Fr. Ed
I am deeply sorry and angry at your decision to issue the second canonical warning to Fr. Roy Bourgeois MM. I am disappointed that you and the Maryknoll General Council did not exhibit the courage shown by others in leadership positions in men and women's religious orders, especially with regard to the punitive directives that have come from Rome during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II and the CDF under Cardinal Ratzinger. This direction is now continuing under Pope Benedict XVI.
I am a mere stripling of 69, born in Liverpool and baptised Catholic (of the Liverpool Irish as well as the Roman Catholic variety) in St. James, Bootle.
In your letter to Fr. Bourgeois you state that his activities " present a clear act of disobedience of the explicit instructions of your superiors and the warnings from the Holy See." I suspect Fr. Bourgeois would agree with that assessment and I would applaud him for that disobedience. How much of our history is the tale of men and women who chose the path of disobedience to fallible human authorities, even of the papal variety, and obedience to a well-formed conscience. How much of our history is the tale of men and women who challenged the status quo and the oft-repeated statement that we have always done it this way. Many of those men and women were also accused and threatened with disloyalty, with defiance, with causing confusion in the "minds of the many faithful", with "obstinate disobedience", with "grave scandal" are now celebrated in the Sacramentary/Roman Missal whilst their accusers have disappeared.
You state very easily that Fr. Bourgeois directly opposes "the definitive letter of John Paul II in the Apostolic Letter "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" (not as your letter states "Ordination Sacerdotalis") and the CDF statement about this letter. You state this in a manner in which, unfortunately, too many Catholic priests
have made similar statements about many things with the understanding that the statement is followed by a period and not by questions or clarifications. In 2012 you may not have yet understood (after all you did spend a decade in Rome isolated from the ordinary peasants of the real world) that Roma can locuta but that does not mean that the causa is finita. I suspect you are aware of the number of theologians and canon lawyers(and of an increasing number of the hierarchy) and of the quality of these men and women who offer arguments in opposition to the creeping infallibility claimed over the last thirty plus years by JPII and Benedict.
You speak of "Grave Scandal given to the people of God." I am one of those, although resident in Canada, and the grave scandal that effects me is not initiated by Fr. Bourgeois but by popes, cardinals, bishops, religious superiors etc who quote from 4th, 5th and 6th century councils but ignore the work of our great 20th century council and ignore the theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries. With all due respect I believe the late Canadian Jesuit, David Stanley had more to offer the Catholic Church on the role of women than Augustine. I use Fr. Stanley as an example not as a lone voice. The scandal you speak of in your letter to Fr. Bourgeois is better described as "of the small minded" rather than as grave.
Let me finish by sharing a piece, published yesterday, by Leonardo Boff.
There is great disappointment with the institutional Catholic Church. A double emigration is happening: one is exterior, persons who simply leave the Church, and the other is interior, those who remain in the Church but who no longer feel that she is their spiritual home. They continue believing, in spite of the Church.
It's not for nothing. The present pope has taken some radical initiatives that have divided the ecclesiastic body. He chose a path of confrontation with two important episcopacies, the German and the French, when he introduced the Latin Mass. He articulated an obscure reconciliation with the Church of the followers of Lebfrevre; gutted the principal renewal institutions of Vatican Council II, especially ecumenism, absurdly denying the title of «Church» to those Churches that are not Catholic or Orthodox. When he was a Cardinal he was gravely permissive with pedophiles, and his concern with AIDS borders the inhumane.
The present Catholic Church is submerged in a rigorous winter. The social base that supports the antiquated model of the present pope is comprised of conservative groups, more interested in the media, in the logic of the market, than in proposing an adequate response to the present grave problems. They offer a «lexotan-Christianity» good for pacifying anxious consciences, but alienated from the suffering humanity.
It is urgent that we animate these Christians about to emigrate with what is essential in Christianity. It certainly is not the Church, that was never the object of the preaching of Jesus. He announced a dream, the Kingdom of God, in contraposition to the Kingdom of Caesar; the Kingdom of God that represents an absolute revolution in relationships, from the individual to the divine and the cosmic.
Christianity appeared in history primarily as a movement and as the way of Christ. It predates its grounding in the four Gospels and in the doctrines. The character of a spiritual path means a type of Christianity that has its own course. It generally lives on the edge and, at times, at a critical distance from the official institution. But it is born and nourished by the permanent fascination with the figure, and the liberating and spiritual message of Jesus of Nazareth. Initially deemed the «heresy of the Nazarenes» (Acts 24,5) or simply, a «heresy» (Acts 28,22) in the sense of a «very small group», Christianity was acquiring autonomy until its followers, according to The Acts of The Apostles (11,36), were called, «Christians».
The movement of Jesus is certainly the most vigorous force of Christianity, stronger than the Churches, because it is neither bounded by institutions, nor is it a prisoner of doctrines and dogmas. It is composed of all types of people, from the most varied cultures and traditions, even agnostics and atheists who let themselves be touched by the courageous figure of Jesus, by the dream he announced, a Kingdom of love and liberty, by his ethic of unconditional love, especially for the poor and the oppressed, and by the way he assumed the human drama, amidst humiliation, torture and his execution on the cross. Jesus offered an image of God so intimate and life-friendly that it is difficult to disregard, even by those who do not believe in God. Many people say, «if there is a God, it has to be like the God of Jesus».
This Christianity as a spiritual path is what really counts. However, from being a movement it soon became a religious institution, with several forms of organization. In its bosom were developed different interpretations of the figure of Jesus, that were transformed into doctrines, and gathered into the official Gospels. The Churches, when they assumed institutional character, established criteria of belonging and of exclusion, doctrines such as identity reference and their own rites of celebration. Sociology, and not theology, explains that phenomenon. The institution always exists in tension with the spiritual path. The ideal is that they develop together, but that is rare. The most important, in any case, is the spiritual path. This has a future and animates the meaning of life.
The problem of the Roman Catholic Church is her claim of being the only true one. The correct approach is for all the Churches to recognize each other, because they reveal different and complementary dimensions of the message of the Nazarene. What is important is for Christianity to maintain its character as a spiritual path. That can sustain so many Christian men and women in the face of the mediocrity and irrelevancy into which the present Catholic Church has fallen.
I find it interesting and disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising, that nowhere in your missive to Fr. Bourgeois does the name of the carpenter from Nazareth appear. Something to think about perhaps?
John Quinn
johnquinn@cogeco.ca
905-934-9115
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