Call for Action: So why bother? Because the task of reform is worth the effort!

An email discussion has ensued following the meeting of Call for Action on 18 July 2012.

A gentleman who has been an active Catholic wrote, "Please remove my contact details from your database:  I no longer regard myself as a member of the church" 

He was supported by another who said "I cannot be the only Catholic who is already halfway through the Exit door, and who is pausing, wondering whether it is just possible that Call for Action is the first hint of a new dawn."

Ted, a highly valued supporter of We Are Church (UK), has responded

Please can I ask everyone who finds themselves "halfway through the Exit door" to turn round and come back in.  Over a lifetime of 70 years (so far d.v.) I have learned that the best, in fact only successful way to reform an organisation is from the inside.

Which is why Jesus came first, not to set up a new religion (that was St Paul's job), but to reform Judaism, and to restore it to the religion that Moses founded when he led the Hebrews out of Egypt, in his turn based upon the religion of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph.

To leave (my beloved) Roman Catholic Church and start a new Christian sect would be to create another man-made organised religion, which is bound to have faults that would lead to further schisms.

Instead, I beg you please, to remain in the Church and assist in reforming - or rather restoring - it.  I am a member of We Are Church UK (WAC UK), which is a part of the International Movement We Are Church (IMWAC), dedicated to the reform of the Church in line with the promises and documentation of the Second Vatican Council.  Take a look at our website - http://www.we-are-church.org.uk/. 

I am also a member of the Executive Committee of Catholics for a Changing Church (CCC) whcih, despite the efforts of some, is still working for the same cause of reforming the Roman Church, and publishes a quarterly newsletter "Renew".  A link to the CCC website will be found on the We Are Church site.

Richard refers to the "feeling of utter helplessness" among the laity of our parishes.  As Catholics, at least we cradle-Catholics, are taught to do as we are told by the parish priest, the bishop and ultimately the Pope.  When we find that what they are teaching is in conflict with our Personal Conscience, we have no "fall-back position".  The ability to decide between these two conflicting concepts has never been included in our learning, even though it is given to us at our confirmation.

WAC UK, CCC and all the other movements are establishing that fall-back position.  My old school was Clapham College (hallo to any Old Xaverians reading this) and our school motto was "Res parvae concordia crescunt" (NB we reformers do still like Latin) which means 'Small things grow by union'.  By uniting your energy and efforts with one or more of these movements, you will contribute to the reform of the Church.

Please don't go away, stay and make your home uncomfortable to those who keep trying to re-arrange the furniture.

In the love of Christ,

Ted 

In a sense it is such an obvious question it's a wonder it hasn't been posed more often: what is the objective of the eucharist? That's the question John Chuchman poses for our reflection today: "Do the adorers seek to place God at their own disposition to reassure their identity and strengthen their determination? Or does the Real Presence seek to honor the liturgy where the community celebrates its own power in the name of God?"

What is the objective of Eucharist?

Is it an idolatry

that imagines itself honoring God

when it heaps praises on a wafer

exhibited as an attraction

brandished like a banner?

Do the adorers seek

to place God at their own disposition

to reassure their identity

and strengthen their determination?

Or does the Real Presence

seek to honor the liturgy

where the community celebrates

its own power

in the name of God?

Is the idolatrous reduction of God

to a mute thing

a vainly impotent act?

Why do the bread and wine

take on new meaning

for the community gathered?

Are the bread and wine

Welcomed as Gift

by the community assembled

because people are nourished

and brought together by it?

Perhaps the Bread and Wine

become the manifestation,

not so much of the Presence of God,

but more of the Community

becoming Aware of God

and of itself,

In Search of the face of God.

At the precise moment

of receiving the Sacrament,

the Community still seeks it

and finds nothing more of it

than what its collective consciousness

has been able to secure.

The Real Presence

is displaced from the bread and wine

to the Community.

The Community gathered must move from

Jesus, present in the bread and wine,

to Jesus present in those gathered

whose Eucharistic Action

manifests reality

under sacramental form.

Eucharist is a meal,

the sharing of which,

is a sign of Communion

of those who participate in it.

Though the theology of transubstantiation

has lost its legitimacy among most theologians;

the Real Presence remains,

not as things, bread and wine,

but in and as

the Community,

as the present consciousness

of the collective self.

The bread and Wine

serve as simple perceptible media

for a wholly representational process,

the Collective Awareness of the Community by itself.

The prayer of consecration can be as useless

as the presider saying it

if it does not bring on

Community Awareness of the Real Presence

within the Community.

Love, John Chuchman

This reflection is also published on John Chuchman's blog.

IMAGE CREDIT:
The images used to support today's reflection have been sourced from: www.emmanuelcommunity.com.au, and Christ Our Hope Anglican Church Blog, Dayton, Ohio

How does ancient Greek medicine impact the Church today?

This is a very short extract from a longer article which is well worth pondering over.

The church teaches woman’s role ties overwhelmingly and primarily to motherhood.  Since she has a uterus, it must be the most defining important part of her.  Since she has a uterus, it should be maximally employed, sort of like maximizing the utilization of a truck’s cargo hold.  Such concepts based on errant secular science in turn fuel the church’s discrimination and marginalization of women.    

These ill-founded gender notions impact more than individual women.  The bishops call the church, i.e., the masses of laypeople, a female, married to male clergy.  They expect the female church to act like women “should” by being submissive as they disseminate their manly seeds of eternal life to fertile gardens.  Inserting the corrected biology into the theological reasoning don’t we arrive at this - since females carry the seeds of life, shouldn’t the female church comprised of laypeople sow the seeds of eternal life?  In turn, doesn’t that make the male clergy’s contribution analogous to fertilizer which disintegrates upon conception?

 Read "How does ancient Greek medicine impact the Church today?

Rejected by His own.

Thank you to Eclesalia Informativo for this reflection on this Sunday's Gospel

José Antonio Pagola. Translator: José Antonio Arroyo

Jesus is not one of theTemple priests, in charge of looking after the religious duties. Nor is he one of the teachers of the Law, appointed to defend the Torah of Moses. The village people of Galilee see in his healing gestures and fiery words one of the old prophets moved by the Spirit.

Jesus knows that he is going to face a difficult life ahead, with all sorts of conflicts. The religious leaders will confront him. That is what happened to every prophet. What Jesus did not expect, however, was that he would be rejected by his own people, those who had known him from childhood.

The way Jesus was rejected by his own inNazareth would become well known among the early Christians. Three evangelists mention the incident in all its details. Mark says that Jesus arrived in Nazareth accompanied by some of his disciples, surrounded by his fame as a healing prophet. His village neighbours don’t know what to make of it.

When Sabbath arrived, Jesus went, as it was customary, to the village synagogue, “and began to teach”. His neighbours and relatives could hardly believe it. There were all sorts of reactions. They had known Jesus from childhood: He was just another neighbour. Where did he learn such amazing things about the    Kingdom of God? How did he get the power to heal the sick?  Mark simply says: “that everything seemed to scandalize them.” Why?

Those villagers thought they knew everything about Jesus. They knew him since childhood. Instead of accepting him as he is returning to them, they are prejudiced by what they had seen and known years earlier. Such memories about Jesus impede them from realizing the mystery that is Jesush. They refuse to see the saving power of God that Jesus has come to manifest.

But there is something more. Should they accept him as a prophet, then they would have to be ready to listen to God’s message as delivered by Jesus. And that would create problems for them. They have their own synagogue, their own sacred books and traditions. They had not had any problems with their religion so far. New ophetic messages might disturb the traditional peace of the village.

Christians have always held different images and ideas about Jesus. Not all these images coincide with what those who knew Him personally saw. All of us form our own ideas about Jesus. Such ideas give rise to different ways of living our faith. If our idea/image of Jesus is poor, distorted or incomplete, our faith will be similarly unreal and distracting.

Why are we so disinterested in knowing the real Jesus? Why are we sometimes scandalized by His human traits and similarities with us? Why do we resist believing that God became incarnate as a Prophet? Are we afraid that such faith would imply profound changes in our Church?

An alternative view

Sam Kennedy has sent this to us.

After hearing various things about this group i decided to check out your website. I am not impressed in the slightest. Your outspoken support for women in the priesthood is disgraceful, women are important within the church and have been since its beginnings but they are not to be ordained as priests. This is exactly the type of liberal nonsense that the church does not need at this time. Countless doctors of the church and renowned theologians have affirmed that only men are to be ordained as priests. These are theologically rooted decisions, not an act of supremacy over women. The infallible church is to be acknowledged as "the pillar of truth" by all catholics, to oppose and ridicule the church as you are doing on this site is simply wrong.

Please stop abusing our church. You are a source of embarassment to catholicism and I have heard your names mentioned to support many athiest arguments.

If liberalism takes over the church, our tradition and most of the things that set us apart from false religion will be lost. The beauty of the latin mass, the respect of our superiors as successors of the apostles etc etc..

Sam.

Jesus Christ be Praised.

What do we believe to be right?

Thank you, Ted, for your reflection

Over the past month, I have given much thought to my own, personal feelings towards Pope Benedict. I am now confessing to you, the People of God, that I have been sinful in my own eyes and according to my interpretation of Jesus' words :"If you call any man 'thou fool', it is as if you commit murder".

I have come to believe that Pope Benedict is acting in accordance with his personal conscience, and since we are demanding the right to obey our own personal consciences, then we must surely, equally demand such a right for His Holiness.

I have to accept that Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope by the College of Cardinals with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that She had a reason to select him. I acknowledge that many of us do not respond to our vocation from God, and go off on our own path instead of that chosen for us. I do not know if Pope Benedict is failing to respond to the vocation he was given in his holy office, or if he is indeed doing God's will. I certainly know that it is not for me to judge him ("Judge not that ye be not judged"). I do believe that there are things happening in the Vatican (and at the Vatican Bank) that are not right, but the rest of the world (secular and ecclesiastical) knows this.

So, I have come to accept that Pope Benedict believes that he is doing what he perceives to be right. In such a case, I do not believe that we can make demands of him, since this will merely cause him to defend his position, and, after all, he is an acknowledged professor of theology and I am not.

What we can do is put forward what we believe - after due consideration, prayer and meditation - to be the right way forward for the Church, and attempt to persuade those in authority of the rightness of our arguments. At our press conference, we should set out our beliefs, including our belief that we have the right to be heard, and call upon His Holiness the Pope to enter into full and equal dialogue with us on resolving any differences.

What do we believe to be right?

We believe that God created and loves all humankind equally, and that Jesus died for all (not many) so that we may be reconciled with His Father, if we so choose. (I also believe that other religions are used by the Holy Spirit to achieve this same reconciliation, but I do not know if any of you, my dear brethren, believe this, so I exclude it from my argument for the time being.)

We believe that all men and women are equal before God, whatever their beliefs, their sexual orientation, their choice of lifestyle.

We believe that those who have married but then divorced, or been divorced, and remarried are also equal.

And, since all mankind is equal, every individual man or woman is entitled to take part in all the sacraments of the Church, including the Holy Eucharist and the taking of Holy Orders, whether as a Religious Brother or Sister, as a Permanent Deacon or as a Priest (and from there into the Bishopric and Hierarchy).

We believe that, since all men and women are equal, the voices of the laity - the People of God - should be heard equally with the voices of the clergy and hierarchy in the councils and decision-making of the Church.

These are our honest beliefs, and we do not want merely to be told that His Holiness does not agree with us so we must accept his diktat. We want him to explain why he disagrees with us, and we want him to listen to our arguments and give them as much consideration, prayer and meditation as we have given them.

Learn from the past!

Last Saturday I went to the National Theatre in London to see a performance of Antigone by Sophocles, translated by Don Taylor.   I could not avoid seeing the relevance to the current situation we face in the Church today.   The whole play is a warning to those who place themselves and political power over their duty to 'love and serve God' and to "act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with God" (Micah 6).

The following line thrown at King Creon by his son, Haemon, is a warning to us all in the Catholic Church,

When the State becomes one man it ceases to be a State!

 For 'State' read 'Church', 'Community', 'Society' ...

In an article in Spiegel On Line International Fiona Ehlers, Alexander Smoltczyk and Peter Wensierski write,

A "reform of the Curia" is probably a contradiction in terms. Its hierarchical, essentially medieval organizational model is incompatible with modern management. The Vatican is an anachronistic, albeit surprisingly tenacious system, in which pecking orders and an absurd penchant for secrecy and intrigue prevail. "The only important thing is proximity to the monarch," says a member of a cardinal's staff. Rome works like an absolutist court, one in which decisions are made by people whispering things into the others' ears rather than by committees. "There are many vain people here, people in sharp competition with one another," the staff member adds.

Like Antigone it is time for men and women who love their Church and their faith to stand up for the Constitutions and Decrees of Vatican II before tragedy strikes the Body of Christ.    Get a group together in your parish to read and reflect upon them.

Is Church reform possible any longer?

It is a very sad day for our community of faith when someone who has a wide knowledge of the Church and contact with theologians, commentators and pastors around the world is compelled to write the following.

"I am honestly totally skeptical that reform is possible within the Catholic Church any longer.
The chief impediment is the forces in the psyches of the small element in society who need certitude in their lives more than they need their breakfast each day.
What is happening in the Catholic Church at the moment bears this out more and more with each passing week. No one can communicate with these people, they are certain they alone can read the mind of Almighty God, and if anyone dares to take them on it is something to be likened to Jesus himself taking on the scribes and pharisees. In the end you simply cannot win.
Is that not what the essential message Jesus was trying to communicate in all his missives about dealing with the pharisaical element in society?"

Brian Coyne, editor and publisher of Catholica

 It is time for all Catholics who want an institution that respects the views of those who took part in the last General Council of the Church (Vatican II) to stand up and speak out for dialogue over issues that are sucking the life and health out of our Church.

Real food or just imagined food?

Elizabeth has called our attention to a news-story this week which had the headline, "Benedict reaches out to the divorced and remarried" " telling them to make a Spiritual Communion and bear their suffering.

She asks why no-one had seen this notion as a clever solution to the world's starving, to tell them to imagine they are eating and all will be well etc etc!

What would Jesus say and do? 

The origin of the news story can be found in  Pope Benedict's address on 2nd June 2012 to the 7th. World Meeting of Families in Milan in a question and answer session.

" THE ARAUJO FAMILY (a Brazilian family from Porto Alegre)

 MARIA MARTA: Holy Father, in our country, just as in the rest of the world, marriage breakdowns are continually increasing. My name is Maria Marta and this is Manoel Angelo. We have been married for 34 years and we are now grandparents. As a doctor and a family psychotherapist, we meet a great many families and we notice that couples in difficulties are finding it harder and harder to forgive and to accept forgiveness. We often encounter the desire and the will to establish a new partnership, something lasting, for the benefit of the children born from this second union.

 MANOEL ANGELO: Some of these remarried couples would like to be reconciled with the Church, but when they see that they are refused the sacraments they are greatly discouraged. They feel excluded, marked by a judgement against which no appeal is possible. These sufferings cause deep hurt to those involved. Their wounds also afflict the world and they become our wounds, the wounds of the whole human race. Holy Father we know that the Church cares deeply about these situations and these people. What can we say to them and what signs of hope can we offer them?

 THE HOLY FATHER: Dear friends, thank you for your very important work as family psychotherapists. Thank you for all that you do to help these suffering people. Indeed the problem of divorced and remarried persons is one of the great sufferings of today’s Church. And we do not have simple solutions. Their suffering is great and yet we can only help parishes and individuals to assist these people to bear the pain of divorce. I would say, obviously, that prevention is very important, so that those who fall in love are helped from the very beginning to make a deep and mature commitment. Then accompaniment during married life is needed, so that families are never left on their own but are truly accompanied on their journey. As regards these people - as you have said - the Church loves them, but it is important they should see and feel this love. I see here a great task for a parish, a Catholic community, to do whatever is possible to help them to feel loved and accepted, to feel that they are not “excluded” even though they cannot receive absolution or the Eucharist; they should see that, in this state too, they are fully a part of the Church. Perhaps, even if it is not possible to receive absolution in Confession, they can nevertheless have ongoing contact with a priest, with a spiritual guide. This is very important, so that they see that they are accompanied and guided. Then it is also very important that they truly realize they are participating in the Eucharist if they enter into a real communion with the Body of Christ. Even without “corporal” reception of the sacrament, they can be spiritually united to Christ in his Body. Bringing them to understand this is important: so that they find a way to live the life of faith based upon the Word of God and the communion of the Church, and that they come to see their suffering as a gift to the Church, because it helps others by defending the stability of love and marriage. They need to realize that this suffering is not just a physical or psychological pain, but something that is experienced within the Church community for the sake of the great values of our faith. I am convinced that their suffering, if truly accepted from within, is a gift to the Church. They need to know this, to realize that this is their way of serving the Church, that they are in the heart of the Church. Thank you for your commitment."

Archbishop of Canterbury's video on The Queen's Diamond Jubilee

Speaking in a short film produced by Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury talks about The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations and the significance of the 60 year reign ‘in which nationally and internationally so much has shifted’.