I saw this important piece by Gene Bianchi on the VOR_VOTF Yahoogroup and felt compelled to share it.

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Old Reformers, New Visions

Eugene C. Bianchi

I was asked to pinch-hit for my old
friend, Robert Blair Kaiser, at the Boston Inclusive
Ministry Conference in July. The topic of his workshop
was “Taking Back Our Church.” Since Bob Kaiser and I
entered the Jesuits sixty years ago in California on
the same day, we have kept up on each other’s careers.
I admire Bob’s forthright dedication to church reform
in his many writings. Now we find ourselves amicable,
dueling novelists (his Cardinal Mahony and my Bishop
of San Francisco and soon to appear, The Children’s
Crusade). I presented Bob’s main points and then gave
my own thoughts on reform that differ from or maybe
complement his.

The key question for Kaiser, as developed
in Mahony and many other publications is: how do we
bring about deep structural change in the Catholic
Church? In the spirit of “enculturation,” endorsed at
Vatican II, he calls for a people’s church, adapted to
different locales and not dominated by a Roman
monarchical hierarchy. He and many others see a
rampant clericalism virtually excluding Catholic
Christians from serious decision-making and
self-determination. Kaiser’s idea of a people’s
church would break the stranglehold of the celibate
male caste.

Such democratized churches would also be
“autochthonous,” self-ruling national or regional
bodies in union with Rome . He points out that twenty
such churches already exist, and that the Roman church
is really just number twenty-one. He cites John
England, the nineteenth-century bishop of Charleston ,
who wanted to write a democratic constitution for the
American church. Kaiser’s approach is consciously
political. One gets images of French students in 1968
throwing up barricades in the streets. Kaiser is not
passive-aggressive. He’s straight-on: “up against the
wall, you Cardinals.” This may be a tad too strong,
but Kaiser wants to get your attention. He is part of
a VOTF working group planning a national people’s
synod for 2010. So his question becomes: how does the
laity (a misnomer in his lexicon, wrongly used since
the Middle Ages to separate Christians) and the lower
clergy develop practical strategies for “taking back
the church.”

Now there’s the rub. I agree that the
political-religious mission is an important avenue for
Catholic reformers. The hierarchical oligarchy will
not give up power voluntarily. It took so much life
energy for top bishops to get to their princely
status. Moreover, the hierarchy and their house
theologians have had a thousand years to construe
theological ideologies to undergird the absolutist
system. I also pointed out the excellent study of
Thomas Reese, S.J., (Commonweal, ) which undercuts
the “divinizing” of the Roman system by pointing out
how its governance structures throughout the centuries
imitated secular ways of ruling. Reese’s work opens up
the argument: what was made by humans can be changed
by humans.

But let’s get back to the rub. Kaiser and
I are old guys now. We were formed in a pre-Vatican II
culture, and let loose into a new kind of religious
freedom by Vatican II. As young men, we tasted the
exhilaration of that watershed change. We felt the
shackles fall away as we took up banners and hurried
into the streets. But where have all the enthusiasts
gone? I looked over the crowded room of gray-hairs. I
reminded them that in a few years we would all be
gone. We needed to study the new culture of the young
who did not share our halcyon years. They are not
picking up the fallen flags. Many of the best are
going elsewhere for spirituality. Young folk see
themselves as spiritual but not religious, which
usually means that they are not attracted to religious
institutions, rules and rituals. A number of studies
bear out this theme. And the middle-aged seem to

have no fire in the belly for lofty church-oriented
causes. Some are satisfied with the status quo or
fearful of change, while others are so beset by the
busyness of life as to have no energy left for church
reform. I don’t heard bugles and distant drummers. It
is a muted time.

Yet quiet days summon us to imaginative
listening. The Spirit seems to be leading the young in
new directions. I see a spectrum of coming religious
communities. On the right, there will be very
traditional communities as exemplified by Tridentine
groups and Opus Dei Catholics who will for some time
represent the mind of the Vatican . In the middle will
be families looking for moral guidance as they raise
their children. Others will more or less put up with
the ways of today’s church. It will still offer them
rituals for major life transitions from birth to
grave. But an increasingly large number of young
people will be looking elsewhere for spiritual
nourishment. They will be seeking communities of
relevance and inspiration. For them, changing the
Catholic structure will be left to holy termites well
advanced in their work on the Constantinian shape of
Peter’s bark. Here are a few traits of such
communities, if I’m reading the future with even a
little wisdom. They will be seeking different modes of
living the Way of Jesus within and outside of
Catholicism.

—Inclusive Communities. The groupings
will be inclusive in terms of membership and
leadership. For example, they will welcome those of
other Christian traditions, as well as those outside
Christianity who are drawn to the ethos of these
fellowships. They will be led by women as well as men.
One of the striking aspects of the Boston meeting were
the roles played by women. Ordained and non-ordained
women conducted the liturgy and, to a large extent,
ran the whole conference. On Sunday afternoon, still
another Catholic women’s ordination service, noted by
CNN, was held at the Church of the Covenant in central
Boston . Inclusiveness will also mean drawing from
wisdom traditions, East and West. The Christian gospel
and the teachings of western mystics and theologians
will be in dialogue with the writings of Buddhism,
Sufism and Hinduism. An ever more connected world
through information technology will expand the global
village into more than just a cliché.

—Contemplative Communities. We may be
seeing the dawning of a new age of contemplation. In
the past, the church has largely relegated the
meditative life to monasteries and religious orders.
More time may be devoted to teaching meditation so
that individuals can experience spirituality in an
interior way. There will always be a place for liturgy
and other public forms of prayer. But today these
external forms of worship dominate the religious
scene. Liturgical worship doesn’t usually go beyond
actions of singing, oral prayer and listening to
sermons. A more contemplative spirit may also lead to
expanded understandings of the sacraments. For
example, the real presence of God may be experienced
as much in sharing an ordinary meal as in a formal
Eucharist.

—Ethical Communities. Gospel-inspired
involvements for peace and justice will continue in
these new communities. Religious traditions at their
best lead to works of compassion, care and service.
One of the tasks of the new communities will be to
help people form their own moral consciences without
threat and coercion.

—Environmental Communities. The
ecological crisis will extend far beyond our own time.
As population pressures and global warming advance,
spiritual seekers will be increasingly confronted by
the need to re-examine older theologies concerning the
relation between nature and humanity. The
evolutionary earth itself will be grasped as part of
God’s revelation. We will have to re-examine our
attitudes and conduct regarding our fellow creatures
and the planet itself. More emphasis will be placed on
the divine manifested in the whole natural order
including ourselves as an intrinsic part of nature.

—Celebratory Communities. Institutional
religion, for the most part, has not been connected
with a spirit of celebration. Religions have tended to
be grim affairs in the minds of many people. The
approach has been negative: to overcome sin or to keep
the faithful from straying beyond limits set by
hierarchs. Celebratory communities will not be
pollyanish as they view the reality of evil and
suffering. But they will make more of the beauty of
the world and of the goodness that can be invoked in
humans.

—Dialogic Communities. Most traditional
religions have not been good at dialogue. The Catholic
Church has made some progress in ecumenical openness
with other religions since Vatican II. But the efforts
have been mainly on intellectual exchange in theology
or some working together in service ministries. But
deeper dialogical communication is still foreign to
us. Such inter-relating calls for a change of heart in
oneself and a new respect for fuller listening to the
other. Without seeking to convert the other to our way
of thinking/acting, we listen reverently to the deeper
values that the other is trying to express. This is
more of a process of truly hearing the other’s
profound concerns. We become sympathetic listeners. It
is an experience of non-violent communication that
changes both parties in their respect for one another
without necessarily altering their ideas about issues.
(See Practical Spirituality by Marshall Rosenberg).

So, in conclusion, the reform of the
Catholic Church will not take place like the Boston
Tea Party. To incite that kind of revolutionary
energy in today’s middle-range Catholics would
probably require a return to the Papal States where
the Vatican would have the power to tax and imprison
us. Short of that, however, reform seems to be working
on certain levels, that of the holy termites eating
away at the ancient ship, and that of the old dictum:
mors pastorum, spes ecclesiae, the death of pastors is
the hope of the church. Yet on another plane, the
spiritual longings and visions of coming generations
impel us to think about reform in new ways. The Spirit
is forever surprising us, waiting around corners we
never suspected.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Church Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.