Posted on 03/26/2004 6:47:24 PM PST by Land of the Irish
Helen (a pseudonym) describes herself as devoutly Catholic. She attends St. Anne's Parish Community in Discovery Bay in the diocese of Oakland. Most parishioners there, she says, are excited about the changes in the parish made by their pastor, Father Ron Schmit -- who is also chairman of the art and design committee (formerly referred to as the liturgy committee) for the new Oakland cathedral.
Helen, though, told me a few of the things that bothered her about the parish. For one thing, she said, Father Schmit is very proud that he will be acquiring for the parish a crucifix with a fully naked Jesus. (Another parishioner I talked to joked that perhaps this was Father's way of teaching the pope's Theology of the Body). Another thing that angered Helen happened at Christmas Eve Mass, when two girls, between the ages of ten and twelve, pretending to be Joseph and Mary, danced at Mass to a song with the words, "would you pick some grapes from the tree." Their dresses, Helen said, had slits that went up to the waist.
According to Helen, St Anne's sometimes uses leavened bread for its hosts. "It rose and was sweeter than it should be," she said. "My mother called the rectory, and they insist it's unleavened. They got the recipe off the internet."
Helen is not alone in her confusion about what is happening at her church.
Joyce Davis lived in Discovery Bay for six years, up until 2002, and was a parishioner of St. Anne's. She told me that the pastoral associate, Gail McGuire, reads the Gospel once a month at the Children's Mass and delivers the homily. Davis said she received a letter from Father Schmit in which he said that the reason McGuire does this is that she is "good with children" -- even though the children troop out of the church for the Liturgy of the Word. Once McGuire, said Davis, conducted a Eucharistic service (no Mass) and instructed everyone to bring his chair closer to the altar, thus forming a circle. "Everyone took their own Jesus from the ciborium. I couldn't do it," said Davis. "The Eucharist is something given, not taken."
Joyce also informed me that Father Schmit "pulled the kneelers, and pews out of the church, and had a garage sale." She also said Father Ron wrote in the Contra Costa Times in support of gay marriages. In the March 12, 2000 edition of the Contra Costa Times, Father Ron is quoted as being "saddened" that the bishops supported Proposition 22 banning gay marriages in California. He argued that divorce is also condemned in the Bible, but no one is clamoring to make divorce illegal.
According to Joyce, Father Schmit once said, "the Bible is just a bunch of stories." She said he often uses the term "Spirit of Vatican II" to justify his actions. Furthermore, as if Catholic moral teaching were simply suggestions, she claimed Schmit said, "in a perfect world, we could all follow the catechism".
In early February, Schmit delivered a controversial sermon regarding the nature of the parish as well as the priesthood. At the request of parishioners, within the bulletin he distributed a flier that lists the source material he used for his sermon, which Helen faxed to me. Among his sources was a book written by William J. Bausch, called The Parish of the Next Millenium. According to Helen, Schmit recommends this book to those interested in getting involved with ministry.
Schmit's handout includes the following quotations from Bausch's book: "The parish of the Christian millenium will be lay oriented, with shared and collaborative ministry." "It will be grounded not so much in ordination and office as in baptism and charism, wherein the baptismal call to discipleship binds believers in a common mission, and leadership, conferred with broader input, is respectful of others' gifts and ministries." "It will complete the process of moving from a pyramid to a koinonia (communion) church, with a better balance between male and female spiritualities and influence, greater female representation in decision making; there will be married priests and communion with one another across the earth, those gone before and those to come after." "It will stress the wisdom tradition rather than the intellectual, retrieve the mystical and return to a more holistic spirituality." "It will see a new priesthood within and among the people, a common communion in ministry." "It will move closer to a male-female partnership, a real balance of male-female cooperation and ministry."
After these quotations, the handout has these comments from Father Schmit: "Although these predictions by Fr. Bausch may not be realized as of yet, or as quickly as one might hope, nevertheless they should inspire and move all who minister for Jesus in the daily grind that is our human existence."
According to Helen, Father Schmit's teachings are very well received because, as she put it, many in the parish want to "get away from the authoritarian church" and have "lay people making decisions."
Another handout contained a "psalm," titled, "Do This in Memory of Me," from a book, Psalms for Zero Gravity by Edward Hays (Forest of Peace Publishing). The psalm begins: "Beloved Jesus, Lord of the Meal, I rejoice that a mother and a father, laboring for their family, begin and end each day's work saying, 'This is my body, this is my blood.' An adult child nursing a sick elderly parent with compassion and patient care says 'This is my body, this is my blood.'" The "psalm" then lists a preacher, a singer "forgetting self and the audience, making love out of the music," an artist, teacher, dancer, doctor, auto mechanic, office worker -- and all in their work say, "This is my body, this is my blood." In the last verse of the psalm, we learn that "ten thousand thousand consecrations occur daily, as all heaven's angels chime in, 'Holy, holy, holy,' to the thunderous praise of a thousand silent, silver bells. Listen. Listen."
Father Schmit's handout explains the "psalm" in the following "reflection": "Some theologians as late as the twelfth century held that there was no necessary connection between the consecration of bread and wine into Christ's Body and Blood and sacramental ordination. Gary Macy, chairman of the theology department of the University of San Diego and a scholar of the medieval period, discovered that the first document making a distinction between laity and ritually ordained clergy didn't appear until the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215."
Schmit's explanation continues: "To frequently make a gift of yourself in loving compassionate service is being faithful to Jesus, keeping the memory of his gift alive and doing what he did. While his gift-words are officially restricted to the ordained clergy today, Jesus' last request on the night before he died was restricted to neither time nor place, person nor circumstance. We all are called at every moment to live out that request."
I called St Anne's several times to ask Father Schmit to comment for this article. No one returned my calls.
After I got off the computer last night, I went through all four gospels and cannot find where John did that. I may have missed it, but it's stuck in my mind. I may have seen it in an older film where the producer employed a little artistic license.
I definitely cannot find it in the crucifixion accounts in the bible.
I accept the truth of his unavoidable nakedness on the cross. I also accept the truth that he was usually clothed, as was everyone else in that scenario other than the two thieves. In my meditations, I prefer the clothed version. I never thought of it much otherwise other than some really nasty thoughts about Jesus induced by the devil which I had to put out of my mind. I don't want to dwell there.
You couldn't have.
I'm surprised that you don't say you would have tried to prevent the crucifixion itself. Look, it's important to get past the idea of the crucifixion as a human event that's up for grabs. You cannot judge the crucifixion of the Lord. It judges you.
While Shem and Japheth had respect for Noah, Ham did not.
Jesus allowed it for the sin of mankind. We don't need to shame him over and over.
The shame in nakedness is a response to human sinfulness and humanity's disintegrated state after the Fall, in which body and soul are no longer aligned, and the soul itself is at war with itself. None of this applies to Jesus, however. Jesus being perfectly sinless has no need of clothes. His use of clothes in his earthly life was part of his willing subjection of self in all ways -- to his Father, to his parents, to the Law, just as he made himself subject to hunger and fatigue and death. The Lord used clothes is a manifestation of his humility, which, as Cardinal Newman points out, is about as far from the worldly conceit of "modesty" as you can get. The call to clothe Jesus in the artificial and unscriptural way you propose is ultimately an acknowledgment and in some sense a surrender to our sinfulness. Nakedness is a problem only for sinful people, not for the sinless.
We do not like to see Jesus humiliated, but we cannot reject his decision to reveal himself this way without rejecting the event that's central to our redemption.
Before God, we are all naked, and always have been.
So is everybody buck naked in Heaven?
| When the roll is called up yonder, I'll be Bare! |
Alex, great idea for a parody here. :-)
I suppose it is silly to get upset over funny bread.
Gee, no WONDER he never has the time to say, for himself, whether or not he's seen 'that movie' and confirm/deny the comments that others have attributed to him...
< /surprise>
Go back to Genesis, where the Lord demands of Adam: "Who told you that you were naked?" The answer of course is the devil, who accuses us of our sinfulness and then tempts us to hide from God because of fear -- as if hiding from God were even possible. Recall that in Genesis it's God who even after the Fall goes looking for Man: "Where are you?" Finally, recall the message repeated at the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Resurrection:
"Be not afraid."
Having a naked Christ on a crucifix in no way insults Christ, but reminds us of the degredation his creation heaped upon him.
We need to be reminded of what, precisely, a crucifixion entails.
I would submit that celebrating communion in sight of a crucifix like that would give a fuller meaning behind "This is my body, broken for you."
I know I can't celebrate communion blithely after seeing The Passion.
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