AMDG?
I was going to add my personal testimony on behalf of the Jesuits for the Feast of St. Ignatius, but as it also happens to be my daughter’s birthday (there are no coincidences!), her second, things got a bit busy. Then, late last night I was directed to this “clarification,” as it is oddly labeled, from the Jesuit theologian Edward Vacek, who is at Weston, in the letters section (also odd) of the July 30 edition of America. It is startling, and for me, chilling, in its rote profession, reminiscent of another era altogether. Or perhaps not. In its entirety Father Vacek’s letter reads:
Clarification
I personally give religious assent to the church’s teaching regarding the intrinsically evil acts as proposed in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor. I personally give religious assent to the church’s teaching regarding homosexuality contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I personally give religious assent to the position of the magisterium concerning the legal recognition of unions between homosexual persons as expressed in the Considerations published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. I personally give religious acceptance to the discipline proposed by the Congregation for Catholic Education in its Instruction Concerning the Admission to Seminaries and Holy Orders of Candidates With Homosexual Tendencies.
Edward Vacek, S.J.
Cambridge, Mass.
I do not know the full back story. But in light of Vacek’s writings in America and elsewhere on homosexuality and gay marriage, the likely arc of this drama is not hard to surmise.
Well, by affirming religious assent per Lumen Gentium
“Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.”
It stating it so mechanistically he is still withholding on the issue as his conscience permits him to do as :
I also do not know the back story for this particular letter by Fr. Vacek, but I’ve read some of his well-reasoned writing on why he believes there should be no prohibition on the admission of gay celibate men to seminaries.
He’s also written convincingly, IMO, on why even “good people” need the Sacrament of Penance. Here’s an excerpt from a 2002 article in “America”:
“More than one perplexed priest has asked me: ‘What should I do when people come to confession and say they have nothing to confess?’ It used to be that when people had not been to confession in years, they would offer a lengthy list of sins. Or longtime sinners would say, ‘You name it, Father; I’ve done it.’ Now, surprisingly often, people who have not received this sacrament in 5, 10 or even 20 years say that they cannot think of any sins to confess. Our church teaches that God preserved Jesus and Mary from sin, but Vatican II seems to have created millions of people without sin.
Many explanations, some good and some bad, have been given for why today’s confessional lines are so short. But certainly one among them is that we do not sin any more. Or, better, as Pope John Paul II has lamented, we have lost the sense that we all sin daily.
My seminarian students are startled when I tell them that during my early years of training as a Jesuit, we used to go to confession once a week. They are shocked when I add we were told that, once ordained, we might go to confession two or three times a week. It was expected that by then we would have developed a healthy sensitivity to our own sinfulness, which would become evident through the practice of our twice-daily examination of conscience.
Why do ‘good people’ need regular confession? I will focus here on one reason: to discover that we are sinners. Put simply, the sacrament provides an occasion and a stimulus for discovering the deep truth that we are sinners. Put paradoxically, confession ‘makes’ us sinners. Penance is the sacrament of honesty.
St. John states this theme with exceptional clarity: ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins’ (1 Jn. 1:8-9). My thesis is that we ‘good people’ need the sacrament of penance in order to overcome self-deception. Otherwise, it is only ‘bad people’ who, acknowledging their sin, walk away justified (Lk. 18:9-14).
The problem for us ‘good people’ is that most of our day-to-day sinning occurs under a shroud of self-deception. This is convenient, since traditional theology said we are not guilty if we do not have adequate knowledge. Self-deception is a clever way to avoid guilt.”
Scott’s interpretation of the clarification is how I interpreted it too.
At least on the face of it, the “Clarification” does have a bit of an “up yours” quality to it. But, not knowing the backstory, I wouldn’t speculate further.
And I do like the quoted passage on self-deception.
I find it ridiculous that Fr. Vacek would be called on the carpet regarding the documents on homosexuality and seminary formation when Archbishop Niederauer of San Francisco wisely pointed out, the document focuses mostly on affective maturity, not on sexual orientation. This is, indeed, the issue. After all, there are more sexually immature, maldajusted heterosexuals running around, even in seminaries.
The Church of fear is a fearful, faithless thing to be pitied rather than emulated or praised.
I would find it ridiculous for him to be called on the carpet for the same reasons as Scott. Is it possible that he was delated by someone and is trying to head them off at the pass? OTOH, it might be directly related to something that came up in the seminary visitation in some way. In any event, whoever knows the circumstances isn’t saying.
On the question of “Confession” two points:
(1) I think that many regular communicants think that they have not committed any sin of the sort that involves rejection of God and refusal of his grace, the sort of sins that used to be called mortal because they brought about spiritual death. That does not mean that they think they are sinless or without fault. There is a penitential rite at the beginning each mass. When the confiteor is said, does any one raise his/her hand and say “I pass”.
(2) The kind of private confession we now have does not go back to the beginning of the Church by any means. According to the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church auricular confession, as it is called, or private penance was not well established until the 12th century and was not enjoined until the 4th Lateran Council in 1215.
You could still add that personal testimony on behalf of the Jesuits!
And Happy Birthday to your daughter! She did pick a fine day to be born!
This is something that America should explain to its readers.
I must confess that I am not familiar with Fr. Vlacek’s thought and writing, but my first impression as I read his words is that he has written them as a defense of his own personal orthodoxy — his own adherence to magisterial teaching — perhaps in response to a “suggestion” by a higher authority that he “clarify” his position. The wording and tone of the clarification are very formal…perhaps even legal (canonical).
-I beleive Fr. vacek was 9is?) head of the moral theology department at Boston College.
-I agree with dabvid gibson’s adjective of ‘chilling.”
=A major part of understanding the issue 9as already noted) is the 9usual) secrecy
Father Vacek’s America article “‘Acting More Humanely’: Accepting Gays into the Priesthood” (Dec. 16, 2002), is , as William Collier puts it, “well reasoned, ” and worth a look if you have access to it. That the author of such a piece might have been required to publish a document that reads like a statement made under duress is disturbing. Having gone back and read at least this one piece, I have to agree with David. It is chilling to think what the back story here might be.
The article Susan Gannon refers to is available only to subscribers at the America Magazine site, but I also found it at the following URL:
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/resources/resource-files/timeline/2002-12-16-Vacek-ActingMoreHumanely.htm
(I have never visited that site before and know nothing about it.)
I’m told Fr. Vacek is a theology professor at Weston School.
My first thought was a rewcal lof the dustup when Cardinal O”Malley sold Seminary property to BC/Weston and the Seminary Rector’s rant about those folks coming in.
I wonder…