Word Up

John Allen's Word from Rome.

He begins by discussing Catholicism in the Global South, with this rather useful analogy:

In other words, the central challenge for world Catholicism at the moment is not decline, but growth, and making sense of the new interactions between faith and culture this growth is generating.

"Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" has passed into the cultural idiom as a synonym for blithe indifference to an underlying crisis. I would suggest that much conversation in Western Catholicism these days is more akin to arguing over which buggy whips are best, while ignoring the emergence of the car; that is, a completely new world is taking shape, one destined to render many of this era's debates obsolete.

What I have called the "upside down church" of the future, one driven increasingly by the experience and priorities of the South, is likely to take scant interest in matters that have set the Catholic agenda in the West for more than a century, such as the balance of power between Rome and the bishops, or debates over various questions of doctrine. Instead, it will be the "cash value" of Catholicism in the confrontation with poverty, disease, corruption, war and cultural conflict that will increasingly be on the minds of most Catholics on the planet.

Here's a fascinating observation:

Third, as Lamin Sanneh, a native of Ghana who now teaches at the Yale Divinity School, notes in his 2003 book Whose Religion is Christianity?, the 20th century explosion in Christianity occurred at a time when "conversion" had become a bad word. Thus it has largely flown below the radar.

"Political correctness created a PR vacuum," Sanneh wrote.

Pope to Israel in 2007?

A long-time veteran of Jewish-Catholic relations told NCR this week that the Vatican has confirmed Benedict XVI's intention to visit Israel in 2007, though no date has yet been established for the trip.

According to this source, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo relayed the pope's intention in conversations with Israeli officials.

Lajolo, this source said, expressed two "desires" with regard to the prospective visit. The first is that long-running negotiations between Israel and the Vatican over the tax and juridical status of church institutions in Israel will be resolved before it happens. The second is that no violence will occur during the pope's trip, to avoid it being "instrumentalized" to serve the political ends of any party to the Middle East conflict.

According to this source, however, Lajolo said these were "desires" rather than conditions that must be satisfied before the trip can take place.

Though no itinerary has been discussed, when Benedict XVI met with Israeli President Moshe Katsav last November, he expressed interest in seeing Meggido, a site in northern Israel where archeologists recently unearthed what is believed to be the oldest Christian church yet discovered. Those remains date to the end of the third century.

Some clarification on the Oregon judge's decision allowing the Vatican to be named as a defendant:

Most legal experts say it's a long shot that the court will eventually take jurisdiction, among other things because it's a stretch to argue that every Catholic priest, brother and sister in the world is an "agent" of the Vatican. (That would suggest a corps of more than 1.2 million Vatican "agents" in every nook and cranny of the planet). Normally an "agent" or "employee" is defined as someone whose day-to-day activities are directed by the employer, who is supervised by the employer, and whose paycheck is signed by the employer. It would be difficult, experts say, to show that such was the case with Ronan.

Further, it would have to be shown that the "sovereign," meaning the Holy See, caused the abuse in Oregon to take place, or that it knew of the abuse and failed to stop it. One would have to prove that someone in the Vatican tracked Ronan's affairs, and hence in theory should have known what he was up to.

Aside from the Oregon and Kentucky cases, there's one other lawsuit currently making its way through American courts that seeks to establish jurisdiction over an agency of the Holy See -- the Institute for the Works of Religion, popularly known as the "Vatican Bank." Alperin v. Vatican Bank deals with the Vatican's alleged role in recycling loot stolen by the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime in Croatia during World War II (the Franciscan Order is also named as a defendant).

To date, the wall of sovereign immunity in American courts has held up where the Vatican is concerned. As with floods and hurricanes, however, the problem with lawsuits is that it only takes one.

Comments

[Janice]

It's interesting that John Allen has again revealed his liberal stripes: we in the West are again arguing over "buggy whips" as against the real interests of the emerging Catholicism of the South, which is poverty, disease, corruption, and war. Allen simply does not understand that beginning with orthopraxis is not the Roman Catholic way. One must start with orthodoxy (i.e., the hated doctrine, which for most Catholic liberals has been irrelevant for the past forty years). Orthodoxy, which begins with the praise of God, is the font out of which flows right belief, from which flows right action. Therefore, doctrine is essential. It guides one's actions in fighting such things as poverty, disease, corruption, and war. Obviously, Catholic methods of eradicating these differ from secular methods. Even apart from these items, Catholic doctrine in itself is important and time spent on issues of doctrine is not wasted as Allen seems to think. The Catholic Church is not just another social service agency.

[Christine]

"The Catholic Church is not just another social service agency."

Pope John Paul II said as much.

The emergence of spiritism and animism alongside and within the Christianity of the South is something that has to be reckoned with.

There are some Catholic truths that are not "western" or "southern" but a core part of the deposit of the faith. If those disappear then the "exploding growth" in the South won't mean much.

[Jimmy Mac]

" Instead, it will be the "cash value" of Catholicism in the confrontation with poverty, disease, corruption, war and cultural conflict that will increasingly be on the minds of most Catholics on the planet. "

Sure smacks of a Peace & Justice emphases ... maybe the Southern church won't be too worried about liturgical nits and gnats.

[Christine]

"maybe the Southern church won't be too worried about liturgical nits and gnats"

Hmmm -- wanna tell that to the Anglican Bishops of Africa who are contending with the ECUSA as we speak ??

[Ignacio]

1. Coming from Argentina, I get somehow baffled at expressions such as "we in the west... meanwhile, in the south (Latin America)". I believe Allen could save his condescending tone for himself while reporting. Culturally, historically and racially, South America is as western as N. America or Europe. The same culture wars that take place there are fought here.

2. In South America, Catholicism is far from new and, I believe, it is not getting stronger by any means. That is a fact. I believe Allen's analysis applies only to Africa and India.

3. I endorse Janice comment. Allen's positions is just the usual liberal/progressive crap. The more "traditional" Catholicism is here, the stronger it is. The "poverty, corruption, social justice" agenda is -and is perceived here- as secondary.

[Fortiterinre]

The "cash value" comment simultaneously bothers me and confuses me. Yes, the southern hemisphere is largely poor and often wracked with violence, but it has been for centuries. If we are still worrying about "buggy whips," I suspect it's because it's still pretty hard to drive the buggy without them.

[Sandra Miesel]

I share the doubts of Chrsitie about the long term orthodoxy of our "southern" component. Will African Catholicism of the future look like the syncretic Afro-Christian cults long established in the New World? Would it really be an advance to have a hundred million black Africans practicing animism, ancestor worship, and spirit-possession? And as for Latin America. how many Christians will be some species of Protestant in the long run rather than reproducing ancestral Catholicism? Syncretism is at work here, too, and long-buried paganism is re-emerging among the Maya among other groups.

[Caroline Gissler]

I don't understand what Allen means by "cash value" of Catholicism in combating poverty etc. Schools? hospitals? that sort of thing? Denouncing governments for not doing more and more? Instilling in Catholics moral behaviors which are conducive to getting out of poverty?

What has been the "cash value"of Catholicism in combating poverty in Latin America since 1492?

[JP]

I have neighbors whose father comes from south of the border. They are very nice people. On a number of occaisons they have invited us to thier Pentecostal Church despite me telling them that we are practicing Catholics. One day, when I went to fetch my children who were playing in thier house, I noticed a large number of candles and prints on thier kitchen wall that were unmistakenly catholics. They pictures were mainly of Catholic Saints, The Holy Mother, and the Scared Heart.

I don't know if Central American Pentecostals keep some vestige of the catholic heritage, and have somehow mixed into thier Protestantism, but
I cannot imagine this happening in other Protestant churches. Are these newer denominations bereft of the historical protestant crtitique of The Church of Rome, or are they more "cultish"?

I also know of an acquaintance at work who was born in Mexico, but is a non-practicing Catholic. She still speaks foundly of Our Lady of Gaudelupe, but finds no reason whatsoever to practice or beleive in the Faith.

[mulopwepaul]

Southern communities are able to work more unitedly on social concerns because they are more united on moral ones.

Rainbow sashers and their ilk would be inconceivable in the Ivory Coast.

PVO

[Sherry Weddell]

I get the feeling that I am one of the few bloggers here with a specialized background in Christian missions, including studying the history of missions at the graduate school level, so here goes:

Serious sycretism had been wide-spread in Latin American Catholicism for centuries before Protestants arrived. Latin American Catholicism has always, especially at the popular level, incorporated tons of stuff from various indigenous cultures, and various occult practices. As one Puerto Rican woman, who was struggling with the consequences of heavy family involvement in the occult, put it to me : "We're 100% Catholic and 99% spiritist."

The resulting Christ-paganism has always deeply shocked Protestants in Latin America and merges in their mind with Marian devotion, etc. It is ahistorical to regard this as a recent, post-Vatican II, post-Protestant onslaught development.

But here's the deal: The only alternative to running the risk of syncretism is not evangelize at all. It has been a constant theme of discussion and tension throughout the entire history of Christian missions. Where does Christ call us to judge the culture and change our ways and where does the faith affirm our culture and bring it to fruition? What is non-negotiable and what is not?

Every culture in history has to be judged and transformed by the Gospel and every culture has resisted and responded in different ways. Every culture in history - whether Irish, German, Tamil, Igbo, or Guarani, that has deeply encountered the Gospel, has gone through an intense and continuous struggle to meld the faith and deeply entrenched cultural practices.

Those of us who are the heirs of 10 - 20 centuries of such struggle by our European forefather and mothers take many of the results for granted. It is part of the warp and woof of our being.

And yet despite many centuries of Christianity and many great saints and apostles, Europe still spawned movements like Nazism and Stalinism that were virolently anti-Christian and destroyed the lives and happiness of so many millions. You should read Deitrich von Hildebrand's description of his astonishment at seeing the cream of highly cultured and deeply Catholic Munich support Hitler. Heads of great religious orders and theologians buying in. Centuries of Christian history and decades of theological formation did not protect them. It is always difficult and none of us is immune.

We find it shocking to witness first and second generations of converts in profoundly alien cultures wrestling with issues that seem obvious and settled to us - and they, of course, are similarly scandalized by the ways in which we "historic Christian peoples" betray and distort parts of the Gospel that seem glaringly obvious to them.

The faith judges all our cultures and calls us all to repentence and transformation. None of us will ever get to the end of it in this life.

Of course, there are deep problems with syncretism in Africa. Are there seriously heretical movements present? Sure. They are no different from us or from the early Church in this respect.

The struggles in Nigeria and Nepal will be different from ours - and the resulting Catholicism will inevitably look different but it will not invalidate their faith and what God has done in their midst any more than the long history of superstition and corruption and the wide differences in European Christanity and practice invalidates our faith.

[Christine]

"Are these newer denominations bereft of the historical protestant crtitique of The Church of Rome, or are they more "cultish"?

I suspect there are some vestiges of cultural Catholicism still at play. A while back a Lutheran church was criticized (rightly) for displaying images of Our Lady of Guadalupe in order to draw in Hispanic folks. Naturally they thought they were in a "Catholic" environment. That is blatantly dishonest as American Lutheran churches don't embrace Marian piety.

As far as "moral" issues are concerned, where the Christian faith is being solidly practiced I think mulopwepaul is right. I just read about an evangelical church in Puerto Rico that has withdrawn its affiliation with the mainland United Church of Christ. I don't know what the specific issues were but I'm betting some were gender based.

[Gregg the obscure]

While it is possible that the Church in Africa and India will "take scant interest in matters that have set the Catholic agenda in the West for more than a century", that doesn't mean that the western baby boomer view will take root there either.

[anon]

What a thoughtful, intelligent, nuanced post by Sherry Weddell.

[Tim Ferguson]

We've come to expect thoughtful, intelligent posts from Sherry Weddell. She doesn't disappoint!

[Christine]

"And yet despite many centuries of Christianity and many great saints and apostles, Europe still spawned movements like Nazism and Stalinism that were virolently anti-Christian and destroyed the lives and happiness of so many millions. You should read Deitrich von Hildebrand's description of his astonishment at seeing the cream of highly cultured and deeply Catholic Munich support Hitler. Heads of great religious orders and theologians buying in. Centuries of Christian history and decades of theological formation did not protect them. It is always difficult and none of us is immune."

Well, I certainly count both Dietrich von Hildebrand (and Dietrich Bonhoeffer) as tribal kin since we are all German born. Their writings are a much cherished part of my personal library.

Perhaps if you had lived through those times as my mother, father, grandparents (who all kept their Christian faith intact through the war) did you might have a better understanding of how and why Hitler and Stalin came to power. I am not justifying it. I'm simply saying that to see it through academic eyes is one thing. To have been there is another.

Meantime, as Jews and Arabs (ethnic kin) Muslims and Hindus, Shias and Sunnis continue to slaughter one another sixty some years later, I'm not too surprised that the human condition has changed so little.

Time will tell what kind of shape African Christianity will take. Let us hope that another massacre like the one that took place in Rwanda will never happen again.

[Christine]

Pardon me, I must back up. I always get my Dietrich's confused. Von Hildebrand was born in Florence, Italy of German parentage.

[Sherry Weddell]

Christine:

I must add the Von Hildebrand's description of his idyllic childhood in a 16th century villa in Florence, raised in a family of great intellectual, cultural, and artistic sophistication, made me *so jealous*.

[Christine]

I agree, Sherry. I loved reading his writings. His integrity shines through and I was so nourished in reading his own journey into the Church. My admiration for him is deep.

Reading Soul of A Lion was a wonderfully nostalgic journey for me. My family left Europe for Australia when I was only five but I was able to return for visits as a teenager and young adult. I am very much a product of European and American culture.

[Christine]

I must give a quick nod here to the magnificent Count Clement August von Galen, bishop of Münster, the ecclesiastical capital of the strongly Catholic region of Westphalia and the Lower Rhine in Northwest Germany. It is written of him that "He took a consistently courageous stand against the policies of Hitler and the Gestapo, and was unrelenting in his criticism of them. His immense prestige at home and abroad was what ultimately saved him from the extermination that many of his own priests suffered."

There was a much stronger protest against Hitler in Catholic Bavaria than in the predominantly Lutheran parts of Germany. Because of Luther's teachings about the role of the church and state Lutherans had a much more quietistic approach to the regime. There were, of course, exceptions such as the courageous witness of Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church.

A rabbi has uncovered dcouments that after Hitler was done eliminating the Jews the Church was his next target.

[Ed the Roman]

Hitler frequently referred to getting rid of the shavelings (priests: a reference to tonsure) once things were properly Judenrein.

[G]

I am surprised that no one has expounded or expanded on the comment that conversion was a "dirty word" for so long.

I only recently discovered (gad, I'm naive.....) that despite being middle-aged, I had not learned what virtually every similarly aged Catholic of my acquaintance had -- that we were not SUPPOSED to try to, or wish to convert other Christians or Jews, that our religion was not "better" than any other, etc., etc.

Had this been what I was told by one or two friends, I would consider it an aberation, but it was too widespread.

One even quoted a Cardinal in support of the notion that trying to convert others was a kind of sin.

So, patently, there was a large segment of the Catholic Church, in America, at least, that for the last 30 years or so, taught that missionary zeal should really only be zealous for... well, peace and justice issues.

How did this happen?

[Fr. Augustine Thompson O.P.]

I just want to say that thanks to Sherry, Tim, and any number of the other posters, this was one of the most edifying treads I have read on Open Door. There were other threads with much meat, but the thoughtfulness, self-awareness, and charity of this one has been exemplary.

Deus vos omnes benedicat.

[Sherry Weddell]

Hi Fr. Augustine:

Thanks for your kind words. I really can't take credit for the basic ideas that I wrote about because they were common coinage at the Fuller School of Cross-Cultural Ministry in LA where I studied before becoming Catholic. Standing on the shoulder of giants and all that, you know!

Oh, but seeing your name reminded me of your book Cities of God
The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125-1325 that Fr. Mike Fones (my current OP partner in crime) and I have been salivating over. I checked the publisher again and behold! it's been issued in paperback. Sold to the lowest bidder!

I do look forward to reading it. There is so much good, ground-breaking stuff on medieval lay sodalities but alot of it is in French and I'd have to find the time to teach myself French and I can't figure out where to fit it in at present. So I shall shamelessly crib from you!

As Michael Sweeney, OP was fond of observing: Intellectual theft on a grand scale is a time-honored Dominican tradition.

[Maureen]

Re: Waddell on syncretism or simultaneous religion and spiritism

Yeah, it's lot of fun to read about Irish folk practices and beliefs. Then you think, "What if I really believed that bad stuff might happen if I didn't leave a bowl of milk out, and that potential fairy child-stealers and rapists lurked everywhere?"

Suddenly, the fun just disappears.

[Sherry Weddell]

Maureen:

No one said syncretism was fun or right or orthodox. The young woman from Puerto Rico was really struggling with demonic influences because of her family's serious occultic involvement.

But it is irreducibly human. The best of us, as individuals, - even saints - have some areas where the culture of our family or childhood or that we now live in makes us deaf to or oblivious to some aspect or implication of the faith. At a lived level, all of us are "material" (unintentional) heretics.

En masse, as a whole culture, it is infinitely more complicated. Some of us are given to see things that the rest of the community needs to hear and some will respond and others resist and both parties can be seriously believing.

The image that sticks in my head is Catherine Doherty, armed only with a 25 cent Bible, spending two hours trying to persuade the Jesuit President of Fordham University and his elegantly soutaned fellow SJs to allow an outstanding black high school student to attend their school in the 1940's.

The response: our "people" are not ready for this. I presume that those Jesuits were all believing men as were many of the parents whose attitude they were so worried about. They weren't necessarily hypocrites. Long-standing culture, long-cherished communal beliefs and practice, a very natural dislike or fear of the consequences of breaking with their community, blinded them to the implications of the Gospel in the area of race.

I grew up among deeply believing Christian racists in Mississippi. I can still hear their voices saying very similar things.

This doesn't relieve any of us of the responsibility to seek the truth with our whole hearts and to live and proclaim it when we see it; but it does enable us to simultaneously regard our inevitable partial successes and partial failures and those of our own culture and other cultures with a merciful eye while still insisting upon change. Holding the two together is the only way that someone working for significant change can sustain the effort for the long-haul.

Apparently God does so or no human being who has ever lived would be saved.

[Clare Krishan]

Joining this one rather late, but I think John Allen's term 'cash value' is rather more than a moniker for 'justice-and-peace', in my mind. It's about "where the rubber meets the road" so to speak, ie a la Bonhoeffer re: discipleship and "cheap grace". Are we willing to defend the Truth when it hits our pocket book, e.g. high-tech firms co-operating with evil in China? Everyone clamors 'never again' for the horrors of WWII but when its closer to home, albeit on a smaller scale, "Nun wanted to 'hug' evil" or the weak and exploited "No life for a child" (Vatican Radio audio file on trafficking of child labor in Catholic Phillipines). Our silence imputes the guilt of sins of omission.

Mr Allen's point isn't about a 'prosperity gospel of first things' but a 'last things gospel of hope' for trials and tribulations that folks in the South live cheek-by-jowl with but could sweep the globe. We're not so familiar anymore with that kind of hardship, think drug resistent TB. I used the VHS story of Fr Damien on Molokai to get my confirmation class students to consider how folks in their neighborhood might respond if the bird flu ever reached worst-case scenario. It was sobering - few of the youth understood the heroic sacrifices necessary in the face of such suffering.

[Janice]

Sherry's comments are very "pious" and "tolerant," but her notion that the Catholicism will look very different is another word for relativism. Catholicism has to have a commonality for it to exist at all. That is why orthodox Catholics are struggling to bring back notions (what Allen refers to as "buggy whips") of objective truth and so forth. It may not seem much to Sherry, but to those of us who prize it, these notion undergird the rest of the Catholic endeavor, including Catholic culture, which purifies the cultures into which it comes, social justice, economic justice and the rest of it. Just giggling about syncretism or justifying it is part of the problem.

[amy]

Actually, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that Allen has been misread here. I see his comments about "buggy whips" being primarily directed at the institutional naval gazing of those in the West - it is not the "orthodox" or "conservative" who are "debating matters of doctrine" - right? Who's fussing about the relationship of Rome to bishops? Take the Mass translation discussion - who's worried about Rome?

What Allen is saying, I think, is that those who have been obsessed with "rethinking" Catholicism in the West are using the buggy whips, focussing on issues that are either a)irrelevant or b)not up for discussion in the Global South.

[Sherry Weddell]

Dear Janice:

Giggling about syncretism? You've certainly got my number.

Ever heard the one about the duck who went into the bar and said:

"Sciunt enim Pastores se a Christo non esse institutos, ut totam missionem salvificam Ecclesiae versus mundum in se solos suscipiant, sed praeclarum munus suum esse ita pascere fideles eorumque ministrationes et charismata ita recognoscere, ut cuncti suo modo ad commune opus unanimiter cooperentur!"

Now there's a knee-slapper!

And here I've spent 20 hours so far this weekend doing a close reading in English (and Latin) of all formal magisterial teaching about pastoral governance and the formation of the laity in preparation for speaking at a theological colloquiam next month. 'Cause I don't care about Truth, you know . . .

If only someone has explained my real motivation to me earlier, I could have spent my weekend in a much more relaxed fashion. Just goes to show you that I've got to hang out at St. Blog's more!

You can, believe it or not, both recognize "the poor you will have with you always" and spend every waking minute working to assist the poor. If fact, if you don't acknowledge the first, you will most assuredly burn out in the second. If the same logic was applied to our Lord's statement above, we'd have to believe that he meant to instruct us to ignore the poor.

Amy, I think you are right about Allen - except I think that he's saying many (not all by any means) western concerns and agendas on *both the right and the left* are not seen as important in many parts of the majority world Church that is grappling with so many life and death issues.

[Janice]

Sherry,

Not matter how many documents on which you have done a "close reading" in both Latin and English (and many have, including me) your conclusions are still the same: culturally and theologically relativist. Your black and white conclusion: that we either do not evangelize or accept syncretism is ludicrous on its face. Catholic evangelization is supposed to purify those elements of the cultures it appropriates (this, by definition, is not syncretism, as you would know if you read Catholic theology). Your point on early Christian theology is also not well taken. There was plenty is biblical warrant (both in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the New Testament) for the same sort of philosophical searching that was later also appropriated from Hellenistic cultures. There was also in both the Semitic and Hellenistic environs the concepts of Being and objective Truth. These are notions that must be translated into other cultures in which the Church evangelizes; otherwise, there is no point in evangelizing.