God save us...from ourselves!

These are interesting days. Maybe interesting isn’t the right word. Some days the news from our beautiful blue planet as seen from the quiet of outer space, ranges from exasperating to despairing. The world economy is tanking, due to greed, risk (motivated by greed) and a lawlessness not matched even in our old wild west pioneer days. There are wars everywhere, some that we know about, and some covert ones in which our country is participating ‘behind the scenes’…ref. Somalia. There there’s the holocaust in Dubai.

As I look at the massive atrocities in the decades of recent history it is noteworthy that the most inhumane atrocities conducted on a grand scale have been and are conducted “in the name of God”. The radical Islamists (‘terrorists’) indiscriminately kill and maim as they shout, “Praise be Allah!” These folks proclaim a passionate apostolate to establish a ‘pure’ Islamic state…in the Middle East, in Africa, and wherever they think they can get a toe hold. The Hindus in India are intolerant of the Moslems. The Moslems in Iraq are intolerant of Christians. The Moslem Sunnis and the Shiia cannot even tolerate each other in the Middle East. The Jews and the Palestinians each seek to erase each other. The Iranians want to wipe Israel from the face of the earth.

Most of our Christian churches have similar passionate apostolates in our histories: the Inquisition, the Crusades, “witch hunts”, cleansing of Native Americans of their “barbaric” earth spirituality etc,. Isn’t it astounding that the most vicious, genocidic movements of recent centuries, the informed centuries, are done “in the name of God”.

This week, (Dec. 1st…) we Christians began the season of Advent, looking forward to the various
‘comings’ of the “Prince of Peace”. It doesn’t look very peaceful as we spin the globe, does it.

Recently the Catholic Bishops met in Synod in the Vatican to discuss the Word of God, and how it is to be heard and proclaimed. In their final published statement they said, “The effective, creative and salvific divine work is source of being, of history, of creation and redemption.” This Word of God “walks along the roads of the world to encounter the great pilgrimage that the people of the earth have taken up in search of truth, justice and peace.”

Isn’t it amazing how our age old religious sects, all of whom have a common father in Abraham of the Old Testament, have arrived at such diverse applications of “the great pilgrimage that the people of the earth have taken up in search of truth, justice and peace.”

As the old Irish nun used to say whenever extremism popped up among us school kids, “God save us!”

Shifts in our Church

This week I attended the annual meeting of the Canon Law Society of America. Not everyone appreciates Canon Law in our Church, even while it provides us with directions to apply the deliberations and decisions that reframed our Church.
As the years roll well past Vatican Council II (of the mid 1960s) the number of us who lived the pre-Vatican II Catholic experience is growing quite small in our Church; probably 10% or less who recall the 'pre-Vatican Church', then the stunning renewal or rebirth of Catholicism coming out of the Council, and then the throes of implementation and integration.
This shift in experience within the Church is becoming a subject of discussion these days, as it was at the meeting I just attended. The 'after-Vatican II' folks grew/are growing up in a Church that was much more integrated into society and the market place, one which those folks have described as "lacking a sense of the Transcendent". Thus they attach themselves to signs and symbols that set them apart as linked to the Transcendent God, or at least, that is one explanation.
Much has happened in our Church these 50 years. There are many new institutions or organizations of the laity throughout the world: 122 have recognition by the Vatican, and they have hundreds of thousands of members. The Permanent Diaconate is reaching an accepted status in the Church, which has promise for apostolic ministry if it develops well. Through RCIA 140,000 people convert to Catholicism annually in the US, which, if done well, builds a sense of Catholic community. Youth take their exuberance to rallies and World Youth Days, a new and yet to be discerned expression of their faith within the Church. There are many new religious communities springing up: over 700 in the US alone, though many have only a few members and short life-expectancy. They are pluralistic in form: men and women, some in temporary commitments, some hosting non-Catholics. At the same time many traditional religious congregations are merging and/or dying. The men in the US who are ordained to priesthood in these later years do not weather well; as many as 50% do not continue in active ministry after ten years. Around the world we note the growth of Catholicism in Third World countries and the demise of serious practice in most First World countries, with the obvious future that the First World Catholics will soon be minorities in the Church. There are many, many martyrs for the faith all around the world, with little press to alert the rest of the world as to the meaning of this movement.
In some ways we have two Churches existing alongside one another: the pre-Vatican Church and the later Church which is born of open, interactive, individualistic culture with instant access. It has been said that these later Catholics are more loyal to their group experience than they are to the Tradition.
These considerations have given me much on which to ruminate...how to read these 'signs of the times' and how to reflect on the gospel within this stunning diversity and shift.

What do you think about all this?

NUN IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE

I decided to begin a blog-site out of my interest in dialoging with others in the public square about important experiences and issues of the day. Internet technology empowers us as individuals to communicate nationally and internationally to explore experiences and issues for the purpose of gaining insight and vision in shaping our present and future, and perhaps to heal our past and present social sin. I believe this is the work of a proactive, discerning human community.

My journey to the here and now? My apostolic ‘nun-life’ began as an educator in Catholic schools and eventually led to the presidency of a Catholic college on the rural Northern Plains. The seeds for a life of religious consecration and church ministry, rather than marriage and kids, were sown by several strong, prairie women, Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who challenged us prairie kids to “go out and make the world a better place!” And, “Leave a footprint, one that will make a difference!” I took the plunge, and spent a generation teaching kids and parents!

With the redefined Church of Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, of Vatican II, we nuns handed our Catholic school ministry to the laity whom we had been preparing for two generations in our parochial schools and Catholic colleges and universities. Thus the Sisters responded to another form of “teaching and healing”. Leaving the secure structures of semi-enclosed convents and parish schools, and faithful to the daring of our founding mothers, we redirected our apostolic work… to hostels for the homeless in our streets, founding homes for victims of AIDs and other crushing issues, establishing numerous social agencies to address the needs of those ridden by poverty, those trafficking across our borders for jobs and as victims of the sex trade, and to the poor in the Third World.

We also discovered the power of corporate board rooms where policy is made and questioned, and we brought our voices to those tables. This includes the institutions of the church as well as the market place, “the public square”.

I spend most of my ‘second’ apostolic life in circles of leadership and governance. I believe there also the gospel needs to be sown, and ‘prophecy’ consists of standing the purposes and policies of an organization over against gospel values.