More Progressive Catholic Perspectives on Ireland's Historic Gay Marriage Vote

Above: Joe Caslin's pro-marriage equality mural on
Caherkinmonwee Castle in County Galway. (Photo: David Sexton)

NOTE: This is a follow-up to the previous Wild Reed post, Progressive Thoughts on Recent Developments in Ireland, El Salvador and the U.S. For my own thoughts on the overwhelming Catholic support for marriage equality in Ireland, click here.

After the Irish vote on gay marriage, which saw 62% vote in favour of a change to the constitution to allow gay people to marry, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said the church needed to take “a reality check” and “not move into denial.” . . . [T]ruth and right are more likely to be found in common consensus than in autocratic dictatorship. But for a Catholic leader, even the mention of a phrase like “reality check” is groundbreaking.

This, after all, is an organisation that has chosen to ignore reality, even when it is up close, personal and staring it in the face. I’m thinking of issues such as contraception, which it continues to pronounce against, while the vast majority of Catholics are more than happy to use it; and child abuse, which it refused to acknowledge, even as the files on its criminal priests stacked up and grew dusty on the desks of cathedral offices the world over.

. . . What led to Martin’s radical rethink was simple: the fear that he will soon be leading a church without any followers. For thousands of years, the men at the top of the Catholic church thought power flowed just one way: now, at long last, they’re realising it’s not that simple. Because a church with no worshippers wouldn’t be a church at all, and the men who run it would have no power any more.

They’d better do something quick. I have an idea: they could start emulating the life of a preacher who lived in poverty 2,000 years ago. Whatever made me think of that? As reality checks go, that one really would take some beating.

– Joanna Moorhead
Excerpted from "The Irish Catholic Church is Changing Its Tune
– Soon the Vatican Will Too"
The Guardian
May 27, 2015

Some of the most effective social media around the ["Yes" vote's overwhelming success] featured families of LGBTIQ Catholics. Their simple statements of love for their children and their hope that they might marry and form good Irish families were persuasive. It was all rather traditional in the end—everyone is entitled to love. While the institutional church lost miserably, the enduring message of post-Vatican II Catholicism—that all persons are equal with corresponding rights and responsibilities—had a good day. The fact that this message was distilled from the rubble of sexual abuse, clergy cover-up, heterosexism, disdain for women, and the rest of the clerically-constructed system is a miracle in itself. The pulpits are still in the hands of the priests, though, and they do not show many signs of sharing.

. . . Irish clergy used to make a living telling other people how to live their lives no matter how flawed their own were. A generation ago people in Ireland went to daily mass after work and heard the messages repeated ad nauseam. Irish Catholics proved they know how to separate the wheat from the chaff, the important values like love and justice from warped attempts to dictate outmoded morality.

It is for lay Catholics around the world to be clear, as Irish voters were, that we can and will make our own decisions.

Much remains to be done to dismantle deeply entrenched structures. But the Irish referendum means that a top-down, clergy-heavy model of church heard its death knell in Dublin. As it reverberates around the world the Gospel message might get a little more airtime. As the Irish say, it will make a glass eye cry—with joy.

– Mary E. Hunt
Excerpted from "Did Ireland Just Bury the Catholic Church?"
Religion Dispatches
May 26, 2015

[I]n falling out of line with the Vatican, Irish people are actually falling in line with their Catholic counterparts in other Western countries, including the United States.

They aren’t sloughing off their Catholicism — not exactly, not entirely. An overwhelming majority of them still identify as Catholic. But they’re incorporating religion into their lives in a manner less rooted in Rome.

We journalists too often use "the Catholic Church" as a synonym for the pope, the cardinals and teachings that have the Vatican’s stamp of approval. But in Europe and the Americas in particular, the church is much more fluid than that. It harbors spiritually inclined people paying primary obeisance to their own consciences, their own senses of social justice. That impulse and tradition are as Catholic as any others.

– Frank Bruni
Excerpted from "On Same-Sex Marriage, Catholics Are Leading the Way"
The New York Times
May 27, 2015

Ireland, the source of Catholic missionaries throughout the word for hundreds of years, has suffered a drastic exodus of people from its church-going ranks since the sexual abuse scandal broke into public view during the past decade. The majority of Irish men and women may still call themselves Catholic, but they no longer accept the hierarchy as believable, particularly in matters of sexual morality. Thus, the stunning rejection of the church’s view of gay marriage as an invalid relationship in the eyes of God and the church. What the church teaches about sexuality is rejected almost as a duty. The church has no credibility in matters of sexuality in Ireland.

The Irish have been brought up by the Catholic Church to view marriage as a sacrament and that’s the reason they can shift sideways to see a same-sex relationship in the same God-blessed way. Because marriage is a beautiful commitment of love, taught to them by the church, the Irish can make the connection to two people of the same sex loving each other with a similar commitment. It is the love commitment they value, and have come to see in their friends and family members who are gay and lesbian as well. Love conquers. The Irish are lovers. It doesn’t matter who the partners are — “I promise to love you all the days of my life, so help me God.”

– Paul F. Morrissey
Excerpted from "Ireland is For Gay marriage Because It is Catholic "
USA Today via Religion News Service
May 27, 2015

I have three suggestions [for why Catholics are so supportive of marriage equality]. . . . First, perhaps the fact that Catholics have a celibate clergy that includes a large number of gay men means that the fear bred from ignorance is less likely to be operative than in other traditions. Second, could it be that a natural law approach to ethical questions, that is, that reason should guide our thinking and our conclusions, is bred into the Catholic bone? Third, might Catholics be so imbued with the sacramental principle that they recognize any expression of genuine love to be evidence of God’s presence in the world, and hence to be cherished rather than condemned? In Ireland or here or elsewhere, the actual principal difference between leaders and people, on same-sex issues or birth control or religious freedom or perhaps many other issues, is that the leadership thinks deductively while the rank and file think inductively. Experience trumps ideology, which—strangely enough—is Pope Francis’s consistent message!

– Paul Lakeland
Excerpted from "Gay-Friendly Catholics"
Commonweal
May 27, 2015

It is time for church teaching to reflect what social science tells us and what Catholic families have long understood: Catholicism must cast off a theology of sexuality based on a mechanical understanding of natural law that focuses on individual acts, and embrace a theology of sexuality that has grown out of lived experience and is based on relationships and intentionality.

. . . On the issue of church teaching on sexuality, the time for dialogue is likely passed. Action is needed. The strongest message out of the Irish referendum is that on its teaching about sexuality, the church today faces a watershed moment, just as it did in 1968 with Humanae Vitae.

– The Editorial Staff
Excerpted from "Ireland Vote for Same-Sex Marriage
a Watershed Moment for Church Teaching"
National Catholic Reporter
May 29, 2015

What a gift the Catholic hierarchy has been handed by the Irish with their overwhelming vote to legalize same sex marriages. Coming just months before the Synod on the Family set for next October in Rome, the vote by this Catholic nation is nothing less than a church plebiscite – a vote of the Catholic sensus fidelium for all to see that official Catholic teaching on human sexuality is wrong, hurtful, and even, at times, immoral.

. . . The Irish vote is a wake up call. If the Synod on the Family ends with only a “pastoral” conclusion, a call that we all need “to open our selves and parishes" to essentially wayward, sinners, that we need to love these “sinners” even as they continue to engage in “intrinsically disordered acts,” it will have failed all of us and the synod, despite the best intentions, will almost certainly end up further eroding - if this is possible - the Catholic church as a moral force on matters of family, human relationship and sexual theology.

It is time we remember: Our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters are people, just like the rest of us. Some more generous; others less so. Some more enlightened; others less so. Some more sinful; others less so. Just people, saints and sinners and in-between.

Can the Catholic hierarchy finally admit it has Catholic sexual teachings wrong? Admittedly, it’s a tall order. I admire Pope Francis enormously. However, just withholding judgment without addressing and amending past teaching errors will not be enough. Nowhere near enough.

Bishops, you have been served.

– Thomas C. Fox
Excerpted from "Bishops, Your Church Has Spoken"
National Catholic Reporter
May 29, 2015

I was quite uncomfortable with [Cardinal Pietro Parolin's statement that the same-sex marriage referendum was not only "a defeat for Christian principles, but also a defeat for humanity."] I mean there has been lots of disasters in the world but I certainly would not support the belief that the referendum was among them. To suggest that over a million people who went to the polls and voted yes were so false in their judgment that it was a disaster for humanity is not something I can accept. It is an inappropriate statement . . . [and] not one I think that represents the mind of Pope Francis despite it coming from a very senior Church figure. It is a very heavy judgement on the whole issue.

– Willie Walsh, Bishop Emeritus of Killaloe
Excerpted from "Bishop Willie Walsh: "I Don't Accept the Referendum
as a Defeat for Humanity""
The Independent
May 27, 2015

Cardinal Parolin’s comments [re. the same-sex marriage referendum in Ireland being not only "a defeat for Christian principles, but also a defeat for humanity"] demonstrate exactly the kind of inflexibility and arrogance that have driven so many people from the Church. It is very hurtful and insulting to supporters of marriage equality to be spoken of as having unchristian, even inhuman, values. More than 80% of the Irish people still identify themselves as Catholic, and most of the Irish people who voted to support same-sex couples and families did so because they recognize the love and commitment these couples share. They were moved by the stories of people they know, and by the relationships they have witnessed first-hand. Their vote was no ‘defeat for humanity,’ but a victory for the fundamental Catholic values of love, inclusion, and the inherent dignity of all people.

This issue and these disagreements will be front and center during the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia in September and the second phase of the Synod on the Family in Rome in October. How our Church leaders respond will impact the lives of people all over the world. We urge the Synod participants to invite in same-sex couples; parents of lesbian and gay people who are married, or who struggle because they can’t be married; and gay couples raising children so they can hear directly from us. We urge respectful listening, a willingness to ask questions, and openness to the Spirit. Like Archbishop Martin of Dublin, we are calling upon our Church leaders to recognize that they must address the new realities in the world with sensitivity, sincerity, and honesty.

– Marianne Duddy-Burke
Excerpted from "Conflicting Comments from Vatican Secretary of State
and Irish Archbishop on Same-Sex Marriage Vote Illustrate Divide
Among Catholic Leadership"
DignityUSA.org
May 27, 2015

[Pope] Francis clearly agrees with [Cardinal] Parolin's "defeat for humanity" opinion on the outcome of Ireland's same-sex marriage vote. Remember that, back in January, the pope famously likened "gender theory" (which provides the intellectual basis for same-sex marriage and a host of other progressive ideas related to sexuality) to "ideological colonization" and even "Hitler Youth." Why? Because, Francis explained, gender theory "does not recognize the order of creation."

But rather than respond directly to Ireland himself, this time, Pope Francis is putting the harsher, condemnatory language in the mouth of his secretary of state while he does the work of evangelizing the youth about the truth and beauty of the church's teachings on marriage.

Parolin is taking on the old-fashioned role of Vatican scold while Francis takes the new, more merciful, catechetical approach. But ultimately, both men agree with the institutional church's opposition to marriage equality. Both men believe same-sex relationships violate the traditional understanding of natural law and gender complimentary.

Most importantly, both men believe these church teachings on marriage are correct and should not change. The problem, they believe, is that the institutional church hasn't done a good job of communicating the church's truths effectively and pastorally. As Parolin himself said in his statement on Ireland, the church "must strengthen its commitment to evangelization." Francis attempted to do just that in his audience the following day.

If the vote in Ireland proves anything, it is that both Francis, the good cop, and Parolin, the bad cop, will fail in their efforts. Ireland demonstrates that the pope's understanding of acting mercifully toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people will not be adequate to bring them into the pews.

– Jamie Manson
Excerpted from "Are Francis and Parolin
Playing Good Cop-Bad Cop on Same-Sex Marriage?"
National Catholic Reporter
May 28, 2015

Above: Joe Caslin's pro-marriage equality mural
on South George Street, Dublin. (Photo: David Sexton)

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Progressive Thoughts on Recent Developments in Ireland, El Salvador and the U.S.
• Singing Their Own Song in Ireland
• Quote of the Day – May 21, 2015

Related Off-site Links:
European Bishops Strategize for Positive LGBT Outcome at October’s Synod – Bob Shine (Bondings 2.0, May 27, 2015).
Confidential Meeting Seeks to Sway Synod to Accept Same-Sex Unions – Edward Pentin (National Catholic Register, May 26, 2015).
European Bishops Discuss Improved LGBT and Divorced Ministry – Terence Weldon (Queering the Church, May 25, 2015).
Vatican’s "Defeat for Humanity" Statement Shows Church Officials Have Not Learned from the Irish Example – Francis DeBernardo (Bondings 2.0, May 28, 2015).
How the Irish Became the World’s Leading Gay Activists – Margaret Spillane (The Nation, June 15, 2015)

Paul Lakeland in Minneapolis

On the evening of Friday, April 30, 2014, close to one hundred people gathered at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Minneapolis to hear theologian and author Paul Lakeland speak on the topic of "Pope Francis and the Liberation of the Laity."

Lakeland is the director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield University. He is active in the American Academy of Religion, the Catholic Theological Society of America, and the Workgroup for Constructive Christian Theology. His two most recent writings, both winners of Catholic Press Association awards, are The Liberation of the Laity: In Search of an Accountable Church and Catholicism at the Crossroads: How the Laity Can Save the Church.

In this latter book, Lakeland defines laypeople as "baptized Christians called to ministry." Yet while he acknowledges that such a definition accurately depicts the place of laypeople in the church, it does not distinguish them from the clergy. This is because the definition offered by Lakeland harkens back to the era of the early church when a distinction between "laity" and "clergy" did not exist; everyone was simply part of the laos or "people" of God.


An "unequal society"

Unfortunately, however, a distinction did in time develop between "laity" and "clergy," and Lakeland explores and discusses the reasons for this in Catholicism at the Crossroads. He notes that this split began in the fifth century and reached its nadir fifteen hundred years later with Pope Pius X's Vehementer Nos, and in particular paragraph 8 of this encyclical:

It follows that the Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of person, the Pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful. So distinct are these categories that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end of the society and directing all its members towards that end; the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors.

One result of Pius X's "unequal society" model of church was that any critical or creative thinking in the church of the early twentieth century was viewed with suspicion and routinely suppressed. But as is often the case, Lakeland notes, there was a "backlash against these crimes against the intellect, and theology actually emerged stronger than it had been for many centuries."


Vatican II

One of the theologians at the forefront of this "backlash" was the French Dominican Yves Congar who, writes Lakeland, "gave particular attention to restoring the idea that there is a theological value to the lay state." It was under Congar's influence that those who attended the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) not only addressed the role of the laity but came to the same conclusion Congar had reached in 1953, this being that the particularly distinguishing mark of the layperson is his or her "secularity."

Lakeland began his April 30 talk by identifying this and a number of other distinguishing marks or characteristics of the laity that were articulated by the Second Vatican Council. Emphasizing the grounding of these characteristics in Vatican II is important, insists Lakeland, as a primary task of the contemporary church is to remain faithful to the spirit of the council.

The first characteristic, as mentioned above, is that the laity is secular, meaning that as members of the laity we live out our apostolic mission in the everyday. Because we are called to love the world for God, we must be fully part of the world.

Second, the laity is apostolic; as members of the laity our calling is to the apostolic mission of the church. Lakeland reminds us that an apostle is a missionary disciple called to be "poised toward the periphery," someone who is thus "off-center." He also reminds us that it is our baptism that makes us apostles.

Third, the laity is prophetic; we are called to speak truth to power, to speak out for the good of the church.

Fourth, given all of the above, the laity should be and needs to be consulted by the ordained leadership of the church.

This last characteristic lead to a discussion by Lakeland on the purpose and meaning of the ordained ministry. First and foremost, the ordained ministry is a support ministry; it supports the laity in the apostolic mission of the church. Accordingly, the ordained ministry should be directed more to the people of God than to the inner workings of the institutional church, which, Pope Francis has reminded us in both word and action, should be a facilitator of faith, not an inspector of faith.

The laity does not assist the ordained ministry in spreading the gospel, says Lakeland. Rather, the ordained ministry assists and supports the laity. Accordingly, the priest must be understood relative to the lay person as it is the members of the laity who carry the sacramental love of God into the world.


Pope Francis

Lakeland noted that in a number of important ways the model of church that Pope Francis promotes and embodies is one that reflects Vatican II's understanding of the laity. Francis has also critiqued ecclessial narcissism or clericalism. In addition, the Pope embodies the servant model of leadership and has said that members of the institutional church, as true shepherds, should not be isolated from the laity, the flock, but should instead be with them to the extent that they "smell like the sheep." One obvious implication of this, says Lakeland, is that members of the church's ordained ministry should be less administrative and more pastoral.

Lakeland also stressed that the ordained ministers' close association with the laity is essential if they are to truly assist and support the laity in its apostolic mission of both bringing God's love to the world and bringing the world's concerns and problems to the transforming love of God. The shepherds of the church need to be respectful of and attuned to the spirit-inspired intuition – and thus practical wisdom – of the laity. For as Pope Francis reminds us, "Sometimes the flock has the scent of the way."

Related to this important point is the reality that there is no exact equivalency between the teaching of the church and the voice of the Spirit. Lakeland reminds us that at times in the past the ordained leaders of the church have been wrong while the rank and file have been where the Spirit is either leading or has taken up residence (with the most famous example of this being the Arian controversies of the fourth century). If this has happened in the past, says Lakeland, than it could not only happen again but could well be happening right now.

For many Catholics, including within the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, it seems clear that the Spirit has led us to the realization that there is simply no way to justify clerical culture as an essential characteristic of ordained ministry. For as Lakeland writes in Catholicism at the Crossroads:

Clerical culture does not say anything about what it means to be a priest. It is simply a description of a particular and entirely accidental subculture of Catholic life, which for historical reasons has grown up around bishops and priests. As a description it is a neutral term. But it has a dark side, usually called "clericalism," which is what has happened to clerical culture when it came to be seen as essential to the condition of priesthood.

. . . If clerical culture is to bow to normal standards of life for the discernment of a calling, the more fundamental problem with an emphasis on ontological change in the ordination of a priest has to do with in which it ties the very being of the person to what is, when all is said and done, a role in the church at the service of the people of God – not a medal or a transfer into another or higher order of being.

A catalyst for change

Lakeland believes that in our role as the laity we need to see ourselves as a catalyst for change. He commended the work being undertaken in our local church around organizing for lay participation in the selection of our next bishop. This organizing is being coordinated by the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR) and has much to do with establishing accountability within the church, something Lakeland insists is crucial. "If the church is truly to practice accountability in the fullest sense of the word," he says, "then both its polity and its culture must manifest total mutuality." Lakeland acknowledges that there is a hierarchical structure in the church. Yet this hierarchy should indicate levels of responsibility to serve and not interpreted in terms of power, still less levels of holiness attached to strata of power.

The problem of lack of accountability in the church stems in large part from the lack of appropriate two-way openness necessary for the health of any institution. Here again, lay Catholics within our local church are stepping up and addressing an identified problem or disconnect. CCCR and the Council of the Baptized are leading a grassroots effort to organize a lay network throughout our parishes and deaneries. This initiative invites Catholics to join in building a strong lay voice on matters of concern in the Archdiocese, including the aforementioned issue of bishop selection.

All who heard Paul Lakeland speak on April 30 appreciated his wealth of knowledge, his insights, and his candor. Yet those at the forefront of local efforts to organize and facilitate lay participation in our church were particularly heartened and inspired by what Lakeland had to share.

Above: From left: Art Stoeberl (Call to Action MN & CCCR), Mary Beth Stein (CCCR and Council of the Baptized), Paul Lakeland, Rev. Michael Tegeder (St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church), and Bob Christensen (CCCR) – April 30, 2014.

For more of Paul Lakeland at The Wild Reed, see:
Paul Lakeland on How the Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal Reveals a Crisis of Leadership
Paul Lakeland on the Church as a Model of Divine Mutuality

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Of Mustard Seeds and Walled Gardens
Dispatches from the Periphery
To Whom the Future of the Catholic Church Belongs
Beyond Papalism
Catholicism's Future is "Up to the Laity"
The Vision of Vatican II
Reading the Documents of Vatican II (Part 1)
Reading the Documents of Vatican II (Part 2)
Reading the Documents of Vatican II (Part 3)

Related Off-site Links:
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission – Paul Lakeland (The Progressive Catholic Voice, September 19, 2010).
Challenges to Us As Catholics – A 10-part series featuring excerpts from Paul Lakeland's book Church: Living Communion (The Progressive Catholic Voice, September 2010).
Synod of the Baptized Uncovers Deep Well of Hope – Paula Ruddy (The Progressive Catholic Voice, September 20, 2010).
Behind the Scenes at Vatican II: Yves Congar Captures a Historic Moment – Kathy Schiffer (Seasons of Grace via Patheos, November 5, 2012).

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

Paul Lakeland on the Church as a Model of Divine Mutuality

I mentioned last week that theologian Paul Lakeland will be speaking tomorrow evening (Wednesday, April 30) at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Minneapolis (details here). I'm very much looking forward to this event, as are many other local Catholics.

In light of Paul's talk tomorrow night, I thought I'd share another excerpt from his award-winning 2009 book Catholicism at the Crossroads: How the Laity Can Save the Church. This excerpt focuses on the disconnect between the church's hierarchical structure and the reality that, as Christians, we are devoted to a Trinitarian God, that is, a God that is a communion of equal persons.

You may be wondering why I've chosen an image of dancers to accompany this post. Well, Lakeland, drawing on the language of the ancient Cappadocian fathers, suggests the image of dancers (and also of trapeze artists) as a helpful image for the dynamic, mutual relationship of the trinity and a model of church that's more in keeping with this relationship than is the hierarchical stratification we currently have.

One of the great ironies of the Catholic Church is that while it is devoted to a Trinitarian God it has resolutely adopted a hierarchical structure. One would think, on the face of it, that the ecclesial structure that God would want for the church would be one that took the hint from God's nature about the superiority of trinitarianism [i.e., a relationship of mutuality] over hierarchical stratification. Just as the call to Christian discipleship should suggest to us a life lived according to the values and choices of Jesus of Nazareth, so you would think the church of God would reflect what seems to be the divine preference for relationship. What would happen if we modeled the church on the life of God instead of on the structures of the Roman Empire or the Ford Motor Company? One would think that it would be a good thing. It would certainly seem that the efforts of Vatican II and beyond to build a communion ecclesiology represented steps in this direction, yet so much in Catholicism remains undeniably hierarchical. In fact it may not be too outrageous a statement to say that wherever hierarchy has been represented in the church's history as the fundamental structure of the church, the church has been envisaged in a manner antithetical to that community of persons which God's inner nature so clearly tells us is the preferred form of social life. When Vatican II made the hierarchical structure of the church secondary to understanding the church as the People of God, it took a giant step toward growing closer to God. Hierarchy does not reflect the divine life; mutuality does.

We Christians believe in a Trinitarian God, that is, that God is a communion of persons. Of course, there is not a lot we can say about what the inner life of God is like, but there are a few illuminating things we can say if indeed it is true, as we believe, that the one God is a communion of three persons. First and most important, while there is differentiation among the three persons of the Godhead, there are no ranks. All are equally and fully God, despite the distinctions that are traditionally asserted in the terminology of Father, Son, and Spirit or somewhat differently claimed in the language of Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Each is God; each is the whole God; each is equally God. Any image that the human imagination can come up with to represent the Trinity must, if it is to be acceptable, respect this equality. Second, the radical equality of the three persons of the Trinity does not extinguish their difference. Third, the difference that each expresses is something we encounter, as human beings, only in their relationship to our salvation, in what theologians call the "economic" Trinity. What these differences mean within the divine life is not for us to know, though Christians throughout history, especially the great mystics, have tried to come up with images that express something of the mystery. In any case, we surely know that the persons of the Trinity are differentiated in terms of what we might call divine mission or ministry. In plain language, they have different responsibilities in the plan of salvation. This is where we encounter the persons of the Trinity, in their relation to our salvation, in their different missions. But it is part of Christian faith that the way we encounter God is consistent with the inner life of God; if only because the self-revelation of God cannot be frudulent or misleading. We can then confidently assert that the equality with which Father, Son, and Spirit pursue their different missions cannot stand in contradiction to their life, which must itself be one of mutuality and interrelationship of equality within difference.

The inner life of the Trinity is the preeminent model for us of that higher accountability [which is] the real issue for the church [today]. The three persons of the Trinity do not have to explain their actions to one another. Their lower accountability is subsumed in the higher accountability of a relationship of total openness and perfect equality. The language of the ancient Cappadocian fathers of the church, as they searched for an image to envision the Trinity, is particularly helpful here. To them, the three persons are engaged in perichoresis, that is, in a divinely and intricately interwoven dance formation. This is no heavenly hip-hop, rave, or stomp. They are intertwined with one another. Picture talented quick-step dancers or aficionados of the tango. There is no way that they can successfully accomplish their mission without complete openness to and trust in one another. They will fall over and lose their dignity. Or think of the accountability of trapeze artists for one another. One slip and they might die. Success requires the trust that comes with total accountability. If this is the model for divine mutuality and Trinitarian structure, then perhaps the church should move more in that same direction. It is surely a salutary warning against any attempt to idealize church structures that, in searching for human metaphors to help us think about God, the hierarchical structure of the church does not immediately spring to mind.

– Paul Lakeland
Catholicism at the Crossroads: How the Laity Can Save the Church
Pp. 51-53

Related Off-site Links:
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission – Paul Lakeland (The Progressive Catholic Voice, September 19, 2010).
Challenges to Us As Catholics – A 10-part series featuring excerpts from Paul Lakeland's book Church: Living Communion (The Progressive Catholic Voice, September 2010).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Paul Lakeland on How the Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal Reveals a Crisis of Leadership
Believing in the Trinity
In the Garden of Spirituality – Elizabeth Johnson
A Trinity Sunday Message from the Equally Blessed Coalition
The Call to Be Dialogical Catholics
Lover of Us All

Image: Helen May Banks (2011).

Paul Lakeland on How the Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal Reveals a Crisis of Leadership

Paul Lakeland, author and director of Fairfield University's Center for Catholic Studies, will be visiting Minnesota at the end of the month to speak on "Pope Francis and the Liberation of the Laity."

I first met Paul at the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform's 2010 Synod of the Baptized, "Claiming Our Place at the Table." I was an organizer of this event while Paul was its keynote speaker. His talk at Synod 2010 was entitled "The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission." It was an excellent presentation, the transcript of which can be found here.

Now Paul is returning to Minnesota where he will be speaking on what Pope Francis has to say about the role of the laity in the world and the responsibilities the baptismal priesthood places on each of us who are baptized in Christ’s name. On Wednesday, April 30, Paul will be speaking at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Minneapolis (details here). Then on Friday, May 1, Paul will be at Christ Church Newman Center in St Cloud (details here). Both speaking engagements are free and open to the public.

Along with serving as the director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield University, Paul Lakeland is active in the American Academy of Religion, the Catholic Theological Society of America, and the Workgroup on Constructive Christian Theology. His two most recent books, both winners of Catholic Press Association awards, are The Liberation of the Laity: In Search of an Accountable Church and Catholicism at the Crossroads: How the Laity Can Save the Church.

Following, with added links, is an excerpt from chapter five of Lakeland's Catholicism at the Crossroads. This excerpt deals with understanding the Catholic church's sex abuse scandal, and I believe it's timely to share given all that is happening in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis in relation to this scandal.

Let us be clear. Sex abuse in the church is a scandal, but it is not a crisis. There is no sex-abuse crisis in the church. What the church suffers from is a crisis issuing from the real problem of clerical sexual abuse of minors. Sex abuse itself is a heinous crime and a scandal in the church of the highest magnitude. But it isn't in itself a crisis.

. . . The scandal of sexual abuse revealed a crisis of episcopal leadership. Poor leadership in dealing with the scandal has led to the kind of public scrutiny to which bishops are not accustomed. The precise nature of the crisis is not something that all will agree upon, but its elements are evident. To name them is not to accuse every American bishop of all elements, but to point to systemic problems to which all American bishops must attend. Among the charges that have been made over the past few years are the following: a faulty understanding of what it is to be a leader on the part of those who select bishops, and a consequent lack of good leaders within the episcopacy; bad judgment about how the good name of the church can best be assured; secrecy; isolation, ambition and careerism; poor theology; too centralized an understanding of the church, with a concomitant over-deference to the Roman Curia; excessive bureaucratization of the role of bishop. Some or all of these may be accurate, but not all qualify as systemic issues. Inappropriate ambition, for example, is something that systemic problems can foster, but in itself it is a personal rather than a structural sin.

Beyond the crisis in the episcopate there is a deeper ecclesiological crisis that is at the same time a cultural crisis. Church historians know that structures of government in the church have changed over time and have indeed always been changing, but, what is more important, that these changes have paralleled changes in secular understandings of government. They have usually needed to stress this in the teeth of those who see the first and last word on ecclesiology to be that "the church is not a democracy."

At a major conference just a few years ago, the opening keynote address was given by a distinguished bishop who tried to make the case that Jesus pretty much envisaged the church as it exists today. Either the bishop believed this, which is sheer historical ignorance, or he thought we needed to hear this, which is insulting. And in an action that revealed so much, he then promptly left the meeting and did not hear the impressive array of distinguished Catholic historians, who deal in historical fact, and, entirely unintentionally, made his presentation seem bogus and frankly ridiculous. If only he had stayed to hear Francine Cardman challenge the proponents of what she called "default ecclesiology" to recognize that the church is not monolithic but "a dynamic, evolving, diverse movement," or Brian Tierney explain that "within the Catholic church there have always been these three, Peter, the apostles, and the people of God, but the constitutional relationships between them have been defined differently in different ages," or Marcia Colish point out that while secular governments have continued to change through-out history, becoming constitutional monarchies and then representative democracies with no kings or queens, "the church remained trapped in the absolute monarchy time wrap of the early modern period," or Frank Oakley offering up the conciliarist movement as a phenomenon that has much still to teach us, though it has been consigned to the garbage heap of church history by what Oakley call "an ultramontane politics of oblivion," or John Beal's eloquent call for a canon law that restores the balance between communio and juridic ecclesiologies. Now is surely the time to answer the question with which Oakley ended his paper: "with what confidence, after all, can we Catholics hope to erect a future capable of enduring if, for ideological reasons, we persist in trying to do so on the foundation of a past that never truly was?"

The weight of the historical evidence would strongly suggest that it is quite appropriate to ask how democratic sensibilities might have something important to offer to the church today, and that it is entirely probable that the church will evolve, willy-nilly, to incorporate some genuine role for the voice of the whole community into its structures of governance. It has been so in the church's past, most recently in the American church of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and it could be so again. The lessons of history also teach us, however, that it is exceedingly rare that an elite in any society will freely give up its own hold on power. And this brings us to what may be a yet deeper level of the crisis, namely, an ecclesiology and a polity that gives no formal role to the voice of laypeople in the church to which they belong, buttressed by the sorry history of theological reflection upon the laity. Here is where the discussion of clericalism belongs. Clericalism can be damaging and can be petty. It can be ridiculous and it can be scandalous. It can be sinister as it is in John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions and as comic as it is in J.F. Powers' incomparable stories of the lives of clergy. But in the end it always points to the real issue that for at least three quarters of the church's life the best theological definition the church could offer of the layperson was "not clergy."

– Paul Lakeland
Catholicism at the Crossroads: How the Laity Can Save the Church
Pp. 79-83

Related Off-site Links:
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission – Paul Lakeland (The Progressive Catholic Voice, September 19, 2010).
Challenges to Us As Catholics – A 10-part series featuring excerpts from Paul Lakeland's book Church: Living Communion (The Progressive Catholic Voice, September 2010).
Synod of the Baptized Uncovers Deep Well of Hope – Paula Ruddy (The Progressive Catholic Voice, September 20, 2010).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
It's Time for Archbishop Nienstedt to Resign
Time for a Fresh Start in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis
In the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, the Unravelment Continues
Colleen Kochivar-Baker on the First Anniversary of the Papacy of Francis
Quote of the Day – September 12, 2011
Now We Know
St. Francis of Assisi: The Antithesis of Clericalism and Monarchism
SNAP Responds to Cardinal Bertone
A Clerical Leadership Unresponsive to Voices of Reason