During this Lent I am ranting on sayings about "how things used to be."
Remember when the pastor preached fire and brimstone half the time, condemning non-Catholics and non-church attending Catholics to hell, and preached money the rest of the time? What happened?
Unless you've been visiting family in Outer Mongolia for the past year, everyone knows that Pope Francis has brought a new emphasis on compassion, mercy, forgiveness and care of the poor to the Catholic Church, through his deed and his words. But the changes in preaching began with the Second Vatican Council. The Council Fathers wanted the entire church to read and pray the bible. So they expanded the Sacred Scripture passages which are read at Sunday and weekday Masses. They also wisely decreed that priests should use the scriptural readings as the basis for their preaching, in both style and substance.
Take the gospel of the third Sunday in Lent in the A cycle, the story of the woman at the well in John 4. Jesus astonishes his disciples by actually talking to a woman in public--a no-no in his culture. And not just any woman, one who is shunned by her village neighbors and has been married five times. He treats her and her questions with respect. By the end of their conversation, she is going to other villagers and urging them to see this man who knew everything about her. She becomes a most unlikely "evangelist," telling the good news of Jesus to those who haven't heard of him.
In style and substance we preachers are to imitate Jesus. He doesn't condemn, but he does confront sin. He engages his listeners, even those whom others want to write off as losers. He teaches in a way that invites people to learn more. He doesn't condemn people to hell. He invites people to learn more about him.
(The only persons Jesus is critical of are the most religiously observant--the Pharisees and the scribes. He calls them hypocrites, or actors, because they perform all the necessary prayers but their hearts are far from love.)
Jesus preached money--but not like the pastors of old. He wasn't clergy, and accepted what donations came his way. He recognized the value of money as a means, not an end. Money should be used to help the poor, and provide for the temple in Jerusalem. But only God is truly rich. Any human being who worked at accumulating wealth was "owned" by it, and thereby placed his trust in things not God. ("You cannot love God and mammon.")
I've long been challenged by this saying of Jesus: "Make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings." How does one make friends with dishonest wealth? By giving it away to those in need. Jesus lived in voluntary poverty; translated today it means our lives are characterized by simplicity and generosity. "Give us this day our daily bread," not an excessive savings account.
One final thought. I've often wondered if those old-time priests really did preach fire-and-brimstone or give-money-to-the-church as often as they did. My suspicion is that those sermons were only occasionally given, but so harsh that the faithful remembered them all too well, and then repeated and repeated their self-serving and mean message. The faithful knew that God is love more than some priests. Yes, we human beings sin, and need to be reminded of our sinful ways. Yes, we human beings need to support the church, and some members of the parish fail to do so. But any follower of Christ cannot do the reminding of our failures with self-righteous anger. Pope Francis, and the Sacred Scriptures, lead us to the compassion of Christ our Savior.
During Lent I am ranting on sayings about "how things used to be."
Remember when Catholics went to hell if they ate meat on any Friday during the year? What happened?
For a long time prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the Catholic Church held that the primary way to remember that Jesus Christ died for us on Good Friday was to fast from meat every Friday during the year. In our country this penitential custom and rule defined us Catholics. After the council, Pope Paul VI wanted to emphasize the voluntary nature of this penitential act, and to make it more than just following authority's rule. So he reduced the requirements to fast from meat on all Fridays to only Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent, which still remains to today.
(I remember one of my moral theology professors in seminary joking about how when he was a teen, his gang of friends would go out on Friday nights, and wait until after midnight to order their hamburgers and milk shakes. They knew how to get around that Catholic rule.)
What was missed by this reduction in law was the pope's encouragement to continue doing personal and voluntary penitential acts on Fridays, in memory of Jesus' death on Calvary on Good Friday. The pope back then rightly recognized that for some (like me) fasting from meat was no big deal. I love eating fish! So do millions of others.
(An old joke: The bishop reminds his cook that he has to fast from meat on Friday. So he instructs her to prepare shrimp cocktail and she-crab soup as appetizers and lobster for the entree.)
But the pope--and the church--wanted us to remember how special Friday is in the church's calendar. So individuals would have to do something more personal and taxing to carry out a penitential act.
Today each of us is called to perform penitential acts, on Fridays, during Lent, and throughout the year. Some may carry out "a black fast," that is, no food at all for one day a week. Some may pray the Stations of the Cross. Some may volunteer once a month at a senior citizens home or shelter for abused women. Some may make an annual and substantial gift to Catholic Charities or United Way. Everyone can do something. It starts with us recognizing that acts of self-denial, mortification and renunciation are part of following Jesus.
On every first Sunday of Lent Catholics hear the story of Jesus fasting 40 days and 40 nights in the desert. Each of us can choose how we will discipline ourselves and our bodies, during Lent and for our lifetime.
One of my favorite rants is how folks in western Pennsylvania obsess over how things "used to be." Perhaps you've heard -- or given! -- directions to a visitor: Make a left at where the Isaly's used to be, then go three blocks to where the old firehouse used to be. No wonder outsiders look at us funny.
It's no different with matters of faith. Many many Catholics look backwards at how things "used to be," and get stuck in the past. During this season of Lent I'm ranting on several of these things I've heard, and how we might see with new eyes.
Remember when talking in church used to be a sin?
Catholics of a certain age can remember when Sister or Father shushed us kids for talking in church. "Be quiet! You are disrespecting Jesus in the tabernacle." Walk into a Catholic Church before the 10:00 a.m. Mass back then and all you heard were the shuffling of footsteps and the bang of an occasional kneeler being let down. An usher might come over and whisper to you to move to the center of the pew, to allow another couple to sit next to you. It was quiet in church.
There was something good about such silence. One could pray in a personal way before Mass, or listen to the choir sing their warm-up song. People identified "prayerful" with "a quiet church."
What is forgotten today is that during the Tridentine Mass (pre-1969) the congregation was silent before and during the entire Mass. Only the servers, and/or the choir, answered the priest's recitation of Latin prayers. For 45 or 55 or 65 minutes the folks in the pew observed but did not participate in what happened beyond the altar rail.
Fast forward to today. Before Sunday Mass one family greets another when they enter. The priest may say hello to an elderly parishioner and ask about her recent hospital stay. The lector and servers bustle about getting the altar ready. A teenager may take her younger sister to the bathroom. (Remember, there were no bathrooms in the church pre-1970 either!) The cantor comes out to the lectern and welcomes visitors before announcing the opening hymn. I often make goo-goo eyes at the babies and toddlers, and enjoy watching their reactions. It's not like a saloon on the South Side of Pittsburgh after a Steelers win, but there is some talking, some noise, some movement of people.
What changed? We the church changed. Fifty or more years ago the image of the ideal church was that of a monastery, with its pervasive adult silence. Today we value hospitality and words of welcome; activity by several liturgical ministers; and participation by every person (younger and older) in the church. The faithful participate by singing hymns and psalms; responding to the priest's greeitng and sign of the cross; answering prayers with a hearty "Amen"; actively listening to the familiar Eucharistic Prayer; giving greetings of peace; and walking forward to receive Holy Communion. Today's prayerful Mass is seen in the active--and verbal--participation of the assembly, before, during, and after Mass. Today we value the warmth of our parish communities gathered for the Eucharist, expressed in hugs, hellos and (for the little ones) high-fives.
Can there be too much talk, too much loud laughter in church? Yes. Everyone (even us priests) has to be sensitive to our neighbors in how we conduct ourselves in church. Those who are looking for a place of profound silence should visit a place like our Perpetual Adoration Chapel, at Mary Mother of Hope Parish in downtown New Castle. I myself love silence, especially when I am on retreat at a place like the Eastern Point Jesuit Retreat House in Gloucester, Massachusetts. But today it's ok to talk in church--indeed, it's necessary to sing and respond during Mass, all for the praise of God.
There is a great scene in the movie, "A Few Good Men." The character played by Tom Cruise, an attorney, is trying to get a marine in the witness stand to describe a "code red." This is when a superior officer orders a marine to rough up another marine, because he was not carrying out his duties in a satisfactory way.
The prosecuting attorney in the court marshal, played by Kevin Bacon, challenges the marine to point to where in the marine handbook is there a definition of a code red. The marine can't, because it's not written down.
Cruise jumps up, grabs the marine handbook from Bacon, and asks the marine, can you point to the chapter where it describes the mess hall. The marine can't. Cruise, in mock horror, says, you mean the Marines don't feed you? No, the marine grins, we get three squares a day, good food. But where is the mess hall, if it's not described in the handbook? Well, everybody knows where the mess hall is. Just follow the crowd at lunch. Point taken.
Lots of things are not written down, just "known."
For example, from time to time, parishioners ask, "How often does a priest have to say Mass?" They expect me to say, "every day" or at least "several times a week." I quote canon 904 for the 1983 Code of Canon Law, "Priests are to celebrate frequently." The 1917 code obliged priests only to celebrate the Eucharist several times a year. I quickly add that priests, like all Catholics, are obliged to participate in the celebration of the Eucharist every Sunday and holyday of obligation. But preside at the celebration? Only frequently.
In fairness to the canon, it goes on to offer not law but exhortation: "Indeed, daily celebration is recommended earnestly." Several other post-Vatican II documents on priestly life and ministry encourage daily celebration of the Mass, as a foundation for engaged priestly spirituality. But it is not required for a Catholic priest to say Mass every day.
Canon 905 goes on to define limits on how often a priest may celebrate the Eucharist.
"#1. A priest is not permitted to celebrate the Eucharist more than once a day except in cases where the law permits him to celebrate or concelebrate more than once on the same day.
"#2. If there is a shortage of priests, the local ordinary can allow priests to celebrate twice a day for a just cause, or if pastoral necessity requires it, even three times on Sundays and holydays of obligation."
The 2000 commentary on the Code of Canon Law by the Canon Law Society of American notes that there have been limitations on how often priests can celebrate the Eucharist dating to the 11th century. An improper motive could be to say many Masses just so you can receive several stipends (which is against canon 951, which states that a priest can receive only one stipend per day, no matter how many Masses he says). Another reason for restriction is "is to ensure that the manner of celebrating by priests does not become too hurried or routine due to the pressures of multiple Masses." Further, the commentary says, "The Apostolic See discourages the multiplication of Masses when a church is large enough to accommodate the faithful at a smaller number of Masses....The pastoral effort is weakened by multiple Masses because the participation of the people in a scattered congregation is diminished and the effectiveness of overworked priests is reduced."
Canon 905 is regularly violated in our neck of the woods. I know of priests who say six or seven Masses on a weekend, every weekend. Our diocesan bishop has been known to do the same, in the period from Saturday morning to late on Sunday evening. I have to believe that in other situations -- a large prison, rural areas with far-flung churches, huge pilgrimage groups -- priests often celebrate more than three Masses in one day. Certainly "pastoral need" impels them. But the distinction between convenience and pastoral need is often hard to discern.
This weekend I presided at the celebration of six Masses within 24 hours. On Saturday, a funeral Mass at 12:30 p.m. Regularly scheduled 4:00 and 6:30 p.m. anticipated Sunday Masses. Three on Sunday: 7:30 a.m., 9:30 and 11:30. Plus I heard confessions, as we have them scheduled, from 3:00 to 3:30 and from 5:30 to 6:00 p.m. on Saturday evening.
This is not to knock my two associates. They were equally apostolic. One did five Masses (a funeral Mass here and a wedding in Pittsburgh on Saturday, three regularly scheduled on Sunday) and the other did four Masses and a funeral blessing service. Plus, both heard confessions for over an hour on Saturday.
We priests have been talking among ourselves about whether in our four parishes (with three fulltime priests) we have "too many" Masses for Sunday. We have twelve--four on Saturday evening and eight on Sunday morning, in four church buildings. About 3,300 souls on average participate in these 12 Masses. We have come to no conclusion. We priests are all healthy, and can manage the four each weekend without much trouble, and with the enthusiasm and energy needed for a healthy and holy celebration. At some not-too-distant point in the future, I'll have to have a conversation about this topic with our pastoral councils.
But six in 24 hours? I don't believe that any canon lawyer would believe I broke the law. But common sense?
I feel that I "gave it my all" at these six Masses. The faithful parishioners who participated can let you know if that is true. I am blessed that I have the health to do all six.
(A few weeks ago I had an attack of sciatica, I think. A sharp pain in my back made almost any movement excruciating. In four days it went away. But during those four days even the simple act of saying one weekday Mass was most painful.)
Six Masses in 24 hours seems to me a neon indication both of "pastoral necessity" and "a shortage of priests." Where this goes, I have no idea, either in New Castle or the Catholic Church. What is written down, and what is known, grow farther apart.
"HOF" in baseball and football lingo is shorthand for "Hall of Fame." One of the HOF Pittsburgh priests died the other day, Father Donald McIlvane. He was 88, and had been residing in the Vincentian Home.
Don was one of the "social justice activist" priests in our diocese who were motivated by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Ordained in 1952, he served in the Hill District, East Liberty and Midland.
But he was best known for his protests. Against the Vietnam war, against segregation (including a brief but impactful march with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama in 1965), against apartheid in South Africa, for civil rights, for the poor. Peter Smith of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette does a nice job of summarizing Father McIlvane's life. To be praised by Molly Rush and Father Jack O'Malley alone is enough to warrant HOF induction.
When I was chaplain to the Sisters of Divine Providence and diocesan secretary for social concerns in the 199s, Don was my go-to guy for taking my place when I had to be out of town. He enjoyed coming out to McCandless and saying Mass in the motherhouse chapel. By then he had retired from active ministry, but not from helping another priest. He was always gracious to me, and over time grew to love the sisters. He even formally became one of their associates.
Two things about Don struck me. One was anger. He seemed to radiate anger, a low-boil yet ever-present sense of the wrongness of how life was structured. Some of this anger could truly be called "righteous," and probably motivated his activism and protests. Some of this anger was directed at the church. He had little good to say about the hierarchy (with the exception of Pope John XXIII) and was acute at pointing out the inconsistencies in policy and clerical privilege lots of us unfortunately took for granted.
Yet at the same time, Don was "a man of the church." He remained a priest in good standing for 62 years, and as Father Jack O'Malley mentioned in his funeral sermon, Don was knowledgeable about the liturgy and liked to show the links between prayer and social justice work. Bishop David Zubik's comment in the obituary captures this: "Even when he challenged the church's practices and traditions, 'he did it in a way that was respected and respectful.'"
Don spoke out for the poor, whether through he support for labor unions, increasing the minimum wage, or attacking racist hiring practices. He also lived in a very simple manner, never putting on airs.
May the Lord reward you for your unsung labors, Father McIlvane, and show you the promised land where justice overrules structural sin and love reigns in the hearts of all.
Our diocesan newspaper ran a story this past Sunday about four parish situations in which "change is in the air." One has three parishes served by one pastor and one parochial vicar, in the Brookline neighborhood of the city of Pittsburgh. Father Jim Bachner is pastor and Father Gary Oehmler is parochial vicar. One has two priests voluntarily sharing a rectory in Washington County. Father Mike Zavage is pastor of two parishes and chaplain to the large campus of California University of Pennsylvania. Father Ed Yuhas is pastor of two parishes. One has one pastor in one parish, Father Steve Kresak, but only after several parish mergers and church closings over the past twenty years in the city of McKeesport.
And one of those is our own situation in New Castle. Three priests serve four parishes in the city of New Castle. We live under one roof together, yet we serve in four parishes. I am canonically pastor of all four communities.
If you had told me when I was ordained 35 years ago that there would be situations where a pastor was in charge of two parishes, three parishes, four parishes, I would have said you were nuts--or asked what you were smoking. Maybe, maybe, I might have allowed that such situations happened in "mission areas" of the world (Peru, Bolivia, Nigeria, the Pacific Islands) or of our country (Texas, Alaska, Wyoming). But no, not in western Pennsylvania.
Yet I have been there, done that: pastor of one parish with one church; of one parish with two churches; of one parish with three churches; of one parish with four churches; of two parishes (twice); of three parishes; of four parishes. And many of my brothers in our diocese have been and are doing the same. There was a moment in the 2002 when three of my classmates and I were each pastor with four church buildings. That's right--four parishes, four pastors; 16 church buildings.
Check out the story in the February 14, 2014, edition of the Pittsburgh Catholic by Chuck Moody, "Shared concerns: Parish changes in retrospect." www.pittsburghcatholic.org
Twelve years after the firestorm of public criticism of the Catholic Church's handling of priests who harmed children, as revealed by the Boston Globe, we are still getting hammered. The news around the world is that Catholic bishops in most other countries did no better than U.S. bishops--prior to about 1993.
I am proud of the current efforts to prevent child abuse in our nation's Catholic parishes and schools, either by clergy or laity. Our hard work goes almost unnoticed, but it's necessary. Our past mistakes are also there, for all the world to see. Some have not learned from them. (I'm referring to the Penn State football case and Jerry Sandusky.) Pope Emeritus Benedict and Pope Francis are on top of the issue.
I've often thought, "if we knew then what we know now," how different the past might have been. Saying that out loud, however, sounds defensive and insensitive to the feelings of victims and victims's families.
In the February 9, 2014 edition of Our Sunday Visitor, the associate publisher, Msgr. Owen F. Campion, expressed well my feelings today. I'm reprinting his column here. I don't like the title, but I do like his column: "A different perspective: Today's seminarians are brought face to face with sexuality--and that's a good thing." (From his photograph I'm guessing that Msgr. Campion was ordained in the early 1970s.)
I cannot forget my first Sunday as a priest. I learned a lot in one hour. Following Sunday Masses in my first parish, my new pastor invited me to lunch, where we talked about some of the routines of the parish and about what would be my duties. It was pleasant.
Then, we returned to the rectory. "Come into my study," the pastor said, "you need to know what you have walked into." In his study, he removed a file from the desk drawer, handed it to me, and began to detail its contents. My predecessor had sexually abused boys. I was shocked. No seminary lecture had ever discussed sexual abuse. I never knew an abusive priest. No one had ever talked to me about it.
As my time in the parish moved along, I met victims and their families and learned the toll taken by this priest's abuse of them. Also in the file was a photocopy of a letter that the psychiatrist treating the priest sent to the bishop. I knew the doctor. He held a doctor of medicine degree from a highly respected medical school, had completed psychiatric residency in a world-renowned mental health facility and was board certified in psychiatry.
His letter assured the bishop that the priest should be fine--if he followed advice, guarded against tempting situations, got his rest, organized his life and saw the psychiatrist as directed. The doctor urged the bishop to reappoint the priest. The bishop, now long dead, followed this recommendation. When bad things happened again, the bishop withdrew the priest from active ministry. (Only the Vatican could remove him from the priesthood, and such action under such circumstances then was very rare.)
Fast forward 20 years. Another priest, whom I knew, admitted sexually abusing boys. The then bishop sent this priest to a distinguished psychiatric hospital. After some months of treatment, the priest's attending doctor advised that he be reinstated. This bishop was skeptical. He assigned the priest to a desk job in the chancery and ordered he have nothing to do with boys. The priest, however, found boys. The bishop learned of a suspicious situation. No accusations had been made, and apparently no physical contact had happened. Nevertheless, the bishop himself told me that he did not care what any psychiatrist or psychologist said, he was forbidding the priest to act in priestly ministry.
Fast forward again. A psychiatrist and his wife invited me to dinner. The doctor, by then in practice for about 30 years, told me that when he was in training, and for years later, no mental health professional looked upon sexual abuse of youths with the same alarm that later came to be associated with the problem.
It will be charged that here I make excuses and try to relieve Church authorities of responsibility in managing sex abuse cases in the past, but at some time mention should be made of how the attitude about such matters has changed in professional circles. For example, science once assumed pedophilia could be treated or managed, and no incident, if treated, necessarily meant that more trouble would occur in the future. Understanding pedophilia has scientifically evolved. The injury of being sexually assaulted as a youth simply was not always realized.
Today, seminary students are brought bluntly face to face with sexuality in all respects, healthy or unhealthy. The abuse issue awakened Church leaders, but so did departures from the priesthood because of celibacy. Seminarians undergo psychiatric evaluations, but no mental health professional presently can predict pedophilia in a given case. Science still has things to learn.
This rigid seminary practice consoles me. I am convinced that rare will be problems in years to come. Thank God.
By Msgr Owen F. Campion, Our Sunday Visitor, 200 Noll Place, Huntington, IN 46750. Subscriptions $40.95 per year. 1-800-348-2440.
My own experience was no different. I never heard about sexual abuse, much less by a cleric, in the seminary. Yet in my first pastorate I had to confront a visiting priest (from another country) who got several teens drunk in my parish. I reported him to the clergy office, and his faculties as a priest were removed. He subsequently went home.
I have been blessed with several seminarian interns over the years. I talk about this subject with them, so that they are not blindsided like I was.
When the U.S. Catholic bishops met in Dallas in April 2002, they approved the Charter for the Protection for Children and Young People. The key provision was that even one acknowledged incident of abuse of a minor by a priest or deacon would mean permanent removal from active ministry. The Vatican subsequently gave its "recognitio" to this document as local law. At the time, I was not sure that the penalty fit the crime. Many voices, some of them priests, said this was too harsh, and more room for other less severe repercussions should be allowed at the discretion of the local bishop or religious superior. Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., the noted theologian, said at the time that the Charter would drive a wedge between the priests and their bishops.
Over time I have come to see that, as harsh and definitive as it was, "one act and you're out" was correct and is correct. The people of God have the right to know that we in ministry--clergy and laity--do not harm children. (The one lacuna in the Charter is that there is not the same penalty for bishops accused and acknowledged of harming minors. Penalties for a bishop can only come from the Holy See.) Back in 2002 the bishops basically said, we don't trust ourselves to do the right thing. Let us hold all of us to the same public high standard. The years have proven the truth of the statement. The years since have also shown that a very few bishops still don't get it or follow the Charter.
As Msgr. Campion's doctor friend admitted, for years the psychiatric community could not or would not admit the grave offense that is sexual abuse. Neither did the Catholic Church. We all have to do better. Constant vigilance is the necessary price we have to pay for our past sins.
