The Areopagus 5-27-08
posted by Phil Lawson
5-27-08
Cardinal Avery Dulles recently stepped down as a professor at Fordham University---at age 89(!). For some time he has been a widely respected voice of wisdom and clarity in the Church. Just last year, he published a paper on the current state of Ecumenism “Saving Ecumenism from Itself” in First Things, that was among the best I have ever read. In fact, I sent a copy of it to a local protestant pastor who was similarly interested in ecumenism, suggesting he would also find Cardinal Dulles’ insights helpful.
He recently gave a farewell address, although it had to be delivered orally by someone else due to the Cardinal’s failing health. In it was this gem by this man so appreciated for his wisdom and insight:
“Very few new ideas, I suspect, are true. If I conceived a theological idea that had never occurred to anyone in the past, I would have every reason to think myself mistake.” Source: Catholic News Service as published in the Catholic Times 4-17-08
How’s that for humility, as well as understanding our role in teaching the faith or “doing theology.”? May the cardinal’s remaining days on earth be blessed!
Phil’s Tidbits:
A friend found this quote from the Holy Father. I trust you’ll enjoy it. J
"Romance is thinking of your significant other, when you are supposed to be thinking of something else" - Pope Benedict XVI
This is a really beautiful story about Archbishop Burke—and by the local secular newspaper no less! I myself wouldn’t mind signing up for one of those “walks”!
Special congratulations to Noah Waldman, ordained this past weekend. Noah spent some time at St. Peter’s discerning his vocation.
Burke's efforts lead to biggest Catholic ordination class in decades By Tim Townsend ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Sunday, May. 18 2008 Once or twice a year, each student at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary will drop by Archbishop Raymond Burke's residence in the Central West End at 4:30 p.m. From there, they set off down Lindell Avenue and into Forest Park.."The walks," as the seminarians call them, are opportunities for young men to have heart-to-hearts with a man who regularly meets with the pope, a heady prospect for a young priest-in-training. The conversations are usually casual, and the seminarians get to see a more personal, human side of Burke — like when he gets a little skittish around off-leash dogs. Kenrick officials organize the walks using time sheets. When the sheets are posted, there's a rush to sign on."It's like when you throw pellets at the Japanese fish at the Botanical Gardens," said seminarian Edward Nemeth, 26. "Guys falling over each other to get their names on the list."On Saturday, Nemeth and eight of his colleagues at Kenrick will be ordained as priests in the St. Louis Archdiocese — the largest St. Louis ordination class in 25 years and one of the largest in the U.S. It's also the same number of ordinations in St. Louis as the last three years combined.Since the 1980s, declining interest in the priesthood has been a growing crisis for the Roman Catholic church in the U.S., a situation that was compounded by the clergy sex-abuse scandal earlier this decade. One church study suggested that 80 percent of parents whose sons are considering the priesthood try to dissuade them, fearing their child is entering a life of loneliness and unhappiness.Burke is credited for helping to address such concerns at Kenrick. He is active in recruiting priests and knows the seminarians — their names, their life stories, their joys and their fears. He's also a frequent visitor to the seminary, sometimes dropping by unannounced for lunch with the students."He's the center and the core of this whole thing," said the Rev. Michael Butler, the vocations director for the archdiocese.The student body at Kenrick-Glennon, which includes the undergraduate Cardinal Glennon College and graduate-level Kenrick Theological Seminary, is 112 students, the largest enrollment in two decades and a 50 percent increase over last year. Monsignor Ted Wojcicki, Kenrick-Glennon's president, said he hopes to enroll 120 students next year, which would double the size of the seminary population from a decade ago. Last year, the archdiocese announced plans to expand the seminary.The archdiocese officially attributes its recent success with vocations — Latin for vocare, which means, to call — to a higher power. More men are hearing God's call to the priesthood, they say. But God has had a hand from Burke, who decided vocations would be a high priority since he arrived in St. Louis in 2004. "A bishop's principal responsibility is to provide priests for the people in his pastoral care," Burke said in an interview last week from Rome. "Ordinations have to be absolutely right at the top of my priorities."
View Source
A group called “Roman Catholics for Obama” uses a quote from Archbishop Chaput to support their argument. The Archbishop, in his usual, thoughtful, and engaging way, takes some time to respond. I include the full article here because it is well worth reading.
THOUGHTS ON ‘ROMAN CATHOLICS FOR OBAMA’
+Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
May 19, 2008
Forty years ago this month Bobby Kennedy was still alive and running for the Democratic Party's 1968 presidential nomination. I was a seminarian in Washington, D.C. I was also an active volunteer on Kennedy's campaign. I can still remember helping with secretarial work in the same room where Edward Kennedy and Pierre Salinger labored away on RFK strategy. It was my first involvement in elective politics, and after the Vietnam Tet Offensive in February and Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder on April 4, Kennedy's cause seemed urgent. Then on June 5, Kennedy was gunned down himself.
After RFK died, the meaning of the 1968 election seemed to evaporate. I lost interest in politics. I didn't get involved again until the rise of Jimmy Carter. Carter fascinated me because he seemed like an untypical politician. He was plain spoken, honest, a serious Christian and a Washington outsider. So I supported him during his 1976 campaign when I was a young priest working in Pennsylvania. After his election as president, I came to Denver as pastor of Holy Cross Parish in Thornton in 1977. I eventually got involved with the 1980 Colorado campaign for Carter's re-election on the invitation of a parishioner and Democratic Party activist -- Polly Baca, who was and remains a good friend. Carter had one serious strike against him. The U.S. Supreme Court had legalized abortion on demand in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, and Carter the candidate waffled about restricting it. At the time, I knew Carter was wrong in his views about Roe v. Wade and soft toward permissive abortion. But
even as a priest, I justified working for him because he wasn't aggressively "pro-choice." True, he held a bad position on a vital issue, but I believed he was right on so many more of the "Catholic" issues than his opponent seemed to be. The moral calculus looked easy. I thought we could remedy the abortion problem after Carter was safely returned to office.
Carter lost his bid for re-election, but even with an avowedly prolife Ronald Reagan as president, the belligerence, dishonesty and inflexibility of the "pro-choice" lobby has stymied almost every effort to protect unborn human life since.
In the years after the Carter loss I began to notice that very few of the people, including Catholics, who claimed to be "personally opposed" to abortion really did anything about it. Nor did they intend to. For most, their personal opposition was little more than pious hand wringing and a convenient excuse -- exactly as it is today. In fact, I can't name any "pro-choice" Catholic politician who has been active, in a sustained public way, in trying to discourage abortion and to protect unborn human life - - not one. Some talk about it, and some may mean well, but there's very little action. In the United States in 2008, abortion is an acceptable form of homicide. And it will remain that way until Catholics force their political parties and elected officials to act differently.
Why do I mention this now? Earlier this spring a group called "Roman Catholics for Obama '08" quoted my own published words in the following way: "So can a Catholic in good conscience vote for a pro-choice candidate? The answer is: I can't, and I won't. But I do know some serious Catholics -- people whom I admire -- who may. I think their reasoning
is mistaken, but at least they sincerely struggle with the abortion issue, and it causes them
real pain. And most important: They don't keep quiet about it; they don't give up; they keep lobbying their party and their representatives to change their pro-abortion views and protect the unborn. Catholics can vote for pro-choice candidates if they vote for them despite -- not because of – their pro-choice views."
What's interesting about this quotation - which is accurate but incomplete - is the wording that was left out. The very next sentences in the article of mine they selected, which Roman Catholics for Obama neglected to quote, run as follows: "But [Catholics who support 'pro-choice' candidates] also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. What is a 'proportionate' reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It's the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face
to face in the next life - which we most certainly will. If we're confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed."
On their website, Roman Catholics for Obama stress that:
"After faithful thought and prayer, we have arrived at the conclusion that Senator Obama is the candidate whose views are most compatible with the Catholic outlook, and we will vote for him because of that -- and because of his other outstanding qualities -- despite our disagreements with him in specific areas."
I'm familiar with this reasoning. It sounds a lot like me 30 years ago. And 30 years later we still have about a million abortions a year. Maybe Roman Catholics for Obama will do a better job at influencing their candidate. It could happen. And I sincerely hope it does, since Planned Parenthood of the Chicago area, as recently as February 2008, noted that Senator Barack Obama "has a 100 percent pro-choice voting record both in the U.S. Senate and the Illinois Senate."
Changing the views of "pro-choice" candidates takes a lot more than verbal gymnastics, good alibis and pious talk about "personal opposition" to killing unborn children. I'm sure Roman Catholics for Obama know that, and I wish them good luck. They'll need it.
View Source
God bless you!
Phil Lawson
The Areopagus is a regular email for adults that includes various reflections, tidbits, news and events. Hope you find it fruitful!
If you would like to be added to this list, you can use the form on the sidebar of this page to sign up.
Cardinal Avery Dulles recently stepped down as a professor at Fordham University---at age 89(!). For some time he has been a widely respected voice of wisdom and clarity in the Church. Just last year, he published a paper on the current state of Ecumenism “Saving Ecumenism from Itself” in First Things, that was among the best I have ever read. In fact, I sent a copy of it to a local protestant pastor who was similarly interested in ecumenism, suggesting he would also find Cardinal Dulles’ insights helpful.
He recently gave a farewell address, although it had to be delivered orally by someone else due to the Cardinal’s failing health. In it was this gem by this man so appreciated for his wisdom and insight:
“Very few new ideas, I suspect, are true. If I conceived a theological idea that had never occurred to anyone in the past, I would have every reason to think myself mistake.” Source: Catholic News Service as published in the Catholic Times 4-17-08
How’s that for humility, as well as understanding our role in teaching the faith or “doing theology.”? May the cardinal’s remaining days on earth be blessed!
Phil’s Tidbits:
A friend found this quote from the Holy Father. I trust you’ll enjoy it. J
"Romance is thinking of your significant other, when you are supposed to be thinking of something else" - Pope Benedict XVI
This is a really beautiful story about Archbishop Burke—and by the local secular newspaper no less! I myself wouldn’t mind signing up for one of those “walks”!
Special congratulations to Noah Waldman, ordained this past weekend. Noah spent some time at St. Peter’s discerning his vocation.
Burke's efforts lead to biggest Catholic ordination class in decades By Tim Townsend ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Sunday, May. 18 2008 Once or twice a year, each student at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary will drop by Archbishop Raymond Burke's residence in the Central West End at 4:30 p.m. From there, they set off down Lindell Avenue and into Forest Park.."The walks," as the seminarians call them, are opportunities for young men to have heart-to-hearts with a man who regularly meets with the pope, a heady prospect for a young priest-in-training. The conversations are usually casual, and the seminarians get to see a more personal, human side of Burke — like when he gets a little skittish around off-leash dogs. Kenrick officials organize the walks using time sheets. When the sheets are posted, there's a rush to sign on."It's like when you throw pellets at the Japanese fish at the Botanical Gardens," said seminarian Edward Nemeth, 26. "Guys falling over each other to get their names on the list."On Saturday, Nemeth and eight of his colleagues at Kenrick will be ordained as priests in the St. Louis Archdiocese — the largest St. Louis ordination class in 25 years and one of the largest in the U.S. It's also the same number of ordinations in St. Louis as the last three years combined.Since the 1980s, declining interest in the priesthood has been a growing crisis for the Roman Catholic church in the U.S., a situation that was compounded by the clergy sex-abuse scandal earlier this decade. One church study suggested that 80 percent of parents whose sons are considering the priesthood try to dissuade them, fearing their child is entering a life of loneliness and unhappiness.Burke is credited for helping to address such concerns at Kenrick. He is active in recruiting priests and knows the seminarians — their names, their life stories, their joys and their fears. He's also a frequent visitor to the seminary, sometimes dropping by unannounced for lunch with the students."He's the center and the core of this whole thing," said the Rev. Michael Butler, the vocations director for the archdiocese.The student body at Kenrick-Glennon, which includes the undergraduate Cardinal Glennon College and graduate-level Kenrick Theological Seminary, is 112 students, the largest enrollment in two decades and a 50 percent increase over last year. Monsignor Ted Wojcicki, Kenrick-Glennon's president, said he hopes to enroll 120 students next year, which would double the size of the seminary population from a decade ago. Last year, the archdiocese announced plans to expand the seminary.The archdiocese officially attributes its recent success with vocations — Latin for vocare, which means, to call — to a higher power. More men are hearing God's call to the priesthood, they say. But God has had a hand from Burke, who decided vocations would be a high priority since he arrived in St. Louis in 2004. "A bishop's principal responsibility is to provide priests for the people in his pastoral care," Burke said in an interview last week from Rome. "Ordinations have to be absolutely right at the top of my priorities."
View Source
A group called “Roman Catholics for Obama” uses a quote from Archbishop Chaput to support their argument. The Archbishop, in his usual, thoughtful, and engaging way, takes some time to respond. I include the full article here because it is well worth reading.
THOUGHTS ON ‘ROMAN CATHOLICS FOR OBAMA’
+Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
May 19, 2008
Forty years ago this month Bobby Kennedy was still alive and running for the Democratic Party's 1968 presidential nomination. I was a seminarian in Washington, D.C. I was also an active volunteer on Kennedy's campaign. I can still remember helping with secretarial work in the same room where Edward Kennedy and Pierre Salinger labored away on RFK strategy. It was my first involvement in elective politics, and after the Vietnam Tet Offensive in February and Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder on April 4, Kennedy's cause seemed urgent. Then on June 5, Kennedy was gunned down himself.
After RFK died, the meaning of the 1968 election seemed to evaporate. I lost interest in politics. I didn't get involved again until the rise of Jimmy Carter. Carter fascinated me because he seemed like an untypical politician. He was plain spoken, honest, a serious Christian and a Washington outsider. So I supported him during his 1976 campaign when I was a young priest working in Pennsylvania. After his election as president, I came to Denver as pastor of Holy Cross Parish in Thornton in 1977. I eventually got involved with the 1980 Colorado campaign for Carter's re-election on the invitation of a parishioner and Democratic Party activist -- Polly Baca, who was and remains a good friend. Carter had one serious strike against him. The U.S. Supreme Court had legalized abortion on demand in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, and Carter the candidate waffled about restricting it. At the time, I knew Carter was wrong in his views about Roe v. Wade and soft toward permissive abortion. But
even as a priest, I justified working for him because he wasn't aggressively "pro-choice." True, he held a bad position on a vital issue, but I believed he was right on so many more of the "Catholic" issues than his opponent seemed to be. The moral calculus looked easy. I thought we could remedy the abortion problem after Carter was safely returned to office.
Carter lost his bid for re-election, but even with an avowedly prolife Ronald Reagan as president, the belligerence, dishonesty and inflexibility of the "pro-choice" lobby has stymied almost every effort to protect unborn human life since.
In the years after the Carter loss I began to notice that very few of the people, including Catholics, who claimed to be "personally opposed" to abortion really did anything about it. Nor did they intend to. For most, their personal opposition was little more than pious hand wringing and a convenient excuse -- exactly as it is today. In fact, I can't name any "pro-choice" Catholic politician who has been active, in a sustained public way, in trying to discourage abortion and to protect unborn human life - - not one. Some talk about it, and some may mean well, but there's very little action. In the United States in 2008, abortion is an acceptable form of homicide. And it will remain that way until Catholics force their political parties and elected officials to act differently.
Why do I mention this now? Earlier this spring a group called "Roman Catholics for Obama '08" quoted my own published words in the following way: "So can a Catholic in good conscience vote for a pro-choice candidate? The answer is: I can't, and I won't. But I do know some serious Catholics -- people whom I admire -- who may. I think their reasoning
is mistaken, but at least they sincerely struggle with the abortion issue, and it causes them
real pain. And most important: They don't keep quiet about it; they don't give up; they keep lobbying their party and their representatives to change their pro-abortion views and protect the unborn. Catholics can vote for pro-choice candidates if they vote for them despite -- not because of – their pro-choice views."
What's interesting about this quotation - which is accurate but incomplete - is the wording that was left out. The very next sentences in the article of mine they selected, which Roman Catholics for Obama neglected to quote, run as follows: "But [Catholics who support 'pro-choice' candidates] also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. What is a 'proportionate' reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It's the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face
to face in the next life - which we most certainly will. If we're confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed."
On their website, Roman Catholics for Obama stress that:
"After faithful thought and prayer, we have arrived at the conclusion that Senator Obama is the candidate whose views are most compatible with the Catholic outlook, and we will vote for him because of that -- and because of his other outstanding qualities -- despite our disagreements with him in specific areas."
I'm familiar with this reasoning. It sounds a lot like me 30 years ago. And 30 years later we still have about a million abortions a year. Maybe Roman Catholics for Obama will do a better job at influencing their candidate. It could happen. And I sincerely hope it does, since Planned Parenthood of the Chicago area, as recently as February 2008, noted that Senator Barack Obama "has a 100 percent pro-choice voting record both in the U.S. Senate and the Illinois Senate."
Changing the views of "pro-choice" candidates takes a lot more than verbal gymnastics, good alibis and pious talk about "personal opposition" to killing unborn children. I'm sure Roman Catholics for Obama know that, and I wish them good luck. They'll need it.
View Source
God bless you!
Phil Lawson
The Areopagus is a regular email for adults that includes various reflections, tidbits, news and events. Hope you find it fruitful!
If you would like to be added to this list, you can use the form on the sidebar of this page to sign up.
Labels: Areopagus Catholic Newsletter
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
This Stevens Point Website designed by Promotion Web Design
