Since the feast day fell on a Monday, it isn't a day of obligation, at least in our archdiocese. Our parish had a Mass for the school kids this morning. My husband was assisting with it, so I went also. All the schools in town started last week. Seems a bit early!
The subject of adoption comes up frequently in the sometimes acrimonious back and forth between pro-choice and pro-life in the wake of the Dobbs decision. Some would have it that adoption is tantamount to child abuse; others that it has only a positive side. I feel that the truth lies somewhere between the child abuse narrative and "all is sunshine and butterflies".
A number of articles have come up lately, including this one on the NCR site a couple of days ago:
America has republished Greeley's 1989 article against the RCIA. Greeley provides not only a critique of the RCIA but also an alternative vision grounded in its general principles.
The alternative vision resides in the fact that Catholicism is as much about diversity as about community. What so many of our parish programs do is submerge diversity in the name of community.
While I have always felt that I could be myself in my work environment, in parish environments I have felt that I not only should check my credentials as a social scientist at the door, but also my master's degree in spirituality, my life time of study of liturgy, scripture, etc. and my four years of experience as a member of a voluntary pastoral staff and defer to whatever lay persons the pastor has anointed to run the parish.
A pastor once made this explicit by telling me that I was just too intellectual for the parish, and needed to be humble so that I would fit in. I resisted the temptation to tell him that I had spent my whole professional life in the company of social workers and consumers who were very happy to have me as friend. I never had to check my intellectuality at the door; rather many seemed to be delighted to have an intellectual treat them as equals.
“THE R.C.I.A.,” I have been told often in the last couple of years, “is the answer.”
I respectfully submit that it is not the answer, even assuming that we know what the question is, which I don’t think anyone does anymore. The Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RC.I.A.) is just that—a rite. When it is imposed as an obligatory paradigm, it violates the freedom of the Spirit and the integrity and the dignity of individual human persons. I protest against it even when it is imposed as an obligation on those who have never been baptized. I protest against it a fortiori when it is imposed on those who have already been baptized. Finally, I protest against neo-gnostic oppression of which the R.C.I.A. is only the most recent, though possibly the most offensive, manifestation.
[The RCIA} is spun out of historicist and academic concerns and displays no sensitivity to either the nature of contemporary religious experience or the cultural environments where it is to be exercised. (How can you call people the “elect” or require “scrutinies” or babble about “mystagogy” in the final decade of the 20th century?)
At a very general level it makes two important points that have been forgotten in the past and of which contemporary Catholics needed to be reminded—that becoming a Christian is a process and not an event, and that it is a process which of necessity should involve some sort of community. I would have called these two “points” guidelines, save that in contemporary clerical culture “guidelines” means “rigid laws” (just as “dialogue” means accepting a bishop’s order). For all I know those who actually drafted this rite intended nothing more than making these two points. Yet, the process, contrary to what is thought by those in the R.C.I.A. movement who interpret the document, is not necessarily that which is administered by the parish “staff.” and the community is not necessarily the parish “R.C.I.A. Team.”
THERE WERE REASONS a millennium and a half ago to require sponsorship and scrutinies to make sure that only worthy people approached the Eucharist—the bishop literally did not know anything about those who presented themselves for admission to the church. There were also reasons to exclude such prospective Christians from the Eucharistic Prayer. The Discipline of the Secret protected the church from the spies of the Roman Empire.
The empire hasn’t been around for a long time. And neither have the other assumptions behind a literal imposition of the rite. There are no grounds for ordering anyone out of church after the homily. Such behavior is an offensive and insulting anachronism. I did it once, caught by surprise, and still feel guilty about it. I’ll never do it again. I’m not an elderly Irish canon from the turn of the century with a blackthorn stick in hand. What right do I have to tell anyone that she or he cannot sit at the Lord’s table?
***
MY FOUR CASES, it will be said, are exceptions. Sorry—everyone is an exception. Everyone is unique. The Holy Spirit still blows whither She wills. The uniqueness, that which is most special about each person who comes to the rectory, is precisely the message, to those who preside over the rectory, of the Spirit of Variety and Pluralism. We have no right to try to arrange Her schedule, budget Her time, routinize Her grace. No one’s spiritual pilgrimage fits a formula. No one can be run through an automatic process. No one can be forced to jump through a series of hoops that have been designed a priori by liturgists and religious educators.
Am I merely saying that the R.C.I.A. must be more flexible and more responsive to individual human needs (and thus the devious workings of the Spirit). I am saying that it must be so flexible and so responsive that it will be unrecognizable to its enthusiasts—and I mean those who write the books and run the conferences and edit the newsletters and pontificate on the tapes and staff the national offices.
If I am told that it has been mandated by the bishops, I respond that such a mandate and a dollar bill will get you a ride on the Chicago subway. Moreover, an appeal to hierarchical authority comes with very poor grace from those who dismiss the bishops when they talk about celibacy or the ordination of women and broadly hint that infant baptism should be abolished so that all Catholics would be processed through the R.C.I.A.
IF THE R.C.I.A. is at most a very sketchy outline— suggesting community and processes for those who are not Catholics, it has no place at all in the spiritual pilgrimage of those who have already been baptized. They are by definition not catechumens (conceding for the sake of the argument the validity of the term) and should not be treated like catechumens.
Using the R.C.I.A. as a model for all sacramental preparation is, alas, typical of the resurgent clericalism of the Catholic Church in the United States. Instead of viewing a request for a sacrament as a sign of the Spirit at work (however tenuously) and joyously and enthusiastically responding to that request, the New Clericalist (who need not be a priest) converts the sacramental experience into an obstacle course, a series of barriers to be surmounted, a list of tests to be passed. (Young people have told me that they “passed” the psychological tests their priests gave them and hence were free to get married!)
Another unpredictable result of the overturn of Roe?
Americans overwhelmingly would like to be able to vote on an abortion measure on their state ballot, an exclusive USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds. And if they had the chance, they would oppose efforts to ban the procedure by almost 2-1.Seven in 10 say they would support using a ballot measure to decide abortion rights in their state, an idea backed across party lines, by 73% of Democrats, 77% of Republicans and 67% of independents. Democrats are the most energized on the issue; 43% say they "strongly support" putting abortion on the ballot.If there were a ballot measure in their state, those polled would vote by 54%-28% in favor of making abortion legal. Democrats support legal abortion in their state by 7-1 (76%-10%) and independents by 2-1 (52%-27%). Among Republicans, 34% would support abortion rights and 54% would oppose them, a worrisome fissure for the party that has long been identified with the anti-abortion movement.At particular risk for the GOP are two groups of swing voters. Suburbanites by 56%-26% say they would vote to support abortion rights in a ballot measure. And women by 60%-25% would support an abortion rights initiative, significantly more than the backing among men of 47%-32%.
Update 8/10/2022 10:42 pm CDT: I attended the mass this evening, did get drafted to help out at mass, and ended up working a booth for a while afterward as well. I'll post my report at the bottom of the post.
Yesterday, Kansas voters had the chance to declare that abortion isn't constitutionally protected in their state. They declined.
