Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast

Earlier this month I traveled from Port Macquarie to the Queensland capital of Brisbane (right) and the nearby Sunshine Coast, north of the city (above).

After celebrating the New Year at Telegraph Point Tavern – where my brother’s band provided the entertainment – I boarded a Greyhound bus at Port Macquarie in the early hours of January 1. The advantage of traveling at this time was that the bus was practically empty. Indeed, for a good part of the trip there was only myself, the driver, and one other passenger!



Our breakfast stop was at the New South Wales coastal town of Ballina, just south of the Queensland border. Ballina is famous for the Big Prawn (above), which is actually slated for demolition as the whole area is to be redeveloped. Some are upset by this, claiming that an “Aussie icon” will be lost.

Australia actually has a number of “big” things that serve as tourist attractions. For instance, there’s the Big Banana, the Big Pineapple, and the Big Merino! Go figure.



In Queensland I first stayed with my friend Raph on the campus of the University of the Sunshine Coast (left and below) at Sippy Downs.







Raph (pictured with me at right) is one of Mike and Bernadette McGowan’s seven children. I first got to know the McGowan family in Goulburn, N.S.W., where Mike was the principal of the primary school I taught at from 1988-1993. Before relocating to the U.S. in 1994, I taught two of the McGowan children – Jeremiah (in 1989) and Tess (in 1992). I’ve stayed friends with all the members of the family ever since our shared time in Goulburn, and always try to catch up with as many of them as I can on each visit back to Australia from the U.S. (See, for instance, the previous Wild Reed posts: Travelin’ South, Return to Wagga, Travelin’ North, Newtown, and Return to Ellenborough Falls.)

In 2004, Raph came and stayed with me in the Twin Cities for four months. It was a great time. We visited the North Shore; took a train trip to Washington, D.C; and flew out to San Francisco.



Above: Raph – January 2, 2010.

All of Raph’s family members – with the exception of Tess – were visiting him and his sister Mim at Sippy Downs when I was there. Raph’s siblings are Jeremiah, Tess, Iggy, Mim, Dominica, and Collette.



Above: Mike and Bernie with Jeremiah and his fiancee Kristy.





Left: Iggy, a champion kick boxer. And he looks it!








Above: Bernie with her daughter Mim.



Above: Dom and Kristy.




Right: Collette.










Above: Catching up with Dom and Collette – January 1, 2010.



Above: Bernie, Iggy, and Collette.



Above: Raph, Bernie, and Jeremiah – January 2, 2010.



Above: Watching the boys catch some waves.



Above: On my last night on the Sunshine Coast, Mike and Bernie and I were Raph’s guests at the restaurant he works at. His preparation of our meals was faultless!



After three days with the McGowans on the Sunshine Coast, I returned to Brisbane (above and left) to visit my college friend Mark, his wife Lana, and their son Matthew.

I studied with Mark in 1987 in Canberra. I last saw him and his family in 2006. (See the previous Wild Reed post, Travelin’ North.)




Above: Lana, Matthew, and Mark – January 5, 2010.




Right: Matthew demonstrating his soccer skills!









Above: Mark and Matthew playing the board game Articulate.



Above: At left with my friend Mark and his son Matthew – January 5, 2010.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Remnants of a Past Life (Part I)
Remnants of a Past Life (Part II)
Goulburn Revisited
Goulburn Reunion
Goulburn Landmarks
Travelin’ South (Part II)
Return to Wagga
Newtown

A Socialist Perspective on the "Democratic Debacle" in Massachusetts

I appreciate Barry Grey’s perspective on the recent Republican victory in Massachusetts that saw the election of Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate. It’s a perspective that Grey shares in a commentary on the World Socialist Website. Following are excerpts.

__________________________________

There was nothing surprising about the [Massachusetts] election outcome. It was the result of the popular realization that the American people were conned into voting Obama into the White House.

Obama’s repudiation of his campaign promises and his single-minded pursuit of right-wing policies has been even more cynical than that of his Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton. The Democrats believed that having elected a young African-American, they could use the new president’s persona to continue the policies of war and social reaction of the Bush administration.

Historically, US administrations that came to power on reform platforms and set out to expand their popular base by implementing social improvements won second terms by increased margins. Franklin D. Roosevelt won reelection in 1936 by a bigger margin than he obtained in 1932.

What did Obama and the Democrats have to offer Massachusetts voters? As is well known, Obama began his term by staffing his administration with Wall Street cronies of Clinton Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs executive Robert Rubin. He sought to rehabilitate the discredited Republican Party, and reappointed Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, to signal a continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He proceeded to vastly expand the taxpayer bailout of the banks, block legislation to tax bankers’ bonuses, impose wage cuts and mass layoffs on auto workers, escalate the war in Afghanistan and extend it into Pakistan. He defended the torturers and war criminals of the Bush administration and continued renditions, military tribunals, indefinite detention, domestic spying and the rest of the police-state measures of his predecessor.

Obama has done nothing to provide jobs or relief for millions of people who have lost their homes and their life savings. He has demonstrated callous indifference to the mounting distress of working people while deferring to every demand of Wall Street.

Massachusetts voters had no reason to turn out and vote for the Democrats. And they didn’t, in droves. Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley [pictured at left with President Obama] because the Democratic vote collapsed, and it fell most sharply in those parts of the state worst hit by unemployment.

Voter turnout plummeted among workers and youth, including African-Americans in Boston and in other cities.

As inevitable within the framework of a political system monopolized by two right-wing parties of big business, the opposition Republicans were the immediate beneficiaries. They had early on taken the measure of the new administration. They knew Obama was incapable of mobilizing a popular base of support, and they calculated that they could profit from the alienation of Democratic voters and the growth of popular disillusionment and anger.

The policies of Obama and the Democrats enabled the Republicans and the extreme right to pose as defenders of the common people. Brown [pictured at right] made his campaign a referendum on Obama’s health care plan. He pledged that if elected, becoming the 41st Republican in the Senate, he would supply the vote needed to successfully filibuster the Democratic bill and block its passage.

He tapped into a deep well of opposition to Obama’s health care scheme among workers, middle-class people and the elderly, who know that it means more cuts in benefits and higher out-of-pocket costs. Millions are already experiencing the drive to cut corporate and government costs in the guise of reforming the health care system. They are being denied access to tests and procedures by their health insurers.

Massachusetts voters also took the measure of Obama. They called him on his “change you can believe in” rhetoric, and said they didn’t believe a word of it.

The response of Obama and the Democrats to their debacle in Massachusetts is to lurch further to the right. They are using the loss of their “filibuster-proof” 60-seat super-majority in the Senate to justify a reworking of the health plan to make it even more lucrative for the insurance and health industries.

The filibuster issue is yet another political fraud. If the Democrats were proposing progressive and popular reform measures, any attempt by the Republicans to block them by invoking this anti-democratic parliamentary maneuver would be political suicide.

In practice, the Democrats never use the filibuster to stop right-wing legislation, while the Republicans manage to get their way with the barest of majorities. In 2000, having stolen the election, George Bush invoked a parliamentary gimmick to ban a filibuster and pass, with significant Democratic support, his multi-trillion-dollar tax cut for the rich.

. . . The Massachusetts election is indicative of a huge political crisis, not just of the Democrats, but of both parties and the political system as a whole. Underlying this crisis is the emergence of a new period of social protest and class struggle. . . .

To read Barry Grey’s commentary in its entirety, click here.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Obama a Socialist? Hardly
Obama, Ayers, the “S” Word, and the “Most Politically Backward Layers in America”
The Challenge for Progressives with an Obama Presidency
A Socialist Response to the Financial Crisis
Capitalism on Trial
Progressives and Obama (Part 1)
Progressives and Obama (Part 2)
Progressives and Obama (Part 3)
Progressives and Obama (Part 4)
Progressives and Obama (Part 5)
Progressives and Obama (Part 6)
Reality Check

Recommended Off-site Links:
Dear President Obama: Time to Stop Letting Corporations Write the Health Care Bill – Jane Hamsher (The Huffington Post, January 20, 2010).
Democrats Boosting Right-Wing Populism - Norman Solomon (CommonDreams.org, January 20, 2010).
What Massachusetts Got Right - Robert Scheer (TruthDig.com, January 20, 2010).
The Left Needs More Socialism – Ronald Aronson (The Nation, April 1, 2006).

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

"From Byzantine Daddy to Baroque Twink" – Charles Darwent on the Journey of St. Sebastian

Today is the feast day of St. Sebastian, a saint whose iconography has, for centuries, held a special appeal to many gay men.

In a 2008 article in The Independent, Charles Darwent attempts to ascertain why this is the case. In particular, he explores how a “a red-blooded captain in the Praetorian Guard, a centurion of middling years” became “a paragon of male beauty, his toned body, prettily stuck with arrows”? It’s a fascinating, if at times irreverent, exploration, and one that is reprinted in its entirety below with added images and links.

___________________________

Arrows of Desire:
How did St Sebastian become
an enduring, homo-erotic icon?


By Charles Darwent
The Independent
February 10, 2008

How did a burly, middle-aged soldier become an enduring, homo-erotic icon? As Guido Reni’s extraordinary series of St Sebastian paintings are shown together for the first time, Charles Darwent investigates...


Christian saints don’t make the cover of gay magazines every day – even less so in a slick of baby oil and a pair of Calvins. But such was the case with last July’s issue of reFRESH, the saint in question being played by French policeman-turned-TV-hunk, Sebastien Moura.

Was he playing Ignatius Loyola? Francis of Assisi? Paul of Tarsus? Not quite. The only saint who really cuts it as a cover-boy is St Sebastian, that curly-haired Roman youth shot with arrows on the orders of the emperor Diocletian. Sebastian’s appeal to gay men seems obvious. He was young, male, apparently unmarried and martyred by the establishment. Unlike, say, St Augustine of Hippo, he also looks good in a loincloth and tied to a tree. And never was Sebastian more winsome than in the seven versions of him painted by Guido Reni, six of which go on show at the Dulwich Picture Gallery next month.

Before we look at these, though, let’s rewind for a moment. Follow me, if you will, to Rome – to the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, not far from San Sebastiano Fuori le Mura, where the martyr’s punctured remains have lain since the year 287 AD. Here, in a niche to the left, is the seventh-century mosaic of a middle-aged man, bearded and in Byzantine court dress. Given the church’s name, you might take him for St Peter. You would be wrong. The saint is Sebastian, although he clearly will not see 40 again and there isn’t an arrow in sight.

What’s going on? Well, Sebastian is living proof of the fact that if saints didn’t exist, we would have to invent them. Thanks to the arrows, he’s the one martyr in art everyone can spot. (Iconography is so unfair. Who now recognises St Stephen’s stones or St Lawrence’s griddle?) A twinky torso also helps. Yet, according to his hagiographer, Ambrose of Milan, Sebastian was a red-blooded captain in the Praetorian Guard, a centurion of middling years: he is the patron saint of soldiers and athletes, not hairdressers. Far from riling Diocletian by proselytising for same-sex love, he was killed for converting Romans to Christianity. And we all know where that led.

But there is worse. Not only was St Sebastian middle-aged and butch, he wasn’t killed with arrows. Punctured, yes, but not killed. The perforated martyr was rescued from the stake and nursed back to health by St Irene of Rome – a woman, boys – before unwisely haranguing Diocletian for his paganism as he passed by on a litter. Unmoved by his tenacity, the emperor had Sebastian clubbed to death; his body was then dumped in Rome’s sewers. Had history been less kind, he might have ended up as patron saint of poo.

How this would have affected his career as a gay coverboy we will never know. I can only recall one representation in art of St Sebastian thrown into the Cloaca Maxima, and that – by Reni’s contemporary and fellow Bolognese, Lodovico Carracci – is safely tucked away in The Getty Center in Los Angeles. By contrast, there are more pictures of the arrow-filled Sebastian than there are of any other martyr I can think of, painted by everyone from Aleotti to Zick by way of Rubens, Botticelli, Titian and John Singer Sargent. The National Gallery alone has a dozen, including ones by Crivelli, Gerrit Honthorst and Luca Signorelli. And they’re all of the same Sebastian, the one who ends up, eventually, on the cover of reFRESH: a paragon of male beauty, his toned body, prettily stuck with arrows, exposed to our gaze; the martyr described by Oscar Wilde – who, in French exile, took the alias “Sebastian Melmoth” – as “a lovely brown boy with crisp, clustering hair and red lips.”


So how do we get from a shit-encrusted Sebastian to a blow-dried Sebastien Moura? For an answer to that, take a trip to Dulwich.

Reni’s six Sebastians have never been seen together before, and it is unlikely that they ever will be again. (One comes from New Zealand, another from Puerto Rico. A seventh, in the Louvre, was deemed too fragile to travel. If you need an excuse for a weekend in Paris, here it is.) It seems extraordinary that a painter should have gone back to the same subject so often, especially over so short a period. Latest scholarship dates all seven Sebastians to the 1610s, when Guido was in his thirties and newly home from Naples.

Some of this can be put down to political nous. Bologna had been annexed by the Papal States in the 16th century, and Sebastian was the third saint of Rome. Then again, Sebastian’s gender-bending may have struck a chord with Reni. According to his biographer, Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Reni “turned to marble” in the presence of female models and lived with his mother until he was 55. After her death, he refused to have women in his house or to let a woman’s laundry touch his own. Unlike his contemporary, Caravaggio, he seems to have had no gay life either. Sebastian is an unmistakably male saint, but one whose martyrdom is the embodiment of female passivity. Like the Virgin, his point is that he is pierced but pure. Far from being homoerotic, Reni’s Sebastians are anti-erotic – a cancelling out of sexuality by a man who seems to have liked neither men, women nor good red herring.

None of this, though, explains the saint’s transformation in painting from a Byzantine daddy to a Baroque twink. Here, Reni was only a follower of fashion. Piero della Francesca’s Misericordia polyptych, painted two centuries earlier, already shows Sebastian as young, willowy and lightly rouged. But why?

In 1348, Europe had been ravaged by the Black Death: up to half of the entire population of the continent died in a torment of bloody flux. In their terror, Romans prayed to Sebastian – he’d survived those arrows, after all – and the epidemic lifted. Willy-nilly, he became the hottest plague saint in Christ-endom. It is incumbent upon plague saints to look as though they haven’t got one foot in the grave (or, come to that, in the sewer). So by the end of the 14th century, the middle-aged Sebastian had had a makeover, his beard, wrinkles and actual cause of death neatly airbrushed from the picture.


Even so, it is something of a leap from the canvases of Reni to the cover of reFRESH magazine. Obvious answers to the question of just why Sebastian should have spent the past 400 years as gay saint du jour don’t seem to add up. There are as many explanations for his appeal as there are people doing the explaining.

To Yukio Mishima, the Japanese writer and keen sado-masochist, his martyrdom symbolised the erotic pleasure of pain. In his autobiographical Confessions of a Mask, the lightly disguised author has his first ejaculation over a reproduction of a Reni Sebastian. (Just which, it is hard to say. Guess for yourselves.) Mishima later had himself photographed as the saint before ritually disembowelling himself. Derek Jarman’s 1976 film Sebastiane uses the loin-clothed youth to look at the overlap between sexual and spiritual ecstasy, while Oscar Wilde and Tennessee Williams see him as a late-antique rentboy.

Perhaps Sebastian’s oddest reinvention came in Thomas Mann’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. “Grace in suffering – that is the heroism symbolised by St Sebastian,” said Mann; then, warming to his theme, he added: “The image may be bold, but I am tempted to claim this heroism for the German mind and German art.” The date was 1929. A decade later, German gays such as Mann were being rounded up and gassed.

All of which is to say that the secret of Sebastian’s success may lie in his ability to be all things to all men. Along with the famous arrows, the symbol of his martyrdom is the rope that binds his hands; yet the shape-shifting Sebastian just won’t be tied down. The novelist and political activist Susan Sontag pointed out that his face never registers the agonies of his body, that his beauty and his pain are eternally divorced from each other. This made him proof against plague in 1348, and, in these ungodly times, it still does. A recent book devoted to the martyr includes Aids-related work by artists including Wolfgang Tillmans and Louise Bourgeois. It is called Saint Sebastian: A Splendid Readiness for Death.

- Charles Darwent
The Independent
February 10, 2008

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Allure of St. Sebastian
Sergius and Bacchus: Martyrs, Saints, and Lovers
The Archangel Michael as Gay Icon
St. Michael the Archangel: Perspectives and Portraits
Gay People and the Spiritual Life
The Inherent Sensuality of Roman Catholicism
Song of Songs: The Bible’s Gay Love Poem
“More Lovely Than the Dawn”: God as Divine Lover
The Gifts of Homosexuality
Officially Homophobic, Intensely Homoerotic
Homophobia? It’s So Gay
Homosexuality and the Priesthood
What Is It That Ails You?

Image 1: Artist unknown.
Image 2: Sebastien Moura on the cover of reFresh (photographer unknown).
Image 3: St. Sebastian as depicted in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli.
Images 4-5: Guido Reni.
Image 6: Taylor Harbison.

Theologian Edward Schillebeeckx: Groundbreaking, Influential, and Gracious

I thought the New York Times did quite well in describing the theological outlook and contributions to Catholicism of the late Edward Schillebeeckx (pictured at right). Of course, such contributions primarily emerged as the result of Schillebeeckx’s role as, in the words of the Times, “a leading adviser to the Dutch bishops, especially during the four sessions of the Second Vatican Council, a marathon reassessment of Catholic life held in Rome from 1962 to 1965.”

Following are further excerpts from the New York Times obituary for Schillebeeckx.

________________________________

Like many Catholic theologians who influenced the council, Father Schillebeeckx had reacted against the neo-scholastic theology that the church adopted in the 19th century as a bulwark against hostile modern ideas. Distilled from the thought of Thomas Aquinas but frequently handed on without any examination of Aquinas’s writings or their medieval context, this neo-scholasticism articulated the faith in series of abstract concepts and propositions presented as absolute, ahistorical and immutable.

Father Schillebeeckx found alternative intellectual resources in modern phenomenology, with its meticulous attention to the actual experience of consciousness. And by studying Aquinas in his medieval context, he recovered a Thomism that expounded the presence and mystery of God in far less rationalistic and conceptual ways than did its neo-scholastic versions.

Strong emphases on human experience and on the importance of examining church teaching in historical context became hallmarks of Father Schillebeeckx’s work.

His early writing on the sacraments, for example, portrayed them as personal encounters with God rather than mechanisms for the distribution of grace. In two books — “Jesus: An Experiment in Christology” (1974) and “Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World” (1977) — he recast classical Catholic teachings about Christ around the experiences that gave rise to his followers’ faith in Jesus as messiah and the son of God.

These were groundbreaking attempts at rethinking church doctrine in light of the scholarly research about the historical Jesus that had accumulated in previous decades. But the fact that Father Schillebeeckx did not begin with Christianity’s great creedal statements about Jesus and the Trinity but instead focused on the subjective experience of the first generations of believers, as expressed in the New Testament accounts, stirred considerable controversy and a Vatican investigation.

Critics asked, for example, whether Father Schillebeeckx, by treating the resurrection largely in terms of the “conversion” experiences that Jesus’ disciples underwent after his death, was either denying that Jesus actually rose from the dead or suggesting that it did not matter.
Father Schillebeeckx said he was doing neither. His intention, he said, was to help contemporary people on a journey to belief by portraying the parallel journeys of Jesus’ first followers.

. . . An emphasis on experience led Father Schillebeeckx to much reflection on large-scale human suffering and on salvation as liberation from it. For him, faith in Jesus required not just a mental assent but also a this-worldly response to suffering.

. . . From 1968 to 1981, the Vatican began three investigations of his writings for heresy. They all ended inconclusively with admonitions, complaints and requests for clarification but with no formal censures or penalties.

Father Schillebeeckx was variously described as “reserved” and “charming.” Mary Catherine Hilkert, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame who edited a volume of essays on Father Schillebeeckx, described him as “utterly gracious.”

To read the New York Times obituary in its entirety, click here.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Robert McClory Remembers Edward Schillebeeckx
A Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent (Part 2)

Recommended Off-site Links:
Edward Schillebeeckx, 1914-2009 – An Appreciation (Part 1) - William D. Lindsey (The Open Tabernacle, January 8, 2010).
Edward Schillebeeckx, 1914-2009 – An Appreciation (Part 2) - William D. Lindsey (The Open Tabernacle, January 10, 2010).
The Schillebeeckx Foundation

Richard McBrien on Disaffected Catholics and "Bad Catholics"

The following is excerpted from Richard McBrien’s latest column in the National Catholic Reporter. (Thanks to my friend Rick for bringing it to my attention.) From my perspective, this particular essay contains statistics and insights that are worth sharing.

_________________

In late February 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a major survey that found that nearly a third of U.S. Catholics have left the [Roman] Catholic church. Some have joined other churches, but most have simply slipped from active membership in the Catholic church to become part of a group once described as “lapsed Catholics.”

This means that about 10 percent of all Americans today are former Catholics. It has been estimated that, if these ex-Catholics were to constitute a denomination unto themselves, they would be the second largest religious body in the United States – after the Catholic church itself.

It should be noted in passing that the major losses suffered by the Catholic church in recent years have been largely offset by the new immigrant population, mostly from Latin America. In addition, over two percent of the population has joined the Catholic church within the same time-period.

But how has the pastoral leadership of the Catholic church responded to this acutely serious problem?

To the extent that the bishops have reacted at all, they seem to believe that disaffected Catholics are simply “bad Catholics,” who cannot accept the morally demanding teachings of their church.

Some bishops convey the impression that the church’s official teachings on contraception, divorce-and-remarriage, homosexuality, the ordination of women, and obligatory celibacy for priests are so clear and compelling that only a person of bad will could possibly disagree with them.

And yet there are many committed, well-educated, still-practicing Catholics, including many priests and religious women, who do disagree with these teachings, in whole or in part.

And how does the church’s pastoral leadership respond to those with questions? In the case of priests, they are ruled ineligible for appointment as diocesan bishops. In the case of nuns, they are subjected to a “visitation” that is a thinly veiled investigation, and the leadership of 95 percent of their communities is subjected to a “doctrinal assessment.”

The Pew study also found that young Catholics, ages 18-29, are much more likely than older Catholics to say that they are not affiliated with any particular religion. If these generational patterns persist, the survey warns, recent declines in the numbers of native-born Catholics and growth in the size of the unaffiliated population are likely to continue.

Whatever the case, the situation calls for bolder and more imaginative pastoral initiatives than have heretofore been proposed or tried.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
What It Means to Be Catholic
The “Underground Church”
The Shrinking Catholic Tent
Hans Küng: “We Are Facing a Structural Problem”
A Smaller, Purer Vision of the Church – and Why It Won’t Work
Of Mustard Seeds and Walled Gardens
“Uncle Vince” is At It Again
The Two-Sided Catholic Crisis
Our Catholic “Stonewall Moment”
A Catholic Understanding of “Faithful Dissent” (Part 1)
A Catholic Understanding of “Faithful Dissent” (Part 2)
To Whom the Future of the Catholic Church Belongs
Beyond Papalism
Rome Falling
Staying On Board
The “Complex Reality” of Catholicism
Tips for Thinking Catholics
A Declaration for Reform and Renewal

Recommended Off-site Links:
Disaffected Catholics: It’s About the Feeling Not the Reasons - Colleen Kochivar (Enlightened Catholicism, January 13, 2010).
“Falling Away” - Mary Lynn Murphy (The Progressive Catholic Voice, January 4, 2009).
Essays in Theology - Brien McBrien’s official website.

How We Can Help the People of Haiti

The news from earthquake-devastated Haiti is truly heartbreaking. I must admit it seems surreal watching the images of death and devastation on TV while enjoying the summer weather in Australia, surrounded by loved ones in a country that is, in so many ways, safe and secure.

If, like me, you want to offer financial help to the people of Haiti, along with prayers of strength, comfort, and healing, then I suggest you consider making a donation to one of the aid agencies listed below. Following this list is the latest Associated Press report on the situation in Haiti, and a prayer offered by Fr. Jean Jadotte, associate pastor of Notre Dame D’Haiti Parish in Miami.

American Red Cross

Catholic Relief Services

Doctors Without Borders

Save the Children

UNICEF

World Vision International

For more organizations, click here.

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Haiti Quake Aid Snarled; Up to 50,000 Feared Dead

By Jonathan M. Katz and Tamara Lush

Associated Press
January 15, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Doctors and search dogs, troops and rescue teams flew to this devastated land of dazed, dead and dying people Thursday, finding bottlenecks everywhere, beginning at a main airport short on jet fuel and ramp space and without a control tower.

The international Red Cross estimated 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in Tuesday’s cataclysmic earthquake, based on information from the Haitian Red Cross and government officials. Hard-pressed recovery teams resorted to using bulldozers to transport loads of dead.

Worries mounted, meanwhile, about food and water for the survivors. “People have been almost fighting for water,” aid worker Fevil Dubien said as he distributed water from a truck in a northern Port-au-Prince neighborhood.

From Virginia, from France, from China, a handful of rescue teams were able to get down to work, scouring the rubble for survivors. In one “small miracle,” searchers pulled a security guard alive from beneath the collapsed concrete floors of the U.N. peacekeeping headquarters, where many others were entombed.

But the silence of the dead otherwise was overwhelming in a city where uncounted bodies littered the streets in the 80-degree heat, and dust-caked arms and legs reached, frozen and lifeless, from the ruins. Outside the General Hospital morgue, hundreds of collected corpses blanketed the parking lot, as the grief-stricken searched among them for loved ones. Brazilian U.N. peacekeepers, key to city security, were trying to organize mass burials.

Patience already was wearing thin among the poorest who were waiting for aid, said David Wimhurst, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission.

“They want us to provide them with help, which is, of course, what we want to do,” he said. But they see U.N. vehicles patrolling the streets to maintain calm, and not delivering aid, and “they’re slowly getting more angry and impatient,” he said.

In Washington, President Barack Obama announced “one of the largest relief efforts in our recent history,” starting with $100 million in aid. The U.S. Southern Command reported the first 100 of a planned 900 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division landed in Haiti from North Carolina on Thursday to support disaster relief, to be followed this weekend by more than 2,000 Marines. The American troops "will relieve pressure" on overworked U.N. elements, Wimhurst said.

From Europe, Asia and the Americas, other governments, the U.N. and private aid groups were sending planeloads of high-energy biscuits and other food, tons of water, tents, blankets, water-purification gear, heavy equipment for removing debris, helicopters and other transport, and teams of hundreds of search-and-rescue, medical and other specialists.

But two days after much of this ramshackle city was shattered, the global helping hand was slowed by the poor roads, airport and seaport of a wretchedly poor nation.

To read this article in its entirety, click here.

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We are praying for hope despite this situation, that even as we face darkness, people may see a pinpoint of light.

-Praying for families.

-Pray for a greater conscience among everyone, not just in Haiti but all over, that we must do something [to help].

-Pray for a spirit of thanksgiving for international agencies for their good heart and good faith.

-Pray for relief workers to have a spirit of patience and perseverance.

-For those who at this time are in search of meaning in their lives and peace.






Recommended Off-site Links:
God Suffers With the Suffering – Jim Wallis (The Huffington Post, January 14, 2010).
Starfish and Seawalls: Responding to Haiti’s Earthquake, Now and Long-Term - Mark Schuller (CommonDreams.org, January 15, 2010).
Of the Disaster in Haiti, and the Coverage - Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive, January 15, 2010).
Haitian Earthquake: Made in the U.S. - Ted Rall (CommonDreams.org, January 14, 2010).
Ten Things the U.S. Can and Should Do for Haiti - Bill Quigley (CommonDreams.org, January 14, 2010).
What You’re Not Hearing About Haiti (But Should Be) - Carl Lindskoog (CommonDreams.org, January 14, 2010).
Pray for Haiti in a Special and Intentional Way - Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, January 15, 2010).


Image 1: Residents walk in a destroyed area after a major earthquake hit the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, January 14, 2010. (REUTERS/Jorge Silva)

Image 2: A Spanish rescuer carries two-year-old Redjeson Hausteen after he was rescued from a home that collapsed during Tuesday’s earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, January 14, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Image 3: A man covers his face as he walks amid the rubble of a destroyed building in Port-au-Prince. (AFP/Juan Barreto)

Image 4: French military rescuers work to secure a structure at the collapsed Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, January 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

Image 5: A man sweeps outside his damaged home on a hill overlooking Port-au-Prince, Friday, January 15, 2010. A powerful earthquake hit Haiti Tuesday. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Image 6: A man, wearing a face mask as a precaution against infections, walks past the collapsed Cathedral of Port-au-Prince, Friday, January 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

Image 7: Jurior Dorcely stands on the rubble of his collapsed home where his mother is still buried in Port-au-Prince, Friday, January 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Image 8: A French military rescuer takes a rest at the destroyed Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince, Friday, January 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)


See also the related Wild Reed posts:
Crisis in Sri Lanka
Letting Them Sit By Me