Books American Catholics through new pair of glasses
NEW CATHOLICS FOR A
NEW CENTURY By Arthur Jones Thomas More, 192 pages,
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By PATRICIA RICE
Every once in awhile a book comes along that helps even the
experts look at their favorite topics slightly differently. Its like
getting a new pair of glasses. Nothing is dramatically new, but everything is
sharpened and focused.
Now comes Arthur Jones New Catholics for a New
Century. He offers a new pair of glasses to Catholics who prepared for
their first Communion before the Second Vatican Council and took the
councils changes to heart.
Jones new glasses fast-forward his readers to the Catholic
church in America in 2040. By then, the people who championed and lived through
the changes of Vatican II will be mostly gone. Jones says it is likely there
may be a more severe shortage of priests if they are still all male. Some of
todays seminarians will be cardinals. It will be an epoch of Catholic
people of color, he says. The church inculturates music, dance and ideas from
around the world.
Now is the time the church needs to inculturate American ideas of
democracy and willingness to welcome and serve. Hes hopeful that
Americans can use those qualities to make the church strong.
Jones, editor-at-large of the National Catholic Reporter,
has regrets about the council. He wishes that there had been time taken for a
fifth session of the council to look at the changes that were supposed to give
birth to spiritual renewal. An extra session might have given bishops and
advisors time to reflect and clean up some of the little messes. As it stands,
all Catholics have lost some things, he says.
For a time, parishes offered poor music. A generation of children
got fuzzy ideas about their faith in parish classes.
Now Jones is concerned that some younger bishops can only see the
messy stuff and want to stop the reform of the council, its spiritual renewal
and empowerment of the laity. These conservative younger bishops are filling
their staffs with priests who agree with them. That is happening even though
American Catholics are still the best educated, best organized, best funded
members of the global Catholic family, he says.
He champions the American in American Catholics. He
joyfully tells story after story that supports his idea that Rome will
have to have more faith in the faithful.
He wants the bishops to listen better, too. He reports on the late
Cardinal Basil Hume who told American Catholic bishops in a retreat that they
needed to stop looking over [their] shoulders, at Rome.
Democratization, Americans perpetual state of revolt against
authority, has not subverted the church but can help it, Jones says. In this
country where thousands of Catholic students take advanced degrees in theology,
theological discourse cannot be stifled. Its time to find new ways to let
the discussion serve rather than trying to make it conform. That just might be
letting the Holy Spirit in.
Jones, who has stayed awake at more November meetings of the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops than most bishops, takes the reader
inside those meetings. Those who look hardest at the Roman reactions are often
careerists. Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, former head of the Congregation of
Bishops, slammed bishops who are always pressuring for higher office and bigger
cities. Jones abhors the careerist mentality, too. He believes that a diocese,
like a parish, suffers from frequent transfers and short-term appointments. He
fears that ambitious bishops will pursue policies not with an eye to the needs
of the people in the diocese but with a view to improving his episcopal profile
in Rome.
The real problem for a diocese, Jones finds, is the ambitious
bishop who gets passed over. A bitter bishop is worse than no leader, Jones
says. He is shocked that some bishops refuse to sit next to others because of
disagreements. Sometimes bishops have rebuked each other in public, and that
makes them look petty and caviling.
Christian charity must survive the thorniest of debates. He throws
a bouquet to Pope John Paul II. In 1979, when Sister of Mercy Theresa Kane was
president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, she welcomed the
pope to San Francisco by asking him to open all the churchs ministries to
women. Of course, the pope dismissed the suggestion, later clamping down on
public discussion of ordination of Catholic women.
However, in 1999 the pope asked another American Sister of Mercy,
Sharon Euart, to give my regards to Sister Kane.
Bishops and pastors may get thorny, but Jones puts his faith in
faithful American Catholics. He finds them hopeful and involved. Many
understand that they must have a strong role to play telling other Americans
about responsibility to the common good both locally and in the ravaged Third
World.
Patricia Rice is the religion editor of the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch.
National Catholic Reporter, June 30,
2000
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