Thoughts About My Church

Napoleon, speaking to a group of Roman Catholic church officials: "I will destroy your church!" (OK, OK, he said "Je detruirai votre eglise", but who's picky?) The response of Ercole Cardinal Consalvi, upon hearing this: "It won't happen. Our own bishops have been trying for 1000 years and haven't succeeded yet."

I am a Roman Catholic, and happy to be so. I find peace and contentment in my faith. I find an appeal to both my intellect, such as it is, and my emotions. At the level that matters, the Church does a great job of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. I love being what I am. I serve the Church in return, as best I can. I'm the Lector for the 5 PM Mass at St. Mary's, Davenport in April, July, and October. I am on the Parish Council for St. Mary's. Rarely does a day go by that I am not acutely aware of how blessed I am.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

It's not as if the church has never had issues. During the tenth century the papacy was so corrupt that it was referred to as a "pornocracy." Later, during the time of Luther, the Pope was Alexander VI. Alexander had nine children by six different mothers. Yes, we've had our scandals, but we've been more open than most about bringing them out.

Heck, we even apologized to Galileo. It only took us about 300 years to get around to it.

So we have our issues. We always have. Jesus formed a perfect church, but then, in the only mistake he ever made, he went and let human beings into it. Dang.

I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father. . .

Yesterday I attended a Diocesan Planning meeting. The issue at hand was the changes that will need to be made to address the shortage of priests. The Davenport Diocese currently has 59 priests available for parish duty. In 10 short years, we project that we'll have 40. I don't know of many organizations that could well afford to lose a third of their best workers. The number of priests is dwindling, no doubt.

Yet one of the people at the meeting asked a question that should be asked: "What do we do to start planning for when we have too many priests?" Good question, and the questioner grasped something: The Catholic Church has survived 2000 years of cyclicality (if that's not a word it ought to be.) The pornocracy of the 10th century was followed by the Cistercians and Bernard of Clairvaux. The low points of the thirteenth century were followed by Francis of Assisi, St. Dominic, and the mendicant orders. And the time of Alexander VI was followed by St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits. The church has always found a way to live up to one of its mottoes: Semper Reformanda (always reforming).And, I am confident that there will be a time when the priest shortage will be a distant memory, then a footnote in the history books. Even now, there are regions in the world where there are more vocations to the priesthood than we know what to do with, and I'm told of a diocese in the U.S. - not one of the ginormous ones - that has 100 seminarians in the process.

A book I'd recommend: Graham Greene's The Power and The Glory. The society rejects the Catholic faith, in particular priestly celibacy. The priest is sought (and executed) because he observes that vow. The priest is called the "whiskey priest" - not a great recommendation -  but he stays faithful to what he knows. On his death, another priest gets off the boat.The message: we'll just keep coming.

We'll just keep coming.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. . .I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.

Thanks for hanging out for a few. As always, I'd love your thoughts.