Joseph Stoutzenberger

A More Inclusive Church: Married and Unmarried Catholics

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

Here are some statistics. The Catholic Church proclaims that the family is the bedrock of civil society. However, a Pew Research study in 2015 found that only 51% of adult Catholics in the U.S. are married. You can do the math as well as I can, but it’s surprising to me that almost half of Catholics are not married. At least in Philadelphia, so much of the church’s resources go to supporting family life, especially children. For instance, there is still a robust Catholic school system in the Philadelphia Archdiocese. That costs a lot of money, focus, and energy; but it is not helping all those Catholics who are not married and have no children. It might even discourage them from feeling part of a parish. (Full disclosure: I have had children and grandchildren who attended Catholic schools, and I taught in a Catholic high school myself, so I value the work that these institutions do.) Parish bulletins likely name the principal of the school, the person in charge of religious education (of children), and perhaps a youth minister. I have yet to see a bulletin that names a parish-level person in charge of ministry to singles. I do know that there are programs for single and divorced Catholics, but those are usually not associated with a particular parish.

I mention this information about nonmarried Catholics as a reminder that in today’s world the view that the church consists of priests, nuns, and with a few exceptions married couples, no longer reflects how things are today. Reality is much more complex. Many women and men from a Catholic background live together without getting married, or they get married in a civil ceremony. (“We wanted to marry on the beach at the Jersey shore, not in a church building.”) I asked a priest friend of mine what percentage of couples who present themselves for marriage are already living together. He answered, “All of them.” And then there are same-sex couples clambering to be married while remaining part of the Catholic community. There’s a sacrament for men seeking holy orders and one for people who marry in the church, but those sacraments leave out many, perhaps the majority, of Catholics today. What expressions of holiness exist for people who are not partakers of those two sacraments?

That being said, marriage is a sacrament in Catholicism. Theologian Bernard Cooke went so far as to say that it is the quintessential sacrament because the love and commitment of the couple so clearly embodies the covenantal love of God for God’s people. A key word there is embodies. Marriage represents a union of bodies and spirit. That realization makes a positive statement about human persons as bodily, sexual beings who desire to share love and the awesome responsibility of being open to new life. The Protestant tradition does not talk about marriage as sacramental. In Catholicism, it is the one sacrament where the couple themselves are ministers of the sacrament, not a priest or deacon. There is grace that comes from a couple publicly committing themselves in love to each other. That grace is for themselves, for the possible blessing of children, and for the community at large. The church calls families “the domestic church.” If church, ecclesia in Greek, is a community of believers in Christ dedicated to carrying on his work, then Catholics who marry commit themselves to being church. Is it any wonder that some same-sex couples steeped in Catholicism want their relationship to be such a grace?
Modern families face many challenges. Some married couples spend only a couple hours together during the week and can have a weekend crammed with activities as well. Perhaps as many as a third of Catholic families are single parent families or must deal with the challenge of child rearing after divorce. Since Vatican Council II, the church has taken steps to reinforce its commitment to helping married couples thrive. Grassroots programs such as Marriage Encounter was begun to give couples an opportunity to spend a weekend together strengthening their relationship. Promoting a clearer understanding of what a sacrament is and how marriage is sacrament has helped couples understand what a wonderful, awesome statement they are making when embarking on the journey of married life together. A marriage divorced from love is not a marriage, which was not always understood sixty or one hundred years ago. (The song “Do You Love Me” from Fiddler on the Roof playfully expresses the hesitancy that many married couples had about admitting their love for each other.) However, a church is catholic only when it is a community of married, unmarried, and all those searching, in the words of St. Francis De Sales, to “be who you are, and be that perfectly well.” The Catholic Church has much work to do to make a place at the table for the diversity of people who make up contemporary society.

Confession—a Sacrament of Consolation?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

Every Monday at noon, the Basilica Shrine of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in the Germantown section of Philadelphia holds a novena service followed by Mass. A few hundred people, sometimes as many as a thousand, come to the service to seek the intercession of Mary for some concern they have. (A novena is nine successive days of prayer offered for a particular intention.) Some of their petitions are read aloud before the novena begins: a mother worries about her son’s drug use, a man has lost his job, a woman has a friend recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The church has an air of solemnity not found at most weekly parish Masses. Before and during the service, on the side of the church people line up to go to confession in an old-fashioned confessional. What draws people to this sacrament? What grace do they feel they are receiving through this ritual of asking God for forgiveness, confessing their sins, hearing a priest assure them that their sins are forgiven, and being directed to say a few prayers as their penance?

First, some facts and background. A Pew study in 2015 found that only 2% of Catholics go to confession at least once a month. 43% go once a year. No doubt that number has gone down since then. Prior to Vatican Council II, a priest’s Saturdays were as busy as his Sundays. He typically heard Saturday confessions from 2:00 to 4:00 and 7:00 to 9:00. The Council called for a review of all seven sacraments in order to make revisions based on two criteria: What was the original intent of the sacrament? How can it be updated to meet the needs of people today? The last sacrament to undergo changes was the Sacrament of Penance—confession.

The name of the sacrament was changed from Penance to Reconciliation. That name change indicates a major change in emphasis—from confession and penance to reconciliation. “Confession” sounds like what a wrongdoer admits to doing before a judge. “Penance” sounds like the punishment handed down by the judge. “Reconciliation” sounds like mending a fractured relationship, re-joining a community from which someone feels alienated. Do any of those terms describe what I imagine people were seeking by going to confession at the Shrine? My guess is that they were seeking consolation. They felt burdened and wanted to be unburdened by confessing their sins or whatever else was troubling them to a priest and hearing from him that God forgives them and loves them. They needed consoling and comfort, and they felt that ultimately only God could provide it.

It’s one thing to read in the gospels that Jesus said that forgiveness is to be given “seventy times seven times” and that he constantly told people, “Be not afraid. Go in peace. Your sins are forgiven.” It’s one thing to hear about the love of God preached from the pulpit at Mass. It’s another thing altogether to hear words of blessing for oneself directly and personally from a priest-confessor, at that moment a representative of Christ himself.

A few Catholics still go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation with the old notion that they fear God will punish them if they do not tell all their sins to a priest. Some go to confession out of a sense of scrupulosity, feeling guilt-ridden over even the smallest transgression, repeating the same sins over and over again. (I like Caryl Houselander’s advice to a young man who scrupulously went to confession every week. She told him: Stop going to confession; just leave the state of your soul in God’s hands.) My guess is that a great many Catholics want something simpler and less God-fearing from an experience of confession. They want to feel connected to God, a loving God, a God who cares for them personally. They believe that baring their soul before God in this humble act of asking for forgiveness is healing. They want to feel the embrace of God. Going to confession for them offers not just reconciliation but refreshment, rejuvenation, and consolation. It’s an opportunity to renew a pact with God: You care for me; I will try my best to be a caring person. Assure me that you love me; I will leave this sacrament trying to love myself and others as you do. I want my life to be better, but I need your help. Carry me, Lord, when burdens overwhelm me. When it works its magic, reconciliation is consolation for troubled souls.

Join the Circus

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

When I began the graduate program in English at Temple University, I took a course on medieval English literature. The professor was nearing retirement and perhaps nearing senility as well. He brought with him to class a cassette tape player and played classical music while he lectured for an hour and a half. “Lecture” is not an accurate description of what he did. Without pause, he talked in stream of consciousness style on whatever seemed to enter his mind. I remember he once said, “Church. The word derives from old English for circle, a circus, a three-ring circus.” I immediately started imagining the church as a circus, with clowns and acrobats, lion tamers and exotic animals. Because of their ornate robes and pointy hats, I of course thought of bishops as clowns. (Some bishops might embrace that association; I’m sure others would not be amused.) Clowns are not the center of attention; they’re not the stars of the show. They add levity to any setting and get people not to take themselves too seriously.

Christianity actually has a tradition of jesters or “holy fools,” especially in the Eastern tradition. However, Western Christianity also has its tradition of saints looked upon as clowns and fools. St. Benedict Labre comes to mind, who died a homeless beggar after being rejected by every religious order he applied to. St. Philip Neri, apostle of Rome, also was a great advocate of not taking oneself too seriously. When a man sought him out for confession and was overly scrupulous about his sins, Neri gave the man the penance of walking around Rome for a day with a live chicken in his hat. Of course, St. Francis of Assisi gained a great following built on foolishness. In his biography of Francis, G. K. Chesterton calls Francis and his early followers “les jongleurs de Dieu”—God’s jugglers, or God’s clowns. Apparently when early Franciscans unexpectedly ran into one another they burst out laughing at the apparent foolishness of the thoroughly counter-cultural life they had chosen to live.

Mime holding a rose. — Photo by pedro18 on Pexels.com

In 1970 the Broadway musical “Godspel” portrayed Jesus as a clown who gathered a group of like-minded followers to spread joy in playful ways. Also in the 1970s, spiritual write Henri Nouwen wrote Clowning in Rome in which he describes clowns as peripheral figures who, through their humble, saintly lives, caused others to smile and to have hope. Around that same time began a movement called “clown ministry.” Youth ministers and other parish ministers would put on white-face and clown makeup and mingle among people in church settings, clowning around without saying a word, like a mime. Ken Feit was the greatest practitioner of clown ministry in Catholicism. He gave up his studies with the Jesuits and set out to live a life as one of “God’s fools.” He was to proper society what a jester was to the medieval courts of Europe. He playfully pointed out the folly of many “serious” endeavors and appealed to the simple wisdom found in quality children’s literature such as the “frog and toad” series. Unfortunately, his life was cut short when he was struck by a car while hitchhiking.

The classic Preston Sturgis movie “Sullivan’s Travels” makes a similar case for levity. Sullivan is a successful Hollywood director known for making fluff movies. He decides he wants to make a movie with a serious theme, one that exposes the suffering of the “common man.” He sets out on a journey to live with hobos and homeless people. He ends up in an oppressive work-camp prison where the men are treated to a movie night featuring cartoons and comedy. The men relish the break from their oppressive lives, and Sullivan decides to return to Hollywood to make comedies to poke fun at conventions and brighten people’s lives. The movie closes with the line: “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh.”
The Greek word for church, ecclesia, means public gathering, a group of people who come together for a common purpose. Is that gathering of people more a circle or ladder-like? A circle implies equality. After Vatican Council II, directives for church architecture called for altars to be brought out from the wall so that all those present were to some degree gathered in a circle. New churches were built in circular or semi-circular designs, again emphasizing the equality and communality of the assembly. How is the church, the people of God, to live in this spirit of unity, seeing one another as equals, and joining together to do good? All members would do well to follow Nouwen’s advice and live humble, saintly lives, being a voice for hope and an impetus for others to smile, like toddlers are without even trying. We have seen much of arrogance in public life lately. A little humility would be a great antidote. Who are the “holy fools” on the periphery today who remind us not to take ourselves so seriously? Late-night talk show hosts? Life is serious business, of course; but doesn’t the world need a little lightheartedness now and then? It’s likely that we all agree on this point but find that too much time passes between moments of sheer playfulness. We would all do well to get in touch with our “inner clown” and join the circus, at least once in a while.

How Can We Find the Holy in a Secular Age?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

The city of Ephesus, now in modern-day Turkey, was home to a thriving Christian community in the early years of Christianity. Today you can still visit a small chapel there that claims to be built on the site of the home where Mary, the Blessed Mother, lived out her last days in the company of the apostle John. On the path leading up to the chapel is a sign that says that Pope John Paul II declared this site to be “worthy of veneration.” He didn’t support or reject the claim that the Blessed Mother actually lived there, but he was saying that it is indeed a holy place. When I visited the chapel, I nonchalantly went in and looked around at the altar and surroundings. I kept thinking, “What are the chances that Mary actually lived here?” Then three men came into the chapel. They immediately genuflected and blessed themselves. Judging by the way they made the sign of the cross, they were Eastern Catholics or Orthodox, not Latin rite Christians. They genuflected and blessed themselves three times on the way to the front of the chapel, knelt before a statue of Mary, lit candles, and bowed their head in a posture of great devotion. I realized that I had approached this place as a tourist; these men were pilgrims. They were moved to bow down in adoration in the presence of the holy. The chapel offered them an opportunity to connect to the Blessed Mother, regardless of whether or not she actually lived there.

I began asking myself if I approached anything with the spirit of reverence that the three men exhibited in Mary’s chapel in Ephesus. Such expressive spirituality runs counter to our modern, secular age. As I go through life, am I always a tourist? Am I ever a pilgrim? Getting down on our knees in adoration is not a gesture that comes naturally to people steeped in secular culture. Aren’t we missing something because of this failure on the part of so many of us? Isn’t something vital lost? Surely there is someone or something we should regard with great reverence. The three men were onto something that we might assent to intellectually but seldom bring ourselves to enter into. Places of worship are meant to be that—places where people go to connect with the holy. Is there any hope for us who are increasingly numbering ourselves as among the “nones,” people indifferent to religion and in large part indifferent to any sense of the sacred?

Some people still seem to be better at adoration than most Catholics, main line Protestants, and secular humanists are. Five times a day devout Muslims prostrate themselves in recognition of the all-merciful, all-compassionate God. Many Evangelical Christians feel themselves transformed when they go to church where they experience the presence of Jesus, their Lord and Savior. Some Catholics associate practices done before the changes brought on by Vatican Council II, such as the Mass in Latin, as conveying a spirit of reverence that they find lacking in Catholic practices of today. What would help the rest of us reclaim a sense of the sacred? Catholic writer Carlo Carretto offers the following guideline for how to cultivate an attitude of reverence and feel connected to the holy that secularists might find helpful:

Try very hard to have a child’s heart and a child’s eyes, then everything will be easier for you. Gaze at things, study things; don’t be afraid of wasting time strolling along by the sea or looking in a microscope….God looks at you through all the signs of creation all around you that are filled with God’s presence. They will speak to you of God.

If we can slow down our racing mind, step away from screens, and tap into a sense of wonder and pondering, we might discover what Carretto says: God is gazing at us, present all around us, and speaking to us. Then we can smile and join the chorus of people who bow down before the holy and sing God’s praises in heartfelt song. We can become pilgrims on a sacred journey through life.

Does God Exist?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

I never wanted to write directly about God. What can be said about what Catholicism calls “ineffable,” a term for that which cannot be fully described or explained. Some years ago, I did write an essay about the existence of God. I relied heavily on the “proofs” for God’s existence put forth by St. Thomas Aquinas and the tradition of scholastic philosophy. I sent the essay to a professor at our local seminary in Philadelphia for his review. He wrote back that the main problem he had with my essay was that it presumed God exists. That critique certainly caused me to pause, especially since it came from a seminary professor. I thought I was on safe ground saying that God exists—isn’t that where the creed begins? I asked him to explain, and he responded, “If cows and trees exist, then God does not exist.” Again, I was baffled; but I started to understand his premise.

The two key words “God” and “exist” are challenging concepts that can too easily be misunderstood. Cows and trees exist as beings distinct from other beings; Aquinas himself said that it is more accurate to say that God is “being itself” rather than a being that exists alongside other beings. Catholicism asserts that God is mystery, beyond our comprehension; but it also proclaims that God exists, despite the shortcomings of the words. Any God-talk must accept that God is always beyond any description we might make. However, such humility and hesitancy about seeking to define God is not to diminish God. God is “more than,” not “less than.” All religions grapple with how to speak about that which does not fit neatly into our ordinary ways of comprehending. The Hindu phrase neti, neti (“not this, not that”) about ultimate mystery is not meant to dismiss the concept God but to caution that our understanding of the ultimate is always incomplete. The Hebrew word for God is equally cautionary but affirming: YHWH, “I am who I am.”
Where does that leave Christians and others who proclaim belief in God? As only a poet can, T. S. Eliot offers helpful advice when considering talking about the mystery of God: “About some things we can say nothing, but before which we dare not keep silent.” Surprisingly, modern science can help us when thinking about God. Only fairly recently has science realized that the universe is over thirteen billion years old and likely will continue for some time to come. What is happening in this universe story? Theologians who ponder this reality suggest that God is behind the journey through time and is ahead of where this journey is going. The bible suggests that God is inextricably bound with the universe and its undulations, most especially with that self-conscious phenomenon in the universe known as humanity. For Christians, Jesus reveals what God is like; but even if Jesus himself is not heeded, he assures us that “the very stones will shalt” of the glory of God (Luke 19:40). In other words, Jesus proclaimed a God who is love, but the universe itself proclaims the same message. Does an artist painstakingly create a painting out of indifference or love? Christians believe that God is an artist who is love itself. That love energy at work in creation is incomprehensible because it is more than we can imagine, not less. We speak of the ineffable not because we fully understand it but because it is too wonderful to be silent about. We look to poets and mystics, saints and scholars, to help us appreciate the mystery. St. Catherine of Siena, both a mystic and a saint, described her experience of God in a simple Italian phrase: Pazzo D’Amore: God is “crazy in love with us.”

The Gospels: Myth or Parable?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

When I first began teaching in the 1970’s, writings on myth by people like Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade were popular. I had thought of myths as falsehoods, popular made-up stories taken to be true but that closer analysis proved to be false. Copernicus and Galileo dispelled the myth that the sun revolved around the earth. Nazism perpetrated a disastrous myth that there was a noble Aryan race superior to all others. I began to see myths everywhere. Part of the American myth was that America was always the good guy who only wanted to help suffering people everywhere and make the world a better place. The Vietnam War called that myth into question and shook up the nation. Could poet Robert Browning have been wrong, mirroring a popular myth, when he wrote, “God’s in his heaven/All’s right with the world”?

Campbell looked at culture-shaping stories from many different cultures and found similarities among them as well as intriguing differences. The Babylonian creation myth described a battle between twin forces of good and evil. Good triumphs because Marduk, the savior son of this warring couple, kills his evil mother. It was thought-provoking to point out similarities with and differences between the Jewish creation stories and their Babylonian counterpart. It was commonplace in the seventies to compare and contrast the Christian “myth” with other myths, even though many Christians cringed at the thought of labeling the Christian story a myth. A seminary professor friend of mine suggested I avoid the use of the word myth applied to Christianity altogether for fear that it would muddy the waters for believers.

I didn’t follow his advice. I found that the word opened up fascinating avenues leading to a better understanding of Christianity. After all, the bible is filled with stories; and the gospels relate the Jesus story told through the eyes of four inspired writers. Stories have meaning, and the best stories have profound meaning. I connected the word myth with mystery, and biblical stories helped unravel the mystery of God, human beings, and reality itself. You can deny or dismiss the Jesus myth, but if you do so it is important to know what it means. The bible itself contains stories offering contrasting myths. Is God exclusively the God of the Jews, as expressed in many Genesis stories; or does God love all people who reject evildoing, such as found in the story of the prophet Jonah. Even New Testament stories are at times baffling. When Jesus told Peter to put away his sword when soldiers came to arrest him, was he rejecting all forms of violence? The Book of Revelation tells a different story.

One insight about the concept myth that I found helpful came from scripture scholar John Dominic Crossan. His 1975 book The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story contrasts different types of stories. The two types that interested me most were myth versus parable stories. Myths support commonly held perspectives on reality; parables subvert those perspectives. Apply that distinction to the stories that Jesus told, and you find that Jesus was very fond of telling parables. Most of his stories and even many of his sayings went against standard beliefs of the people of his time, and they continue to baffle us today if we take them seriously. What sensible employer pays workers the same wages whether they worked nine hours, five hours, or two? What is Jesus getting at with that story? When Jesus told an audience of Jews in Jerusalem about one of their own being beaten up by robbers and left to die by the side of the road, surely they could relate. But when he then said that a Jewish priest and expert in the law passed by and didn’t help but a Samaritan did, it must have left them dumb-founded. What is this man getting at, painting righteous members of our society in such a negative light and equating hated Samaritans as being “good”? I could go on with examples of Jesus stories that are parabolic and not mythic. Parables make us question our presuppositions. Jesus was good at that.
The greatest takeaway I had from Crossan’s analysis of different types of stories is that the Jesus story itself is parable! There’s a story about the mother of Caesar Augustus being impregnated by the god Apollo while she slept. Augustus, who amassed such power and ruled the mighty Roman Empire for decades, was rightfully called the Son of God by his subjects. Who could believe that the son of an unmarried peasant woman in out-of-the-way Nazareth deserved the same title? Someone executed as a criminal by crucifixion is not what Jews of the time were expecting from their Messiah. Shouldn’t the Savior of the world have had a higher profile than spending three years preaching mostly to the poor people around the Sea of Galilee? The story of Jesus makes no sense unless it is understood as parable. The one who told parables is parable himself. Commonly held beliefs about power, righteousness, and who are the beloved of God are overturned in his stories and in the story of his life, death, and resurrection itself.

Christ in a Keffiyeh

I was in Jerusalem seventeen years ago. A friend and I went looking for an ATM to withdraw money. Three blocks from our hotel, we came across a gas station where a young man was filling up his car. We asked him if he knew where we could find an ATM, and he told us there was one two blocks away and that he would gladly take us there. I hesitated and said we could walk, but at that point, it started to rain, so my friend jumped into the front seat, and I went in the back. On the seat next to me, I saw a keffiyeh, a red and white scarf worn by Palestinians at the time most often associated with the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization. I started imagining my friend and I being taken hostage and hidden away somewhere in an underground bunker. Sensing my uneasiness, the driver said, “Where are you from? I have a brother who lives in California.” His kind gesture got us to the bank and back to our hotel without our getting wet and without incident.

Christ in a Keffiyeh

How Do Catholics Read the Bible?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

Growing up, I attended Catholic schools for sixteen years. During that time, I don’t recall ever reading the bible directly. Even in college, the course I had on the bible actually involved reading a textbook about the bible, not the bible itself. It was as if the bible was too sacred a text for the uninitiated, such as myself, to make sense of except as explained by those in authority and knowledgeable about it. There’s a history to Catholicism and bible reading. It’s important to remember that books and reading in general were rare until after the invention of the printing press. Before that time, the bible was communicated nonverbally, such as through stained-glass windows and the mysteries of the rosary that reminded Christians of events from the gospels. Once Gutenberg invented the press in the mid-fifteenth century, printing presses started showing up in all major cities of Europe. Not surprisingly, his first printed book was the bible in Latin translation. Before the time of Martin Luther in the 1500s, no one could call for people to read the bible themselves—except for in some monasteries and churches books simply did not exist. After Luther, especially after he made his masterful translation of the New Testament into highly readable German, people could read the bible themselves in printed form. Leaders of the Catholic Church at the time were wary of such a free-wheeling approach to reading and interpreting scripture. Protestants were finding bible passages that led them away from the one true church.

There’s something to be said for a cautious approach to bible reading. Interpretation of a text can never be separated from a text itself. A few years ago, I heard Cardinal Donald Wuerl talk about discussing the bible with a Protestant woman he met on a plane. She told him that she based her faith solely on scripture. He drew her attention to the passage in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus says to the apostle Peter: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” He claimed that this passage was Jesus appointing Peter to be the first pope, and therefore, all bible-believing Christians should be members of the one, true church under the leadership of the pope. I doubt that the woman was converted to Catholicism immediately after her conversation with Wuerl, but I heard what the archbishop said as laced with his own interpretation of the text. Jesus spoke those words to Peter after Peter had expressed his faith in Jesus. Perhaps Jesus saw Peter as “the rock” because of his faith, not because he proposed that Peter would begin a long succession of leaders who serve as bishop of Rome. Thus, Protestants interpret the passage to mean that Peter is the model for all people of faith. The Catholic Church itself points out that bible passages such as this one cannot be read in isolation from the Tradition that is found in the Catholic community and its leaders analyzing and explaining what a text means—text plus interpretation of text.

Any written text calls for interpretation. Think about the controversies swirling around interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Do citizens have a constitutional right to bring semi-automatic guns with them into their local Starbucks? A text as ancient and nuanced as the bible is should be approached with humble recognition that simple explanations are not easily arrived at. For example, the passage from Leviticus stating that “a man should not lie with another male as he would with a woman” has been appealed to as a clear-cut condemnation of homosexual relationships. Those who read that line solely on a literal level see it as clear-cut and unambiguous, disregarding the cultural context in which it was written perhaps three thousand years ago in a highly patriarchal society. In Catholic circles, discussion about this passage is not done separate from the tradition of interpretation about the topic of homosexuality, especially the natural-law tradition that Christianity adopted from ancient Greek philosophers.

Catholicism agrees with other Christian communities: the bible is the word of God. It should be read and should be viewed as a sacred text. However, the Catholic Church makes clear that the bible is the word of God through the words of human beings. Those human beings wrote at particular times and places. Deciphering what those words mean requires the painstaking work of ongoing study and analysis. Text can never be separated from the context in which it was written. And in the end fidelity to the text means seeking to arrive at the most reasonable interpretation possible, while also recognizing that the search for meaning is never-ending.

Is Liberation Still Central to the Christian Message?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

During the 1970s, there was much talk of “liberation” among religions, especially Catholicism. Gustavo Gutierrez and other Latin American theologians laid out a biblical and theological foundation for liberation as an essential element of the Christian message. The pope of the time, Pope Paul VI, used the term frequently. In 1976, he wrote: “As the kernel and center of his good news, Christ proclaims salvation, the great gift of God which is liberation from everything that oppresses man.” What is this liberation from oppression that Paul VI was talking about? Is it what Christians mean by “salvation”? Is it still a guiding force in the agenda of the Catholic Church?

I imagine that when most Christians think about “salvation,” they envision that Jesus saves them from eternal damnation and is waiting to welcome them into heavenly peace. On the other hand, “liberation” implies transforming conditions in the world today that are oppressive into ones that foster the well-being of people suffering under oppression. “Jesus saves” means that people experience the love of God in their lives, which fills them with hope for eternal life. “Jesus liberates” means identifying how people are hurting and committing to overcoming conditions that cause suffering. Liberation theologians, along with Pope Paul, had no intention of dismissing personal salvation as central to the good news of Jesus. Gutierrez said that poor people, in particular, hold out hope that life after death will be better for them since they are more likely than others to die before their time and are well-acquainted with suffering in this life. Liberation theology served as a corrective to the “otherworldly” understanding of salvation. Vatican Council II made clear that “painstakingly working for the betterment of the world” went hand in hand with personal spiritual development. In fact, hope in an afterlife of union with God frees people to ask what a young man in the gospels asked of Jesus: What must I do to attain eternal life? Jesus’s reply was: Go and give all that you have to the poor. Jesus did not separate the promise of eternal life from the mandate to care for people who are hurting.
Is liberation still front and center in the message of Catholicism? Early in his papacy, Pope Francis called the church a “field hospital,” dedicated to healing people’s wounds. He had in mind both physical and spiritual wounds. He saw migrants forced to leave their native land as one group whose suffering had multiple causes, from environmental changes to violent conflicts. His first official visit as pope was to a Mediterranean island that serves as a stopping-off point for African migrants seeking refuge in Europe. He saw climate change as an underlying cause of suffering, especially for poor people, and in response, wrote an encyclical on the environment that has led to many Catholic grass-roots organizations addressing the problem. In his most recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (2020), Pope Francis appeals to a longstanding Catholic concept, the common good, to call for changing and creating policies and practices aimed at helping people who are hurting. The United States Catholic Bishops continue to talk about the “two feet” of Christian service: individual acts of charity as well as works of justice to bring about social change. The words “liberation” and “oppression” may not be used as frequently as they were fifty years ago, but it is clear that modern Catholic social teaching centered on justice and liberation remains a hallmark of the church’s mission.

Will U.S. Catholicism Survive?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

I begin my recent book on Catholicism relating a story about two Philadelphia priests walking by a church building being demolished. The church was Our Lady of Mercy at Broad Street and Susquehanna Avenue, an area of the city much in need of mercy. The event spurred them on to ponder whether or not the entire church in the United States was in danger of being demolished. Their questioning about the future of Catholicism was not unfounded. There has been a steep drop in the number of people who identify as Christian in the United States in the past couple of decades, and Catholicism has not been immune from that trend. Much of that decline has taken place among young people. That trend has not been limited to America. When I traveled through the Netherlands, I visited a number of churches. I asked a curator at one church if they held services there. He said, “Not really. Our churches are mostly museums now.” That sounds exactly like what Pope John XXIII and Pope Francis feared. They warned that the church was not meant to be a museum. If it was to survive it had to be a living, growing, thriving garden. To be that blossoming garden, both of these popes saw a need for change—what Pope John XXIII called aggiornamento, “updating.”

Pope John saw updating as responding to the “signs of the times” during the early 1960s. Pope Francis sees a world in crisis today, especially an environmental crisis, that calls for creative change. Moves toward change create problems for an institution as old as the Catholic Church. Would it mean mimicking secular society and adopting secular values dominant in Western society today? Pope Francis actually offers a balanced vision for the church today: dare to dream of new possibilities, but hold onto your roots. In a talk he gave in 2021, Pope Francis said the following:

A living faith draws strength from remembering the past while continuing to grow in love of God and service to others…. Go to the roots, get nourishment there and move forward.

Catholics who hold onto the ancient faith propose that the roots of the community begun by Jesus two thousand years ago offer enriching nourishment for living fruitfully in the world today. Presumably, all of them would agree that love should be the guiding principle when pondering how to move forward. The very beginning of Christianity reflects the roots and wings that Pope Francis is talking about. The Christian community was a Jewish community. The Acts of the Apostles makes clear that early followers of Jesus attended synagogue services, not as outsiders but as accepted members of the Jewish community. A gradual separation occurred when, out of love, people who were not Jewish in background were welcomed to share faith and table fellowship with those Jews who were Jesus’s followers. These Gentile (non-Jewish) Christians put their own stamp on the Jewish roots of the movement. They helped the community move forward, adapting to what at the time were “modern,” secular, non-Jewish and non-Christian practices and beliefs. Many examples of such adaptations exist. A simple one is the use of the stole worn by priests when serving in official capacities. When a priest presides at Mass or hears confession, taking on that priestly role, he wears a cloth around his shoulders called a stole. Where did that practice come from? Stoles were worn by members of the Roman Senate to identify themselves as having the power to govern. Churches went from meeting in people’s homes to gathering in large spaces, modeled after the Roman public buildings known as “basilicas.” Despite external changes such as these and other adaptations, the root meaning of Christianity remained the same. Today, people who call themselves Catholic must address the tension between holding onto the riches of the tradition while making changes in fruitful, caring ways. Creativity and innovation are not to be feared, even though admittedly they can be misdirected. Pope John called for humility when trying to decipher the signs of the times. Our perspectives are always in need of reflection and questioning, and a necessary way to make that happen is to listen to and talk with real people facing real problems. And Pope Francis would surely second the advice of Anthony de Mello: “Always err on the side of love.”

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