community happens

i had an experience of community last night
a sort of reunion of members of a christian discussion group
one of our members
who is now a missionary
was in town for a couple of weeks
which precipitated the reunion

in our discussion after dinner
she asked us each to respond to the question
what has been the biggest change in your life
in the past year?

it was interesting to hear the responses
both from people i have not seen
in quite some time
and from those with whom i have been
in more frequent contact
but with whom i have not had
opportunity to share deeply

i felt very encouraged
by these fellow pilgrims
by the ones who had passionate vision
and by the ones struggling to hear
what God is saying

i shared
or tried to share
regarding the current
that seems to be tugging me
toward Catholicism

i found myself struggling for words
unable to explain it
even now
i am not really able
to explain it to myself

even as i come across things
in the Catholic church
that i think
well yeah
maybe i do have
a protest against this
the current is still there
dragging me farther in
toward what feels like the center

i don't understand it


ironically
i think i felt most encouraged
but the group member whose journey
is most opposite to mine

michael
who for as long as i have known him
has been a very actively involved
lay leader within the local baptist church
announced that he stopped attending church
a few months ago
and has a desire to plant a church

he spoke of some book
by george barna which indicates that
there is no correlation between
a person's level of commitment to christ
and church attendance
and that in fact many of the most
committed christians
are outside of the church

so here i am
on this path toward
trying to unite myself
as much as possible
to the church
to the whole church
even with all her
present imperfections

and here he is
passionately moving
away from the church
in search of a more
authentic life with God

yet he doesn't want to be a loner
or a hermit
no his is not the contemplative nature
he wants community
he is passionate about community
he wants authentic christian community

and that inspires me

i suppose he is
the quintessential protestant
he wants to start over
to create a new church
and to get it right this time

(how many times
has that happened
in protestant history?)

yet i was encouraged
by his passion and vision

i wonder how we keep
all of this wonderous stuff
that God is doing
within the church
so that all can benefit from it?

michael obviously feels
that he cannot pursue
his vision within the confines
of the baptist church

too much inertia there i suppose
too hard to get all those
nominal christians on board

 i suppose if michael
had grown up catholic
he might have ended up being
the founder of a new religious order

that seems to be the way
for zealous individuals
to pursue their visions
while remaining inside the church
so that their gifts can be
of benefit to the church

something about that
seems healthier than
leaving the rest of the church behind

still
i remain inspired
by michael's zeal

for some reason
this train of thought
is reminding me of
a recent conversation with
high school teachers
about the "no child left behind" policy
how it basically enshrined
a standard of mediocrity
and eliminated programs
designed to challenge and inspire
the brightest students

within the church
of course we don't want
to leave anyone behind
but there must also be
attention to the spiritual needs
of those who desire to move
beyond the basics


i think michael is finding
his spiritual needs unmet
in the mediocrity of the baptist church

i think my attraction to the Catholic church
in part at least
has a similar basis
a need for a deeper
more authentic christian community
than what i was finding
in my present church

whether or not i will find that need met
in the catholic church remains to be seen

and even if it is met there
i would also not want
to "leave behind" my
presbyterian and evangelical siblings
but would want to remain
in communion with them

orthodox critique of contemporary discontent within catholic ranks

by Louis Bouyer

from Man, Woman, and Priesthood, pp. 63-67, edited by Peter Moore, SPCK London, 1978.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions.

LOUIS BOUYER (b. 1913), educated at Strasbourg and Paris Universities, was a Lutheran minister until the Second World War. He is a priest of the French Congregation of the Oratory. He was a Professor of the Institut Catholique in Paris until 1963, and has since taught at universities in England, Spain, and the U.S.A., where he is at present Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of America. Twice appointed by the Pope to the International Theological Commission of the Roman Catholic Church, he has been a consultant in the Vatican Consilium for the Liturgy, the Congregation of Worship, and the Secretariat for Christian Unity. His numerous publications include, in English translations, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism (1963) and three volumes of The History of Christian Spirituality.

The possibility of conferring the Christian priesthood upon women has become, for many people, an essential item in what they call the 'liberation of women'. However, it can be seriously doubted whether this would contribute to the end for which it is introduced, while it seems clear that it would ruin not only the whole conception and reality of the Christian priesthood but some of the most basic elements of any Christianity worthy of the name.

To begin with, to introduce a Christian priesthood of women accepts, at least by implication, the idea that the founder of Christianity, Christ himself, could be wrong on a central point of his teaching practice. It is useless to retort, as some try to do, that if Christ did not include women among his apostles, or more generally, those to whom he gave some part in the preaching of his gospel like the seventy, it was just a matter of chance or of a lack of opportunity. He did not call women, just as he did not call pagans, or blacks, or any other kind of foreigners—but, as these people say, the purely negative fact cannot permanently exclude women from the priesthood any more than it has excluded in the past converts from paganism, Negroes, or other people introduced into the Church at a later stage. The obvious answer is that our Lord had no actual opportunity to call any of the people mentioned, while he had just as many opportunities to meet women as he had to meet men. But even to say this is to say too little. In fact Jesus, in open contradiction to the usual practice of the rabbis, and although he was not a married man as they were, did not hesitate to admit women into his closest company, into his dis-cipleship. Therefore, if he did not call them either to the apostle-ship proper, or to any kind of apostolic ministry, it must have been as a matter not of chance, nor of a lack of practical and actual opportunity, but of principle.

Nor can it be said that he acted in such a way merely to counteract contemporary prejudices. First of all, no such prejudices existed. Among the priesthoods of antiquity, in his own times, many were open to women as well as to men, and some of the most respected ones were a special privilege of women. It is true that it was a distinctive feature of Judaism, following the tradition of the early Hebrew religion, that women were not admitted any more among the rabbis than among the priests. But the explanation sometimes given, that that could be accounted for only as a reaction against the nature-worship of the other Semitic people, which had led them to confer the priesthood upon women (who were in fact prostitutes), is self-destructive. In those shrines of the Babylonians or Canaanites, the 'sacred' prostitution of men as well as of women was accepted as a part of their priesthood.

More generally speaking, in the Old Testament already and in Judaism as well, the exclusion of women from the priesthood or the public teaching of doctrine, far from being linked with any diminished or impoverished idea of womanhood, went together with an esteem of women and a legal (and practical) situation for them in society which had no equivalent in antiquity, especially in the Greek-speaking world.

Against this, none of the objections often raised can stand. For example, how many times has the bereka (prayer) daily said by Hebrew males been quoted: '... Blessed art thou, O Lord, to have made me a man and not a woman .. .'? But it has been forgotten that the women were advised to say for their own part: 'Blessed art thou ... to have made me according to thy will.. .' (a sentence, let it be said, probably echoed in the answer of the Virgin Mary to the Angel). The rabbis explained that the men were taught to speak in that way to inculcate into them the idea that their responsibility for the divine worship was not to be interpreted so much as a burden (from which women were dispensed as a compensation for their family duties) but as an honour.

The Jewish tendency to keep women inside the family circle could not be given as the motive for Jesus' failing to call them to the ministry of the gospel. It seems that he made it clear that women were henceforth not only to be freely admitted on a footing of perfect equality, together with men (as the rabbis already agreed), to participation in the service of the people of God, but that now they were to be made partakers of the full collective responsibility for its celebration. It is certainlv under his personal influence that, from the very beginnings of the Christian Church, women were admitted to take part, exactly as men were, in the prayers of the faithful, in the offering of the gifts for the Eucharist, and in the communion. They were equally admitted, very early, to a diaconal ministry, which seems to have been an exact equivalent of that of men-deacons; but they were never called, nor supposed to be able to be called, to the apostolic functions of exercising pastoral responsibility, together with publicly announcing the Word, and presiding at the eucharistic consecration. This, from the first, has been understood as an apostolic ordinance backed by the practice and the undoubted intention of Christ himself.

That it did not mean any aspersion on the possible equality of women with men concerning spiritual things is made perfectly clear by two considerations. The first is the very high regard for the Virgin Mary in Christian esteem, already manifest in Luke and John. It went so far indeed that very early it was accepted that in the Church Mary had a position and a role not only as high as those of the apostles, of the Twelve, and St Paul, but much higher —although hers was not the same role as theirs. The second evidence for the same point is in the position officially recognized in the ancient Church of the 'Virgins' and the 'Widows'. It is not an exaggeration to say that they were very early acknowledged as two 'orders' of consecrated persons, having in the Church an official status of which there was no equivalent even for male ascetics.

Here, maybe, we have the final clue to the distinctive vocations ascribed to men and to women in the Church from the beginning. The special public vocation of man in the apostolic ministry was seen as a vocation to represent, among all the members of Christ, the Head, a vocation which, like that of the Head itself, belongs to men only. Similarly, the public vocation of women was understood as a vocation to represent the Church as a body, as the Bride of Christ, in its unity as well as in its eschatological integrity. This could be the vocation of women only, as it had been the special vocation of Mary. Once again, no possible idea of inferiority could be connected with that specialization, since the Virgin Mary was soon to be considered as higher, in the Church, than the Twelve and St Paul.

We come to a very remarkable correspondence with something which has been revealed by the most recent researches in both psychology and sociology, about the 'equality' of women with men. As the Dutch scholar Buijtendijk has said very impressively in his book on Woman, it is only at an embryonic stage of modern 'feminism' that it was naively supposed that equality for women had to mean doing all those things that men do. This, as he points out and demonstrates very conclusively, far from involving a true acknowledgement of the positive and unique contribution of women to humanity, was a last attempt to subject them to purely masculine criteria and, therefore, a way of admitting them to full humanity only through depriving them of their femininity. The true, and the only true, way to an equality with men, which will not prove destructive of their own integrity, is not their admission to a kind of bogus masculinity, but the admission of the unique importance of what they only can do and be. Their contribution to human existence is no less important or honourable than (though fundamentally different from) the masculine contribution.

If there is a field where this has to be understood and applied, it is par excellence that of the Christian ministry. We are, certainly, to restore to women those ministries they had in the primitive and early Church, which have since fallen into disuse. And we should be aware of the many still too little (or not at all) used opportunities we have of putting their proper gifts to the service of the Church. But let us not fancy we could do them any real service by encouraging them to do and to be what could only result in a loss of identity. We are precisely where we, theologians and canon lawyers, have found ourselves in so many other cases since the sixteenth century. That is to say, when we intend to be 'modern', 'up to date', 'with it', and so on, we usually just manage to consecrate and introduce into the very temple of the one true God the idols of yesterday, at the exact time when the children of the world, who are no fools, are seeing through them, exploding them, and sweeping away the dust of their broken images. May we once again be saved from that sham 'modernity' which will only succeed in making us the laughing-stock of our more perceptive contemporaries, while diluting in tepid and polluted waters the ever-fresh mainspring of Christianity. We are to transmit it from one generation to another, certainly adapted ever anew, although the same always; however, true adaptations have never been, and will never be, of a refashioned gospel of mere fancies, but only of the true gospel, the true reality of mankind... womankind!

St Thecla

This morning I read the following tribute to St. Thecla in a Catholic daily devotional.  Normally it probably would have had only minor impact on me, but after the recent discussions over on de gustibus, this took me by surprise.  I find it encouraging and marvelous that the Catholic church while withholding the priesthood from women, nonetheless honors as saint a woman who saw herself as commissioned by Christ to baptize and preach in his name.

"St. Thecla is one of many saintly virgins of the early Church whose witness, though steeped in legend, has exerted a powerful influence in Christian history.  Her story is preserved in The Acts of Paul and Thecla, a second-century text that was warmly celebrated by many Church Fathers, including Augustine and Ambrose.

"According to her Acts, Thecla was a beautiful young woman whose life was transformed when she heard St. Paul preaching in the street outside her window and was 'subdued by the doctrines of the faith.' Under this influence, she announced her intention to break off her engagement and to embrace a life of chastity.  Her family, scandalized by her behavior, denounced her to the governor and caused her arrest.  Sentenced to death, she twice found miraculous deliverance from her fate and went on to enjoy a long life.

"Seeking out Paul, she revealed that she had been commissioned by Christ to baptize and preach in his name.  According to the story, Paul recognized her as a fellow apostle and authorized her to spread the Gospel.  Wherever she went, 'a bright cloud conducted her in her journey.'

"Eventually Thecla retired to a cave and later formed a monastic community of women, whose members she instructed 'in the oracles of God'  Her feast is celebrated on September 23."

the value of weakness

"the more a community deepens, the weaker and more sensitive its members become.  you might think exactly the opposite - that as their trust in each other grows, they in fact grow stronger.  so they do.  but this doesn't disperse the fragility and sensitivity which are at the root of a new grace and which mean the people are becoming in some way dependent on each other.  love makes us weak and vulnerable,  because it breaks down the barriers and protective armour we have built around ourselves.  love means letting others reach us and becoming sensitive enough to reach them.  the cement of unity is interdependence."  -   jean vanier  ( founder of L'arche) in community and growth - chapter entitled  'one heart one soul one spirit'

at the very beginning of his book on community jean vanier is insistent upon demolishing idealistic notions of what community living is about
he emphasizes throughout that the essence of success in community living is to be found more in human weakness and our approach to it than in the collection of our strengths
often he makes the comparison to marriage where the man and woman are often confronted with their weaknesses in very real ways and are forced to either realize that weakness finds some solace in love or perhaps they become frightened and mistrustful the inability to face up to weakness becomes a destructive wedge

i live in a community where there are some amazingly talented people
and in fact it is a community that takes great comfort in knowing there are some living "heroes" in our midst
but i was rivetted to this quote for a particular reason
i realize i came into this community as a way of acknowledging my weaknesses
i had no designs on a profession or a place of strong service

i have been contented to be carried
i have been willing at times to be the lowest guy
i have a few talents i can offer
but i don't have social status the way other monks do
i'm just at the point in my life where i'm willing to accept that

it would seem that christ accepted the lived weakness of his disciples
and he still does

a community is bound together on the realized weaknesses of
those who realize they have to be there
they are dependent upon what the community has to offer

what does it matter

i entered into a rather risque act this summer
i stepped over a line of consciousness
i entered into communion
with non-catholic people
(unless of course we abide by the principle
that in fact we are all bad catholics)

it appears like rather a minor act
commited almost undeliberately
maybe i could use the excuse that
i hadn't slept all that well the night before
that in a  moment of comme si comme sa
i merely went along with the crowd
and no one was any the worse for it
it was an innocent transgression of love
except for the fact that i in a different mood
i may have been more circumspect
more reserved

yet i held out my hand
and i recieved the bread and
the little cup of juice
in a presbyterian church
where i was the only dyed in  the wool catholic

it was a first time thing
it was fostered out of curiosity and
like all efforts at love
out of at least a little trepidation

but i am just a  poor wayfarin' stranger
what right do i have to expect designs
on the bread and wine offered me

who am i to presume that the grace i seek
can't be granted in ritual to which i was
a little strange

life was not altered egregiously or even noticeably for that matter life was not left in some abject state of need or readjustment by the afternoon everyone had more or less forgotten that a catholic man who lives his life in monastic order and decorum decided for a moment to step out of the box and receive his lord in a context somewhat unfamiliar
like degrees of faith was no object
for indeed who could ever measure

do i know the grace that came my way
in my willingness to let my guard down
to be carressed in love in a  different way
than what i am used to on a daily basis

i was willing to hear the tune in a different way

i never thought to ask forgiveness
for i never thought to confess that anything wrong had occured
for i never thought for myself anything but good will
and generous intention for union were at stake

union in the imperfect liturgy all christians share each day

community is held by communion

holy communion

give thanks to the lord for the lord is good
his mercy is everlasting

bread for the journey
broken and shared
a pilgrim must not refuse

now off to the communion i know
like i know the sheets on my bed

pow wow

what a funny term
pow wow

there's something deep and humorous in the word itself

but the event is to be held in profound respect

i was in attendance the other day over by mille lacs
i was there for the grand entry
by the side of a great lake with cool breeze
and sunlight and clouds
i watched the mating dance of two eagles high above
699 dancers

my ears are still ringing from the music
2 days later
it is the loudest thing humanly possible
without amplification
and yet it is not at all painful to listen to

the drumming and the singing are important
these are ways of communicating some essential ideas

all these people
anishinabe lakota crow cheyenne blackfoot
and a smattering of other tribes
came together to make a communal statement

i saw a lot of bead work
which is a trademark of the metis
it is french beadwork from the 15th century
taught to the chippewas and cree

in their dancing around in a circle
always the same way
they give honor to their elders to their
mothers to the earth to the creator
to the ancient origin of this form of ritual expression

while one can see that wisdom and serenity
mark the faces of the elders
the older women maintain a rare elegance throughout
and yet the children can dance and the young men
and young women can move gracefully and athletically
and sometimes in surprising dramatic gestures
one would not think posssible

the children are welcomed in
they learn by flowing with the elders
and imitating what they see

the clothing designs are simple colorful elegant
and musical
lots of bells

eagle feather fans are apparent everywhere

smoke is in the air

i was there for 5 hours and it seemed little more than one
i was amazed when it was time to go
i felt like we should stay there all night if we have to
something tells me if i would have decided to just stay there
the people would've accepted me and shown hospitality

a quiet unspoken attitude of welcome pervaded the whole grounds
everything necessary was there

there is a strict no alcohol or drugs policy
but there were plenty of cigarettes
which gave added perfume to the summer air

i remember thinking as i watched the grass dancers
that these people have clung to and forged community
against the most unthinkable odds the greatest devastation
of a culture and way of life that i can think of

that they hold on at all and do it with pride and joy and certainty
is a way that i must think about community

the MC at the microphone announced dances and drummers
and cajoled the audience with the wittiest understated humour

my sense is that a lot of other important business gets worked out
at the pow wow

i carry this sense that christianity
to some extent must own the guilt
of not fully appreciating what is in the pow wow
i'm willing to own the stupidity within myself

i've been to pow wows before
only now have i sat there and looked with the
interest of really wanting to know what is going on

every community should be willing to dance in a circle

three way community conversation

it would appear to me today that some sort of elucidation about how community conversations take place take place....having just come from one

i sat with two monks at the coffee table in the coffee room and the conversation went from football to politics
first fr brian went on and on about peyton manning and his huge contract with the indiana colts i don't know what it is with football with this 91 yr old genius
after the other monk and myself weighed in negatively stating rather absurdist positions on the presence of football at all the conversation veered toward recent politics

i made a case or tried to
for all politics being understood as merely a job with no celebrity no perks
it should be understood as a service task with no money involved whatsoever
everyone who is elected has to make their own way -
even if that means borrowing money from lobbyists

this idea was roundly rejected
br paul stated that politics is a human game and you have to be with humanity you have to show your face.... that's the politics i like - he said
he said he's rubbed shoulders with amy klobuchar and mark dayton
he's even stood next to michelle bachman
then br paul offered an expletive which i will not hesitate
to type out for matters of clarity

he said

i think she's a shit

that's all he said about it
he didn't say anything else

brian was in a conversational mood he could have gone on
with this level of inanity all morning
but the both of us paul and i seemed to have the
natural inclination to get about the activities of the day
and leave brian to his worldly thoughts

kind of a pathetic scene as we walked away
although brian smiled hugely and waved generously

i'm drinking decaf coffee
and i had a piece of toast as we chatted

community carries with it the willingness to
enter into inane if seeming pertinant conversation
with people you can trust

politics is not foreign to community life
it's a social reality that knocks on the door daily

we also spoke briefly about the state fair tragedy
the collapse of a large bleacher section
in some state or another
none of us seemed to know in which state this happened
but we agreed that people died

my comment to all this was
just goes to show you
the american dream can be a dangerous thing

this was the portal to something else about the rich
and caring about the feelings of the rich

somehow i came around to the money as manure theme
and expounded upon my theory of spreading it around

paul and i agreed that money tends to move toward family concentrations
and sooner or later two or three families will be in charge
of all the money

i suggested that obama make a political decision to enter the race
for re-election and simply say to america i'm going to stay in
washington and do my job maybe do a 15 minute press conference every week
brian spoke of harry truman riding the train through america
i was appealing to the notion that basic common sense and a resistance to the hooplah
would go a long way in this country even heritage foundation republicans and independents might be impressed with such a radical decision
the republicans coud fight it out but the democrats could just sit back and laugh
and refuse to play
they could decide to not pay attention to the babble
and leave it all one sided babble and then see how it pans out in the elections
or at least obama could decide to not campaign
until after the party conventions

i think that's what obama should do
ride the train

i only publish this as a means of elucidating the
commonplace activities in community
i suppose there was more said
maybe quite a bit left unsaid
but that in general is the line of shared conversation
i entered into this morning

now

i'm going to go swimming

alone