Austrian
Fr. Helmut Schüller is a representative of many priests in the Catholic
Church. He is currently on a US speaking tour. He is organizing priests
and laypersons to make a grass-roots change.
His group thinks all Catholics should have greater participation in the
running of the Church and that married men and women should be able to become
ordained.
Several
bishops have disallowed Fr. Schüller to speak under their jurisdictions. This web page article by Matthew Archbold, "Philadelphia Archdiocese Opposes Dissident at Chestnut Hill College," Free Republic, July 8, 2013, reports that Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia thinks his appearance at a local college on July 19 would be dangerous to Church unity. Does Archbishop Chaput actually think
that the current Church is united?
Perhaps he doesn’t count all the people who have left it in recent years
or those crying for change.
When
the Pew Research Center released an extensive survey in 2008, US Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation, it found that Catholic Church has the most percentage loss of any denomination. In
the past few decades here, around 25,000,000 people have left. As the survey says,
if it were not for the Latino influx into our country, the losses would be much
higher. The bishops may hope for Latinos
to change the order of things in the US, but these people are also leaving the Church. There may have been an enthusiastic World Youth Day in Brazil, but in another Pew Forum study, Brazil's Changing Religious Landscape, the
statistics show people are declining in Catholic affiliation there too,
especially the young.
Ever
since Pope Francis has been elected, he has talked about change. He wants Catholics to “get outside
themselves,” to dialogue with others and to care for the poor. If you follow the Vatican News website
which gives daily updates on his homilies and other activities, you will see
the themes often.
The
people who leave the Catholic Church go to various ends. Some join Pentecostal churches, some mainline
Protestant, some lose their faith altogether. Even within the Church a wide
range of opinion is seen, from liberal to conservative. So is there any hope
for unity at all?
The
Catholic Church has been through all kinds of tough times. Past popes were involved in wars (Free Library description HERE) and belonged
to corrupt political families (Wikipedia entry HERE). During
Inquisitions, heretics were burned at the stake. Women are totally excluded from leadership. The child sexual abuse travesty has
apparently been around for a long time but not as widely known as it lately has
been. (And we hope that this coming to the surface will lead to permanent cleansing.) A well-researched article by Thomas Doyle, "A very short history of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church," is on the Crusade Against Clergy Abuse website. People ask why members
stay.
I
do not want to minimize our responsibility to try to solve our problems. Fortunately, things do change and we hopefully try to evangelize heretics instead of burning them at the stake. In my blog I have had many articles
concerning the inequality I feel is imposed upon Catholic women. Though some Catholic women are not insulted by the traditional way of men-only clergy, in this day and age many women are indignant about the differences. Though some people hold there are reasons for distinctions between genders, this theology has obviously been put forward by an all-male Magisterium. Would a group which included women in the decision come to the same conclusion?
However,
getting back to the point, I along with other Church members have priorities. I saw a comment on the Internet where they
were discussing grievous wrongs of the Church. The person said he can answer why
he stays with two words: the Eucharist.
In
a word it is the Word for Whom we stay. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. He
was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2 NABRE). When we receive the true body and blood of Christ at each mass, the encounter is awesome. Most Protestants and a large number of Catholics think that the bread and wine are simply symbols, so I suppose I should speak for myself. One way I will try to put it is that even though I accept, as Christ promised, that He is with us always, there seems like an added or maybe clearer dimension in this sacrament. It reminds me of a Scripture verse from the King James Bible: "Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end" (Isaiah 9:7 KJV). It's like when you think you've had a peak experience with the Lord, it can get even better. Those of us who experience this mystery want to invite
others to come to Him too.
People
are sinful and sometimes very badly sinful.
But you don’t get away from evil by leaving the Church. Evil is all over the place. We come to the Lord because He is our
protector. He is our Savior, and we
surely need one. Through the ages, no
matter how bad it got, people realized this.
Though they may have disagreed with their leaders and each other, this is the focal point
from which they carried on. This is the power that is greater than evil.
Many
Catholics agree with Fr. Helmut Schüller in his first priority: to ensure that
there are enough priests to provide the precious gift of the Eucharist for all who
desire it (along with time for those priests to adequately serve their parishes). Christ told Peter, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:17 NABRE). It is good that Pope Francis cares about the poor--I'm glad he does. But he must also care for the Catholic flock. And he
Another
commenter I read in a different discussion about disagreements among Catholics
declared, tongue in cheek, he will change the name of his blog to “I alone am
the True Church.” I think we all feel
this way at one time or another. But we
pray for the grace to move forward, and that we may all do our best so that
Christ’s body and blood can be given each week to all who believe it is real.
