Commonweal Conversations panel for the Chicago 5/29/18 event: from left to right: Meaghan Ritchey, Commonweal's Community and Events Manager, who organized the event and introduced the panel; Dominic Preziosi, Commonweal's Executive Editor, who interviewed Cardinal Cupich; and Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago.As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I had registered for a Commonweal Conversations event: Commonweal Executive Editor Dominic Preziosi interviewing Cardinal Blase Cupich. The event took place this evening at Loyola University's Water Tower campus in Chicago. Here are some brief notes about the event:
The event was sponsored by the John Garvey Fund. I suppose most readers of NewGathering know that Garvey was a long-time Commonweal columnist. Thanks to the fund's sponsorship (including a generous donation from Thomas Higgins, who was present this evening), the event was free to attendees like me.
The room was nearly full: I would guess there were at least a couple of hundred chairs set out, and virtually all seats were taken except for a couple of rows in the back. Most of the attendees seemed to be middle-aged to "advanced middle age", but it was also pleasant to notice that there were young people here and there in the crowd. Also visible were a sprinkling of clerical collars and attire. I struck up a conversation with the gentleman seated next to me; he mentioned that he was interested in starting a Commonweal Local Community. When, in the midst of our conversation, an acquaintance of his greeted him, it transpired that he also was a priest, albeit dressed in civvies. The Chicago clergy tends to be relatively progressive, so it doesn't surprise me that there are Commonweal readers among them.
There were two or three video cameras on tripods positioned at strategic points around the room; I tried to ascertain whether a recording of the event would be available on Commonweal's website, but wasn't able to get any specific confirmation as to when that might be. If I'm able to locate the video, I'll update this post with a link to it.
The event was organized by Meaghan Ritchey, Commonweal's Community and Events Manager. She introduced the panelists and kept them on schedule. Dominic Preziosi, currently Commonweal's Executive Editor but, as announced by Ritchey during her introduction, soon to become the editor of the magazine, did the honors of interviewing Cardinal Cupich. Preziosi did a nice, understated journalist's job of drawing interesting comments from Cupich by asking substantive questions and then getting out of the way and letting the Cardinal talk.
Preziosi started by noting, presumably as a sort of hint to the Cardinal, that the folks in the room should be considered to be pretty well-informed on Catholic issues. He then asked Cupich questions on a series of topics. Toward the end of the session, written questions were collected from the audience and Preziosi posed a few of these to Cupich as well.
Throughout their Q&A, both Preziosi and Cupich referenced Pope Francis a number of times. Cardinal Cupich is a staunch supporter and admirer of Francis. He is not one to minimize or oppose the reforms and programs that Francis is driving in the church.
Like Francis himself, Cupich did not spend his church career in Rome. In Cupich's case, he was the pastor of two parishes before be became a bishop. I speculate that this pastoral background has given Cupich a foundation of empathy toward parish priests and staff, and the people of the church. Part of the art of pastoral ministry is mediating between the well-polished system of doctrines, disciplines and laws of the "official church" on the one hand, and the real and messy lives of the people of God in the grassroots church on the other hand. This mediation is something that Francis seems to relish, and I sense the same thing in Cupich.
- Preziosi asked Cupich to comment on what he thought Francis meant when he recently called on Catholics to have an "adult faith" rather than an infantilizing faith. Cupich replied that he believes that living an adult faith means that we must take responsibility for our own lives, and that part and parcel of that is taking risks and trusting that God will stay with us and continue to watch over us. By contrast, an infantilizing faith is one with little risk-taking and little trust in God.
- Preziosi solicited Cupich's views on the role of conscience. The Cardinal emphasized that conscience is not just a retrospective tool to look back over our past actions to figure out where we had sinned, but an indispensable aid to living in the present; we should be in conversation with the "inner voice" and be willing to listen to where the Spirit may be leading us.
- Regarding those who are "spiritual but not religious", Cardinal Cupich stated that he firmly believes that the church must relinquish all social privileges and claims to temporal power in order to be an authentic witness to the Gospel. The church should be organized, not to acquire status and privilege, but to serve others.
- Asked whether the church needs to recover a sense of monastic spirituality, Cupich agreed. He noted that Francis, when he is with others, frequently is the calmest and most joyful presence in the room.
At the end of the evening, I was able to shake Dominic's hand, which was a pleasure. I also purchased a book of Garvey's essays, which I look forward to reading. I'm grateful to the Commonweal staff and to benefactors like Higgins for enabling these events.
One more note on Commonweal Local Communities: as I mentioned, my neighbor expressed interest in starting one up; he had reached out to the magazine and initiated the process, but stated that he was having a difficult time getting it to launch velocity. Later, chatting briefly with Meaghan Ritchey after the event, she let me know that among her duties is facilitating the local communities. Remembering my neighbor's interest, I asked her to give me her contact info. I then went in search of my neighbor to urge him to speak with her, but he seemed to have left. Meaghan had also mentioned that there is a local community in Chicago.
Thinking about whether I would join one or not: I would if it wasn't too inconvenient, but I don't know whether I'd be an every-meeting sort of member. If it involved traveling more than 15-20 minutes I'd probably pass on it completely. So my view is that these local communities really need to be intensely local in order to achieve lift-off and stay in the air. It might work in a close-knit community like a college; I suppose the challenge there would be that, if it's a student-focused group, the students turn over every few years. But at a Catholic college like Loyola's Lake Shore campus there would have been a critical mass of instructors and staff and other adults who would be subscribers and would have an interest in the sorts of issues that Commonweal covers. Where I live, in the 'burbs, I don't know whether or not that critical mass would exist.
Back in the days of the Vatican Council (II; my memory of I is hazy), when The New Yorker almost needed an imprimatur because it ran "Xavier Rynne's" accounts of the doings, when Holy Mother Church was poised at a point beyond which who knew?, Hans Kung -- who was one who was thought to have a good idea of what lay ahead -- spoke at the first McCormick Place in Chicago. And filled a huge hall. Whole lotta priests, but a whole lotta laymen, too. Whole lotta congestion in a really big building.
ReplyDeleteThere is a local community here (about 25 minutes away). I missed its first meeting due to a conflict. The second one is next week, on the late Stephen Hawking. Going to be way over my head, but if my lung guy and I can get on the same page, I'll try it.
Tom that is very interesting about Hans Kung. I was a wee tot during the Council so I pretty much missed the event, but my mother's younger brother, and the girl who eventually grew up to become his wife, were in school at the time - they would have been the age that today we call middle school; I think it was still called "junior high" back then. But they still have a palpable sense of the excitement of Vatican II. They tell me that their teachers, who were women religious, were very excited about it. The events of the Council were discussed in class, and they had assignments to write papers about it every week.
DeleteIt's commonly thought that JPII and Benedict had programs to "roll back" the Council. But I wonder if what transpired during those pontificates was a collective loss of nerve as much as a particular program. Not necessarily on the part of the popes themselves - I don't think JPII was one to quail in the face of a challenge. But rather on the part of the whole leadership layer. One way to understand Francis is that he is trying to prompt the church to recover its courage, to take risks and engage.
Over at Pray Tell, Bishop George Thomas of Las Vegas has an article about John XXIII and Vatican II that I thought was pretty interesting in this respect.
http://www.praytellblog.com/index.php/2018/05/25/bishop-george-thomas-opening-the-windows-of-the-church/
I'll check out Bishop Thomas, but you really missed an amazing era. Probably deserves a thread of its own. I mean, here we were knowing our parish priests, but with them living in a world of Latin from which they would emerge to play basketball or golf (depending on our age) with us and answer questions, and us looking in from the English outside. And suddenly, Wham!
DeleteI mentioned Kung, who in 1963 looked like the young Kurt Jurgen and spoke English like he was playing Captain Von Trapp. His dissertation, on Karl Barth, was pronounced sound Catholicism by the Pontifical Gregorian University and sound Barth by Barth himself. (We, of course had never heard of Barth or the Greg at that point, but the facts were impressive.) Then he wrote The Council, Reform and Reunion, which sold like Gone With the Wind, among rectories, monasteries and Christian Family Movement groups, and did his first U.S. tour.
Then The New Yorker blossomed with these "Letters from Vatican City" by Xavier Rynne (who was Fr. Francis X. Murphy, but that wasn't known until later). And Rynne knew what Cardinal Koenig of Cologne said about Cardinal Pericle Felice of the Curia, and whether Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani of the Holy Office was going to make his move or bide his time and use someone else as his staling horse. And he was usually right! He pictured the Council as a deliberative body, with the usual high ideals fighting with the usual low politics, procedural maneuvering and blocs forming and good guys vanquishing bad guys. Great stuff.
I think you are probably right to a large extent about a loss of nerve. In council, the bishops were reinforcing one another, but when they got home they ran into nattering nellies, self-appointed theologians and little old ladies with holy cards. Paul VI didn't handle birth control very well, but he was facing a situation that no pope had faced in probably 500 years, and he stopped before the last hurdle. That was bad.
But as Bob Olmstead, news editor of The National Catholic Reporter, replied once when someone asked when the Council ended: "five minutes after the last bishop got back to his desk."
(A little later). Thanks for pointing to Bishop Thomas' homily/introduction. Makes me think about moving the Vegas. They play some hockey out there, too!
DeleteYes! Little old ladies with holy cards are a formidable lot!
DeleteInteresting insight about the bishops reinforcing one another in council. Maybe that is why Francis is eager to reinvigorate synodality. Now, I'm not sure that the synod (synods?) on the family quite got to where Francis was hoping it would get to regarding communion for the divorced and remarried: I think they ... [sounds of grunting and efforting] just about got there but ... [lots of oofs and effs] not quite over the top. Seems another synod is upcoming, I guess we will see what the Paraclete has in mind this time.
Very interesting article at NCROnline - not about the Council, but about Humanae Vitae. Essentially saying that HV did NOT reflect "centuries" of church teaching. Many believe that HV was simply a matter of showing that popes and the church could not have erred in its birth control teaching - a matter of preserving their "authority" over the laity. But, HV backfired - people figured that if they could be so wrong on this, what else was the official teaching church wrong about?
Deletehttps://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/overwriting-tradition-humanae-vitae-replaced-real-church-teaching
Jim, I think you are right about the "commonweal" groups needing to be local. People are busy, and having to drive more than 15-20 minutes is a burden on most people these days, since they deal with nasty commutes all week anyway.
DeleteNot surprised that it was an older crowd. When my sons were growing up, I never went to anything like that - not even at the parish unless my husband was home from work. When they were young, I had no child care in the evenings, as my husband seldom made it home before 8 pm (DC traffic is horrific, often beating LA in the annual assessments of cities with worst traffic). I mostly worked from home, which meant my work day was fragmented. It stopped at 3 pm. School carpools, sports carpools, other kid activities, homework supervision, cooking, cleaning, shopping for groceries etc. My workday usually resumed around 10 pm, after the house quieted down! Weekends were often work, plus soccer and basketball games - at one time, as the boys got older, we would have 5 games/weekend with the 3 boys, because of multiple leagues (the community team plus CYO and/or "select" teams). I couldn't make it to the local parish for talks etc, one mile away,. Going to something in DC wasn't possible until the boys were high school age.
Most parishes offer some kind of child care during mass. But having some kind of childcare (play care for the little ones, maybe a supervised "study hall" for school kids) for evening events might bring out the younger adults with kids, instead of only the gray haired with empty nests.
Anne, that's a pretty interesting article about HV. What is needed, I think, is to find a way to get that author to engage amicably and productively with church leaders. If that could be brought about in a way that the participants could be open and trusting - who knows where it could go?
ReplyDeleteWhat blew my mind about the NCR article was this paragraph:
Delete"When Pope Pius XI promulgated Casti Connubii in 1930, he condemned the use of contraception because he thought, or at least strongly insinuated, that the Anglican Communion had endorsed the idea carte blanche at its Lambeth Conference of the same year. No one investigated that presumption at the time because the report of that conference was immediately put on the Index of Forbidden Books. Even theologians needed explicit permission from their bishop to study the Anglican "teaching," and that permission was hard to come by."
I am old enough to remember the Index of Forbidden Books, but had no idea a report by the Lambeth Conference was on it. I had associated it with weighty tomes and authors such as Voltaire, of interest only to academics, which I wasn't. I am assuming the Index no longer exists. Or maybe it does. But everything's out there on the internet now; the idea of needing permission to read anything seems so outdated.
Jim, it sounds like an interesting interview with Cardinal Cupich. He's originally from Omaha and still has family there. He was pastor of two parishes there before he went up the ecclesial ladder.
DeleteKatherine, the Index was officially done away with in June 1966. Growing up, I never knew anything about it. But in college (Catholic), I was assigned many Index books. I was in college during the late 60s, but the books were on the required reading lists for previous classes also when still officially banned. The profs had built their courses around syllabi that featured these great classics. I studied a lot of French in college (including Voltaire - in French!), and the many French authors on the Index were required in my French Lit classes (the profs had used the same books for years because they were "classics") as were some of the others in my World Lit class - which was a freshman requirement.
DeleteI too had not known that Catholic theologians were prevented from studying the birth control papers from the Lambeth Conference. Amazing.
I have long wondered why the RCC is so afraid of opening its institutional mind to understandings and interpretations that differ from their teachings. The two popes before Francis were very big on silencing their best and most creative thinkers - their own Catholic theologians - because they are thinking about old things in new ways. The world changes, the cumulative body of knowledge grows continuously. This leads to new understandings, as it should.
So why is the RCC, which claims to be the only "infallible" source of christian truth so afraid of those who continue to seek "Truth"? Instead of silencing their theologians, they should be inviting them to engage together in study, analysis, and conferences where they can compare ideas, debate ideas. Censorship is a sign of fear, not of confidence in one's "rightness".
Anne - I agree it's hard to conceive how the church could operate that way. I do think the church has changed and evolved since 1930 and even since 1960.
DeleteThe world is a different place, and as long as the church consists of people who were formed in and by the world, the church will continue to change, whether or not particular leaders wish it. But at least for now, I think we have a leader who wishes it. And there are leaders like Cardinal Cupich who also see the need for the church to grow and change - take risks, and trust in the Holy Spirit. Cupich tried to convey some of that last night, and I tried to capture some of that spirit in my notes above.
Katherine, the Index was a casualty of the Council. I needed permission to read Descartes in grad school, but the permission was automatic. I don't recall kissing the bishop's ring or promising to rinse my eyes every four pages.
DeleteI think it was feared that someone might lose their faith by reading the things on the Index. If their faith were that fragile a flower they would probably lose it anyway.
DeleteThe Anglican party line on b.c. was revised during the Great Depression and has not, as far as I can see, changed since then.
DeleteIt is fairly conservative and explicitly forbids it for the purposes of sex outside marriage and to avoid having children simply because they are inconvenient nuisances. The idea was that a sacramental marriage included procreation and sacrifice.
In the 1980s (therabouts) ECUSA allowed couples to delete the words about children in the wedding liturgy.
So attitudes have changedchanged, at least among American Episcopalians.
Snip: Preziosi asked Cupich to comment on what he thought Francis meant when he recently called on Catholics to have an "adult faith" rather than an infantilizing faith. Cupich replied that he believes that living an adult faith means that we must take responsibility for our own lives, and that part and parcel of that is taking risks and trusting that God will stay with us and continue to watch over us. By contrast, an infantilizing faith is one with little risk-taking and little trust in God.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think the Cardinal meant by "risk-taking"? What would be an example of an adult faith type of risk vs an infantile faith lack of risk? Racking my brains trying to understand how this translates to real life.
Jean - he didn't go into any further details or offer any examples, to the best of my recollection. But my understanding of what he meant here is that we need to do the best to balance or synthesize what can be a very demanding moral code with the reality of our lives. Following the moral code unthinkingly and unquestioningly can have consequences on other people's lives. I suppose the two examples that are top of mind would be contraception and remarriage after a divorce. The reality of reproductive decisions, even within marriage, can be more complicated than a simple "don't use birth control full stop". We've discussed some of those complicating factors over the years: what if the woman has a medical condition such that pregnancy would be life-threatening to her. Neither she nor her husband realized that would be in the cards when they made their wedding promises to one another. Is their marriage to be devoid of intimacy because of circumstances over which they have no control? And then there are medical conditions not related to reproduction for which birth control pills have proven to be an effective treatment. If the couple desires to have children, and means are available (e.g. IVF), is it wrong in those circumstances to pursue those morally-generally-illicit means? I think an adult approach to religion is to pray, consult, discuss and discern what to do in these situations. I'm neither advocating nor forbidding a particular course of action here, except insofar as I'm advocating for a responsible and mature application of conscience.
DeleteRegarding divorced and remarried couples: this has been much-discussed, and Francis surely has complicated any tendency to reduce the church's advice to, "Don't do it - period; and if you did do it, get out of it - period." Cupich supports Francis's approach here, in contrast to some other church officials we could name who have stated that Amoris Laetitia changes nothing.
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DeleteHmmm. When Church teaching is pretty clear and makes no exceptions, it's hard to hear a cardinal call rule-abiders "infantile."
DeleteThere is so much encoded messaging in the Church, and this drives me crazy. When we had our first Confession before RCIA, the Church Ladies told us that the priest requested we not be "specific." A general acknowledgement of breaking one of the 10 Commandments or Seven Deadlies was all that was expected, Father had a big week, he was tired, shouldn't take more than five minutes.
It wasn't until many years later that I understood that this was basically a don't ask/don't tell policy in pelvic issues. One of the reasons I did not consult the priest before so had a tubal at 48 and left Communion for good.
Here's a more trivial example of adult faith. I worked for many years for a company that was owned by a Jewish man. One year he gathered us for a corporate retreat at his private club in downtown Chicago, which was a club for Jewish members. This was during Lent. For lunch that Friday, they served us a salad with grilled chicken breast. As an infantile follower of the rules, I ate the salad but left the chicken on the plate. I was seated next to a senior executive of the company, also Jewish and a member of the same club, who noticed I didn't eat the chicken. He asked whether I was vegetarian or had some dietary restrictions. I told him I was Catholic and couldn't eat meat on Fridays durint Lent. He immediately felt awful that he hadn't considered that there might be a religious dietary restriction that they hadn't planned for; he's an observant Jew himself and is quite sympathetic to that sort of observance.
DeleteIt would have been more courteous of me to eat the chicken. I was a guest, and caused my host to lose face.
"There is so much encoded messaging in the Church, and this drives me crazy. When we had our first Confession before RCIA, the Church Ladies told us that the priest requested we not be "specific." A general acknowledgement of breaking one of the 10 Commandments or Seven Deadlies was all that was expected, Father had a big week, he was tired, shouldn't take more than five minutes. It wasn't until many years later that I understood that this was basically a don't ask/don't tell policy in pelvic issues."
DeleteOMG, I guess maybe I'm still infantile, but that is just idiotic on the part of the church lady and the priest.
If the guy doesn't have the time or energy to hear your confession, he should recruit some help.
There is no "don't ask, don't tell" in the confessional. We should tell all the things that we've discerned are sins and that otherwise haven't already been forgiven. If we're not ready to confess those things yet - e.g. if we don't have a firm purpose of amendment - then we should have that conversation with the priest, too. If that is going to suck up all his remaining energy and cause someone to have to call the ambulance for him, then the church makes other forms of the rite available for those exigent and very unusual circumstances.
Sorry for venting. Drives me crazy to see a perfectly good sacrament get mucked up.
Just a couple of thoughts; you can have imperfect contrition with confession and be forgiven, in fact most people don't attain perfect contrition. And knowing that you're never going to commit the sin you're confessing again seems like a pretty firm purpose of amendment.
DeleteVent on. I often feel like I need an RCIA do-over.
Delete"If that is going to suck up all his remaining energy and cause someone to have to call the ambulance for him, then the church makes other forms of the rite available for those exigent and very unusual circumstances."
DeleteLike what? I mean, you can go to Confession to another priest. But I have no confidence in the administration of the sacrament.
Actually, Father is on hospice now, and, while I have all kinds of sympathy for him, I do not know what the bishop is thinking letting him keep on like this.
Jean - the rite has three forms. The traditional one, tete a tete in a confessional or another private place, is the first form. The third form is group absolution - it doesn't require individual confession of sins. It's hardly ever used - hardly ever permitted by the senior execs in the church. When would it be used? Maybe for the privates and corporals who were getting on the boats to invade the Norman beaches, when there isn't time for individual confession. Or when the Titanic is shipping water.
DeleteIf your priest didn't have the time and/or the health to hear individual confessions - that could well be a legitimate discernment on his part. Group absolution could be an option in that case. But what if the bishop hadn't given him permission to use the third form? Cf. the topic we're talking about: adults doing adult discernment. Maybe easy for me to say: I've got an archbishop who seems to respect adult discernment - not all bishops are like that.
Sorry, don't mean to drag us off topic, but what's the second form? The general confession during Mass? I understood that didn't count. So why is it there?
DeleteThe second form is the reconciliation liturgy, which includes individual confessions. They're pretty common during Advent and Lent - I did a blog entry about it a few months ago.
Deletehttp://newgathering.blogspot.com/2017/12/adventures-in-penance.html
Oh, yes, I have heard of that. Usually it's offered once during Lent at a nearby parish, with several priests helping out.
Delete