Month: October 2014

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Synod Aftermath: The Importance of Attitude

In 1960 Leon Joseph Cardinal Suenens, the Archbishop of Malines-Brussels authored a small but insightful book titled Love and Control, (Un problème crucial: Amour et Maîtrise de Soi.) In the 1962 second edition he writes: “At all costs, she [the Church] must take the lead in apostolic activity and sex education, otherwise all her work will come to nothing” (32). How prescient. The huge question today is, how to do this? While there may be different ideas on how to approach the issues of love, marriage and sexuality, there is probably universal agreement on the role of attitude on the part of the recipient.

The matter of attitude is absolutely crucial. Many Catholics are aware of the conversion of Scott and Kimberly Hahn. By way of summary, they were married students in a Protestant seminary. Scott prided himself as being the most anti-Catholic person at the seminary because he believed that much Catholic teaching was seriously wrong. Kimberly took up the question of birth control in a seminar, and another married student providentially gave her a copy of my book  Birth Control and the Marriage Covenant. She shared it with Scott and when he got to the key section on the covenant, he threw the book across the room—so he once told me. Fortunately, he picked it up, and he has written that it helped to persuade him and Kimberly to accept Catholic teaching on birth control while they were Protestants. As they began to live the truth about marital love, gradually they came to appreciate the whole truth of the Catholic Church. I believe that behind all of this was an attitude of searching for and following God’s truth no matter where the search led, an attitude that derived from a prayer given them by Kimberly’s father, a Presbyterian minister.

To give another example, an atheist wife and her agnostic husband became Catholics after adequate exposure to simple Catholic covenant theology. She had complained to a Catholic friend about her unhappy experiences with the Pill, and the friend gave her the 1996 book on natural family planning that Sheila and I wrote. After teaching themselves how to practice the Sympto-thermal Method, the spouses who described themselves as a truth-seeking atheist and agnostic couple didn’t stop just when they learned a healthy method of birth control; the wife kept reading the theological sections of the book. Key factor: an attitude of seeking for the truth.

It works the other way, too. In my life-before-Sheila, I lived in a guest house in San Francisco, and it was pretty obvious that one of the young men was trying to seduce a young woman who was not exactly the smartest girl in the house. He accepted my invitation to attend a Paulist inquiry forum which was truly great. But he refused to come with me to the second talk because, as he put it, “If I were to accept that as true, then I would have to change my lifestyle which I do not intend to do.”  He was a non-practicing Catholic. The truth can be scary for those who are committed to sinful ways.

Next week: More from Cardinal Suenens about sex education.

John Kippley, also at www.nfpandmore.org

 

 

 

 

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Synod: What Needs to be Done

Since the Synod ended on October 19th with the beatification of Pope Paul VI, there has been ample commentary, mostly critical. The Kasper-ites have been disappointed that their hopes and plans met so much opposition. The Burke-ites, if I may use that term, are disappointed that the interim statement was published even though it did not get the required votes for real adoption and even though some paragraphs were very seriously criticized. In the Catholic press and blogosphere there is no shortage of criticism of Pope Francis because of his apparent favor for ambiguous statements that are open to the interpretation that traditional Catholic teaching about love, marriage and sexuality is being watered down.

If there are some truly constructive efforts to point out what needs to be done to bring Catholics and other Christians to accept, once again, the biblical Catholic teaching on love, marriage and sexuality, I have not seen them, but I have truly not had the time to search for them. So here’s how it seems to me.

Our leaders need to start with the basics. Who is going to believe any of the biblical Catholic teaching on sexual morality unless he or she first believes in God and that God has a plan for love, marriage and sexuality? And in this day when there are so many different voices claiming to speak for God, how do we know which voice speaks the truth? And how can we claim to know this except through faith in the Lord Jesus risen from the dead? And how many Catholics and other Christians realize in their inner being the utter importance of St. Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 15:12-20 that if Christ is not risen from the dead, our faith is in vain? Now, if the Lord is truly risen, as he is, then the events that led up to his resurrection are extremely important, namely, his Last Supper words and actions as well as his passion and death.

Somehow or other, our Pope and bishops and priests have to kindle in all Christians a renewed love for the Lord Jesus, a renewed appreciation for his passion for the truth including the truth about love, and a renewed appreciation for the privilege of carrying the particular cross called the demands of love. At the Last Supper, Jesus not only gave us the Great Commandment of love but also talked about truth and promised to send the Holy Spirit to guide the Apostles and their successors into the fullness of the truth. On trial before Pilate, he testified that he had come to bear witness to the truth and that everyone who is of the truth will hear his voice.

In short, our leaders need to lead us to redevelop the basic Christian attitude of gratitude for Jesus—both for what he has done for us and for what he calls us to do.

There is certainly more they need to do, so I will continue next week. (The idea is that if I keep the blogs short, people might read them.)

Next week: the importance of attitude and how it can change a person’s world.

John F. Kippley, October 25, 2014

 

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Synod Document of October 13 2014

My fear about the Synod was that it would “get it wrong,” that is, issue a statement that would have some statements that would be open to all sorts of speculation and misinterpretation. That fear was realized with paragraph 50 of its interim report issued on Monday, October 13.

  1. Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community. Are we capable of providing for these people, guaranteeing […] them […] a place of fellowship in our communities? Oftentimes, they want to encounter a Church which offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of this, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?

As was apparent to many of the bishops and viewers around the world, that was a very questionable statement, and it was readily questioned. Providentially, the first reading at Mass on October 15 was a passage from Chapter 5 of St. Paul’s epistle to the Galatians including verses 19-21. “Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” The first three words are different ways of saying “sexual immorality.”

Now, it is obvious that all of those who are guilty of any of these sins also “have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community.”   So the net effect of paragraph 50 is that it raises the question as to why the document called special attention to homosexuals as contrasted with other sinners

The vast majority of the bishops at the Synod did not take kindly to this sort of verbiage. For one thing, it appears that the wording was not approved by the entire Synod; most of it was written by one cardinal. So, as one account put it, they revolted, and they issued a number of modifying statements from the various language groups.

The bottom line is that the vast majority of the bishops do in truth believe what the Catholic Church has been teaching about love, marriage, and sexuality for some 2000 years.

To get it right, the bishops needed to come up with some practical ways to evangelize their fellow Catholics as well as make a case to other Christians, theists and even non-believers that the best thing the Catholic Church can do for humanity is to remain true to itself as the Body of Christ. They didn’t get it right this time, but they still have another year to get their act together.

Their revolt against the document of October 13 gives me hope. Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us and for our bishops.

John F. Kippley, October 17, 2014

See also the blogs at www.nfpandmore.org