A journal dedicated to the life and mission of St. Gaspar del Bufalo, and to a life lived in response to the call and the cry of the Most Precious Blood of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Our on-going mission is to share good news of hope and communion.
I will be away for the rest of the weekend at a retreat called EdPeg. Really it is the western regional for Retrouvaille, but it was named after Ed and Peg Gleason, the grandparents of Retrouvaille here in Northern California. The refresher weekend will be up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. (Its a tough job but someone has to do it.) Chances are internet access will be nil up there, but I will be sure to blog on Monday. In the meantime take a look at the comments, now called "conversations." I'd love to hear conversations on my Sunday homily called "Strong Winds." The actual text is a bit longer and more concrete, but why don't you all have some conversations about the substance of this Sunday's readings and I will join the conversation when I get back. Have a great weekend everyone!
Here is an example of how all the news that is reported is not entirely accurate. It is not the reporters fault. The CMSM was actually not really forthcoming with anything useful.
So this is what gets reported:
Leaders of the male religious orders just concluded their annual meeting, and have declared that they will not expel sex offenders, only keep them from personal contact with children and other parishioners. This is naïve at best.
Rod Dreher reports that the meeting is over on the day that the meeting began. The Assembly began Wednesday night and continues for several days. There was a workshop that was held on Wednesday, but nothing of substance was decided.
Here is the problem. All of these religious orders are autonomous. They cannot set policy for each other. CMSM has no authority over an individual religious community. Provincials who attended this workshop on canonical and legal issues are free to come home and do as they please. To find out how they responded the press would have to investigate individually hundreds of Orders. And they would treat them all the same even though some are Orders, some are Congregations and some are Institutes of Apostolic Life like ours. All of them have different statutes and policies that govern membership.
So, Rod, it is not bad policy. It is the nature of religious life that needs to be studied. And possibly what the press needs to ask the Jesuits in question is what they plan to do differently since their original plan was such a disaster, and canon law prevents them from just kicking out these sick people and inflicting them unsupervised on the rest of humanity. Talk about Bad policy!
I am not happy about CMSM either. They could at least make a statement, but it does not appear they are ready to do that either. At least I think I have my facts right.
Today is the Feast of St. Dominic. Besides being a Missionary of the Precious Blood, I continue to be an associate of the Mission San Jose Dominicans. It was one of their sisters (she knows who she is) who twisted my arm, literally, and convinced me I should be a priest. Mass was said for her intention this morning.
Before we reflect on Eucharistic devotion, let us reflect for a moment on what it is we as Catholics believe about the Eucharist. Put simply, we believe that it is the source and summit of the Christian life. In it we have present the very reality of Jesus, the Christ, in his flesh and blood. God, who wishes us to companion us, and to be with us as friend, (1) is present to us under the forms of bread and wine. The creator of the universe, God who is, in whom all time and history find their meaning, desires to be with us, in this time and place. He seeks to enter our life and our world.
For us who are devoted to the Precious Blood, Eucharistic devotion should be a specific and generous feature of our life and prayer. “The spirituality of Saint Gaspar ... is truly at the heart of the Christian life: the Most Precious Blood of our Lord has always been the object of a special attention on the part of all the saints: it is the school of sanctity, of justice, of love... Never cease...to delve deeply into this mystery of justice and love: diffuse it into the whole world.” (2) Adoration was to be a regular feature of the missionary’s life according to instructions left by St. Gaspar.(3)
If all this is true, if we indeed believe that this is true, that God is truly present to us, for us to see and to taste, what is it that prevents us from spending hours with this divine guest? To be in relationship with someone, one needs to spend time in their presence, to listen to them speak and to engage them in conversation. If one is to be intimate with another, meals and times for sharing are the center of this experience. This is precisely what the Lord wishes for us and from us. He desires that we respond to his invitations to friendship and intimacy.
The perfect means to enter into the grace of this relationship is Eucharistic Devotion, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Flowing from the Celebration of the Eucharist, this gives us an opportunity to relish the words that we shared there and to cherish the presence of one who loves us beyond our imagination. (4) The liturgical reforms of Vatican II were meant to restore a balance in Celebration of the Eucharist and Eucharistic Adoration. The Celebration of the Eucharist leads us to Adoration, and Adoration prepares our hearts and leads us to a fuller celebration of the Eucharist.
In the parish where I once was Pastor, we had Eucharistic Adoration twice each week, on Wednesdays and Fridays. During those times it gave members of the assembly an opportunity to enter into intercessory prayer on behalf of the parish and the world, and it provided an opportunity for the community to drink often from the font which is our own spirituality of the Most Precious Blood. Elements of this hour with the Blessed Sacrament included song, readings from the scriptures, readings from the Saints and Fathers and Doctors of the church, and significant periods of silence. Intercessions were sung using the Seven Offerings of the Precious Blood, and then Benediction was celebrated. Once each year our parish celebrated a 24 hour vigil for life, celebrating the richness of God’s life that was present to us and in reparation for the many times God’s life was abused and neglected in our world. The order of our worship was very similar to the inserts that accompany the “Precious Blood Family” each issue.
Times of silence in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament are a rich opportunity for God’s people. We are bombarded each day with a variety of media, radio and television and newspaper. We listen to all sorts of voices from idle conversation, to news and opinion from the world and the neighborhood. Silence in the presence of the living Word of God helps us to recognize the one voice calling to us above all the others to the fullness of life. We are his people and how we respond to his voice indicates how we belong to his flock, to his people. “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” (5)
Occasionally people would be anxious if Sunday liturgy is more than an hour. If we truly believed what we do as Catholics, we would have a desire to spend at least an hour each day in the presence of the one who loves us. Indeed God is present to us in many ways; in his people and in his word, yet here we have the true presence of God par excellence.
NOTES
(1) I no longer call you servants, but friends. (John 15:15)
(2) John Paul II to the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, 1986, and repeated in 1989
(3) Letter from St. Gaspar, March 1831, to Pope Gregory XVI: “The sacred functions of each day have been described above. The weekly functions are the following: On Thursdays, the adoration of the most Blessed Sacrament in memory of the institution of that divine mystery. Each Missionary, in turn, is asked to direct this tender exercise”
(4) See also the 1967 Instruction on the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery, “Eucharisticum Mysterium,” 50. “When the faithful adore Christ present in the sacrament, they should
remember that this presence derives from the sacrifice and has as its
purpose both sacramental and spiritual communion.”
(5) John 10:27
I went through their website today looking for anything they may have said on the crisis of sexual abuse in the church. It appears they made some statement about the sexual abuse of nuns in Africa, but I did not find anything on the current situation in the United States.
According to their bulletin, August 7 is a day long workshop on “Balancing the legal, administrative and pastoral obligations of the sexual abuse crisis.” The workshop, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. provides practical advice for major superiors for updating sexual abuse policies.
My own Major Superior, our Provincial Director Fr. Ronald Wiecek, C.PP.S. is attending this meeting.
CMSM is for members of Religious Communities and Apostolic Institutes what The Bishop‘s Conference is for Diocesan Clergy. Although there was a media feeding frenzy over the Bishop’s meeting in June, I have heard very little in the press before this meeting.
I also find it odd that CMSM appears to have been silent on the situation in the church until now. Maybe (hopefully) something will come out of this meeting.
I read the NY Times article to which Father Jeff referred. I always hope that papers like the NY Times will be balanced and resist the media's general penchant for dramatic flare, but I regularly get disappointed on that front.
What chills me about this article is what's missing: there's no description of the on-going support system this priest has been drawing on to be faithful to his ministry. A few months of intense therapy is just a start.
It's hard to tell what is behind the description of the violation to which this man admits as "crossing a line." That does sound like refusing to fully acknowledge the extent of the damage done to the young person. Money can't really repair the harm to the young person's sense of self and ability to trust. (I recommend the testimonies given at the US bishops' meeting if anyone has any doubt about the life-long consequences of such violation.)
The part of the article that was the worst for me is the idea that this person would now seek employment as a counselor. I don't know about Indiana, but I'm pretty certain that if such a person applied for an intern's license in MFCC (Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling) here in California, they would be denied a license based on the past offense.
If we were to have a serious conversation about what sort of ministry settings might be appropriate for a priest with an offense against a teen, I suggest that general parish ministry in a one-priest town would be deemed way too risky. Nor am I too enthusiastic about the assignment of such a priest to serve as a chaplain at a motherhouse of a communityof women religious. (A priest with such as assignment here after admitting to sexually abusing a child was recently arrested, as the diocese made the information available to civil authorities and there is no statute of limitations for violating a child.) These days, communities of women religious are often joined by family members, associates and their family members, and the general public for prayer and worship, so there's not much guarantee that access to teens and children is cut off. Further, is a priest who has violated a teen really a wise choice for confessional counseling for sisters in formation and sisters dealing with the life-long challenges of living out their celibacy in a fully human manner? I would argue that the priest's own developmental disabilities would indicate no. Sisters deserve the best we have to offer, rather than being a dumping ground for priests with major psychological issues.
If we framed the question generally, what sorts of ministerial settings? what sorts of supervision? what sorts of on-going therapy and support? we might find it easier to conclude that it would be very unusual to find such settings. This would shift the emphasis from punishment of the priest offender to care for the people of God.
I don't like the tone I sense of serving as a priest as a privilege which is now being taken away, though the canons on the loss of the clerical state seem to come from that context, especially when the focus in on the titles or the wearing of the Roman collar or being acknowledged as a priest in social settings. This isn't a matter of etiquette!
It might be good to add to the conversation the question of faculties. No priest functions on his own by virtue of ordination. Nowhere, never, except in danger-of-death emergencies. Every priest has to be in relationship with the local bishop, who determines what ministries the priest may exercise. This is also true for those who are members of religious communities--just because the community sends a priest to work at a high school it staffs, for example, doesn't mean that priest can automatically say Mass or hear confessions. These days, most bishops and their curias are beginning to do their 'homework' and checking with the diocese where the priest previously served before granting faculties.
The removal of a priest with a prior offense against a teen could be framed in terms of loss of faculties, or of suspension rather than loss of the clerical state, but for some reason, that's not what's being done.
I hope the questions I pose here, or similar ones, are part of the canonical process for priests who appeal to Rome. My honest question is, what bishop would grant these men faculties to serve in parishes?
I especially like Maureen's connection of the so called "right" to be a priest with "faculties." This is another indication that what we have is not our own. What we hold is indeed a gift, a vocation, a sharing in something larger than ourselves. It is a great treasure to "hold" and to identify with, but I can never say it comes from me and is mine, other that to say that he has made me his own.
Steven Riddle at Flos Carmeli has agreed with my post on no one having the right to be a priest. He comes at it from the perspective of vocation which is an excellent view point.
It is time for Lane Core to step up to the plate and explain his perspective a little more.
Of course, a right may be forfeited: but saying that is not nearly the same as saying the right doesn't exist.
On this Feast of St. John Vianney, all I can say is that I treasure who and what I am and what God has made me. This priesthood is a tremendous gift and mystery. If I held on to this like it was my own, that this is my priesthood, this is my mass, then that could possibly give rise to any number of abuses.
It is my growing opinion that priests who willy nilly make all sorts of changes in the Mass on their own authority are showing the church the next level of abuse. I have not attended Mass once in the Chicago Archdiocese without a priest making changes in the text of the Eucharistic prayer.
I respectfully disagree with Mr. Core, and think we should spend more time reflecting on and celebrating what God has given, what God has done for us, then trying to take sole ownership of it.
