Francis message: bishops and priests should not 'infantilize' lay faithful

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican Insider
July 28, 2013

In his speech to the Coordinating Committee of CELAM, the Pope talked about the temptation of clericalism and asked pastors to be poor and merciful

Francis concluded his trip to Brazil with another wide-ranging speech to the coordinating committee of the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM). But Francis’ words will most certainly resonate beyond the Latin American continent.

The Pope asked bishops to give a missionary slant to the daily activities of local Churches, explaining that the “change of structures” (from obsolete ones to new ones) will not be the result of reviewing an organizational flow chart” but will “result from the very dynamics of mission.” Francis recalled that the general assembly of Latin American bishops at Aparecida in 2007 had presented “pastoral conversion” as a “necessity”. The Pope then asked bishops to reflect on some questions with regard to the current state of the Church: “Do we see to it that our work, and that of our priests, is more pastoral than administrative? Who primarily benefits from our efforts, the Church as an organization or the People of God as a whole?”

The questions then focused specifically on the laity and their role in the Church: “In practice, do we make the lay faithful sharers in the Mission?” As pastors, bishops and priests are we conscious and convinced of the mission of the lay faithful and do we give them the freedom to continue discerning, in a way befitting their growth as disciples, the mission which the Lord has entrusted to them? Do we support them and accompany them, overcoming the temptation to manipulate them or infantilize them?” His words portray the picture of the Church’s current situation in a number of countries, European ones too.

Speaking of the importance of the Church engaging in dialogue with the world around it, Francis referred to what was said at the Second Vatican Council to explain the basis of dialogue with contemporary society: “The joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted, are the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well.” The Church needs to be aware of the varied “scenarios and the areopagi involved.” “If we remain within the parameters of our “traditional culture” which was essentially rural, we will end up nullifying the power of the Holy Spirit. God is everywhere: we have to know how to find him in order to be able to proclaim him in the language of each and every culture; every reality, every language, has its own rhythm.”

Francis then spoke of the “temptations” that steer people away from being missionaries. The first is making the message of the Gospel an ideology. The Pope listed four ways of doing this: “sociological reductionism” which “involves an interpretative claim based on a hermeneutics drawn from the social sciences … from market liberalism to Marxist categorization”; psychologising “based on an elitist hermeneutics which ultimately reduces the “encounter with Jesus Christ” and its development to a process of growing self-awareness”; the Gnostic solution “ordinarily found in elite groups offering a higher spirituality, generally disembodied. Its adherents are generally known as “enlightened Catholics”. Finally the Pope mentioned the Pelagian solution which “appears as a form of restorationism.” “In dealing with the Church’s problems, a purely disciplinary solution is sought, through the restoration of outdated manners and forms which, even on the cultural level, are no longer meaningful. In Latin America it is usually to be found in small groups, in some new religious congregations, in tendencies to doctrinal or disciplinary “safety”.”

Francis referred to two more temptations: “functionalism” and “clericalism”. The “functionalist approach has no room for mystery; it aims at efficiency” “It reduces the reality of the Church to the structure of an NGO. What counts are quantifiable results and statistics. The Church ends up being run like any other business organization. Clericalism, on the other hand, “has to do with a sinful complicity: the priest clericalizes the lay person and the lay person kindly asks to be clericalized, because deep down it is easier ... Clericalism explains, in great part, the lack of maturity and Christian freedom in a good part of the Latin American laity.” Francis pointed to the autonomy of the laity as “on the whole is a healthy thing, basically expressed through popular piety.” Clericalism is being overcome thanks to bible study groups and ecclesial basic communities.

After warning against a “utopian” vision of the future or a “restorationist” vision of the past, the Pope explained that “God is real and he shows himself in the “today”.” When the Church “makes herself a “centre”, she becomes merely functional, and slowly but surely turns into a kind of NGO. The Church then claims to have a light of her own … She becomes increasingly self-referential and loses her need to be missionary.” She “ends up being an administrator; from being a servant, she becomes an “inspector”.” “There are pastoral plans designed with such a dose of distance that they are incapable of sparking an encounter ... [They] give priority to principles, forms of conduct, organizational procedures … and clearly lack nearness, tenderness, a warm touch. They do not take into account the “revolution of tenderness” brought by the incarnation of the Word.” The Pope sees homilies as a “touchstone for measuring whether a pastoral plan embodies nearness and a capacity for encounter.” “Do we imitate the example of our Lord, who spoke “as one with authority”, or are they simply moralizing, detached, abstract?” the Pope asked.

The Pope ended his speech to CELAM’s coordinating committee, with a reference to his speech to Nuncios last June. He stressed that “bishops must be pastors, close to the people.” They must be “patient and merciful.” They must “love poverty, both interior poverty and exterior poverty, as simplicity and austerity of life” and must be “men who do not think and behave like “princes”” or that are “ambitious."

Pope draws 3M for vigil after chastising 'exodus'

[Among other areas,it is instructive to consider the new translation of the Roman missal imposed on the English speaking world in light of Pope Francis' statements below.]

JENNY BARCHFIELD and NICOLE WINFIELD
The Associated Press
Kansas City Star
July 28, 2013

Pope Francis drew a reported 3 million flag-waving, rosary-toting faithful to Rio's Copacabana beach on Saturday for the final evening of World Youth Day, hours after he chastised the Brazilian church for failing to stem the "exodus" of Catholics to evangelical congregations.

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The vigil capped a busy day for the pope in which he drove home a message he has emphasized throughout the week in speeches, homilies and off-the-cuff remarks: the need for Catholics, lay and religious, to shake up the status quo, get out of their stuffy sacristies and reach the faithful on the margins of society or risk losing them to rival churches.

In the longest and most important speech of his four-month pontificate, Francis took a direct swipe at the "intellectual" message of the church that so characterized the pontificate of his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Speaking to Brazil's bishops, he said ordinary Catholics simply don't understand such lofty ideas and need to hear the simpler message of love, forgiveness and mercy that is at the core of the Catholic faith.

"At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people," he said. "Without the grammar of simplicity, the church loses the very conditions which make it possible to fish for God in the deep waters of his mystery."

In a speech outlining the kind of church he wants, Francis asked bishops to reflect on why hundreds of thousands of Catholics have left the church for Protestant and Pentecostal congregations that have grown exponentially in recent decades in Brazil, particularly in its slums or favelas, where their charismatic message and nuts-and-bolts advice is welcome by the poor.

According to census data, the number of Catholics in Brazil dipped from 125 million in 2000 to 123 million in 2010, with the church's share of the total population dropping from 74 percent to 65 percent. During the same time period, the number of evangelical Protestants and Pentecostals skyrocketed from 26 million to 42 million, increasing from 15 percent to 22 percent of the population in 2010.

Francis offered a breathtakingly blunt list of explanations for the "exodus."

"Perhaps the church appeared too weak, perhaps too distant from their needs, perhaps too poor to respond to their concerns, perhaps too cold, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas," he said. "Perhaps the world seems to have made the church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions. Perhaps the church could speak to people in their infancy but not to those come of age."

Francis asked if the church today can still "warm the hearts" of its faithful with priests who take time to listen to their problems and remain close to them.

"We need a church capable of rediscovering the maternal womb of mercy," he said. "Without mercy, we have little chance nowadays of becoming part of a world of 'wounded' persons in need of understanding, forgiveness and love."

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"We cannot keep ourselves shut up in parishes, in our communities when so many people are waiting for the Gospel!" Francis said in his homily Saturday. "It's not enough simply to open the door in welcome, but we must go out through that door to seek and meet the people."

Francis' target audience is the poor and the marginalized — the people that history's first pope from Latin America has highlighted on this first trip of his pontificate. He has visited one of Rio's most violent slum areas, met with juvenile offenders and drug addicts and welcomed in a place of honor 35 garbage collectors from his native Argentina.

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read full article at Kansas City Star

Schüller: Popular support provides freedom to speak without condemnation

Robert McClory
National Catholic Reporter
July 26, 2013

As Fr. Helmut Schüller travels the United States, the question that puzzles many is how he and other leaders of the "Appeal to Disobedience" movement escape condemnation if not excommunication by the bishops of Austria. Schüller, head of the Austrian Priests' Initiative, speaks candidly about the need for a "new image of the priesthood," which would be open to women and married persons. He sees no reason to deny Communion to divorced and remarried persons and members of other Christian churches. And his organization advocates that every parish have a leader (man or woman, married or single) who would preside at the Eucharist in order to avoid the consolidation or closing of churches. Yet Schüller has so far escaped censure (except for the removal of his title as monsignor). He remains an active priest in good standing in his native Vienna diocese.

At a dinner sponsored by Call to Action the evening before his talk Wednesday in Chicago, Schüller provided some answers to the question. To understand Austrian Catholicism, he said, you have to go back to the turmoil of the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Habsburg rulers imposed the Catholic faith on all Austrian citizens, forcing conversions and expelling non-Catholic clergy from the country.

"This experience of repression," he said, "sowed a lack of confidence" in the hierarchy. "Suspicion and criticism" among the laity has remained a characteristic of the Austrian church to this day, he said.

"On the surface there may be peace and sweetness, but beneath, there is an historic burden we carry," Schüller said.

However, the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) greatly encouraged Austrian Catholics, and they readily backed the council initiatives under the leadership of Cardinal Franz König, archbishop of Vienna and a powerful force at the council itself. Like the Netherlands under the leadership of Cardinal Bernard Alfrink, Austria moved forward on collegiality and lay leadership. The new age ended abruptly in 1986, when König resigned and was succeeded not by a like-minded prelate but by a staunch conservative, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër.

"The church was turned around," Schüller said. Groër's auxiliary bishop, Kurt Krenn, handled much of the scuttling of Vatican II initiatives. Groër was forced to resign in 1995 because of serious allegations of child abuse. Krenn, who moved on to head another Austrian diocese, was also forced to resign in 2004 when he was found in possession of thousands of pornographic photos and films.

The current Viennese archbishop, Christoph Schonbörn, has muted much of the heavy-handed repression of his predecessor but is no advocate of reform himself.

"I believe he is following the advice of Gamaliel," Schüller said. Gamaliel, the Pharisee mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, advised Jewish leaders to refrain from harsh measures, saying, "If this movement is merely human, it will collapse of its own accord. But if it should be from God, you cannot stop them."

No bishop in Austria speaks against the Austrian Priests' Initiative in their diocesan papers or from the pulpit. "They don't dare because of the popular support we have," Schüller said. "They're afraid to go against two-thirds of their readers."

There is also a very practical, financial aspect to this hierarchical silence. If bishops were to crack down on this reform movement, Schüller said, many angry and suspicious Catholics would join those who have already declared themselves publicly as "non-confessing" church members, becoming exempt from paying the portion of their income tax that goes to the church. On a large scale, such noncooperation would have disastrous effects on church operations throughout Austria. Schüller said such a meltdown could spread to Germany as well, where relations between hierarchy and laity are also strained.

So Schüller proceeds calmly and comfortably, speaking wherever he is invited on the benefits of disobedience. His immediate goal, he said, is to raise a critical mass of Roman Catholic priests throughout the world to overcome their fears and speak the truth.

Vatican prelate accused of trying to smuggle €20m appeals to pope for help

Lizzie Davies
The Guardian (UK)
July 26, 2013

Even as he tours the favelas and beaches of Brazil, Pope Francis may find it difficult to forget what is going on back home.

On Thursday, a prelate accused of attempting to smuggle €20m (£17m) into Italy from Switzerland appealed directly to the pontiff, insisting on his innocence and accusing his lay bosses in the Vatican's asset management arm of abusive activities which he said were covered up by some cardinals.

In a letter written from the Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven) prison in Rome, where he has been detained since his arrest with two others on 28 June, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano told Francis: "I have never laundered dirty money; I have never stolen. I tried to help someone who asked for help."

In the missive, written last week and released by his lawyers, he added: "The documentation in my possession proves my honesty and my battles against the abuse of my secular superiors, protected by some senior cardinals."

He also accused some of his superiors of blackmailing and manipulating the cardinals concerned, Reuters reported.

Until recently Scarano – dubbed "Monsignor 500" by the Italian media for his taste in high-denomination euro notes – occupied a senior position in the Vatican's asset management arm, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See.

But he was suspended after being placed under investigation in a separate affair involving allegations of money laundering, which he also denies.

On Friday, before setting off for Brazil, Francis announced he was setting up a commission to look into the reform of the Vatican's administrative and economic structure. But his spokesman, Federico Lombardi, told reporters Francis had not seen Scarano's letter before his departure.

Lombardi announced on 12 July that two of Scarano's accounts at the scandal-plagued Vatican bank – the Institute for Religious Works, which Francis is also planning to reform – had been frozen.

Archbishop Allen Vigneron bans liberal priest speech from Westland church

Patricia Montemurri and Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press
July 26, 2013

Detroit Catholic Archbishop Allen Vigneron has banned an Austrian priest from speaking at a Westland Catholic parish today because the Rev. Helmut Schüller advocates allowing women and married men to be priests, in opposition to current church teaching.

Schüller was scheduled to speak at SS. Simon and Jude parish in Westland. But instead, his address, which is free and open to the public, will be held at Wayne Memorial High School. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for the 7 p.m. talk.

Schüller was also banned from speaking in Catholic churches in other areas of the U.S.

Speaking to the Free Press on Thursday, Schüller criticized Catholic leaders in Detroit and other cities for banning him from church property, saying that it reflects the very problem he’s trying to highlight — a leadership out of touch with the people.

“It reflects an old-fashioned system,” Schüller said by phone from Cleveland, where he was to speak Thursday night. “It’s behavior I cannot understand.”

Schüller said such actions show a “lack of respect for the ability of people to decide for themselves and make up their own mind.”

“It irritates me,” he said.

Last year, the Vatican stripped Schüller of the title “monsignor” because of his activism. Yet, he remains a working priest in Austria, where he teaches at a Catholic university.

The Austrian priest is touring 15 U.S. cities. Last week, he was banned from speaking at a Boston parish by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, and he was banned in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia because his views contradict Catholic teachings, according to published reports. Before he arrives in Detroit, Schüller was scheduled to speak in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago and Cleveland at non-Catholic facilities. Schüller’s tour is being sponsored by several Catholic reform advocacy groups.

Archdiocese of Detroit spokesman Joe Kohn said Vigneron became aware of Schüller’s visit because of phone complaints the archdiocese received. Kohn said Vigneron’s decision was communicated in early July to SS. Simon and Jude pastor, the Rev. Gerry Bechard. Bechard did not return phone calls or e-mails for comment.

“What (Schüller) teaches is not in harmony with Catholic Church teachings in regard to women priests,” Kohn said. “We did receive a few calls when it was made known.”

Kohn said there are no prohibitions against Catholics discussing such issues, but “it was deemed that what he has preached on in the past is not in alliance with Catholic Church teaching.”

But Schüller said that the Catholic Church’s ban on women and married priests is a church order that can be lifted. It’s not an inherent part of the teachings of the Catholic Church, whose positions have varied over the centuries, he said. Church leaders “make a mistake” when they say these are “the teachings of the church.”

Regarding the new pope, Schüller said he is hopeful, but was disappointed that he has not spoken up in favor of nuns in the U.S. who have been accused by some Vatican officials of being too liberal.

“There were some signals of hope” from the new pope, but “also things which irritated us.”

Liberal American Catholics have warmly received Schüller.

Despite being barred from church property in Boston, more than 600 people packed a Unitarian church on July 17 to hear him speak, according to a report by the Religion News Service. The crowd was so big that it “spilled out onto the church lawn,” the story said.

On Monday night, Schüller drew an overflow crowd to a Lutheran Church in Washington, D.C., to hear him speak, said Will Donahue. And Wednesday night, about 500 heard Schüller’s message at a building in Chicago that used to be a Catholic high school.

The crowd was “very enthusiastic,” said Bob Heineman, a Catholic who helped coordinate the event.

Schüller’s message resonates with many Catholics, Heineman said, because “the time is right” for reform. He criticized leaders like Vigneron and others for banning Schüller from church property, and not allowing priests to interact with him.

“The priests are afraid” to meet with Schüller, Heineman said.

For his Detroit talk Schüller was scheduled to be welcomed by Sister Chris Schenk, a Catholic nun with Future Church, a reform group. Schenk, associate director of the group, said the prohibition against Schüller’s speaking at Catholic facilities “is very sad.”

“We shouldn’t be prohibited from speaking about the main problems in the church,” Schenk said.

Schüller said his message is that lay people should stand up and get active in their church to reform it.

He’s worried that Catholic leaders “are losing contact with the ground (reality) of the society.”

“Speak out clearly,” he urged lay Catholics. “We should take care of our church. ...We should be responsible for its future.”

The deception unveiled, Francis "will know what to do"

Sandro Magister
Chiesa

ROME, July 25, 2013 – It is enough these days to enter the offices of the Institute for Works of Religion to understand how flimsy the argument is that has been advanced in defense of Monsignor Battista Ricca, the prelate of the IOR whose scandalous past has been revealed by L'Espresso:

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According to Ricca's defenders - very active both inside and outside of the Vatican - by striking him the "old guard" of the curia is trying to block the rehabilitation of the "pope's bank."

But the facts say the opposite. With or without the prelate, the remediation of the accounts and apparatus of the IOR is moving forward at an accelerated pace.

*

The affair of Monsignor Ricca is a case in point of the weeds that pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio wants to uproot from the Vatican curia.

Against homosexuals who live in chastity, including priests, bishops, cardinals, there is no preconceived hostility whatsoever in the Church, so much so that, in tranquility, a number of them have occupied and still occupy important positions.

What the Church does not accept is that consecrated persons, who have made a public commitment of celibacy and chastity "for the Kingdom of Heaven," should betray their promise.

When the betrayal is public, it becomes scandal. And to heal it the Church requires a penitential journey that begins with repentance, not with falsification, concealment, deception, worse still if carried out with the complicity of others, in a "lobby" of intersecting interests, licit and illicit. In the case of Ricca, the deception has hit Pope Francis himself.

About the monsignor's scandalous past, and the present cover-up, Francis knew nothing when on June 15 he appointed him prelate, meaning his fiduciary at the IOR. He had been shown the file concerning Ricca that is kept at the personnel office of the secretariat of state, and everything appeared to be in order.

But over the following days a number of trusted persons sounded the alarm for the pope, in speech and in writing, over what had happened in Uruguay between 1999 and 2001 at the nunciature of Montevideo where Ricca had been in service. More information came to the pope on June 21 and 22, when he met with the nuncios who had convened in Rome from all over the world.

After the news of the looming scandal was published on July 3 on www.chiesa, Francis wanted to see Ricca's personal file again.

This time as well they passed him off as immaculate. The chain of command composed of cardinal secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone, his substitute Giovanni Angelo Becciu, and the delegate for the pontifical diplomatic missions, head of personnel Luciano Suriani, did not even take the basic step of asking the nunciature of Montevideo for copies of the reports from the nuncio at the time, Janusz Bolonek, which arrived in Rome but were evidently made to disappear.

Worse, after L'Espresso last week brought the elements of the scandal to everyone's attention, they had Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi say that what was published is "not reliable."

When instead it corresponds in every way to the documents - ecclesiastical and of the civil authorities - kept at the nunciature, including the letter with which Bolonek implored the Vatican authorities to send him in place of Ricca a new and "morally sound" adviser.

In Uruguay, at least five bishops who were direct witnesses of the scandal are ready to report. "Es todo verdad," it's all true, ecclesiastical sources have told the leading newspaper of Montevideo, "El País."

After seeing L'Espresso, Pope Francis himself picked up the telephone and called persons in his trust in that country, for definitive confirmation of the facts.

"Surely the Holy Father, in his wisdom, will know what to do," was the succinct statement of the current nuncio, Guido Anselmo Pecorari.

First trials planned in Montana Catholic sex-abuse cases

MATT VOLZ
Associated Press
July 24, 2013

Attempts to settle allegations that hundreds of Montanans were sexually abused as children by Roman Catholic clergy have been stymied by challenges from the church's insurers over which claims they are obligated to cover.

So attorneys representing the 360 alleged victims, along with lawyers for the Helena diocese, the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province and District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock began laying out plans Wednesday for the first of what could be many trials beginning in December.

Attorneys for both sides said the outcome of the initial trials — unless the cases are resolved first — could act as a bellwether to gauge the extent to which Montana jurors would find the church liable and penalize it. That, in turn, could lead to settlements for the remainder of the cases.

The plaintiffs claim they were abused by priests, nuns and agents of the diocese between the 1930s and the late 1970s. The diocese and the Ursuline sisters knew of the abuse but did not stop it, the plaintiffs claim.

From the outset, all sides pledged to work to settle the lawsuits, which were filed in 2011. There have been three mediation sessions, the last one on Monday, but the case can't be settled without funding from the insurance providers, diocese attorney Mike Patterson told Sherlock.

"Although we are still on the train, it is not moving as quickly as we thought it would," Patterson said.

The diocese has filed claims with 16 insurers. Several insurers have filed lawsuits challenging those claims, saying they should not have to pay damages for abuse that occurred before their policies went into effect.

Sherlock had previously set the first trial for December, so with prospects of a settlement looking dimmer, the judge held a hearing Wednesday to discuss just how to manage jury trials for 360 people.

The sides agreed the first trial would consist of just one or two plaintiffs from the first of the two lawsuits filed, followed by additional trials about every six months with six or eight plaintiffs each.

But before that first trial happens, attorneys for both the diocese and the plaintiffs are awaiting a ruling by Sherlock on the scope of the insurers' coverage that may speed up a resolution.

The diocese is asking Sherlock to adopt a "continuous trigger" rule that would put the insurance companies on the hook for physical and emotional injuries caused by the clergy abuse, even if the actual abuse happened before the policies went into effect.

The physical and emotional injuries caused by sex abuse are continuous and progressive after the initial abuse occurred, attorneys for the diocese argued. They compared it to asbestos-related diseases in which an injury from breathing in the toxic fibers slowly grows and may not manifest for years.

"As with an asbestos related injury, if left untreated, being sexually abused as a child causes continuous and progressive bodily injury throughout the course of the victim's life," diocese attorney William Driscoll wrote in his June 14 court filing.

The insurance companies say that while the "continuous trigger" has been applied in asbestos cases, no court has ever used it in a sex-abuse claim.

Sex abuse has a definitive beginning and end, and an insurance company should not have to cover abuse that happened years before its policies took effect, St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co. attorney Patrick Sullivan said in his response to the diocese's request.

Sullivan compared it to a victim in an explosion or a car accident. The person may suffer physical and emotional injuries over several years, but that doesn't trigger insurance coverage from policies that were put in place after the accident, he said.

He asked the judge to dismiss the diocese's request and rule that St. Paul has no duty to defend or indemnify the diocese for claims before its policies went into effect in 1973.

"The diocese's failure to purchase insurance and/or maintain its records cannot justify the extreme, unfair, and unprecedented result for which it advocates," he wrote.