Sixteen Tabs

Right now I have sixteen tabs in my browser gathering material as I consider a USCCB plan to address the Joe Biden communion issue at their June meeting.

I wrote last week about an article I haven’t even linked to again: “I must admit that if Father Louis Cameli had come down differently on communion for a lesbian woman in a same-sex union, I would not be so content with his meticulous examination of the issue in America.”

I said then, “There is still much discussion of the controversy about the blessing of gay unions, and Cameli makes me aware that LGBTQ persons, not to mention the divorced and remarried and even Catholic politicians, confront uncertain outcomes whenever they approach the communion rail. How can we tolerate this?” This time I have added the bold.

I have tried to stay away from American politics in this blog, not always successfully. How do I do that when the Bishops themselves do not?

David Crary of the AP has interviewed Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, who chairs the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities about the bishops sending, as Crary summarizes, “a tougher-than-ever message to President Joe Biden and other Catholic politicians: Don’t receive Communion if you persist in public advocacy of abortion rights.” This article in America includes comments from bishops in favor and opposed and from a couple of theologians as well, the only woman being professor Margaret McGuinness of La Salle University in Philadelphia.

With other WOC members, I was barred by guards outside a luxury resort when we wanted to present “A Church for Our Daughters” to the bishops at the 2016 USCCB summer meeting. I do wonder just exactly who Naumann is speaking for, and whether enough Bishops will discover some common sense and oppose this measure. Bishops John Stowe and Robert McElroy are quoted by Crary, but they do not expect a sufficient number of others to stray from the party line.

I have no clue where the June 2021 meeting will be held and wonder: Who could the Bishops listen to?

1. Tom Reese, after surveying the divisions in church hierarchy and people in an article in America, considers communication: “The first job…is to listen. Listening is just as important a ministry as preaching.”
   
   
2. Joan Chittister in NCR begins: “Over the years, we have begun to discover some differences between Jesus and the church: Jesus has credibility.” Her article is about synodality, and she gives a clear explanation of how this process will succeed or fail, using the Australian Synod, now in process, as an example. Hint: listen to the laity or don’t ask them for their opinions. If you do, they’ll talk about women’s ordination or whatever else is on their minds.
   

3. John Warhurst, an emeritus professor of political science in Australia, has provided a primary source for Chittister in La Croix International, demonstrating how the 17,500 submissions by “ordinary Catholics” were ignored.
   
   
4. Rebecca Bratton Weiss in NCR profiles several “exiles” who left the church because of leaders and members who are increasingly identified with Trumpian policies.
   
   
5. Sr. Fran Ferder and Fr. John Heagle, way back in February, published in NCR a psychological analysis of Trump, and then address why many bishops and a majority of white Catholics probably voted for him. “The failure of prophetic imagination” is one of their conclusions.
   
   
6. Christopher White in NCR details a conference at Villanova Law School on the “Biden Effect,” and
   calmly says the event “elevated a number of voices…sympathetic to denying the president Communion.”
   
   
7. Michael Sean Winters the next day in NCR opines that at least one speaker “gives Biden way too much credit. The majority of U.S. bishops have painted themselves as ‘doctrinaire’ and ‘aligned against the message of mercy preached by Pope Francis’ without any help from the man in the White House.” He gives a complex explanation of the Canon Law issues at stake, quoting professor M. Cathleen Kaveny of Boston College and the Cameli article, mentioned above.
   
   
8. Christina Traina of Fordham University is more critical than either Winters or I are of Cameli’s solution in New Ways Ministry’s Bondings 2.0. She characterizes it as, “offer Eucharist to same-gender couples who genuinely want it and don’t publicly exhibit sexual involvement.” Traina finds this half-solution not much better than the paired America article arguing for not making the offer at all. It’s by Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver.
   
   
9. Alexis Buisson in La Croix International provides a quick review of “Biden and the Bishops” to date.
   
   
10. And finally, I see Rob Esdaile, a parish priest in England, who writes for this Vocation
    Week in The Tablet about why most Catholics do not lift their voices in prayer for this annual intention.

Do you remember the question I asked as I began this list: Who could the Bishops listen to? I wish some synodal process would result in voices like Esdaile’s being lifted up.

"While I do not regret my choice and am delighted to welcome others who discern a call to ordination, personally I’d rather pray for the vocation of the community than for the sending of a new cleric from elsewhere. If a congregation has a healthy understanding of the call of each member to use their gifts in the service of all, then there is a hope of new individual vocations to ordained ministry and lay pastoral leadership being recognised, supported and brought to fruition – assuming we don’t narrow the selection criteria too much before we start. Instead of searching among the thinning ranks of twenty- and thirty-something unattached males at Sunday mass, we need to look to those within the community who already live as disciples, fully involved and committed, with a habit of prayer and a life of service, for signs of the Lord supplying our need."

When this reflection slides into my inbox, I decide to abandon the power plays of the bishops and ignore other articles that could continue my dispiriting survey. The power to change Canon Law resides in Rome, but the power to live as the one true church lives in all of us. Our church and our country should not be at the mercy of those who show no mercy or discernment.