A Catholic cornucopia

It’s time we reconsider excommunication as an instrument of church policy. Frankly, it’s anachronistic, unbecoming of a Christian community, and ineffective as a teaching tool. There’s little, if any, track record that shows the banished change their beliefs or return as happy campers. Further, when in the past this bludgeoning tool has been used, it’s been done in an unsupportable and uneven manner. So considering all the sins of history, the list of so-called excommunicated -- even though St. Paul writes nothing can separate us from the love of Christ -- includes such sinners as Martin Luther, Henry VIII, Juan Perón, Fidel Castro and Marcel Lefebvre. And don’t forget Nebraska Call to Action.

It’s time softer persuasion is tried. Like humble dialogue. Calls for inclusion coupled with acknowledgements of one’s own shortcomings might have a better track record, and the approach seems more appropriate given the times and our church’s own, shall we say, spotted history.

It was just last November that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith informed Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois he faced excommunication if he would not recant his belief that women should be ordained as Catholic priests.

Recant a belief? Recant a belief shared with Catholics worldwide? I guess he could utter the words that women should not be ordained, but could he actually change his view on this matter? If he spoke the required “recanting” words, I guess that would satisfy Rome. But would it really change anything at all? His belief? Those of other Catholics? This to ward off official excommunication?

Bourgeois has already said he cannot change his thinking. If the Vatican lowers the excommunication blades, it will only further divide our Catholic communities, and we can expect little hope for a more effective outcome than the one we are watching unfold in the latest act of the sad and tarnishing Lefebrvite play (See story).

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It’s a treat to have author James Carroll ruminating on the pages of NCR (See story). Consider this prose in Carroll’s review of Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith, by Hollywood screenwriter Joe Eszterhas: “To the religious person, the sting of death suggests its own healing by pointing beyond to One experienced as the promise of life itself. The literature of conversion is rife with this move from the shock of mortality to faith.” Our Winter Books section (Pages 1a-8a) is filled with a number of other examples of first-rate ruminations.

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For an interesting change of pace, look at Jeannette Cooperman’s Cornered column, in which she interviews medical examiner Mary E. Case. Here’s a taste: “You’ve worked with death for decades now. How has it affected you?” “It’s made me very cautious!” Case says. “Some people just go through life and don’t realize how easily you can die -- and how easily you can avoid lots of ways of dying” (Page 20).

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NCR readers will take a trip back into history in reading the obituary of Archbishop Jean Jadot by Jack Dick (See story). Jadot was the man most responsible for the progressive leadership by the U.S. hierarchy during the 1980s. His work flourished in the peace and justice pastorals of 1983 and 1986. Jadot died peacefully at his residence in Brussels, Belgium, Jan. 21 at the age of 99. At that time, he was the fourth-oldest living Roman Catholic bishop in the world. For a more detailed obituary, go to the NCR Web site at NCRonline.org and search “Jadot.”

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I am pleased to announce that NCR has a new Washington correspondent, Jerry Filteau, who was a journalist with Catholic News Service from 1972 to 2007, 32 of those years in Washington. As chief of the CNS Rome bureau, 1978-81, he covered the Vatican and traveled with Pope John Paul II on visits to five continents. In 2003 he received the Catholic Press Association’s St. Francis de Sales Award for outstanding contributions to Catholic journalism. Since his retirement from CNS, he has coauthored two books and done occasional writing for several Catholic organizations and publications.

National Catholic Reporter February 6, 2009