Kung's Call For Reform: Part II

The best part of Kung’s letter to the bishops is his listing of the missed opportunities and the failed initiatives of Benedict XVI. I have listed some of them below. Kung’s suggestions embody the spirit of Vatican II.

I have this additional comment on Kung’s letter. If Benedict is going to take in the illegally consecrated bishops of the Pius X Society, then he should be willing to take in all the newly consecrated Womenbishops of the world.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0416/1224268443283.html?via=rel

Missed is the opportunity for a dialogue with Muslims in an atmosphere of mutual trust: Instead, in his ill-advised but symptomatic 2006 Regensburg lecture, Benedict caricatured Islam as a religion of violence and inhumanity and thus evoked enduring Muslim mistrust.
Missed is the opportunity for reconciliation with the colonised indigenous peoples of Latin America: Instead, the pope asserted in all seriousness that they had been “longing” for the religion of their European conquerors.
Missed is the opportunity to help the people of Africa by allowing the use of birth control to fight overpopulation and condoms to fight the spread of HIV.
Missed is the opportunity to make peace with modern science by clearly affirming the theory of evolution and accepting stem-cell research.
Missed is the opportunity to make the spirit of the Second Vatican Council the compass for the whole Catholic Church, including the Vatican itself, and thus to promote the needed reforms in the church.
This last point, respected bishops, is the most serious of all. Time and again, this pope has added qualifications to the conciliar texts and interpreted them against the spirit of the council fathers. Time and again, he has taken an express stand against the Ecumenical Council, which according to canon law represents the highest authority in the Catholic Church:
He has taken the bishops of the traditionalist Pius X Society back into the church without any preconditions – bishops who were illegally consecrated outside the Catholic Church and who reject central points of the Second Vatican Council (including liturgical reform, freedom of religion and the rapprochement with Judaism).
He promotes the medieval Tridentine Mass by all possible means and occasionally celebrates the Eucharist in Latin with his back to the congregation.
He refuses to put into effect the rapprochement with the Anglican Church, which was laid out in official ecumenical documents by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, and has attempted instead to lure married Anglican clergy into the Roman Catholic Church by freeing them from the very rule of celibacy that has forced tens of thousands of Roman Catholic priests out of office.
He has actively reinforced the anti-conciliar forces in the church by appointing reactionary officials to key offices in the Curia (including the secretariat of state, and positions in the liturgical commission) while appointing reactionary bishops around the world.

Kung Writes To Bishops: Calls For Reform

Huns Kung has written a letter to the world's Roman Catholic Bishops asking them to speak up and take some ownership for the mess the church is in. The full article can be found in the Irish Times for April 16th. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0416/1224268443283.html?via=rel
The following is a list of six requests Kung makes to the bishops.

1. Do not keep silent: By keeping silent in the face of so many serious grievances, you taint yourselves with guilt. When you feel that certain laws, directives and measures are counterproductive, you should say this in public. Send Rome not professions of your devotion, but rather calls for reform!

2. Set about reform: Too many in the church and in the episcopate complain about Rome, but do nothing themselves. When people no longer attend church in a diocese, when the ministry bears little fruit, when the public is kept in ignorance about the needs of the world, when ecumenical co-operation is reduced to a minimum, then the blame cannot simply be shoved off on Rome. Whether bishop, priest, layman or laywoman – everyone can do something for the renewal of the church within his own sphere of influence, be it large or small. Many of the great achievements that have occurred in the individual parishes and in the church at large owe their origin to the initiative of an individual or a small group. As bishops, you should support such initiatives and, especially given the present situation, you should respond to the just complaints of the faithful.

3. Act in a collegial way: After heated debate and against the persistent opposition of the Curia, the Second Vatican Council decreed the collegiality of the pope and the bishops. It did so in the sense of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Peter did not act alone without the college of the apostles. In the post-conciliar era, however, the pope and the Curia have ignored this decree. Just two years after the council, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical defending the controversial celibacy law without the slightest consultation of the bishops. Since then, papal politics and the papal magisterium have continued to act in the old, uncollegial fashion. Even in liturgical matters, the pope rules as an autocrat over and against the bishops. He is happy to surround himself with them as long as they are nothing more than stage extras with neither voices nor voting rights. This is why, venerable bishops, you should not act for yourselves alone, but rather in the community of the other bishops, of the priests and of the men and women who make up the church.
4. Unconditional obedience is owed to God alone: Although at your episcopal consecration you had to take an oath of unconditional obedience to the pope, you know that unconditional obedience can never be paid to any human authority; it is due to God alone. For this reason, you should not feel impeded by your oath to speak the truth about the current crisis facing the church, your diocese and your country. Your model should be the apostle Paul, who dared to oppose Peter “to his face since he was manifestly in the wrong”! ( Galatians 2:11 ). Pressuring the Roman authorities in the spirit of Christian fraternity can be permissible and even necessary when they fail to live up to the spirit of the Gospel and its mission. The use of the vernacular in the liturgy, the changes in the regulations governing mixed marriages, the affirmation of tolerance, democracy and human rights, the opening up of an ecumenical approach, and the many other reforms of Vatican II were only achieved because of tenacious pressure from below.

5. Work for regional solutions: The Vatican has frequently turned a deaf ear to the well-founded demands of the episcopate, the priests and the laity. This is all the more reason for seeking wise regional solutions. As you are well aware, the rule of celibacy, which was inherited from the Middle Ages, represents a particularly delicate problem. In the context of today’s clerical abuse scandal, the practice has been increasingly called into question. Against the expressed will of Rome, a change would appear hardly possible; yet this is no reason for passive resignation. When a priest, after mature consideration, wishes to marry, there is no reason why he must automatically resign his office when his bishop and his parish choose to stand behind him. Individual episcopal conferences could take the lead with regional solutions. It would be better, however, to seek a solution for the whole church, therefore:

6. Call for a council: Just as the achievement of liturgical reform, religious freedom, ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue required an ecumenical council, so now a council is needed to solve the dramatically escalating problems calling for reform. In the century before the Reformation, the Council of Constance decreed that councils should be held every five years. Yet the Roman Curia successfully managed to circumvent this ruling. There is no question that the Curia, fearing a limitation of its power, would do everything in its power to prevent a council coming together in the present situation. Thus it is up to you to push through the calling of a council or at least a representative assembly of bishops.



I have the feeling reading the rest of Kung's letter outlining the failures of Benedict's leadership that the present pope is leading the church back to the 1950's.

Then I read these statistics about the numbers of Catholics leaving the Roman Catholic Church in droves from two dioceses in southern Germany, the pope's homeland and where some of my ancestors come from; and I wonder how much longer the pope, the bishops, or any serious catholic can ignore the present crisis. Although this letter is addressed to bishops, there are many suggestions that can be taken up by anyone who cares about the Catholic Church.

http://www.expatica.com/de/news/german-rss-news/german-catholics-leaving-church-in-droves:-report_36966.html


There is wisdom in Kung's letter. It makes me think that the wrong man has been elected pope.

Holy Week 2010

Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times this morning is a must read.

Maureen Dowd offers her opinion and the opinion of her brother Kevin who is male and conservative since the New York Archdiocese and Bill Donohue have been so dismissive of her and her opinions because she is a woman. Kevin Dowd writes: “In pedophilia, the church has unleashed upon itself a plague that threatens its very future, and yet it remains in a curious state of denial.”

Maureen Dowd adds: “I’ve been wondering, given the vitriolic reaction of the New York archbishop to my column defending nuns and the dismissive reaction of the Vatican to my column denouncing the church’s response to the pedophilia scandal, if they are able to take a woman’s voice seriously. Some, like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, seem to think women are trying to undermine the church because of abortion and women’s ordination.”

She continues: “We must reassess. Married priests and laypeople giving the sacraments are not going to destroy the church. Based on what we have seen the last 10 years, they would be a bargain.”

Read the whole column here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/opinion/07dowd.html?ref=opinion

In my opinion Holy Week 2010 will mark another turning point in the history of Vatican II. If it takes a hundred years after a council to get where it was pointing, the church today seems to be moving away once again from the grip of the conservative and fundamentalist Catholics. The reality of the Catholic Church in Holy Week 2010 was that of Humpty Dumpty smashed. Just look at the tortured face of Benedict and his defenders. Through all the weeping and gnashing of teeth, there are glimmers that the vision of the Church of Vatican II still lives.

Bishop Joan Houk - Womanbishop
Speaks at Vanderbilt Divinty School

UPDATE -- February 19, 2010 -- Video of Bishop Joan Houk's talk at Vanderbilt University Divinity School http://www.vanderbilt.edu/divinity/lecture_20100202.php

I was at Bishop Joan Houk’s talk last evening at Vanderbilt. It was really my first up close experience with the issue of the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church. I came away very impressed.

Bishop Joan impressed me, first of all, as a woman with both feet firmly planted on the ground. She seems to have done all things well. She is still very happily married celebrating fifty years with her husband. She talked about her six children and grandchildren and now two great grandchildren. She has taught grade school. She has been involved in the mission of the Roman Catholic Church working in priestless counties in Kentucky. She has the academic qualifications expected of priesthood candidates today.

I think I was most impressed when she departed from the prepared text and talked of her own passion for the equality of women. She spoke of her experience working in a women’s shelter with battered, abused and raped women. She linked this experience to the Roman Catholic Church and the many ways in which the church directly and indirectly treats women as inferior. The church is complicit in the abuse of women.

Bishop Joan seemed challenged and said she would think about a comment made to her from a man in the audience who is a lawyer suggesting she needed to get tougher in her approach to the church. You know, maybe knocking the bishop’s hat off. She offered that this was not her approach. What she did say, and what resonated with me, is that what really needs to be done is to get the story out. Bishop Joan and the other womenbishops and womenpriests are doing a ministry rooted in the gospel.

This is what also impressed me. Bishop Joan talked about how she already was doing the things a priest would do before she was ordained. Those things were rooted in her day to day experience, like the day she went to visit one of her sick sixth grader’s in the hospital and prayed for him and laid hands on him even though a “real” priest was in the background. She is the one who had the personal connection with the student. I think our present idea of ordination and who can do priestly things is too constricted.

Benedict and some of his bishops can try to build higher and higher walls to keep women like Bishop Joan Houk out. I see a rising tide against all these walls. I’d like to call it grace or the work of the Holy Spirit. This was a very good, even historic evening, at least for me.

Women's Ordination -- Bishop Andrea M. Johnson

UPDATE--February 10, 2010--Bishop Andrea Johnson is snowbound. Another womanbishop, Bishop Joan Houk will be substituting for her.

Here is a story about the event at the blog of the Nashville Scene...

http://blogs.nashvillescene.com/pitw/2010/02/another_event_you_wont_read_ab.php

Bishop Andrea M Johnson will be coming to speak in Nashville on the ordination of women to the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church.

Bishop Johnson was ordained a womanpriest in 2007 and a womanbishop in 2009.

She will be speaking at Vanderbilt University on Wednesday evening February 10, 2010 at 8:00 PM in the Arts Room of the Divinity School.

This event is being sponsored by Anawim , the Vanderbilt Office of Women’s Concerns, the Vanderbilt Carpenter Program, the Vanderbilt Office of Religious Life, and the Society of St. Cornelius (DIV Catholic student organization).

A Follow-up Disscussion

On Thursday afternoon February 18th. from 4:00 PM until 5:30 PM there will be a follow-up panel discussion on the broader topic of women’s ordination in other denominations. The panel will include Professors Patout Burns (Catholic studies chair), Doug Meeks (Methodist studies chair), Ted Smith (PC-USA clergy and very active in Covenant Network), Eileen Campbell-Reed (her disertation was on the effects of the controversy over women's ordination in the SBC on women seeking ordination; she is also active in progressive Baptist circles on lesbian and gay ordination). Ellen T. Armour who is the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair in Feminist Theology and Director of the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality will be the panel moderator. The location for this discussion will be announced later.