Rejoice — But Be Realistic!
Archbishop Martin of Dublin, in a recent reflection, took as his leitmotif John XXIII’s opening address at the Second Vatican Council: “Gaudet mater ecclesia.” Like most of Martin’s talks it is nuanced and many-sided. Here is an excerpt:
Our rejoicing about the Irish Church must be kept within the limits of realism and realistic analysis. The Church needs more than the analysis of spin doctors and public relations gurus. It is no use rejoicing at every fleeting sign of change or statistic. Our analysis must go straight to the point. The real roots of the religious crisis in Ireland are deep and of a different character than many would wish to admit. They are linked with a crisis of faith, among individuals and within Irish society.
That crisis of faith then manifests itself in a crisis about the Church as an institution within a broader context of a change in the cultural infrastructure which had traditionally sustained the faith of people but which has become much more fragile over the years. Ireland is a highly secularised society and secularisation should not leave us unmoved.I am not talking about crusading, but we must admit that unfortunately the Church in Ireland was slow and is slow in recognising the fragility of the infrastructure of faith and in many ways continues to think that the challenges of tomorrow can be addressed with the pastoral methods of yesterday. For their part many well-intentioned outsiders fail to understand the particular characteristics – both historical and contemporary – of the Irish Church and they fail to understand the depths of the current crisis.
The challenge of faith in Ireland can only be addressed by radical efforts of new evangelization. That new evangelization must however have its own Irish characteristics. The renewal of the Irish Church must be led from within the Irish Church. It must begin immediately. There is little time to waste.
The rest is here.
This is a very sincere honest approach which seems to greatly differ from that of the American bishops who are more into politicization than evangelization. Though they give evangelization lip service. While Archbishop of Martin realizes that there is much work, reparation and healing to do which will take time, Cardinal Egan withdraws his apology as if nothing ever happened. It is a prodigious difference. While former ambassadors to Rome from the US identify themselves as such in declaring for Romney, Ireland, that most Catholic of countries, has withdrawn its ambassador to Rome. Ireland has always been the leader in the American church. Seems that it remains so as it recovers from its own enormous problems in the church.
Also notable is Archbishop’s Martin embrace of optimism and rebuke of the prophets of doom. He quotes the words of John XXIII and assents: “We feel – Pope John said – we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster”
Hope and humility from our brethren in Ireland. Something lacking in the American bishops as they continue to parade around like dominators rather than to get on their knees to rebuild the church.
Scattered and superficial, but good to read. Thanks.
A little history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Emancipation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cullen_%28bishop%29
Don’t mean to be a downer on a Sunday morn, but isn’t even a hint of rejoicing premature–like rejoicing that Jesus got up each time he fell?
David,
I believe that’s called: thanking with faint praise.
Mark,
“He is risen:” tell his disciples and rejoice!
The point that I take away from this is that every culture must rethink the manner in which inculturation of the faith will work for them. What is fitting and appropriate for US Catholics is not necessarily fitting for Irish Catholics and vice versa.
I do think though that an excessive entanglement with the state does lead to a major problem when the politics changes. Quebec faced a similar process of implosion of the institutional Catholic church during the so called quiet revolution. It had formerly been 100 percent Catholic – not anymore.
Good lesson – be careful about Caesar’s sword. Whether it ulteimately belongs to Obama or Romney, best leave the sword be!!
From Archbishop Martin’s talk: ” The real roots of the religious crisis in Ireland are deep and of a different character than many would wish to admit. They are linked with a crisis of faith, among individuals and within Irish society.”
I would have thought that it is rooted in sin, which I take to be different than a crisis in faith. The response to sin is not evangelization, but rather repentance and reparation. Obviously, he knows the Irish church very well, and I don’t know it at all, so it’s more than possible that I’m wrong in my diagnosis. I’m just tossing this out for consideration.
It seems to me that the Irish situation is extremely different from the situation in France when the Church was rejected by many there. In France for centuries the Church had aligned itself with the upperclasses, and when the aristocracy was overthrown, the Church as a political power was dumped with it. In Ireland the Church had aligned with the people against the hated English. The English are gone (politically anyway) and so the relationahip between the Church and the Irish people has, up to now, remained powerful and apparently benign. The scandal has changed that. The feeling of downright betrayal by the clergy is a different attitude than was found in France. (The French never expected that much o the clergy in t he first place.)
But in either case one must ask why a whole people retains its loyalty to the Church. In the U. S did immigrants remain faithful mainly because the Church had some political power and so it could == and did — represent the social interests of the masses of Catholics?
In any case, it would seem that mere political power is no long-term guarantee of keeping the hearts of the people. The American bishops had better watch it. If they lose their political relevance, the Church history indicates that it will die here.
Haven’t we reached the days Karl Rahner predicted when one will either by a mystic or nothing at all? The Catholics-by-environment have found out no one will force them to go to church. (They will pile in of their own free will on Palm and Easter Sundays, but that is the last we will see of a lot of them until Christmas.)
I get the feeling that some of us would be happy with a remnant intensely loyal to the magisterium and the Latin Mass. But that, too, will fade away. The only thing that will holds people’s hearts is being in love with Jesus.
Tom,
I too believe that we’ve reached those days — in diebus illis!
But, as I’m sure you agree: love for Jesus will be fully nourished and challenged by our participation in the Eucharist — whether in English, Latin, or Swahili.
Evangelicals preach the necessity of metanoia and acceptance of a relationship with a personal savior. They focus (quite often to an extreme) on Jesus. And they grow by leaps and bounds and attract many disaffected Catholics.
Catholics talk about community and cultural loyalty, ritual purity, adherence rules, top-down authority. The focus is on externals. And the feet out the door increase in number.
Is Catholicism missing something here?
Jimmy, for “cultural loyalty, ritual purity,” and “adherence rules”, ok, (and as to “top-down authority”, that’s in disarray,) but I disagree that “community” is about externals.
Community remains very important to me. It was the setting in which I fell in love with Jesus, and it wasn’t done once and for all in a moment of conversion, a la the evangelicals. But it’s going to have to be a community of mystics from now on because the old extra-church cultural ties are gone or fraying. Moriarty, in Andrew Greeley’s old story, has not only gone Republican, but Mrs. O’Malley didn’t see him at church just last Sunday because he had an early tee time.
Tom B. –
When you say “a community of mystics” what do you have in mind? That term “mystic” covers a huge territory, everything from simple Centering Prayer and lectio divina to whole lives planned around ascetic and spiritual practices. There has been a limited interest in such prayer in this country. We’re so pragmatic. Many Protestants begin with a prejudice against any sort of “monkish” spirituality, and Catholics generally know very little about the subject.
I’m assuming you’re referring to kinds of non-garden variety prayer.
Mysticism? If the Irish bishops had not been so chary of theology, we would have a flourishing university theology culture in Ireland. In Maynooth the theologians have not been able to teach theology as a graduation subject in the flourishing secular campus because of episcopal nervousness. And the discouragement of theology has a lot to do with the crisis of faith. I fear that religion in Ireland will turn mystical, in a most unhealthy sense.
Ann — The mysticism I refer to was covered very well by Lawrence Cunningham in the Oct 7 issue of Commonweal (so long ago already?). It can be as simple as Centering Prayer, if that form of prayer is done to talk to God or just be with Him on a regular — or, better, steady — basis. That relationship is a more decisive marker of the person than Sunday Mass attendance, talking sports at the K of C and a semiannual retreat with some of the guys from the parish because the latter are breaking down as Catholic attributes. You can’t rely on the surrounding culture to make you Catholic anymore.
That doesn’t negate the value of the Mass (but I am able to focus better on our well-attended daily Mass than on Sunday, when I usher). I work on our parish Re-membering program, when we issue an open invitation to disaffected Catholics to come in and see us. Those people, typically, left over because someone bullied them with a church rule or with his private aesthetics; they come back, typically, because they miss the Eucharist.
I don’t think most people develop their relationship with God without human help. Ideally, that involves them with a spiritual adviser. I have met weekly with about 15 other men for almost 10 years. We worked our way through stewardship in the early years and are now working on discipleship, which is another name for mysticism. Those meetings are invaluable. Attendance is wholly voluntary but no one ever skips over less than a war or natural disaster.
And, Mr. O’Leary, I spent five years in a Jesuit college. You can’t appeal to my heart until my head says it’s OK. There is plenty of room for theology in what I am talking about. Didn’t I just quote Rahner?
In his “Catholicism” book (and DVD series) Robert Barron says this apropos of Thomas Merton:
“Merton insisted over and over again that contemplation … is nothing other than the organization of a person’s life around the divine center…Once that center is found, everything else changes. When we find that place, we necessarily find that which connects us to everyone else and everything else in the cosmos.”
From the little I’ve learned about Merton, I’d be disinclined to use him as an authority on anything. But he seems to have become sort of a de facto saint and religious expert. Go figure.
I agree that we’re living in post-religious times. (I know, no one actually said that, but it’s been implied.) People stuck close to churches so long as they feared a mysterious natural world. Now that science has demystified all that, the fear is gone and people are free to throw away what for most of them was probably little more than superstition.
“Now that science has demystified all that…”
But David, the latest science is bringing enchantment back into our world, as physicists learn that the previous center did not hold, and their models are falling apart. A second coming of religion?
Father, does Barron/Merton mention where or how to find the divine center? I imagine it can’t be found through contemplation, since that would seem to be a bit circular.
Mark,
Not sure why it is circular to suggest that contemplation is the path to the Center. I did leave out portions of the passage.
David,
I have some questions about Merton as well, but with respect to contemplation Barron finds him saying what Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross taught.
I also found, with Tom B., that Larry Cunningham’s piece in “Commonweal” was excellent.
Well, perhaps I’m reading it too literally, but if contemplation is nothing other than organizing your life around the Center, and you find that Center through contemplation…that would imply the Center is what…at hand?
Mark,
I don’t pretend a special expertise. But I wonder whether “contemplation” is both the way and the goal: both learning to find the center and abiding there. I suspect that the saint’s abiding in the center admits of degrees of intensity and inclusiveness that are beyond my experience.
“… the way and the goal: both learning to find the center and abiding there.”
That’s worth pondering; I think there’s a trinity in there somewhere.
Fr. O’Leary –
While I agree that there is an unhealthy sort of mysticism, I daresay that most people could gain a great deal spiritually if they practiced some sort of the many sorts of Christian contemplation or even mystical practices. True, many people are not temperamentallyy inclined to such concentration, but I think that if more were known about the many sorts of contemplative prayer that most people would br much “healthier” spiritually.
I happened to watch the Bill Moyers repetition of an interview of Joseph Campbll yesterdya. Fscinting. Campbell has always been popular, and i was suprised at how much of his Catholic backgorund he had retained. I kept thinking about a lot of it, “This is straight Aquinas!”, and at one point he evne mentioned St. T. But i notice that he didn’t talk about methods of prayer but spoke more as a theologian — he talked about the nature of God, especially His unknowableness as well as the relationship between man and the Ultimate (whatever it be). It was theology of one sort, and Americans apparently maintained their interest in it. (The inteerview took place about w0 years ago.)
My conclusion: mystical theology needs to be included in catechesis.
Ann,
Speaking of Moyers: I recall an interview with Sister Wendy Beckett in which she seemed to befuddle his Eminence by speaking of contemplating paintings as akin to contemplative prayer. But, of course, that entailed a maximum of three paintings per museum visit. No skateboarding through the Louvre.
I’m also amused by the ever growing multitudes who don’t look at a painting, but take a photo of it with their cell phone cameras. Even when (even in Italy) it is VERBOTEN!
Whatever has happened to Sr. Wendy? What a splendid teacher she is.