Lent: A Summons to Live Anew

Lent is about becoming, doing and changing
whatever it is that is blocking
the fullness of life in us right now.
Lent is a summons to live anew.

– Joan Chittister

For previous Wild Reed posts on the Lenten journey, see:
• Lent: A Season Set Apart
• "Here I Am!" – The Lenten Response
• Lent: A Time to Fast and Feast
• Now Is the Acceptable Time
• Lent with Henri
• Waking Dagobert
• Ash Wednesday Reflections
• The Ashes of Our Martyrs

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The Path Ahead
• The Challenge to Become Ourselves
• Daniel Helminiak on the Lesson of Jesus: "We Will Be True to God by Being True to Our Deepest and Best Selves"
• Love is My Guide
• Sons of the Church: The Witnessing of Gay Catholic Men – A Discussion Guide
• Quote of the Day – November 16, 2011
• Trusting God's Generous Invitation
• The Inherent Sensuality of Roman Catholicism
• Soul Deep

Related Off-site Links:
Allowing Lent to Disrupt Our Lives and Renew the World – Sarah Gregory (Bondings 2.0, March 5, 2017).
Ash Wednesday Jottings – J.A. Dick (Another Voice, March 1, 2017).
From Ashes, We Will Rise – Ish Ruiz (Bondings 2.0, March 1, 2017).
Ash Wednesday: Queer Martyrs Executed for Homosexuality Rise from the Ashes – Kittredge Cherry (Q Spirit, March 1, 2017).

Image: Nebojsa Zdravkovic.

Easter: The Celebration of the Sacrament of Transformation

'The tomb was empty,' the Scriptures said later, metaphorically perhaps but pointedly, nevertheless. People had known His presence again, not the same as before the crucifixion, true, but real, nevertheless. Transformed. Somehow or other Jesus had defeated death, had snatched new life from its cavernous throat. The implications were overwhelming. Death, even once transcended, could never be permanent again. In fact, life itself could never be the same again. Jesus risen from the dead made life the stuff of eternity. Jesus transformed leads us to look beyond the obvious, to allow for the presence of God in alien places in unanticipated ways. Resurrection begs the scrutiny of the obvious, the celebration of the sacrament of transformation.

– Joan Chittister, OSB

For previous Easter reflections, see:
A Girl Named Sara: A Person of the Resurrection
The Triumph of Love: An Easter Reflection
Jesus: The Revelation of Oneness
The Resurrected Jesus
Jesus: The Breakthrough in the History of Humanity
Resurrection: Beyond Words, Dogmas, and All Possible Theological Formulations
The Passion of Christ (Part 11) – Jesus Appears to Mary
The Passion of Christ (Part 12) – Jesus Appears to His Friends

Related Off-site Link:
In Easter Message, Pope Remembers Areas of War, Conflict Around World – Joshua J. McElwee (National Catholic Reporter, April 20, 2014).

Advent: The Season of Blessed Paradox

Yesterday marked the beginning of Advent, that season of the liturgical year full of paradox.

Why do I say this? Well, think about it: Advent is all about waiting while journeying; being centered while engaged in preparations; and retreating inwards in anticipation of revolutionary transformation!

Now that Thanksgiving has past it's also that time of year for putting up Christmas decorations, which is exactly what my friend and housemate Tim and I did on Saturday afternoon when we set up and decorated our Christmas tree!

I therefore share in this post today some of the Advent thoughts I heard articulated yesterday at the Spirit of St. Stephen's Catholic Community . . . and some images of the Christmas tree that Tim and I decorated.

I start with the following reflection by Sr. Joan Chittister.

God is not in the whirlwind, not in blustering and show, Scripture teaches us. God is in the breeze, in the very atmosphere around us, in the little things that shape our lives.

God is in the contradictions that assail us, in the circumstances that challenge us . . . in the life goals that demonstrate our real aspirations, in the burdens that wear us down, in the actions that give witness to the values in our hearts.

God is in the stuff of life . . . God is where we are, including in the very weaknesses that vie for our souls.

God is not a mystery to be sought in strange places and arcane ways.

God is a mystery to be discovered within us and around us.

And savored.

Also shared yesterday at the Spirit of St. Stephen's was a wonderfully insightful and inspiring homily by one of our community members. Here's part of what was shared:

There are multiple references to the image of a thief breaking into a home throughout Scripture. It must have been a big problem and a bigger worry. Just the thought of it can bring an apprehensive shiver—that feeling of invasion, vulnerability and eroded trust. We who are blessed with wealth know that things can be replaced but feeling safe is harder to come by.

So, is God a thief, wanting to break in and startle us? Does God want us to be afraid? Of course not. God wants us to pay attention, to prepare, to be ready and awake.

Is God a thief? Of course. God is the thief who wants to break into our barricaded hearts and souls to shine the light of day on the treasures there. God is the thief who wants to steal our economy of war and death and dazzle us with the light of peace with justice. God is the thief who can wait no longer for an invitation but must be an intimate part of our lives—right now.

Joan Chittister says God is in the contradictions, the challenges, the burdens and the actions that give witness to the values in our heart. Simply put: God is where we are.

. . . Megan McKenna calls Advent the “guard dog” rousing us from our sound sleep. There is an intruder in our midst—wake up!

And do what?—Grab a weapon to defend ourselves, our loved ones? Run and hide? Melt into a puddle of fear?

No, the revolutionary call is to fling open all of the doors and the windows, light the lanterns and roll out the red carpet in welcome.

The intruder is the One we have been waiting for.

We would have missed it without the barking of Advent and our prophets and those who beg us to raise our voices with them for living wages and dignified working conditions, for just immigration processes, for housing that feels like home.

Come . . . let us walk in the light of hope and promise. Let us open the home of our heart willingly, putting thieves out of business. Let us be the evidence of peace for pilgrims climbing the holy mountain. Let us be always ready—more than ready, let us be longing—to approach the burning bush of God’s inviting presence.

Better still, let us light the fire of God’s glory and wisdom so that others are drawn to the Holy One’s warm love through our prayers and actions, through our lives of peace with justice.

Welcome to the revolution, fellow pilgrims! Blessed Advent to you.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Something to Cherish
Rejoice? (Advent 2012)
Advent 2011: Thoughts and Reflections (Part 1)
Advent 2011: Thoughts and Reflections (Part 2)
Advent 2011: Thoughts and Reflections (Part 3)
Advent 2011: Thoughts and Reflections (Part 4)
Thoughts on Waiting . . . and a Resolution
Advent: Renewing Our Connection with the Sacred
The Centered Life as an Advent Life
My Advent Prayer for the Church
Advent Thoughts
Letting God Loose
Mystics Full of God
Thoughts on Transformation (Part 1)
Thoughts on Transformation (Part 2)
Thoughts on Transformation (Part 3)
Christmas Baubles

Quote of the Day

Holy Week, that stretch of time between Christ's entry into Jerusalem for the feast of Passover to the laying in the tomb a week later, is a panoply of the sufferings and the heartaches that life brings to the process of honing souls. Christ suffered the disillusionment that comes with superficial success, a sense of failure, betrayal by people he trusted, misunderstanding by authority, fear, humiliation, abandonment, loneliness, despair, and death. And he shows all of us how to do the same. To say "I believe . . . Christ suffered" is to say, "I believe that suffering can be transcended." It is to throw in our lot with hope.

– Joan Chittister, OSB
(from her book In Search of Belief)

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
When Expulsion is the Cost of Discipleship
The Passion: "A Sacred Path of Liberation"
Why Jesus is My Man

Related Off-site Links:
New Pope Opens Holy Week at Vatican on Palm Sunday – Frances D'Emilio (Associated Press via Yahoo! News, March 24, 2013).
Pope Francis Changes Holy Thursday Plans to Celebrate Mass in Prison – Carol Glatz (Catholic News Service via U.S. Catholic, March 21, 2013).

"An Icon For Our Century"

The reflection I share this evening is written by Joan Chittister, OSB, and marks the occasion of today's feast of St. Mary Magdalene. This beautiful and powerful reflection was shared this morning at Spirit of St. Stephen's Catholic Community, and can be found online on the website of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference's National Office for the Participation of Women.

______________________

An Icon For Our Century - Mary Magdalene

By Joan Chittister, OSB

It is Mary Magdalene, the evangelist John details, to whom Jesus first appears after the resurrection. It is Mary Magdalene who is instructed to proclaim the Easter message to the others. It is Mary Magdalene whom Jesus commissions to “tell Peter and the others that I have gone before them into Galilee.”

And, then, the scripture says pathetically, “But Peter and John and the others did not believe her and they went to the tomb to see for themselves.” It is two thousand years later and little or nothing has changed. The voice of women proclaiming the presence of Christ goes largely unconfirmed. The call of women to minister goes largely unnoted. The commission of women to the church goes largely disdained.

Mary Magdalene is, no doubt about it, an important icon for the twenty-first century.

She calls women to listen to the call of the Christ over the call of the church.

She calls men to listen for the call of the Christ in the messages of women.

She calls women to courage and men to humility.

She calls all of us to faith and fortitude, to unity and universalism, to a Christianity that rises above sexism, a religion that transcends the idolatry of maleness, and a commitment to the things of God that surmounts every obstacle and surpasses every system.

Mary Magdalene is a shining light of hope, a disciple of Christ, a model of the wholeness of life, in a world whose name is despair and in a church whose vision is yet, still, even now, partial.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Mary of Magdala
Apostle to the Apostles
Thoughts on The Da Vinci Code
Thoughts on Ordination, Intellectual Dishonesty, and the Holy Spirit of which the Prophet Joel Speaks
Tell Them, Mary

Related Off-site Links:
What Would Mary Magdalene Do? – Phyllis Zagano (National Catholic Reporter, July 18, 2012).
Controversy Energizes FutureChurch's Annual Magdala Celebration – Kate Oatis (National Catholic Reporter, July 23, 2012).
What Mary Magdalene and the Samaritan Teach the Church – Jamie L. Manson (National Catholic Reporter, July 24, 2012).
A Homily for the Feast of Mary Magdalene – Diana Culbertson, OP (The Progressive Catholic Voice, July 22, 2011).
The Woman from Magdala – James Martin, S.J. (America, July 22, 2009).

Image: "Apostle to the Apostles" by Janet McKenzie. Writes Janet McKenzie of her painting: "The Gospel of John tells us that the Risen Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene and told her 'Go to my brothers and tell them I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God' (John 20:17). She is seen here as in medieval paintings of her as preacher with the characteristic gesture of forefinger raised toward the heavens, proclaiming the Resurrection to Peter and 'the one whom Jesus loved.' The Beloved Disciple, who is sometimes understood as a symbol for the Johannine community, is listening to her but Peter is not."

A Prayer for Pentecost

By Joan Chittister, OSB


The Holy Spirit embodies the life force of the universe, the power of God, the animating energy present in all things and captured by none. On this great feast of Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit of God, I invite you to pray with me:

May the Gifts of the Holy Spirit
bring fire to the earth
so that the presence of God
may be seen
in a new light,
in new places,
in new ways.

May our own hearts
burst into flame
so that no obstacle,
no matter how great,
ever obstructs the message
of the God within each of us.

May we come to trust
the Word of God in our heart,
to speak it with courage,
to follow it faithfully
and to fan it to flame in others.

May the Jesus
who filled women
with his Holy Spirit
fill the world and the church
with new respect
for women's power and presence.

Give me, Great God,
a sense of the Breath of Spirit
within me as I . . .
(State the intention
in your own life at this time
for which you are praying.)

Amen.

Prayer of the Week

Prayer in Honor of Those Whom Jesus Loved


Jesus who loved the Samaritan woman,
outcast proclaimer of your name,
let us love and support all those who proclaim
your name to the gay and lesbian community.

Jesus who loved the lepers
whom others called unclean,
let us see the glory of creation everywhere,
in everyone.

Jesus who loved the one condemned with him
and promised him heaven by virtue of his faith,
give us the faith to broaden our vision
of the reign of God.

Jesus who loved the hemorrhaging woman,
long ignored and thought to be intrinsically disordered,
give us hearts large enough to embrace
those whom the world calls bent.

Jesus who loved the tax collector the community feared,
enable us to put down our fear of those
who are different from ourselves.

Jesus who loved the Roman soldier,
foreigner and oppressor,
help us to love those who make exiles of
our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

Jesus who loves us in all our humanness, all our glories,
enable us to love those
whose glories we have failed to see.

You who called women disciples in a male world,
who confronted leaders of the synagogue
with their sins of injustice,
who sent out your disciples to the whole world,
give us the courage to stand with
our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters,
their families and those who minister to them.
Give us the grace to confront their rejection,
to ease their loneliness,
to calm their fears and
to belie their sense of abandonment.

Give us all the grace to own our sexual identity,
whatever its orientation,
as another manifestation of your goodness.
Give us the vision to recognize and reject
the homophobia around us and in our own hearts, as well.

May we and the church of Jesus open
our hearts and homes and sanctuaries
to the gay and lesbian community,
to the glory of God they bring in new voice,
with different face.

Let us bless the God of differences.
Amen.

Benedictine Sisters of Erie, PA
Text by Joan D. Chittister, OSB

This prayer was written in response to the May 1999 decision by the Vatican to silence Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick in their ministry to gays and lesbians, whose sexual orientation the Vatican declares "intrinsically disordered."

Lent: "A Summons to Live Anew"

Writes Sister Joan Chittister:

Lent is a call to weep for what we could have been and are not. Lent is the grace to grieve for what we should have done and did not. Lent is the opportunity to change what we ought to change but have not. Lent is not about penance. Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now.

Lent is a summons to live anew.

The first challenge of Lent is to open ourselves to life. When we "rend our hearts" we break them open to things we are refusing for some warped reason to even consider. We have refused for years, perhaps, to even think about renewing old commitments that we've allowed to go to dust – spending time with the children, visiting our parents, exercising, taking time to read good books. We've closed our minds, maybe, to the thought of reconciling with old friends whom we have hurt. We've refused to put the effort into reviving old spiritual practices like visits to church, meditation in the morning, the memorization of the psalms, that we allowed to die in our youth but failed to substitute for as we aged. We've failed to repent old abrasions, quick words, harsh judgments made in haste and expiated never. We have closed the doors of our hearts, as time went by, to so many of the things we need to live full and holy lives.

Lent is the time to let life in again, to rebuild the worlds we've allowed to go sterile, to "fast and weep and mourn" for the goods we've foregone. If our own lives are not to die from lack of nourishment, we must sacrifice the pride or the sloth or the listlessness that blocks us from beginning again.

– Joan Chittister, OSB
"Ash Wednesday and Lent: Beginning Again Always"
The Huffington Post
March 8, 2011

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Our Memory of Eden
Now Is the Acceptable Time
Ash Wednesday Reflections
The Lenten Journey
"Here I Am" – The Lenten Response

Recommended Off-site Links:
This Lent – Looking Inward, Looking Outward – Jim Wallis (The Huffington Post, February 17, 2011).
My Lent: Ashes, Addiction and the Reality of Hell – Debra Dean Murphy (Religion Dispatches, March 7, 2011).
This Lent, Practice a Spirituality of Resistance – John Dear, SJ (National Catholic Reporter, March 8, 2011).
The Trouble (and Blessing) of Lent – David Lose (The Huffington Post, March 7, 2011).
Lest We Forget: The Ashes of Our Martyrs – Terence Weldon (Queering the Church, March 8, 2011).

Joan Chittister on Why Women Need to Thank Mary Daly

.

‘God’s plan’ is often a front for men’s plans
and a cover for inadequacy, ignorance, and evil.

– Mary Daly

Edward Schillebeeckx is not the only influential theologian to have recently died. Mary Daly, described by America magazine as a “pioneering, brilliant, and controversial feminist theologian,” passed away on January 3. She was 81.

The New York Times notes that Daly (pictured at right) was “among the first American women to train as a Roman Catholic theologian,” and that she “challenged orthodoxies from the start.”

“She came to wide attention in 1968,” reports the Times, “with the publication of The Church and the Second Sex (Harper & Row), in which she argued that the Catholic Church had systematically oppressed women for centuries. Her next book, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (Beacon, 1973), explored misogyny in religion in general.”

Later books included Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Theology, Amazon Grace: Re-Calling the Courage to Sin Big, Quintessence: Realizing the Archaic Future, and Outercource: The Be-Dazzling Voyage.

Religious-studies scholar Demaris Wehr observes that Daly’s “powerful mind, her creative genius and her uncanny ability to put her finger on deep emotional, psychological and spiritual problems are ignored at our peril.”

Following are Joan Chittister’s thoughts on the life and legacy of Mary Daly.

_______________________________

For Mary Daly: In Memory of
Courage Walking

By Joan Chittister

National Catholic Reporter
January 13, 2010

I did not know Mary Daly personally. I never met her professionally. I never heard even one of her public speeches. My concern for women’s issues did not come from Daly. I got that from my mother.

My sense of Daly’s impact on history comes from every discussion of women’s issues in which I ever participated. The impact Daly’s ideas and courage was having on other women was palpable. In those living situations, then, I learned a lot from Daly. Most of all, I learned how to look newly at things I’d looked at for so long that I was no longer really seeing any of them.

Recently I heard a commentator remark on her role in the development of thought in our time that “when the theological history of the period is written, Mary Daly will, at most, be only a small footnote in the study.” That depends, I would argue, on who is doing the history. Women, I think, will have a great deal more to say about Daly than any amount of footnotes can possibly hold.

Remote as my own associations had been, for instance, when the word of her death came I realized instantly that women in general, whether they knew it or not, had a great deal for which to thank her.

Women need to thank Daly for raising two of the most important theological questions of our time: one, whether the question of a male God was consistent with the teaching that God was pure spirit, and two, whether a church that is more patriarchal system than authentic church could possibly survive in its present form. These two questions have yet to be resolved and are yet rankling both thinkers and institutions.

Women need to thank Daly for bearing the rejection that too often comes to those who say a new insight first and say it consistently and say it in the face of the very system in which they themselves have been raised.

For example, in later years, Daly refused to accept men in some of her classes, forcing men to experience the exclusion that women had endured for centuries. As a result, she lost her tenured position at a Catholic college for allegedly failing to offer equal service to all students, both men and women. But at the same time, no one else in Catholic colleges — or elsewhere — lost their jobs for excluding women from access to theology degrees or various medical specialties, among others, on the grounds that women, as women, were unfit for such programs.

Nor did anyone — now that men had finally experienced what it felt like to be made invisible in the public arena — officially apologize to women for having kept them out of schools, offices, work, leadership positions, discussions and decision-making in both church and state for two millennia. However much theology claimed we were all equal.

Women need to thank Daly for modeling the adulthood, the psychological maturity, the strength it takes to accept the social isolation and loneliness that comes with refusing to agree that just because we have never questioned a thing that it is, therefore, unquestionable. Thanks to her relentless questioning of women’s social circumstances and theological exclusions everywhere, the woman’s question became a major and profound theological question. It is thanks to Daly and the myriad of women theologians after her that “Because we say so” is no longer either a logical or an acceptable explanation for the exclusion of women anywhere.

Women need to thank Daly for exposing to us a whole new way of being alive. She freshened thought about the role and place of women by using language to show us what we could not see. She dug into history to trace the original meanings of words like hag and witch — once terms of reverence for the spiritual qualities and feminine wisdom of women, but now used to reduce them to the level of the malevolent.

She forced us to think newly, to think creatively. She called on women to Re-member themselves, to put themselves together differently than they had been taught was right for a woman. She talked about Gyn/nocide to make us understand that the infamous centuries of witch burnings were really the genocide of women practiced long before this century's Holocaust and under the guise of holiness.

Indeed, Daly’s work is an icon to women. She was a groundbreaking thinker, a threat to any patriarchal institution, a creator of an entire new way of seeing life, of being alive, of celebrating life. She touched a culture deeply. Indeed, we owe her thanks.

From where I stand, a person’s influence is measured, not so much by virtue of their effect on the institutions that bred them, but by their influence on those who never knew them at all. It is the women who never knew Daly but now know the things she knew that are the real evidence of her legacy, her impact, her meaning not only to this generation but to generations to come. As in “all generations shall call her blessed.”


Recommended Off-site Links:
Mary Daly, a Leader in Feminist Theology, Dies at 81 – Margalit Fox (New York Times, January 6, 2010).
In Memoriam: Mary Daly – Francis X. Clooney (America, January 14, 2010).
Mary Daly Quotes

The Challenge of Peace

Nineteen years ago, on the 6th anniversary of the publication of the US Roman Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response, Pax Christi USA compiled and published a book entitled, Dear Bishops: Open Letters on the Morality of Nuclear Deterrence Addressed to the US Catholic Bishops.

With today being the 63rd anniversary of the world’s first nuclear attack (on the Japanese city of Hiroshima), it seems fitting to share one of these letters. This particular letter was written by Joan Chittister, OSB.

___________________________________

Dear Bishops,

One of my most hopeful moments of church came when the bishops of the United States were willing to wrestle with the questions of nuclear morality in a nuclear world. One of my most disappointing moments, on the other hand, came when you failed to say that deterrence that is aimed at the destruction of the globe is morally unacceptable, that a defense system that has already begun to erode the social fiber of our country with its lustful, gluttonous, profligate use of resources could possible be a sinless activity.

How can we possibly say that what is immoral to use is moral to design and develop and deploy? How can we possibly say that to abort a fetus is morally wrong but that the weapons intended only to abort the whole human race is not? How can we possibly make ourselves and our generation more worthy of the ultimate act of retaliation than at any other possible moment in history?

Isn’t the arrogance of those postures alone a sin against the Holy Spirit?

How is it that we can ask people to be prepared to die in nuclear warfare in the name of a “defense” that is destructive but refuse to ask them to be prepared to die in passive resistance in the name of the gospel? All that would happen to us if we faced a nuclear attack without weapons is that we would die, but isn’t that the very posture that we clearly espouse even now in the name of “defense”? And isn’t that precisely the kind of deterrence that we expect from the non-nuclear world even now?

The point is that we say nuclear weapons alone can be a deterrence to nuclear war. But surely there is a rational and Christian deterrence as well that would be equally effective.

It was a Christian state that designed the Holocaust, and Christian countries that waged the Inquisition, and Christian states that burned witches and napalmed Vietnamese villages and used the atomic bomb [on civilian populations], not once but twice, for experimental purposes. Now, with all the planet and universal human morality and civilization itself at stake, in an age when errors cannot be forgiven, we are begging you, lead this Christian state to more than that.

The Rule of Benedict requires humility as the cornerstone of spirituality built in the patriarchal culture of imperial Rome. We need that same humility now from the church. Call the country to negotiations, to human respect, to faith and to humility in our dealing with both the little and the great ones of the world.

There is an ancient proverb that teaches, “Wherever there is excess in anything, something is lacking.” Finish the fine work you have begun and give the nation what it lacks, to its peril, in its excessive militarism – the challenge of peace.

– Joan Chittister, OSB

Recommended Off-site Links:
Hiroshima Marks Bomb Anniversary with Hopes for US Change – Agence France Presse, August 6, 2008.
The Lies of Hiroshima Live On, Props in the War Crimes of the 20th Century – John Pilger (The Guardian, August 6, 2008).

Joan Chittister in Australia

Brian Coyne of Catholica Australia has written a compelling report on Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister’s recent public address in Sydney, Australia.

In her talk, delivered as the keynote address of the 150th Anniversary Celebrations in Australia of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict, Chittister (pictured above) called on Christian people to rediscover the spirituality of St. Benedict – a spirituality that played a crucial role, she insists, in saving European civilization at the beginning of the sixth century.

Following is an excerpt from Brian Coyne’s Catholica Australia news report on Joan Chittister’s keynote address in Sydney:

The popularity and appeal of Sister Chittister was testified to by the fact that the 900 tickets on sale for the lecture were sold out seven weeks in advance . . . Organizers of the lecture informed the audience last night that the demand for tickets was so high that the lecture hall at Mount St. Benedict’s College in Pennant Hills could have been filled many times over. The audience was also informed that large groups of people traveled from all states of Australia to attend this lecture.

The thrust of Sr. Joan’s lecture was to link the major ills of Western society — its arrogance; its exploitation of the third world; its exploitation of our environment and our planet’s finite renewable resources; the social disintegration of communities; the relentless measurement of everything in terms of monetary profit and the discounting of the importance of understanding the value in leisure and sabbath; the ungodly emphasis on the production of armaments at the expense of other forms of human productive effort; a culture that encourages violence and exploitation rather than the pursuit of peace through what we screen on our media — to a contrasting set of values that sit at the heart of Benedictine spirituality. These values, Chittister argued, are the values that St. Benedict preserved and nurtured and which are credited with being the tools that this Patron Saint of Europe used to save Western civilization when it was in imminent danger of being snuffed out at the beginning of the sixth century.

She argues the world needs to urgently re-discover the wisdom of Benedictine spirituality if we are to successfully address the many challenges that face our present-day world.

Certainly to this reporter, this lecture was a tour de force — probably the single most powerful address I have heard delivered by any spiritual leader or politician in this country in half a century.

Sister Joan Chittister is such an unlikely figure to project the power and passion that she does. She could be the favorite and gentlest of aunts to any of us. Yet the way she modulates her voice; her capacity for “the memorable phrase” that condenses complex concepts in science, sociology, economics, politics or theology down to a thimble-sized idea that packs more power than that contained in a nuclear power plant; her powerful use of gesture; all these things she uses with consummate skill that it is little wonder she has become one of the most powerful leaders in modern Catholicism and is euphemistically referred to as “Pope Joan” by conservatives and liberals alike. . . .

To read Brian Coyne’s news report in its entirety, click here.


Image: Catholica Australia.

Recommended Off-site Links:
“Chittister Call for Renewed ‘Humility’ to Save Western Culture” - Catholic News.
From Where I Stand - Joan Chittister’s National Catholic Reporter blogsite.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Joan Chittister on the Restoration of the Tridentine Latin Rite
In the Garden of Spirituality - Joan Chittister
Reflections on Associate/Consociate Programs by Joan Chittister

Joan Chittister on the Restoration of the Tridentine Latin Rite

In her latest National Catholic Reporter column, Joan Chittister, OSB reflects on Pope Benedict XVI’s recent Motu Proprio allowing for the wider use of the Tridentine Mass (also known as the Latin Mass) within the Catholic Church.

As could be expected, Chittister’s commentary is informed and insightful. It also gets to the heart of the matter: “In their fundamental messages,” she writes, “[the Tridentine and the Vatican II liturgies] present us with more than two different styles of music or two different languages or two different sets of liturgical norms. They present us with two different churches.”

Following are excerpts from Joan Chittister’s commentary, “Coming Soon to a Church Near You.”

_______________________________

Why the concerns? If some people prefer a Latin mass to an English mass, why not have it?

The answer depends on what you think the Mass has to do with articulating the essence of the Christian faith.

The Latin Mass, for instance, in which the priest celebrates the Eucharist with his back to the people, in a foreign language – much of it said silently or at best whispered – makes the congregation, the laity, observers of the rite rather than participants in it.

The celebrant becomes the focal point of the process, the special human being, the one for whom God is a kind of private preserve.


The symbology of a lone celebrant, removed from and independent of the congregation, is clear: ordinary people have no access to God. They are entirely dependent on a special caste of males to contact God for them. They are “not worthy,” to receive the host, or as the liturgy says now, even to have Jesus “come under my roof.”

The Eucharist in such a setting is certainly not a celebration of the entire community. It is instead a priestly act, a private devotion of both priest and people, which requires for its integrity three “principal parts” alone – the offertory, the consecration and the communion. The Liturgy of the Word – the instruction in what it means to live a Gospel life – is, in the Tridentine Rite, at best, a minor element.

In the Latin mass, the sense of mystery – of mystique – the incantation of “heavenly” rather than “vulgar” language in both prayer and music, underscores a theology of transcendence. It lifts a person out of the humdrum, the dusty, the noisy, the crowded chaos of normal life to some other world. It reminds us of the world to come – beautiful, mystifying, hierarchical, perfumed – and makes this one distant. It takes us beyond the present, enables us, if only for a while, to “slip the surly bonds of earth” for a world more mystical than mundane.

It privatizes the spiritual life. The Tridentine Mass is a God-and-I liturgy.

The Vatican II liturgy, on the other hand, steeps a person in community, in social concern, in the hard, cold, clear reality of the present. The people and priest pray the Mass together, in common language, with a common theme. They interact with one another. They sing “a new church into being,” non-sexist, inclusive, centered together in the Jesus who walked the dusty roads of Galilee curing the sick, raising the dead, talking to women and inviting the Christian community to do the same.


The Vatican II liturgy grapples with life from the point of view of the distance between life as we know it and life as the gospel defines it for us. It plunges itself into the sanctifying challenges of dailiness.

The Vatican II liturgy carries within it a theology of transformation. It does not seek to create on earth a bit of heaven; it does set out to remind us all of the heaven we seek. It does not attempt to transcend the present. It does seek to transform it. It creates community out of isolates in an isolating society.

There is a power and a beauty in both liturgical traditions, of course. No doubt they both need a bit of the other. Eucharist after all is meant to be both transcendent and transformative. But make no mistake: In their fundamental messages, they present us with more than two different styles of music or two different languages or two different sets of liturgical norms. They present us with two different churches.

The choice between these two different liturgies bring the church to a new crossroads, one more open, more ecumenical, more communal, more earthbound than the other. The question is which one of them is more likely to create the world Jesus models and of which we dream.

To read Joan Chittister’s “Coming Soon to a Church Near You” in its entirety, click here.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The New Motu Proprio: “Nothing But Headaches for Bishops, Priests, and Laity”?
In the Garden of Spirituality: Joan Chittister
Reflections on Consociate/Associate Programs by Joan Chittister
“Receive What You Are, the Body of Christ”: Reflections on the Eucharist
Trusting God’s Generous Invitation

Stamping Out the Light

Joan Chittister, OSB, has written an insightful commentary on the recent “removal” of Bishop Thomas Gumbleton as auxiliary bishop of Detroit and pastor of St. Leo Parish.


As well as being an internationally-renowned advocate for justice and peace, Gumbleton (pictured above) has also long been a supporter and advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons and their families. He notes that the experience of having a gay brother played a foundational role in his call to speak out on the need for change in church teaching regarding homosexuality.

Not surprisingly, when CPCSM approached Bishop Gumbleton to write the foreward to the organization’s soon-to-be released book, Creating Safe Environments for LGBT Students: A Catholic Schools Perpective, he didn’t hesitate.

Following are excerpts from Chittister’s piece, one entitled “Gumbleton: Nothing But the Truth”.

The resignation/removal/whatever of [75-year-old] Bishop Gumbleton brings to the foreground some issues of church that no amount of canon law can ever dispel.

. . .The Urban Parish Coalition, a group under the umbrella of the Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance, placed ads in the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News that read “Bishop Thomas Gumbleton . . . Life-long Detroiter, Priest, Pastor, Bishop, Elder, Global Peacemaker, Visionary, Prophet, Spiritual Leader and Friend . . . We honor, respect and love you. . . . We are opposed to the decision to remove you as Pastor of St. Leo the Great Parish, Detroit.”

How many of those kinds of ads, ads praising a bishop, have we seen lately? It’s a far cry from the ads run in the Boston Globe, for instance, calling for the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law. You’d think a church would be giddy with glee to see such a thing happen.

So, the question is not whether or not what has been done has been done legally. Of course it has. Rome has the power, we are reminded often, to do whatever it wants to do to the clerical personnel of the church. The question is only, “Should they?”

And that’s where the scriptures provide an eerie challenge to the news story of the day. “Let your light shine,” it reads. But how shall we recognize what is the light? The criteria is plain: (Matthew 5:1-10) The light is in those who are poor in spirit and gentle, who mourn over the suffering of the world and thirst for justice; who are merciful and pure of heart; who are peacemakers and persecuted for the cause of right.

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, international peacemaker, advocate for the poor and oppressed, proponent of justice and truth-teller of the church – even about the church – people everywhere are saying, meets that criteria with startling clarity. That only makes the situation harder to understand, more difficult to grasp. It’s not so much either the resignation or the loss of the parish, however difficult that may be for everyone involved, that makes us wonder. After all, there’s nothing wrong with change.

But in this case, at this time in church history, at this moment when the church has lost such public credibility, when the church needs priests, when this is one of the most effective proclaimers of the Gospel in the public arena, when this is obviously one of the most loved church leaders we have, why lose this one to the public face of the church?

If you read the comments of parishioners and colleagues which this story has evoked, it is the rest of the scripture that troubles them, it seems. “No one,” the scripture goes on, “lights a lamp to put it under a barrel; they put it on the lamp-stand where it shines for everyone in the house.”

“No pastoral office whatsoever,” the letter from the Congregation for Bishops accepting his resignation says. No position in the diocese at all? No office of peace and justice? No position as special envoy to anyone for anything? Strange, isn’t it? But if this is the case, what happens to the light?

When Cardinal Bernard Law resigned for not telling the truth about pedophile priests, Rome gave him a promotion, a position on five of the curial congregations of the church, St. Mary Major, one of the four principal churches in Rome, and a luxurious Roman apartment. On the other hand, this bishop, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, told the truth, even about his having been abused by a priest himself when he was a young seminarian. Most of all, he took the position that it is the obligation of bishops to bring transparency, accountability and justice to the plight of sex abuse victims, whatever the financial ramifications for the church itself.

From where I stand, it looks to me as if we won’t know for sure what really happened here till we see what they give Tom Gumbleton. But in the meantime, the question looms large for all of us: What is going on in a church that stamps out the light?

To read Joan Chittister’s “Gumbleton: Nothing But the Truth” in its entirety, click here.


Note: The above photo of Bishop Gumbleton was taken on February 6, 2002, and is from my website Faces of Resistance. The caption that accompanies it reads as follows:

Over a thousand people filled the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis to hear Bishop Gumbleton talk on “Peace, Patriotism and Nonviolence: Another Way to Confront Terrorism.”

Bishop Gumbleton is a consistent and outspoken critic of war and the social inequality that fuels it: “If we don’t close the gap between the rich and the poor, if we don’t try to make our world really one with [the] human family sharing all the resources that God gave for all and not just a few, [then] violence will only become worse.

“The poor of the world are outraged [that] this gap is getting larger and larger, a gap filled with violence that is killing them and a violence that will ultimately destroy us. We must do something to bridge that gap, to bring us closer to the poor of the world, to understand why they are angry and why they hate us so much.”

Bishop Gumbleton is also critical of his own church’s so-called “just war theory”: “[We should] take that ‘just’ war theology, put it in a drawer, lock it, and never open it again.

“As war is rejected as the failure that it always is and the [non-violent] way of Jesus is embraced, we will begin to experience the reign of God in our land. Any nation that continues to build up arsenals of weapons of destruction is a nation approaching spiritual death.

“It’s up to us to make the choice to follow Jesus and to make his way of transforming the world a reality. It's an extraordinary challenge, but it's one that with God’s help each of us can accept and live out.”


Recommended Off-site Links:
• The Peace Pulpit: Homilies by Bishop Thomas Gumbleton
• Bishop Gumbleton: “For Gay Catholics, Conscience is the Key”

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Authentic Catholicism: The Antidote to Clericalism
• The Catholic Church and Gays: An Excellent Historical Overview

In the Garden of Spirituality: Joan Chittister

“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

- Pope John XXIII

Continuing with a series of reflections on spirituality, I offer today the thoughts of Benedictine sister Joan Chittister on the difference between religion and spirituality.

_________________________

It is God that religion must be about, not itself. When religion makes itself God, it ceases to be religion.

But when religion becomes the bridge that leads to God, it stretches us to live to the limits of human possibility. It requires us to be everything we can possibly be: kind, generous, honest, loving, compassionate, just. It defines the standards of the human condition. It sets the parameters within which we direct our institutions. It provides the basis for the ethics that guide our human relationships. It sets out to enable us to be fully human beings.

. . . Religion at its best gives substance to life. Most of all, it enables us to find meaning in life. It gives purpose to the human condition. It sets the human compass toward home. It requires us to be more than we ever thought we could become. It raises our sights beyond ourselves. It sets standards for us that are above the lowest level of the self.

. . . Religion, this great treasure-house of the faith, is the history of our family heroes. It presents us with an historic stream of witnesses from every people on earth who chose the holy, in the face of rejection and ridicule, whatever the cost to themselves. They dared courage, rather than cooperation with evil. They chose love, rather than law. They stood for justice, rather than self-interest. They sought the transcendent, rather than the immediate.

. . . At the same time, no doubt about it, religion is often religion’s own worst enemy. The tension between religion at its best and religion at its worst drives people from church to church, searching for authenticity. It drives them, as well, from the God of the institution to the God of the spirit within. When religion makes itself God, when religion gets between the soul and God, when religion demands what the spirit deplores – a division of peoples, diminishment of the self, and closed-mindedness – religion becomes the problem.

Then, spirituality is the only valid answer to the cry of the soul for the kind of life that makes life possible.

. . . There is a difference between religion and spirituality. There is a link between them, of course, but one is not meant to be the other.

Religion is about what we believe and why we believe it. It is about tradition, the institution, the system. Constructed over centuries . . . religion draws for the world a portrait of creation and relationships. It gives us creeds and dogmas and definitions of God. It gathers us in worship and reminds us of a world to come.

Spirituality is about the hunger in the human heart. It seeks not only a way to exist, but a reason to exist that is beyond the biological or the institutional or even the traditional. It lifts religion up from the level of the theoretical or the mechanical to the personal. It seeks to make real the things of the spirit. It transcends rules and rituals to a concentration on meaning. It pursues in depth the mystical dimension of life that religion purports to promote.

When we develop a spiritual life that is beyond some kind of simple, unthinking attachment to an inherited canon of behaviors, the soul goes beyond adherence to a system to the growth of the soul. Spirituality seeks to transcend the functionaries of religion to achieve an intimacy of its own with the mystery of the universe. Spirituality takes religion into its own hands.

. . . Ironically, we often forget the very attitude most essential to the spiritual search: God is greater than religion. God is the spirit within us that calls us to deep, conscious living of a spiritual life. God is the question that drives us beyond facile answers. God is the invisible vision that drives us to the immersion of the self in God.

Religion is the mooring of the soul. Spirituality is its lodestone. Religion is, at best, external. Spirituality is the internal distillation of this externalized witness to the divine. Spirituality is what galvanizes us to do more than go through the motions. It spurs us to fill up the lack we feel within us. It is the desire for wholeness that evades us. It is the burning need to find the more.

. . . Spirituality is a commitment to immersion in God, to the seeking that has no end. It is a consciousness of engrossment in God that defies convention, that lives beyond convention, that eclipses convention. Religion, the finger pointing at the moon, is not the moon. Simply keeping the rules, accepting the conventions, and loving the pomp that comes with religion will not get us there. For that we need a spirituality of search.

Excerpted from Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir by Joan Chittister (Sheed and Ward, Oxford, 2004).


Image: Gordon Bayly.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
In the Garden of Spirituality: Zainab Salbi
In the Garden of Spirituality: Rod Cameron
Afternoon
In the Garden of Spirituality: Daniel Helminiak
In the Garden of Spirituality: Paul Collins

This "Militant Secularist" Wants to Marry a Man

I’ve always thought that a sure sign that your message is actually getting out to folks is when people have a go at you for whatever it is you’re saying. Even a negative response, I’ve always maintained, is better than none.

Not that what follows can be really called a “response”. It’s a reaction, and like all reactionary endeavors it is uninformed and lacking in substance.

On the website of the ultra-conservative Catholic newspaper, The Wanderer, I recently discovered that I’ve been identified and denounced as a “militant secularist”.

Indeed, according to the The Wanderer (which, incidentally, I’ve always thought was a very cool name, though an odd one for a group that sees itself as the guardians of orthodoxy) I’m not only a “militant secularist” but also a “self-described specialist on the spirituality of coming out” – all of which is news to me.

Anyway, here’s that part of the article that highlights my “secularist” ministry work in the Twin Cities:


He Wants To Marry A Man

[. . .] And then there is the ongoing defiance of [Archbishop] Flynn and his directives at St. Joan of Arc’s Parish, which continues to promote the gay agenda, as exemplified by the Sunday, January 15 “homily” given by Michael Bayly marking Martin Luther King Day.

In October 2004, Archbishop Flynn sent two of his auxiliary bishops to St. Joan of Arc to inform the pastor, Fr. George Wertin, to pull information about the parish’s participation in the Twin Cities’ gay pride parade from its web site, and to stop the practice of lay preaching. Wertin subsequently resigned from the parish [actually, I think he simply retired], but Bayly, the director of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities, and a self-described specialist on the “spirituality of coming out,” continues to preach at the parish [“continues”? I’ve only spoken there once].

In his homily, Bayly denounced Church teaching on homosexuality, Archbishop Flynn’s support for the state’s proposed marriage amendment, and endorsed the adoption of children by gay couples.

“I hope one day to marry the man I love,” Bayly told the congregation, “and I have a dream of holding our marriage ceremony within the tidal zone of a beach, in that place ‘somewhere in between’ the land and the sea.

“Of course as you’re well aware, such a legal arrangement is currently impossible in Minnesota where neither sacramental nor civil marriages are recognized. And if our archbishop and others in the archdiocese have their way, not only would civil marriage be banned, but all legal equivalents, such as domestic partnerships and civil unions.

“I lament the recent actions taken by the archdiocese in support of the so-called Minnesota Marriage Amendment, an amendment that would enact such a sweeping ban on all types of same-gender unions. Such actions are a clear sign that the institutional Church has closed itself off from the Spirit of God present and active in the lives and relationships of gay and lesbian people.

“The actions of the archdiocese derive from a place of extremism, and we know this because there’s no acknowledgment of the need for dialogue on this issue, let alone the attempt to engage in such dialogue.

“When it comes to the issue of homosexuality, our Church hierarchy seems to be operating from that extreme position of religious imperialism: We have the answers, we have always had the answers, there can be no change, your experiences in the matter don’t count, you need to be quiet, you need to obey.

“It doesn’t sound like the voice and message of Jesus, does it?

“The total disregard of the findings of science is another way that we can tell that the recent actions of the archdiocese come from a place of extremism. The archdiocese justifies its active support of the ‘marriage amendment’ by stating that same-gender marriage would be harmful for children as children do best in two-parent families in which the ‘complementarity of the sexes’ is present. Yet to date, no relevant or credible evidence to support such a contention has been presented by the archdiocese. There are studies available that address this issue, yet none of their findings support the statements of the archdiocese.

“One example: In a 2002 article in Pediatrics [vol. 109, n. 2, February 2002, pp. 341-344], the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, it is reported that ‘a growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with one or two gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual. Children’s optimal development seems to be influenced more by the nature of the relationships and interactions within the family unit than by the particular structural form it takes.’

“Clearly, there’s a tension within our Church when it comes to talking about issues of human sexuality. And I think this is because we often have two different models of revelation in conflict whenever we engage in such talk.”

Wow! I think it’s great that The Wanderer quoted so much of my homily.

I also think it’s telling that no attempt was made whatsoever to refute anything I said. Not one iota!

Is it a case of “silence equals consent”? Probably not. But it is clear evidence that facts and reason are the enemies of reactionary ideology. It’s also evidence that ultra-conservatives seem only able to react, and rarely willing or able to meaningfully engage or respond to the valid questions and insights raised by myself and others within the Church.

And why are they so opposed to dialogue and engagement? Well, by definition, reactionaries are against change to the political, social, and/or religious status quo. And how does any change of this type take place? Often it’s through dialogue and engagement with those who have different opinions, experiences, and insights from our own.

Yet why is it that, for some, reaction is the only answer to prospects of growth and change? Benedictine sister, Joan Chittister, reflects on this question in her book Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir, and suggests that it belies “the kind of spirituality that gets out of touch with reality and so calls itself spiritual because of it”.

“We create a false dilemma”, says Chittister, “and call it holiness: the sacred versus the secular; God versus the world; spirituality versus worldliness. We look for Jesus in the temple, but never with the crowds.”

And why is this a problem? Because, says Chittister, we’re called to recognize that “life itself is of God, that the natural is sacred, and that an inward life and immersion in life are of a piece [. . .] To seek God means to find God around us. [. . .] To awaken, to grow, we must be fully engaged in the process of living, [and] it is the choices we make every day in our lives, either to grow or to stagnate, that determine the depth of our soul”.

I find it fascinating that when reading something like the previously quoted excerpt from The Wanderer, it’s as if no one outside the reactionary world exists as a subject with whom which engagement would be considered an option. Those of us with different experiences and perspectives, and who are open to God's presence in the world and thus the ongoing development of our faith tradition, are simply regarded as objects, and terms like “secularist” and “homosexual activist” are often code words employed to denote this objectification.

I also find it intriguing that the mere reiteration of, for instance, my words as one of these “secularists”, is often all that is needed to validate the ultra-conservative/reactionary perspective. Pesky details like my and others’ experience of God in our lives and relationships, or the findings of science, are simply ignored or discounted. And again, this stems from a fear of being invited, encouraged, or challenged to change.

I feel genuinely sorry for young people, growing into awareness that they are gay, who are members of families dominated by people who allow themselves to be defined by a reactionary ideology. And, believe it or not, I also feel sorry for these reactionary folks themselves, as there doesn’t seem to be much love or joy in their lives.

Which is more than I can say about their feelings for me. Take for instance the following comment left on the message board of haloscan.com.

“[W]e are also counting our ‘blessings’ that the instigator of [. . .] blasphemy in this area, Michael Bayly of CPCSM, is in Australia. He’s probably instigating the same garbage there. In my dark moments, I imagine him taking a flight out of Sydney and ending up on the Lost island, but I suppose that’s not very Christian of me.”

No argument from me on that one.


To read my January 15, 2006 homily, “Somewhere In Between”, in its entirety, click here.