April 14th, Third Sunday of Easter

The Catholic Church has many blessings and many weaknesses. One of the weaknesses of which most of us are very conscious is that the Church of the last two hundred years has not put a stress on the importance of good preaching. Some priests are naturals and their parishioners should thank God. A large percentage of us don’t work at it hard enough and some of us should never be allowed into the pulpit.
I know nothing about how seminarians are trained in today’s world in the art of preaching and I no longer have the opportunity to hear or evaluate the outcome of that process. However, I have listened to people for the last few decades and wonder that so many Catholics are so faithful to Sunday Mass. Theology is important, tremendously important, but if you can’t get people excited and motivated about what you say about it on Sunday, a potential strength and spiritual blessing is being lost. Priests can do many other things in the life of the Church – run schools, deliver social services, raise money, etc., etc. If the candidate cannot preach at all, he can be ordained but he should not be in the pulpit too frequently or too long. Needless to say, an exception has to be made in the case of a priest who is extraordinarily holy; the Cure of Ars, for example. Ordinarily, however, for most of us sanctity is in short supply.
The first reading today records a public homily in the life of the early Church. It is by St. Peter on Pentecost Sunday. It was moderately effective. Three thousand people joined the Church that first day. The response to today’s preaching is somewhat more modest than that.
 

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Last week, I was saddened to see that the Archdiocese of Liverpool in England was commissioning a large number of deacons to undertake the responsibility of witnessing marriages throughout that large archdiocese. The primary reason given for this adaptation was the fact of the continuing declining number of priests and the need to have their workload lightened. That is a good reason and it is one of the reasons that the Church was able to reactivate the diaconate after the Second Vatican Council, but is it not a reflection of a deeper problem?

Now discouraging news from the Archdiocese of Vienna, Austria. The Cardinal held a press conference in late September in which he announced a startling restructuring of parish life in this enormous archdiocese. For the next ten years, he will reduce the 660 parishes down to 150. Once again, the main reasons given for these measures was the increasing shortage of priests and the steady decline in the number of Catholics, especially those who regularly attended Mass and were involved in their local parishes. The program the Archbishop is introducing is far more complex than I can mention here, but think about the basic reality; 650 parishes cut back to 150 in one jurisdiction. Once again, the overriding issue is the shortage of priests. Is this a real solution? Is cutting back hundreds of small faith communities into enormous “mega-churches” really going to solve the basic problem?

My prayers are with the Archbishop. I suggest that we all pray for him and beleaguered shepherds across Europe and North America.

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I was saddened but not surprised when I just saw the announcement that in England the Liverpool Archdiocese has just begun to commission lay people to preside at funerals due to a lack of priests and deacons. The archbishop formally commissioned 22 lay ministers to celebrate funeral ceremonies in an effort to relieve pressure on priests who sometimes must celebrate seven or more funerals a week.

I have been watching this process since about 1965. It used to be that all key jobs in a diocese were handled by ordained priests. We resurrected the diaconate after 1,500 years of being kept in the refrigerator. Then came religious women being appointed as chancellors, heads of Matrimonial Tribunals and other key leadership positions. Needless to say, having lay people distribute communion was an important step forward in terms of lessening the load on parish priests. However, shouldn’t anyone notice that as each one of these changes occur it is under the pressure of the fact that there are ever fewer priests to serve the needs of the Universal Church.

While this tragedy is a shock only in Western Europe and North America for the last 40 years, it has been an agonizing reality for several centuries in South America. The Eucharist is the center of the life of the Church and the Eucharist can only be made available by the priesthood and yet the Church refuses to face these agonizing facts that are staring us in the face. Oh, we have tried to go in the other direction. Everyone has a full-time Vocation Director, vocation weeks, vocation years, vocation this and vocation that but the fact is that the spiritual, psychological and pastoral conditions that generated an abundance of priests a hundred years ago is not present today and does not seem to be appearing on the horizon any time soon. The shortage increases. The burdens grow heavier for the ordained. I guess that if it is time for the laity to take over funeral ceremonies, it will soon be time for the laity to take over marriage ceremonies. What do we do when there are no priests? In many parts of the world, that reality is tragically at hand now.

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As the country was being established in the last two decades of the 18th century, statistics were not easily at hand. I have read that there were possibly as few as 25,000 Roman Catholics in the 13 colonies and certainly no more than 50,000. Now a fast jump to 2012.

Statistics on some aspects of the Church are still far from perfect but what we have is awesome. The Church itself counts about 65 million Catholics and, at the same time, admits that many millions have become formally inactive (however, I am willing to bet that most of them would call for a priest if they thought that the end was at hand!). There are nearly 195 dioceses served by 430 bishops and 41,406 priests in 1,500 parishes, 55,000 religious women accomplish extraordinary work over the vast areas of activities that are provided in Catholic health care and other ministries. Naturally, while these numbers are impressive, they are nothing compared to the millions of dedicated lay men and women who work at every level in the Church. More accurately, they ARE the Church.

Who would not be impressed by 7,000 elementary and high schools? Education is tremendously expensive and while the schools operated under Roman Catholic auspices have contracted somewhat, it is still a magnificent accomplishment. Let’s hear it for Catholic schools!

What really impresses me, however, is earlier generations were burdened with tremendous poverty throughout the 19th century. They would bring into existence no less than 230 colleges and universities. Some might argue that maybe there should have been fewer but there is no arguing about the enormity of the project.

In my own diocese, and around the state and in other parts of the country, I have had the opportunity to visit or to work with a sizable number of these institutions of higher education. However, I would like to talk about several of them individually as I have been closely associated with them and to which I am greatly indebted. I will talk about St. Edward’s University in Austin, the University of St. Thomas in Houston and, if we have time, the three Catholic colleges established in San Antonio. That is St. Mary’s University, Our Lady of the Lake and Incarnate Word. On, I can’t forget Dallas. The University of Dallas is the newest of the Catholic colleges and they have been very successful.

More on all of them later.

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How many pastors find themselves disappointed and discouraged by the fact that the exciting blurb in the Sunday bulletin about the important meeting on Tuesday night in the parish hall met with virtually no response? There is something about folding chairs, formica topped tables, a vague agenda and competition with television that really erodes the effectiveness of many parish meetings. Not so in Ireland, at least not when an exciting agenda is proposed.

The Association of Catholic Priests recently sponsored a meeting in Dublin’s Regency Hotel to discuss the future of the Church. Two hundred participants were expected but more than 1,000 people showed up. Speaker after speaker pleaded for a more open Church centered around a spirit of dialogue and called for a redesigning of ministry to incorporate the gifts, wisdom and expertise of the entire faith community, male and female. There were certainly other concerns on the list many of which would create tension and nervousness on the side of the Vatican. It was an important meeting because it symbolized the mood that is present in the Church all over the developed world. People are dissatisfied with the status of today’s Church and want very much to express their deep concerns about needed changes and adaptations. Yet they feel that the leadership in the Church not only does not want to consider changes, but will not even consider discussing them.

Here is the present crisis. There is a massive sense of unrest, disappointment and frustration over a large percentage of the body of the faithful. These people have articulate leaders, they are backed up by the most effective journals of thoughts, such as the London Tablet, the Jesuit’s America and the lay published Commonweal, but the authorities choose not to listen. This has been a source of tension for more than two decades but I am not aware of a single structure that has been established by Church authorities that would encourage thoughtful listening and responsible decision making. One side says that we have all the knowledge necessary because we are divinely guided but doesn’t make for realistic communication. Was divine guidance present in the many scandals coming out of the Vatican in recent years? Not too likely!

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Last week, the Universal Church celebrated Holy Thursday. That day is especially important in the Church because on this day we mark both the institution of the Eucharist and the ordained priesthood. Pope Benedict XVI chose this day to chastise those priests who have called for the ordination of women and the end of priestly celibacy. There is little doubt that his remarks were occasioned by an organized call for disobedience in these areas in a number of countries, especially Austria.

No one should be surprised that the pope would take such a stand in view of the long established Church law regarding these issues and while the pope has ever right and even a duty to maintain long-established traditions in the Church, we still have the problem that somebody has to come up with a solution. The number of priests being ordained has been declining for half a century. In those five decades, we were shored up by short-term pastoral solutions – the diaconate, increased utilization of laity in leadership and pastoral roles, merging the parishes so that one priest could cover two or three parishes, etc., etc.

It seems, however, the tragic priest shortage in Europe and North America is of recent origin and the decline continues. Of more grave consequences was the failure to ever develop an adequate clergy in Latin America. With priests as the kingpin of the Church’s pastoral structure, their absence in adequate numbers leads to a failure of proper development and the lessening of membership. This has certainly been going on for years. A number of countries, such as Guatemala and Brazil, have lost a huge percentage of their Catholic members to Pentecostal and other groups. This is truly tragic.

This may be the largest issue facing the Church in the 21st century. In one way or another, a solution must be found.

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For the last two years, most of my daily blogs have been on the serious side, ranging through theology, economics and politics, stressing the reality of human suffering in our age. However, I am also delighted that God has given us the gift of laughter and so occasionally I will slip one in when my editor is not looking. Try this for a change of pace.

Changing A Light Bulb The Christian Way

How many Christians does it take to change a light bulb?

Charismatic: Only 1
Hands are already in the air.

Pentecostal: 10
One to change the bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness.

Presbyterian: None
Lights will go on and off at predestined times.

Roman Catholic: None
Candles only.

Baptists: At least 15.
One to change the light bulb, and three committees to approve the change and decide who brings the potato salad and fried chicken.

Episcopalians: 3
One to call the electrician, one to mix the drinks and one to talk about how much better the old one was.

Unitarians:
We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that light bulbs work for you, you are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your light bulb for the next Sunday service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.

Methodists: Undetermined
Whether your light is bright, dull, or completely out, you are loved. You can be a light bulb, turnip bulb, or tulip bulb. Bring a bulb of your choice to the Sunday lighting service and a covered dish to pass.

Nazarene: 6
One woman to replace the bulb while five men review church lighting policy.

Lutherans: None. Lutherans don’t believe in change.

Amish: What’s a light bulb?

If you understand the humor in each one of these, you are very open to ecumenism because it means that you know some particular trait about that specific religious tradition.

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For good or for ill, seminary education is fairly standard around the world. The basic courses – four years of undergraduate work with a major in philosophy and the second four years is in the various forms of theology as well as other ecclesiastical subjects – things that need to be known by someone who is going to function in a parish or most other priestly roles. Their curriculum may be the same but priests differ dramatically in different periods of time. I don’t know if that is true of the whole world but it is certainly true of the United States. Priests who started in the seminary in the late ‘40’s and early ‘50’s were profoundly influenced by the ‘60’s, the chaos of that period and the awesome hope generated by the Second Vatican Council. They would later be dubbed as “Vatican II priests.” Sometimes that expression was a compliment, sometimes it was derogatory depending on the frame of reference of the speaker.

There are always exceptions and no description fits everything or everyone, but the Vatican II priests were optimistic about the Church’s mission to the world. They were vitally concerned about bringing the message of Jesus Christ into the failing human structures of day-to-day living and society. The bishops of that period reflected the same thing. It is very interesting to look at the list of the subjects upon which the bishops spoke out in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. They were working for peace, for freedom for everyone, for a more just societies, for concern for the poor and the vulnerable. The episcopal statements coming out of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops today are overwhelmingly “in-house” being concerned about churchy issues and they reflect a dramatic withdrawal from the mode of operation of the last generation. Both groups are bishops, both groups are faithful to the Gospel but they are very different. Will the frame of reference turn again in the near future?

Only God knows.

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Many people are confused about various aspects of the Catholic Church. This is certainly true of persons who are not of the Catholic faith, but it is true of many Catholics as well. The Church is so big, so old and seems to be so complicated that many of us almost never get everything straight in our minds.

One aspect of the Church that leaves some wondering and somewhat confused is that there are so many different kinds of Catholic priests. We know that the priesthood is a central organizational component of the Catholic faith but soon people begin to find out that there are priests and then there are priests. Let me try to make this simple in the few paragraphs that are allocated to me for my daily blog. This is oversimplification but give me a little slack.

First of all, the Church has divided the entire planet into dioceses. These are particular parts of the planet that are divided along geographic lines presided over by a bishop. These dioceses are served by priests that traditionally come out of that diocese, study there and are ordained for it and, unless something unusual comes along, they will serve that diocese all their lives until God calls them. They are called diocesan priests.

The second large group of priests (and this can be divided and subdivided) are what we call religious priests. This is a constant source of confusion because does that mean that the diocesan priests are not religious? Not at all. These priests are called religious because they are bound by solemn vows and the word “religious” in this sense comes from the Latin word “religare” which means to bind or, in other words, to be bound by these vows. These priests, the religious, or more simply stated, members of religious orders, are usually committed to specialized work that the order itself assumes responsibility for and they have no geographic boundaries as such. The Dominicans are preachers, the Jesuits run colleges and universities, the Franciscans have special ministry to the poor, the Maryknollers are foreign missionaries, etc., etc., etc.

When all is said and done, none of that is absolute. Diocesan priests are missionaries. Many religious run parishes. The easy distinction with which I began breaks down into the day-to-day life of the Church. None of this matters. What does matter is that the Church has enough priests who are holy, well educated, faithful, generous and give their lives to building up the Church by walking faithfully in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.

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Running a small organization can be a difficult task but trying to lead, coordinate and keep in unity the world’s largest volunteer organization, namely the Church, is always loaded with difficulties. At the present time, the Church has more than its share of headaches. For example, a few of them are:

• The bishops of Australia called for a meeting with top Vatican officials to calm the situation in that country over the fallout from the abrupt manner in which one of their brother bishops had been removed.

• Ten percent of the priests of Austria are committed to liturgical disobedience on a number of issues.

• Tension is ongoing in Ireland. In the meantime, the Irish government has closed its embassy to the Vatican.

• In Kansas City, Missouri, the diocesan bishop has been indicted.

• In Washington, there is an argument between Archbishop Wuerl, Chair of the Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, and a famous theologian, Sister Elizabeth Johnson, over who communicated with whom and when regarding the blistering criticism that the committee delivered against her book.

The common thread running through most of this tension is the very widespread view that Vatican officials continue to rollback one aspect or another of the Second Vatican Council. That means that the hope and confidence that was so evident in the Church in the 1960’s and 1970’s is gradually being quashed.

All in all, tension and conflict continues to ripple through the Church and a great deal more work will have to be done in order to return the Church to a relative state of peace and calmness.

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