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SITE-Seeing, Etc.
The July 1 Boston Globe reports that “Boston College is preparing
to launch the nation's first* graduate program to train priests, nuns, and
laypeople who manage Catholic parishes and organizations, an effort to
help the Catholic Church respond to the widespread criticism of its administrative,
financial, and personnel practices during the clergy sexual abuse crisis.” Media
coverage also noted, “The university [Boston College] has also become a primary
location for discussion of controversial Church issues, particularly gender,
that the diocese has been unwilling to tackle directly.” Subscribers can
access the full article at www.boston.com or visit the BC web site at www.bc.edu
for access to the Boston Globe article.
*Villanova University in Pennsylvania is exploring a similar program.
A June
30 National Catholic Reporter editorial addressed the subject
of recently USCCB-approved liturgy changes in “Jarring history of the
liturgy wars.” In part, the editorial said, “The language of battle
is unfortunate because liturgy is supposed to serve as a point of union,
not division. It is appropriate because the tactics used to reverse the reforms
that had resulted from the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s and more than
three decades of subsequent work were secretive and engineered by people
incompetent in the discipline and accountable only to a small group who had
achieved power. That power was used to accomplish what they could not by
persuasion or through the mainstream of liturgical scholarship.” NCR also
noted more than once the absence of women in these discussions, observing, “Of
the group that met in secret, only one man (no women were included) held
a graduate degree in scripture studies; two members were not native English
speakers; another was from the United Kingdom and had spent no significant
time in the United States; and the group included several members who came
in with reputations for opposing inclusive language.”
Thank you to Kathy Mullaney (MA) for finding this sermon delivered at
Boston University on June 17 by Robert Cummings Neville:
“ But our ordinary notions of Christian virtue, even of Christian love, are closely
tied up with manifesting the virtues of our own particular culture. We want everyone
in the world to be like the ideals we hold for ourselves (of course, noting that
we do not often live up to those ideals). The first jolt of maturation in social
conscience for Christians is when we realize that other people have other ideals,
and that those ideals might be far more worthy than our own. At the very least,
this jolt in maturity causes us to ask whether our own sense of justice can make
a good case for itself when set in fair competition with other senses of justice.
The mark of immaturity about serving the needs of the world is to think that
all good people are in our in-group, and the bad people are in the out-groups.
The mark of first maturity is the recognition that the distinction between the
in-group and out-group is a desperately wicked concept, however it might have
had evolutionary staying power in primitive times.” Robert Cummings Neville
is Dean of Marsh Chapel and Chaplain of the University. He also is Professor
of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at the University. Dean Neville was ordained
Deacon in the Methodist Church in 1963 and Elder in 1966, and is a member of
the Missouri Annual Conference. For the full text of the sermon, click
here.
VOTF Australia continues to provide their Catholics with updates and
hope. Visit their website; another
site, based in England, devoted to “changing” our Church includes some
interesting reading on clericalism and other global Catholic concerns. To visit, click
here.
Which comes first or, Can forgiveness and justice co-exist? The eighth
annual Common Ground Initiative lecture, “Reconciliation and the Refusal
to Cease Suffering” is available
here. Boston College professor of theology Robert Goizueta delivered
the lecture on June 24 at Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.
Goizueta’s talk was directed at “an extended reflection on the theological
and ethical significance of the victim’s offer of forgiveness and reconciliation
to his or her oppressor.” The responder was University of Notre Dame professor
Margaret Pfeil whose remarks are also available through the above site.
Letter to another editor – from fellow communicant Paul Cromidas
of the Greek Orthodox tradition. Go to the Voice
of Orthodox Christian Unity for an interesting perspective on the abuse
crisis from a VOTF supporter. Mr. Cromidas sent his letter “What’s Wrong With
This Picture?” to the Vineyard for publication but the letter appeared
on the OCL site recently.
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