It May Not Be Realized Yet

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."

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.

Well, you've managed to pull it off, Romie. For all the fine talk about about Roman Catholic "unity" and Protestant "dissension" -- you alone amongst the Roman Catholic Caucus have managed to create a situation in which some of the Calvinist Caucus are fervently disputing your argument as the foulest Blasphemy, and other Calvinists are affirming it as a Valid and important recognization of the Reality of the Incarnation.

Frankly, we Calvinists don't even disagree this much on Baptism ("Okay, y'all there wanna dunk adults while we here want to sprinkle infants... but we're all 100% agreed that, contra Rome, Baptism does Not Regenerate, right? Alright, so we have disagreements as to the Mode and Practice, but we're all theologically agreed on where Rome has it wrong") or Eschatology ("Pre-Mills, A-Mills, and Post-Mills, oh my! Look, we all agree that God is in Control and it will all "pan out" to His Glory in the end, so we're all PAN-Millennialists anyway, right?").... but you, alone among the Free Republic Romans, have managed to create real disagreement amongst the supposedly "schismatic" and "sectarian" Calvinists.

Speaking for myself, I tend to agree with Jude24. "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." We are, I think, compelled to admit that no manner in which Christ chose to display Himself (and as you correctly say, He did so choose) can ever be called "blasphemous"; for Christ, in howsoever He presented Himself, was ipso facto never Blasphemous. And I think that you are right that in His humble presentation of Himself, His "humiliation", He did "image" for us the total and unreserved gift of self which was His Incarnation and particularly His Atonement -- and which is properly reflected in Marriage.

But on first viewing (and this is the first time I've seen the Michelangelo; not from your post, but it's the immediately-third image one sees on a Google image-search of "crucifix"), it is an arresting, disturbing Image -- because you're right, it is a pretty intense Reality to contemplate.

I'm reminded of a Spectator article on Holbein's "Dead Christ in the Tomb", and Dostoevsky's response thereto....

Hans Holbein the Younger’s ‘Dead Christ in the Tomb’

It is a painting of unprecedented — and harrowing — realism. Coffin-sized, it shows Christ’s coffin with one side removed to reveal an emaciated body on a crumpled white shroud. Rigor mortis has set in, the hands and feet still claw in their death agony, the mouth and eyes remain open. Muscle tone has begun to collapse and the flesh has taken on the green hue of putrefaction (forensic examination has put the degree of corruption as being consistent with a three-day-old corpse — Christ’s three days and three nights in the tomb). The man is not handsome, his body is not beautiful: he has a pointed, oriental beard and a corrugated, washboard chest. This is unequivocally not a body at peace but a human corpse in an unquiet grave — it is painting as post mortem. The Easter story started with Jesus declaring to his disciples ‘This is my body’ -- well, here it is.

...What we do know is that it had a powerful effect on later viewers. When Dostoevsky saw the painting in 1867, he stood before it for a full 20 minutes without moving. According to his wife ‘on his agitated face there was a terrified expression’, and in the end she had to drag him away, fearing the onset of an epileptic attack. Dostoevsky reused the episode when he wrote The Idiot — one of the characters, Prince Myshkin, remarking: ‘That picture! Why, some people might lose their faith by looking at that picture.’

But Dostoevsky was right, the ‘Dead Christ’, although it seems atheistic, is indeed a picture about faith.... The ‘Dead Christ’ is one man’s proof that art is capable not only of stimulating reflection but indeed can offer an encounter with the divine: it is as if he were saying, ‘This is what painting can do.’

Holbein understood and demonstrated a very simple truth: for a man so utterly dead to come back to life really will require nothing less than a miracle. ~~ Michael Prodger, "The Word Made Flesh"; Spectator, 4-19-03

That might be one of the most awful paintings I have ever seen. But it was awful in a good way; it made me consider what it meant for Deity to die.

Yes.

(Although I thought that Christ didn't see corruption. The spices would have kept his body okay for three days).

Well, unless we presume that His body entered some kind of inter-dimensional stasis whilst in the Tomb, I think we have to suppose that Natural Law did apply and there was some cellular degeneration during the three days prior to Resurrection, but I'm sure that the Body of Christ didn't "see corruption" in the sense of actual flesh-rot or anything like that. Beyond that, though, I'm not too worried about just how precisely we have to take the Psalm 16:9-10 -- "Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption"; I don't have any expertise as to what extent Hebrew burial spices actually retarded cellular degeneration -- but considering that within three days His Glorified Body could be touched, felt, could consume food and yet walk through walls if He felt so inclined, the matter doesn't bother me overmuch anyway.

best, OP

I once saw a similar image in Mexico, of a saintly woman offering her generous breast to a dying old man.

Why, that's the Carita Romana episode also in Caravaggio:

The Seven Acts of Mercy

Caravaggio

1607
Oil on canvas, 390 x 260 cm
Church of Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples

The seven acts of mercy represented on the painting are the following. On the right appear the (1) burial of the dead and the episode of the so-called Carita Romana (Cimon's daughter giving her father suck in prison), which contains at once the two charitable acts of (2) visiting prisoners and (3) feeding the hungry. (4) Dressing the naked appears in the foreground, symbolized by St. Martin and the beggar. Next to this scene, the host and St. James of Compostela allude to the (5) offering of hospitality to pilgrims. (6) Relieving the thirsty is represented by Samson drinking from the ox jaw. The youth on the ground behind the beggar of St. Martin may also represent the merciful gesture of (7) caring for the sick.

Source

Go and vex no more.

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