Tag: Change

Studying Life

The (Greek) root meaning of Biology is Life-Study. In other words it is the study of life and living things.
   In high school, I had a great Biology teacher. He taught us to use a microscope to study unicellular organisms.
   Amoebas were fascinating, especially their ability to move about, change their shape, and reproduce by dividing into two!
   Some of us liked the Biology class so much that we persuaded the teacher to offer us an additional elective course in Zoology, one of three traditional major branches of Biology. (The others are Botany and Microbiology.)
   Although Biology means the study of life, studying and learning about life embraces much more than Biology, Zoology, or other related sciences. In the broadest sense, every thinking living person is studying, experiencing, and learning about life all the time.
   We’re usually preoccupied by aspects of life, especially of our own lives—physical, emotional, intellectual, psychological, and spiritual to name a few.
   And, it’s a course of study that never quite ends. No matter how old or experienced we may be, we’re still studying, experiencing, and learning about life!
   Faith and religion are part of learning about life, too. They involve studying, experiencing, and learning about the universe we live in, life itself, living things, their relations, and their creator’s designs.
   Hopefully, you had the good fortune to have had good examples and teachers of faith and religion and to have learned to use religious teachings, theology, and scripture to study the meaning and purpose of life.
   Religion is more than a matter of customs, social standards, rules, and regulations that dictate and even restrict personal behavior.
   Social standards, rules, and regulations are changeable and even arbitrary. A good example of this is the ten commandments.

   For example, Exodus 20:8-10 says, Remember the sabbath day [day of rest]—keep it holy. Six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God…
   Devote Jews observe this, but Christians do not. Instead their day of rest is the first day of the week, Sunday. Literally, this is disobeying one of the commandments.
   Our understandings of many things religious always have been changing: what’s right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and sin as well as our understandings of God and the will and designs of God, the purpose and destiny of life, the meaning of scripture, theology, and church teachings.
   Sometimes our changed understandings are misunderstandings; sometimes they are rediscoveries of lost or misunderstood original meanings; sometimes they are new or enhanced understandings, new insights into the will and designs of God.
   If we really are studying life and living things, then we are necessarily experiencing change, for better or for worse, and, hopefully, developing and evolving.
   All this is of the very nature of life. The simplest of living things—for instance, the amoebas, move about, change their shape, and reproduce and multiply.
   How much more complicated and complex are our lives, our understandings of our purpose, and our limited insights into the nature of God and his designs and will.
   To bewail and avoid change, always clinging to what is familiar, comfortable, and secure, is to behave like an immobile caterpillar who is reluctant to break out of its enfolding cocoon, never realizing that its ultimate destiny is to fly!


20 March 2022

Experiencing and Experimenting

It’s important to know how words shift, change, and develop in their meaning as centuries pass. If we understand where they came from and how they have evolved, we can use them better and more accurately. For instance:
   The Latin verb experior basically means to try, test, prove, put to the test. Hence it can mean:
   – to make trial of a person
   – to know by having tried, to know by experience
   – to try to do a thing
   – (as a present participle, experiens) enterprising, venturesome
   – (as a past participle, expertus) tested, tried, approved or with experience, experienced
   It’s at the root of the English word, experience, which can mean:
   – a particular instance of personally encountering or undergoing something
   – the process or fact of personally observing, encountering, or undergoing something
   – the observing, encountering, or undergoing of things generally as they occur in the course of time
   – knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed, encountered, or undergone
   It’s also at the root of the English word, experiment, which can mean:
   – a test, trial, or tentative procedure; an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of testing a principle, supposition, etc.
   – the conducting of such operations
   – (as a verb) to try or test, especially in order to discover or prove something

   Generally, the methodology of science includes almost all these meanings, since it involves observing, researching, theorizing, testing, analyzing, and concluding.

   Generally, the methodology of religion includes some of the meanings associated with experience, but hardly at all those associated with experiment.
   In scientific methodology, experiments are necessary to verify the validity and truthfulness of a theory. Whether the experiment succeeds or fails, it has value in the learning process.
   However, in religious methodology, a failed experiment is not usually appreciated as a value in the learning process. Usually it is identified as a moral defect, a negative judgement of the experimenter, and as a violation of accepted rules and regulations.
   Human nature being what it is, most people have grown and developed, instinctively using a methodology that is more “scientific”. In other words, we’ve learned by trial and error.
   We either try and err ourselves or we trust the shared conclusions of others who have tried and erred before us.
   The very essence of our learning process involves making mistakes.
   Actually the trial and error methodology works in religious matters as well. There, too, we learn by trying and erring ourselves or trusting the shared conclusions of others who have tried and erred before us.
   However, in religious affairs often the learning process is thwarted since our trying and erring may be censored and identified as evil and sinful. The expectation usually is that we should totally and exclusively trust and be guided by the wisdom of others who have gone before us.
   Hopefully, our “Last Judgement” won’t confuse our in-good-faith erring with our stubbornly repeating failed experiments!


13 March 2022

Entropy and the Evolving Kingdom of God

Entropy originally referred to the measure in thermodynamics of how much energy is not available to do work—a sort of energy or heat loss. In a broader sense, almost metaphorically, it is about social decline and degeneration.
  It’s hard to apply this concept to living things, since in biology an almost opposite point of view dominates: evolution—that is, that living things are constantly becoming ever more complex and diverse.
   Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, scientist and theologian, made a brilliant synthesis of the findings and concepts of science and the developing insights of biblical studies and theology.
   He knitted together cosmology, biology, anthropology, and faith into a grand evolutionary vision starting with origin of the universe, through the creation of life, the emergence of humanity, divine revelations, Christ, and the contemporary world, culminating in a final union of all through Christ in God.
   Especially in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, teachings, and contemporary faith there is a radical optimism about the universe we live in and the direction of its ongoing development.
   This is a realistic optimism, It realizes that there is a certain “entropy” in our lives, a certain sinking to the least common denominator, a kind of decline and loss. Our old words about it were error, failure, disobedience, and sin.
   But, fundamentally, it is an optimism, a point of view that sees each person, all human societies, all life, all creation as essentially good and constantly growing, progressing, developing, and evolving—in spite of occasional “entropic” deviations.
   In the words of St. Augustine, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
   That’s a great way of describing evolution!

   Okay, we’re incorrigibly optimistic, confident about evolutionary development, and yearning for an ultimate culminating future for each and all of us.
   What do we call it? The kingdom of God? The Omega Point? The Cosmic Christ? The After-Life? Heaven? Paradise” A Better Life?
   How do we describe it? A place of everlasting happiness? joy? pleasure? wealth? fulfillment? reunion with others? union with God?
   Where is it? No, it’s not up since the world’s not flat. No, it’s not down, either. It’s not a place in the usual use of the word.
   What do we really know about it? The only one who briefly returned to tell us of it and show us the way there was Jesus.
   Actually, he didn’t give us much detailed information at all, but he was pretty clear about directions to get there. He didn’t give us any road maps but he did propose a pattern of life that leads there.
   “Thy will be done…” That’s a sort of title for the detailed lifestyle that Jesus witnessed to and proposed to us.
   It’s very consonant with a vision of a developing and evolving universe, for it’s a vision of each of us as developing and evolving persons.
   St. John said it beautifully (1 John 3:1-2):

   See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.




6 March 2022

Why Are We Persistingly Celibacing?

“Celibacy” is a curious word. Etymologically, it is derived from Latin words. The primary word is “caelebs” which means unmarried and, related to it, “caelibatus” meaning the state of being unmarried.
   However, it also later came to be associated with the notion of abstention from sexual relations—probably because at that time it was presumed that only within marriage were sexual relations appropriate.
   This led to celibacy being identified with chastity or the state of being chaste, words derived from the Latin adjective “castus” meaning to be clean, pure, or chaste.
   The main Gospel reference to celibacy in the teachings of Jesus is Matthew, 19:11-12:

   The disciples said to him, “If that is how things are between husband and wife, it is advisable not to marry.” But he replied, “It is not everyone who can accept what I have said, but only those to whom it is given. There are eunuchs born so from their mother’s womb, there are eunuchs made so by human agency and there are eunuchs who made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”

   A eunuch is a castrated man. In some cultures (e.g. the Roman empire) a eunuch was a man of trust not only in the sense that, if he were a harem guard, he wouldn’t take advantage of the women in his care but also that, if he were a military leader, he wouldn’t seek the throne for his progeny.
   Jesus himself, of course, was no eunuch; as a matter of fact, he never married, although he certainly was a man who loved and was deeply loved.
   Jesus spoke of an ideal of men committing themselves, as though they were eunuchs, to the service of the kingdom of God, and his life displayed this kind of generosity and strength of purpose.

   The selflessness of the eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven is above all their renunciation of their giving themselves entirely to self-aggrandizement and that of their family—the renunciation of progeny, and, consequently, of seeking prosperity, prestige, privilege, and power for them.
   For the first centuries of Christianity and while it was established as the imperial state religion, its officials, its deacons, priests, and bishops, were not necessarily required to be celibate men at all.
   It was years later that the Western church, not the Eastern churches, gradually restricted the selection of all clergy from among men vowed to a life of celibacy.
   There were many other influences that led to this development—especially martyrdom, radical renunciation (e.g., the desert ascetics), the development of monasticism and later religious life, and, it must be confessed, concern for the control of church property that might be contested by heirs.
   Even though the Western or Roman Catholic Church adopted clerical celibacy as a matter of canon law, its practice and discipline can change, has changed occasionally, and may continue to change more in the future.
   For instance, already in the post-Vatican II church, by way of exception, there are married priests of other Christian churches who have been accepted into the Roman Catholic church and remain married.
   Presently the tradition is being critically examined, and there probably will be other even more extensive changes in the future.


27 February 2022

[See also the reflection, The Obligation of Celibacy, and the article, How Priests Came to Be Celibate: An Oversimplification]


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

Don’t Be Shellish!

From now I announce new things to you,
   hidden events you never knew.
Now, not from old, they are created,
   Before today you did not hear of them,
   so that you cannot claim, “I have known them.”
You never heard, you never knew,
   they never reached your ears beforehand.
                    (Isaiah 48:6b-8a)

   Jeweled eggs created by the firm of Fabergé from the days of the Russian Empire are sold today for tens of thousands of dollars. They’re not real eggs, of course, merely egg shaped.
   Real eggs are fragile, and their shells are meant to be breakable (though they sometimes are hardboiled and decorated for Easter). It’s amazing how long something as fragile as an egg shell remains intact.
   Shells are simply the first stage in the development of a new little bird (or platypus!)—and they have to be broken if new life is to emerge.
   Figuratively speaking, growth and development always involve a sort of breaking and loss of what once was—and even very necessary in its time—so that life may go on and flourish.
   We may love and cherish a particular stage of our life, but inevitably we need to move on—even though the change may involve a shattering and leaving behind of what was  loved and prized.
   The joy—and pain—of living involves change, gradual or sudden, minor or major, and particular stages of our lives and of the world we live in can’t be frozen or preserved permanently. (Embalming is only for the dead!)
   Sometimes we yearn for an imagined past, imagined, because often memories tend to be somewhat selective and edited; we may emphasize the pleasurable and satisfying parts of the past, overlooking or minimizing what was unpleasant or painful.

   The few verses from Isaiah (quoted initially) allude to the wonderful, unfamiliar, novel things that God has in store for us.
   When we appeal to God, ask for help, pray, we are inviting divine intervention—change! And, often God’s responses regarding our personal or family lives or the whole world are initially disturbing to us and even upsetting—because of their newness.
   For the little bird or platypus to live, to grow and develop, they must break through the fragile shell that encases them. And, this is a metaphor for each of us and for all the world we live in.
   It’s hard to yearn for the unknown, since what we do not know and have not experienced can be frightening prospects—but that’s life!
   Some changes in our lives are desired and yet, even so, disturbing. like graduations, marriage, and moving to a new place or getting a new job.
   Some events in our lives come upon us gradually and subtly; other can be so sudden and unforeseen that our instinctive reaction is to reject them and recoil—even though, later, we may come to appreciate, celebrate, and thank God for them.
   Beware of a life of faith, for it invites and welcomes divine intervention. And when God acts in our lives and in our world, our first reaction often is to try to avoid the changes God’s intervention demands.
   A life of faith requires strength and courage, a willingness to let go even of our favorite things, a repeated plunging into the unknown or even undesired.
   Life and faith involve constantly breaking out of shells, letting go, and entrusting ourselves to God whose love ever guides us.


16 January 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

Outdated Language

The language we speak is changing all the time. That’s why we need dictionaries. They tell us where each word comes from, what it originally meant, how it used to be used, what it means now.
   Geoffrey Chaucer, born around 1340 in London, is called the father of English literature. His famous work is The Canterbury Tales. You think you know English? Try reading it exactly as he wrote it.
   You may more or less understand it, but you’ll find yourself often stumped by unfamiliar words or words spelt differently and/or that have a different meaning now than they did when Chaucer wrote them.
   You think you know English? Try visiting different English speaking countries and different neighborhoods within them. I once was in a train to Liverpool near a group of teenagers returning home. I couldn’t understand their conversation at all!
   You think you know English? Spoken Indian English is rapid and can be hard to understand for an American. Once in India, I asked a friend if he had a similar difficulty with my (New York style, American) English. Yes, he said, you speak with such a drawl!
   You know where and when we still use a lot of old, outdated English words? In our religious language and traditional prayers.
   For example, the Our Father. We still use some outdated words, but, hopefully, not with their outdated meanings.
   We refer to God as in the sky (heaven). We pray that his name be hallowed (made, be regarded as holy), but the main way we use that word now-a-days is for Halloween.
   We ask that his kingdom be established, but how familiar are we really with ancient Middle East kings and kingdoms?
   Do we really want to be led away from all temptation? If we avoid every place and situation of temptation, we’d be rather shut in. But, we do want the strength to resist the daily temptations in our lives.

   When we ask for forgiveness of trespasses, we don’t mean unlawfully entering upon someone else’s private property.
   Another obvious example, the Hail Mary. We know about hailstorms, we may hail a cab, and we know about ship to ship encounters, but now to attract someone’s attention we’re more likely to “hey”.
   We say she is full of grace, but we don’t mean elegance or beauty, rather that she was favored by God or in a state of holiness.
   When we say she is blessed, we don’t mean that she’s lucky or a winner; we mean she bespeaks God, that the love and mercy of God shows forth through her life.
   “Mother of God” doesn’t mean that she has begotten the creator of the universe nor that God’s genetic makeup is from her. It refers to the divinity of Jesus, her son.
   I’m not knocking anything, just reminding that in religious talk we comfortably use many words whose meaning has shifted.
   A few more examples:
   Church—do we mean a consecrated building or an assembly of believers?
   Altar—do we mean a place where offerings are burnt or a dining table?
   Mass—do we mean a holy sacrifice or a remembrance of Jesus’ life and death and a communal act of thanksgiving (eucharist)?
   Priest—do we mean an ordained official or an elder (presbyter) in a community of believers?
   Confess—do we mean to plead guilty to a sin or crime or to proclaim one’s belief or allegiance?
   Communion—do we mean the consecrated host or a shared fellowship?
   It’s okay to use outdated language, but it’s important to be clear about what we mean!


14 November 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