Church structural organization and discipline Archives

Collaboration

My dictionary defines “collaborate” as: [from the Latin collaboratus, past participle of collaborare, to work together from com, with + laborare, to work] 1. to work together, especially in some literary, artistic, or scientific undertaking. 2. to cooperate with the enemy; be a collaborationist.
   Paradoxically, many a great writer, artist, or scientist apparently has worked alone, either because of a quirk of personality or even a selfish desire to be a solitary achiever.
   On the other hand, what accomplishments are the fruit of exclusively individual invention or creation with no reliance on or influence at all from the work of confreres, predecessors, or antecedents?
   Collaboration is not a mathematical concept, in the sense that one and one makes two—for frequently and often the work of two people together can reach a level and attainment that exceeds the capacity of either separately!
   A collaborationist, literally, doesn’t have to be an enemy (the current usage of the word), but could refer to any group of people, joined together to some extent in seeking a solution to a common problem or working together to complete a common task.
   Further, collaboration certainly could include collaboration in the quest for meaning in our lives, knowledge of the will of God, faith, and religion.
   Genesis tells the story of Creation:
   In 1:26 it says: “Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth.”
   In 2:15 it says: “The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it.
   “Have dominion” and “cultivate and care for” are collaboration mandates!

   Notwithstanding the many great writers, artists, scientists, and other specialists, from the beginning the plan of God for us involves and has involved collaboration—collaboration in the work of creation and in the care and shaping of the created world.
   Collaboration is related to “synodality” defined as: [from the Greek συν, together + ὁδός, way or journey] 1. The specific modus vivendi et operandi of the Church, the People of God, which reveals and gives substance to her being as communion when all her members journey together, gather in assembly and take an active part in her evangelizing mission. 2. the involvement and participation of the whole People of God in the life and mission of the Church.
   The mission of the Church then is not merely the concern and responsibility of the clergy and the religious but includes the “laity” also—that is, it includes each and every one of the members of the Church!
   It’s an aberration if we’re all not involved in collaboration! Just because this may have been the practice for a long, long time doesn’t mean it’s right.
   Now, we’re trying to revise and restore the correct order of things and of responsibilities in the work of God.
   Is it disturbing? Of course, all radical change is disturbing!
   Do we get it exactly right? Hopefully, but, remember, we’re used to progressing through a process of trial and error.
   Don’t become frozen in place, but beware of thin ice as you try to get moving again!
   You’re not meant to be a monument to the past but may be challenged to be a pioneer—one of those who dare to go or lead the way to where few have gone before!

2 April 2023

Vatican II Pandemic

A key factor in the development of my life was Vatican Council II—not because of studying about it, but because I was there!
   No, I wasn’t a member of the council (that was for bishops only), and I wasn’t an appointed theological expert. But I did attend half the council—the second and third of the four annual sessions (1962-1965)—as an “assignator loci” (“usher” you could say; actually, a sort of staff attendant).
   It was held in St. Peter’s Basilica. Each tiered section of bishops had one priest assigned to assist them and do whatever needed to be done: distribute documents to the bishops; distribute blank voting cards (IBM punched cards) and collect them and bring to a central processing office in the basilica; deliver messages during the council sessions to the presiding officers of the council, even to the pope in his quarters.
   I also heard all the speeches during these working sessions of the Council, had copies of and studied all the working documents, and was fortunate to learn from the so many distinguished bishops and priests that shared their views in talks to us U.S. priest-students at our residence in Rome.
   Happily, I had arrived in Rome a week before the start of the Council to begin my studies for a doctorate in Canon Law.
   I was in Assisi when Pope John XXIII made an unprecedented trip there to pray at the tomb of St. Francis for the success of the Council just before it started.
   I was in St. Peter’s Basilica for the opening of the Council, a pontifical Mass, fortunately standing very near the main altar.
   An unforgettable and moving thing for me that day was to see Pope John, the celebrant of the Mass, kneeling down over the burial place of St. Peter to recite the Nicene Creed before the bishops of the world, professing his and their and the whole Church’s common faith: Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentum . . .

   Some commentators describe the Council as contentious, but this was not my experience. Overwhelmingly the Council was a spiritual event for all concerned.
   Every morning I saw bishops kneeling on the cold marble floor of the transept of the basilica in silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in preparation for the day’s work.
   Every daily session began with a Liturgy at a modest altar table in the central aisle of the basilica between the banks of seats on both sides; all the rites of the Church had their turn and some were surprising—for example, the Geez rite used drums and dance!
   During my three years in Rome, although the Council was in session only for a few months each Fall, it dominated church life.
   My assigned personal duty was to develop some expertise in the law of the Church, but the vitality and excitement of my life in Rome was the amazing and wonderful experience of the Council.
   What a sad surprise it was, back in New York during the final session of the Council, to discover that most people there didn’t realize what an astounding event in the life of the Church was taking place.
   In some small way I brought some of the Council spirit to my work in the Chancery Office. Many evenings and weekends I would visit convents in the diocese to talk to women religious who were eager to learn about the Council and the new perspectives it was bringing to their lives.
   Priests in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where I lived, were also glad to know more of the Council and its teachings.
   I was severely infected by Vatican II. For the past 60 years I keep trying to remain contagious!

23 October 2022

Retirement of Priests

Years ago, I was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of New York and was assigned to a variety of positions and responsibilities over the years.
   Right now, I’m retired and have no assigned position or responsibilities, but I’m expected to observe two continuing commitments: celibacy (i.e., not to marry) and praying the Divine Office daily.
   I will not be assigned or obliged to anything more by church authorities, but I may be offered or requested to do some thing or assume some official responsibility for a specific occasion or period of time; these are all voluntary matters.
   What’s the best way of describing me? Am I an off-duty priest? a retired priest? a former priest? an ex-priest?
   What would the best way be if I were a doctor, lawyer, judge, teacher, athlete, machinist, or husband?
   – “Off-duty” means that for a specific period of time an active-duty person is relieved or excused.
   – “Retired” means to be sort of permanently off-duty, usually because of age and/or incapacity to continuing to exercise the responsibilities of the job or office.
   – “Former” is similar but more permanent. It describes a position once but no longer held nor exercised.
   – “Ex” is similar to former but with overtones of having been terminated or dismissed from a former position, perhaps punitively.
   Being ordained a priest used to be considered as a forever thing in the sense that it could never be entirely relinquished. It used to be considered a kind of change of the very essence or being of the person.
   But with the introduction of retirement for priests, bishops, and even popes, it is being seen more like any other profession or occupation—a function or job, not a permanent alteration of the class or nature of the person.

   In some ways the retirement of priests has some similarity to military service. In case of emergency the (experienced and trained) officer may be temporarily reactivated, called back to active duty.
   An example: Joseph Ratzinger once held the office of and served as pope with the title of Benedict XVI. Right now, due to his voluntary resignation of office, he is a former pope. Loosely, he could be described as a retired pope, but that sounds a little like he no longer functions as pope due to some rule or customary practice.
   In my case, I’m not an ex-priest, nor a former priest, but I am a retired priest. This implies that I can volunteer or may be requested to perform some priestly duties, subject to the decision of proper authorities.
   I don’t necessarily identify myself as Father, Brother, Reverend, Doctor, Monsignor, or Archimandrite, although I may be addressed as such by others. As a courtesy or custom, former office holders often are addressed with their former title and may identify themselves by it.
   Of course, former office holders also may be presumed to act with the dignity and professionalism of their former office.
   All this reflects attitudes and thinking that are relatively recent in terms of church history, sacramental theology, and canon law—another of those changes that may be disturbing or unpleasant to some, but which are the fruit of a better understanding, growth, and development.
   And, to make it a tad more complicated, it’s not universal—i.e., the usages, customs, and understandings still vary from place to place, group to group, and person to person!

6 February 2022

Taking Care of the Baby and the Bathwater

“Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater” is good advice about a lot of things, not just about bathing babies.
   The point of the saying is that in caring for the baby we shouldn’t confuse the baby with the dirt that may have accumulated on him/her.
   When good Pope John XXIII announced his intention to convoke an ecumenical council he had used a somewhat similar metaphor, about cleaning a great painting so that its original beauty could better be seen, for assuring Christians worried about possible changes in the Church.
   In our modern world, polarized in many aspects, similar concerns, unease, and challenges are facing us.
   On the one hand, we don’t want to leave the baby dirtied or the great painting encrusted with accumulated grime and retouching—but on the other hand, we don’t want to endanger either the baby or the painting.
   The reality of life is that babies do get dirtied and need to be bathed—and great works of art sometime do require a delicate cleansing.
   Remember when Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel were cleansed and restored? Some in the art world were shocked by the boldness of the original colors he had used, since they were so accustomed to seeing them through the pre-restoration accumulations of grime.
   When it comes to babies, the matter is more complicated. Babies are living beings; that means they grow, changing and developing. If we want to have them always as they once were, we are denying them life, since life involves change and development.
   Resistance to change may preserve something valued in the past, but also it may preclude growth and, perhaps, betterment and progress.

   The challenge is about discernment. Are we cleansing the accumulated disfigurement over time that needs to be washed away? Or, are we confusing accretions with essence, altering and changing something important and vital?
   For better or worse, our contemporary politics are never going to be exactly like the days of Washington, Lincoln, or Roosevelt, nor should they be. The world has changed.
   For better or worse, our contemporary social customs are never going to be exactly like those of a century ago or even those we may fondly remember from our youth.
   For better or worse, our religious beliefs, customs, and practices are never going to be exactly like they were before the early 20th century or the Second Vatican Council.
   If we’re tempted to work for restoration, allowing for development, we really need to remember the baby/bathwater dilemma. We cannot return entirely to the past.
   We have to let the living baby grow and mature, while washing away all that despoils its beauty and impedes its growth.
   Part of the challenge of our aging is experiencing change in our health, fitness, appearance, ideas, and values, as well as adjusting to the continual changes in the customs, practices, priorities, ideals, and values of the society in which we live.
   Do I always get it right? Do you? Of course not! It’s the very essence of a human being to be limited in every way—and also to be changing in every way.
   Call it what you will—mistake, error, misjudgment, fault, sin, or even progress—it’s who we are and what we do.
   God knows! (He made us this way!)

12 December 2021

The Mass of the Roman Rite

As a young priest studying Canon Law in Rome during the first three sessions of Vatican Council II, I had two different memories related to the implementation of the revised liturgy of the Mass there.
   One was of a conversation with the pious layman who was the sacristan of the chapel where we lived: “Father”, he said to me, “the Mass in Italian is very nice, but . . . ” hesitatingly he continued. “since Our Lord spoke in Latin at the Last Supper, is it a good idea for us to change?”
   The other was of the local newspaper: “For the second time,” it boasted, “Rome has changed to the vernacular for the Mass.” It referred to the fact that for the first few centuries, prayers in Rome were still in Greek before they began to be celebrated in the then local spoken language, Latin.
   A lesson of these two little stories is that Vatican II was not the first major time that the Roman liturgy was changed and updated.
   A landmark work of scholarship about the liturgy was the publication in 1948 of Missarum Sollemnia, a history of the development of the Roman Mass by Fr. Joseph A. Jungmann, S.J.. (A translation from the original German to English was published two years later under the title of The Mass of the Roman Rite; Its Origins and Development.)
   In this masterwork, Father Jungmann traced the changes and development of the Mass through the centuries, explaining the factors and logic behind the continual changes in the prayers and the rite itself.
   With the polarization in the Church today between those favoring the “Tridentine Mass’’—i.e. the rite used before the Vatican II liturgical reforms—and those using the revised rite promulgated by St. Pope Paul VI, one might think this was the first time in history that there was a major change!
   It wasn’t the first, and it won’t be the last!

   I was ordained in 1958; Pope Pius XII was still in office and the Mass was still in Latin. I celebrated Mass in Latin every day for the next six years or so, until the changes to the vernacular began to be made.
   (I needed no missal for the unchanging prayers of the Mass; I knew them by heart.)
   Personally, I have no issues about the language of the Mass—I’m certainly used to celebrating in Latin, English, or Spanish. I miss some of the beautiful Latin chants and hymns we used to use more frequently—and we still can use them, of course.
   There have been some changes in the words of the prayers and a greater variety of them. I think that’s a good thing. Some gestures, postures, and vesture have changed as well, usually because their raison d’etre no longer exists.
   It seems that some of the conflict and taking of sides about the rite of the Mass is really about Vatican II itself, accepting or rejecting its teachings. It’s really an issue of change and development.
   Of course we all have fond memories of past practices, customs, and favorite things, but “time marches on” and change happens, for better or for worse. Not every change is positive growth; some changes are destructive. Clearly discernment is vital.
   As a priest, I lived, studied, and worked in Rome 1962-1965. I was on the staff of Vatican II for the second and third of its four sessions. It was a wonderful, exciting, unforgettable time.
   There was no great polarization at Vatican II. The Council was not sharply nor bitterly divided. It was a time of great grace and inspiration. It was a profoundly spiritual experience. It really was an aggiornamento.

17 October 2021

Church Officers

An officer usually is a person elected or appointed to some position of trust, responsibility or authority in a government, corporation, society, etc.. We frequently associate it with police and armed forces.
   The Church has officers also, but uses different words to describe them like “clerics” or “clergy”.
   When church officer candidates are trained and ready to hold office, their commissioning is called ordination.
   Church officers also can be retired or discharged, honorably or dishonorably (punitively). For centuries their term of office was idealized as forever; however now they have set, limited terms of office.
   Church officers are often called “pastors”, meaning “shepherds”. A shepherd herds, tends, and guards sheep. Metaphorically, a pastor protects, guides, and watches over his congregation (his “flock” or sheep).
   However, Church officers are not a different breed; they also are sheep. But, they have leadership roles in the Christian community. They may have positions of rank, authority, or responsibility, but their role is to serve.
   In other words, the Church doesn’t have different classes of membership, only different roles of service and responsibility.
   St. Augustine, in his sermon On Pastors, described it well:
   “I must distinguish carefully between two aspects of the role the Lord has given me . . .
   “The first aspect is that I am a Christian; the second, that I am a leader. I am a Christian for my own sake; the fact that I am a Christian is to my own advantage, but I am a leader for your advantage.
   “Many persons come to God as Christians but not as leaders. Perhaps they travel by an easier road and are less hindered since they bear a lighter burden, In addition to the fact that I am a Christian and must give God an account of my life, I as a leader must give him an account of my stewardship as well.”

   In today’s Church, there are many men and women exercising roles of service, but only some of them are ordained officers. Sometimes, using a somewhat old fashioned vocabulary, we call the others “lay ministers”.
   Although they may have positions of trust and leadership in the Church, they still tend to be considered an entirely different class from the “ordained”.
   A current practical problem is that the dwindling numbers of ordained clergy simply are too few to be the exclusive leaders in the Church, and some of them are personally inadequate to the task.
   The understanding of Church leadership is changing, and some of the terminology being used to describe the changes is new.
   For centuries, in a mostly monarchical Europe, Church leadership was monarchical and clerical. Vatican Council I, in a changing world, tried to address this. It began with clarifying the office, duty, and authority of the Pope but was interrupted before it could to do the same for bishops.
   Vatican II remedied this in part. A new post-conciliar structure was the Synod of Bishops, a large and diverse ad hoc body chosen by the Pope to advise and collaborate with him in overall planning and leadership.
   Now a next stage of development is gradually emerging; called Synodality, it involves finding and establishing forms of exercising church leadership that include more than pope and bishops alone. Initially perhaps upsetting and difficult to understand and implement, it is necessitated by the reality of the church today.
   Slowly but surely, Church leadership is no longer being limited to an exclusive body of ordained Church Officers.

10 October 2021

West Point Seminaries

The seminary of the New York Archdiocese, St. Joseph’s Seminary, is located in the Dunwoodie neighborhood of the City of Yonkers; hence it’s nickname, Dunwoodie.
   Established in 1896, it had once been referred to as the West Point of seminaries. West Point, being, of course, where the United States Military Academy was located.
   What would a seminary be like if it was really modeled after West Point?
   These thoughts danced through my head during a recent visit to the West Point Visitors Center with its striking exhibitions about the Military Academy’s history, contemporary status, and what in a seminary might be called its “spirituality”.
   The exhibition area proudly displayed the mission statement of the academy:

To educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army.

   Change a few words, and it could serve as a mission statement for a seminary too, since the seminary also is meant to be a place where (the church’s) “officer corps” are educated, trained, and inspired.
   The seminary graduate also is commissioned (ordained) as a leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Church and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to his Diocese, Eparchy, or Order.
   In the Military Academy, the student body is not like that of other colleges; it is referred to and treated as a “Corps of Cadets”. The cadets are educated, trained, and inspired as a collaborative group, not as elite individuals.

   This means that shared responsibility and teamwork characterize every aspect of their experience. Like the Military Academy, the seminary is not meant to be a place for individuals to pursue their personal and individual goals and advancement.
   The cadet experience includes the equivalent of military basic training and more, since their training continues over the course of four years.
   Although seminaries usually do not have physical training as such, they traditionally had some rigorous demands and discipline with a tightly scheduled day that included when to arise, meditate, pray, eat, attend class, study, recreate, speak or be silent, be indoors or outdoors, and sleep.
   The defining values of Duty, Honor, Country that are esteemed at West Point are its strength. The academy trains and tests men and women for leadership.
   The seminary’s traditional strength usually has been more quality philosophical and theological education and less its developing of “esprit de corps”.
   Training for leadership in country or church is not like running for office. It involves subordinating one’s personal desires and advancement to the common good, seeking to serve, not to be served.
   However this doesn’t mean unthinkingly conforming and blind obedience. Professional excellence involves critical thinking and honest communication as well.
   The West Point Visitors Center and nearby Museum exhibitions trace the history and development of the academy and even such things as the nature of warfare itself. They effectively explain, educate, and inspire.
   West Point is a good model for a seminary!

26 September 2021

It’s Tradition

tradition 1. the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc. from generation to generation, especially by word of mouth or practice 2. something that is handed down 3. a long established or inherited way of thinking or acting 4. a continuing pattern of culture beliefs or practices 5. a customary or characteristic method or manner 6. in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, unwritten codes, laws, doctrines, teachings, sayings, acts, etc. regarded as handed down from Moses, Jesus, Muhammad.

With respect for all our traditions, please notice that a tradition can and may be correct or mistaken, right or wrong, good or bad.
   Usually when a law or regulation is changed, we get used to the change and obey it, even though we may not think that the change was a good idea and personally liked the old one better.
   But, when it comes to traditions, we’re not so easily accepting of change—in fact it often seems that the very idea of deliberately changing a tradition is almost contradictory in itself!
   However, actually our traditions do change but usually gradually and imperceptibly (and sometimes mistakenly as well).
   For example,
   – What’s the proper skirt length for a well-dressed woman?
   – If I say, “Thank you”, and you reply, “No problem”, is that polite or inappropriate?
   – Is missing Mass on Sunday without an adequate reason a mortal sin for which you could burn in the fires of Hell forever?
   – Should a man greet another man with a kiss on the cheek?
   – Could a woman be elected president?
   – Is Heaven only for my coreligionists or can any good person end up there?

   – Is it wrong to use contraceptives?
   – If it’s written in the Bible, it must be always true, no matter who, what, or when.
   – If Jesus spoke Aramaic, not Latin, why should the Mass be in Latin?
   – Shouldn’t real Americans be Republicans? Democrats? Liberals? Conservatives?
   – Shouldn’t the man be head of the family?
   – The U.S. should keep out aliens, foreigners, socialists, communists, gays, Africans, Asians, Latins, etc.
   – Is gender a matter of anatomy? social customs? upbringing? personal preference?
   Excuse this smorgasbord listing of odd examples, but I’m trying to illustrate that traditions have changed or are changing, and are changing more rapidly than we sometimes realize.
   Why? Because of growth and development, individually and collectively, we are always encountering new challenges, ideas, experiences, and understandings. To be alive involves change, non-stop until the end of our lives.
   We no long believe that the earth is flat, that we live in the center of the universe. We no longer believe in many gods, and for many, in any god. Our notions of right and wrong, virtue and sin, evolve with the course of history and our individual lives. Our capacity for rapid exchange of information and communication is phenomenal—and often misleading.
   Sometimes, it’s because we can’t keep up, because we can’t process so much so fast, that we fall back on and cling to “traditions”.
   Our heritages are our legacies not our laws, our gifts not our obligations, our memories not our futures.
   Respect traditions, surely, but also live!

19 September 2021

Ruling (the) Class

“Rulers” (e.g., governors, presidents, CEO’s, kings, tyrants, dictators, bosses) may but are not obliged to justify their decisions or actions.
   They wield power. They may possess it through family, social status, election, appointment, class privilege or even deception, falsification, assassination.
   “Teachers” (e.g., professors, school teachers, scout masters, dieticians, counselors, trainers, guides, trail blazers, therapists, models, designers, artists, directors) are the opposites of rulers
   They coach and challenge others to learn to think, analyze, and understand, encouraging them to encounter new ideas, perspectives, and experiences.
   “Leaders” are a sort of blend of both. They have a responsibility for organized groups with common purposes. They serve the group both through personal qualities and example and through their special role of making decisions for the common good.
   What is the principal role of clergy? When a bishop, priest, deacon, or other minister is preaching the Good News, explaining the Scriptures, or counseling an individual or a congregation, is it mostly a matter of teaching, leading, or ruling? Is it more about witnessing, persuading, or demanding?
   There’s a complicated history to all of this, and the answers may vary depending on the era you have in mind.
   Jesus was not a ruler, even though he spoke with the language of his day of a kingdom not of this world. He taught by word and example, he led and guided, he gave standards and mandates.
   His early followers were heralds and proclaimers of what they considered to be good news all over in and outside of the Roman empire in which they lived. But, they needed and had leaders, not rulers, to guide them, coordinate their efforts, and foster their unity and common values.

   Jesus and his first followers were Jews, whose tradition was that priests and other Levites were a special tribe with roles and power as presiders in religious rituals and as adjudicators of the laws of God.
   The early Christians in the Jewish world were influenced by this tradition, while those in the pagan world struggled to accommodate the proclamation of Jesus and his teachings to the traditions and ways of a foreign culture.
   When Christianity became the official religion of the empire, the proclaimers of the message and the celebrants of the rituals possessed a status in the empire, as the new priesthood and temples replaced the old.
   With the collapse of imperial authority in the West, Christian leaders in Rome began to fill the gap, by ruling and wielding political power. This blurred the distinctions between ruling, teaching, and leading for many centuries. (Movie fans, just think of Becket, A Man for All Seasons, and films about Joan of Arc.)
   Vestiges of this, like the pope’s appointing nuncios (ambassadors) to countries or establishing codes of law, still linger. Is the Pope today a powerful enforcer of legislation, a fearsome wielder of life or death decisions? Hardly!
   His power lies in faith and witness, in his skill in teaching, motivating, and leading. Dictates are out-of-date and ineffective.
   Decreeing, judging, and penalizing have become outdated religious methodologies, while witnessing, explaining, persuading, and leading are far more effective.
   Even so, trying to rule as well as to teach and to lead still lingers as a methodology of some religious leaders and their followers.

18 July 2021

Imperfect Societies

Imagination knows no bounds. We can imagine things that may never have been and may never be. If we strive to attain what we imagine, we may make progress but may also never attain our goal completely.
   In 1516 Thomas More wrought a book, Utopia, about an imaginary island where everything was almost perfect. But “utopian” now means a vision of things so idealistic that it is almost a dream and unrealistic.
   Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean that aspiring to be or to make things better and better is not a good thing, but realistically perfection is never attainable.
   A very popular notion in ecclesiology before and even during much of the last century was that of the perfect society.
   The perfect society had basic institutions and structures to ensure the common good, protection of rights, and justice; it included legislative, administrative, and judicial institutions.
   A popular teaching in the once Christian part of the world was that there are only two perfect societies, the State and the Church.
   Why in the world was the Church identified as on a par with the State? Perhaps it had to do with the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire which left the Church as a quasi-governmental force and institution in central Italy, the Papal States
   Perhaps it was the influence of books of the Bible that describe the history of the Jewish people as a nation of believers ruled and guided by God, often speaking through prophets and priests.
   The Church’s role became entangled with government’s. The Church had its own laws, rules, and regulations; mechanisms for teaching and enforcement; and penalties.
   Although early Christianity was tormented and rejected by the civil society, the Roman Empire, it gradually became the imperial state religion and the Church wielded great power in many countries.

   Is there still room for such a role of the Church? Should the Church have a system of laws and punishments as the State does? Should the clergy in varying degrees be a ruling class
   You know, it was only as recent as a little over 50 years ago, when Pope St. Paul VI, rejecting this, eliminated the papal coronation and the triple crown itself
   It may seem strange and hard to imagine for us now-a-days, but the classic conclusion to a formal letter to a pope used to close with, “humbly prostrate and kissing the sacred purple…”
   To what extent should the Church regulate the conditions for and validity of marriages? Clearly the Church may place preconditions before choosing to bless and recognize a marriage. But, the legal regulation of marriages in contemporary societies is seen as the role of the State
   The State can and does set conditions for recognizing the existence of a marriage and for ceasing to recognize it. But the heart of any marriage is the mutual consent of the parties, no matter the recognition or not by Church or State.
   Thanks be to God the days of Church trials and deadly punishments are long gone—think of Joan of Arc—but the tendency to judge and even publicly punish its members still lingers.
   As we study history, hopefully we learn from the mistakes of the past—which, considering the state of the past world and of human knowledge and experience in bygone days, were understandable.
   I’m glad I’m not as deaf, dumb, and blind as I once was. There may still be a chance for me after all!

4 July 2021