In the News: Pope in Turkey

In a semi-historic trip to Turkey, Pope Benedict XVI has been meeting with secular and clerical leaders and holding out an olive branch to groups he has previously held in less repute.

At his visit yesterday to the supposed home of the Virgin Mary, he prayed in Turkish. During his trip today to the Blue Mosque, he took noff his shoes and spent a minute in "meditation." Also, according to NCR

In a divine liturgy celebrated today at the Phanar, the headquarters of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Pope Benedict XVI pledged that “the Catholic Church is ready to do everything possible” to promote unity between the 250 million Orthodox believers in the world and the roughly 1.1 billion Roman Catholics.

While the seeming sounds of nrotherhood and unity sound terrific, it's an open question this sounds to a group that equates promises of "unity" with assimilation and disappeaance.

As far as the world of Islam is concerned, what need does it have to cionciliate with its ancient foe? Catholicism, for all its putative numerical strength, is terribly weak. The ancient traditiuons of celibacy, opposition to female leadership and opposition to birth control have strained the Church's intellectual vitality and credibility to the breaking point. The cclergy sex abusse scandals, as well as old scandals that are just coming to light, is sapping the Church's moral authority and claim to divine protection.

Benedict is also still banging on the drum of Europe's all-but-lost Catholic heritage. In a common declaration with the Patriarch of Constantinople, he said,
“The process of secularization has weakened the hold of that tradition,” he said.

“Indeed, it is being called into question, and even rejected. In the face of this reality, we are called, together with all Christian communities, to renew Europe’s awareness of its Christian roots, traditions and values, giving them new vitality....In Europe, while remaining open to other religions and to their cultural contributions, we must unite our efforts to preserve Christian roots, traditions and values, to ensure respect for history,”

What this might mean in realistic terms is anyone's guess -- anything on the spectrum from benign tolerance to legislating benefits to Catholic to out-and-out crusade are possible. Without specific goals, such high-fflying rhetoric is all but meaningless.

The Church should reach out to other Chriotian sects and to non-Christians. But the Church cannot simultaneously ask for unity while maintaining the very teachings, practices and attiutudes that caused the splits in the first place. Insisting on Roman primacy over all Christians, insisting on unmarried clergy and insisting on an intellectually dishonest retention of the ban on birth ccontrol and female priesthood will do nothing to attract lapsed Catholics- not to mention sects whose beliefs and traditions are furtther afield.

Without the kind of creativity and flexibility that ewas never on display when Pope Benedict was Cardinal Ratzinger, there's little hope that this latest trip will be nothing more than a photo op, and an opportunity to fill coffee table books with pretty and irrelevant pictures.

BishopWatch: NCR dismayed!

A terrific editorial in the November 24, 2006 issue of The National Catholic Reporter. Seems that our bishops, incapable of dealing with the real world, are retreating into the comfortable world of old customs and old vestments. They may not be able to win our hearts or influence our minds, but dahling, they can look fabulous!

Excerpts:

Not bad for melodrama

A year ago we ... noted that there was war and starvation everywhere; fresh clergy sex abuse reports out of Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Spokane, Wash., to name a few; 20 percent of U.S. parishes without a pastor; a Congress poised to reduce health care coverage and food stamps; the United States accused of torture and keeping combatants in secret prisons; and so on. And the bishops had nothing to say. They would talk only to each other about internal church matters.

We are compelled, then, to report that the bishops have not entirely disappeared. For they gathered again, in Baltimore this year, and, continuing their trip inward, issued documents on such burning issues as birth control, ministry to persons with “a homosexual inclination,” and how to prepare to receive Communion. Now, none of these matters is unimportant. Don’t get the wrong impression. We’ve had documents aplenty about all of them before. And these topics -- unlike the war in Iraq, say, or what it means to have a president and vice president endorsing torture -- are even covered in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

So why again? Apparently the bishops feel that people just aren’t listening. If that’s their hunch, we’d agree. Why aren’t they listening? Let’s consider for starters the document on contraception. A lot of the U.S. bishops today might say there are a lot of bad, or at least ignorant, Catholics out there, Catholics influenced by the contraceptive culture, for instance, who no longer know good from evil.

Maybe they’re right. More likely, though, it’s because the teaching makes little sense, doesn’t match the experience of lay Catholics and tends to reduce all of human love to the act of breeding.

In short, the bishops aren’t terribly persuasive or clear when they talk about sex, and they tend to want to talk about sex a lot. To be sure, they say lots of lovely and lofty things about marital love, about how it completes people and cooperates with God’s plan and fills married lives with joy and happiness. You can want not to have children, say the bishops, you just can’t do anything “unnatural” about it. It’s a strange concept, like not wanting to die of heart disease while not doing anything “unnatural” about it.

They make the point that if every time a married couple makes love they are not open to having children, then they’re not giving “all” of themselves to each other. If you use birth control, say the bishops, and every single act is not open to having children, then “being responsible about sex simply means limiting its consequences -- avoiding disease and using contraceptives to prevent pregnancy.” Whew! So that’s it, eh?

It’s either be open to having kids or married sex is no more significant than an encounter with a prostitute. Such a view of marriage and sexuality and sexual intimacy can only have been written by people straining mightily to fit the mysteries, fullness and candidly human pleasure of sex into a schema that violently divides the human person into unrecognizable parts. There’s a reason 96 percent of Catholics have ignored the birth control teaching for decades. We doubt the new document will significantly change that percentage.

So it is with gays. Here again, church authorities try to fit together two wildly diverging themes. They go something like this: Homosexuals are “objectively disordered” (that’s about as bad as it humanly gets, in our understanding of things), but we love them and want them to be members of our community.

Only this time out, the bishops are not using the term homosexual “orientation” (a definite position) but homosexual “inclination” (a liking for something or a tendency toward). Sly, no? The inference to be drawn, we presume, is that someone inclined one way can just incline another way, whereas someone with an orientation is pretty much stuck there.

That science and human experience generally say otherwise is of little concern, apparently, though the bishops were clear they weren’t suggesting that homosexuals are required to change. This time, too, the bishops, while acknowledging that those with homosexual tendencies should seek supportive friendships, advise homosexuals to be quiet about their inclinations in church. “For some persons, revealing their homosexual tendencies to certain close friends, family members, a spiritual director, confessor, or members of a church support group may provide some spiritual and emotional help and aid them in their growth in Christian life. In the context of parish life, however, general public self-disclosures are not helpful and should not be encouraged.”

The next paragraph in the document, by the way, begins, “Sad to say, there are many persons with a homosexual inclination who feel alienated from the church.” You can’t make this stuff up.

It is difficult to figure out how to approach these documents. They are products of some realm so removed from the real lives of the faithful one has to wonder why any group of busy men administering a church would bother. They ignore science, human experience and the groups they attempt to characterize. The documents are not only embarrassing but insulting and degrading to those the bishops are charged to lead. The saddest thing is that the valuable insights the bishops have into the deficiencies and influences of the wider culture get buried.

Where is this all going?

No one’s come out with a program, but we’ll venture yet one more hunch. It has become apparent in recent years that there’s been an upsurge in historical ecclesiastical finery and other goods. We’ve seen more birettas (those funny three-peak hats with the fuzzy ball on top that come in different colors depending on clerical rank) and cassocks (the kind with real buttons, no zippers for the purists) and ecclesiastically correct color shoes and socks, lots of lacy surplices and even the capa magna (yards and yards of silk, a cape long enough that it has to be attended by two altar boys or seminarians, also in full regalia). In some places they’re even naming monsignors again.

It’s as if someone has discovered a props closet full of old stuff and they’re putting it out all over the stage. Bishops, pestered by the abuse scandal that they’ve avoided looking full in the face, find it easier to try to order others’ lives. They have found the things of a more settled time, a time when their authority wasn’t dependent on persuading or relating to other humans. It was enough to have the office and the clothing. Things worked. Dig a little deeper in the closet and bring out the Latin texts, bring back the old documents, bring back the days when homosexuals were quiet and told no one about who they essentially are. Someone even found a canopy under which the royally clad leader can process.

Now that’s order.

Now that’s the church.

Bring up the lights a little higher so all can see.

Before it all fades to irrelevance.

In the News: Partisan Preachers

From the Boston Globe on Oct 27, a terrific piece describing the problem of the pulpit being used to preach not Jesus, but politics, What I am curious is whether he IRS will enforce its rules across he board, or only when the enemies of a current administration cross the line, as in this article. If so, we will have gone all the way toweard politicizing religion, something I am sure would set the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves.

Clergy warned on partisan preaching
Several faiths act to keep tax status

By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff | October 27, 2006

In the face of increased federal scrutiny of politics in the pulpit, religious denominations are warning clergy against overtly partisan preaching.

As Election Day approaches, with the Massachusetts governorship and both houses of Congress up for grabs, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has sent a memo to all priests instructing them not to provide parish directories to political candidates, not to allow the distribution of campaign literature on church property, and not to express support or opposition for political candidates.

The memo warns explicitly that the tax-exempt status of the Archdiocese of Boston could be at risk if those rules are violated.

The Reform Jewish movement, the largest Jewish denomination in the country, took a similar step last week, holding a conference call with more than 200 rabbis and synagogue administrators around the country to offer guidance about how to preach on politics without running afoul of the nation's tax code.

And the Unitarian Universalist Association, which is headquartered in Boston, is revamping an Internet page that guides clergy about political preaching in light of new IRS guidelines for churches.

The increased concern among religious denominations has been triggered by a highly publicized IRS investigation into All Saints Church, an Episcopal parish in Pasadena, Calif., where a preacher in 2004 mused aloud, in a sermon, about a hypothetical debate between Jesus and the two major-party candidates for president, President George W. Bush and US Senator John F. Kerry. The church is now refusing to comply with a summons for a copy of all written and oral communications identifying candidates for public office in 2004; the IRS, which issued the summons, is investigating whether the sermon, in which the preacher imagined Jesus criticizing the war in Iraq, constituted illegal advocacy for the Kerry campaign.

"Religious people on all sides of the political spectrum are speaking out more, and as the nation has become more partisan, and the level of public discourse has become more politicized and negative, that has brought us to this point, and has brought more scrutiny from the IRS," said Rob Keithan , director of the Washington office of the Unitarian Universalist Association, which is known for liberal politics. "The All Saints case did have a big impact -- it gave us all occasion to talk about whether we have our own houses in order."

Political campaign activity by churches and other nonprofits was barred by Congress in 1954, but enforcement activity has intensified dramatically in the last two years, as liberals accuse evangelical churches and conservatives accuse African-American churches of routinely violating the law. One website, ratoutachurch.org, solicits allegations about politicking in liberal congregations. The IRS said that it has completed 87 audits of churches and charities accused of violations during the 2004 election campaigns, and the violations were found in 71 percent of the cases.

The regulations bar churches from endorsing or opposing candidates, but permit discussion of issues. Clergy can endorse candidates as individuals; currently, in Massachusetts, the gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Deval Patrick is circulating a letter to clergy, "to help them get involved with the campaign as individuals if they choose," according to campaign spokeswoman Libby DeVecchi.

The recent memo to Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Boston was similar to one sent to all Catholic priests in the state, according to Edward F. Saunders Jr. , the executive director of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, who said he thought it would be prudent for all four bishops to clarify the rules for priests.

"We had heard some priests were being approached to do things -- there were various voter guides floating around, and we wanted to make sure they knew the guidelines and that there were no problems," Saunders said. "It's the first statewide election in four years, and we felt it was a good idea to get the word out."

Harold Sparrow , the executive director of the Black Ministerial Alliance, said he has cautioned his membership not to endorse candidates from the pulpit since an IRS review of a comment by a Boston minister, the Rev. Gregory G. Groover Sr. , pastor of the Charles Street AME Church, who in 2004 introduced Kerry as "the next president of the United States."

The Unitarian Universalist Association published guidelines for clergy during the 2004 election season but is now modifying them in response to new guidance from the IRS, and, like other denominations, expects to more aggressively publicize the rules in 2008, when political discussion is expected to intensify for the presidential campaign.

Numerous mainline Protestant denominations, including the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, and the umbrella organization Lutheran Services in America, have posted guidelines on their websites in an effort to prevent problems with the federal agency.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this month reiterated its policy prohibiting endorsement or assistance of political candidates after a Globe story reported that operatives representing Governor Mitt Romney had met with a Mormon church elder about Romney's possible presidential campaign.

The increased attention to the role of religious organizations in politics has raised concerns that some preachers might be scared away from talking about politics.

"I am concerned that people's fears will cause them to be less forceful with their words," Keithan said. "Certainly, we don't want people to not speak out about their values."

Rabbi David Saperstein , a Reform Jewish official who hosted last week's conference call, said he, too, hopes that the discussion of an IRS crackdown will not mute the political outspokenness of clergy.

"It is clear that it is having a chilling impact, with people feeling constrained from doing things that are clearly legal, such as speaking out on the issues in a campaign or on a ballot," said Saperstein, who is the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

"People are being erroneously confronted by lay leaders who tell them, 'Oh, the IRS doesn't allow you to speak on issues,' and rather than trying to explain why they're wrong, sometimes it's just easier to back off. I don't think that's good for the strength of our democracy, or for religious freedom."

The IRS has been outspoken this year about its concern about violations; the issue is currently highlighted on the agency's Web page, irs.gov, and the agency's commissioner, Mark W. Everson , gave a major speech on the subject in February -- in the swing state of Ohio -- in which he declared, "at the IRS we have stepped up our efforts and are vigorously enforcing the law."

"We have seen a dramatic increase in the amount of money financing politics," he said. "Are we going to let these political activities spread to our charities and churches? Now is the time to act, before it is too late."

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.