Homily for September 23, 2018 Fr Ben
Hawley, SJ
The 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time Holy Trinity Parish
Washington DC
Jesus predicts his own suffering and death in
today’s gospel, in part because he has come to believe that he is the Messiah and
because he knows what we know, that evil will always attack the good and that
the powerful will always protect their power with hostility.
These principles apply to you and me as we
confront the church’s present-day distress. To the extent we are critical, we
must be ready for the hostile gossip and backbiting that our first reading
describes and perhaps even the threat of death our gospel describes - not physical death perhaps but rejection and
exclusion. We must be wise in discerning
how to help the church move forward.
You might ask me though, “Forward from what? to
where or to what?”
My answer is, “From being a post-Vatican II church
to being a Vatican III church.”
“Why Vatican III?” I hear you ask me.
We will not appreciate the church’s present
moment unless we realize that popes, cardinals, and bishops have for the last
thousand years arrogated to themselves total control of the church’s self-definition
and functions. The present crisis grows
out of this long history, and we will not find resolution apart from this
history.
Let me sketch this history in a few short
paragraphs, recognizing how sketchy this overview must be, not to mention the
potential for it to be misleading and perhaps even wrong.
St Paul’s idea of church was a number of house
churches in larger cities, loosely connected within the city by personal
relationships and unified within the city and across cities by weekly gatherings
to read Jewish scripture, sing newly-created hymns about Jesus’ ministry, pray
and celebrate the Eucharist.
By the late first century senior community
members, often civil magistrates, had become the sole celebrants of the
Eucharist with the title of bishop. Bishops had presbyters and deacons as
assistants, but the office of priest did not emerge until the 5th Century.
The pope as an historical figure had yet to emerge.
By the 7th, 8th and 9th
Centuries certain popes had attained significant stature: to name two, Gregory
the Great, a reformer in the 7th Century, and Pope Leo III who crowned
Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800 AD. But the institution was still
fragmentary.
By contrast - in the High Middle Ages the church became
formalized as an institution as newly-created canon law became the church’s
legal system. Popes became canon lawyers, and the institution modeled itself on
the feudal system of king, nobles, and serfs. The college of cardinals emerged as
a papal court.
This institutional church was separate from and
in the bishops’ view superior to civil authority. St Thomas Aquinas gave the
institution a formal system of abstract philosophical theology that held sway
for the next 800 years.
In the Renaissance popes and cardinals became wealthy
and lived as king and nobles alongside secular kings and nobles. Cardinals became
princes of the church. The church institution became increasingly identified
with its wealthy, visible hierarchy. Canon
law and Aquinas’ abstract philosophical theology provided the foundation of continuity.
In the early 1500s the Protestant Reformation threatened
this institution. In fearful reaction the popes of the time created the
Inquisition and the List of Forbidden Books. The former is now the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith, the premiere office in the Vatican, and the List
of Forbidden Books was maintained until its abolition in 1966.
The Council of Trent, meeting in the mid-1500s,
anathematized all who protested and doubled down on the hierarchy’s authority
over theology, sacraments and church administration.
In the 1600s mathematics and the natural sciences
emerged as intellectual disciplines at odds with a purely theological
explanation of physical phenomena, and Enlightenment ideas of individual
liberty challenged the church’s feudal authoritarianism.
The violent anti-clericalism of the French
Revolution of the late 18th Century, the anti-monarchist revolutions
of the 19th Century, as well as the loss of papal lands, and the
rise of social sciences, psychology, and other disciples challenged the hierarchy’s
claim to absolute authority, power and abstract knowledge based in scripture
and tradition.
In response popes continued to assert the
church’s authority and condemn these perceived threats. In 1864 Pius IX published the Syllabus of
Errors. The first Vatican Council of 1870, known as Vatican I, proclaimed the
infallibility of the pope, condemned what then was called Modernism, and affirmed
yet again Thomas Aquinas’ abstract system as the church’s preeminent theology.
By contrast - in calling Vatican II in 1962 John XXIII, a historian by training, asked the
Council’s bishops to return to the history of the early church to discover what
the scripture writers and early documents told us about how Jesus’ early
followers understood him and his mission, as well as how they lived and
worshipped. Those clearer
understandings, the pope said, could renew the church in the present day.
Not surprisingly, as we read the documents of
Vatican II, we can hear the voices of bishops articulating now-familiar principles
of renewal:
-- the inclusive
image of the church as the People of God and the Body of Christ, images found
in Jewish and Christian scripture, who are organized in a hierarchical
structure that ensured order without centralizing control;
-- the
need for the laity’s “full, conscious and active participation” in the sacraments;
-- the need
to read and interpret scripture in historical context; and, perhaps most
remarkably,
-- the
right of all people to religious liberty – to choose their mode of religious
belief, including holding no belief.
Also, not surprisingly, in these documents we
hear the voices of bishops who oppose these principles as violations of
tradition and teaching.
In trying to find a way forward through and
beyond the present crisis, I think we need to recognize that the crisis itself and
the bishops’ inadequate reactions and refusals to act arise out of principles
that the church’s hierarchy has espoused for centuries, for example,
-- the episcopal
insistence on theological understandings of human sexuality, emotional
maturation, and deep relationship that reject insights from psychology or human
experience;
(Unfortunately, we must admit the ironic
exception of the bishops’ being giving mistaken information when they did ask psychologists
about abusive priests.)
--
episcopal refusal to recognize civil authority in matters of criminality,
preferring to see misbehavior as sin;
--
episcopal rejection of checks and balances on church operations and
thereby a refusal to provide accountability; and, finally,
-- continued
episcopal use of the language of nobility and ultimate authority, as opposed to
the language of being shepherds who smell like their sheep.
So, how do we move forward? The listening
sessions that have taken place in this parish and those we will continue to
have are essential to our deeper understanding of one another and of these
issues.
In addition, though, I think we must understand
the church’s history for several reasons:
First, the history helps us see that the Vatican
II bishops and the documents they have left us are the guides for present-day
bishops and laity alike;
Second, the history helps us see why some bishops
continue to resist change and why they are willing to oppose Pope Francis, a
reaction unthinkable under the two prior popes; and
Third, the history helps us name the areas of
resistance that are not simply resistances to resolving the present-day crisis
but are resistances to allowing the full flowering of a Vatican III church,
freed from the excesses of the past thousand years.
Finally, you and I must not underestimate the
magnitude of the needed change nor the likely resistance to change. The result could
be either no change or only superficial change. Or the result could be change along
with the persecution of those calling for change.
But Jesus is our guide and model. Where the best
of his bishops have led, we can follow. Where the most resistant of his bishops
have resisted, we can be assured of his presence in his church, whether we are
persecuted or not and whether Vatican III happens within our lifetimes or not.
Let’s drink deeply of his Holy Spirit in this
Eucharist and leave this place with our courage renewed and our faith deepened.
He conquered death, and with him we can conquer hardship and discouragement to
bring his word of joy and new life to our suffering world.
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