L.A. Congress
February 27, 2009, 1:29 pm
Posted by Grant Gallicho
So I neglected to mention that a few of us from Team Commonweal have invaded the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress. Any other Commonwealers among the throngs? Stop by booth 213 and say hello. Free issues for those who mention dotCommonweal! For every copy of America you turn in, get two copies of Commonweal!
Didn’t Mollie say on that radio show that there would be a plenary indulgence for visiting the booth, or am I misremembering?
Jim Wallis as keynote speaker is an intriguing choice … if there is anything good to report, I’d love to read about it here. (Of course, if it’s *really* good, we may have to wait for an issue of the magazine to drop :-)).
Also, the Liam Lawton concert sounds way cool.
Well, let’s put it this way: I didn’t say visiting the booth wouldn’t earn you a plenary indulgence…
Would I be out of line to suggest that joking about plenary indulgences is much like talking of “baptism, schmaptism”?
COMMONWEALIANS seem not to have a high regard for the practices of piety of our grandparents. Have they been educated out if them?
Gabriel, there were a couple of threads on plenary indulgencees within the last couple of weeks on dotcommonweal. In one of them, Mollie recounted being interviewed by a radio station on the topic. That’s what David was referring to in a light-herted vein. Forgive me for not recalling if you were part of those discussions – there were a lot of participants in both of them, and I’ve lost track of who was involved. I don’t think David’s remark was meant to disparage indulgences or the Catholic faith in any way.
COMMONWEALIANS seem not to have a high regard for the practices of piety of our grandparents. Have they been educated out if them?
Our grandparents???
Do you know how many plenary indulgences I personally earned for the souls in Purgatory, going in and out of church again and again on All Souls Day back in the 1950s and early 1960s?
For that matter, do you know how many Spiritual Bouquets I gave my parents? I have boxes full of them.
Do you know how many times I walked around and around the parking lot in processions for things like Rogation Days? How many Mays I sang “Oh, Mary we crown the with blossoms today” while someone put a wreath on the head of the statue of the Blessed Virgin? How many times I gave up candy for Lent? How many pagan babies I helped to ransom? Do you have any idea how much Gregorian Chant I have sung in my life?
Jim,
Thanks.
I remember a cartoon in The New Yorker (I think) in which an angry-looking man was snapping at a somewhat-taken-aback man, “It’s okay for me to joke about religion because I’m deeply religious!” That’s my defense.
Gabriel, to answer your first question: yes.
Speaking of indulgences:
AN OPEN LETTER TO POPE BENEDICT XVI ON INDULGENCES
Dear Holy Father Benedict,
First I greet you as former colleague of the 1960s (I as Visiting Professor) on the Catholic Theology Faculty of the University of Tübingen! In that same vein I also greet you as the Founding Editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies which had the privilege of publishing an essay of yours in our very first issue (1964); I am also happy to recall that we also published in that first issue an essay by your then good friend Hans Küng, who hired you at Tübingen University. Second, I wish you well in your most demanding responsibility as the Pope of the Catholic Church. Thirdly, I address you as the co-founder and current president of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC), which was founded in 1980 in the wake of the Vatican attack on our former University of Tübingen colleague Professor Hans Küng.
It is about the most recent episcopal actions being taken with your approval that I would like to engage you in a theological and pastoral dialogue. I am speaking of the renewed promotion of Indulgences, which your predecessor Pope John Paul II also advocated. (see February 11, 2009 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/nyregion/10indulgence.html?scp=1&sq=indulgences&st=cse). I must confess that I am deeply disappointed in this new development, which appears as the latest in a series of restorationist efforts to roll back the joyful renewal accomplishments of the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65.
I am especially disappointed because you as a creative young theologian were deeply involved in that effulgence of Catholic creativity and renewal. You participated with eagerness in the wonderful “throwing open the windows of the Vatican,” as was said by your earlier predecessor Pope John XXIII—and in his Aggiornamento, “Bringing up to date” of the Catholic Church.
In your earlier role as theologian you were very aware of the “quantification” of God’s love for humankind in the medieval notion of Indulgences. Perhaps one could have made a case for such “simplifying,” such “thingifying” moves in a time and culture when very few people could read. But as you, and the bishops of Vatican II who you, Hans Küng, and the other Aggiornamento theologians counseled well knew, such a mentality no longer speaks to modern people who live in a mental world of scientific, historical thought categories. Surely a return to such medieval thinking is not going to draw back to an active Catholicism the current 30 million(!) former American Catholics, nor is it going to spiritually nourish the rapidly shrinking 65 million current American Catholics, who include many thousand more lay Catholic trained in contemporary theology than there are active Catholic priests!
A return to Tradition? Yes, we are looking for your theological and pastoral leadership in a return to your creative Aggiornamento Vatican II theology!
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“Indulgence: The remission of temporal punishment due to sin, granted to the faithful who recite specified prayers, visit a specified place of pilgrimage, or engage in a specified act of charity; punishment is remitted through the power of the Church and in the mutual exchange of spiritual goods, particularly the merits of Christ and the Saints.”
Like the Sacrament of Penance, Indulgences result in reconciliation with God and the Church.
“The closer one gets to God, the more simple our concept of God becomes.”-St.Theresa
We are called to live our Lives in Loving relationship to help each other get to Heaven.
Grant is not going to be pleased when he finds out he triggered another discussion about indulgences! Let’s put an end to it here, please — we’ve been down this road already.
Hey, let’s go back to Gabriel’s line about my thread titled “baptism, schmaptism”…
For the record, once again, that was not my line–it was the VATICAN’S! So take it up with the Holy Father, Gabriel. Please. Indulge me.