family synod, in the intervening year since, and will be again in October.

Change will not come without extensive exploratory debate. What is now clear, is that under Pope Francis, there is now far wider, freer debate about reform to Church practice, disciplines and even doctrines, than at any time under the previous three pontiffs – perhaps even since Vatican II.

Gaudium et Spes: Share Our Riches

With so much recent attention on the extravagance of Germany’s  Bishop of Bling, the second reading from  this mornings office has a particular relevance, with its stress on the extent of world poverty, and the Christian obligation to share our wealth. Below is a short extract, that should be especially embarrassing for bishops indulging in luxurious lifestyles.

bishop-of-blim

But the message is important for all of us, not only bishops, and certainly includes gay Catholics. Continue reading Gaudium et Spes: Share Our Riches

Bishop Robinson: Catholic Assertions, Not Arguments

In his address to the New Ways Ministries’ conference  From Water to Wine:  Lesbian/Gay Catholics and Relationships,  Bishop Geoffrey Robinson devoted a major part of his address to demonstrating just why that teaching is unsound. Yesterday, I outlined the first of his three reasons for making such claim, that the argument from “God’s purpose in nature” is unsound.

Now, I move on to the second of his three arguments against the traditional teaching on sex :

The second reason for change is that the statements of the Church appear to be assertions rather than arguments

This is pretty much the same point that the medieval historian Mark Jordan makes (in “The Silence of Sodom“) about the Vatican’s rhetorical style – that it makes no attempt to present a rational argument for its claims. Instead, it simply depends on endlessly repeating its own claims in different forms, with no substantiation except its own assertions. Instead of attempting to win over its adversaries by persuasion, it simply wears them down. Jordan’s conclusion from this is that there is no point in trying to deal with  Vatican sexual theology by attempting to engage with it as if it had any rational basis. To do so, he argues, is to make the mistake of engaging with it on its own terrain. Instead, we must find other ways of dealing with it.

Some time ago, I wrote to James Alison to ask for help understanding a particular passage in the CDF Hallowe’en Letter. His response was that I should simply avoid wasting time on the letter. There’s no point, he wrote, in wasting time on nonsense. I remembered this when reading that part of his long interview with Vox Nova, which deals with the CDF description of homosexuality as an “intrinsically disordered” inclination. There has been a lot of hurt and anger resulting from that description, and a great deal of time spent in either attempting to refute it, or defend it. But, says Alison, the actual meaning of the term is unstable, constantly shifting to suit whatever conclusion the Vatican apologists want to extract from it. The lesson from both Jordan and Alison then, would be to avoid grappling with orthodox sexual theology from within its own frame of reference. Instead, we must formulate our own framework for a system of sexual ethics that bypasses the Vatican’s flawed assumptions.

This is what Bishop Geoffrey Robinson did in his Baltimore speech to New Ways Ministry. After showing that the basic premises of official teaching are unsound (as I described yesterday), he makes no attempt to engage with the arguments that follow from them – because, as he notes, there are no arguments, only unsubstantiated assertions. Observing further that the emphasis in the doctrine is unsatisfactory obsession with genital acts, ignoring the  people who perform the actions, he proceeds to construct a new, reasoned framework on the basis of relationships – which I will get to in later posts. For now, this is what he says about the Church’s use of assertions to replace argument (the full text is posted on his own website).

Second Argument

The second reason for change is that the statements of the Church appear to be assertions rather than arguments. No one disputes the fact that sexual intercourse is the normal means of creating new life and that it can be a powerful force in helping couples to express and strengthen their love. Both the unitive and procreative elements are, therefore, foundational aspects of marriage as an institution of the whole human race. But are they essential elements of each individual marriage, no matter what the circumstances, e.g. the couple who are told by medical experts that any child they had would suffer from a serious and crippling hereditary illness? Are they essential elements of every single act of sexual intercourse? On what basis?

There are always problems when human beings claim that they know the mind of God. So is the statement that it is God’s will, and indeed order, that both the unitive and procreative aspects must necessarily be present in each act of sexual intercourse a proven fact or a simple assertion? If it is a proven fact, what are the proofs? Why do church documents not present such proofs (6)? Would not any proofs have to include the experience of millions of people in the very human endeavour of seeking to combine sex, love and the procreation of new life in the midst of the turbulence of human sexuality and the complexities of human life? Is an ideal being confused with a reality?

If it is only an assertion, is there any reason why we should not apply the principle of logic: What is freely asserted may be freely denied? If it is no more than an assertion, does it really matter who it is who makes the assertion or how often it is made? Where are the arguments in favour of the assertion that would convince an open and honest conscience?

 

Books:

Jordan, Mark D: The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism

Robinson, Bishop Geoffrey: Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church

 

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Bishop Robinson on "The Offence Against God", "God’s Purpose"

Speaking at New Ways Ministries’ conference 2012 on  the theme From Water to Wine:  Lesbian/Gay Catholics and Relationships, Bishop Robinson began by demonstrating that we cannot hope for a  change Catholic teaching on homosexual relationships, until we first achieve a change in teaching on heterosexual relationships. He then devoted a major part of his address to demonstrating just why that teaching is unsound, producing three discrete arguments:

  • The first addresses the Church’s claim that the essence of sexual sin is a direct offence against God, irrespective of any harm caused to any human being.
  • The second reason for change is that the statements of the Church appear to be assertions rather than arguments.
  • The third argument is that the teaching emphasises the God‐given nature of the physical acts, rather than on how such acts affect persons and relationships.

After demonstrating why present teaching needs reform, Bishop Robinson moved on to a positive basis for a new Catholic teaching, and then to a discussion of Catholic ethics for homosexual relationships. I will get to these later. For now, I consider here only the first of these three arguments:

First Argument (Against Catholic Teaching on Heterosexual Morality):

The teaching of the church  that sexual sin is that is a direct offence against God raises two serious questions, one concerning nature and the other concerning God.

The claim that non -procreative sexual activity is a sin against God rests on the belief that this contravenes “God’s purpose” for sex, opposed to the natural order that God established. One problem with this, is that observations of “nature” show clearly that this is not so. There is abundant evidence that in the natural world of the animal kingdom, many species practice a wide range of sexual activities that cannot lead to procreation, including sex before reaching full maturity and fertility, oral and anal sex, masturbation (alone or with others), genital rubbing, and homosexual activities. Some primates even manufacture and use sex toys – breaking off vine sections for use as dildoes, and fruits adapted as masturbation aids.

But that is not the objection Robinson raises. He finds another, one that I have not found before. Is there any other context, he asks, where theologians identify a sin on the grounds that it is against God’s purpose? If there are, he asks further, why do church documents not list them? To demonstrate the absurdity of theologians deriving a single, inviolable “God’s purpose” for a particular human faculty, he refers to the rather trivial case of human vision. If the purpose of eyes is to see where we are going, is it then a sin when driving, to use rear view mirrors, which show us where we have been?

There are numerous other examples that he could have used to demonstrate the futility of deducing a single “purpose” of God in any part of creation. One that I would certainly not be acceptable to the Vatican was once used by post-reformation Protestant theologians. Observing that women have narrower shoulders and broader hips than men, they deduced that God’s purpose for women was to bear children.  Some Catholic theologians might accept this – but not their next conclusion, that this implied that for women to live celibate lives in convents was clearly in contravention of God’s purpose for them.

In the sexual context, I wonder about the tongue. It would seem self-evident that this has two purposes: for speech, and in eating. The Church’s teaching on sex is that it too has two purposes, unitive and procreative, but that these must both be present for sex to be licit. For the tongue, any attempt to apply both uses simultaneously, eating and talking at once, is clearly not ideal. Then, there is another, less obvious use of the tongue, in kissing and in love-making. Following the Church’s reasoning on any contravention of God’s “purpose” as sinful, are we to conclude that introducing the tongue in love-making is a third purpose for the organ – or that such use is a contravention of its two intended purposes, and so sinful?

There are many more objections that could be raised to the whole idea of identifying a particular “purpose” of God, but Robinson goes on to another issue entirely, the suggestion that any contravention of such purpose is an offence against God, to which he proposes a remarkably simple riposte: God is bigger than that, and not so easily offended.

Robinson’s full text is posted on his own website. This is the extract relating to his “first argument”.

First Argument

The first argument is that the teaching of the church says that the essence of sexual sin is that it is a direct offence against God because, irrespective of whether harm is caused to any human being, it is a violation of what is claimed to be the divine and natural order that God established. It is claimed that God inserted into nature itself the demand that every human sexual act be both unitive and procreative. If it does not contain both of these elements, it is against “nature” as established by God. This raises two serious questions, one concerning nature and the other concerning God.

In relation to nature, should not the church’s argument give a number of examples of other fields where God has given a divine purpose to some created thing, such that it would be a sin against God to use that thing in any other way? Or is this the only example there is of God giving a divine purpose to a created thing? If there are other examples, why do church documents not list them? I remember reading years ago the mocking argument that the natural God‐given purpose of eyes is to look forwards, so rear vision mirrors in cars are against nature and hence immoral. Granted that this is a mocking argument, does it not raise questions about what we mean by “nature” and how difficult it is to draw moral consequences from a claim to a divinely established nature?

In relation to God, the argument was used in the past that striking a king was far more serious than striking a commoner, and, for the same reason, an offence against God was far more serious than an offence against a human being. In this view, the most serious sins were those directly against God. In practice, this applied above all to sins of blasphemy and sexual sins, and it helps to explain why, in the Catholic Church, sexual morality has long been given a quite exaggerated importance.

When a person takes great offence at even a trivial remark, we tend to speak of that person as a “little” person, while a person who can shrug off most negative comments is a “big” person. My reading of the bible leads me to believe in a very big God indeed who is not easily offended by direct offences. I believe, for instance, that God shrugs off much of what is called “blasphemy” as an understandable human reaction to the felt injustice of evil and suffering in this world. I do not believe that God is in the least offended when parents who have just lost a child rage in terrible anger against God.

In this vein, I must ask whether God will be offended by any sexual thought or action considered solely as an offence against an order established by God, before any question of its effect on other persons, oneself or the community is taken into account.

The parable of the prodigal son may help us here3. The younger son had received the entire share of the property that would come to him and he had
wasted it. He had no right to one further square centimetre of the property, for the entire remaining property would now go by strict right to the elder son (“You are with me always and all I have is yours” v.31). The father respected his elder son’s rights and would take nothing from him. When, however, it came to the hurt the prodigal son had caused to his father by abandoning him and wasting the property he had worked so hard for, the father brushed this aside out of love for his son and insisted that he be welcomed and treated as a son rather than a servant. The message is surely that God cares about the rights of human beings and what they do to one another, but is big enough, loving enough and forgiving enough not to get angry at direct offences against God. May we ask whether the god portrayed in this parable would condemn a person to eternal  punishment for sometimes getting unitive and procreative purposes out of a perceived ideal harmony in the midst of the turbulence of sexuality?

For centuries the church has taught that every sexual sin is a mortal sin (4) According to that teaching, even deliberately deriving pleasure from thinking about sex, no matter how briefly, is a mortal sin. The teaching may not be proclaimed aloud today as much as before, but it was proclaimed by many popes (5) it has never been retracted and it has affected countless people.

The teaching fostered belief in an incredibly angry God, for this God would condemn a person to an eternity in hell for a single unrepented moment of
deliberate pleasure arising from sexual desire. I simply do not believe in such a God. Indeed, I positively reject such a God.

Does it not follow that there are serious dangers in basing the church’s moral teaching concerning sex on the concept of direct offences against God? It must be added that, in the response to revelations of sexual abuse, this became a most serious problem, for far too many church authorities saw the offence primarily in terms of a sexual offence against God, to be treated according to the criteria governing such offences ‐ repentance, confession, absolution, total forgiveness by God and hence restoration to the status quo. This contributed greatly to the practice of moving offenders from one parish to another. There was never going to be an adequate response to abuse as long as many people thought primarily in terms of sexual offences against God rather than harm caused to the victims.

3 Lk. 15:11-32

4 See Noldin-Schmitt, Summa Theologiae Moralis, Feliciani Rauch, Innsbruck, 1960 Vol.I, Supplement
De Castitate, p.17, no.2. The technical term constantly repeated was mortale ex toto genere suo. The
sin of taking pleasure from thinking about sex was called delectatio morosa.

5 For example, Clement VII (1592-1605) and Paul V (1605-1621) said that those who denied this
teaching should be denounced to the Inquisition.

Books:

Robinson, Bishop Geoffrey: Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church

Benedict’s New Clothes

Michael Bayley, at The Wild Reed, and Colleen Cochivar-Baker at Enlightened Catholicism, show a fascinating exchange of views on the declining numbers in the Western church.  (Both are responding to a reported drop in numbers in the US /Canadian Catholic Church, but the same pattern applies even more in Europe.)  Colleenbelieves that this decline is a reflection of disillusion by baby boomers at the failure of Vatican II, coupled with an ingrained aversion by generation x’ers and millenials to enforced conformity; Michael argues that his ‘crisis’ is in fact an opportunity, and quotes examples of the  ways in which local churches are refusing to go along with the Vatican, and taking control of their own circumstances.

In general, I agree with Michael, but here I am tempted go even further. Reading and reflecting on his links, and on some related material, I began to wonder. In our outraged reactions to the events of the past few months, to Vatican excesses and stupidity, have we all been missing the point?  In seeking to assert and extend Vatican control, is not Benedict increasingly resembling the Hans Christian Anderson’s Emperor:  displaying to the world the new clothes he does not have?

Among Michael’s links, I was particularly enthused by the story from the Netherlands, reported in the National Catholic Reporter. Later, I came across a report in New Catholic Times on how Asian bishops are holding fast to the V2 reforms, and a story in Dignity’sQuarterly Voice called “The Gay Catholic Insurgency”.  In this, Brian McNeill reflects on a book about the Russian military’s struggle against Afghan insurgents, which he sees as an instructive analogy for the struggle of the church to contain gay Catholics.  Substituting the words “Church authority” for “the military” and “the Catholic faithful” for “the people”, he quotes:

“The church authorities can never defeat a truly grassroots movement of the faithful. We, the GLBT insurgents, never need to win, we just have to continue to fight. In fighting against us, the hierarchy is fighting its own people, which thwarts its stated purpose of proclaiming the Gospel, and creating the Reign of God. They will never win as long as we continue our efforts. The harder they fight us, the more they alienate the Catholic faithful and reveal themselves as hypocrites.”

Quite so.




From my own experience, I draw a different analogy.  Growing up in South Africa, the first 25 years of my life coincided with the relentless extension of apartheid repression into many areas of life.  In 1976, the Soweto youth revolt began a new phase of popular resistance.  Increasingly, the state attempted to counter with increasingly harsh security legislation and military control, but this was simply met with further resistance.  As years passed, it became obvious that real power was being transferred from the official apparatus of the state to the unofficial popular leaders in the townships. One after another, bits and pieces of apartheid legislation fell into abeyance as they were ignored or publicly flouted in passive resistance, until these laws were gradually repealed.  When the formal political transformation began in 1990, this was not out of the generosity of the government wanting to change, but out of simple realism – the recognition that political reality had indeed changed already, and there was a need to adjust to the new circumstances.

In “The pain and the endgame”, one of James Alison’s many insightful observations was that as a consequence of the bludgeoning we gay and lesbian Catholics have received, we have become highly sensitive to small slights, while tending to lose sight of the signs of progress. So let us take stock of current progress (not specifically on LGBT issues here, but more generally).

Whatever the stance of the Vatican on sexual issues, it is a common observation that at the local level, Catholic parishes and individual priests are far more tolerant and understanding of nonconformists (e.g. to contraception, to divorcees, or to young adults in sexual relationships before marriage) than they used to be.

At senior levels of the hierarchy, the fuss over SSPX, and over earlier controversies, saw unprecedented levels of public criticism from the ranks of the bishops.

Despite official insistence that the topics of married priests and women priests are off-limits, in practice such discussion is becoming widespread, even encouraged, in some national churches.

Despite vigorous opposition, the womenpriests movement is growing, and attracting willing congregations. At the Spirit of St Stephen’s, parishioners are doing it for themselves – just as the Netherlands’ Dominican order is actively recommending. And the full body of Asian bishops is insisting on continuing to implement the empowerment of the laity, and of local churches, as promised by Vatican II. This degree of resistance, public criticism, and non-compliance would have been unimaginable before the Council.

In lamenting the incomplete implementation of the council’s intentions, the failure of the laity themselves to accept fully the responsibilities they were offered, and current attempts to undermine the reforms, we lose sight of one crucial fact: The empowerment that was put into effect, cannot be undone. To switch from Hans Christian Anderson with whom I headlined this post to the Arabian Nights, the genie has been let out of the bottle, and cannot now be forced back.

There was a time when it was possible for church authorities to control all access to religious knowledge and influence, but those days have gone. First was ceded access to scripture, then to a vernacular Mass, to active participation in the liturgy and to ministry, and to formal theological studies. In the world of modern technology, theology, canon law, church history and scriptural study are all freely available to anyone, even outside formal training institutions, to anyone with a keyboard and internet connection.

In the secular world, democracy has spread even in Latin America and Africa.Organisations of all kinds have found, over the last few decades that the old hierarchical pyramids of control no longer work as they used to, and are being replaced by flatter structures and horizontal project teams. Osama’s victory was just the most dramatic, most public example, of the value of this.

No power can continue indefinitely to hold onto control without the consent, or at least the acquiescence, of the governed. Benedict’s attempts to further centralise control are flying in the face of modern realities. Unless he and shi successors recognises this reality, the greater the danger that they will find themselves controlling a shrinking, lifeless institutional church – but life and authority will have flowed to a real, living church beyond his reach.

 Church, Power & Abuse

Depressing church news over the past two months has led me to pick up and start reading a book which has been on my shelves some time, but which I have previously only dipped into.  The removal of  excommunication of SPXX  members has received wide and ongoing publicity; clerical sexual abuse is again in the news with the FBI reopening old investigations in LA Diocese, and fresh revelations over   Fr Marcial Maarciel Delgado of the Legionnaires of Christ.  Meanwhile, on the progressive wing of the church, there has been less coverage in the MSM of the silencing or excommunication of the priests  Fr Roger Haight,  Geoffrey Farrow and Roy  Bourgeois, or of bizarre goings-on in the parishes of St Mary’s, Brisbane and St Stephen’s, Minneapolis, where attempts to muzzle complete parishes have led to resistance (St Mary’s) or exodus (St Stephen’s).
Confronting Power and Sex

What all these have in common is that they are concerned with power in the church – its extension, its abuse, or attempts to defy or resist it.  so I picked up again  “Confronting Power & Sex in the Catholic Church”, by Bishop Geoffrey Robinson.  I am pleased that I did.  Published in 2007, this book has much to say that is directly relevant to current events. Although I have not yet finished reading, and this is far from a formal review, I have already found much of value that I thought would be worth sharing.

Bishop Robinson was Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney from 1984, and in 1994 was appointed by the Australian Bishops to a position of leadership in the Australian church’s response to revelations of sexual abuse.  Following his retirement in 2004, he felt freer in speaking his mind, leading to the publication of this valuable book.





Continue reading  Church, Power & Abuse