Leeds Trinity to Host Major Catholic International Conference

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, Leeds Trinity University College is hosting a major Catholic international theological conference from 26 – 29 June 2012.

(PRWEB) May 18, 2012

The beginning of the Second Vatican Council had a profound impact on the life of the Catholic Church and its mission, in particular by starting an engagement with the modern and secularized world through a renewed proclamation of the Gospel. Pope John Paul II described this as the ‘New Evangelization’, and in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI confirmed this priority by creating the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization.

The 50th anniversary provides a unique opportunity to revisit that seminal event, and ‘Vatican II: 50 Years On: The New Evangelization’ will reflect on the impact of the council and deepen understanding of New Evangelization. Hosted by Leeds Trinity in conjunction with the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, the conference will take place from 26 – 29 June at Leeds Trinity University College, and is the first in a series of conferences to celebrate Catholic Higher Education in the UK.

A number of international, high profile church leaders and theologians will address the conference, including Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, President of the newly formed Pontifical Council for New Evangelization, and Gavin D’Costa, Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol. Representatives of church, academy and society will also take part in panels assessing the local and global impact of the Council and its meaning for today. There will be an opportunity to celebrate the Council and the New Evangelization at public events each evening.

The Right Reverend Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, has lent his support for the conference, saying:

“I welcome the forthcoming International Theological Conference at Leeds Trinity University College. This represents an important moment in the Church’s outreach to society following the Papal Visit in 2010. Our Catholic faith has a specific content. Rearticulated at the Second Vatican Council, this faith is to be constantly explored and treasured. God is calling us to share its saving truths respectfully with others so that they may share our joy. I hope that your reflections will bear much fruit.”

For further information and to book a place, visit http://www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/vaticanIIconference or contact Kathy Stenton, k(dot)stenton(at)leedstrinity(dot)ac(dot)ukor +44 (0)113 2837102.

Notes for editors

Leeds Trinity University College is an independent higher education institution offering foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in a range of subjects including Business, Education, Humanities, Journalism, Media, Psychology and Sport. Formerly Leeds Trinity All Saints, the institution attained University College status in September 2009, following the granting by the Privy Council of Taught Degree Awarding Powers.

All degrees involve a professional placement for students to extend their experience and explore their career aspirations. With around 3000 students studying for full and part-time degrees Leeds Trinity retains a community atmosphere which provides a supportive and friendly environment to help people realise their full potential.

For more information:

Lisa Farrell, Communications Officer, Leeds Trinity University College

Tel: 0113 283 7273

Email: l(dot)farrell(at)leedstrinity(dot)ac(dot)uk

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebleedstrinity/internationalconference/prweb9514946.htm

Leeds Trinity to host major Catholic International Conference

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, Leeds Trinity University College is hosting a major Catholic international theological conference
from 26 – 29 June 2012.

/PressPort/ – The beginning of the Second Vatican Council had a profound impact on the life of the Catholic Church and its mission, in particular by starting an engagement with the modern and secularized world through a renewed proclamation of the Gospel. Pope John Paul II described this as the ‘New Evangelization’, and in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI confirmed this priority by creating the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization.

The 50^th anniversary provides a unique opportunity to revisit that seminal event, and ‘Vatican II: 50 Years On: The New Evangelization’ will reflect on the impact of the council and deepen understanding of New Evangelization. Hosted by Leeds Trinity in conjunction with the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, the conference will take place from 26 – 29 June at Leeds Trinity University College, and is the first in a series of conferences to celebrate Catholic Higher Education in the UK.

A number of international, high profile church leaders and theologians will address the conference, including Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, President of the newly formed Pontifical Council for New Evangelization, and Gavin D’Costa, Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol. Representatives of church, academy and society will also take part in panels assessing the local and global impact of the Council and its meaning for today. There will be an opportunity to celebrate the Council and the New Evangelization at public events each evening.

The Right Reverend Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, has lent his support for the conference, saying:

 “I welcome the forthcoming International Theological Conference at Leeds Trinity University College. This represents an important moment in the Church’s outreach to society following the Papal Visit in 2010. Our Catholic faith has a specific content. Rearticulated at the Second Vatican Council, this faith is to be constantly explored and treasured. God is calling us to share its saving truths respectfully with others so that they may share our joy. I hope that your reflections will bear much fruit.”

For further information and to book a place, visit  www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/vaticanIIconference or contact Kathy Stenton, k.stenton@leedstrinity.ac.uk or +44 (0)113 2837102.

ENDS

Notes for editors

Leeds Trinity University College is an independent higher education institution offering foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in a range of subjects including Business, Education, Humanities, Journalism, Media, Psychology and Sport. Formerly Leeds Trinity All Saints, the institution attained University College status in September 2009, following the granting by the Privy Council of Taught Degree Awarding Powers.

All degrees involve a professional placement for students to extend their experience and explore their career aspirations. With around 3000 students studying for full and part-time degrees Leeds Trinity retains a community atmosphere which provides a supportive and friendly environment to help people realise their full potential.

For more information:

Lisa Farrell, Communications Officer, Leeds Trinity University College

Tel: 0113 283 7273

Email: l.farrell@leedstrinity.ac.uk 

Ratzinger’s Faith

I first became acquainted with the writings of Tracey Rowland in the pages of the Tablet, where she is a fairly regular contributor. I am not sure why I did not see her book “Ratzinger’s Faith” when it was published by Oxford Press in 2008. But, I saw it at a local bookstore this past winter, bought it, and put it on my list of books to read. I completed it last weekend and highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the theological pedigree and distinctive theological perspectives of Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

The first casualty of Rowland’s scholarship is the meme – let us be frank, a meme that has more than a little currency in leftie Catholic circles – that Joseph Ratzinger may have been on the side of the reformers at Vatican II, where he served as a peritus to Cardinal Frings of Cologne, but that after Vatican II, with the social and religious tumult of 1968, he turned hard to the right and has essentially been trying to put the Vatican II toothpaste back into the tube ever since, leading the Church back into pre-conciliar days. Rowland points us towards several instances in which Ratzinger has made his criticism of pre-conciliar scholasticism quite clear. He has allowed that it has its excellences but that he always found it dry and impersonal. She quotes a seminary Prefect who knew Ratzinger as a student who relates this observation, at once charming and profound: “[According to Raztinger] God is not recognized because He is a summum bonum that is able to be grasped and demonstrated with exact formulas, but because He is a You who comes forward and gets Himself recognized…In the dialect of Bavaria we would say: it[scholasticism] wasn’t his beer….He’s not interested in defining God by abstract concepts. An abstraction – he once told me – doesn’t need a mother.” Rowland relates throughout the book how Raztinger has stayed true to his suspicions of pre-conciliar scholasticism.

The second casualty of Rowland’s scholarship, again offered early in the book but sustained throughout its pages, is the idea that Ratzinger’s Augustinianism is “the problem” and that this characteristic differentiates him from the upbeat mood of the Council: Whereas the Council was opening the windows of the Church to the world, Raztinger has been trying to shut them ever since. She writes:

Ratzinger’s Augustinian dispositions should not be construed as having anything to do with wanting the Church to retreat from the world, or wanting her scholars to close down conversations with the rest of non-Catholic humanity. Unfortunately, in popular parlance the adjective “Augustinian” has often been tarred with a Calvinist brush…. The promotion of a puritan-style retreat from the world is based on an interpretation of the spiritual standing of the world in the thought of St. Augustine which flows from the reformation branch of this tradition. Ratzinger belongs to a different branch with people like the great Jesuit Erich Pryzwara (1889-1972), for whom Augustine, steeped in classical culture, and rejoicing in its achievements, none the less recognizes the necessity of Christ’s Revelation to transcend its limitations and breach its aporia, or doubt.

Well said. I would add that Ratzinger, like John Paul II, understandably and rightly has a certain suspicion, not to say pessimism, about modern culture’s ability to seek the good, and it has nothing to do with their reading of Augustine. Both men grew up in the horror of World War II.

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The first chapter of Rowland’s book presents a very fine survey of the pre-conciliar theological landscape, how the Council absorbed the different theological streams that fed it documents, and some of the emerging post-conciliar schools of thought, how they overlap and how they don’t. She notes how pre-conciliar Thomism fostered a “two-tier” approach to the relationship between grace and nature, and that this two-tier approach, or dualism, unintentionally fostered the secularization of culture. She notes that this two-tier approach was especially adopted by Catholic scholars in Protestant countries, such as the U.S., in their efforts to build bridges between Catholics and non-Catholics. “The idea was that Catholics and non-Catholics could find common ground on the territory of ‘pure nature’, while the more socially contentious supernatural beliefs and aspirations of Catholics could be relegated to the privacy of the individual soul.” She quotes Henri de Lubac who, on a tour of the U.S. in 1968 had warned that such a construction of the relationship between grace and nature resulted in “a total secularization that would banish God not only from social life but from culture and even from relationships in private life.”

This debate about the relationship between nature and grace may seem like the stuff, exclusively, of theological symposia. Instead, it is the heart of the matter. The influence of de Lubac and Balthasar on both John Paul II and Benedict XVI, I would submit although Rowland does not, is precisely the part of both men’s thought that Catholic neo-cons like George Weigel, Richard John Neuhaus, and Michael Novak were never able to grasp, or were afraid to grasp. How could they, committed as they were to John Courtney Murray’s attempts to reconcile the theological constitution of the Church with the Constitution of the United States. It was Murray, after all, who once wrote that “the dualism of mankind’s two hierarchically ordered forms of social life has been Christianity’s cardinal contribution to the Western political tradition.” It is all very well and good to repeat the words of Jesus about rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and rendering unto God the things that are God’s, but what if everything is God’s? One of the difficulties some of us have seen in the USCCB’s statements about religious liberty is precisely the way those statements embody the Murray approach. This is what Professor Schindler was getting at in his brilliant essay on that subject to which I earlier called readers’ attention here.

It would be going too far to say that the struggle between liberals and conservatives over the interpretation of the Council has been a sideshow. It is not going too far to recognize that there is a certain symbiotic relationship between the two that misses the more interesting struggle within Catholic theology. As Balthasar once wrote: “[The] program of Christian progressivism is curiously close to that of its opponent, Christian integralism…Both, ultimately, have reduced the problem of power between God and the world, between grace and nature, to a monistic form which is easy to handle and can be managed by men.” Liberals and conservatives may be fighting over the rules, but the de Lubac, Balthasar, Ratzinger project is to go deeper, and to assert, boldly, that for the Christian, the absolute imperative is love, not obedience, except and only insofar as love entails a type of obedience, a demanding obedience indeed, to its own dictates. Rowland is careful to note that many post-conciliar Thomists has been wrestling with this issue of grace and nature, and the problems of dualism, whether that dualism is attributed to mis-readings of Thomas by pre-conciliar thinkers, or to Cajetan, or to Thomas himself. It is the most fascinating theological issue of our time.

The different approaches towards the relationship between grace and nature profoundly affect how one reads the Council, especially Gaudium et Spes, and also how one views our understanding of Revelation, Scripture and Tradition. We shall take up these issues tomorrow.

Sue and Larry Yarger: Theology test

If they want the church, and we are the church according to Vatican II, to fall into step with Catholic theology, then that theology needs to exemplify the ministry of Jesus.

Sue and Larry Yarger

Raleigh

Pope stakes out church’s course entering 8th year

The Associated Press

Tuesday, May 1, 2012 | 3:21 a.m.

Pope Benedict XVI began his eighth year as pope on Tuesday after spending the waning days of his seventh driving home his view of the Catholic Church, with a divisive crackdown on dissenters and an equally divisive opening to a fringe group of traditionalists.

The coming year may see more of the same as the Vatican gears up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that reshaped the Catholic Church and are key to understanding this papacy and Benedict’s recent moves to quell liberal dissent and promote a more conservative brand of Catholicism.

Tuesday marked the anniversary of the start of Benedict’s pontificate, which officially began April 24, 2005, with an inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square. The pope promised then not to impose his own will on the church but to rather listen “to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by him, so that he himself will lead the church at this hour of our history.”

Seven years later, Benedict has certainly left a mark on the church, pressing a conservative interpretation of Vatican II’s key teachings, appointing like-minded bishops and making his priority the revitalization of traditional Catholicism in a world, which he often laments, seems to think that it can do without God.

He set out many of those priorities in a December 2005 speech to his closest collaborators running the Vatican, insisting that Vatican II didn’t represent a break from the past as many liberal-minded Catholics would like to think but rather a renewal of the church’s core teachings and traditions.

The Vatican last week put those words into action, cracking down on the largest umbrella group of nuns in the United States, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The pope’s old office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, appointed a bishop to revise the conference’s statutes and review its programs and publications, and accused the group of taking positions that undermine church teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality, while promoting “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Two weeks earlier, the pope himself took to task a dissident group of priests in heavily Catholic Austria who have openly called for ordaining women and relaxing the celibacy requirement for priests, questioning whether their call for disobedience was more about imposing their own ideas on the church than renewing it.

At the same time, on the very day it announced the crackdown on the U.S. nuns, the Holy See said it was nearing agreement to bring an ultra-traditionalist conservative group of Catholics back into communion with Rome after two decades of schism.

The group, the Society of St. Pius X, broke from Rome after rejecting many of the teachings of Vatican II, particularly its outreach to Jews and people of other faiths, and the sanctioning of the New Mass in the vernacular that essentially replaced the old Latin Mass.

Benedict has gone to tremendous lengths to reconcile with the group, fearing the expansion of a parallel, pre-conciliar church that already boasts more than 550 priests and 200 seminarians.

To critics, the coincidence was remarkable: the Vatican was in a way rejecting the U.S. nuns who had embraced Vatican II and its call to go out into the world to serve the poor, while embracing the Society of St. Pius X which had rejected Vatican II.

Top officials at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious have said they were “stunned” by the Vatican decision and taken by surprise by its gravity. Online petitions supporting them have been launched, and one Jesuit author, the Rev. James Martin, has started a Twitter campaign, WhatSistersMeanToMe, highlighting individual nuns who had an impact on him and others.

“Catholic sisters are my heroes: they’ve been my teachers, my mentors and my friends,” Martin said in an email. “The women represented by the LCWR fully embraced the changes that the church asked of them after the Second Vatican Council, revisiting their founding documents, throwing themselves into work with the poor, and reimagining community life, all while remaining faithful to their vows.”

Yet conservative Catholics have long complained that the majority of sisters in the U.S. have grown too liberal and flout church teaching on issues such as homosexuality and a male-only clergy. The Vatican in its admonition of the LCWR complained that speakers at its assemblies often contradict or ignore core church teaching and that Catholic doctrine as a whole isn’t stressed enough in the conference’s member communities.

Conservatives have championed Benedict’s move to bring about a more orthodox faith to the church, even at the expense of popularity among liberals.

“Benedict understands his mission as custodian of the faith,” said the Rev. Robert Gahl Jr., an Opus Dei priest and professor of moral philosophy at Rome’s Pontifical Holy Cross University. “The pope has little interest in opinion polling and focus groups. He is not going to adjust the doctrine according to popular opinion or majority belief. Benedict’s aim is to unite the church around the faith handed down by Jesus, the church’s founder.”

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, reached out to both dissidents and members of the schismatic Society of St. Pius X in an anniversary editorial this weekend, urging unity as the pope begins his eighth year.

“It is our hope that dissenting groups will hear his invitation to be in communion with the church and receive this invitation with respect and attention, and with an understanding of its significance,” Lombardi wrote. And he added that he hoped the Vatican II anniversary “might be an occasion to promote the proper and objective understanding of the council as a ‘compass of the church of our time.’”

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at http://www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Pope stakes out church’s course in his eighth year

The coming year may see more of the same as the Vatican gears up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that reshaped the Catholic Church and are key to understanding this papacy and Benedict’s recent moves to quell liberal dissent and promote a more conservative brand of Catholicism.

Tuesday marked the anniversary of the start of Benedict’s pontificate, which officially began April 24, 2005, with an inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square. The pope promised then not to impose his own will on the church but to rather listen “to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by him, so that he himself will lead the church at this hour of our history.”

Seven years later, Benedict has certainly left a mark on the church, pressing a conservative interpretation of Vatican II’s key teachings, appointing like-minded bishops and making his priority the revitalization of traditional Catholicism in a world, which he often laments, seems to think that it can do without God.

He set out many of those priorities in a December 2005 speech to his closest collaborators running the Vatican, insisting that Vatican II didn’t represent a break from the past as many liberal-minded Catholics would like to think but rather a renewal of the church’s core teachings and traditions.

The Vatican last week put those words into action, cracking down on the largest umbrella group of nuns in the United States, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The pope’s old office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, appointed a bishop to revise the conference’s statutes and review its programs and publications, and accused the group of taking positions that undermine church teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality, while promoting “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Two weeks earlier, the pope himself took to task a dissident group of priests in heavily Catholic Austria who have openly called for ordaining women and relaxing the celibacy requirement for priests, questioning whether their call for disobedience was more about imposing their own ideas on the church than renewing it.

At the same time, on the very day it announced the crackdown on the U.S. nuns, the Holy See said it was nearing agreement to bring an ultra-traditionalist conservative group of Catholics back into communion with Rome after two decades of schism.

The group, the Society of St. Pius X, broke from Rome after rejecting many of the teachings of Vatican II, particularly its outreach to Jews and people of other faiths, and the sanctioning of the New Mass in the vernacular that essentially replaced the old Latin Mass.

Benedict has gone to tremendous lengths to reconcile with the group, fearing the expansion of a parallel, pre-conciliar church that already boasts more than 550 priests and 200 seminarians.

To critics, the coincidence was remarkable: the Vatican was in a way rejecting the U.S. nuns who had embraced Vatican II and its call to go out into the world to serve the poor, while embracing the Society of St. Pius X which had rejected Vatican II.

Top officials at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious have said they were “stunned” by the Vatican decision and taken by surprise by its gravity. Online petitions supporting them have been launched, and one Jesuit author, the Rev. James Martin, has started a Twitter campaign, WhatSistersMeanToMe, highlighting individual nuns who had an impact on him and others.

“Catholic sisters are my heroes: they’ve been my teachers, my mentors and my friends,” Martin said in an email. “The women represented by the LCWR fully embraced the changes that the church asked of them after the Second Vatican Council, revisiting their founding documents, throwing themselves into work with the poor, and reimagining community life, all while remaining faithful to their vows.”

Yet conservative Catholics have long complained that the majority of sisters in the U.S. have grown too liberal and flout church teaching on issues such as homosexuality and a male-only clergy. The Vatican in its admonition of the LCWR complained that speakers at its assemblies often contradict or ignore core church teaching and that Catholic doctrine as a whole isn’t stressed enough in the conference’s member communities.

Conservatives have championed Benedict’s move to bring about a more orthodox faith to the church, even at the expense of popularity among liberals.

“Benedict understands his mission as custodian of the faith,” said the Rev. Robert Gahl Jr., an Opus Dei priest and professor of moral philosophy at Rome’s Pontifical Holy Cross University. “The pope has little interest in opinion polling and focus groups. He is not going to adjust the doctrine according to popular opinion or majority belief. Benedict’s aim is to unite the church around the faith handed down by Jesus, the church’s founder.”

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, reached out to both dissidents and members of the schismatic Society of St. Pius X in an anniversary editorial this weekend, urging unity as the pope begins his eighth year.

“It is our hope that dissenting groups will hear his invitation to be in communion with the church and receive this invitation with respect and attention, and with an understanding of its significance,” Lombardi wrote. And he added that he hoped the Vatican II anniversary “might be an occasion to promote the proper and objective understanding of the council as a ‘compass of the church of our time.’ ”

Pope stakes out church’s course entering 8th year

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI began his eighth year as pope on Tuesday after spending the waning days of his seventh driving home his view of the Catholic Church, with a divisive crackdown on dissenters and an equally divisive opening to a fringe group of traditionalists.

The coming year will likely see more of the same as the Vatican gears up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that reshaped the Catholic Church and are key to understanding this papacy and Benedict’s recent moves to stamp out liberal dissent and promote a more conservative brand of Catholicism.

Tuesday marked the anniversary of the start of Benedict’s pontificate, which officially began April 24, 2005, with an inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square. The pope promised then not to impose his own will on the church but to rather listen “to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by him, so that he himself will lead the church at this hour of our history.”

Seven years later, Benedict has certainly left a mark on the church, pressing a conservative interpretation of Vatican II’s key teachings, appointing like-minded bishops and making his priority the revitalization of traditional Catholicism in a world, which he often laments, seems to think that it can do without God.

He set out many of those priorities in a December 2005 speech to his closest collaborators running the Vatican, insisting that Vatican II didn’t represent a break from the past as many liberal-minded Catholics would like to think but rather a renewal of the church’s core teachings and traditions.

The Vatican last week put those words into action, cracking down on the largest umbrella group of nuns in the United States, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The pope’s old office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, appointed a bishop to revise the conference’s statutes and review its programs and publications, and accused the group of taking positions that undermine church teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality, while promoting “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Two weeks earlier, the pope himself lashed out at a dissident group of priests in heavily Catholic Austria who have openly called for ordaining women and relaxing the celibacy requirement for priests, questioning whether their call for disobedience was more about imposing their own ideas on the church than renewing it.

At the same time, on the very day it announced the crackdown on the U.S. nuns, the Holy See said it was nearing agreement to bring an ultra-traditionalist conservative group of Catholics back into communion with Rome after two decades of schism.

The group, the Society of St. Pius X, broke from Rome after rejecting many of the teachings of Vatican II, particularly its outreach to Jews and people of other faiths, and the sanctioning of the New Mass in the vernacular that essentially replaced the old Latin Mass.

To critics, the coincidence was remarkable: the Vatican was in a way rejecting the U.S. nuns who had embraced Vatican II and its call to go out into the world to serve the poor, while embracing the Society of St. Pius X which had rejected Vatican II.

Top officials at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious have said they were “stunned” by the decision and taken by surprise by its gravity. Online petitions supporting them have been launched, and one Jesuit author, the Rev. James Martin, has started a Twitter campaign, WhatSistersMeanToMe, highlighting individual nuns who had an impact on him and others.

“Catholic sisters are my heroes: they’ve been my teachers, my mentors and my friends,” Martin said in an email. “The women represented by the LCWR fully embraced the changes that the church asked of them after the Second Vatican Council, revisiting their founding documents, throwing themselves into work with the poor, and reimagining community life, all while remaining faithful to their vows.”

Yet conservative Catholics have long complained that the majority of sisters in the U.S. have grown too liberal and flout church teaching. They have championed Benedict’s move to bring about a more orthodox faith to the church, even at the expense of popularity among liberals.

“Benedict understands his mission as custodian of the faith,” said the Rev. Robert Gahl, an Opus Dei priest and professor of moral theology at Rome’s Pontifical Holy Cross University. “The pope has little interest in opinion polling and focus groups. He is not going to adjust the doctrine according to popular opinion or majority belief. Benedict’s aim is to unite the church around the faith handed down by Jesus, the church’s founder.”

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, reached out to both dissidents and members of the schismatic Society of St. Pius X in an anniversary editorial this weekend, urging unity as the pope begins his eighth year.

“It is our hope that dissenting groups will hear his invitation to be in communion with the church and receive this invitation with respect and attention, and with an understanding of its significance,” Lombardi wrote. And he added that he hoped the Vatican II anniversary “might be an occasion to promote the proper and objective understanding of the council as a ’compass of the church of our time.”’

Entering 8th year, pope presses traditional views

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI began his eighth year as pope this week after spending the waning days of his seventh driving home his view of the Catholic Church, with a divisive crackdown on dissenters and an equally divisive opening to a fringe group of traditionalists.

The coming year may see more of the same as the Vatican gears up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that reshaped the Catholic Church and are key to understanding this papacy and Benedict’s recent moves to quell liberal dissent and promote a more conservative brand of Catholicism.

Tuesday marked the anniversary of the start of Benedict’s pontificate, which officially began April 24, 2005, with an inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square.

The pope promised then not to impose his own will on the church but to rather listen “to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by him, so that he himself will lead the church at this hour of our history.”

Seven years later, Benedict certainly has left a mark on the church. He has pressed a conservative interpretation of Vatican II’s key teachings, appointed like-minded bishops, and made his priority the revitalization of traditional Catholicism in a world that, he often laments, seems to think it can do without God.

He set out many of those priorities in a December 2005 speech to his closest collaborators running the Vatican, insisting Vatican II didn’t represent a break from the past as many liberal-minded Catholics would like to think, but rather a renewal of the church’s core teachings and traditions.

The Vatican last week put those words into action, cracking down on the largest umbrella group of nuns in the United States, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

The pope’s old office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, appointed a bishop to revise the conference’s statutes and review its programs and publications, and accused the group of taking positions that undermine church teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality, while promoting “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Two weeks earlier, the pope himself took to task a dissident group of priests in heavily Catholic Austria who have called for ordaining women and relaxing the celibacy requirement for priests, questioning whether their call for disobedience was more about imposing their own ideas on the church than renewing it.

Yet on the very day it announced the crackdown on the U.S. nuns, the Holy See said it was nearing agreement to bring an ultra-traditionalist conservative group of Catholics back into communion with Rome after two decades of schism.

The group, the Society of St. Pius X, broke from Rome after rejecting many of the teachings of Vatican II, particularly its outreach to Jews and people of other faiths, and the sanctioning of the New Mass that essentially replaced the old Latin Mass.

Benedict has gone to tremendous lengths to reconcile with the group, fearing the expansion of a parallel conservative church that already boasts more than 550 priests and 200 seminarians.

To critics, the coincidence was remarkable: The Vatican was in a way rejecting the U.S. nuns who had embraced Vatican II and its call to go out into the world to serve the poor, while embracing the Society of St. Pius X that rejected Vatican II.

Top officials at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious have said they were “stunned” by the Vatican decision and surprised by its gravity.

Online petitions supporting them have been launched, and Jesuit author Father James Martin has started a Twitter campaign, WhatSistersMeanToMe, highlighting individual nuns who had an impact on him and others.

“Catholic sisters are my heroes: they’ve been my teachers, my mentors and my friends,” Martin said in an email. “The women represented by the LCWR fully embraced the changes that the church asked of them after the Second Vatican Council, revisiting their founding documents, throwing themselves into work with the poor, and reimagining community life, all while remaining faithful to their vows.”

Yet conservative Catholics long have complained that the majority of sisters in the U.S. have grown too liberal and flout church teaching on issues such as homosexuality and a male-only clergy.

The Vatican in its admonition of the LCWR complained that speakers at its assemblies often contradict or ignore core church teaching and that Catholic doctrine as a whole isn’t stressed enough in the conference’s member communities.

Conservatives have championed Benedict’s move to bring about a more orthodox faith to the church, even at the expense of popularity among liberals.

“Benedict understands his mission as custodian of the faith,” said Father Robert Gahl Jr., an Opus Dei priest and professor of moral philosophy at Rome’s Pontifical Holy Cross University. “The pope has little interest in opinion polling and focus groups. He is not going to adjust the doctrine according to popular opinion or majority belief. Benedict’s aim is to unite the church around the faith handed down by Jesus, the church’s founder.”

Pope stakes out church’s course entering 8th year

VATICAN CITY –  Pope Benedict XVI began his eighth year as pope on Tuesday after spending the waning days of his seventh driving home his view of the Catholic Church, with a divisive crackdown on dissenters and an equally divisive opening to a fringe group of traditionalists.

The coming year may see more of the same as the Vatican gears up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that reshaped the Catholic Church and are key to understanding this papacy and Benedict’s recent moves to quell liberal dissent and promote a more conservative brand of Catholicism.

Tuesday marked the anniversary of the start of Benedict’s pontificate, which officially began April 24, 2005, with an inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square. The pope promised then not to impose his own will on the church but to rather listen “to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by him, so that he himself will lead the church at this hour of our history.”

Seven years later, Benedict has certainly left a mark on the church, pressing a conservative interpretation of Vatican II’s key teachings, appointing like-minded bishops and making his priority the revitalization of traditional Catholicism in a world, which he often laments, seems to think that it can do without God.

He set out many of those priorities in a December 2005 speech to his closest collaborators running the Vatican, insisting that Vatican II didn’t represent a break from the past as many liberal-minded Catholics would like to think but rather a renewal of the church’s core teachings and traditions.

The Vatican last week put those words into action, cracking down on the largest umbrella group of nuns in the United States, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The pope’s old office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, appointed a bishop to revise the conference’s statutes and review its programs and publications, and accused the group of taking positions that undermine church teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality, while promoting “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Two weeks earlier, the pope himself took to task a dissident group of priests in heavily Catholic Austria who have openly called for ordaining women and relaxing the celibacy requirement for priests, questioning whether their call for disobedience was more about imposing their own ideas on the church than renewing it.

At the same time, on the very day it announced the crackdown on the U.S. nuns, the Holy See said it was nearing agreement to bring an ultra-traditionalist conservative group of Catholics back into communion with Rome after two decades of schism.

The group, the Society of St. Pius X, broke from Rome after rejecting many of the teachings of Vatican II, particularly its outreach to Jews and people of other faiths, and the sanctioning of the New Mass in the vernacular that essentially replaced the old Latin Mass.

Benedict has gone to tremendous lengths to reconcile with the group, fearing the expansion of a parallel, pre-conciliar church that already boasts more than 550 priests and 200 seminarians.

To critics, the coincidence was remarkable: the Vatican was in a way rejecting the U.S. nuns who had embraced Vatican II and its call to go out into the world to serve the poor, while embracing the Society of St. Pius X which had rejected Vatican II.

Top officials at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious have said they were “stunned” by the Vatican decision and taken by surprise by its gravity. Online petitions supporting them have been launched, and one Jesuit author, the Rev. James Martin, has started a Twitter campaign, WhatSistersMeanToMe, highlighting individual nuns who had an impact on him and others.

“Catholic sisters are my heroes: they’ve been my teachers, my mentors and my friends,” Martin said in an email. “The women represented by the LCWR fully embraced the changes that the church asked of them after the Second Vatican Council, revisiting their founding documents, throwing themselves into work with the poor, and reimagining community life, all while remaining faithful to their vows.”

Yet conservative Catholics have long complained that the majority of sisters in the U.S. have grown too liberal and flout church teaching on issues such as homosexuality and a male-only clergy. The Vatican in its admonition of the LCWR complained that speakers at its assemblies often contradict or ignore core church teaching and that Catholic doctrine as a whole isn’t stressed enough in the conference’s member communities.

Conservatives have championed Benedict’s move to bring about a more orthodox faith to the church, even at the expense of popularity among liberals.

“Benedict understands his mission as custodian of the faith,” said the Rev. Robert Gahl Jr., an Opus Dei priest and professor of moral philosophy at Rome’s Pontifical Holy Cross University. “The pope has little interest in opinion polling and focus groups. He is not going to adjust the doctrine according to popular opinion or majority belief. Benedict’s aim is to unite the church around the faith handed down by Jesus, the church’s founder.”

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, reached out to both dissidents and members of the schismatic Society of St. Pius X in an anniversary editorial this weekend, urging unity as the pope begins his eighth year.

“It is our hope that dissenting groups will hear his invitation to be in communion with the church and receive this invitation with respect and attention, and with an understanding of its significance,” Lombardi wrote. And he added that he hoped the Vatican II anniversary “might be an occasion to promote the proper and objective understanding of the council as a ‘compass of the church of our time.’”

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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Colleagues celebrate career of Fr. Richard McBrien

To the dismay of the right and pleasure of the rest, theologian Fr. Richard McBrien has popularized Vatican II theology more than any other person.

After 45 years of his award-winning weekly column (2,364 in all) titled “Essays in Theology”; after 20 books, including Catholicism, originally a two-volume synthesis of Catholic theology; after serving as president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and after being the recipient of its highest honor, the John Courtney Murray Award; after countless papers and speeches; after all this and more, McBrien will be honored April 27 at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, where he has taught for 30 years.

“No Catholic theologian in the United States has made a larger contribution to the reception of Vatican II than Richard P. McBrien,” said Catholic theologian Fr. Charles E. Curran, Elizabeth Scurlock University Professor of Human Values at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and a longtime McBrien colleague and friend. “McBrien has made this contribution by carrying out to the nth degree his role as a Catholic theologian.”

Curran will be a featured speaker at the Notre Dame McBrien symposium, whose honorary chair is former university president Holy Cross Fr. Theodore Hesburgh. It was Hesburgh who in 1980 invited McBrien to come from Boston College to chair Notre Dame’s theology department. McBrien was chair for 11 years, until 1991.

Curran is not alone in his effusive praise for McBrien and his contributions to theology.

According to John Thiel, president of Catholic Theological Society of America and professor of religious studies at Fairfield University in Connecticut, “McBrien is the theologian who has done the most in the American church to teach the continuing heritage of the Second Vatican Council. Through his many books and essays … [he] has prompted a couple of generations of post-Vatican II Catholics to reflect on nothing less than what it means to be the church.”

St. Joseph Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, professor of theology at Fordham University in New York, said of McBrien: “His love of the church and his knowledge of its history, both sinful and graced, led a whole generation to a greater critical appreciation of what it means to be Catholic. … [His] weekly columns have been the voice of church reform in the United States for decades. … His insights have pierced the fog of pretense and at times outright deception to bring a modicum of transparency to the exercise of power.”

In This Issue: April 13-26

Subscribe to NCR to get all the news and special features that aren’t always available online. In this issue:

- Peace Seekers Garther on Kenyan Plain
10th Anniversary gathering of the Global Peace Initiative for Women

- Special Section: Ecology
Legislative milestones; partnerships with the poor; Genesis Farm; and more

- Viewpoint: Faded Outrage
Apple story shows fair labor movement must bridge ‘concern gap’

McBrien is currently on a medical leave of absence with plans to retire in May 2013.

Last year he had back surgery and discovered in June that a non-Hodgkin lymphoma returned in spite of two years of treatments. In treatment he suspended his column for the second time, in January. He recently told NCR editor Dennis Coday: “Don’t feel sorry for me.”

He told me recently, “I’m getting lots of emails and cards from people who say, ‘We need you.’ I fully intend to return to the column, but don’t want to return until I feel well enough to do it every week.”

The name Richard McBrien is synonymous with the Second Vatican Council. It helps explain why, as Pope John Paul II’s and Pope Benedict XVI’s conservative episcopal appointments have taken firm hold, many diocesan newspapers have dropped his column. Once his weekly reflections appeared in 24 diocesan papers and in the bulletins of two dozen parishes. Today, only six diocesan newspapers and eight parishes publish McBrien, who is a Hartford, Conn., archdiocesan priest. (McBrien has written for NCR from at least the early 1970s. His weekly column has appeared in the paper and online since 2008.)

It bothers McBrien to see bishops dropping his writings. He makes this clear in conversations with friends. But the reason he is disturbed is only partly personal. He sees implications for the wider church and for freedom of expression in theology.

Former students of Fr. Richard McBrien catch up in his office at the University of Notre Dame. From left are Brandon Peterson, Jesuit Fr. Andrew Downing, McBrien and Professor Todd Walatka.“My column might be viewed as a kind of barometer,” he said April 4 in a telephone interview. “I’ve not changed; the bishops have.” McBrien said he takes pride that what he says in private he repeats in public, and then went on to say, “If there are any reasons for the bad patch the church is now going through, it is the appointments to the hierarchy and the promotions within made by John Paul and Benedict. By and large, they have all been conservative. That’s why so many Catholics have left the church, are on extended vacations, or are demoralized or discouraged.”

By contrast, he pointed to Popes Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI who appointed, he said, conservatives, moderates and liberals. “A healthy mix,” he added.

Eugene Kennedy, longtime McBrien friend and another Vatican II evangelist, in an email called McBrien “an ironic hero of Vatican II and its teachings.”

“For reasons that remain unclear, Fr. McBrien has been judged by many bishops and those who would please bishops as a dissident and dangerous priest whose column was banished from many diocesan newspapers as if it were a modern version of Luther’s theses, too threatening to be nailed to their editorial pages,” Kennedy said. “In truth, and throughout years of unjustified and unjustifiable criticism, Fr. McBrien calmly returned to the lectern of his column every week to teach the faith in depth and in its application to social and political issues in an orthodox manner that respected his knowing readers and even the bishops who apparently did not read him before condemning him in a highly self-satisfied, let’s-play-this-safe fashion.”

McBrien, a tall man who stands out in most any gathering, obtained his doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he studied during two sessions of the Second Vatican Council.

It was during those years he developed his interest in church history and ecclesiology. He was especially taken by the writings of French Dominican Cardinal Yves Congar, another theologian out of favor with the hierarchy for much of his life. “I read all his works in French and English,” McBrien said. “I visited Congar during the council at the Angelicum [Dominican university of Rome]. That was the highlight of my time in Rome. Meeting him and talking with him for about an hour.”

Himself a specialist on Congar, Boston College theologian Richard Gaillardetz said of McBrien: “He has often championed Yves Congar as the most important ecclesiologist of the 20th century. However, by the mid-1970s McBrien had, in a real sense, taken the baton from Congar, who would live almost two decades longer but with greatly diminished productivity.”

Gaillardetz added, “In McBrien’s first theological vocation as Catholic ecclesiologist, he drew on the massive achievement of Vatican II, an achievement largely inspired by Congar, to work toward accomplishing what the council itself could not, a coherent and comprehensive post-conciliar ecclesiology, a project reflected in his most recent work, The Church: The Evolution of Catholicism.

“What has made McBrien stand out from his peers has been his ability to combine scholarly erudition and a sympathetic engagement with the ordinary insights and concerns of everyday Catholics. … His pugnacious attitude and determination to speak truthfully, and often courageously, in the face of ecclesiastical dysfunction, has often blinded people to his profound love of the church.”

Upon his return from Rome in 1965, as Vatican II was closing, McBrien became a professor of theology at Pope John XXIII National Seminary (now Blessed John XXIII National Seminary) in Weston, Mass.

After five years at the seminary, where he also served as dean of studies, he went to Boston College, where he taught and was director of its Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry until coming to Notre Dame in 1980.

During more than four decades of writing and teaching, McBrien’s theological reach has been wide and deep. His scholarship has influenced more than a few younger theologians. “He has educated generations of scholars,” remarked Susan A. Ross, chair of the department of theology at Loyola University Chicago and president-elect of the Catholic Theological Society of America. “He has been a mentor for many of us.”

Within the academic pantheon, McBrien is viewed as a moderate to progressive theologian. Primarily because of his weekly column he has been a prime target of the Catholic far right, especially on the Internet, where he often gets demonized for not upholding Catholic orthodoxy.

“Why have those extreme right-wing Catholics made him the focus of their opposition?” Curran asked. “He himself points out that some extreme conservatives resist to the end the aggiornamento reform brought about by Vatican II. Part of the answer comes from the fact that McBrien, more than any other contemporary Catholic theologian, has tried to theologically inform the average Catholic struggling to reflect on the meaning of faith.”

Looking back, McBrien said the most satisfying element in his long career has been being able to popularize Catholic theology. Or, as he likes to say, “keeping alive Vatican II.”

“I try to be honest and without being cynical. I try to give a sense of the history of the church and hope in the process.”

Asked if he has personal regrets, he answers, no, he doesn’t. Pausing, he goes on to say it saddens him that cooperation between theologians and bishops has not been better. “Vatican II was the high point. I blame John Paul and Benedict. They’ve leaned on Catholic theologians, Curran in particular. There have been others. They’ve put a chill in Catholic theology. Today many Catholic theologians are gun-shy. They keep their heads down. It’s not good.”

He says his “most significant” book was Catholicism, his 1980 two-volume synthesis of Catholic theology. The first edition sold more than 150,000 copies. Ross, among other theologians, agrees. “It remains,” she said, “a landmark in post-Vatican II theology.”

The same, many Catholic theologians and other church observers might quickly add, could be said of Richard McBrien.

[Tom Fox is NCR publisher and can be reached at tfox@ncronline.org.]

Editor’s note: McBrien’s columns appear in NCR regularly. His weekly column has appeared on the NCR website at NCRonline.org. All his columns can be found at www.richardmcbrien.com. Emails to McBrien can be sent to rmcbrien@nd.edu