The Second Annual Prayer Breakfast for Hope and Justice

On Saturday, May 3, 2008, over 125 people gathered at the Metropolitan Ballroom in Golden Valley, Minnesota for the Second Annual Prayer Breakfast for Hope and Justice.

Sponsored by a coalition of progressive Catholic organizations, including the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM), The Progressive Catholic Voice online journal, Pax Christi Twin Cities, Catholic Rainbow Parents, and Dignity Twin Cities, this year’s prayer breakfast was entitled “Here Comes Everybody: Democratizing Catholicism in Challenging Times,” and featured Robert McClory, award-winning journalist and author of Faithful Dissenters: Stories of Men and Women Who Loved and Changed the Church and As It Was In the Beginning: The Coming Democratization of the Catholic Church.



McClory spoke powerfully and eloquently on how the Catholic tradition develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit, and, as the Second Vatican Council document Dei Verbum reminds us, “through the intimate understanding of spiritual things [that believers] experience.” In this way the Church “constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth.”

In outlining the history of faithful dissent in the Church, and the criteria for responsible or conscientious dissent, McClory drew on the works of noted Catholic theologians Francis Sullivan (author of Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church), Richard McCormick, SJ, and Edward Schillebeeckx, OP (whom Robert and his wife Margaret met recently during a visit to the Netherlands).

In light of the highly authoritarian approach of John Nienstedt, the new archbishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis, the following two quotes by Francis Sullivan particularly resonated with those in attendance at yesterday’s prayer breakfast:

It would be inconsistent for the magisterium to propose a moral norm as a requirement of the natural law . . . and not offer convincing reasons that would appeal to the intelligence of those to whom this teaching is directed. . . . It would be a mistake to rely too heavily on merely formal authority in proposing it for acceptance by thinking people.

. . . If, in a particular instance, Catholics have offered their religious submission of mind and will to the authority of the magisterium by making an honest and sustained effort to achieve internal assent to its teaching, and still find that doubts about its truths remain so strong in their minds that they cannot actually give their sincere intellectual assent to it, I do not see how one could judge such non-assent to involve any lack of obedience to the magisterium.

Sullivan, Francis A., “Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church” Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2002

In a future Wild Reed post I’ll share more of Bob McClory’s May 3 talk. Today, I’d simply like to share the two readings that were used as part of the prayer breakfast’s Liturgy of Word and Eucharist, and the words that introduced this same liturgy’s “Ritual of Letting Go.” This liturgy preceded Robert McClory’s presentation.


A Reading from the Gospel of Mark (Chapter 10, Verses 43-45)

Jesus said to his disciples: “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be servant of all.”


A Reading from the Writings of Robert McClory

What kind of legacy did Jesus leave and how did he want his community to operate? The Gospels report such an abundance of scenes in which Jesus makes clear his abhorrence for the established top-down system of government in both church and state that it’s impossible, I believe, to think he supported it or was indifferent to it. Jesus reproaches the disciples whenever they misinterpret his intentions regarding superiority and inferiority in relationships. He wants them to comprehend something that is crystal clear to him, and they don’t get it. For the most part, we don’t either. . . . Whatever form the Kingdom of God will take, its pattern of authority should not resemble that in the governments of this world; in fact, it must operate in a fashion contradictory to the worldly model. . . . In [numerous texts] Jesus uses strong language and examples to communicate how his disciples are to operate, among themselves and in their dealings with others. Certainly, it seems, they are to be leaders, but their leadership is not to be authoritarian, autocratic, or despotic. They are to function as servants, and this surely means openness to those they serve, especially since these others are also recipients of the Holy Spirit.


A Ritual of Letting Go

Reader 1: Friends, we would all agree that our Church is in crisis. I doubt we’d be here this morning if we thought otherwise.

We’ve just heard the wise words of Robert McClory reminding us that our Church leaders should function as servants, and that such servant-leadership means that they are called to be open to those they serve, especially since “these others are also recipients of the Holy Spirit.”

Reader 2: Sadly, those of us who planned this prayer breakfast do not observe this openness on the part of our leadership. We do not sense that this leadership recognizes, let alone celebrates, others as recipients of the Holy Spirit.

Rather, we look around our Church and see the experiences and insights of many people being downplayed or even dismissed outright by many within the hierarchy of the Church. Indeed, members of the hierarchy seem more invested in protecting and maintaining a feudal system of monarchical power than seeking out and listening to the voice of the Spirit throughout the people of God.

Reader 1: We are all too familiar with the painful consequences of this failure to discern the voice of the Spirit. Voices are not heard and respected. The Spirit is denied. Our Church stagnates. People are alienated and oppressed. Feelings of hurt, anger, frustration, and hopelessness multiply within people’s lives and within communities.

Reader 2: Elizabeth Stuart writes: “We are living through a very painful period.” Yet she is adamant that the Church “always moves forward through crisis,” and that “crises are times when cracks appear in the Church through which the Holy Spirit pours.” These are words of hope.

Reader 1: All of us present today long for the Church to move through and beyond this current crisis.

Reader 2: We want to respond to this crisis in hopeful and proactive ways.

Reader 1: We long to be vessels of God’s transforming love in our Church and the world.

Reader 2: Yet often the feelings of hurt and anger about how we and others have been treated prevent us from being hopeful and proactive.

Reader 1: And so we invite you to take time with those at your table to acknowledge those feelings of hurt and anger, grief and loss, and to name the issues and actions on the part of the hierarchy that have produced these feelings within us and within our communities.



Reader 2: Friends, we’ve named the actions of some within our Church that have caused feelings of grief, loss, anger, and frustration. We now invite you to let such feelings go . . . or at least to put them aside for the duration of our time together this morning. We do this because we know that such letting go is necessary if we want to move forward as the agents of transformation that we long to be.

Reader 1: As a simple yet powerfully symbolic gesture of our commitment to let go of all that holds us back from being the change we long to see in the Church, we invite one person from your table to come forward with the small unlit candle at your table, to light it from the large candle at the foot of the stage, and to return with it to your table group.

Reader 2: And as people come forward, Kathleen [Olson] will lead us in singing “Flower of Compassion.”

Flower of Compassion
(Words and music by Brett Haas)

Flower of compassion, bloom within, bloom within.
Flower of compassion, bloom within each heart.

Blossom of love, you draw us close, draw us close.
Blossom of love, you draw us close together.

Delicate fragrance, drift beyond, drift beyond.
Delicate fragrance, drift beyond all borders.

Above: The organizers of the Second Annual Prayer Breakfast for Hope and Justice with Bob McClory and his wife Margaret. Back row (from left): Paul Fleege, Rick Notch, Michael Bayly, Bob McClory, Mary Beckfeld, and Paula Ruddy. Front row (from left): David McCaffrey, Mary Lynn Murphy, and Margaret McClory.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Here Comes Everybody! (featuring an April 2008 interview with Robert McClory).
• Ghostwriting for the Pope (a commentary by Robert McClory).
• Robert McClory’s “Prophetic Work” (featuring two reviews of As It Was In the Beginning: The Coming Democratization of the Catholic Church).

Recommended Off-site Links:
The Dutch Plan: Will Innovation Save the Church? - Robert McClory (National Catholic Reporter, December 14, 2007).
Dissent: An Honored Part of the Church's Vocation - Leonard Swidler.

Images: Michael J. Bayly.