Catholics and Quakers

Martin Kelly has an interesting post about Quakers and Roman Catholics who "get it" about their faiths bumping heads with people who don't, especially with those who have institutional power. I'll return to his central questions another day-- Why would someone who dislikes Catholic culture and wants to dismantle it's infrastructure become a priest and a career bureaucrat? For that matter why do so many people want to call themselves Quakers when they can't stand basic Quaker theology? and So what would a spiritual community for these outsider Friends [Friends who want to build a true faith community as opposed to maintaining the current bureacracy] look like? (Martin would see the last question, I think, as the central question and the first question as an aside.)

For today, I'll focus on what he writes about the closing of his wife's Roman Catholic parish church:

The current lightening-fast closure of sixty-some churches is the first step of an ambitious plan; manufactured priest shortages and soon-to-be overcrowded churches will be used to justify even more radical changes. In about twenty years time, the 125 churches that exist today will have been sold off. What's left of a half million faithful will be herded into a dozen or so mega-churches, with theology borrowed from generic liberalism, style from feel-good evangelicalism, and organization from consultant culture.

From my encounters as a religion reporter, I agree that the Roman Catholic trend is towards organizing the faithful into mega-churches. I think this a response to the priest shortage. (I'm not sure what Martin means by a manufactured shortage, as the numbers I've seen do show a steep decline in priests. Perhaps he means manufactured in the sense of the church's refusal to ordain women or married men? Or used in this context as an excuse to rush church closings?) However, whether or not the shortage is real, one way to avoid a shortage is not to have as many parishes and hence not to need as many priests. Needing fewer priests also allows the church to be more selective in choosing its priest candidates, which must weigh heavily on the collective mind of the Catholic hierarchy after the recent scandals.

Whatever the reason, the larger point is that people in a new, huge church are likely to lose the sense of connection and community a small, historic parish church can offer. And the lay people, many of whom will be women and married men, will be tapped to perform the duties priests in small parishes once could do themselves. How likely are these people to experience resentment over restrictions that "allow" them to do plenty of hard work but not share in power?

The deeper point (as opposed to the larger point!) involves the haste Martin speaks of. Why rush this important process? I've read that haste is of the devil. Any decision that's rushed through in a blur probably had some facets that wouldn't have stood up under closer scrutiny. The most obvious example is the rush to go to war in Iraq. The more slowly a decision is made (assuming we're not in a genuinely life-threatening or otherwise emergency situation), the more likely it is to be spiritually renewing. For example, taking the time to visit and revisit the question within Baltimore Yearly Meeting of whether or not to stay affiliated with FUM brings out previously unconsidered viewpoints, gives more and more people a voice in the process and is leading to a gentling of the earlier, more inflamed sentiments of some Quakers.

Of course, working against careful, spirit-based and inclusive decision-making is the culture we live in, which is hooked on speed. I struggle constantly to get slowed down to God's pace because God's rhythm is so different from the culture's frenzy. I more and more am convinced that a true point of spiritual discipline is to form us to resist the world's pace.

I can't help but contrast the bureaucratic "efficiency" of closing small churches and streamlining Catholics into megachurches, trampling on some people's feelings and sense of community, with Mother Teresa's insight that Christianity is all about small acts done lovingly.

Catholicism: Defender of the rational?

Below are excerpts from two intriguing Washington Post op-ed pieces today about the Pope. (Note: For all that I write about Catholicism, I am not and never have been Catholic.) It sounds to me as if the Pope, Shane Claiborne and Quakers might have a lot in common:

"Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted," [the Pople] told the country's Catholic bishops on Wednesday. "Only when their faith permeates every aspect of their lives do Christians become truly open to the transforming power of the Gospel."

That is a demanding and unsettling standard for the right and the left alike. Benedict asked a pointed question: "Is it consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalized, to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching, or to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death?"

This is the thinking of a communitarian counseling against radical individualism. "In a society which values personal freedom and autonomy," he said, "it is easy to lose sight of our dependence on others as well as the responsibilities that we bear towards them. . . . We were created as social beings who find fulfillment only in love -- for God and for our neighbor." It is this attitude that Benedict described as "countercultural." Dionne, April 18, 2007


I think it can't be said too often that radical individualism is NOT countercultural. It may have been in 1970, but not any more.

And more:

First, despite charges of dogmatism, the church is the main defender of reason in the modern world. It teaches the possibility that moral truth can be known through reflection and argument. It criticizes what Pope Benedict XVI has called the "dictatorship of relativism" -- a belief "that does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires." "Being an adult," says Benedict, "means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties."

Secularism has traditionally taught that human beings will eventually outgrow religious conviction and moral absolutism -- that skepticism is evidence of maturity. Benedict contends that modern men and women, unguided by reasoned moral beliefs, turn toward adolescent self-involvement. Their intellectual growth is stunted. In a world where all moral claims are seen as equally true and equally false -- the world, for example, of the modern university -- human conscience is reduced to biology or prejudice. Moral behavior may continue to ride in grooves of socialization or genetics, but moral assertions are fundamentally arbitrary -- always trumped by a two-word response: "Says you."

By asserting that the human mind can grasp moral truth, Catholicism also defends the reliability of reason against the superstitions of our time.

And this is important for a very practical reason: because a belief in human rights is also a moral conviction. Catholicism teaches that relativism and a purely material view of man have disturbing social consequences. "The criterion of personal dignity," wrote Pope John Paul II, "which demands respect, generosity and service -- is replaced by the criterion of efficiency, functionality and usefulness: others are considered not for what they 'are,' but for what they 'have, do and produce.' This is the supremacy of the strong over the weak."

Gerson, April 18, 2008

What do you think?