Trouble in Charles River City

The ArchDiocese of Boston is contracting. Like a balloon left out in the cold, it is shrinking. And like captains of a sinking ship, the bishops are scrambling for a way to keep afloat.

Last December, Cardinal Sean O'Malley announced the beginning of a process of parish re-alignment that will see pastors administering more parishes. A pastor who ran 1 or 2 parishes may see himself running 3 or 4. The good news, I suppose, is that the ArchD will avoid the huge outcry and bad press of a few years ago: no churches are being closed. The bad news...well, I'll save that for later.

Like any decent business in an economic downturn, the Church is trying to do more with less. I'll let the bishops speak for themselves:

The present way in which pastoral services are structured in the Archdiocese of Boston is not healthy and it cannot be sustained much longer. Priests are being stretched too thinly; pastoral associates and religious educators are not being replaced in sufficient numbers; permanent deacons are unevenly deployed; and we face a growing number of parishes (40%) unable to pay their bills, even as the cost for services in our parishes continues to climb.

...we are going from 346 priests available for parish ministry today to about 185 in about nine years’ time...

Basic message: not enough leaders; not enough money. What to do?
You might imagine a number of possible solutions: train more priests and deacons; have more bake sales and bingos. But the problems are serious when 40% of your "franchises" aren't breaking even. If the church was Kmart or Sears, the answer might be easy: close down under-performing shops and concentrate on the profitable ones. But (good news again) the Church is trying to maintain its presence in as many towns and neighborhoods as it can. Say what you will about our bishops -- at least they aren't giving up so easily.

Here's the archdiocese's strategy in a nutshell:

• Create geographically-close "collaboratives" of parishes from 2, 3 or even 4 existing parishes
• Manage the collaborative with a single pastor, parish council and pastoral staff
• The collaboratives will have one priest for every 1600 Mass attendees. When the ratio reaches 3200-to-1, they can have a vicar.
• Make sure the collaborative can rake in at least $500,000 annually.

Tough love.
You might wonder about the wisdom of placing even heavier burdens on priests who are nearing or beyond retirement age. The graying of the priesthood is a real problem. With so few seminarians staged to replace their aging pastors, the solution will certainly not come from the young.
Think too about the people in the pews. With fewer priests, the slide toward parishes becoming "sacramental dispensaries" is high. If you think today's priests are aloof from day-to-day realities of their parishioners, imagine a world in which there are half as many priests -- sick, overworked, crotchety and literally dying to retire.

Yet the Archdiocese remains sanguine: "The 1600 to 1 ratio should allows a priest to conduct the services, do the pastoral visits, and meet the ordinary and unexpected needs of parishioners, along with the administrative tasks required of him."

Perhaps their expectations of priests are too low -- how many pastoral visits do you think one man can make before he's just going through the motions, dazedly blessing stop signs and rose bushes?
A priest I know suggests that the answer must come from rethinking the celibate, male priesthood. Certainly, celibacy is one impediment that keeps many mature, healthy men out of Roman collars. But more priests will not bring people back into the pews. For that, the Church would have to overcome much of its institutional baggage and habits.
For instance, it's a rare Catholic parish that truly functions as a community. Believe me, 1600 people at Mass on Sunday does not a community make. First of all, 1600 is too damned many people for most humans to relate to. Our poor primate brains can handle about 150 relationships before fritzing out. Pun intended: Catholic worship is not intended to be a mass experience! You can't relate to Jesus from the center of a mob. You can't see Jesus in others when you don't know the names and stories of the folks in the pews around you. In this faceless and lonely age, people need to be known and loved. Provide that, and you may start getting them back in the pews.
Next, the Church has to back off its most atavistic and brainless teachings. Sanctity of life is one thing, but allowing mothers to die rather than permitting life-saving abortions is stupid and heartless. Calling contraception immoral in a world with over 7 billion souls is suicide. Continuing to suggest that salvation cannot come but from the Catholic Church is not only wrong, but a sure loser in a world where people marry for love, and will ignore rigid teachings that cut their lovers and spouses out of heaven. And in a world where AIDS is a dagger at the heart of the poor, the church needs to stop hiding behind its mock-moral stance on abstinence as a the only realistic way to curb the disease.
Unlikely? Perhaps. But given the shrinking number of priests, the general indifference of parishioners to threats of hellfire and the ever-present need for humans to live in community, the ship's course has never been clearer. Whether our captains will steer us into the shoals or sail out into deeper waters is yet to be seen.

Pray!

Sleazy Stats: CNN and the 2000-year-old lie

I was burning a few calories on the elliptical machine today when a CNN feature threw me for a loop. The anchor and his two guests were carrying on about how Obama was wrong in his State of the Union address when he called for a "fair shot" at success for all Americans.
The first problem was that the gentlemen were all on the same, pro-capitalist side of the issue. So much for balanced reporting. But beyond that, the argument was based on the mistaken idea that fairness is equivalent to economic equality. This is such a mush-brained idea that I as surprised grown-ups were actually having it. Put it in terms of Monopoly, and even a 5-year-old can understand what these analysts could not: fairness means playing by the rules and making sure the Banker doesn't slip wads of cash to his friends. It doesn't mean that everyone should win the game!

The guests then went on to discuss average income over the last 2000 years. The chart at the right is similar to theirs, which extended back to the year 1. There was not much change in the curve: between 1AD and 1500AD, GDP was stuck around $500.

The CNN guests then went on to extol the benefits of industrialization and capitalism. Without doubt, it's pretty clear that somewhere around 1800, income started to increase, and since 1950 or so, it has increased exponentially. Makes sense, since James Watt perfected his steam engine -- which tremendously boosted productivity -- around 1776.

But the analysts went a step over the edge by claiming that capitalism, the engine that drove this increase in average wage, was wonderful even though it did not have the goal of being fair or equal in the way it treated workers. Take that, Comrade Obama!

Now I am not a statistician, though I understand the concepts well enough. Seems to me that telling me the average income for a period does not tell me much about the income distribution. It could be that everyone has the same income. Or that incomes are distributed in a bell curve around the average. Or (ominously!) that there are a few hyper-wealthy individuals and a ton of desperately poor ones.

You don't have to be a historian to know that there were periods of history -- the majority of them, in fact -- when the few enjoyed a standard of living far beyond that of the rest of the population. Consider the Caesars and the rural peasant farmers; medieval kings and their impoverished serfs; 18th-century French aristocrats and breadless peasants; Southern plantation owners and their slaves. In fact, the only time periods when income distribution was more or less equal was the US and its Allies between World War II and about 1980. Since then, there has been enormous political pressure that has increased the share of the economic pie enjoyed by the wealthy, with a simultaneous pressure to remove or reduce government support for the poor.

Talk about class warfare and redistribution of wealth!

But our CNN talking heads ignored all of this. Average wealth, on the rise since 1800, is all they cared about, and 'proved' their point that inequality was a good thing. I take massive exception to this, and only point to the shocking disparities in our own country: 50 million -- every 6th person -- without health insurance; 1 out of 7, or 46 million Americans under the poverty line; 650,000 homeless Americans.

Surely, a capitalist economy that delivers stupendous wealth to the few can do so without so enormous injury to a sizable slice of its population. And surely, the smart people at CNN can do better than to diminish the impact of an economic system with proven and systemic faults.

Unbuckling the Bible Belt

Newt Gingrich's big win in the South Carolina primary this Saturday has me perplexed. What happened to the rigid moralists in the Bible Belt? I used to be able to count on them to hold the scriptural line on morality. It was a line I thought was drawn in the wrong place, but a predictable, unmovable line nonetheless.

What happened, Palmettans?

I mean, I believe in forgiveness and being washed clean in the blood of the Lamb, but this quantity of forgiveness and let-bygones-be-bygones has not been seen since a very bad Friday on Golgotha hill.
Newt, the serial philanderer, and a Catholic, no less! Folks, where are your standards?
The best I can figure is that anti-Romney votes were really anti-vulture capitalist votes. Mitt is still the darling of the 1%, while fellow millionaire and man of the people Gingrich captured a higher percentage of the middle class vote. It's the Republican version of the Occupy movement -- support whoever is running against the mega-millionaire, even if he is also wealthy, morally bankrupt and an opportunist.
Or maybe they are anti-Mormon votes? In the Bible Belt universe, born-agains are the true Church, with Catholics considered honorary Christians at best. Mormons, with their treasure-finding, wife-stealing founder, are hardly on the radar as Christians at all.
Which makes me wonder why wan, super-Catholic Rick Santorum didn't pull more than his 17% of the vote. Maybe if you're going to vote for a Catholic, vote for the guy who can stick it to the media.
At this rate, it's going to be a long strange primary season!

The overlapping serial monogamist

Newt was on fire the other night at the SC debates -- attacking CNN reporter John King for DARING to bring his personal life into the debates. It was a clasic case of "the best defense is a good offense." Turns out that Newt's second wife had just been interviewed , claiming Newt had given her the choice between OKing an open marriage (i.e., permission to boink his mistress and stay married) and getting divorced. Mrs. Newt showed which member of the couple had integrity by refusing the open marriage option.

Newt went on to claim that King's question was just part of the standard media attack on conservatives. The Republican audience not only cheered Newt's prickly attack, it gave him a standing ovation! And the other candidates looked on in admiring stupefaction.

The gall of this man is overwhelming. Isn't this the guy who tried to bring down Bill Clinton for an affair (if you can call it that) with a White House intern? While he was banging mistress #1/wife #2? While trumpeting "family values" and the evils of modern society?

Talk about situational ethics! If Dems do it, it is criminal and impeachable; if Reps do the same or worse, it's none of your business and you're a dick for bringing it up!

If anyone thinks that this arrogant, amoral, unrepentant, vile and vicious man has what it takes to be in the Oval Office, I pity them and the globe on which they would inflict his egomaniacal duplicity.

Our Prophet

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  is a man who needs to be regarded as a prophet -- on a par with Isaiah, Moses, Jesus, and his beloved Amos. A man who exemplified the highest possibility of a Christian man of faith -- to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.

One of my biggest regrets as a Catholic (one that I hope is addressed in the fullness of time) is that Martin cannot be venerated officially as a saint in my tradition, though his consciousness, his vision and his deeds far outstrip the paltry good done by most popes, cardinals, nuns and bishops. Actually, I might retract the statement about nuns, since many of them selflessly labor in the health and educations fields, constantly under spiritual assault by small-minded pastors and bishops. Indeed the female spirit is so often greater than that of the average well-connected, fancily-shod male prelate.

Martin was a stand-out. His epic "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is a stirring cry of loving disappointment with his fellow Christian ministers. They urge him to slow down, be patient, avoid provoking violence. Martin calls them out for what they are -- ministers of the Church, not of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Their Church is the self-satisfied champion of the status quo, protecting the interests of the powerful against the powerless, and calling that religious. Martin criticizes their inability to stand against evil and their eagerness to hush the oppressed.

How many others like Dr. King are there in the world? Many probably. But few have his penetrating eye, his clarion speaking voice and his soaring spirit. Few dared to insist on a path to justice that was itself just. Few trusted, like him, that "we will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands." He, unlike the pious and the patriot, trusted that the dream of the Founders, based in humanity's eternal quest for freedom, would one day -- through struggle, tears and blood -- prevail.

Martin Luther King Jr. deserves his day on the calendar. In the 1950s, his was not the only voice calling out for justice, nor was he the movement's ablest organizer. He was not the most blameless, nor the only martyr. But by a strange coincidence of history, personality and luck, he came to exemplify Samuel's midnight summons with his version of "Here I am Lord."I am grateful to God for our St. Martin. I am grateful that he shouldered the burden of becoming the public face of a movement that was reviled and inspirational -- that he put his life at risk, and the lives of family and friends, to advance the cause of a people. He not only led his own to greater freedom, but helped to save the souls of generations of Americans who acquiesced in a system of slavery and degradation.

Not a paper saint, nor a priest's bland-yet-genial mentor, he was a man whose life became greater than the sum of his voice, actions and writing. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks with a voice as old as the 8th century BC prophets, in whose steps he trod, and as modern as the Occupy movement. The search for justice will live as long as there are human beings in bondage. As long as humanity thirsts for righteousness, Martin will be among us as an exemplar and a challenge to our complacency and accommodation with evil.

Like Water for Corpses

OK. So I am not a big fan of US Marines in Afghanistan descrating Taliban corpses by peeing on them. It's childish, dumb and not the way to win anyone's hearts and minds. And soldier, PUT DOWN THAT CAMERA PHONE!

But I have to wonder at the shock and angst of news people and politicians working themselves up over dead soldiers getting urinated on, without a thought that these men had been killed on a complex battlefield. It's OK to kill, we seem to be saying, but not to pee on those you have killed. It's OK to demonize your enemy -- enough to feel OK about putting a bullet into him from long range -- but once he breathes his last, we must let the love begin.

Personally, given the chance to be killed or wee'd on, I'd pick the warm shower.

I have never been in battle, or anywhere near a war zone. I suspect that if I were, and if I was subject to the day and night terror about getting killed by some detested enemy, that I might be tempted to let loose a little if that enemy got his.

My problem is that desecrating the dead speaks volumes about what our soldiers -- and by extension, we -- think about living Afghanis. It's hard to imagine a soldier urinating on the body of a respected advserary. One might even by moved to honor the dead man in some way.

But an Afghani? A raghead? A camel jokey? These people are so far beneath us. They deserve our contempt, or at best our pity.

To reflect on the rationale for the war, or to question the violence that taks so many lives, is considered unpatriotic. Perhaps we protect ourselves against the irrationality of this war by being so appalled at the way some of our troops behave in the field. But for God's sake, war means hurting and maiming and destroying and humiliating. Yet we turn away from those realities, and worse, we console ourselves with tales of cleft palates repaired, or schools built, or puppies saved. You have to wonder what mosters we have become -- to turn a blind eye to death, grief and desolation, yet play the appalled spectator in a violent game we begged to have played.

When Moammar Ghaddafi was killed, so much righteous judgment was leveled against the Libyan fighters who dragged him out of his drain pipe, beat him, shot him and sodomized him. Barbaric! But the NATO flyer who dropped a bomb on his convoy was hardly considered. To blow up someone's ass from 10,000 feet is civilized, but to rape hsi ass at ground level is grotesque. Really.

Friends -- death and war are grotesque, unleashing evil and destruction on guilty and innocent alike. The least we can do is to be honest about it. Whether delivered at the push of a button or at the sharp end of a stick, we must try harder to own the beast within.

Net insanity: Santorum on sexuality

Rick Santorum came out in the last few as a supporter of state bans against contraception, stating that the practice is "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

The way they are supposed to be, that is, as defined by Catholic teaching and the beliefs of conservative Protestants. The "supposed to be" is a reference to Catholic natural law teaching that holds that since genitals are involved in the creation of human life, that procreation is all they should be used for. Natural law is a way to study the patterns underlying Creation, and therefore, is a way to understand God's will. This was probably clever in the 12th century, but in a world of science, it is ludicrous.

But more on that another time.

The natural law argument cuts both ways. Just as in Jesus's parable (Matthew 13:47-48) about the net that catches fish both good and bad, natural law catches sexual behavior that is both good and bad in its net. The problem is that, unlike the parable, the bad fish are never thrown away.

The natural law net catches behavior that is demonstrably bad or hurtful -- rape, incest, prostitution, adultery and sex with children. But it also catches behavior that is hard to get excited about: masturbation and non-procreative sex within marriage. Imagine the moral quandaries that creates for  a married couple that is post-menopausal or in which one partner is incurably infertile! Further, the natural law net catches behavior that is part and parcel of the way humans are designed (cue Creation!): homosexuality and transgender. By refusing to make reasonable distinctions between sexual acts -- expect inasmuch as they do or do not lead to heterosexual procreation -- the natural lawyers walk away from their responsibility to help human beings lead more whole, happy and holy lives. The churchmen who use natural law to support their judgements miss the opportunity to grapple with real problems faced by real people. That few seem to care shows how stupid and immoral the Church has become. That churchmen use their stridency on sexuality to get promoted shows how corrupt the edifice is.

One last comment. I am amused at the tendency of political conservatives to reject government regulations. Yet when their pet issues are at stake, they have no compunctions against bringing the police power against sinners.

And they are afraid of a liberal-conceived nanny state? Please!

Boundary marker: drug tests for welfare applicants

There's a new/old chain mail make the rounds of Facebook again:

Thank you Florida, Kentucky, and Missouri, which are the first states that will require drug testing when applying for welfare. Some people are crying and calling this unconstitutional. How is this unconstitutional? It's OK to drug test people who WORK for their money but not those who don't?… Re-post this if you'd like to see this done in all 50 states....and they need to have people take the drug test without a warning.

The sad part is that otherwise-good Christian people are posting this stuff. The rage that some people have about giving a break to the poor or the addicted astounds me. I can't decide whether this reflects their own rage, or is instilled in them by talk radio or their own ministers.

The potential for a greater evil than drug addiction should make most people reject the drug testing option. Say that an addicted mom with several kids applies for welfare. She tests positive on a drug test and is denied aid. Where does she go? How does she eat? Do the haters hope she becomes homeless? Will that teach her a lesson? Will she turn tricks to survive? Will the haters be gratified that she has completely debased herself and put her kids in danger?

Better yet, will they direct her to a church soup kitchen and shelter? These shelters (as well as basic human compassion) are in short supply in this supposedly faith-based world. Will they direct her to agencies that service the drug addicted and homeless? Not likely. Ordinary voters, many religious, can't wait to lower their own taxes and defund these places.

The situation is frustrating, mostly because these people don't see themselves as evil. One woman, who had insisted on drug testing addicts, responded to my posts with "I'm a woman of God and believe in helping people." Really? Is the cognitive dissonance (old term: hypocrisy) too hard for her to see?

Obviously so.

America has a huge problem when its religious faithful stop comparing their actions to the injunctions of their own traditions. A Christian who acts in opposition to Matthew 25 (feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc.) or the Sermon on the Mount (blessed are the poor) should at least feel ashamed. But the country's current political climate makes these people proud of their dismissal of the poor, glad to increase their suffering and hopelessness, and certain that their vicious stance is in keeping with the mind of Christ.

I am tired of being a PIA, and worried about stressing myself out with my Facebook "friends," but I feel compelled to make these posters face up to their hatred. Nobody is forcing you to like the poor or the addicted or the crazy or the homeless. It takes a special person to enjoy working with people so damaged and damaging. But we Christians need to speak up for them, even in spite of our feelings to the contrary. Feeling shame over our inability to love the poor is the smallest gift we can give them, and the boundary line separating true Christians from those in name only.

Review: "God No!" by Penn Jillette

The magic of unbelief

I'm one of those d-u-m-m theists that Penn Teller probably thinks is an idiot, but that didn't stop me from enjoying this book. "God, No!" is part biography and part polemic from Penn Teller, the tall half of the wonder magician duo of Penn & Teller. Penn is a terrific and funny writer, and his oversized persona comes across on every page. He's darned opinionated too, which makes for naughty and gossipy reading. P fancies himself a magic purist, and doesn't care about folks with animal acts, for instance. This means that he has quite complicated views of fellow performers like Siegfried & Roy. On one hand, he is absolutely enamored of their almost desperate need for love - P loves their utter devotion to their act. But he hates animal acts, and was not buying Roy's excuse that the tiger who attacked him was actually trying to help him. P is a realist, above all. He even berates himself for trashing S&R on Howard Stern's show, and shows S&R to be better gentlemen by thanking him for the mention. They fare better than Chris Angel and others who try to add mystery to their mundane magic acts. Kreskin and Valentino, the Masked Magician, come in for their fair share his opprobrium, too.

The book is full of stories like this. Penn visits a sex club (and tries to get picked up by a guy) in San Francisco. He gets naked and weightless on the Vomit Comet. Penn tells how his church-going parents got turned off to religion, and hints at the openness of his own marriage. He has a large heart and a large libido, and is not one to constrain his ego or his sexuality, any more than he would fit his 7-foot frame into a size-small jumpsuit.

"God, No!" can be a rough read. Penn drops plenty of F-bombs. And for reasons that are unclear to me, he publishes a letter he wrote to Penthouse, graphically describing a supposed first-person underwater sexual encounter. He sings the wonders of breast implants. Definitely NC-17 stuff.

Anyway, churchy though I am, I loved the book and couldn't get enough of it. P's dishing and fascinating stories made this an extremely easy and fun read. Religious people don't need to worry that P will turn them into flaming atheists. Indeed his arguments about theology are not terribly sophisticated. I guess that for a guy who spends his time fooling people, it's not too much of a stretch to assume that many preachers are in the same game. Fair enough. Take Penn's intellectual abilities with a grain of salt, if you must. But give him points for writing one of the most open, honest, funny and heartfelt books ever!

Movies in the afterlife

Today, I must have been thinking about the classic "life review" that is said to flash before the eyes of the dying in their last moments. It was revealed to me (i.e., I imagined) that at or after death, our first taste of Purgatory is to see a review of all the terrible things we have done -- all the people we have hurt, the thoughtless comments, the "jokes," the insults, lies and blame-laying, missed opportunities -- all made known to us, along with a visceral understanding of the pain they caused to ourselves and to others.

It's not about being punished for our sins as much as making us facing the consequences of our sinfulness by experiencing in ourselves the pain we caused in others.

But, a merciful God being in charge of the cinema, we are then shown another film -- of the kindness we bestowed and the good we did. I think this will be the more interesting and surprising film, since much of the good we do is far less known to us than the pain we caused. Examples: The smile we gave a drive-thru employee. The door we held open for an immigrant. The birthday greeting to a lonely person. The compliment to a co-worker. The time we felt stupid for having nothing to say to a grieving friend. The flower we placed on a gravestone.

At heart, most of us are good, though we don't give ourselves much credit. Wouldn't it be an interesting world if we obsessed as much about the good things we did as much as the dopey ones?

Cups and Chalices

Back again -- new year, new start.

In our little community, we are trying to implement the new translation of the Mass. After a fashion. We debated the value of the changes (not much), how to handle them (slowly, slowly and without coercion) and even bought little cardboard crib sheets to help us remember the new words. But no one seems in any hurry to make the leap.

Last Sunday, we were still "and also with you'ing" and singing the old version of the Holy, Holy. The presider did read from the new Eucharistic prayer. The words seemed a bit more baroque than usual, but the EP is all repetitive God talk anyway. Most people don't laser into the words. But during the Consecration, the replacement of the word "cup" with "chalice" stood out to me.

It seems really far-fetched that Jesus would have used anything remotely resembling a chalice at the Last Supper. He broke bread, after all, not an artisinal loaf.

But the Vatican translators thought differently. I can imagine the conversations going like this:

Msgr. Blustero Converato: But, bubule, how could a mere cup hold the precious Blood of Our Lord? It's so, so, common!

Padre Mildamo Progressio: But Jesus was a poor man in a poor land, your Excellence. A cup was what he must have used!

MC: Surely Mary Magdalene and her sister cohorts could have pitched in for a nice, gold chalice for the Last Supper? Or they could have rented or borrowed one from Joseph of Arimethea!

PP: Does it matter what kind of earthly vessel was used to hold the Sacred Blood? Would not any vessel be ennobled by contact with its contents?

MC: Precisimento! And a cup so ennobled would be a chalice, would it not? In essence if not in fact? Why confuse the faithful with history when we can give them meaning!

PP: Oy, my malatesta!

So, the pinheads win with chalice, and we move a step closer to the silly idea of Jesus celebrating Mass with his disciples, robed in Latin vestments and flanked by taper-carrying sacristan angels. Give me the rough-and-tumble Last Supper any day. One celebrated in hiding and under pressure; one with a desperate, anguished Jesus passing to us his very self under the disguise of bread and wine - innocent symbols of life, conviviality and God's simple presence. One that would outlast death, that would survive any hostile search, that would carry the simple message, "I am, and I love" to hungering future generations.

Chalice, my foot.