Deacons Today: Dalmatics and Beyond

Sorry for the silence

2012-02-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

Just a brief note: I am sorry that I have been so remiss in posting anything here lately! Not only have things been particularly busy in my ministerial and professional responsibilities, but we have been dealing with some family matters that have demanded attention.

So, I ask for your prayers and understanding.

I hope to be blogging more regularly shortly!

Marking a Wonderful Milestone

2012-01-25T20:14:00.000-08:00

While personal and professional obligations have kept me from blogging over the last couple of weeks, I hope to get back on track soon. I could not, however, let the day pass without honoring a most significant date in Church history.

On this date, 25 January 1959, 53 years ago, Blessed Pope John XXIII announced his intention to convoke the Ecumenical (General) Council which would come to be known as the Second Vatican Council. You can read an excellent take on this event HERE. What is interesting, and quite disturbing, however, are some of the negative responses about the Council found in the comboxes following the article! As someone who lived through and studied the Council ever since, I find the misconceptions and downright disinformation about the Council that exists "out there" to be most appalling.

Most scholars of the 21 ecumenical councils recognized by the Catholic Church agree that it takes many decades, perhaps 100 years or so, for a Council to be "received" substantively. If that's accurate, we're only about half-way there!

Keep the Council alive!

"But I can't see Jesus": A Reflection on the Epiphany

2012-01-08T17:13:00.000-08:00

For nearly the last time this Christmas season: Merry Christmas!

Today, of course, is the great celebration of the Epiphany. The Greek word means "manifestation" or "showing"; in the Eastern part of the Church, the feast is called the Theophany,which means "manifestation of God." Unfortunately, we often find our communities focusing their attention on "the Three Kings" and miss the larger vision behind it. Certainly, the story of the magi coming to give homage to the Christ is the heart of the Gospel, but the fact behind the magi is that God has manifested Himself to the entire world in the child Christ. This was brought home to me this morning at the first Mass of the day by one of the most astute of our parishioners: a little girl sitting with her family.

This morning, our nativity scene near the front of the church was completed with the addition of the figures of the three kings. After the Opening Collect, as we were all sitting down for the first reading, this brilliant child turned to her mother and said, in a clear voice, "But I can't see Jesus!" Exactly! The Epiphany is about seeing God in Jesus.

Two things were brought home to me through our young parishioner.

First, what do I/we have to do to help her see God in Jesus? What would we do, in practical terms? We could, for example, lift her up so she can "see" better. What can I do to "see" the Christ better? Just as I might have to "stretch" to "see better", how must I stretch myself spiritually to see the Christ? How can I help others to stretch themselves? At the same time, what is obstructing the view? How might I be able to remove those obstructions? It's all about seeing God in Jesus.

Second, God wants to be a part of lives. God comes to us and is visible to us. The truly remarkable thing is that the all-powerful, all-loving God could come to us in any number of ways. God chose to come to us in the most vulnerable way imaginable: as a human child. Just we find ourselves drawn to this child, we should be finding ourselves drawn to God-With-Us ("Emmanuel" = "God with us").

Finally, we can see this spelled out in the Profession of Faith, the Creed. Nearly everyone realizes that the English word "creed" comes from the Latin word "credo": "I believe." However, not as many people know that the word credo itself comes from two other Latin words: cor (heart) and do (I give). Literally, when we pray the Creed at Mass, we are saying, "I give my heart to Almighty God. . . , I give my heart to Jesus Christ. . . , I give my heart to the Holy Spirit. . . ." Think of when we might use that expression in our daily lives: it's focus is on the relationship involved. The Creed, therefore, is not some list of theological propositions that we treat as some kind of "Christian check list". It is, rather, a cry from the heart about the relationship we put at the heart of who we are: our relationship with God.

"I can't see Jesus": Let's do all we can to remove the obstacles to our relationship with God, to stretch ourselves, and to help others do the same!

"Only a deacon": A New Year's Reflection on the Role of the Deacon

2012-01-02T12:16:00.000-08:00

In a couple of months I will celebrate 22 years of service as a deacon. The photo at left was taken during the Mass of ordination, with Cardinal James Hickey of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC as principal celebrant, Fr. Jack Smith who was my pastor at the time and Fr. Tom Henseler, a friend of mine for many years, as concelebrants (Fr. Tom Kalita was also a concelebrant, but he's not visible in the photo). Even though this photo is from the Concluding Doxology of that Mass, with me elevating the chalice next to Cardinal Hickey, it brings back so many wonderful memories of that day and of the entire ordination ceremony.

One of the parts of that ceremony includes the bishop asking a series of questions of the candidate, so that he is assured that the candidate is free, ready and willing to assume the responsibilities of the order to which he is to be ordained. In conjunction with that, I've been thinking about the number of times over those years that I've heard the expression "only a deacon."

-- "Since you're only a deacon, what can't you do that Father does?"
-- "Oh, he can't do that -- he's only a deacon."
-- [sometimes even deacons get it wrong]: "Oh, I'm not a leader; I'm only a deacon"!

Some years ago a friend pointed me to a wonderful homily preached at the ordination of deacons. This ordination was within the Episcopalian Church, and the bishop-homilist was Bishop John W. Howe of Central Florida. Just as within the Catholic Church, the bishop was about to ask his ordinands a series of questions. Here's what the bishop had to say:

“In a few minutes I’m going to ask the ordinands thisquestion: “Do you believe you are truly called by God and his Church to thelife and work of a deacon?”

This isn't one of the questions we get asked in the Catholic Church, but it's a good one! The bishop went on in his homily to describe the work of those first two men traditionally associated with being deacons: St. Stephen (the protomartyr) and St. Philip, who's stories are found in Acts 6-8. St. Stephen, of course, is described as a powerful preacher and witness of Jesus Christ, who ultimately is martyred for his strong preaching. St. Philip is described as being filled with the Holy Spirit (like Stephen) and being led by the Spirit to various place to catechize. In particular we find Philip with the Ethiopian eunuch, explaining the scriptures to him and, at the official's request, baptizing him before being led by the Spirit someplace else. The bishop continues:

So: in the stories of these two men, Stephen and Philip, Isuggest we have the beginning, at least, of the job description of adeacon. A deacon is to be: a person ofgood reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom, full of grace andpower, with a servant’s heart, available to God for menial tasks, or to confrontthe authorities, speaking truth to power. A deacon is to be a channel for signs, wonders, healings and evenexorcisms; an evangelist, a student of scripture, obedient to the promptings ofthe Spirit, willing to minister to the one or the many; blind to color, race,or station, courageous in witness, and faithful unto death.

If your answer to my question is “Yes,” I don’t ever want tohear any of you say 'I’m only a deacon.'

So, having just celebrated the feast of St. Stephen last week, all of us -- and in particular, deacons -- can take a good lesson from the bishop's homily. And don't let me ever hear any of you say, "I'm only a deacon"!

Merry Christmas!

"A Deacon! A Miserable Deacon!": St. Thomas Becket

2011-12-29T17:06:00.000-08:00

Today we remember the famous saint Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, murdered in his own cathedral by knights under the influence of the king and Becket's former friend, Henry II. What many people forget about St. Thomas is that he was a deacon; in fact, he was once the archdeacon of Canterbury under Archbishop Theobald. He left that office (of archdeacon) when asked by his friend Henry to take over as Chancellor of England.

Back in college seminary, I took the role of Becket in a production of Jean Anouilh's play of the same name. While many critics have rightly criticized Anouilh's historical accuracy, no one can doubt that he captures the personalities involved beautifully, and many actors have enjoyed playing these roles, including Richard Burton (Becket) and Peter O'Toole (Henry) in the movie version of of the play.

One bit of history that Anouilh appears to have appreciated accurately is the fact of Becket's diaconate! In one of the early scenes of the play (watered down in the movie), the king has just presented his new Chancellor to the Archbishop and other Church leaders. While the Archbishop is gracious enough, it is clear that the other bishops in attendance are not pleased, especially when they realize that young deacon Thomas is "switching sides":

Becket: My Lord and King has given me his Seal with the Three Lions to guard. My mother is England now.

Folliot (the bishop of London): A deacon! A miserable deacon nourished in our bosom! Traitor! Little viper! Libertine! Sycophant! Saxon!

I suppose there have been other pastors who have felt the same way about their deacons! One lesson that we can all learn from Becket, of course, is his courage in speaking truth to power, whether that power is found in the structures of the church or in secular authority. May God continue to grant us all the same courage in our own lives and ministry!

Merry Christmas, Gentle Readers!

2011-12-24T21:47:00.000-08:00

No reflection today: just a heartfelt wish from my family to yours,

that you have the most blessed Christmas ever!

"Your redemption is near at hand": Remembering "Amahl and the Night Visitors"

2011-12-23T11:07:00.000-08:00

The responsorial psalm for today reminds us, "Lift up your heads and see: your redemption is near at hand." In a wonderful reflection over on PrayTell, Teresa Berger refers to December 23 as a liturgical "hinge day" as we transition from Advent preparations into Christmas realities. On television, Christmas is being described in very generic, nondescript and unoffensive terms as a "time of peace, family, and gift-giving." Nice enough, to be sure, but we could just as easily be speaking of any other solstice celebration. To borrow from our Jewish heritage at Passover, "What makes tonight different from all other nights?" ought to be our question as we celebrate the entrance of the Christ into human history. What difference should Christmas make?

I have shared before about the eight years I spent in Catholic seminary preparing for possible ordination to the priesthood. These were the eight years of high school and college and, in those days, there were actually hundreds of Catholic high school seminaries around the country. I graduated from the Salvatorian Seminary in St. Nazianz, Wisconsin in 1967. During our junior year, the rector -- who was also our music teacher and director of the choir -- decided to stage Gian-Carlo Menotti's wonderful opera, "Amahl and the Night Visitors." We were not a large school, and since we were a seminary, there were no women or girls around to play Amahl's mother and the "shepherdesses" called for in the libretto! So, Father Rector contacted a nearby convent/novitiate and we arranged to do a joint production. One of our freshmen, Mike Hoffman (now Rev. Michael Hoffman, SDS), was a professionally trained singer who sang the lead role better than I have ever heard it done before or since. I was the accompanist for the production, playing the 136-page score so often over the weeks of rehearsal and then production that I could "name that tune" in any two notes!

For those of you who do not know the story, it's quite simple. Amahl is a crippled boy living with his widowed mother. They are living in extreme poverty and the mother is resigned that they will soon have to become beggars in order to survive. In the middle of the night, there is a knock on the door of their hut. To their amazement, their visitors are the Three Kings on their way to find the Christ child, and the kings are seeking a place to rest on their journey. After some wonderful music describing the child they are seeking (here's an audio clip from the original 1951 broadcast), and a warm welcome from the shepherds and shepherdesses living in the region, the kings and Amahl and his mother retire for the night. In the darkness, Amahl's mother sings a beautiful aria about her own son, and then realizes what she could do for her son with just a little of gold that the kings are taking to the unknown Christ child. (Here's the aria from the original 1951 broadcast with the remarkable Rosemary Kuhlmann.) As she attempts to steal some of the gold, she is caught by the kings' page. The kings tell her to keep the gold, that "the child we seek doesn't need our gold". The mother returns the gold, however, and expresses her wish that she had something of value that she, too, could send to the child. Amahl steps forward, saying that all he has to give is his crutch but that he would send that to the child, since, "who knows, he may need one too"! In that act of generosity, the miracle takes place and Amahl the cripple is healed. In thanksgiving, the mother permits Amahl to go with the kings to greet the Christ child in person.

Here's where I'm going with this. Menotti wrote "Amahl" on a commission from NBC in 1951. The network was seeking original programming, and in particular, they wanted a serious work to be broadcast as part of their Christmas schedule. "Amahl" was broadcast live on Christmas Eve, 1951, and immediately became a Christmas staple for many years. I read recently that every year it is now produced more than 500 times across the country. I find this history stunning on many levels. First, there was no apology by the commercial network (NBC) for having a specifically religiously-themed production aired; not only that, network executives intentionally and deliberately commissioned the work! Second, this was a piece of classical music exquisitely performed live. There was no attempt at a "dumbing down" of the material, and the immediate popularity of the music attests to its popular reception. There were no cheap jokes, no scatological attempts at humor, no trivializing of the material.

I too fell in love with the music and the story. Here is a modern re-telling of the impact the coming of Christ can have on very real people facing very real challenges in their very real lives. This is not some kind of Christmas-lite, "feel-good", pseudo-religious piece of programming. A single mother raising a handicapped child living in extreme poverty and about to go on the streets encounters a chance to steal some gold to turn their lives around. Instead, through the love and the dreams of the kings and her own innate generosity and that of her son, a miracle takes place. Their lives are changed, not because they now will have money to do whatever they want, but because the unseen Christ has come freely to them and affected the choices that they make.

Perhaps you have never heard of this opera these days. Or, conversely, perhaps you've heard of it too much and consider merely a piece of Christmas fluff. In any case, I offer it to you for your reconsideration. Let yourself be swept away by some of the must beautiful music written (for example, the Mother's aria, or the quartet she sings with the kings as they ask "Have you seen a child?" and she describes Amahl to them). We should then ask ourselves: How is the coming of Christ into my life being felt in very real, concrete ways in the lives of the people around me?

What miracles is the unseen Christ willing to work through us? "Lift up your heads and see: your redemption is near at hand."

An Old Man's Advent Dream for Christmas

2011-12-16T12:22:00.000-08:00

Advent.

A time of waiting for "the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ" is the way the new translation of the Roman Missal puts it. Sounds great, but what does this really mean? "Blessed hope" for what, exactly? And what will the coming of Christ mean THIS year? If these words are to have any meaning beyond being part of a new liturgical ritual, it seems to me we have to make them truly incarnate, to "flesh them out" a bit.

Advent.

I've been doing a lot of praying and reflecting about life this Advent, trying to figure some things out. The older I get the more comfort I find in the words of St. Peter on Pentecost. The people of Jerusalem, hearing the apostles speaking in tongues under the influence of the Holy Spirit, think that they are instead under the influence of new wine. "But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: 'Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

"In the last days it will be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams."

So, this reflection is nothing more than an old man dreaming a dream.

When I was a young man, I was strongly influenced -- as I've written about before -- by the visions and dreams of the bishops of the Second Vatican Council. Some of those men were young and were seeing visions; others were old and dreaming dreams. Now I'm an old man, and I've seen some of those early visions become reality, but so much more still remains a dream.

What do I see in my dream?

It begins with a nightmare. There are people living on the streets, under overpasses, in dark alleys. They are dirty, smelly, with runny noses and open sores. Many of them are drunk on booze or drugs, and this is a violent nightmare, with people attacking each other for money or food, people selling themselves to earn money. They are in a downward spiral, without hope, joy or reason for either.

The nightmare continues. There are people who have been ostracized, cut off from family and friends because of things they've done in the past, or because of relationships they're in, or because they're "different" or hard to handle in "acceptable" circles of society. There are young people who feel isolated and abandoned because they have realized that they are homosexual and they are pushed into suicide out of overwhelming depression and a sense of permanent and total exclusion.

The nightmare grows. Old people, people who were once vital and ran through life with creativity, passion and generosity, now shunted aside because they are no longer able to contribute anything to anyone. They are dried up, used up, and kicked to the curb of life. Sick and dying people, whose fear of death is often faced with courage and strength, are also forgotten or relegated to the sidelines as if association with them might lead a healthy person to fear their own vulnerability.

The nightmare includes the treatment of the stranger, or people who speak different languages or who look at life and the world through eyes different from others. The nightmare recalls an incident at a "Catholic" parish in the Midwest in which a bilingual program on pastoral planning was being held. As signs in English and Spanish were being placed around the room, several Catholic gentlemen came forward and told the presenter to "put the American signs on this side of the room." When the presenter said, "You mean, you want the English signs on this side of the room?" the men -- those good "Catholic" men -- repeated, "You heard what we said, you put the AMERICAN signs on this side of the room."

The nightmare? So many people, all cut off, isolated and alone. Where can they find hope, joy and a reason for living?

The dream? The catholic -- truly universal -- people of God! Every person who is cut off from everything and everyone else, is WELCOMED by the catholic people of God. In a very real sense, the catholic people of God is the home for the homeless, the family for those who have been disowned and rejected by others, are the ones for whom this church is designed. In the ancient catholic people of God, they were often the ones cut off and persecuted by society and those in charge, often to their deaths. But the ancient catholic people of God rejoiced that they were a people called by God (an "ekklesia theou"), a people without church buildings or temples. What united them and gave them hope and joy was their common faith that God had called them to be a people for each other, PRECISELY because they were cut off from everyone else.

The dream? At Midnight Mass this year, that the doors will open and everyone -- absolutely everyone -- will walk in to applause, laughter and joy-filled welcome. Those dirty, smelly children of God who are living under the overpass, those depressed and lonely gay teenagers who are walking on the brink of despair, those people who look and sound different from others, and even those who find themselves here without legal status -- all of them will pour through those doors and into the welcoming arms of this catholic people of God and find a true home and the love that has so often been denied them by society. "If society has rejected you, we welcome you" is the mission statement of the catholic people of God. And to the bishop who once remarked that the song "All are Welcome" was incorrect, and that all people are NOT welcome at Catholic Mass, I say, "Sorry, bishop, but you are wrong. In the Catholic Church, in the authentic catholic people of God, all are indeed welcome in this place."

I know. Right now we have many Catholics who don't even like to reach out and take someone else's hand at the greeting of peace before communion. Those folks are really not going to like my dream, since not only do I hope that they will shake someone else's hand, but actually, beginning at Midnight Mass this Christmas, I'm hoping that they will open their arms and embrace tightly that dirty, smelly homeless man who's been living in a cardboard box down the street from the church. In fact, it is precisely to those who have been excluded by everyone else that Christ is coming into the world.

My dream is really quite simple. Christ willingly emptied himself completely into human nature. We either believe that or we don't. Human nature is the common denominator here. If Christ is to be found there, then we are to be found there. The "Church" isn't a place for those who have successfully navigated life. It's a haven for all those who admit their sinfulness, their brokenness, their need for others and for God.

And then I wake up.

What do I have to do to make the dream a reality?

"Who are you? What have you got to say for yourself?"

2011-12-11T16:22:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make. Oh, not a sacramental confession as in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but a confession nonetheless. My specializations in Theology deal with ecclesiology, the theological study of the nature of Church, but my motivations for going into this field were not based on some grand academic quest. Rather, I found at a very early age (13 to be exact), that ecclesiology was the most fascinating part of theology, since that was what the Second Vatican Council was all about. Since the Council was just going into its second session (1963) as I was entering high school seminary, this was an understandable focus for a young seminarian.

As the Council progressed, then ended, and the Church moved into the implementation phase following the Council, so much about how we were Church evolved. No longer was ministry something that only priests and sisters did, for example. We had recovered a sense of baptism as the primal sacrament of ministry, and the Council has described the Church as a pilgrim in the world and servant to the world. All members of the Church, we read in the Council's documents, were called to be evangelists, and the Church herself was to be "a leaven and a kind of soul" within the world. However, all of this came at a cost.

Vatican II was convened because many bishops, including Pope John XXIII, believed that the Church was out of touch with the demands of the modern world. Churchmen of the first half of the 20th Century were deeply concerned over the Church's failure to be a more effective witness of Christ during that time, and worried that the Church had been ineffectual at confronting the issues that led to two world wars and the rise of three totalitarian regimes. The Council was an attempt to give a renewed missionary drive to the Church, to empower all of the members of the Church to be "co-responsible" as evangelists to the world, with all believers being called to perfect holiness, despite our state in life. The Council was, as Pope Paul VI put it, "the great Catechism of our time." My generation of seminarians found ourselves inspired to be at the forefront of these renewed efforts in the Church and the world, and enthusiastically responded to the Council's call.

Nonetheless, following the Council, we watched as public institutions, including institutional Churches, continued to lose credibility in the contemporary world. Despite our best efforts in the 1960's and 1970's to find creative ways to be a prophetic witness of Christ to the world, efforts which are now routinely mocked by certain reactionary elements even within our own Church, people continued to find, as they had even before the Council, that certain aspects of the Church -- usually described as the "institutional" dimension of the Church -- to be irrelevant at best and harmful at worst. Increasingly people began to say that they were spiritual, and maybe even go so far as to say that they were spiritual Catholics, but not in the sense of being churchgoing religionists. As a friend once said to me, "The Catholic Church is great once the institution gets out of the way." Perhaps the most troubling thing to watch, for me personally, was how members of my own family were treated by certain priests and other "good church-going Catholics," who very successfully drove these family members from the Church through their stupidity, narrowness and arrogance. I watched as repeatedly, my loved ones would try and try again to reconnect, only to encounter the same kind of things all over again until they felt they had no choice but to leave.

And here's the real point of all this: my family's situation is not an isolated case. Recently, on an international list-server for deacons, a brother deacon asked the group how many family members in our own extended families still "practiced" Catholicism. I won't depress you with the final answers.

Author Eric Weiner, writing an op-ed piece in the New York Times recently, asks "Americans: Undecided about God?" Read the whole article here. It's a most thought-provoking piece, and many folks have been blogging about it. At first I was going to pass this one by, but as I was preparing homilies for this Third Sunday of Advent, I came back to Weiner's piece. The questions asked of John the Baptizer remain the questions asked of us today: "Who are you? What have you got to say about yourself?

Weiner concludes his column with his own take on an answer:

What is the solution? The answer, I think, lies in the sort of entrepreneurial spirit that has long defined America, including religious America.

We need a Steve Jobs of religion. Someone (or ones) who can invent not a new religion but, rather, a new way of being religious. Like Mr. Jobs’s creations, this new way would be straightforward and unencumbered and absolutely intuitive. Most important, it would be highly interactive. I imagine a religious space that celebrates doubt, encourages experimentation and allows one to utter the word God without embarrassment. A religious operating system for the Nones among us. And for all of us.

While I'll leave the comparison to Steve Jobs alone, I do rather like his observation that what he's looking for is "not a new religion but a new way of being religious." That, in my opinion, was PRECISELY was the Second Vatican Council was calling us to do. Sure, those bishops used the Latin term novus mentis habitus (a "new way of thinking"), but there it is, in contemporary terms. How can we, followers of Christ, find a new way of being religious, a new way of being Catholic, in the contemporary world? A new way of being Catholic that proclaims Christ in ways that are -- like Christ Himself -- always inviting and open to all. We shouldn't be excluding ANYONE from our assembly, precisely because we proclaim ourselves to be a people called by God ("ekklesia"), not by "the Church". And this people called by God has always, throughout the Tradition, called itself to be catholikos -- catholic -- open to all and universal. If we were truly finding a new way of thinking, a new way of being religious, people who now feel excluded from our communion would instead be welcomed! No matter how else society might be treating them, they would find a warm, welcoming home with us! "These Christians! See how they love one another!"

"Who are you? What have you got to say for yourself?"

Indeed.

"When I grow up I want to be a Deacon!" Thanks, Elizabeth!

2011-12-03T12:52:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, a prolific author named Elizabeth Ficocelli contacted me about a manuscript she had written for children on the diaconate. She asked if I would take a look at the manuscript, and it was joy to do so! That book, which Deacon Greg Kandra has already announced, has now been published and is available. Elizabeth was recently interviewed about her work, and you may read more about that here and here. It's called Where Do Deacons Come From? and it's published by Bezalel Books.

In the interview, she remarks that "Deacon Greg Kandra recently blogged that his friend, Deacon William Ditewig, had made the following statement: 'The diaconate will only become fully accepted as a vocation when young people say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a deacon.’ Well, Deacon Ditewig, I hope my book Where Do Deacons Come From? will help make that a reality." Thanks, Elizabeth, I agree with you!

The reason I believe this to be so important is this: For nearly a millennium, when someone "imagined" ordained ministry, the "image" that came to mind was "priest". In Scholastic theology, even the bishop was not considered part of the sacrament of Holy Order: he was thought to be sacramentally simply a priest who had been given additional jurisdiction. This had NOT been the case in the ancient church, and since 1967 it is not the case any more. It's just that while church law and official practice has shifted, how people "image" ordained ministry has not. At least not completely. Such a cultural shift is going to take time.

We can see this shift taking place in different ways around the world. In those areas where the diaconate has been around since the 1970s, we've had some four decades to become part of fabric of contemporary church life. In those areas where the diaconate is still relatively new, of course, the process has barely begun. What I find so fascinating and significant about Ms. Ficocelli's contribution on the diaconate is that she has captured the presence of deacons as ministers with whom the children are familiar and would like to know more about.

So, many, many thanks, Elizabeth! God bless you!

Watching a Classmate Become a Bishop

2011-12-01T21:47:00.000-08:00

I haven't seen Dave Kagan since 1967, when we graduated from Salvatorian Seminary in St. Nazianz, Wisconsin, and went our separate ways into different college-level seminaries. Dave was a seminarian for the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois, and I was a seminarian for the Diocese of Peoria. For those of you not in the know about such things, Rockford and Peoria have always competed for the title of the second largest city of Illinois. Dave and I were members of a 27-student senior class, so we all knew each other quite well by the time we graduated. Dave and the rest of the Rockford men went to Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa and the Peoria men were sent to Saint Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa.

Most Rev. David D. Kagan

I left the seminary after eight years, following graduation from St. Ambrose in 1971, and a few months later, found myself in the Navy. Dave continued in the seminary, and was ordained a priest for the Rockford Diocese in 1975. He became a canon lawyer and eventually served in a variety of pastoral and administrative posts until yesterday. Yesterday, Monsignor David Kagan, Vicar General of Rockford, became Bishop David Kagan and was installed as the seventh bishop of Bismarck, North Dakota. Here's where you can find the video of the whole event, complete with Native American drums, the new papal nuncio to the United States, and a Cathedral full of the People of God.

It was quite a moment, watching a man whom I had known as a fellow teenager, now in the process of becoming a bishop and taking on the pastoral responsibilities of a diocesan church. What came through loud and clear is just how important it is for all of us to pray for all of our diocesan churches and their bishops. Each of those bishops has friends who "knew them when" and I hope that each of those bishops will continue to permit themselves to stay connected to those people who knew them "before the purple." During my days at the USCCB, more than a few bishops shared that it's often very, very difficult for a bishop to receive information he needs to have, while there are many, many people who are willing to tell him what they think he wants to hear. Then again, there are some bishops (fortunately, very, very few) who think that they already know everything they need to know! Still it seems important to me for bishops to retain significant connections with family and friends who will still love them for who they are as human beings (and not simply because of the office they now hold) and who will continue to be honest with them.

So, my old friend, ad multos annos on your ordination and installation as bishop! May God continue to bless you abundantly in your family, friends and new collaborators in the vineyard. I'm sure I speak for all of the surviving members of the Salvatorian Seminary Class of 1967 when I say that we're all proud of you and will pray ardently for you and the Church of Bismarck.

Your old classmate,
Deacon Bill

Being Catholic: What Difference Does It Make, Really?

2011-11-29T21:52:00.000-08:00

My friend and brother deacon, Greg Kandra, and others have been opining about Mike Hayes' recent blog post which asks whether we have become the Pharisees of our day. Here's the original blog post over at Googling God, and here's Deacon Greg's post on the matter, along with considerable commentary. Not only do I think Mike's post is right on target, I think it has particular relevance for those of us who serve as the Church's deacons. Let me offer two observations: one based on an historical look at the diaconate in the ancient and early medieval church, and another based on more recent history and theology related to the diaconate.

First we should look at the biblical and patristic roots of the Order of Deacons in the church. Consider that whenever we read of deacons in scripture, they are always described in relationship to the bishop-overseer of the community, and the deacons are clearly responsible for much of the administration and outreach of the community. The various patristic sources on the diaconate describe deacons as legates, ambassadors to other communities, catechists and religious educators. Yes, of course, they have a liturgical role, and it's an important one! However, their "day job" is all about helping people make connections: connecting their bishop with other communities when they served as his legates, connecting people with needs with the resources to meet those needs, and even helping their bishops in administering the goods and other "temporalities" of the church. Deacons are, as I have said often, ministers of "connect-the-dots."

As the diaconate gradually became transitional to the presbyterate, some of this connective tissue was lost, and I don't believe it's coincidental that we see the emergence of a variety of religious orders (of both women and men) who take as their primary charism the service of others. There is a direct, tangible connection between the decline of the diaconate as a permanent order of ministry and the rise of religious congregations devoted to the Church's diakonia.

Second, as I've written extensively here and elsewhere, the reasons for renewing a permanent diaconate in the 19th and 20th Centuries were also driven by a need to increase the outreach of the Christian family to those in need (charity) and also to work for institutional, structural, and systemic change so that the conditions which led to those needs could be eliminated (justice). In short, the Church increasingly recovered her identity as a servant-Church. This was the principle theme of Pope Paul VI as he closed the Second Vatican Council in 1965: he announced that the central theme of the entire Council had been to identify the Church as servant to the world. The diaconate was restored, largely and most influentially, because of the horrors of the Dachau Concentration Camp and the experiences of the large numbers of German and Polish priests incarcerated there. It would due to the efforts of several of those priest-survivors who would push for the renewal of a contemporary permanent diaconate precisely to help the Church recover her servant-identity, and this was what the world's bishops would also recover at the Council. Pope Paul VI didn't end his reflection with that final speech, either. In the years following the Council, as he took the necessary steps to renew the diaconate, he frequently observed that the very reason for the deacon's existence is to "sacramentalize the Church's own service." He also reminded these new deacons that we are to be the "animators" of the Church's own service, by stirring up the conscience of the Christian community.

Here's where I think Mike's blog post really hits home. He asks us to inquire of ourselves and our parishioners what they believe the Church's priorities are. What has the bishop stated as his own pastoral priorities? Here in the diocese in which I'm serving, for example, our bishop has made it clear that one of his chief pastoral priorities -- and something that he wants all of us to tackle in some way -- is that countering gang violence. Bishops in the Midwest, where family farms are giving way to huge corporate conglomerates, often take on the plight of the family farmers and their families. Unfortunately, Mike found that very often, many Catholics didn't even know who there bishop was, much less what his pastoral concerns were.

Many of us, myself included, find ourselves playing "insider baseball". We often get so wrapped up in internal parochial matters (which are sometimes quite important, don't get me wrong!), that we forget that the very mission of the Church herself -- as Paul VI and John Paul II said so frequently -- is evangelization itself. As Cardinal Mahoney once wrote, "It's not that the Church has mission, but that the mission has a Church" and that mission, is evangelization.

So, my friends, I think this is a good opportunity for us to reflect on all of this. As a community of faith, what is your parish doing? Get specific! What are the top three priorities of your bishop? Of your pastor? Of your parish pastoral council? Of your finance council? Follow the money, follow the time, follow the energy expended. What do you find?

Let me end with a true story. I was serving on a diocesan staff in the Midwest. The bishop asked me to come to a meeting with some parish leaders from a small rural parish who were concerned about their ability to survive as a parish. They came to the bishop and enthusiastically told him that they had "found the solution to the priest shortage." Their answer was to sponsor a priest from Nigeria to come to the diocese, attend a local University, and also serve in their parish, which was nearby. And the good news, they said, was that they only needed Father to say a Mass on Sunday; the rest of the week, he would be available to do any other jobs the bishop had for him. When the bishop asked who was going to handle the rest of the parish's functions, if they didn't see Father doing that, they said that there WERE no other parish responsibilities. The parish existed for one reason: to have Sunday Mass. Period. Nothing else. It was a stunningly depressing moment, to see these wonderful people who had no idea of what being a Catholic parish ought to mean within the larger human community.

What's going on where you live?

Time for a little levity: Priests and Deacons working together

2011-11-29T13:21:00.000-08:00

There are so many important things going on in the world today, and we usually treat them with deadly seriousness. World hunger, global warming, illness and disease, human trafficking, gut-wrenching poverty, new translations of Latin Mass texts. . . . all of them deadly serious, to be sure. Sometimes, though, we just need to see the humor in things. So, thanks to one of my former students, now a very effective diocesan youth minister, we have this great story. Chelsea, thanks for this!

"Father, you want me to do what?"

Some cautions before I share it with you:

1) Please don't get distracted and hung up about what SHOULD or should NOT have been done in this case. As a deacon for nearly 22 years, and a very active and committed lay person for at least as many years before that, I can attest to seeing even crazier things happen, some which would put this little tale to shame! I'm sure many of you can do the same. But for now, just enjoy it!

2) What I particularly enjoy is how the priest and the deacon work together on this one! Would that we always had this kind of good collaboration!

Now -- enjoy! Here's the story. . . .

22 November: A Personal Reflection

2011-11-22T17:32:00.000-08:00

Today, 22 November 2011, we commemorate the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. I leave it to political pundits and scholars to hypothesize about the impact of JFK's loss on our nation. For now, though, I simply offer one man's personal reflection.

On 22 November 1963, I was a freshman in high school seminary: St. Henry Preparatory Seminary in Belleville, Illinois. I was studying to become a priest in the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI), hoping to become a missionary priest. Three years before, while still in grade school at St. Patrick's Parish in Peoria, Illinois, my class had staged our own version of the Nixon-Kennedy presidential debates, as we learned that, for the first time ever, the United States might actually elect a Catholic to be president! Not everyone was a Kennedy supporter: even at home, my Dad was firmly behind Richard Nixon. After the election, Kennedy had won and then came that marvelous inaugural address! "Ask not what your country can do for you. . . ." What an exciting time!

As JFK was preparing to run for president, of course, things were changing in the Church, too -- the other great influence on those of us in Catholic grade school. In 1958, the long-serving Pope Pius XII died, and Cardinal Angelo Roncalli was elected pope, taking the name of John XXIII. There was such excitement about the new pope, especially when, in January 1959, he announced that he was convening a general Council of the Church: Vatican II. To me, as a young Catholic boy who had already decided that he wanted to go to the seminary, it seemed like everything and anything was going to be possible in the church and the world.

1962: the year of the opening of the Council and the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and as a 12-year old, I watched with my Mom and Dad as President Kennedy showed those frightening photos of the missile launchers in Cuba and announced the naval blockade. If I could have enlisted in the Navy that night, I would have. The world was rapidly changing, and we wanted to be part of it.

In 1963, suddenly, things began to change in a negative direction, including the death of "good Pope John" and then the assassination of President Kennedy. Even though I was only 13, I made two scrapbooks that year, and I still have them: one on the President and one on the Pope. Suddenly, our generation had to start to grow up and face unpleasant realities. A new word, "Vietnam" replaced "French Indochina" in our news, and tensions increased in both our government and in our church. This would seem to build until the awful year of 1968: the year of the Tet Offensive, and the year of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. While those events would really steer our generation in many ways, the process really began with that shocking day, 48 years ago, in Dallas.

Ultimately, it's not helpful to wonder "what if" JFK hadn't been cut down. At the same time, it does seem opportune to see if we can recover some of the optimism and enthusiasm we all had for the Church and Country back then! Wouldn't it be wonderful too see and encourage the possibilities of the future, and not all of the things that keep us angry and divided?

RIP, President Kennedy. We're still here, still trying to live up to the potential of your inaugural challenge!

Coming soon to the Archdiocese of Vancouver: Deacons!

2011-11-14T05:13:00.000-08:00

Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, the Archbishop of Vancouver announced earlier this year that, following the recommendations of a recent Archdiocesan Synod and other consultative processes, he was restoring the diaconate as a permanent ministry within the Archdiocese. You can read more about his announcement, as well as a link to his pastoral letter on the diaconate, here.

This is always an exciting time for an diocesan church, and yet it is also a time of some confusion and uncertainty. Ultimately, it is a time of extraordinary faith and hope: the willingness to set out into waters that are as yet uncharted in that diocese, the recognition that a new group of ordained ministers who are not priests will be entering the official service of the People of God, and the courage to face whatever challenges develop as they happen with the conviction of the ongoing presence and action of the Holy Spirit to guide them through it.

As I type these words, I'm sitting at an airport gate in California awaiting my flights to Vancouver. I've been invited by Archbishop Miller to come to Vancouver and spend two days with the priests of the Archdiocese talking about the diaconate. I'll also be spending some time with the brand new group of aspirants to the diaconate, as they meet with the priests on Tuesday evening. I'm honored to be a part of the "launching" of this new adventure in the life of their local Church.

Please keep all of them (and your humble blogger!) in your prayers.

The Renewed Diaconate at Vatican II: Gift of the Holy Spirit

2011-11-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

It is fairly well known that it was the decision of the 2600 bishops assembled as the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) that it would be possible again to permit the exercise of the diaconate as a permanent order of ministry. They expressed this decision in paragraph #29 of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (known by its Latin incipit, Lumen gentium). Pope Paul VI would then implement this decision after the Council ended; he promulgated Sacrum Diaconatus Ordinem ("The Holy Order of the Diaconate") in 1967, changing existing law to permit bishops to ordain men as deacons without the intention of later ordaining them to the priesthood, as well as changing the law in order to permit married candidates to be ordained.

However, what is often not discussed are the actual conversations, speeches and writings related to the question that took place before and during the Council itself. I thought it might be interesting to review some of that background. It gives us a valuable insight as to why the bishops felt this was such an important decision to make.

I will present three Cardinals to you. At the time of the debate on the diaconate, Cardinal Leo-Josef Suenens of Belgium was 59, and a highly-respected leader during and following the Council. He was a close friend to both Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, and his intellectual brilliance and pastoral heart were deeply felt on a wide variety of issues at the Council: the renewal of religious life, the diaconate, the processes involved in the governance of dioceses, and even his support of the charismatic renewal movement. Cardinal Juan Landazuri Ricketts, only 50 years of age at the time of the debate, was a Franciscan friar serving as Archbishop of Peru, Cardinal Julius Doepfner of Munich-Freising was another young (50 at the time of the debate), well-respected and pastorally-experienced leader at the Council. These three young cardinals articulated extremely valuable points which apparently echoed the desires of the vast majority of the Council fathers with regard to the diaconate.

The principal conciliar debate on the subject of renewing the diaconate as a "proper and permanent" order in the Latin Church occurred during the 41st to the 49th general assemblies (4 - 16 October 1963). In reviewing the interventions, the climax of the debate occurred on 8 October, with the intervention of Cardinal Suenens.

Cardinal Doepfner

The first speaker in favor of renewal was Cardinal Doepfner. He strongly urged acceptance of the draft, and addressed some of the concerns already raised. He supported the inclusion of the diaconate in a dogmatic document because the issue of the orders of the hierarchy of the Church is a dogmatic issue, a part of the divine law and therefore an essential part of the nature of the Church. He pointed out that the diaconate, ever since Trent, had been seen as part of the sacramental priesthood. Looking to the present situation in many parts of the world, Doepfner pointed to the fact that there are many persons, many of them married, who are serving the Church in diaconal roles. He asked, “Why should these people be denied the grace of the sacrament?” The law of celibacy is sacred, he said, but it should not become an obstacle for the evolution of beneficial ways to serve which may be necessary in our times.

Cardinal Landazuri-Ricketts

Cardinal Landazuri Ricketts, speaking for himself and 95 other Latin American Fathers, spoke to the benefits of a renewed diaconate. While many functions (which he does not articulate) of the diaconate were already done by laypersons, there were still others that the deacon would carry out as an ordained member of the hierarchy. The restoration of the diaconate was not to lessen the role of the laity, but to increase it, and that the lay apostolate, while most important, is not an end in itself. The Latin American Fathers he represented urged the adoption of the proposal.

Cardinal Suenens

It was at this point that Cardinal Suenens presented what is arguably the strongest and most coherent argument for the diaconate evident in the documents. He began by outlining the theological principles upon which the diaconate is based. Citing the authority of scripture, the apostolic Fathers, constant tradition, and the liturgical books of East and West, he spoke of the many charisms evident throughout the Church, distinct from the priesthood, which were set up to provide direct assistance to the bishop in the care of the poor and the nurturing of the community. To say that these tasks can be given to lay persons does not mean that the diaconate is not needed. These tasks should only be given to persons (whether ordained or not) who have the necessary graces. The Church has the right to the benefit of all the graces given to it by God, including the graces of the diaconate.

Suenens then turned to the situation in the contemporary world. He urged the Fathers not to make a universal decision for or against the diaconate. Rather, they should decide if there was any area or situation that might benefit from it, and then phrase its decision in such a way as to enable it to take effect in those regions in which the bishops decided it was appropriate. In other words, the Council should not close off universally any means by which the grace of God may flow into the Church. Therefore (quoting from the draft), “where episcopal conferences judge the restoration of a permanent diaconate opportune, they should be free to introduce it.”

Even in this brief snapshot, we can see how the Council worked: What tools were needed to assist people in the contemporary world. Expressed more theologically, what gifts had been given by the Spirit to the Church to render such assistance? The diaconate was presented as one of those many gifts of the Spirit.

Women Deacons: Heat and Light

2011-10-30T21:12:00.000-07:00

Friend, brother deacon and blogger extraordinaire, Deacon Greg Kandra of the Deacon's Bench, recently posted an entry (read the original post and the many comments here) which linked to my last post about the launch of Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future, which was written by Drs. Gary Macy, Phyllis Zagano, and myself. After the fantastically positive experience of writing the book itself and the equally positive reception at the launch at Loyola University, Chicago, it was quite disheartening to see the almost unbelievable venom and vitriol levied at Deacon Greg, the three of us authors, and anyone who would even consider picking up our book. We were even criticized for our pasts; for example, I was mocked as a former senior staff member of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB); you know, that rabid liberal cabal who lead our country's bishops around by the nose to get them to do dangerous, liberal things, like defending religious liberty, Catholic social teaching, and so on.

Be that as it may, I encourage you to read all the comments. Greg has felt compelled to close off comments and I respect his decision. On the other hand, while I hope that such behavior will not migrate to this blog, I still wish to respond to a couple of points raised on his blog. You will see that I had addressed several issues already. If Greg hadn't closed his comments when he did, I would have posted the following. Again, I think that others might be interested in the questions raised, and answers to those questions. So, "Diakonos09". of you happen to find yourself over here on my blog, here's what I wanted to post:

Dear Diakonos09 (#104),

Several points. Your tone suggests that you don't accept Deacon Greg's point that he was quoting me (from my blog) rather than the pope, and that therefore you don't believe that there is papal support for this being an "open theological question." After teaching all day yesterday and preaching four Masses this weekend, the tempting answer out of fatigue is to suggest you read the book, where I review more than a dozen documents and historical events which address your question specifically. But, reason prevailed, and here's a short summary.

Let me highlight both documents and actions.

In terms of documents, both Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II have been influential. In 1976, Paul directed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to publish "Inter Insigniores", which has an official English title of "Declaration on the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood." Subsequent teaching, both in papal encyclicals and reflected in secondary teaching documents such as the Catechism, clarifies repeatedly that deacons are NOT part of the ministerial priesthood. In fact, "Inter Insigniores" itself says, "the Catholic Church has never felt that priestly or episcopal ordination can be validly conferred on women." Taking that quotation at its word, notice that it does NOT reference deacons.

In 1994, Pope John Paul II promulgates "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" which again refers only to ordination to the sacerdotal (priestly) orders of presbyter and bishop -- NOT deacons. Several other documents from this period and up until as late as 2009 further clarify the church's understanding that deacons are NOT included in the "ministerial priesthood" and are NOT included in the teaching of these documents.

Those are just two major documents. But let's consider official ACTIONS, and I will list the major one. Notice the dates of the two documents I listed above. Now, consider that then-Cardinal Ratzinger -- with the approval of the Pope -- assigned the question of ordaining women as deacons (not deaconesses -- they are a separate group) to the International Theological Commission for review as part of their five year term from 1992-1997. Notice that no published report on the question was ever put out by the Commission or the Congregation, although the Pope had during that time promulgated "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis." Since the Commission had not been able to come up with an answer on women deacons, Cardinal Ratzinger assigned it to them AGAIN for their 1997-2002 term. This time, they issued a report, in which they concluded that the question of ordaining women, was something that the Church's "ministry of discernment" might choose to address at some future point; in other words, it remains an open question. Neither Cardinal Ratzinger or Cardinal Levada (who succeeded him at the CDF) has ever acted on that suggestion, although Ratzinger did authorize the public release of that report, and it's available for your study. The fact is, if this question of women deacons were NOT an open question, why would successive popes and prefects of the CDF keep treating it like one, even after they have taken pains to address the question of women priests???!!!!

Finally, a word about being ordained as an icon of Christ. I would never agree with the conclusion that a deacon is not ordained as an icon of Christ the Servant. I wouldn't want to, and as you point out, it's a clear teaching of the Church. But ordination as an icon of Christ need not always be reflected simply in the gender of the ordinand. Can women not be icons of Christ? Mother Theresa comes to mind -- certainly when the poorest of poor encountered her, they encountered the love of Christ, right? And, frankly, to go back to my first points: if this were an issue for the popes and CDF, why didn't they simply say, "Look, we've already addressed this issue in "Inter Insigniores" and in "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" and it applies to deacons as well as priests." But they didn't do that, even when asked directly about it. Instead, they have consistently put the matter out for further study. That's what we're doing.

Really: I know people will have questions about why we wrote the book, what's in it, and how we come to whatever conclusions we reach in the book. The best way to find answers to those questions, obviously, is to read the book, where we can explain ourselves much better than we can on blogs and Facebook entries. Still, it's a start!

The "Ship" is Launched. . . .

2011-10-28T18:36:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, at Loyola University in Chicago, Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future was officially launched. Three of us wrote the book: Dr. Gary Macy focused on the most recent historical research into the question, I analyze contemporary Church teaching and theology of the question, and Dr. Phyllis Zagano offers some insights into the possible future of women in the diaconate.

First, some personal reflections about the event at Loyola. I arrived in Chicago after a great visit with our oldest son and our grandson. We had gone to visit my mother and had a great visit with her! Then it was back to Chicago for me to meet with my colleagues. Gary Macy and I had gone to high school seminary together many years ago and, until a couple of months ago, had not seen each other in person since 1967! We met and went to the Five Guys across the street from where we were staying and waiting for Phyllis to arrive. We had a nice visit and coordinated our plans for the next day.

Before the event itself, several news agencies were interested in talking with us about the nature of the diaconate itself in the Church, and to summarize the points we raise in the book. Of all the books I've written and/or contributed to, this one is (obviously) getting the most attention, and we want to be as clear as possible about what we're saying and what we're NOT saying in the book. More about this a bit later. About 200-300 people gathered for the launch, and it was quite a diverse group! There were a few undergraduates, but most of the folks were grad students and folks from the community, including more than a few priests, one of whom brought a whole group of parishioners. We enjoyed the presence of Sr. (Dr.) Sara Butler, who is on the pope's International Theological Commission, and Sr. (Dr.) Mary Collins, OSB, now retired, who was one of my professors at the Catholic University of America when I was working on my Ph.D.

We began with prayer, and shortly thereafter, Dr. Susan Ross, Chair of the Theology Department at Loyola, welcomed everyone and began the panel presentations. Proceeding in turn, each of us gave a 15 minute presentation on our particular focus in the book. We then took a short break which gave the attendees the chance to write out some questions for us. After the break, Dr. Ross invited us to respond to the questions, which was a lot of fun and gave us a chance to expound even more on points we hadn't had time for in our initial presentations. It was a great conversation! After that we signed a LOT of books, and responded to more questions. It was an absolutely wonderful, engaging and stimulating evening, with a lot of humor and wit along with the more scholarly stuff.

Second, a word about the process we used in writing the book. After deciding to write this book, Dr. Macy drafted his essay/chapter and e-mailed it to me. I commented on it, and then wrote my own and forwarded both Dr. Zagano. She commented on both of ours, and wrote HERS, and then forwarded the whole thing back to Gary, and the cycle was repeated several times until we were satisfied with it. This kind of "self-refereeing" was very helpful to each of us, and we think, for the end result. We then collaborated on the Introduction, and invited Dr. Ross to write a Forward, which she did.

Third, I ask my readers to keep a number of things in mind before you comment on this posting. I know just how incensed some people can get when this topic is broached, and the recent thread on Deacon Greg's blog is a good example of that! So, here are some things to know before blood pressures are raised:

1) No one, not the pope, nor any part of the Roman Curia, has EVER ruled out the possibility of ordaining women AS DEACONS. It is, according to the pope himself, an "OPEN THEOLOGICAL QUESTION." All we are doing is exploring that question with the latest research we can find on the subject. Many people think that "we can't talk about ordaining women"; that's not true, and that's not what church authority says! You will see what I mean when you read my chapter of the book: I analyze much of the official teaching documentation to see precisely what is being said. One thing comes through crystal clear: the Holy See very clearly and very significantly DISTINGUISHES the diaconate from the sacerdotal ("priestly") orders of presbyter and bishop (I use the word "presbyter" here because in technical language, "priest" can apply to both presbyters and bishops). So, no matter what has been said about the ordination of women to the presbyterate, the Church authority itself says that this does NOT apply to the diaconate.

2) The history of women in the diaconate has benefitted from considerable new historiography and analysis over the last 20-25 years. Therefore, Gary's work is not simply a different interpretation of the same material, but an up-to-date analysis of the more complete data we have now. He builds on some of the venerable work done a generation or more ago. For example, there are several groups of women associated with diaconate in the early history of the Church: there are "women deacons" in one group, "deaconesses" in another, and some women given those titles because they were married to male deacons. Each group is distinct and we have the rituals used to ordain them to help determine how their local communities perceived these women in ministry. I know you'll find this section quite interesting.

3) My section deals with two major themes: first, as I said before, I study the official documentation on the topic to demonstrate the distinctiveness of this question from other questions, and to stress that we are only interested in this book with the question of the possible ordination of women as deacons, not to any other question at all. I also review the teaching of Vatican II on the subject of the diaconate itself to make sure we see what the "vision" of the diaconate at the time of its renewal. Just as women and men in religious life often talk about rediscovering the vision of their founders, I think that for deacons, the bishops at Vatican II were our "founders", and it's good to have a sense of what they were thinking and doing about the diaconate and the renewal of the Church.

4) We often hear that this is just an attempt to get women into the priesthood "through a back door"; that, if we ordain women to the diaconate, "the next thing you know, they'll want to be priests!" Well, that's just a lot of nonsense. As I said: the diaconate is not the priesthood, nor is it a part of the ministerial priesthood in which presbyters and bishops participate. Furthermore, we have more than four decades of experience with the (permanent) diaconate now, in which the vast majority of deacons are serving as married men. There's been no run on any diocesan chanceries by these married deacons to demand ordination as presbyters! The vast majority of deacons, when asked if they would be interested in serving as presbyters if the church's discipline on celibacy were changed, respond that they would not. After nearly 22 years as a deacon myself, but also as someone who had earlier spent eight years in the seminary, I can attest that the vocation of deacon is significantly different from the vocation of the priest! So, the evidence is pretty clear that the diaconate is not now, nor would it ever be, a "back door" to becoming a priest.

These are just some reflections on what has been a most interesting process for me and my colleagues. All I ask is this: BEFORE you jump to any rash conclusions, BEFORE you assume you know our motivations, our lineage, our "agendas" and all the rest of it, just read the book. None of the three of us are rabid "liberals" or "conservatives"; we are not "radical feminists" or "feminazis". In fact, two of us (Dr. Zagano and myself) are both retired Navy Commanders -- not exactly a "liberal" professional background. Besides, if you start to find yourself pre-judging based on what you think you already know about this question, I would hope you would try to set those pre-judgments aside and first gather the facts.

Bottom line: the Church considers this an open question to be studied and discussed so that the church's "ministry of discernment" (the phrase used by the International Theological Commission, which works for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) can be exercised on this matter. All we have done here is attempt to contribute to that discussion.

You have to be a little crazy to be a deacon

2011-10-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

My good friend and brother deacon who occupies "The Deacon's Bench" over at Patheos, Deacon Greg Kandra, has a very interesting post today about psychological testing as part of the process of applying for admission into formation programs which may lead to possible ordination as a deacon or presbyter. Here's what Greg wrote about it, and from there you can read the full reflection by the original blogger on this issue.

I thought it might be helpful to review some basics about the application, discernment and formation processes that are involved here, and how psychological testing fits into that larger picture. While I certainly don't deny that the original author highlights some interesting questions vis-a-vis psychological testing, several things need to be kept in mind: 1) Unless the applicant is a trained psychologist himself, how he THINKS certain questions might be answered may not, in fact, be the same as how a professional trained in test interpretation might read the data. I can tell you from my own experience with this, that while my examiner didn't ask certain questions specifically, I was stunned later about her ability to piece the data she DID receive into an accurate portrait; 2) The applicant has, apparently, not yet completed the whole application process, so he has no idea if the questions he is raising will simply be part of subsequent testing or additional interviews; 3) The applicant himself is not himself experienced with the ministry of (at least in this case) the diaconate, which means that he has to make certain assumptions about what he BELIEVES ought to be included. Now, I'm not saying he doesn't raise valid concerns! However, it would also be wrong to extrapolate from one man's partial experience in one diocese (out of 196!) to make judgments about the processes followed throughout the country. So, let's take a closer look.

First, psychological testing is only one part of the overall application process. If you look at the National Directory for the Formation, Ministry and Life of Permanent Deacons in the United States, you'll find that Chapter Four deals with "Vocation, Discernment, and Selection." The chapter is divided into five sections: 1) Promotion and Recruitment, 2) The Mystery of Vocation, 3) The Discernment of the Call, 4) Admission and Selection Procedures, and, 5) Admission into the Aspirant Path in Formation. I list all of these to put the specific issue of psychological testing in perspective. Notice that the process of assessing the suitability of applicants begins long before we get to the administration of psychological tests, and that we begin with the far more fundamental issues of vocation and discernment of God's presence and action witnessed in the applicant's life by all of those around him: his family, friends, church community and so on. We try to make sure that, unlike a "job application" for a secular position, the process of discerning a possible vocation to ordained ministry is interested in the whole range of human, spiritual, intellectual and pastoral elements of a person's life and character; the psychological is only one aspect in making such assessments.

Second, let's turn to Section IV in more detail. There, we find information about the role of the pastor, the parish and the diocesan staff in reviewing a person's suitability, and the means of doing this involves a series of interviews by and with a variety of people, and these interviews usually involve the whole family of the applicant to some degree. In paragraph 177, we read that "appropriate psychological consultation may be included as part of the application process, but always with the written consent of the applicant. Those selected as psychological consultants must use psychological methods in harmony with Christian anthropology and Catholic teaching, particularly with respect to the theology of the diaconal vocation, the various states of life of the deacon and the basic human qualities expected of a mature deacon."

Third, notice what is NOT included in that paragraph: a required list of the psychological tests to be conducted! In earlier drafts of the National Directory, such a list was offered; however, further research indicated that the resources available around the country varied greatly, as well as the professional opinions of psychologists about the best instruments to use. This means that what one applicant might experience in one diocese will undoubtedly vary from what is used in the neighboring diocese. As a result, those of us who are involved in this process are constantly assessing the psychological test batteries in use.

Just a final note: People should realize that, in a process as complex as this is, only rarely is a person rejected from the formation process based on a single issue alone. Obviously, if it is discovered that a person has a serious psychological, medical or other issue; that's one thing. But what we most often discover is a pattern of issues that need to be addressed. Ultimately, decisions about whether or not to accept a person into the formation process, and leading all the way to decisions about whether or not to ordain a person at all, rest with the bishop and his assessment of the common good of the diocesan Church. No one is ordained simply because they're a good and holy person (we hope!); a person is called to orders only when the bishop is convinced that the People of God can be served, and served well, by a particular person. Psychological testing can be one important tool in that overall process, but it is never the only one, nor is it necessarily the best one.

What a Day! Pope John XXIII and Vatican II!

2011-10-11T12:09:00.000-07:00

Forty-nine years ago today, on 11 October 1962, Pope John XXIII presided over the opening of the Second Vatican Council. It is for this reason that we now celebrate Pope John's feast day today as well. It's interesting, because usually a saint is remembered on the date of his birth or the date of her death. John's is celebrated on the date of his most significant achievement in ministry: Vatican II. It's a great day to commemorate both.

Angelo Roncalli, while he relished his peasant roots, was a man who loved history and the lessons history could teach us. He was also a Roman "outsider" (unlike his best friend and successor, Giovanni Battista Montini, who was quite the Vatican "insider"), who came into his own during lengthy tours as a papal legate to Bulgaria (1925-1935), Turkey and Greece (1935-1944) and France (1944-1953). He always maintained that it was his military service as a stretcher-bearer and chaplain during World War I that formed him into a pastor, and during World War II he did everything he could to facilitate the escape of as many as 100,000 Jews from Nazi-held areas. In 1953 he was appointed Patriarch of Venice and was made a Cardinal. He wrote that he loved the title of "Patriarch" -- the title he thought he would be buried with -- because it meant he was a "Father" to his people. Little did he know that he would soon become "papa" to the whole world, not just Venice. What his biography shows us is a man who was deeply immersed in the "real world" in a variety of difficult human situations, and a man who learned profoundly how the Church might help.

What the great Pope John brought to the world, and what the Council he called emphasized, was a "novus mentis habitus" -- a "new way of thinking" -- about the world and the Church. Pope John Paul II used to speak about this quite often in the early days of his own papacy: that the world and the church today demands a new way of thinking about how we relate to the people with whom we live and serve. Today, this message seems more needed than ever.

We read of church leaders who have decided that the richness of eating and drinking the Lord's Body and Blood, commanded by our Lord, is best accomplished through a resurgent sacramental minimalism by consuming under the species of bread alone; we wonder why our young people (and, let's be honest, some NOT so young people as well!) are leaving active participation in a Church they honestly believe has lost its moral compass and any connectedness whatsoever to the real problems which today's people face. Instead, they see institutional church leadership fussing about translations from a dead language into a living culture while whole peoples are victims of genocide, forced migrations, war and natural disasters. They know that individual Catholics and groups of Catholics are involved in trying to make things better, but the acknowledged leadership often seems completely out-of-touch and remote from those efforts.

It was this very detachment from the "real world" that Pope John and the Council attempted to address. In 1962, the world's bishops had vivid memories of two world wars, worldwide economic collapse, the rise of three totalitarian regimes, the emergence of the nuclear age and the cold war. During the Council itself, the world was brought to the brink of another worldwide war during the Bay of Pigs debacle and the President of the US himself was assassinated. The bishops of the world, led by John himself, wanted to try to find a NEW WAY OF THINKING so that the world might be transformed into a different kind of place, so that such tragedies could not happen again.

I entered high school seminary in 1963, during the Council itself, and what a dynamic and exciting time it was! We were encouraged to dream about serving in a rejuvenated Church, a Church that would walk among people and help them. To use John's own word, there was to be an aggiornamento in the Church, an updating, not just of how we worshiped, but how we lived and served in the world.

Many things have happened in the forty-nine years since the Council began, but I believe that we are still called to a new way of thinking. The old patterns of thought which some people seem intent on trying to "restore" to the Church and the world, did not keep the world from war, violence and destruction. Pope John's call to look forward with new, fresh approaches is more needed today than ever. What else matters if we cannot connect the real messiness of life with the promises of Christ?

Viva il Papa Giovanni!

Arrivederci, Roma; Welcome, USA!

2011-10-02T09:27:00.000-07:00

In a few hours I will make my way to Fiumicino to catch the first of three flights back home. First is a flight from Rome to Amsterdam, then the long 12-hour flight to LA, and then another quick flight up to Monterey. It has been a good and productive trip, but it will be wonderful to be home again!

The meetings here concerning our international study institute on the diaconate have gone very well. The University of St. John Lateran (the "Lateranum") has emerged as a key player in our planning, and we laid out a three-year summer program of courses. This means that a person has choices: for those able and interested in doing so, a person could come to Rome for three summers and complete a Master's Degree awarded by the Lateranum. Alternatively, a person could simply come for a single course purely out of personal interest, or, still again, could take a course or two which would provide transfer credit to another graduate degree being taken elsewhere. For example, if a person were working on a Master's degree or Ph.D. at a university in the United States, 1 or 2 of the Institute's courses could be applied to the course work for that degree, since our courses are fully accredited as well. Finally, a student who is enrolled in a university at which one of our faculty members is on staff, the course in Rome can be taken for credit at the faculty member's "home" institution as well. For example, I could teach a course for the Institute in Rome, but a student from Santa Clara University could receive credit from Santa Clara for the course.

The academic prerequisites for the Institute program will be a baccalaureate degree, preferably in Theology or a related discipline. The Roman and Vatican officials are quite insistent that the Institute be a place for graduate level work, and this really is the point of the Institute as well. Courses are open to all qualified persons (and not only deacons) who are interested in study and research on the diaconate, and this cuts a wide swath: from history and archaeology, to biblical exegesis and the patristics, to ecclesiology, systematics, moral, spiritual and liturgical theology, to canon law.

Not all courses will be taught every summer. Instead, there is a three-year plan of study: the first summer will be devoted to scripture and the patristics; the second summer to theology, and the third summer to pastoral-ministerial topics.

We even agreed on a name of the Institute. It will be known as the "Studium Internazionale sul Diaconato San Lorenzo": the "Saint Lawrence International Institute on the Diaconate"

Once I get home, I'll be working on developing some English language materials on all of this, and we're putting together a web site that will link everyone together as well. So stay tuned!

Reflections on Buon Papa Giovanni

2011-09-30T08:51:00.000-07:00

As I wrote earlier, I spent some time in prayer this morning at the tomb of Pope John XXIII. I have been blessed to have this opportunity a number of times now, but the experience is always a profound one on many levels.

I began an eight-year journey (1963-1971) in the seminary (high school and college) during his pontificate and the Council which he convened. Both have had an incredible influence on my life personally, ministerially, academically and professionally. Today, as I found a spot near his tomb under the mosaic of the Death of St. Jerome, I noticed that the candles were lit at the altar [see the photo], reminding us, of course, that today is the Feast of St. Jerome on the Latin calendar. As I prayed the Liturgy of the Hours, however, something else struck me.

Pope John died nearly 50 years ago. Those people who remember him and the events of his papacy (1958-1963) are now getting old (he himself once remarked, when he turned 60, that 60 was the age at which we begin to be old!). But something remarkable has always amazed me, and this visit was no exception. See, after you enter St. Peter's and work your way down the right hand side of the Basilica, the first big gathering spot for tourists is Michelangelo's famous Pieta "just inside" the front door; and now the next big stop is the new tomb of Pope John Paul II. Then you come to the tomb of John XXIII. Here's what amazed me: There were perhaps 200 people admiring the Pieta, and perhaps 100 or so at the tomb of John Paul II. But, in the hour I was there, a steady stream of pilgrims filed by John's tomb. I lost count after a couple of hundred, and the stream kept going. In fact, there were three security guards posted there to keep the crowd moving, quiet and prayerful. The memory of this holy man is still so strong and vibrant nearly 50 years after his death! He was able, in his quiet joy-filled way, to touch the hearts, souls and imaginations of the entire world, and his pastoral leadership style enabled the bishops of the world to rejuvenate the Church at the Council.

As I prepared to leave, I approached one of the security guards and thanked him for his efforts. He smiled and said, "Ah, deacon, good Pope John still lives!" And so he does. . . .

Here we go again. . . .

2011-09-29T23:51:00.000-07:00

Gentle readers, it has been far too long between blog posts, but life has been -- for all of us, I'm sure! -- full, rich and packed with other things which demand our attention. However, following a summer of relocation from Florida to California, beginning a whole series of new responsibilities, and various family matters, now seems like a good and appropriate time to start things up again.

I'm writing from beautiful Rome, and I don't mean the beautiful Rome in Georgia. As I've blogged about before, several of us deacon-theologian-professors are launching a new international advanced studies institute on the diaconate here at the Vatican. We are meeting tomorrow with representatives from the Vatican (the Congregation for Catholic Education) and the various pontifical universities who will be involved with the Institute. We will be discussing the final details of dates, times, costs and curriculum, so it promises to be a full day! If all goes well, we will offer the first courses this coming summer. I'll provide all the details as soon as they are finalized.

For now, however, I'm off! I'm going to walk over to St. Peter's and spend an hour in prayer at the tomb of my hero, Pope St. John XXIII. I know, I know: the rest of the Church hasn't yet canonized him; but I claim the ancient practice of canonization by acclamation! I will keep all of you and your intentions in prayer.

A presto!

From Benedict XVI: Great words for those in formation for ordination

2011-08-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

My friend and brother deacon, Greg Kandra, has a wonderful posting today on a sermon delivered by Pope Benedict XVI to a group of seminarians. As Greg points out, it is a wonderful exhortation for deacon candidates as well, and I am forwarding a copy of it to all of our deacon candidates for this diocese. Read the entire homily here, but here is a wonderful excerpt.

Dear friends, you are preparing yourselves to become apostles with Christ and like Christ, and to accompany your fellow men and women along their journey as companions and servants.
How should you behave during these years of preparation? First of all, they should be years of interior silence, of unceasing prayer, of constant study and of gradual insertion into the pastoral activity and structures of the Church. A Church which is community and institution, family and mission, the creation of Christ through his Holy Spirit, as well as the result of those of us who shape it through our holiness and our sins. God, who does not hesitate to make of the poor and of sinners his friends and instruments for the redemption of the human race, willed it so. The holiness of the Church is above all the objective holiness of the very person of Christ, of his Gospel and his sacraments, the holiness of that power from on high which enlivens and impels it. We have to be saints so as not to create a contradiction between the sign that we are and the reality that we wish to signify.
Meditate well upon this mystery of the Church, living the years of your formation in deep joy, humbly, clear-mindedly and with radical fidelity to the Gospel, in an affectionate relation to the time spent and the people among whom you live. No one chooses the place or the people to whom he is sent, and every time has its own challenges; but in every age God gives the right grace to face and overcome those challenges with love and realism.

Happy Feast Day to My Hero!

2011-08-09T21:51:00.000-07:00

My wife and I have just moved again; the original house we rented turned out to have certain, shall we say, issues. We have now settled into a wonderful new place and I'm back online!

And what a great time to return to the blog! August 10th is the feast day of the greatest deacon who ever lived, Deacon Lawrence of Rome! OK, so that's one person's opinion, but consider:

1) Lawrence, when instructed to gather up the treasures of the Church to present to the magistrate, did just that -- he gathered the poor of Rome and presented them as the treasure of the Church!

2) Notice that Lawrence was correctly assumed to be responsible for the temporal goods of the Church -- a longstanding tradition of the Church.

3) Lawrence displays a particularly diaconal sense of humor when he tells his executioner to turn him over because he's done on that side! Not to mention the wit mentioned above about playing on the term "treasures of the Church." His rapier wit is seen quite often in his deacon-successors around the world, who frequently take great joy in "tweaking" people and getting them to think and to laugh! Deacon Larry of Rome would fit in easily with any community of deacons (and wives of deacons) with whom I'm familiar!

4) John Paul II recognized all of this in Lawrence. During the Jubilee Day for Deacons in 2000, an urn containing the relics of Lawrence was brought to the audience hall from the Basilica of St. Lawrence. When the pope began his address to us, he gestured to the urn and said, "You were unable to go to Lawrence, dear Deacons, so I had Lawrence brought to you!"

So, dear sainted brother Lawrence, we celebrate your feast with great joy! Thanks for the inspiration!

A Liturgical Rant: Wearing Underwear Over Outerwear

2011-07-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

OK, so this isn't a post dealing with a particularly earth-shaking issue! Still, it's something that continues to crop up and I get questions about it all the time, so I thought I'd address it. The issue? The horrible practice of wearing the deacon stole OVER the dalmatic!

I'm old enough to remember very well the days prior to the Second Vatican Council. I began serving Mass in 1957 when I was seven years old, and often served two or three Masses a day. I then spent high school and college in the seminary during and after the Council; liturgically, that's a lot of experience! I first served as a liturgical Master of Ceremonies when I was 15. OK, that's some background.

For centuries, the accepted practice for all clerics in the major orders was to wear the amice, alb, cincture, and maniple. Over these foundational vestments, the subdeacon added the outer vestement of the subdeacon, the tunicle. Over those same foundational vestments, the deacon added the stole (tied diagonally and held in place by the cincture) and then the outer vestment of the deacon, the dalmatic. Over those same foundational vestments, the priest added the stole (worn crossed over his chest and held in place by the cincture) and then the outer vestment of the priest, the chasuble. Notice the pattern? THE OUTER VESTMENT, by definition, was worn OVER EVERYTHING ELSE!

Catholic clergy didn't adopt the Protestant practice of a "preaching stole" worn over other vestments.

So -- what happened? Why do priests and now some deacons choose to wear these so-called "overlay" stoles? How did this liturgical novelty catch on, DESPITE liturgical guidance (read: law) otherwise?

Let's get the legal stuff out of the way. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (the GIRM) has always stated that the dalmatic or chasuble is worn OVER the stole and other foundational vestments. Period. So why do some choose to wear their liturgical "underwear" over their liturgical "outerwear"?

I think there are a couple of things at play here.

First -- and this is a good thing -- we have seen a wonderful emphasis on the primary role of the bishop, presbyter and deacon for preaching the Good News. I get that, and support it. This led some priests, immediately after the Council, to adopt the common practice of other Christian churches to wear the stole, associated by many of those Churches with the function of preaching, OVER their chasubles. Vestment makers picked up on this and began to design "overlay" stoles. Still, it's worth noting that the liturgical law of the Church has NOT changed on this regard: it still tells us to wear the stole UNDER the chasuble/dalmatic. What's next, wearing the cincture over the chasuble/dalmatic? How about throwing on an amice over everything? That would be an interesting look, too!

Second -- for deacons, many of us are still getting used to the dalmatic. After the Council, most parishes got rid of their old "Mass sets": fiddleback chasubles, dalmatics/stoles, and tunicles. New liturgical vestment styles were developed, except that in the late 1960s and early 1970s these often didn't include vestments for the deacon, since the permanent diaconate was still in its infancy. This led to expedient of wearing an alb along with a "priest" stole tied or pinned diagonally. There were very few dalmatics. This led to the liturgical innovation of a deacon of the Mass wearing only an alb and a stole: this was NEVER the practice prior to the Council. So, deacons often associated the stole as the primary sign of their Order of Deacon. HOWEVER, the actual sign of the deacon is the DALMATIC: that is the vestment unique to the diaconate (and the episcopate). So, when overlay stoles were developed by the vestment makers, they gradually extended that mistake to the deacon's vestments as well, and some deacons have embraced it because they can wear "their" identifying vestment (mistakenly assumed to be the stole) in plain view over the dalmatic.

During this time of ongoing liturgical renewal, it seems a good time to get back to the basics: Wear the stole UNDER the dalmatic!

A Lesson for Sinatra, an insight for all of us

2011-07-17T16:56:00.000-07:00

Bob Greene over at CNN has a nice little story about Frank Sinatra, and his friendship with Pasquale "Patsy" Scognamillo who owned what became known in the 1950's as the singer's favorite restaurant. It seems that the men became friends when both were about to make it big, Frank in entertainment, and Patsy with his own popular restaurant. Then, when Sinatra's career tanked for a time in the early 1950's, Patsy and his restaurant became sources of comfort and support.

Patsy's grandson still runs that restaurant, and the family recounts this time justifiably with great pride. Greene writes,

A person recalls how he is treated not when he is on top of the world, undefeated, but when he is at his lowest, thinking he will never again see the sun.

This is such a good insight for all people of faith. Not only do we ourselves remember how we were treated when we were down, it is a reminder about how we treat others when they are most in need. As Greene points out, many people didn't want to be seen with Sinatra during his "down" time, but Patsy reacted with generosity and compassion. That's a good lesson for all of us, especially those of us who are deacons.

Read the whole story here.

On the Road to Tucson: Fundamentals

2011-07-15T17:43:00.000-07:00

I just arrived in one of the greatest cities around -- Tucson, Arizona. I'm here for an annual gathering of the diaconate communities of the dioceses/archdioceses that comprise Region XIII. It's always a wonderful event, with lots of great fellowship, wonderful food and drink, and conversation. They've asked me to talk about "The Diaconate in the Liturgy: Past, Present, Future." That's quite a broad topic, but here's what I plan on doing.

There's been a lot of talk about the implementation of the 3rd Edition of the Roman Missal in a few months, and so most of the folks have already been to classes and workshops on the particulars. I don't want to prattle on about things they already know. What I think (hope!) will be far more beneficial is to really turn the clock back and reflect on WHY we have the Mass in the first place! We often spend all kinds of time talking about WHAT the Mass is, and WHAT TO DO at Mass, and many times we don't have a real clue about WHY we're doing it in the first place!

We are going to start with the most fundamental dogma of the Church. That will be my first challenge to the deacons and wives present tomorrow at my presentations: Just what IS the most fundamental DOGMA of the Catholic Church. A dogma, of course, is a teaching (doctrine) of the Church that we believe is divinely-revealed. Think about that for a minute. What do YOU think that most fundamental dogma is?

If you said the TRINITY, you get a gold star, or maybe we should make it a gold triangle! So, the first thing we're going to do is talk about the Trinity. Where did that whole idea come from? What led Christians to take the ONE GOD of the Jewish faith and further define that ONE GOD as being in Three divine Persons? Why was such a radical step necessary?

Because Christians had to answer a very important question, one that they'd been wrestling with since Jesus asked if of Simon at Caesarea Philippi: "Who do you say that I am?" Every Christian has to answer that question for himself or herself. Well, the range of possible answers includes: "You are a man," "You are God", "You are neither God nor Man," and "You are both God and Man." But here's the rub. If you answer that Jesus is simply a man, you have no problem. But if your answer involves Jesus being divine, you then have to figure out HOW to explain His relationship to the ONE GOD. Of course, as any good church historian will tell us, these dicussions about who Christ is (the Christological debates) and who God is (the Trinitarian debates) occupied many of the early centuries of the church's life as disciples struggled to explain all of this.

And while all of this debating was going on, faithful Christians continued to gather in their various communities and traditions to worship Mystery through the breaking of bread as modeled for them by Christ. Those earliest Christians didn't wait till they had answers to all their questions before they acted: they lived and acted out of sheer faith.

We'll get into many things tomorrow, but this will be our starting point.

Moving On. . . . What shall we talk about?

2011-07-07T15:20:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm all settled in (well, mostly) to my new jobs, and there's been so much on the news (both religious and secular) to choose from! I entered (briefly) into the whole Corapi mess, but now it's definitely time to move on.

So, what shall we talk about about? What's on YOUR mind these days?

The Corapi Matter and the Polarization of the Catholic Church in the United States

2011-06-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

Permit me to give some necessary personal context to the reflections that follow.

If you look at the brief biography that accompanies this site, you'll notice that I have been blessed to be a Catholic my whole life, and from an early age I knew I had a vocation to ordained ministry. For eight years I attended high school and college seminary preparing for diocesan priesthood. Although I discerned that I did not have a vocation to the priesthood, I remained active in ministry throughout the years as a lay person. I pursued graduate education in Theology during my off-duty time throughout my Navy career. Eventually, I was ordained a deacon by Cardinal James Hickey for the Archdiocese of Washington, DC in 1990. From that time to this I remain an incardinated deacon of that Archdiocese although ministry has taken me frequently to other dioceses for service. My Ph.D. is in Theology from the Catholic University of America, with a special emphasis on Ecclesiology and Sacramental Theology. Since 1989, I have been associated with the USCCB headquarters variously as a consultant and later as director of two of the Secretariats there.

Against that background I wish to respond to a couple of recent comments made on this blog. Here's what the readers wrote.

The first reader stated:

While I am fiercely loyal to the Church, I also accept the reality that She has been gravely harmed by some members in the USCCB who have championed a liberal/progressive agenda in place of Gospel values.

A second reader then wrote:

And there in lies the problem...with the USCCB and their progressive/liberal ALINSKY tactics in order to protect their agenda. I hear nothing about the PRO-ABORT-CATHOLICS in Congress [http://www.canon915.org/list_people.php?figure_ind=P] because they, too, are 'progressive/liberal' .... I see what's happening to Father Corapi as "Rule 13" in Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. And it takes the focus off of the USCCB's failures to uphold the Church's Pro-Life teaching and their refusal to own up to their own guilt and complicity in failing to promote and uphold the Teachings of the Magisterium.

The USCCB fails to take today's Gospel to heart. They're too busy allowing sin to run rampant in their diocese and across this nation.

PS this is not an indictment against every member of the USCCB. There are some truly godly men doing their best against the tide of those 'progressive/liberals' who would silence them.

God have mercy on The Catholic Church in America.

The first reader at least qualified his criticism by saying the "some members" of the USCCB were involved in pursuing a liberal/progressive agenda. The second goes much, much further, eventually only qualifying the indictment in a postscriptum to her remarks.

It is precisely this kind of broad brush and imprecise language which does much damage to the Body of Christ. I am not saying that all bishops, their staffs, including the national staff in Washington, DC are perfect. They (we) are not. And people SHOULD criticize the bishops and their staffs when that criticism is warranted, by all means! We have, under canon law, an OBLIGATION to do so. I am not suggesting otherwise. What I am pleading for, however, is precision in language, temperance and charity in tone, and accuracy in reporting. Here's one example.

With both writers above: What do THEY mean by the term "USCCB"? Do they mean the bishops as a body? Or do they mean just the staff of priests, deacons, religious and lay persons who staff the headquarters in Washington? Or do they mean both, the body of bishops AND their staff collectively?

Then, we need to ask: How is this language understood by the READERS of the posting? Do they understand what these terms mean? Do they understand the term in the same way as the writer does?

We need answers to all of this before we can even begin to assess the validity of the claims being made about whatever this "USCCB" is in the minds of the writers! As this language now stands, it is clearly based on emotion, is grossly over-generalized, and, frankly, designed to incite to fear and anger. It appears to be rhetorical, not factual.

Well, let's get to some actual FACTS here. The USCCB is the assembly of all ordained bishops (and for some matters, this includes priests who are administering dioceses while the diocese is sede vacante awaiting the appointment of a new diocesan bishop) of the United States, and it includes bishops and eparchs of both the Latin and the Eastern Catholic Churches. Once a priest is ordained a bishop, he is automatically a member of the USCCB (prior to Vatican II, membership in the predecessor organization was purely a voluntary matter). While the majority of the bishops are serving as diocesan bishops, others are auxiliary bishops, and still others are "retired" bishops (although the preferred term is to refer to them as the "seniores"). As you can well imagine, such a diverse group would be very difficult to characterize as "liberal", "progressive," "conservative" or "traditional," or any other adjective you care to apply. In fact, even if you tried to do this, you would find that in many cases, the same bishop might -- on one issue -- adopt a progressive stance, while on another issue, he will be conservative. These broad generalizations about bishops are just as inaccurate as they are about most of us who are NOT bishops!

The same applies to the national staff. The staff is also a part of the "USCCB" and the job of the staff is to implement the policies SET BY THE BISHOPS. No staff member sets his or her own agenda; even if they tried to do so, they wouldn't be around long. The bishops alone staff the various Committees (some years ago, this was different, but not now), and the Committees set the policies, directions and priorities that they desire, and the staff carries them out. Let's talk more about the staff. I will share with you that during my time on the senior staff, we sometimes would find it almost amusing to hear ourselves referred to by some folks as "progressive-liberal"! After all, here we ALL were, serving the institutional church through her bishops -- not really where you'd expect to find a nest of progressive liberals! And, as a matter of fact, there weren't. Did some among us have more progressive views than others? Of course! But as diverse as the staff was on the "theo-political" spectrum, we were all there to serve the needs of the bishops; the staff is a professional organization, made up of priests, deacons, religious and lay persons, ALL of whom have extensive diocesan, national and international experience in their areas of expertise. One of the great joys for me when I worked on the staff was the ability to walk down the hall and have a conversation with such exceptional and dedicated professionals.

All of that is "the USCCB" to me. To read a comment that somehow there is a cabal trying to implement some "Saul Alinsky" plot is, frankly, just ludicrous. It would humorous if it were not so tragically inaccurate and, bluntly, libelous.

Dear Readers: We ALL have to find ways of communicating and dealing with each other as Christian disciples, and quit trying to find villains around every corner. There is enough sinfulness in the world already, and we all are guilty of sin. But the world -- and the church which is supposed to be the "soul and leaven" of society -- is just not as black and white as many people would like it to be. When things are black and white, decisions can be seen as simple things; in such a polarized world, we would be free of struggles and strife, because choices would be so clear and obvious. But we all know, from our own gained experience, that life is simply not like that. This side of heaven, we must strive, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to do the best we can, enjoying the good, struggling against the evil, and accepting the bumps along the way. Just as we can acknowledge such complexity in our lives "outside" the church, we need to accept that complexity within the church as well.

God bless all here, and let us pray for each other!

Fr. Corapi: "Soft you; a word or two before you go"

2011-06-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

It has never been my intention to comment much on l'affaire Corapi. We simply don't know enough about the facts surrounding the case to comment intelligently about it. However, one theme that has run through the various communiques issued by the Corapi camp has been about the ecclesial process looking into the matter. Essentially, and variously, the process has been described as lacking transparency, as being fundamentally flawed, and even "of the devil" and so on. While I don't know the facts of the case, I do have some familiarity with the process, and want to comment on it briefly. I do so out of concern over many of Corapi's "fans" who are now vilifying and demonizing "the bishops" and their process.

Let me begin with full disclosure: I was a member of the USCCB's senior staff for more than five years (2002-2007), and a consultant to the USCCB before that and since. It is in this capacity that I offer some observations.

1) I readily acknowledge that no human legal process is without flaws, and I'm not suggesting here that the process being followed is flawless or perfect. On the other hand, it has good points as well.

2) Despite innuendo and even some statements otherwise, this matter is NOT subject to the so-called "Dallas Charter" which address clergy sex abuse cases dealing with children, and vulnerable adults. So, there should be clarity here: Whatever is going on with Corapi vis-a-vis this particular case -- which as I understand it deals with the claims of an adult woman against Corapi -- it does not involve the Dallas Charter and its provisions. So, discussions which suggest otherwise are grossly inaccurate and should be discounted.

3) So, what process IS being invoked? Rather simple, actually: it is the process contained in the Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church (the Eastern Catholic Churches have their own Code of Canons). When a cleric is accused of a crime, he is subject both to ecclesial law ("Canon Law") and to civil law. The legislator for a cleric is either his bishop (if he is a diocesan deacon or presbyter) or his religious superior (if he is a member of a religious order). When religious orders minister within a particular diocese, of course, they do so under the authority of the diocesan bishop. For example, if the bishop has asked the Franciscans to staff a particular parish in the diocese, the Franciscan superior will make the actual assignment (he'll pick the priest to be assigned), but the priest will be responsible both to his own superior and also to the diocesan bishop.

4) Now, I'm not too clear about Corapi's arrangement. (I was never aware of him until this whole thing broke in the news.) However, what I'm told is that he was not living in community with this order (SOLT), and so I must presume that his religious superior had agreed with whatever arrangement was in place, and of course, the diocesan bishop would be informed of it, and have to agree with it, as well, especially if he was functioning as a presbyter in the parishes of the diocese. The local bishop would extend faculties (authority) to exercise priestly ministry within the diocese, and so on.

5) Now comes the complaint. Ultimately, the religious superior is the responsible person, and it appears that the complaint was given to the diocesan bishop, who took the steps he needed to, and then referred the rest of it to the superior for HIS action. When a complaint is levied, an investigation is made. It is not uncommon to ask the cleric (presbyter or deacon) to step away from ministry until the investigation is complete and the disposition made. This, of course, is not a question of "presuming guilt" in the matter; it's simply prudential judgment pending the outcome of the case. While it's not a perfect analogy, it's not unlike what happens when a police officer is suspected or accused of wrongdoing; or sometimes just when he discharges his or her weapon in the line of duty. Such an officer is suspended from duty pending the outcome of the investigation; if everything is found to be in order, he is returned to duty. THE REASON FOR THIS IS TO ENSURE THE CONTINUED SAFETY OF THE COMMUNITY, not to "presume guilt" of the officer.

Similarly, the bishop/superior's main concern must be the CONTINUED SAFETY OF THE COMMUNITY pending the conclusion of the investigation. So, the priest or deacon is asked to step aside from ministry for the good of the community; if he refuses to do so voluntarily, he may be temporarily suspended, exactly as in the case of the police officer. Again, it's about the safety of the community. Once the investigation is complete, and if there's no problem, the suspension is lifted, he "gets his badge back," and returns to serving the community.

6) Now, what has happened in the Corapi case? It appears that, hurt and wounded as he surely is, Fr. Corapi has decided to forego the investigation altogether and simply walk away. No one has asked him to leave the priesthood, nor as any religious superior sought (yet) to have him returned to the lay state. All of this seems to be HIS decision, not ecclesial authority. To use my secular analogy: it would be the same as if the suspended police officer simply decided not to wait for the end of the investigation, and he or she just resigned from the police force altogether. Again, HIS initiative, not the Chief of Police's decision.

Is this a perfect system? Of course not. But I don't see anything in the facts made available to us that suggest the process is in any way unusual or inappropriate. I know that Corapi and his fans are hurting, but in their pain, they should not perpetuate further damage to the Body of Christ.

Oremus pro invicem -- Let us pray for each other.

Fr. Corapi speaks: “I’m not going to be involved in ministry as a priest anymore…”

2011-06-17T20:14:00.000-07:00

Fr. Corapi speaks: “I’m not going to be involved in ministry as a priest anymore…”

Deacon Greg Kandra, and many others, have now reported on the latest developments in the Corapi matter.

No matter where you fall on your opinion of this man, it is time now to pray for everyone concerned. In particular, we should be praying for the many people who placed so much faith in his ministry. They are finding all of this quite devastating.

Let us pray. . . .

Some of my former students, now brother deacons

2011-06-11T16:41:00.000-07:00

The news is eveywhere: new deacons being ordained in the Dioceses of Pittsburgh, Venice, Atlanta and elsewhere. Here's still another! Bishop John Noonan ordained five new deacons this morning for the Diocese of Orlando. I highlight them especially, since I was privileged to be one of their professors of Theology during the academic component of their formation.

So, to my new brothers Israel Colon, George Ferraioli, Mark King, Scott Lindeman, and Bill Timmes: Congratulations, and ad multos annos!

More on Kansas City-St. Joseph and the Diaconate

2011-06-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

As a much lighter sidebar to my last posting, there is an interesting tidbit of diaconal history with the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

The first (permanent) deacon ordained in the United States following the diaconate's renewal by Pope Paul VI in 1967 was Michael Cole, who was ordained by then-bishop Fulton Sheen for the Diocese of Rochester, NY on 1 June 1969. Unfortunately, Deacon Cole soon returned to his former ministry as Canon (Father) Michael Cole of the Anglican Communion, eventually pastoring a parish in Canada. The next ordination of a (permanent) deacon was that of Paul McArdle, who was ordained in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph by Bishop Charles H. Helmsing on 24 May 1970. Paul, a true pioneer of the renewed diaconate, died last year.

You may read more about this remarkable man here.

An Agonizing Decision in Kansas City-St. Joseph

2011-06-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

My good friend and brother Deacon Greg Kandra reports on the recent decision of a candidate for ordination to the diaconate to decline ordination. Read about it on "The Deacon's Bench" here. In summary, the candidate in question agonized over the decision to "promise respect and obedience" to Bishop Robert Finn and his successors; such a promise is made by every candidate for diaconal ordination, and even under the best of conditions this is a most profound and challenging promise to make! Given the recent scandals in the diocese, and Bishop Finn's own admission of negligence in reporting recent cases of abuse by a particular priest of the diocese, an open-ended promise of "respect and obedience" to this particular bishop and all future unnamed and as yet unknown holders of that office, becomes particularly challenging.

Of course there is much involved here, and we can spend a lot of time going over it if people wish. First, there is the theological understanding of "obedience" which is quite different from the more common understanding we hear every day. Second, we can reflect on the nature of the relationship between the bishop and his clergy, and third, the presence and action of the Holy Spirit working in and through the bishop, the ordinand and the entire church. In other words, this is so much more than someone promising some kind of "blind obedience."

In the deacon candidate's letter to his fellow parishioners, he refers to the fact that he is not going to be able to "respond to the call to orders which he had received." Many comments have been posted on Deacon Greg's blog and I'm sure elsewhere which take the candidate to task for not responding to God's call. As I tried to explain, though, this is highly technical and canonical (legal) language. Here's what I wrote:

I will not enter into the substance of this debate, other than to say that I applaud the man’s decision. This isn’t a question of ex opere operato or anything else. Consider the way the ritual flows at ordination. The candidates are first questioned, and they respond AS A GROUP. But then comes this last question, and the liturgical action changes. Each candidate steps forward individually, kneels in front of his bishop, places his hands in the bishop’s, and promises respect and obedience to the bishop and all of his successors in office. It is a profoundly PERSONAL moment between bishop and candidate. If the man cannot, after wrestling with all of the issues in the crucible of his conscience, make such a promise, he is right not to do so.

But the main reason I’m chiming in is to give a technical response to the question, “From whom does the call to orders come?”

Overall, of course, the call comes from God, AS DISCERNED BY COMPETENT CHURCH AUTHORITY. Both aspects are necessary. I can’t simply say, “God is calling me to be a , , , and that’s all I need.” But what the candidate in THIS case is saying is technically quite different.

See, shortly before ordination, the ordaining bishop will issue a formal document known as a “Call to Orders”; it is what officially informs the candidate that he’s supposed to show up at the ordination ceremony. For example, when I was ordained in 1990 by Cardinal James Hickey for the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, my wife and I went through our final round of interviews with him personally THE DAY BEFORE ORDINATION WAS SCHEDULED. At the end of those final interviews, the Cardinal opened his door, called in his photographer, and presented me with the official document calling me to orders. I was in the church the next day.

When I read the candidate’s letter in this case, it seemed perfectly clear to me that he was not speaking theologically or sacramentally but canonically: he had in fact received the official “Call to Orders” from Bishop Finn, but that he was not going to accept it.

Perhaps, in the future, he will.

So, what do you think? Comments? Questions?

Finally, at home in Monterey

2011-05-31T20:46:00.000-07:00

Well, friends, it's been a long time between postings. Last week, I moved into my new offices at the historic Diocese of Monterey, California. I'll be doing a variety of things here, from teaching to supervising to, well, whatever the bishop wants me to do! I finally got internet connectivity and so now I'm able to get back to the blog.

Monterey holds a special place in our hearts, since we lived here back in the late 1970's when I attended Russian language school here at the Defense Language Institute during my days in the Navy. Yesterday I drove by the school and, of course, very little remains of those old buildings! I've also been spending time at the Naval Postgraduate School, so I feel very much reconnected to my Navy roots.

So, what shall we talk about? If anyone is reading this and has any suggestions, questions, or topics you'd like to discuss, reply to this post and we'll give it a go!

Seven of the twenty-one Franciscan missions founded along the California coast by Fr. Junipero Serra are located within the Diocese of Monterey. In fact, one of them serves as the diocesan Cathedral, which is across the street from our diocesan offices. Not a bad view, and with that I'll end this post.

Moving Out, Moving In. . . .

2011-05-08T07:42:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long delay in posting. My last reflection was posting on the Easter Vigil, and I hope that everyone is having a transformative Easter season! As we gradually experience this tranformation of new life, we here are living that transformation on many personal and professional levels as well, so the liturgy and life are truly wedded.

During Easter Week, I flew to Nashville to address the annual convention of the National Association of Deacon Directors (NADD), and had the chance to spend some time with a friend from college who is now the Bishop of Nashville, Bishop Dave Choby. It was good to visit with him and to sip a little Jack Daniels and share a few stories from "the old days". Then I flew home to assist and preach at the Baccalaureate Mass for the graduates, families, faculty and administration of Saint Leo University. It was quite an honor to preach the Mass, presided over by Abbott Isaac Camacho, OSB, since this was my last official act as a member of the faculty of the University.

Actually, that's not quite true: the following day I taught my last graduate class for Saint Leo: the deacon candidates' class in the Diocese of Orlando. And the highlight of that was a Mass with the candidate community, and again, I was privileged to preach.

This past week, then, I moved out of my University office (which was about half the size of the office depicted in this photo!), and my wife and I are packing up for our move to the Diocese of Monterey, California! It will begin with a drive up to Charleston, SC, where I will spend the day with the diaconate community there, and then head out due West until we hit California!

So, keep us in prayer as we begin yet another chapter in our adventure of life and discipleship. Now that the school year is ended, I'll be posting more regularly!

Third Movement of the Paschal Symphony: The Vigil of Easter

2011-04-23T11:59:00.000-07:00

I often tell people that if they want to understand Catholicism and Catholics, all they need to do is celebrate the Sacred Triduum with us! And tonight, the Easter Vigil, is the culmination of everything!

The basic structure of the Vigil is pretty simple, consisting of four parts. The Service of Light, in which we move -- literally -- from darkness to the light of Christ. The Liturgy of the Word follows, but not in the abbreviated form we normally celebrate on Sundays! As many as seven readings from the Old Testament, each with its own responsorial psalm and reflective prayer. Following the homily, we celebrate the sacraments of intitation: baptism, reception into full communion, and confirmation. All of this moves us into the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Simple it may be, but it touches us all at the very core of our beings.

One of the great joys and challenges for the deacon is the chanting of the ancient prayer known as the Exultet. You can find the whole thing here. I find the whole prayer to be a profound Easter reflection, but one passage is particularly moving and meaningful in today's world.

The power of this holy night:

dispels all evil,

washes guilt away,

restores lost innocence,

brings mourners joy;

it casts our hatred,

brings us peace

and humbles earthly pride.

May tonight's Vigil bring us all to new life, hope and joy!

Second Movement of the Paschal Symphony: Good Friday

2011-04-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

Last night the sacred Triduum opened with the celebration of the Lord's Supper. With that celebration, the symphony of the Paschal Mystery began. A symphony is a single piece of music consisting of three major sections, or movements, and the Triduum is very much a symphony of prayer and worship. The First Movement, on Holy Thursday, concludes with the stripping bare of the altar and with the people of God following Christ to an altar of repose. Liturgically, it is most significant that there is no final blessing and dismissal, as we would have at any other Mass; in other words, the liturgy HAS NOT ENDED.

Today, as we gather this afternoon to commemorate the second movement of the Paschal Symphony, this idea continues. There is no "ordinary" entrance; I'll have more to say on that in a moment. But when the priest first speaks, it is not to give an "Opening Prayer." The rubrics are very specific that the priest offers this first prayer "with hands joined" rather than the using the orans gesture normally used for an opening prayer? Why? Because this prayer today is NOT an opening prayer; the celebration TODAY is a continuation of the celebration begun last night. At the end of this afternoon's service, notice again that there is no final blessing or dismissal; the ministers simply leave the sanctuary.

Personally, several things always "grab" me about today's service. First, at the outset, the priests and deacons prostrate ourselves in prayer. No other gesture or posture is as profound in our liturgy, in my opinion. It is an act of total surrender. To be vested as a minister of the Gospel and then, in the presence of the People of God, to lie down before God is a most awesome and vulnerable moment. For me, I am reminded of the only other time I did this: at the Mass of Ordination when I was ordained a deacon. At ordination, and now on every Good Friday, I prostrate myself before God the people I have been ordained to serve. As I said, nothing is more awesome and vulnerable.

Second, there is the sense I spoke of above that this is not a "new" service, but that we are simply entering a new phase of the sacred worship initiated last night. In many monasteries and convents, and now even in some parishes, people don't leave after the Holy Thursday celebration. Often serving in shifts throughout the night, people are in constant prayer and adoration awaiting today's movement to commence. They will remain after today's movement, in prayer and adoration, until the solemn Easter Vigil tomorrow night on Holy Saturday. One Paschal Symphony in three movements.

Third is the Rite of Communion celebrated during the service today. This is the one day of the entire year in which Mass is not to be celebrated, which would mean, normally, that communion would not be received. As one writer has put it very well, it is a day in which we should feel a "Eucharistic hunger" as Christ is in the tomb and we await Resurrection. For many centuries, in fact, communion was NOT received in Catholic churches. With the exception of those sick, imprisoned, or otherwise unable to attend Mass itself, communion should not be received outside of Mass, although bishops may make other decisions based on their assessment of pastoral need. I was once assigned as deacon to a Cathedral parish in the Midwest. After the Good Friday service, a lady approached me in great agitation. She was a visitor from Eastern Europe, and she asked me to confirm whether or not this church was a Catholic Church. I assured her that it was, and that, in fact, it was the Cathedral church of the diocese. She seemed a bit relieved, but even more confused. I asked her what was wrong. She told me that in her part of the world, Catholic churches did NOT distribute communion on Good Friday, in honor of Christ's passion and death. She was concerned that perhaps she had mistakenly come to a Protestant church and that she had "missed" a Catholic celebration. So, I ponder whether the liturgical reforms of Holy Week initiated in the 1950's by Pope Pius XII might not have gone too far by introducing a Rite of Communion outside of Mass into the Good Friday service. This is a good day, and good opportunity, to experience the void left by Christ between his death and his resurrection.

Just one deacon's reflections. . . . May you all have a prayerful and blessed celebration of Good Friday: the Second Movement of the Paschal Symphony.

And so we enter into the Triduum: Holy Thursday

2011-04-21T06:37:00.000-07:00

Tonight we enter into that most sacred time of the entire life of Christianity: the Three Days (Triduum) of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. At the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday we celebrate the climax of the Paschal Mystery as Christ overturns death and restores life. I pray that this will be an especially graced time for all of us!

Since this is a particularly busy time for many of us, I don't know how often I'll be able to post during the Triduum; some people have even "given up" their electronic ventures "for Lent." Still, I hope to post some reflections on these days as time permits.

One of the most unique features of our Celebration of the Lord's Supper tonight (Holy Thursday) is the mandatum, during which Christ's action of washing the feet of his disciples is re-enacted in our parishes, often with the clergy washing to the feet of members of the assembly. I think it is important to consider a particularly powerful moment in the Gospel account.

Following the washing of the feet, Jesus returns to his place at table and asks the disciples if they understand what he just did for them. Clueless as always, the disciples don't have an answer for him. He then remarks, "I have given you a model to follow. . . ." And this is where many people stop. "OK, Jesus washed feet; that was a service even slaves could not be commanded to do, it was so menial. This meant that usually only women did this. So, what Jesus is saying is that we all have to do this for each other, right?" Well, that's right, but only to a point! But there's much more to the story.

See, the Gospel of John uses a very unique word for that "model" or "example" that Jesus mentions. The Greek word in question is hypodeigma, and it appears in v. 15 of the passage. This expression, found only here in the New Testament, is associated with exemplary death. Jesus’ exhortation is not to moral performance but to imitation of his self-gift. . . . Entrance into the Johannine community of disciples meant taking the risk of accepting the hypodeigma of Jesus, a commitment to love even if it led to death. (For more on this passage, see Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of John (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1998), 375.

The implications of this passage for the identity of Christ as well as the identity and ministry of the apostles are profound, since it links the kenotic self-sacrifice of Christ to the life of the disciple. Just as Christ is willing to give himself completely “to the end” for the sake of others, so too must his disciples. Fr. Moloney writes, “To ‘have part with Jesus’ through washing means to be part of the self-giving love that will bring Jesus’ life to an end, symbolically anticipated by the footwashing.”

Furthermore, those who would be servant-leaders in the community of disciples are to be identified by their own self-sacrificing love in imitation of the kenosis of Christ.

So, for all of us, we should ask ourselves, "How willing am I, not only to do whatever menial tasks are necessary to care for others, but even to sacrifice my total self in their service?" This is the ultimate meaning of the mandatum.

A Reflection on Diaconate by Deacon Thomas Merton

2011-04-19T18:41:00.000-07:00

Here's another tidbit to ponder during the Holy Week, especially for deacons and deacon candidates.

Most folks are familiar with Fr. Thomas Merton, OCSO. On 19 March 1949 he was ordained a deacon, and he wrote the following reflection shortly after his ordination. As you read it, please keep in mind that in 1949, the Latin Church still had the longstanding "cursus honorum" ("course of honors") by which a man entered the clergy through a rite known as Tonsure, then progressed up the "minor orders" of porter, lector, exorcist and acolyte. He then moved on to the major orders of subdiaconate, diaconate and priesthood. The fact that the diaconate was known as one of the "major" orders explains the starting point for Merton's reflection, but as you will see, it doesn't exhaust its meaning for him.

The first thing about the diaconate is that it is big. The more I think about it the more I realize that it is a Major Order. You are supposed to be the strength of the Church. You receive the Holy Spirit ad robur, not only for yourself, but to support the whole Church.

So diaconal service, far from being focused on menial "tasks" can be seen in quite a different light. I believe that it ties in nicely with our earlier reflections on the servant-leadership to which the deacon is called and ordained.

Reflecting on Fifty Years of Priesthood: Interesting for All

2011-04-15T17:31:00.001-07:00

Today I received the following reflection from a friend of mine, a diocesan priest who is approaching his own golden jubilee. A close friend of his, who is a priest in another country, shared his own thoughts on fifty years of service as a priest. Now, why am I posting this here, on a blog focused on the ministry of the deacon? There are two main reasons.

First, I was a seminarian myself for eight years (high school and college). Had I remained in the seminary I would have been ordained to the presbyterate in 1975, placing me in the population of priests being discussed by Father in his reflection, and much of what he writes has a particular resonance with much of my own experience. In checking with other priest-friends of our generations, they too found much in common with their experiences as well. To that end, this reflection offers a good insight into these men of God and their service.

Second, I believe that as members of the church, we have a responsibility to try to place many things in perspective so as to avoid the polarization that is afflicting our society in general and the Church in particular. I often hear many strange claims made about the priests of this man's generation by people who did not live through this period of history, and his own reflections will undoubtedly frame certain questions in new ways.

I'm sure that this reflection will upset some people. I do not apologize for that, because I believe this is an honest reflection of one man's opinion. I do not ask people to agree with him on everything. But I believe it to be insightful and valuable as we reflect on the nature of ministry in general. We, as Church, are called to collaborate in caring for the People of God, and understanding each other is a critical component of that collaboration. This reflection is quite lengthy, but I believe it worth the read.

=======================================

We are the Gaudium et Spes priests. We went into the seminary at the highest rate in living memory. We were ordained between 1955 and 1975 – in double the numbers our parishes required. Most of us were from the Silent Generation with a few years of Baby Boomers at the end. We took Vatican II to heart. We changed from being priests called and consecrated by God to being presbyters called and ordained by the Church – the People of God.

Ecumenism became a normal way of thinking for us. Prepared for the challenge by Cardijn’s apostolate of like-to-like, we were successful at educating a newly vital and active laity. We worked with the people rather than for them. We realized that clericalism was an evil, not a good, and discarded it with its style and culture. We ran highly successful and active parishes. Though ageing now, many of us are still on the job. Our presbyteral and pastoral lives have been a source of that unusual experience – joy.

But not without grief. We have experienced the awakening 60s, the exciting 70s, the suspicious 80s, the depressing 90s and the imploding 00s. During the 1980s we became aware that a lot was going wrong. Ordinations suddenly dropped after 1975. We started to lose parishioners – first from Mass, then from affiliation. Both of these changes had mixed social causes.

Worse! Discordant decisions were coming down from the pope. Priestly celibacy, despite being highly contentious, was reasserted by Paul VI in 1967 without discussion. In 1968 Humanae Vitae was a shocking disappointment. Most of us never accepted it. Paul VI began appointing bishops opposed to the council’s ethos. This was most notable in Holland which had become a trailblazer in implementing the council. Paul killed that initiative and we are all the worse off for that. The whole trend was demoralizing.

Then came John Paul II. Charismatic in front of the TV camera; brilliant at languages; but – out of touch in scripture and limited in theology, a bad listener and rock solid is his self-assessment as God’s chosen man of destiny. His whole life had been spent in the persecuted church of Poland with its fortress church mentality frozen in time.

The open dialogue of the Church with the new ideas and values arising out of new knowledge in scriptural criticism, theology, psychology, sociology, anthropology stopped. New scientific discoveries in genetics were treated with suspicion and their application usually condemned. Sexual mores were promoted to the top shelf of his panorama of sin – a bit of an obsession with him.

Power corrupts. The history of the papacy shows this pre-eminently. Unchecked potentates believe their own propaganda. Taken to the extreme, they claim infallibility. Pius IX bullied Vatican I into institutionalizing such a claim. Since then creeping infallibility has resulted in the pope and his theologically limited curia stealing the term “magisterium” from its real owners – the college of professional theologians. How can you conscientiously give assent of mind and heart to policies formed without theological debate, consultation, transparency or accountability? In contemporary government and business this would be judged unethical.

John Paul’s lust for power showed very early and was taken to monumental proportions. Accountable to nobody, John Paul moved against any opinion other than his own and removed many exponents of alternative opinions from teaching and publishing. His most powerful enforcer was the Ratzinger-led Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Other Roman dicasteries joined the campaign.

The CDF is the current euphemism for the Inquisition. True to its mediaeval roots, it assumes the pope to be entitled to enforce his views. It conducts its deliberations and proceedings in secret. In today’s secular world this is a violation of human rights.

Theological censorship justifies itself as the quest for the truth and poses as truth’s champion. In fact it is the enemy of the discovery of truth because discussion is forestalled. The contemporary secular world understands this and wisely enshrines freedom of speech and debate as a central value. The Church no less than any other enterprise is at least the poorer and at worst prone to error when it rejects this value.

All of us are abused by this process. The priest at the coal face is not consulted, yet is contemptuously expected to defend policies he and his people do not believe. John Paul II also enforced much of his own devotional life on the church at large. Despite Vatican II he effectively stopped the third rite of Penance, reversed a burgeoning dynamic theology of Eucharist by reverting to and re-emphasising devotion to the static Real Presence, reinforced a distorted devotion to Mary based on fundamentalist theology and introduced peculiar devotions such as Sr. Faustina’s Divine Mercy Devotion which undercuts Easter – the climax of our liturgical year.

A more grievous abuse of power by John Paul II was his appointment of bishops. Appointees were to be clerical, compliant and in total agreement with his personal opinions. This has emasculated the leadership of the Church. The episcopal ranks are now low on creativity, leadership, education and even intelligence. Many are from the ranks of Opus Dei – reactionary, authoritarian and decidedly not creative. Many, often at the top of the hierarchical tree, are embarrassingly ignorant of any recent learning in scripture, theology and scientific disciplines. Many are classic company boys. Some of the more intelligent and better educated seem to have sold their souls for advancement. Can they really believe the line they channel? Ecclesiastical politics have trumped integrity. And when these men are appointed as the leaders of priests without any consultation they become a standing act of contempt.

Worse still, this happened over a period when the priesthood held its biggest proportion of intelligent, educated and competent leaders. It was those very qualities which blackballed them for appointment under the blinkered but powerful regime. Our best chance has been missed. Today the ranks of the priesthood are depleted due to low recruitment over the last forty years. The pool from which future bishops must be chosen is very shallow.

A newly critical laity questions policy but receives no answers. Why can’t women be leaders in the Church? Why do priests have to be celibate? What is wrong with contraception? Why alienate remarried divorcees? Why this salacious preoccupation with sexual mores? Why are scientific advances always suspected of being bad? Why can’t we recognize the reality of homosexual orientation – and the social consequences of that recognition? Have we learnt nothing from the Galileo case – or the treatment of Teilhard de Chardin? Can’t we escape the Syllabus of Errors mentality?

Benedict XVI has continued the reversal of Vatican II. He is imposing a new English translation of the Sacramentary on a resisting English speaking constituency. This may very well backfire because many priests are not going to implement it. Benedict has received back bishops from the schismatic Society of St Pius X. He has encouraged the Tridentine Mass in Latin. He has reintroduced kneeling for communion on the tongue at his public Masses – all deliberate key pointers to regression from the spirit of Vatican II. To the priests who embraced Vatican II they are iconic insults.

Then he has the nerve to decree a Year for Priests in 2009 with St John Vianney as patron. Like Fr. Donald Cozzens, many felt they were being played. The celebration of the importance of priests in the church is belied by the contempt with which they are treated. How can Rome call priests to repentance when it is so recalcitrant; so slow to admit any failing of its own? How can they be serious in stressing the importance of the priest as confessor when it is clear that confession has all but vanished from the life of the Church? How can they urge Holy Hours and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament when most priests have moved on from that static theology of Eucharist to a dynamic one – with Vatican II leading the way? How can they urge priests to more intense prayer when they show no evidence of a change of heart or attitude – the genuine indicator that prayer is working?

We took as normal the world and the church into which we were ordained. In reality, the religious affiliation of the period was abnormally high. Mass and sacramental participation and priestly vocations were at a high water mark. The reversal which began in the late 60s was always going to happen. But with Vatican II we had the tools to handle the new situation. A large group of the priests were ready to meet the challenge. They did not get the chance. T he orders from above were to withdraw to the fortress and sing the old song. Instead of embracing the new they lost the opportunity and left us high and dry – and disappointed.

In the western world priests still always rate highly in job satisfaction surveys. They generally enjoy their job and do it well. That is because they are happy in their own patch. But they feel betrayed by the pope and the bishops. If you ask them what they think about the powers up top and where the official show is going you get a very different answer.

Deacons and Diakonia: "Configured to Christ the Servant"

2011-04-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

For the last seven or eight years, I have written a monthly column -- "Priests and Deacons" -- for The Priest, which is a periodical published by Our Sunday Visitor. Subscribers can access articles online here. Recently, I have been reviewing several foundational documents, speeches and catecheses on the diaconate. One such text is an address given by Pope John Paul II to a joint plenary assembly of the Congregation for Clergy and the Congregation for Catholic Education on 30 November 1995. The Congregations were gathering to prepare two documents on the diaconate, which were eventually published in Feburary, 1998. This papal address was the official launch of this project. I think it would be interesting to share some of it here as part of our reflection on deacons and the ministry of charity.

Entitled "Deacons Are Configured to Christ the Servant," the whole address is excellent, but one paragraph is particularly rich in significance. Here's the first part of what the pope had to say:

“The exercise of the diaconal ministry—like that of other ministries in the Church—requires per se of all deacons, celibate or married, a spiritual attitude of total dedication. Although in certain cases it is necessary to make the ministry of the diaconate compatible with other obligations, to think of oneself and to act in practice as a ‘part-time deacon’ would make no sense. The deacon is not a part-time employee or ecclesiastical official, but a minister of the Church. His is not a profession, but a mission!”

Deacons often find themselves dealing with a common misperception on the part of some presbyters and laity that they are, in fact, “part-time” ministers. Such a misperception places the locus of ministry on formal ecclesial structures themselves; the deacon, however, as a full-time minister, exercises diaconal ministry across the full range of human activity: whether he is at home with his family, at work in a secular profession, or functioning at church. At all times and in every venue he is, in fact, acting as a sacred minister of the Church, and the pope makes this point perfectly clear.

However, the pope wasn't just talking to other people about deacons; his words are important for deacons themselves. Immediately after the quote above, he continued:

“It is the circumstances of his life -- prudently evaluated by the candidate himself and by the bishop, before ordination -- which should, if necessary, be adapted to the exercise of his ministry by facilitating it in every way. The many problems which are still to be resolved and are of concern to pastors should be examined in this light. The deacon is called to be a person open to all, ready to serve people, generous in promoting just social causes, avoiding attitudes or positions which could make him appear to show favoritism. In fact, a minister of Jesus Christ, even as a citizen, must always promote unity and avoid, as far as possible, being a source of disunity or conflict."

Notice how the pope changes the focus of his comments: it is not only others who need to appreciate the fundamental sacramental identity of the deacon, but the deacon himself must evaluate the rest of his life in light of that identity! Furthermore, it is the other dimensions of his life that are to be adapted to the demands of ordained ministry, not the other way around. This is a topic every diaconal aspirant and candidate, and all deacons, and all the wives of aspirants, candidates and deacons, should consider prayerfully and honestly. How one’s life is forever re-oriented as a result of diaconal ordination lies at the very heart and expression of the deacon’s sacramental identity.

With this observation, the pope reminds pastors (including bishops) that this is a concern that they too must address. The deacon is not someone who simply “fits in” the ministerial program as he can; he is a vital member of the ministry and must be treated as such. Finally, the pope offers a rather nice summary of the pastoral attitude which ought to be the deacon’s: he is to be the very sign of what it means to be Catholic: “open to all, ready to serve people, generous in promoting just social causes.” While all people are called to this, the deacon sacramentalizes these traits. The deacon must avoid anything that (“attitudes or positions”) which could be perceived as showing favoritism for one person (or group of persons) over others. I find it particularly interesting that the pope even highlights the deacon’s role in what me considered the political sphere: that as “a minister of Jesus Christ, even as a citizen, [the deacon] must always promote unity and avoid, as far as possible, being a source of disunity or conflict.

This section of the pope’s address offers a wonderful reflection on the proper orientation of the deacon, a vision of how the deacon ought not only be perceived by others, but how he should see and understand himself and the ordained ministry in which he participates. It is, in fact, a kind of diaconal world view which can form the foundation of a healthy, well-integrated and transformative diaconate in the Church today.

What do you think? Apply some of these papal insights to contemporary ministry.

Talk amongst yourselves!

Deacons and Diakonia: Too Many Deacons?

2011-03-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

Recently the Diocese of Worcester announced that it was suspending its diaconate formation program pending a thorough review of the pastoral needs of the diocese. You can read about it here. The basic question seems to be: "Do we have enough deacons?"

This raises some interesting areas for discussion, especially in light of what we've already examined about the nature of the diaconate. The article mentions the possibility that there might be enough deacons to meet the needs of the diocese. Deacon Gerald Du Pont, the current head of the National Association of Deacon Directors, and Fr. Shawn MacKnight, the Executive Director of the Secretariat for Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops were both interviewed for the article.

I simply would like to make two points:

1) No one should ever be ordained to any order (bishop, deacon, presbyter) if there is no pastoral need for that ministry. The ordained ministries do not exist for the good of the ordained themselves, but for the common good and building up of the whole People of God (see, for example, Lumen gentium 18). We don't often think of this important dimension; it is far more common to speak of the vocation a particular person receives and then responds to. When approached in this way, a vocation can be (mistakenly) as a personal thing: "I have received a vocation from God to be [bishop, presbyter, deacon]." However, that is only half the story: an ecclesial vocation is, in fact, just that -- a vocation exercised with and for the Church. Lumen gentium 29 further states: "It pertains to the competent territorial bodies of bishops, of one kind or another, with the approval of the Supreme Pontiff, to decide whether and where it is opportune for such deacons to be established for the care of souls." Therefore, to review the pastoral needs of a diocese in terms of the ordained ministers needed is certainly appropriate.

2) However, here's the rub. The question becomes: How do we determine the needs of the diocesan Church? It is in response to this question that I think we sometimes jump to wrong conclusions. There is too often a tendency to filter this question through pastors and parishes: "What do our parishes need?" "How will the deacon fit into these needs?" But the church is not confined to parishes, nor is the church's service exercised solely through parishes. Certainly it is important to know about specific parochial needs; but we must ensure that someone is assessing the needs of the broader church and community, and this is precisely a principal diaconal venue of service.

The problem really only arises when deacons are understood primarily as PARISH ministers, not if they are understood as ministering in venues that transcend the parish.

Further the "funding" of the diaconate should never come solely from parish resources. Whoever "pays" for something feels like they "own" something. If the deacon is truly a diocesan minister, then the diocese needs to find extra-parochial sources for funding.

In conclusion, I would suggest that it is perfectly reasonable to assess the pastoral needs of the diocesan church for ordained ministry; however, in the assessment of those needs vis-a-vis the diaconate, it should be ensured the widest possible lens be used, and that more than parish-centered needs be worked into the equation.

Deacon: Apostolic Leader in Service

2011-03-25T17:50:00.000-07:00

Several months ago, I began a series of reflections on the participation of the deacon in the three-fold functions of Word, Sacrament and Charity. I had finished the first two munera but never covered the final function of "charity." Let's rectify that at long last.

First, let me point out a few things by way of introduction. The three-fold office of Word, Sacrament and Charity is described by the Second Vatican Council as the role of the bishop, and all three functions are referred to collectively as a "diakonia," a "service" or "ministry." It's important, I believe to highlight these points: the fullness of these functions are, in fact, the ministry of the bishop, in whose ministry the deacon (and presbyter) participates; and, second, ALL THREE functions are to be understood as "diakonia". Quite frequently, people mistakenly assume that "diakonia" refers only to the third of the functions, that of "charity." It does not, and "charity" does not exhaust the concept of "diakonia," or service.

This explains why I prefer to use the word "charity" for the third function, not "service" as one often reads. One last time: all three sets of functions are "service."

As I reflect on the various forms of ministry that "charity" can be exercised, I would like to make two observations: 1) ALL Christian disciples are called to serve as agents of God's love and concern, not "just" deacons. It doesn't take ordination to visit the sick, care for the homeless, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and so on -- it flows from our sacramental initiation! We are not ordained primarily to "do" charity so that other people don't have to; we shouldn't think, "OK, now I'm ordained, so now I can do prison ministry" (for example). Doesn't work that way. 2) What is reflected in the church's teaching on the diaconate and in our theology of Order is that all ordained ministries involve the charism of LEADERSHIP. I have written extensively about this before. This dimension of leadership applies as much to the order of deacons as much as it does to the order of bishops and the order of presbyters.

Since ordained ministry is a participation in the apostolic ministry, I sometimes refer to deacons as "apostolic leaders in service".

Therefore, as we begin our reflection the deacon's role in "charity," I suggest that we ask how the deacon LEADS (understood as servant-leadership) in this role. What traits associated with good leadership would apply here? Leaders are people with vision, who can inspire others to share and be engaged in realizing that vision; a leader cares for the people who serve with him or her; a leader is a good steward on behalf of others. I believe that this is at the heart of what Pope Paul VI had in mind when he described deacons as the "animators of the Church's service" and when Pope John Paul II taught that the deacon's ministry "is the church's service sacramentalized."

Flying Time: 21 Years of Ordained Ministry

2011-03-24T17:05:00.000-07:00

Twenty-one years ago tomorrow, on 25 March 1990, I was ordained to the Order of Deacons by my archbishop, James Cardinal Hickey of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC. The photograph below was taken during the concluding doxology of the ordination liturgy, with me elevating the chalice for the first time alongside the Cardinal.

Standing there that day, I had no inkling of the path of ordained ministry on which I was embarking. At that moment, I was a Commander in the United States Navy, and I was being ordained ahead of my class because the Navy was sending me to Okinawa to serve as Executive Officer of a base there. My first diaconal assignment from Cardinal Hickey was to be released from the archdiocese for service with the Archdiocese for Military Services, USA. My intention at the moment of ordination was to finish my tour on Okinawa and then to return to Washington to teach and to serve as a deacon. Clearly the Holy Spirit had other plans.

That first assignment on Okinawa was a wonderful introduction to ordained service. I worked with some great Air Force chaplains at Kadena Air Base, where we lived. Many of my sailors, who also lived on Kadena, were also parishioners, making for an interesting blend of service! There were challenges during the tour, but overall it was a most positive experience. I focused a lot on adult faith formation, as well as sacramental preparation, preaching and serving with local Franciscan Capuchin missionaries in the local community. At the end of that tour, having served 22 years on active duty in the Navy, I retired and returned to the United States.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good job in Washington to support my family, so we returned to the Midwest where I served as Associate Principal and Director of Curriculum and Instruction at a regional Catholic high school. In addition to serving at the high school, I was a deacon assigned to a large parish, along with two other deacons. Again, we were blessed with wonderful pastors; again, I worked closely with adult faith formation and the RCIA team. I also worked with the diocesan diaconate formation office.

Out of the blue, after two years, I received a phone call from Cardinal Hickey, inviting me to come back out to Washington to take over the archdiocesan diaconate office. After being a deacon for only five years at this point, I was now going to be responsible for the formation, ministry and life of more than 250 permanent deacons; that was a scary thought, but it was an exciting prospect, and it was a wonderful experience. I also became a consultant to the national office associated with the diaconate at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, DC. In particular, I was blessed to be asked to serve as a member of the editorial committee developing the National Directory for the Formation, Ministry and Life of Permanent Deacons in the United States. Additional diocesan ministry followed, serving as Director of Pastoral Services in two other dioceses before finally joining the senior staff of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. I served there for more than five years, and in that capacity, became involved with the diaconate, not only here in the States, but in the international community as well. All of this has become the foundation of the last four years teaching undergraduate and graduate students.

In short, the past twenty-one years have been an unbelievable and totally unanticipated and unpredictable path, and I'm looking forward to the continued surprises the Holy Spirit has in store for the NEXT twenty-one years!

On the Road Again: Rome

2011-03-10T23:04:00.000-08:00

This is a big weekend for three of us who have been working now for several years to establish an international institute for the advanced study of the diaconate. Along with Deacon Dr. Enzo Petrolino of Italy and Deacon Rob Mascini of the Netherlands, we three have worked out the details with the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education and with the major Roman pontifical universities to begin the institute in the summer of 2012. The Institute has received enthusiastic support from the Vatican and from the universities, and this weekend's meetings will finalize many of the administrative details. These are being handled by the Gregorian University, and we will be establishing fees, procedures and even some of the housing details. So, we will soon be able to announce and advertise the specifics.

The Institute will be truly international. We have professors lined up from the United States, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany who will teach advanced courses (i.e., graduate level) for academic credit either through the professor's home institution or from the associated pontifical university. Courses will range from biblical and patristic studies to systematic and canonical courses, and to spirituality and liturgy. At this point, courses will be taught in Italian and English, although we will probably expand to German and Spanish as the programs develop.

At this point we're considering a three-week block of time in the early summer. Each course would be one week in length, with intensive sessions in the morning hours followed by research/tours and other activities in the afternoons. In this way, students might opt to take ONE course (one week), or THREE courses (if they stay the whole three-week period). These will be designed for graduate or post-graduate students who will be expected to have read extensively before coming to Rome for the course, and to pursue a serious research project following the course. Courses would be open to any and all qualified and interested students.

I'll keep you posted!

A Tidbit from Vatican II: Reflecting on the "Hierarchy"

2011-02-22T08:09:00.000-08:00

I am a student of the Second Vatican Council. I was actually in high school seminary during the last three sessions of the Council, and then in college seminary during the first years of its implementation. The Council was so formative for all of us at that time! In my studies since that time, Vatican II has always been the foundation for what I've been involved in, and it has been this study that led me to the diaconate.

This semester I am blessed to be teaching a course on the Council to a group of upperclassmen. We are focusing on the major documents of the Council. One of the classic bits of history concerning the Council concerns the re-crafting of the foundational document The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen gentium). It went through several drafts, with the world's bishops rejecting the first draft as completely inadequate to the task. Many bishops spoke against the first draft, and still more submitted written objections to it.

Perhaps no one was more clear and concise in his concerns than the 53-year old bishop of Bruges, Belgium, Emiel-Jozef De Smedt. He was ordained a bishop at the age of 40, and served as bishop of Bruges from 1960 until 1984, and didn't pass into eternal life until 1995. In his speech to the Council about his concerns with the first draft of Lumen gentium, the bishop spoke of three areas of concern: 1) the draft's triumphalism in tone and content; 2) the draft's clericalism; and 3) the draft's juridicism. His concerns were overwhelmingly affirmed by the Council Fathers and the draft was sent back to Committee for a complete overhaul.

While there is much to consider in Bishop De Smedt's intervention (speech), I was struck once again by his comments on clericalism, and thought I would post a brief quotation here so that it might serve as a point of reflection by all who are, by definition, part of the hierarchy. Officially, the "hierarchy" of the Catholic Church includes all of the three orders of ordained ministry: bishops, deacons and presbyters. So the following quote applies to all of them:

In the first chapters of the Draft the traditional picture of the Church predominates. You know the pyramid: the pope, the bishops, the priests, who preside and, when they receive the powers, who teach, sanctify, and govern; then, at the bottom, the Christian people who instead receive and somehow seem to occupy second place in the Church.

We should note that hierarchical power is only something transitory. It belongs to our status on the way. In the next life, in the final state, it will no longer have a purpose, because the elect will have reached perfection, perfect unity in Christ. What remains is the People of God; what passes is the ministry of the hierarchy.

In the People of God we are all joined to others and have the same basic rights and duties. We all share in the royal priesthood of the People of God. The pope is one of the faithful; bishops, priests, lay people, religious: we are all the faithful. We go to the same sacraments; we all need the forgiveness of sins, the eucharistic bread, and the Word of God; we are all heading towards the same homeland, by God's mercy and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

But as long as the People of God is on the way, Christ brings it to perfection by means of the sacred ministry of the hierarchy. All power in the Church is for ministering, for serving: a ministry of the Word, a ministry of grace, a ministry of governance. We did not come to be served but to serve.

We must be careful lest in speaking about the Church we fall into a kind of hierarchism, clericalism, episcopolatry, or papolatry. What is most important is the People of God; to this People of God, to this Bride of the Word, to this living Temple of the Holy Spirit, the hierarchy must supply its humble services so that it may grow and reach perfect manhood, the fullness of Christ. Of this growing life the hierarchical Church is the good mother: Mother Church.

A great reminder to all of us yet today!

"Have Stole, Will Travel"

2011-02-22T07:48:00.000-08:00

Remember that old TV show from 1957-1963 starring Richard Boone, "Have Gun, Will Travel"? Well, I'm thinking of putting a similar statement on my own business card, "Have Stole, Will Travel." Effective 1 June, I will leave my current University teaching position and my wife and I will head West, for the great State of California. I will be responsible for supporting a number of pastoral ministries in the Diocese of Monterey. I will direct the offices of catechetical ministries, youth and campus ministry, lay and deacon formation, pastoral planning and so on: whatever the bishop asks me to do. With the bishop's full support, I will continue to travel and to teach, especially on matters related to the priesthood and the diaconate.

None of that will affect us here at the blog, however! But I ask that you keep my wife and I in your prayers as we make another transition. After a lifetime of moving for the US Navy, including a wonderful tour in Monterey some years ago, we are looking forward to moving back to such a beautiful area of God's creation.

Thanks!

A Letter to a Newly-Ordained Deacon

2011-02-10T16:44:00.000-08:00

The most recent issue of the National Catholic Reporter contains an article I wrote in the form of a letter to a newly-ordained deacon.

You can read it here.

The Anawim, the Beatitudes, Deacons and Cairo

2011-02-01T09:12:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday's readings spoke of the "anawim", the faithful remnant of Israel who in the face of hardship, persecution and powerlessness, turned themselves totally over to God. It is to the "anawim" that Christ directs the Beatitudes. Not only are we called to serve the anawim in our own day, but to recognize that we are all called to be anawim -- to give ourselves over completely to God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, when preparing to address the beatitudes, speaks directly of "Our Vocation to Beatitude."

Thanks to my friend Deacon Eric Stoltz, a contemporary reflection on the anawim and the beatitudes may be found on his website here.

Given what is going on in Cairo and elsewhere at this very moment, now is a wonderful time for such a reflection, and I thank Eric profoundly for his work. I would also pose a question for the deacons among us: There are, literally, only a handful of Catholic deacons in Egypt: What do you think they are doing right now? Let's keep everyone in prayer. . . .

So, sexuality and sexual continence: Where are we?

2011-01-25T08:30:00.002-08:00

The questions raised by Dr. Edward Peters concerning c. 277 and clerical continence vis-a-vis married clergy in the Latin Church are all very interesting. In his very helpful summary of what he believes to be the four courses of action possible in this matter, I found the last to be particularly fascinating. In his original Studia Canonica article, he gives a review of the history of the clerical continence, maintaining that this has been the constant tradition of the (Latin) church. So, his fourth "possibility" maintains that "Neither deacons nor priests, if married, need observe any sort of continence" and that this would be a complete abandonment of the Tradition and would therefore, if this change accurately reflects the current mens ecclesiae, require that this change be expressed clearly in the law.

I don't disagree with this conclusion -- that the law should be clearly stated to avoid confusion -- but I do have questions for consideration which seem to me warrant further attention.

1. Granting the weight of Dr. Peters' historical evidence of the Western connection between orders and continence (although I'd be very interested in a church historian's take on all of this), I want to ask: "Why did the Latin church adopt this position in history? What was it about human sexuality and the use of the sexual gift -- even within marriage -- that somehow made this "unsuitable" or "inconsistent" with ordained ministry? For argument's sake, let us hypothesize that perhaps such a connection was made on the basis of a misplaced dualism which saw human sexuality and its exercise as somehow sinful or "dirty": if this were demonstrable, then perhaps it would be high time to move in a different direction that more clearly reflects the church's CURRENT teaching and understanding of human sexuality, including sexual intercourse, within marriage. In such an understanding, (active) sexuality and orders would be seen as complementary, positive values, and not as a condition in which one must be sublimated to the other.

What do you think?

2. Dr. Peters, if you happen to read this, I have a question for you. This is not meant as a debating point, because I truly and simply just want to understand a particular point better. If you don't see it here, I'll post in on your blog:

In my original post in this matter, I made a point of looking at related canons from the Eastern Code. You dismissed this, if I understand correctly, because you are speaking solely and discretely of the Latin Code; is this correct?

My point, however, is this: While the Codes are distinct, of course, I'm approaching this from a broader ecclesiological perspective, I believe. The Church is ONE, so when we consider our Tradition and our traditions, I believe that we need to let the traditions inform one another. I am not saying that "the East is always right" on an issue, but neither can we say that the West has all of the insights either (I know, Dr. Peters, that you are not saying that; I'm simply being hyperbolic). My point is that we should, as John Paul II liked to say, "breathe with both lungs." So, for me, it IS a matter of interest on how the Eastern churches view this issue of continence currently.

What do you think? This question is not addressed to Dr. Peters only! Chat amongst yourselves!

So I leave town for a few days and look at what happens!

2011-01-17T10:15:00.001-08:00

Over on my friend Deacon Greg Kandra's blog The Deacon's Bench, things have been heating up a bit. Deacon Greg posted some information about an opinion of noted canonist Dr. Edward Peters on the subject of clerical continence for married clergy, which would of course, include married (permanent) deacons. Here's Deacon Greg's original post, and here is the link to Dr. Peters' position, well laid out with suitable references. In response to Deacon Greg's post, Dr. Peters' son entered the lists with his own piece, found here.

So, why am I about to make a modest offering in this debate? Long before Dr. Peters wrote his article in Studia Canonica, several theologians had offered similar positions which most other theologians dismissed as not being what was in the mind of the Church when renewing a diaconate permanently exercised; this rather abrubt dismissal was probably unfortunate, in that the questions raised should have been tackled directly. I first became aware of the general argument: that married clerics following ordination ought to remain sexually continent, in 2002 when I arrived on the staff of the USCCB in Washington. A theological paper had been sent to the Conference on the issue; it was ultimately decided that no action would be taken on it at that time. Then, in 2005, Dr. Peters published his article in Studia Canonica. I often inquired among canonist-friends whether they were going to develop any kind of response to the arguments presented, and most declined (and still others suggested that it might be helpful if I, as a theologian, would write a response). I have always hesitated precisely because I am not a canonist, and Dr. Peters' arguments are made solidly from within a canonist's frame of reference.

However, because I belive the matter does warrant further discourse, I'm willing to make a modest effort. I want to be perfectly clear, however, about two very important things:

1) What I am posting here is NOT an academic research piece for submission to a learned journal. I may try to develop such a piece, but I caution my readers that this is a BLOG, and only a blog. I hope that this may be of some help to readers with questions or concerns, but it does not present itself as any kind of definitive response. At best it is an interim response.

2) As I said above, I am a theologian (Ph.D., the Catholic University of America), not a canonist. That needs to be borne in mind.

OK, down to cases.

Here's the canon that is at issue. This is c.277 from the 1983 Code of Canon Law: § 1. Clerics are obliged to observe perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and therefore are bound to celibacy which is a special gift of God by which sacred ministers can adhere more easily to Christ with an undivided heart and are able to dedicate themselves more freely to the service of God and humanity. § 2. Clerics are to behave with due prudence towards persons whose company can endanger their obligation to observe continence or give rise to scandal among the faithful. § 3. The diocesan bishop is competent to establish more specific norms concerning this matter and to pass judgment in particular cases concerning the observance of this obligation.

So let's begin with the definition of some of the key terms:

1) Celibacy can be defined as "the state of being unmarried." In its broadest terms, as we sometimes hear it used in popular "culture", the term itself makes no assertion about a person's sexual activity or lack of sexual activity. It is, simply, the state of being unmarried. As we all know, unmarried persons often engage in sexual activity! Obviously, within the Church, when we speak of celibacy, we generally include the understanding that a person is living appropriate within their state of life with regard to the sexual gift. Therefore a Christian celibate (such as most Catholic presbyters in the Latin Church) would be assumed to be abstaining from sexual relations, since the Church teaches that the only proper use of the sexual faculty is within marriage. Not married = no sex.

2) Chastity can be defined as the integration of one's sexual faculty within the context of that person's state of life. The Catechism reminds as that ALL persons are called to chastity, whether celibate or married. Again, popular culture, "chastity" is often equated with "abstinence" or "continence" when the meaning is actually much broader. There is, for example, a married chastity which would include proper sexual activity within that marriage.

3) Continence is abstinence from sexual activity, either permanently (such as in the case of a professed religious who vows such continence) or temporarily.

Back to c. 277. "Clerics are obliged to observe perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and therefore are bound to celibacy which is a special gift of God by which sacred ministers can adhere more easily to Christ with an undivided heart and are able to dedicate themselves more freely to the service of God and humanity." The law states "clerics" -- and that certainly involves deacons -- are OBLIGED to observe perfect and perpetual continence. . . ." So far, so clear. Unless and until certain categories of clerics might be exempted from this obligation, it applies to all, including married deacons (by the way, for the record, I must point out for clarity that not all permanent deacons are married deacons; to reduced this question to "celibate priests" and "married deacons" would be a gross oversimplification, since we have married priests and we have celibate permanent deacons!).

By way of background, this section of the Code is referring to matters relating to all orders of the clergy. So, we have to find if there is anything that might exempt married or permanent deacons from any of these things. Other canons in this section, for example, legislate that clerics are obliged to wear clerical attire, that they are to avoid secular occupations and so forth. Many of these things simply could not apply to permanent deacons, who most often work in the secular world (I was a career Navy officer! It would have been tough to wear clerical attire while on duty!). So, we find at the end of this section of the Code something I like to call "the deacon's canon." It's canon 288, and it reads:

The prescripts of cann. 284, 285, §§3 and 4, 286, and 287, §2 do not bind permanent deacons unless particular law establishes otherwise.

Interesting point: Notice that c. 277 about clerical continence isn't there! So, so far, Dr. Peters appears to be correct. The law does not seem to remove the obligation for perfect and perpetual continence in the case of permanent deacons.

According to Dr. Peters' original article, during the preparation of the new Code of Canon Law, such a statement, removing this obligation for permanent deacons, was included. However, for no known reason, it was removed prior to the promulgation of the Code. The problem for me is this: Its absence from the Code does not seem dispositive. It's not there. No one in authority has explained why it is not there. It just isn't. Therefore, I don't believe I can take that silence or absence to reach any fully substantiated conclusion; neither can Dr. Peters: he can't use "silence" to prove his case any more than I can use it to make mine. However, what may I nonetheless infer from that silence? One, I can infer that Dr. Peters' conclusion is correct and that married clerics are bound to continence. Two, I can infer that there was a mistake made and that particular statement exempting deacons was left out simply by a clerical (no pun intended) error. Three, I can infer that those responsible for the drafting of the Code felt that such a statement was not necessary because of other statements in the Code itself which would indicate this obligation did not bind married clerics. For sake of argument, I'm going with inference #3. Here's why.

What else does c. 277 say? After it imposes the obligation, it goes on to use a very important, and I submit, critically important Latin word, ideoque. Ever since I first read Dr. Peters' article in Studia, this word has troubled me. Ideoque has a variety of meanings, most usually translated as "therefore." In the English translation of the canon above, "and therefore are bound to celibacy. . . ." Now having studied Latin myself for many years, I'm never far from the wonderful Latin Dictionary by Lews and Short, and the entry for ideo offers the meanings of "for that reason, on that account, therefore." So it seems quite clear that, while continence is the fundamental "value" being addressed in the canon, this continence is to be lived out ("for that reason") in the celibate state. Celibacy flows from the desire for continence.

But here's my question: If clerical CELIBACY flows from the desire for clergy to be CONTINENT, then wouldn't the very removal of the requirement for CELIBACY in the case of certain clerics not also remove the requirement for CONTINENCE? (I'm not shouting here; I'm simply typing for emphasis.) All clerics are to be continent. Therefore, all clerics are to be celibate. But not all clerics are celibate. Therfore, not all clerics are continent.

In the case of married permanent deacons, clerical celibacy is not required. According to c. 1042: a candidate for orders who is married is "impeded" from ordination "unless he is legitimately destined to the permanent diaconate." So, with the removal of the obligation of clerical celibacy, it would seem to me that likewise the obligation for clerical continence is removed. If the church wishes all of her clergy to be continent, then all of her clergy must be celibate. If there is a category of clerics for which celibacy is not obligatory, then it seems reasonable to infer that the church does not wish to impose continence either.

Let's look at more sources. The Eastern Catholic Churches have married clergy. What does the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches have to say about all of this that might help our interpretation? Let me invoke again my disclaimers above: I am not a canonist, nor have I made a scientific study of the Codes, especially the CCEO, but in my rather cursory review, I found NO mention whatsoever of continence, clerical or otherwise. In the section of the law pertaining to clerics, however, I did find these three canons to be pertinent:

CCEO, canon 373: "Clerical celibacy chosen for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and suited to the priesthood is to be greatly esteemed everywhere, as supported by the tradition of the whole church; likewise, the hallowed practice of married clerics in the primitive church and in the tradition of the Eastern Churches throughout the ages is to be held in honor."

CCEO, canon 374: "Clerics, celibate or married, are to excel in the virtue of chastity; it is for the particular law to establish suitable means for pursuing this end."

CCEO, canon 375: "In leading family life and in educating children, married clergy are to show an outstanding example to other Christian faithful."

Now I may have missed something, but I find it interesting that none of this invokes "continence" in specific. As noted in our definitions above, a celibate cleric would be bound to continence, and all clerics are bound to chastity, but those are not the same thing. Not only are we speaking of the same Catholic Church here, we must acknowledge that the Eastern Catholic Churches have as venerable a history as the Latin Church (and in some ways even more ancient), so an appeal to any historical connection between clerical continence and celibacy must account for this silence on the point in the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches.

Dr. Peters refers to this ancient historical connection. Even granting and respecting any such historicity, however, does not bind the church in perpetuity, either. While we honor our history we are not necessarily and in every instance restricted to it. And here we enter into the next chapter of the discussion.

Space doesn't permit me to do much more here, but let me pose the next question: What was it that the church was intending with the renewal of a diaconate permanently exercised? Was it simply a return to the ancient diaconate of patristic times, or was this to be an ancient order re-envisioned for the contemporary church? I have argued extensively elsewhere the latter position, so I won't recount all of that here. New wine should go into new wineskins, so maybe it IS time that the law in the Latin church be modified accordingly to be clear on this point. The great canonist Fr. Jim Provost once pointed out that what remained to be done in future revisions to the Code of Canon Law was for a more complete and substantive treatment of the permanent diaconate in its own right, and I strongly support that insight. Fr. Provost also offered his own critique of the position taken by Dr. Peters by focusing the mutual rights acquired by a married couple through the celebration of the sacrament of Matrimony.

Finally, let me conclude with a final reflection. Law serves the Church. Law is to reflect the theology of the Church. As the Church and her theology changes, so too must the law. So, to interpret the law, it seems to me (a theologian) one must first look at the theological sources for the law. Such a theological hermeneutic seems to me quite obvious. So, when considering the permanent diaconate, what has the church had to say about all of this OUTSIDE of the law?

At no point, in any conciliar or post-conciliar official document has there ever been a single statement that directed permanent deacons were to remain continent following ordination. It is not in any of the Council documents, it is not in any papal statements, nor is there any mention of it in any of the several documents promulgated by the Holy See concerning the nature and exercise of the permanent deacon. No pope, no dicastery, has ever exhorted their married deacons to observe continence; in fact, we have been encouraged to be completely faithful and diligent in carrying out all of the responsibilities, duties and dimensions of family life. Interestingly, for many deacons and their wives who have had children AFTER ordination, there has been no public outcry that some kind of canon has been violated, or has such a deacon been dealt with by means of loss of faculties or suspension from ministry. If such a connection as posited by Dr. Peters was of such importance to the Latin Church (it clearly is not in the Eastern Churches), you would think that SOMEONE in authority would have acted accordingly. In this case, theological and pastoral praxis seems to provide a powerful hermeneutic for approaching the law.

Therefore, it seems to me that, clearly, the mind of the church is such that there is NO expectation of clerical continency by married deacons, despite Dr. Peters' claims. Perhaps he is correct that the law should be changed to prevent any similar misunderstanding in the future.

I'm B-A-C-K!

2011-01-17T07:20:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delay in updating the blog, friends. We have kicked off a new semester, and I had to head out in between classes to visit two wonderful dioceses. First, I went to the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas at the invitation of Archbishop Joseph Naumann to speak with his priests about the permanent diaconate. The Archbishop will soon ordain the first-ever class of permanent deacons for the archdiocese, and several of the candidates were also present for the day. It was a wonderful day, responding to the priests' questions and concerns, as well as listening to their own hopes and dreams for future collaboration.

Second, I headed directly from Kansas City up to the Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut to spend the day with the deacons of the diocese discussing the implementation of the Third Edition of the Roman Missal, and in particular how this will affect the liturgical role of the deacon. Again, it was a great blessing to be with the diaconal community of the diocese. And if that weren't enough, one of my former undergraduate students, who is now completing her MA in Theology at nearby Providence College, was able to come over and spend the day with us.

But I'm back now, and I have something planned to post later this morning.

Deacon as Minister of Sacrament -- Part III

2011-01-07T07:54:00.000-08:00

What the church means when she refers to deacons as ministers of sacrament is, in one sense, fairly straightforward: How does the deacon participate in the sacramental life of the church? In answer to that question, one can often rather simply just list the various sacramental functions of our public worship -- as I did in the last post -- and speak to the various roles of the deacon in their celebration.

However, in my opinion, we need to then broaden the discussion back to where we started in the first post in this series: that for Catholics, "sacramentality" means much more than simply "the seven sacraments of the church." Sacramentality, as you will recall, is grounded in Christ, the ursakrament or the fundamental sacrament of our encounter with God. The entire "sacramental life" of the Church, in all of her members, flows from this relationship with Christ.

So, looking at the deacon, then, we might ask: How does the deacon "sacramentalize" for the Christian community this encounter with Christ? Pope John Paul II, writing about the human dimension of the formation of presbyters, used the image of a bridge: that the ordained minister needs to be a bridge for people in their encounter with Christ, and not an obstacle to that encounter (see Pastores Dabo Vobis); in subequent documents, the Holy See and USCCB have developed this idea for diaconate formation as well.

How can deacons be this "bridge" leading others to Christ? There are many ways, of course, including the deacon's liturgical and sacramental roles. However, equally important (and some would say, even more important) are the various ministries and "apostolic works" in which the deacon is engaged in the service of others in the community. This will be subject of our next series on the deacon's participation in triple munus of ordained ministry, when we turn our attention to the deacon as Minister of Charity and Justice.

The Deacon as Minister of Sacrament -- Part II

2011-01-04T11:45:00.000-08:00

Sacraments, it has been said, "effect what they signify." For Catholics, Orthodox and certain other churches and denominations, a sacramental life is central to Christian discipleship, and even Catholic canon law speaks of the "right" that Christians have to the celebration of the sacraments. We usually speak of the seven sacraments in terms of their overall function in the life of the church: sacraments of initiation are baptism, confirmation and eucharist; sacraments of reconciliation are reconciliation ("confession") and anointing of the sick; and the sacraments of vocation are matrimony and order.

Although we don't like to reduce things to pure functionality, we have to do that a little bit. It's important to remember, however, that there are usually three dimensions to ALL sacraments: they are OUTWARD signs, connected with Christ, that effectively communicate God's grace. The sacraments are always PUBLIC events; there is no such thing as a "private" sacrament.

Down to function:

Bishops may preside at all sacraments, including ordination of other ministers.

Presbyters preside over all sacraments, except ordination. While bishops are the original ministers of confirmation, presbyters may do so with proper delegation through canon law and the bishop.

Deacons preside over baptism and matrimony. Deacons do not confirm, do not preside over the Eucharist, do not hear confessions, do not anoint and do not ordain. Deacon do have, however, their own specific assisting roles in other sacraments, such as at the Eucharist or in anointing or at ordinations.

As ordained ministers, deacons also have other liturgical functions as well. Deacons are ordinary ministers of holy communion; deacons preside over communal celebrations of the Liturgy of the Hours, deacons preside at Benediction and may give the Eucharistic Benediction (lay persons may not), and deacons conduct wake services and funerals.

The role of the deacon, even while presiding, is to act in the person of Christ the Servant and in the name of the Church.

The Deacon as Minister of Sacrament -- Part I

2010-12-31T10:26:00.001-08:00

Ordination brings the ordinand into a new set of responsibilities in service of the People of God. This is usually referred to as a participation in the triple munus (function) of Word, Sacrament and Charity. Before Christmas we looked at the role of the deacon as a minister of the Word of God. Now I want to move into some reflection on the deacon as a minister of sacrament.

To do that, of course, we need to understand what we mean by "sacrament." So, here's a very, very brief "Sacraments 101".

1) Theologian Joseph Martos has referred to sacraments as "doors to the sacred" and that's a pretty good phrase. The underlying understanding of sacrament in the Catholic sense is that a sacrament "connects" the human and the divine. Another theologian, Robert Taft, SJ, once tried to describe a "symbol." He evoked Michelangelo's famous painting of the creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel. Taft points out that God's finger, stretched out toward Adam, and Adam's finger, stretched out toward God, do not touch; there is a gap. For Taft, a "symbol" CONNECTS the two. In many ways, this can also describe our sense of sacrament as that which connects the human and the divine.

2) Prior to the Second Vatican Council, theologians began describing a deeper sense of sacramentality than most people appreciated. The bishops at the Council adopted much of this language in their own documents. So, in addition to the seven sacraments of the church, we first speak of Christ himself as the most fundamental sacrament of all: Christ IS the connection between God and humanity. The Church itself can be understood as a sacrament of our encounter with Christ, and then the seven sacraments of the church represent special encounters with Christ. We also speak today of the "sacramental principle": that understanding that all of God's creation can serve as vehicles of God's life. That's why we make such liberal use of ordinary things like water, wine, bread, oil, touch and so on.

3) Finally, the word "sacrament" itself comes from the Latin word sacramentum. A sacramentum in the Roman Empire was the oath of enlistment taken by a new recruit into the army, and early Christian writers began referring to Christian initiation as a sacramentum. For those of us who have served in the military, this analogy works very, very well! Consider what happens when a person enlists in the military: That person swears a solemn oath, after which his or her old civilian clothing is taken away. The person is given new clothes -- a uniform -- which communicates the person's new status. This uniform identifies the person's relationship to others (their relative rank and specialization, for example), and without any words at all, the simple fact that the person is now in service to an authority other than himself.

Now look at early Christian baptism: The catechumen states his or her intent to a new relationship with God. The person's old, "civilian" clothes are taken away and the catechumen, naked, enters the baptismal pool where the "sacramentum" (oath) is taken; we call it the Creed today! Then the neophyte is led from the pool, and given his new "uniform" of a white garment which marks the person as a new person in Christ. No longer acting on their own authority, they are now Christ's and have been immersed into the very life of the Trinity. Now part of God's own life, the neophyte is led fro

m the pool to the Eucharistic table to complete his or her initiation.

It is against this sense of "sacrament" that we can now turn to the role of the deacon in the sacramental life of the Church.

Welcome Back!

2010-12-30T10:12:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful Christmas Season. I have deliberately not been posting much out of respect to the Holy Season. However, I will begin a new series shortly, probably later today, so check back soon!

I will be moving into the deacon's ministry of Sacrament.

God bless,

Bill

Christmas Greetings

2010-12-24T15:43:00.000-08:00

May Almighty God bless you and your families in a most special and joyful way during this season of Christmas.

Deacon as Minister of the Word of God, Part III

2010-12-21T21:53:00.001-08:00

There is a well-known saying, often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: "Preach the Gospel; use words if necessary." This wonderful insight reminds us that the Good News of Christ is to be proclaimed to every creature in our words and in our actions. To return to the "Deacon's Charge" from the ordination ceremony: "Receive the Gospel of Christ, who Herald you now are. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach." This is the charge given to Heralds of Christ in the world today.

We have reflected upon the deacon and his role of proclaiming the Gospel and on his responsibilities as a preacher at Mass. Now we turn our attention to other dimensions of the deacon's service as a minister of the Word; specifically, in this posting, the deacon's role as an official teacher of the church. The deacon's catechetical role flows from the same charge given to him by the bishop. While some deacons do not consider themselves teachers, and a few might even argue loudly that they are not! However, that doesn't change the fact that the church sees all ordained ministers as teachers, and as with most things the deacon does, his responsibilities as teacher flow from his relationship to the bishop, who is the prime teacher of the faith in the diocese.

We can always learn so much from looking at the days of the early church. In this case, we can gain some interesting insights from the great bishop Augustine of Hippo and his relationship with deacons; in two particular instances, they were not even deacons of his own diocese! The first example is that of Augustine and a deacon from Carthage named "Deogratias". The deacon had written to Bishop Augustine to ask his advice. His own bishop had asked him to take charge of the catechetical formation of new converts in the Church at Carthage, and the deacon turned to the famous teacher and bishop for advice. "What should I teach these catechumens?" In response, St. Augustine composed a document which comes to us as perhaps the earliest catechetical document in the history of the church, "De Catechizandis Rudibus" ("On the Catechesis of the Unlearned"). For our purposes, it is significant to see that the deacon is clearly associated with taking the leadership in catechesis on behalf of his bishop.

Our second example is similar. In this case, still another deacon from Carthage, this one named "Quodvultdeus" writes to Bishop Augustine informing him that the bishop of Carthage has asked the deacon to preach the Lenten homilies, and the deacon asked for Augustine's advice (I like to think that Quodvultdeus heard from his buddy Deogratias about how helpful Augustine had been to him!). In this case, however, we don't have a document from Augustine in answer to the deacon's question; but we do have the deacon's homilies! So it is possible to study them and discern Augustinian influence. But again, for our purposes here, it's illuminating to see that the deacon is again taking on preaching/teaching responsibility on behalf of his bishop -- and that this is seen as a normal activity of the deacon.

So, for our reflection today, those of us who are deacons can ask ourselves how well we handle our catechetical responsibilities. First, do we embrace them eagerly and passionately as a constitutive component of our ministries? Second, do we continue to seek opportunities for ongoing formation, just as our predecessors turned to a master teacher for advice? Third, how well do we teach, helping others find the practical applications of the Gospel in every day life. Such ministry is part and parcel of the charge given to us at ordination.

Deacon as Minister of the Word of God, Part II

2010-12-18T07:03:00.000-08:00

Another aspect of the deacon's service tot he Word of God is that of preaching, including preaching the homily during the Eucharist and at other sacramental and liturgical celebrations. The basis for this ministry is found in the Code of Canon Law (for the Latin Church; a similar canon exists in the Code of Canons for the Eastern Catholic Churches):

Can. 764 Without prejudice to the provisions of can. 765, priests and deacons, with the at least presumed consent of the rector of a church, have the faculty to preach everywhere, unless this faculty has been restricted or removed by the competent Ordinary, or unless particular law requires express permission.

Let's take a closer look at this canon and what it means.

1) Notice that this canon extends the faculty to BOTH priests and deacons. Unlike other canons which refer specifically to priests, and still others which apply specifically to deacons, this canon speaks to both orders. So, the legal basis by a which a priest (other than a pastor) as well as a deacon preaches at Mass flow from the same law.

2) Notice that the faculty extends "everywhere"; whether I'm in Washington, DC, Peoria, Illinois or Monterey, California or Rome, Italy, the law says I have the faculty to preach.

3) Significant, of course, is the subordinate clause about "with the at least presumed consent of the rector of a church". The PASTOR (not just any priest, but the priest who holds the office of pastor) may legitimately restrict the preaching of any priest or deacon within his pastoral jurisdiction. The law also says that the Ordinary (usually the diocesan bishop) may also restrict or remove this faculty. But notice that these restrictions must be made explicit; otherwise, the deacon (and priest not the pastor) HAVE the faculty. For example, let's say that the document conveying diaconal faculties (this document is called a "pagella") to the deacon does NOT include the faculty to preach. What does this absence mean? Given c. 764, it means that the deacon HAS the faculty to preach and that it is not restricted or has not been removed by the bishop. If the bishop does not want a particular deacon to preach, he has to put that in writing.

4) Furthermore, if the pastor of the place decides he doesn't want the deacon or another priest to preach within his jurisdiction for whatever reason, I would strongly recommend that this restriction be communicated to the bishop. The bishop (and in this case, the law itself) extends faculties to priests and deacons with the presumption that they will be exercised for the good of the People of God. If this is not going to be the case, then the bishop should be informed.

5) Liturgical law (contained in the General Instruction on the Roman Missal and in the other praenotanda to the various sacraments) also contains regulations regarding preaching. With regard to the deacon preaching at Mass, the GIRM notes that the deacon preaches "on occasion". The norm is for the priest-presiding to preach, but he may also ask the deacon to preach the homily. This has caused no little confusion: just what does "on occasion" mean?

Some pastors have interpreted this too mean "rarely" or "only in extraordinary circumstances." This is not correct. What the Holy See was trying to correct were abuses in some parts of the world (not so much in the US) in which priests were never preaching, but turning over that responsibility to others (deacons or lay people). However, given the law we've already examined, the deacon IS an "ordinary" preacher and, while we don't preach at EVERY Mass, we should certainly preach with certain regularity.

Finally, and perhaps most important of all, diaconal preaching should have its own unique character. Deacons can bring their own experience of family and professional life to bear in their homilies. Just as priests can offer insights from the perspective of their own experience, so too can deacons. This goes much deeper than simply telling parishioners what he and his family did on vacation! Rather, the deacon can offer insights about the practical challenges of living out the Word of God in school, on the job and in the family. He can also highlight what he has experienced in his own ministries of charity, and the very real needs of the people he is serving in prisons, hospitals, on the streets and in soup kitchens. This desire to encourage uniquely diaconal preaching is reaching new maturity. Just over the last two years, I have assisted three graduate students completing doctorates in ministry who wrote about this very topic. Two were written by deacons and one by a priest.

More to come. . . .

People traffickers kill Orthodox deacons in Sinai Desert | Christian News on Christian Today

2010-12-15T14:21:00.002-08:00

Here's is a graphic example of deacons living out their charge to be heralds of Christ. Remember the bishop's charge to deacons in the Latin rite? "Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach."

These deacons, and so many others, were truly "practicing what they taught."

People traffickers kill Orthodox deacons in Sinai Desert Christian News on Christian Today

Martyrdom is not simply historical; it is as current as today's news.

Deacon as Minister of the Word of God, Part I

2010-12-14T13:46:00.001-08:00

I just began a series of columns for Today's Parish which are going to sketch the participation of the deacon in the three-fold ministry of Word, Sacrament and Charity. As I ended my "10 Points to Ponder" here last week, I spoke of the need for balance in each of these three areas of ministry, but for now let's just consider the deacon's role as minister of the Word of God.

The "Word of God," of course, is Jesus, the Christ. At the deacon's ordination, the newly-ordained deacon comes before the bishop who presents him with the Book of the Gospels and charges him with the words: "Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you now are. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach." Of all the things the bishop COULD tell the new deacon, I find it very significant that this is the deacon's major charge.

There are many dimensions to being a Herald of Christ. We saw one this past Sunday in the person of John the Baptizer, one of the original "heralds of Christ." Not a bad model for the deacon, either! Of course, one of the most obvious heraldic roles for the deacon is in his proclamation of the Gospel in the midst of the Eucharistic assembly (the "Mass"). Some people seem to think that this is just some kind of liturgical function that is "permitted" to the deacon, in a way to give him something to do at Mass. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, the church ties the Gospel DIRECTLY and INTENTIONALLY to the ministry of the deacon.

The deacon -- as servant to and for the People of God -- proclaims Christ in the Gospel in order to sacramentalize the servant-character of the Gospel itself. The Gospel not only delivers "good news"; that good news is also a call to service, a call to action. As the Church teaches, this ministry is diaconal, NOT an act of the presider. In fact, the rules surrounding this part of the liturgy are quite illustrative. When a deacon is present and assisting, he IS the minister of the Gospel. Period. This is not one of those optional things which either the priest, deacon, or another minister may do. This one is for the deacon. If there are 500 bishops and priests present, it is still the responsibility of the deacon. In fact, have you ever seen the pope proclaim the Gospel at Mass? Nope. Here's some more: In a concelebrated Mass, if there is no deacon present and serving (and why not, I have to ask?), the priest-presiding is STILL not the first choice to proclaim the Gospel in the deacon's absence. Rather, one of the concelebrating priests is to proclaim the Gospel if there is no deacon. Only when there is no deacon, and no concelebrant, is the priest presiding to proclaim the Gospel; he is, literally, the last choice.

And yet, we still have some priests who will simply tell the deacon before Mass, "I'll do the Gospel today, since I'm preaching; I have some things I want to stress in the reading that tie into the homily." I wonder: What if he were going to preach on the FIRST reading (usually from the Old Testament). Would he go to the lay person who is assigned to read that day, and tell her, "I'll do the reading today, because I want to stress some things that tie into the homily." I certainly hope not! There's a reason why each of us has different roles in the liturgy, and the church is clear: each of us is to to "solely but completely" what is ours to do.

There are other dimensions of the Deacon as Minister of the Word of God, but I'll save those for the next postings.

By the way, the picture to the right is of your humble blogger proclaiming the Gospel on board the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) during a visit to our son who is stationed on board. Mass is celebrated in the forecastle (the "foc's'l") between the anchor chains. For liturgical purists, there was no dalmatic available; sorry!

End of Semester Madness

2010-12-12T13:37:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note to explain my absence for the last few days: We are at the end of our semester and my days are filled with papers, exams and grading!

Starting tomorrow, however, all of that is finished and -- in the words of the Terminator -- "I'll be back!"

Advent blessings to all,

Deacon Bill

Point to Ponder #10: Balance and Poise

2010-12-07T08:59:00.000-08:00

One of the first lessons drummed into new deacon aspirants is that diaconal ministry will require a good sense of balance. To which most married men with families and jobs will say, "Duh!"

As I enter the third decade of my own diaconal experience, though, this truth, while certainly self-evident, is no less valid. I recently came across a word I had not heard in many years, but which captured the essence of balance: EQUIPOISE. Equipoise means to distribute weight equally, but it also has the sense of having a "dignified, self-confident manner or bearing; composure; self-possession." I like the combination of meanings here, especially as it might apply to any of us in life, and not only to deacons.

As deacons we must balance our relationships with God, family and friends, work and church; we must also balance the formal ministries of Word, Sacrament and Charity. That's a lot of balance that calls for a lot of poise as well.

In the early years of diaconate formation in the United States, and still found in some locations still, we used to hear of the "deacon's priorities." First, his relationship with God; second, his relationship with family; third, his relationship with his job; fourth, his relationship with the church (in other words, his formal ministry). While on a certain practical level, this prioritization makes some sense, it is also a bit nonsensical. In fact, one priest-friend of mine who has spent decades in diaconal formation work, calls it outright heresy! Why?

Because we are not so easily compartmentalized. The implication given by the priority list is that, if diaconal ministry is getting in the way of family life, or work life, then it should just go away until those other "problems" get cleared up. As I said, on a certain level, this can be practical and necessary. But on a deeper level, it conveys a sense that the diaconate is simply one compartment of my life and that I can take off the diaconate, even temporarily, just like I take off an alb, stole and dalmatic. And that's where the problem comes in.

Because once ordained, we are deacons 24/7/365. I am a deacon who wrestles with his relationship with God, a deacon in relationship with my family, a deacon dealing with issues at my secular employment, and a deacon in ministry. Far too often, the impression can be given that the only time we're involved "in ministry" is when we're at the parish or involved in some kind of "church" business. That's just not the case with deacons any more than its the case with priests or bishops: once ordained, you're never NOT a deacon, and it's not a disposible thing.

Furthermore, WITHIN our official ministries there needs to be equipoise as well. All find their source in the Eucharist, so our own identity and strength for service comes from our ministry of Sacrament; we are called and ordained to be a Herald of the Gospel, even within (as well as outside) the eucharist, so our ministry of Word is essential; and all of that serving and preaching and teaching leads us to Charity. All the dots must connect, especially since we are ordained to be "icons" of Christ the Servant. People should be able to see, in our own attempts to find and achieve a "poised balance" in our lives, the same equipoise to which we are all called through sacramental initiation.

So all of this requires great skill at being poised, confident, and balanced. There will be times, hopefully, not too many, when things will become unbalanced and we crash. But I believe that the very heart of the sacrament known as the diaconate lies in that balanced existence in service of God and others. We can't just pick and choose those parts of it that we like, and we can't just dump it if things get uncomfortable. This is why prayer is the foundation for all of us. Our relationship with God can help us find, maintain, regain and perpetuate our "balanced poise" in the service of others.

How are we all doing (deacons and everyone else) at finding and achieving a balance in lives and ministry? This is the core of the sacramental life.

=======================

Well, this certainly took longer to get posted than I anticipated! I hope it's of some use.

Blessed Advent, everyone!

Point to Ponder #9: Getting Out of the House

2010-12-05T15:10:00.000-08:00

After Blessed Pope John XXIII announced his decision to convene the Second Vatican Council, he directed Cardinal Tardini, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, to send a letter to all the bishops of the world, the heads of all religious orders, and the deans of all Catholic schools of Theology. The letter invited all of them to submit items for inclusion on the Council's agenda. Eventually, nearly 9,000 recommendations and proposals were received!

The problem became: How to organize all of this material so that the bishops could discuss and debate everything systematically? Cardinal Suenens of Belgium came up with part of a solution and persuaded Pope John to implement it: Divide all of the issues into two broad categories, those dealing with internal matters about the nature and structure of the church (ad intra) and those related to external perspectives about how that church relates to entities outside of itself (ad extra). All of the Council's documents can be grouped into ad intra and ad extra. For example, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen gentium) is ad intra and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes) is ad extra.

I mention all of this because these categories can be helpful in our own reflections. Many times in ministry, we can find ourselves so focused on the ad intra issues such as diocesan and parish "politics" that we lose sight of our responsibilities ad extra such as caring for all those in need in our communities, even when they're not members of our parish or even of our church. Furthermore, we might find ourselves not attending to even more strategic issues ad extra which are contributing to the needs of people: WHY are people hungry, homeless, lonely, or in some other kind of need? What needs to be done to address the causes of such problems, not simply to address the immediate needs themslelves.

So this point of reflection encourages us to "get out of the house": to expand our focus from strictly "in house" concerns to encompass a more global point of view. How well do I minister EVERYWHERE? Or do I just minister "in house"? We're ordained to serve everywhere, including the work place and market place. Or have I just become "churchy" in my service?

Point to Ponder #8: Thinking With the People of God

2010-12-04T16:28:00.001-08:00

There is a Latin expression found in some theological and canonical literature that is the basis of this reflection: mens ecclesiae. This expression, which literally means "mind of the church", gives us a lot to think about.

What IS a mens ecclesiae? It refers to being attuned to the what the church -- the People of God, Mystical Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit -- is immersed in. In some quarters, it is mistakenly reduced to something like "knowing what the church teaches and sticking with that." But that does not capture the depth of its meaning. Such a limited understanding reduces "the church" to the writings and teachings of the higher echelons of the church, not the total reality which is the Church. It also reduces this phrase to a kind of cognitive body of teaching. The mens ecclesiae goes much deeper than that. Let me recount a real life story.

As I've mentioned before, I served for five years at the national headquarters of the Catholic bishops of the United States in Washington, DC. In the assignment, I came to know quite of few of our bishops. One day, as I was leaving the building, I encountered one of our bishops waiting for a taxi. He had been in town for some meetings and was returning home to his diocese. As we were chatting, I asked how he was doing, because he looked very tired and run down. He shared with me how tough things were in his diocese: strategic planning which would be resulting in parish closures and mergers (never popular decisions), financial troubles which would probably end in his having to declare bankruptcy [eventually, that's what happened], and most disturbing of all, his Vicar General had called to tell him that several more cases of abuse had surfaced, cases that bishop had not known about. All of this was combining to make the problems facing the bishop almost insurmountable.

I asked him if there was anything at all we could do to help him; we agreed that prayer for all was what was needed. His cab arrived and we prepared to go our separate ways. Just as he was about to step into the cab, the bishop stopped and asked if I was still traveling around the country speaking to groups of deacons and priests. I answered that I was. He then told me the following story, and asked me to share it with the deacons of the country.

It seems that just before he'd left for Washington, and after a particularly rough day trying to address the problems we'd been talking about, he received a call from the head of his deacons' council, requesting a meeting as early as possible. The message said that he really need to talk the bishop about some concerns raised at the most recent meeting of the deacon council.

The bishop agreed, and he said that as he thought about it, he got more excited. Among the deacons of the diocese were accountants, businessmen, lawyers, teachers, farmers, and so on. Almost all were family men. He got thinking that his deacons, all experienced men, had perhaps come up with some strategies or ideas about all of the problems facing the church. Maybe his deacons had come up with some ideas that his other advisors had not -- after all, isn't that what deacons are supposed to do?

The next day, the deacon came in early and they got down to it. The bishop said he could hardly contain his excitement. The deacon told the bishop that the deacons had gathered and that after the meeting they wanted the head of the council to get to the bishop to convey their most serious concern. What was it? The #1 concern of the deacons of the diocese was the fact that deacons were not permitted to wear Roman collars in the diocese.

The bishop said he was crushed with disappointment. Were the deacons unaware of all of the challenges facing the local church? Were they really that disconnected?

So, in this reflection we want to ask, "How well do I understand how the church really works and how sensitive am I to the very real needs of the local people of God?" Thinking "with the Church" means, for the deacon, being able to be what the fathers of the church called the "seeing and hearing, the heart and the soul" of the bishop. To be all of that means being focused OUTWARD to the persons of the Church, not focused INWARD on my own needs (like whether or not I can wear a collar).

How good is my own mens ecclesiae?

Point to Ponder #7: In the (peripatetic) footsteps of St. Paul

2010-12-01T07:45:00.000-08:00

St. Paul often refers to himself a "deacon of the Gospel" (diakonos evangelion). While he was certainly not referring to himself as a "deacon" in our modern sense of that word, it does remind us of our own basic responsibility of service to to the Gospel. It also gives us, in St. Paul, an interesting and inspiring model of diakonia. So, in this point of reflection, we will follow St. Paul's example.

St. Paul was a well-educated Jewish citizen of Rome. We all know the broad outlines of his biography: Saul was a tent-maker by trade from the metropolitan trade center of Tarsus. He initially opposed Christianity, often pictured as holding the cloaks of the men who were in the act of stoning St. Stephen, the protomartyr of the New Testament. Then, following his dramatic encounter with Christ and his conversion, Saul changes his name to Paul ("paulus" = "the little one") and returns to Tarsus as the newest disciple of Christ. Some scholars maintain that he continued on in this disipleship mode for as long as ten years before assuming his apostolic role as missionary to the Gentiles. Following numerous mission trips, unbelievable hardships and trials, he wound up in Rome where he was martyred. I can't think of anyone else in the New Testament who is as peripatetic as Paul of Tarsus.

And what did he do on all of these trips? He would go into an area, preach the Good News, help the local community elect their own leadership, and then Paul was back on the road, heading into a new area to repeat the process all over again. His letters were part of his "follow through", giving encouragement to those fledgling Christian communities.

And if Paul the deacon of the Gospel was constantly on the move, we should be, too!

I'm not necessarily suggesting that we all run out and book passage on the next ship to Cyprus (although it's a lovely place and I'd love to go back!), or that we should host tour groups "in the footsteps of St. Paul." What I am suggesting is that deacons consider ourselves "mobile ministers" who take care of things in a certain area, train other people to take those responsibilities over, and then we let go and move to another area of unmet need. For example, let's say a deacon takes responsibility for visiting prisoners in the local jail on a regular basis. He runs bible study classes, takes communion to prisoners, and spends time talking with them during his visits. He does this for many years, and then retires. Who's going to continue that work?

But try this approach: the same deacon, doing all of those wonderful things, encourages others from his parish and the surrounding area to join him in this ministry. He coordinates their training and accompanies them as they get used to the ministry. Eventually he turns the ministry over to the group he's worked with, and then he moves on to some other area. Perhaps he dedicates the bulk of his efforts working for prison reform. Or, perhaps he moves into working at a local hospice. After a while, he encourages others to join with him, and, eventually, he turns the leadership of that ministry over. And off he goes to some other area of need.

What's driving the deacon is not simply the "doing" of a particular ministry "of his own", but rather the focus is on finding and meeting the needs of others. This approach also serves to do what the church says repeatedly about the diaconate: that deacons are to be the "animators of the Church's own diakonia". In short, the deacon's efforts are not complete simply by visiting the inmates at the jail and he can go home and say, "job well done." That's not necessarily going to animate anyone else to service.

The challenge of this point to ponder, then, is: How "mobile" am I willing to be? Can I go, preach the Good News, empower other leadership, let go (part of kenosis) and move on to the next area of need?

Point to Ponder #6: Threading the Needle

2010-11-30T09:08:00.000-08:00

I happen to have huge hands, and whenever I've had to thread a needle, it usually takes a day-and-a-half or so to accomplish. It can be a tough thing to do, but it's an essential and prerequisite skill if that button is going to get sewn back on!

This point of reflection, as I wrote in our original list, goes like this: We should not be co-opted into someone else's ministry. The Holy See actually says this quite strongly: we are not supposed to be substitutes for priests or anyone else, nor are we supposed to take on ministries that rightly belong to others. Here's the actual quote from the Congregation for the Clergy's 1998 document, The Directory for the Ministry and Life of Permanent Deacons:

In every case it is important, however, that deacons fully exercise their ministry, in preaching, in the liturgy and in charity to the extent that circumstances permit. They should not be relegated to marginal duties, be made merely to act as substitutes, nor discharge duties normally entrusted to non-ordained members of the faithful. Only in this way will the true identity of permanent deacons as ministers of Christ become apparent and the impression avoided that deacons are simply lay people particularly involved in the life of the Church (#40).

Sounds like threading a needle to me!

First, "in every case" deacons are supposed to exercise their ministry fully, and the text specifies the triple functions of word, sacrament and charity: ALL of them are important, and ALL of them are to be exercised, and exercised "fully." So far so good, although many deacons complain that, in real life, their pastors often circumscribe their duties, but for now, let's just get the theory down.

Second, we get to the actual "assignment" of the deacon. We are told that deacons are not to be marginalized (as in, "Well, I've got a deacon at the parish, but I don't intend to use him."). Also, deacons are not "substitutionary" for someone else. In particular, we should look at this the way a parishioner or the pastor might. I once had a parishioner come up to me and tell me how glad she was that the church had deacons now, "since we're running out of priests, and you guys can fill in." Substitutes until the number of priests goes back up. But the Congregation is being very clear here: Deacons are not substitutes for ANYONE else's ministry. This doesn't mean we can't help out as we can, of course! But how often are deacons "filling in" for someone else?

We continue to read that deacons should not be doing things that would normally be exercised by lay persons. So, deacons aren't substitutes for anyone else, including the priests, on the one hand, while on the other hand, deacons are not to usurp things which are legitimately to be the responsibility of lay people.

And yet, in real life, what do most deacons hear in conversation? "Deacon, what can't you do that the priest can?" "Wow, deacon, you do almost everything a priest does!" Or, alternatively, "Deacon, now that you're here, take over the responsibilities of the DRE." "Deacon, run the liturgy committee of the pastoral council." "Deacon, serve on the finance council." Now I'm not saying that deacons should NOT help out in these areas, but only if there is some particular need for it. Simply to do such things "just because he's a deacon" is not a good reason! These are the responsibilities of the baptized faithful and they need to be encouraged and inspired to take them on, and should not be set aside when a cleric becomes available.

So this really is a lot like threading a needle. Deacons need to find and steer a course in ministry that is neither substitutionary nor usurping. Actually, this can be quite freeing, and it gets back to some of our earlier points, since it means that it encourages the deacon's own creativity at identifying needs that are not yet being met, and charting a course to help meet them. It also means, with gentleness and tact, to resist attempts to have us be "merely substitutes" or to take on tasks that should be done more appropriately by others.

So, for reflection: If you're already a deacon, are you serving in ways that can and probably should be done by others? If you're not a deacon, but perhaps a priest or a parishioner, do you find yourself trying to put the deacon into roles that ought best be done by another?

Point to Ponder #5: Breaking New Ground in Service

2010-11-29T16:44:00.000-08:00

This point of reflection flows rather naturally from the last one. In my summary of the list that began this series, I wrote, "Don't get stuck in old patterns of ministry! What areas of need are not being met at all? How willing are we to be creative and break into new areas of service?"

All through formation, and even after we enter into ordained ministry, the focus so often is on "what we're going to do" in our assignment, whether that's in parish or other ministries. Functions are important, of course, although as we have seen, what any of us "do" (function) as a result of baptism and ordination is of lesser import than who we "are". That being said, let's spend some time with "function" and the deacon.

It's fairly easy to find indicators about what we're supposed to "do." Canon law specifies various things, probably the most significant being the faculty to "preach anywhere." So we can make a list of functions based on the law. Then we can look at the liturgy and see what we're supposed to "do" there: baptisms, weddings, viaticum, certain blessings, and so on. Fine.

Then we can look at what deacons have done in other parishes, or in the same parish to which we're being assigned. "Deacon Tom used to handle RCIA until he retired last year; I'd like you to take that over, Deacon." So there's still another way to find "functions" that the deacon can handle. Finally, we can consider what we are already doing before we were ordained, and simply continue doing those things, only now as deacons.

BUT HERE'S MY POINT (pardon my shouting, but I want to make sure you're with me on this!): WHAT ABOUT ALL THING THINGS THAT ARE NOT BEING DONE? Sometimes deacons, like anyone else, get into a rut. We tend to accept the structures that are in place, and try to make sure that all the gaps IN THAT STRUCTURE are filled. But we're supposed to go one big step further. As "eyes, ears, heart and soul" of the bishop, we're supposed to be pushing the envelope in ministry: what are the needs NOT being met in the parish, in the surrounding community? I once had a priest tell me that there was no need for a deacon in his parish because "everything is already covered; everything is being done." Period. He was not a happy camper when I told him I thought that was great, but was he really saying that there was no person in any kind of need at all within his parish or the community? Really? Seriously? ALL needs are being met?

And that's where the deacon can step in. Perhaps he doesn't have the expertise to handle the unmet needs himself, but if he's alert to them, he can help identify the appropriate resources that might be available to meet those needs. He can be the bridge between the people in need and the resources to meet those needs.

There are so many blessings with this approach! First, those folks already involved in ministry don't feel threatened that the deacon is trying to "horn in" on their turf. Second, the deacon -- from his very identity as servant-leader -- is using his eyes and ears, his heart and soul, to "see" things that others perhaps have not seen. Third, it helps the church extend her ministry into new areas in need of transformation.

So, when I talk with deacons and all I hear are stories about various parish functions, I often challenge them to look beyond the existing structures: Catholic social teaching, for example, is not the sole province of a parish social justice committee. This can be an unsettling dimension: we'd all like to get into a groove and stay there. But that's not the extent of what ordination means.

It's time to "look beyond" and break into new territory. Be creative!

Point to Ponder #4: Deacon as Servant-Leader

2010-11-27T07:58:00.000-08:00

A major industry has arisen around the nature and exercise of leadership, including the specific type of leadership known as "servant leadership." Even one of my own books is subtitled "Servant Leaders in a Servant Church". So this little reflection cannot hope to contain all of the insights to be found in all of these resources. However, I still encounter members of the diaconate community who struggle, and sometimes oppose, the notion that they are called to leadership! "I'm a servant," they say, "not a leader." However, the history and theology of the church tell a very different story. Ordination to any order, like it or not, involves leadership responsibility. I find that reluctance to accept this fact usually flows out of some rather narrow understandings of what leadership actually means within a community.

Here are some things I find important about leadership, especially vis-a-vis deacons:

1) Ordination, to any order, involves the assumption of leadership in and for the church. A review of scripture, the patristic authors, and the historical theology of the church all agree: the reason for ordination is to set persons in leadership relationship to their community. A bishop, for example, presides over the worship of the community precisely because he is first the overall leader of that community; the same can be said about a presbyter appointed pastor of a parish. And a deacon, ordained and appointed by the bishop to extend the bishop's own sphere of leadership, participates in this role as well. Vatican II, in Lumen gentium #18, as it begins its treatment of the three ordained ministries, describes them all as ministries instituted by Christ to build up the People of God. "Building up" is a function of leadership, and the willing assumption of such leadership is an important part of the vocational discernment of the deacon.

2) All good leadership is "servant" leadership. The best leaders in any enterprise are the one who have vision and the ability to communicate that vision to others, inviting and inspiring those others to share in bringing that vision to reality. The best leaders are the ones who also provide for those with whom they serve. Even in the Navy, for example, I found that the best leaders took care of their troops so that those troops were free to do what needed to be done.

The expression "servant leadership" has been around since 1970 when Robert Greeleaf wrote his landmark essay "The Servant as Leader", but the reality has been around forever. Greenleaf wrote:

The servant leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first. . . . The different manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people's highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?

In a second essay, Greeleaf speaks of leadership within institutions, which seems to have a particular relevance for those involved in ministry:

This is my thesis: caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built. Whereas, until recently, caring was largely person to person, now most of it is mediated through institutions -- often large, complex, powerful, impersonal; not always competent; sometimes corrupt. If a better society is to be built, one that is more just and more loving, one that provides greater creative opportunity for its people, then the most open course is to raise both the capacity to serve and the very performance as servant of existing major institutions by new regenerative forces operating within them.

I hope and pray that deacons would find those words particularly apt guidance for who we are (servant-first) and what we try to do with and for the People of God! In a special way, notice how this approach stresses the WHO WE ARE dimension of ministry as PRIOR TO the "what we do" dimension. What we do in ministry is critically important and we must not minimize that; but we are more than simply the some of our actions. Our actions flow from who we are, and as deacons, we are servant-first.

3) Leadership is not always tied to a particular position in the organization. Anyone with any experience whatsoever in parish life knows that the most powerful leader in any parish is usually the parish secretary. In other ways of life, even something as rank conscious as the military, the most powerful leaders in an institution are often not the ones who hold the highest rank. General Patton, for example, could not have accomplished anything whatsoever, if there were not sergeants, corporals and privates exercising leadership as well. Leadership cannot be reduced to position/rank. Positional leadership is one type of leadership, but it is not the only type of leadership. In fact, a wonderful little book which every deacon should have in his or her library (I'm hoping deacons of other Christian traditions are reading this!) is called "Leading from the Second Chair: Serving Your Church, Fulfilling Your Role, and Realizing Your Dreams," by Tom Bonem and Roger Patterson.

The insights of these authors are very good, and deacons will find much in them that resembles our own pastoral experiences. And for those who like to complain, "What can I do? I'm JUST a deacon!" this book should help change your mind. And, by the way, "JUST a deacon"? Are you kidding? "JUST" a deacon? Remember that all of the patristic sources who mention deacons, from East to West, ALL of them refer to deacons as bearers of the very ministry of Christ. Bishops are referred to as representing God the Father, deacons represent Christ, and the presbyters are described as representing the apostles. While it became commonplace in the second millennium to refer to presbyters as "alteri Christi" -- "other Christs" -- that was a rather novel development. In the ancient Church such an understanding was more associated with deacons.

4) Leadership exists beyond institutional parameters. Just as leadership is not restricted to those who hold positions of power and authority from an institution, the human aspects of institutions do not "confine" leadership either. Now, we believe that the church is not merely a human institution. That's true. However, as Vatican II teaches, human institutional elements nonetheless exist within the church, and Christ did not dictate particular forms for these human elements to follow, and they have changed remarkably over the centuries!

Consider this insight from John Gardner:

All too often, on the long road up, young leaders become "servants of what is rather than shapers of what might be." In the long process of learning how the system works, they are rewarded for playing with the intricate structure of existing rules. By the time they reach the top, they are very likely to be trained prisoners of that structure. This is not all bad; every vital system reaffirms itself. But no system can stay vital for long unless some of its leaders remain sufficiently independent to help it to change and grow.

We can, and must, ask ourselves as deacons: Are we "servants of what is rather than shapers of what might be"? Are there ways in which we might be a bit of both? Certainly within the church we are respecters of Tradition (capital "T"), and even hold this, along with Scripture, to be a source of divine revelation. And yet, as Church, we are always a pilgrim, always changing, always adapting to new needs, new cultural realities in which we are challenged to make a difference.

Cardinal Walter Kasper once described deacons and presbyters as the "two arms of the bishop"; but he continued in that same address to remind deacons (and others) that, once ordained, the deacon -- like the presbyter -- attained a certain autonomy as well. There will be times, the Cardinal noted, that the deacon will need to exercise his prophetic role even to the bishop who ordained him! That the "respect and obedience" promised by the deacon at ordination does not relieve the deacon of such a prophetic responsibility even within the structures of the church.

One of the best servant leaders of modern times, in my opinion, was Angelo Roncalli, Blessed pope John XXIII. During his opening address to the Second Vatican Council, he reminded the world's bishops that while Truth is eternal and unchanging, the ways in which that Truth is communicated to the world can and must change. Another fine little book for all who are interested in leadership in the Church is "Pope John XXIII: Model and Mentor for Leaders" by Fr. Bob Bonnot, Ph.D. While you can read any number leadership books using examples from business leaders, this book gleans leadership insights from examining the leadership style of Pope John.

Setting a tone, establishing a purpose, outlining a program, having a strategy, selecting a team, keeping on message, using the media, rationing the time available and deliberately pursuing the goals established are just some of the areas examined by Fr. Bonnot in this book, and they can be very helpful for all involved in ministry. Once again, the great John XXIII can inspire us in our appreciation of the servant-leadership to which we are called and ordained.

Point to Ponder #3: Deacon as Risk Taker

2010-11-26T07:36:00.000-08:00

One definition of a "risk taker" is: "A person who is not fearful of uncertainty and may even enjoy risky, speculative situations." While such a description is often applied to the world of business, there are certainly elements of it which apply to ministry!

When one pours oneself out (kenosis) in the service of others, there is a certain amount of risk involved: risk that our own needs will not be met, risk that the ones we serve will not reciprocate, risk that our selflessness will not be effective. And yet, these all-too-human shortcomings need to be confronted. As we saw in the earlier quotation from John Paul II's Fides et Ratio, kenosis involves the understanding that "suffering and death can express a love which gives itself and seeks nothing in return" (#93).

I once heard a young bishop express concerns over approving a document for publication by the Bishops' Conference, because there were many questions for which no answers had yet been found. The bishop continued that, "We must not move forward until we have answers to every question." I was immediately struck by the difference between that young bishop's opinion, and the remarkable work done by the world's bishops at the Second Vatican Council. They opened so many doors, accepting that they did not have all the answers, and perhaps did not even know all of the questions! Consider the diaconate itself: There had not been a diaconate opened to married men for many centuries in the Latin church. The bishops knew that problems might emerge, but they also knew that this was the right course of action to take, and that problems would be resolved as they developed. While prudence would dictate thorough research on important matters, of course, I think that suggesting one must have answers to ALL questions goes to far, and quickly paralyzes us into inaction. Fear can freeze us in place. However, the emphasis with kenosis is on the self-giving, and not on the results of that gift.

So we come to the notion of "risk" and diaconal ministry. Deacons must be willing to extend themselves (perhaps another way of saying "pour themselves out"?) based on the needs of others, not by our own needs. That means we sometimes have to leave our personal comfort zones. A quarter of a century ago, when I was in formation for ordination, our formation director used to say that if he ever heard any of us say, "Oh, that's MY ministry," or "I don't do prison ministry; that's not MY ministry." He reminded us that it is not our ministry at all, but the ministry of Christ. Through ordination, we are called into a participation in the ministry of Christ, not a ministry of our own choosing.

I am NOT saying that a deacon must become competent in all areas of need! No one person could ever do such a thing. However, I am saying that the point of view of the deacon ought to be on the "other", the person in need as well as the structural causes for that need. It also means that the deacon must have a "deacon's eye" for spotting not only need, but for the persons who are best able to meet that need, and arrange a meeting between them; in other words, the deacon must know how to refer, to coordinate, to lead.

All of this involves a certain measure of risk, of going outside of our normal comfort zones. The point of reflection here is: "Am I, as deacon, a risk taker, or am I risk averse?" In terms of the description above, am I a person who "is not fearful of uncertainty" for the sake of others?

Point to Ponder #2: The Bishop and his Deacons

2010-11-24T06:27:00.000-08:00

Moving on to point #2: How healthy is our relationship with our bishop? We are supposed to be the "eyes, ears, heart, soul" of the bishop, extending his ministry throughout the diocese. How's that going?

With a h/t to Rocco over at Whispers in the Loggia, I found this photo to be perfect to illustrate this point. It's a picture of Archbishop Tim Dolan of New York surrounded by some of his deacons. And this is how it should be!

From the earliest scriptural references to deacons as ministers in the ancient church, deacons are always, always, always -- did I write that enough? -- ALWAYS associated with the bishop. The letters of Paul, the pastoral letters (such as 1 Timothy, which gives the famous list of qualifications for bishops, followed immediately by the qualifications for deacons), even the famous passage from Acts 6 which is traditionally associated with deacons with the selection of the Seven: all associate the ministers we have come to know as deacons with the apostolic ministry of the bishop. Here's the famous passage from 1 Timothy 3: 1-13:

1 This saying is trustworthy: whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task.

2 Therefore, a bishop must be irreproachable, married only once, temperate, self-controlled, decent, hospitable, able to teach,

3 not a drunkard, not aggressive, but gentle, not contentious, not a lover of money.

4 He must manage his own household well, keeping his children under control with perfect dignity;

5 for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of the church of God?

6 He should not be a recent convert, so that he may not become conceited and thus incur the devil's punishment.

7 He must also have a good reputation among outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, the devil's trap.

8 Similarly, deacons must be dignified, not deceitful, not addicted to drink, not greedy for sordid gain,

9 holding fast to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.

10 Moreover, they should be tested first; then, if there is nothing against them, let them serve as deacons.

11 Women, similarly, should be dignified, not slanderers, but temperate and faithful in everything.

12 Deacons may be married only once and must manage their children and their households well.

13 Thus those who serve well as deacons gain good standing and much confidence in their faith in Christ Jesus.

The patristic literature is just as emphatic in this relationship; you can read all of them in any good text on the history of the diaconate, such as some of the books on my bookshelf to the right of this posting. My own particular favorite citation is from Syria in the 3rd century, the Didascalia Apostolorum. Here are a few samples:

Let the bishops and the deacons, then, be of one mind; and do you shepherd the people diligently with one accord. For you ought both to be one body, father and son; for you are in the likeness of the Lordship [Christ]. . . . Let the deacon be the hearing of the bishop, and his mouth and his heart and his soul; for when you are both of one mind, through your agreement there will be peace in the Church. . . . And be you [bishop and deacon] of one counsel and of one purpose, and one soul dwelling in two bodies.

"One soul in two bodies"! Wow! Here's the tough bit: Does that sound like the relationship the deacons you know have with your bishop? I rather doubt it. The National Directory for the Formation, Ministry and Life of Deacons in the United States, however, promulgated in 2004, repeatedly stresses the relationship of the deacon with the bishop, and it's critically important to remember that the National Directory is a text written BY the bishops of the country FOR the bishops of the country. This means that the bishops themselves wish to stress this relationship. Still, it's one thing to put something like that in a book; it's quite another to live out that relationship in real terms during the day-to-day life of diocesan ministry.

So, for reflection, if you are already a deacon: How is your relationship with your bishop? What can you do to improve it, to strengthen it? If you are a bishop: What are you doing to improve relationships with your deacons? Are there opportunities to have honest, forthright conversations with your deacons? Is there a forum to receive the pastoral insights of these men whom you have ordained to be your eyes and ears, heart and soul throughout the diocese? And if you're a baptized disciple or a presbyter, what are you doing to strengthen the relationship of deacons with the bishop?

I often tell the true story of a bishop who, while literally standing in the middle of his deacons, said, "When I ordained you as deacons, I ordained you to share with me the burdens on my heart for the people who live in this diocese; today I want to share what's on my heart, so it can be on yours as well." I've always remembered that, because it seemed to me that this bishop truly captured the relationship that should exist. If the diaconate is going to be strong and effective, it is critical that this relationship be healthy and vibrant.

What can YOU do about that?

Point to Ponder #1: Kenosis and the Deacon

2010-11-22T18:49:00.004-08:00

The first question for reflection is, "How kenotic am I?" This is a good question for all disciples of Christ, and for deacons there is a particular relevance. Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical "Fides et Ratio", wrote that "the prime commitment of theology is seen to be the understanding of God's kenosis, a grand and mysterious truth for the human mind, which finds it inconceivable that suffering and death can
express a love which gives itself and seeks nothing in return" (#93). We deacons are fond of saying (correctly) that being a deacon is less about what we do but who we are; indeed, that's true for all disciples. So, we begin our reflection by reflecting on "God's kenosis."

First, we should recall Paul's second letter to the Philippians, verses 5-11;

Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

I like to point out that St. Paul's reason for quoting this early Christian hymn was so that HIS READERS WOULD BE LIKE CHRIST! So, while the hymn makes a clear statement about Christ's kenosis ("he emptied himself"), Paul's point is that we too are therefore called to empty ourselves in imitation of Christ. How willing, really, are we to empty ourselves in service of God and neighbor? This is a profound challenge and really, in the words of the saintly pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it is "the cost of discipleship." Deacons, as ordained servant leaders in and for the church, have a particular responsibility for modeling this kenosis.

I came across a nice talk on kenosis given by Archbishop Fulton Sheen, which I share here. It's in four parts: PART ONE, PART TWO, PART THREE, PART FOUR. I hope you can take the time to watch it; the total talk is only about a half hour or so.

Enjoy! And then, share your reflections here. . . .

Deacon Top Ten List

2010-11-22T08:19:00.000-08:00

We've been spending way too much time lately on church externals! Cardinal, vestments, clerical attire. As the Italians say, "Basta!" ("Enough"!) Not that these things aren't interesting, but there are more significant things to think about as we enter into Advent.

So, over the years at various presentations, I've developed some points to ponder about the diaconate. I'll list them here to get us started, and then I'll post more on each point in separate posts so we can, if readers like, discuss them in more detail.

Here's the list, in no particular priority order:

1. How "kenotic" is my ministry? ("Kenosis" is the self-emptying of Christ, to which we are all called as well) In short, how completely do I "empty myself" into service to others. Ministry is not about "me" but about "the other," not something we do, but the kind of people we are.

2. How healthy is our relationship with our bishop? We are supposed to be the "eyes, ears, heart, soul" of the bishop, extending his ministry throughout the diocese. How's that going?

3. How much do I "risk" in diaconate? Am I willing to leave my own comfort zone to serve others?

4. How capable am I of servant-LEADERSHIP? Ordination to any order of ministry involves LEADERSHIP, specifically, servant leadership. How willing am I to lead in and through service?

5. Don't get stuck in old patterns of ministry! What areas of need are not being met at all? How willing are we to be creative and break into new areas of service?

6. We should not be co-opted into someone else's ministry. The Holy See actually says this quite strongly: we are not supposed to be substitutes for priests or anyone else, nor are we supposed to take on ministries that rightly belong to others. This can be challenging: Am I serving in ways that are best done by others?

7. How "mobile" am I willing to be? Our model should be like St. Paul: move into new area, preach Good News, empower local leadership, and move on to a new area.

8. How well do we develop a "mens ecclesiae"? How well do I understand how the church really works and how sensitive am I to the very real needs of the local people of God?

9. How well do I minister EVERYWHERE? Or do I just minister "in house"? We're ordained to serve everywhere, including the work place and market place. Or have I just become "churchy" in my service?

10. Balance, balance, balance! How balanced is family, ministry, spirituality; how balanced are Word, Worship and Charity?

That's the list in brief. The next posts, over the next few days, will examine each in more detail. I'll try to have the list complete by Thanksgiving!

Nice take on the whole "collar" thing -- by a priest

2010-11-21T08:03:00.001-08:00

Check out this reflection by Fr. Francis X. Clooney, SJ. He's writing about priests wearing clericals, and his observations relate directly to the same issue for deacons.

He outlines a number of interesting points, like this one:

I suppose all Jesuits know from early on that stories of the great Jesuit missionaries in Asia, who learned to fit perfectly into the local cultures, as it were incarnating in every possible and appropriate way. St Francis Xavier famously threw off his shabby cassock and dressed in yellow silk, to reach the Japanese nobles; Matteo Ricci dressed perfectly for the imperial court; Robert de Nobili adopted the saffron robe of an Indian ascetic, knowing that the black cassock would puzzle and repel. Or just re-read I Corinthians 9:22. And so too today: when on campus, dress for the occasion, fit in, that words and deeds be clearer, less encumbered, freer, direct and undistracted.

What's interesting for us deacons, of course, is how this resonates with what the US bishops have said about deacons' attire since 1971, that it is their preference that "deacons dress in a manner similar to the people they serve."

Again, you can read the whole thing here. Good stuff.