THE WORD OF FORGIVENESS:

...work hard for a living and are too tired in the evening Our approach is to adjust rather than to change the to man picket lines...

...and hence the progressive paganizing of church life...

...the abstract to the absurd, implying that those who do And our weakness is a reliance on the past model not hit the streets for the pastor's latest crusade are unof the established church as a pattern for living and responsive pagans...

...Happily, that silly him) and to the very poor (who can obtain free serpolemic has quieted...

...If the phenomena are on ordinary parochial life, the church Lord's prayer is still a model for Christians, it may be stands aside, muttering about elitism...

...The union between religion and life which was the ideal (and in considerable measure the practice) of both medieval Catholicism and the great Reformers has passed from the scene...

...Society and the state are Christian, and as the all the talk about the role of the Christian layman in the influence of the church is a public and welcome leaven world, the church gives little encouragement to anything in the whole of society, so also is the state and the other than vocation to ecclesiastical ministry on one society the support of the church...

...The village wise men or the saintly grandmother were Clearly, this cannot be done in simple sectarian blacks readily accessible...

...For those Rhetoric about the priesthood of the laity has been who want more intensity, American sectarianism gives strong enough for even immovable and immutable Rome signs of long life, and will gladly absorb those who can- to adopt it...

...The ability to pray is bought at no small sacred instrument...

...Yet touched vast portions of their lives is not to bring them the church positively catechizes people to precisely this the healing power of Christ, but to legitimate the sinful kind of religious schizophrenia, when parochial ministry situations in which they are ensnared...

...Meanwhile, the out- Although highly partisan to the right, he kept playing lawed People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), Marxist the right against the left to keep a balance in the ranks guerrillas who never joined the Peronist movement, con- Consequently, the leadership of the nation fell on the well-molded shoulders of his third wife, Maria Estela Martinez de Peron...

...THE WORD OF FORGIVENESS RALPH A. KEIFER Some uncomfortable words about the present state of penitential practice As the new Roman Ordo Paenitentiae reaches its first some deeper issues which must be faced, not only for stage of translation into English, our penitential practice the sake of liturgical reform, but for the sake of the is in the greatest disarray it has known for centuries...

...the established church, and (like others also) its present Undoubtedly, the new rite will be attacked from some situation of disestablishment...

...As its influence has decreased, the church has national health insurance, but he is a good Christian attended more and more to private and domestic affairs...

...Yet most of our parochial structures are not abide the church by custom established...

...Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore...

...Yet these vast reand to add pageantry and color to the routine of ordin- sources of the church remain untapped...

...He pledged to structure his movement so it his political stature and sagacity would enable him to could exist after his death...

...For the ordinary Christian, the pattern of society, a greed and lust for power which can always Christian life is determined mainly by the assimilation be excused on the ground that "all I do, I do for the of socially acceptable patterns, according to one's own good of my family...

...In a society whose only public prayer is that of they are subjected to the ventilation of prejudices we the occasional civic incense tossed to the false God of call a study group...

...many of the values most dearly held in our culture...

...appropriate without qualms the rest of the values of Commonweal: 519 American culture...

...model in any radical way...

...This has added wielder of absolute power, Peron did not leave an heir...

...The church, like it or not-and we of topical preaching and individual counseling...

...are living Christian life at its best are virtually invisible The Godfather, after all, is the apogee of that parochial to the parish...

...forgiveness ought to be offered, but what can be done We are sometimes shocked by the ability with which so that people can actually repent of lives entangled some people are able to combine regular churchgoing with the powers of this world...

...istry which acknowledge that fact...

...Who is the priest or toward assimilation into the values of the culture...

...The Instead, he continually played people against each other shoot-outs between right and left, which gained momen- to make sure none of his underlings became a threat...

...American Roman Catholicism did itself to anything beyond the domestic sphere in the most not impose a total world view different from that of the global, generic and abstract fashion...

...But the facts of the situation re- vices...

...In practice, the only noticeable post-conciliar de- for baptism are not merely initial stages of Christian velopments have been some mild adjustments with life, but its enduring characteristics...

...If there is to their deepest concerns and individual problems...

...Since minister who could freely seek the advice of members we still operate on this model, the church implicitly of his congregation in a moment of personal doubt and proclaims that religion and propriety are to be identified crisis...

...and we do so at our peril...

...Perhaps the most evident symptom of the church's The ideal of the established church presupposes a num- inability to speak beyond the narrowly domestic and ber of things...

...Where is the parish in which those who do is normative for the society in which it exists...

...To pronounce a word and active participation in parochial affairs with a mas- of forgiveness to those for whom the gospel has never sive indifference to gross injustice and social evil...

...The established church assumes that the gospel ministry...

...For poses...

...Belief is a public hand, and to part-time good works on the other...

...to the violence plaguing Argentine life in the '70s...

...And if it is a volAnd just as many people are not able to perceive en- untary organization, then there ought to be concrete ormous blocks of their lives as sinful, neither have they opportunities for people to minister to one another who been taught to see enormous blocks of their lives as do not share ties of blood or physical proximity of domireligious when in reality they are...

...proved to be too old and weak...

...There is little place for ministry to one another, laity to There is another possibility open to us, and it would laity, and laity to clergy, as well as clergy to laity, which require violation of neither creed nor canon, but only would be the indispensable prerequisite of a church the courage to face reality...

...These questions become all the more pressing as our If anything should be put forward in the church's pro- mobility, physical and social, increases...

...Now that he has died, a more pull enough tricks out of his grab bag to solve the apt phrase for Peron's legacy belongs to Louis XIV: situation...

...It would tend not to like it because of our established church also require that the laity be actually heard with regard background-is a voluntary organization...

...tum under Peron, have increased...

...entire church functions because it addresses itself con- The greatest tragedy may very well be that those who cretely to narrow domestic issues, and to nothing else...

...MS...

...Even a much more are not identified with the round of activities we identify radically secularized culture than our own, that of west- as "church work...

...the confessional is in marked decline, Lent is a practical Perhaps the matter which is most obvious, yet most vacuum, and we have undergone a quiet collective am- overlooked is the fact that the proclamation of God's nesia with related things such as a doctrine of satisfac- forgiveness in Christ to members of the church implies tion, of purgatory, or of indulgences...

...There are also a vast number of the ern Europe, is not adverse to trotting out the church on sick and the aged whose lives have been transformed ceremonial or festal occasions to give its benediction by a Christian attitude to suffering...

...Latin America's first woman PresiAcosTnNO soNO,, a regular contributor to these pages, writes fre- dent attained this distinction thanks to her dance hall quently on Latin American affairs for U.S...

...tinues its political kidnappings and raids on military With this laconic phrase, Juan Domingo Peron ex- installations...

...The church exercises no real position of leadership in the modern world, and functions at best as a over the Sunday school class, work for the sewing circle, peripheral institution...

...The model of the established church has long since begun to creak...

...It should be ridden, nor dependent upon the social patterns of the fairly obvious that unless people's lives are transformed past...

...The right, aided by Peron's favoritism, controls the key Peronist movement was allegiance to Peron, the man...

...is, it remains confused as to how to apply this in the The second is fraught with theological and pastoral last quarter of the twentieth century, and how to apply ambiguity, as strangers gather to celebrate reconciliation this in the United States of America...

...We could, if we were willing, prepared to live in a state of cultural deviancy...

...It is things, a witness to a strong desire for Christian fellowpossible that our greatest tragedy is not that the prac- ship which is not strangled by the patterns of the Commonweal: 521 established church, a fellowship which is neither priest- his judgment, and trusting in his power...

...The church has no critibe fond of blaming the Reformation for a situation in cism of the doctor or the lawyer whose fees make him which life as religious has become progressively priva- inaccessible to all except the rich (who can afford Vzed, individualistic, and subjective...

...Even if his reign had lasted personal allegiance to Peron, has disappeared...

...It should be noted that Roman Catholicism's the father of three children, and an associate professor of liturgy sectarianism was very selective and incomplete, fostering at St...

...Leftists have broken away from the It was not based upon a common definition of principles...

...They may in fact only be people who acting in the pluralistic situation of the United States...

...We provide "services" instead of a sphere need to heed a few words of judgment, keeping in of interaction and reflection within which people might mind that judgment begins at the house of God...

...The baptismal is aimed primarily at the family this, the mother's that, scene in the film The Godfather is not just a commentary and the children's something else...

...The problem for all its mildness, has been surrounded by controversy...

...In the Peron's death left no one on the horizon having anyname of true Peronism many have resumed the guerrilla where near his political ability or stature...

...None of this domesticizing of the church poses an It is not, after all, uncommon to find people of an eximmediate threat to its existence...

...Most modern movements, political, scientific, educational, industrial, social, have moved if not totally, at least in significant measure, entirely from the church's tutelage, and have often developed in the teeth of its most vehement opposition...

...Most of the strucready answer to the rhetorical question as to what father tures which stand in the way of being a Church which would give a stone to his children when they ask for is both evangelical and catholic are neither creedal nor bread...

...invite them to that phony folksy frontier relic known Too many proposals for church reform are detached as the church supper...

...People ask for fel- observed that it is a ringing renunciation of many of lowship, and we steer them to a committee which debates the values which our parishes and our parishioners hold such soul-searching issues as whether the guitar is a very dear...

...Even small town clamation, it should be the understanding that to live or urban neighborhood life half a century ago provided by the gospel is now to live in a state of deviancy from a natural setting of informal ministry to one another...

...For the rest Roman Catholics were able to Indiana...

...On the other side, it panders to the station in life...

...routine which caught the roving eye of an aging ex27 September 1974: 522...

...but it was a powerful homebody whose only break from routine is to take ideal, and has captivated the Christian imagination even down to the present...

...Many any genuine priority in parochial ministry, it ought to people do not have, or at least do not see, any real be the attempt to foster and develop patterns of minalternatives to the lifestyles in which they are enmeshed...

...They are the informal, unquesIt is also the absence of a possibility that repentance tioned folk structures which have never been canonized be a public and tangible fact for the benefit of the by authority, and which exist simply because we want whole church that has rendered prayer problematic in them to...

...And begin to live lives attuned to God's presence, aware of that means the local congregation...

...away as we always do...

...plained his purpose for reassuming the Argentine While Peron was alive, many Argentines hoped that Presidency...

...Of course, this ideal was, for a variety enslavement of women by the exaltation of the passive of reasons, never fully realized...

...The longer, Peron could not have achieved this end...

...Where acknowledge the fact that Christendom no longer exists, is the parish whose sick and aged can be a source of and stop acting as though we were an established strength and inspiration, and not merely the objects of church...

...cile...

...His aim was a four-year Peron has left a political vacuum characterized by "emergency government" which would have put a system chaos rather than forceful leadership...

...quarters for its conservatism, and from others for its Some, especially in the development of a thesis that opening to the left...

...that the repentance of many is an entirely private event...

...As familial patterns respond to the pressures of committee...

...social change, and as women are no longer confined to The question which lies before us, in view of the the home, the church has a questionable future even in present state of the church, is not what form in which its suburban shadow existence...

...He can bankrupt a middle-class family or fight main...

...Now Grandma lives in a Florida and whites, and any attempt to do this with any real condominium or a nursing home a thousand miles from effectiveness would require a standard of pastoral care her grandchildren, and the rural village has become a entirely different from the present ambulance services weekend resort...

...Even more tragic than the absence of paragon, the good provider and protector of his weak repentance in the lives of many churchgoers is the fact womenfolk...

...Even that last a distinctive ecclesiology, a distinctive understanding of ditch piece of penitential practice, excommunication, is the nature of the church...

...They ask to be sustained and we manifest destiny, the church must learn to pray anew...

...The first, churches," subscribes to this point of view...

...Negatively, its logic demands now a practical impossibility...

...In contrast, violence increased as Peron Apres moi, le deluge...

...They ask for the word of God, and price...

...The conventional parish has a from the central issue of repentance...

...future of the church, and particularly for the sake of The practice of fasting is in near abeyance, the use of the future of the church in this country...

...Or it rocks from surrounding culture...

...In both cases, however, it is not the Catholic Church of the recent past in this country altogether likely that enough attention will be paid to was an enclosed ghetto, have suggested that Roman Catholicism appropriated a sectarian model for its exisRALPH A. KEIFER, a frequent contributor to Worship, is married, tence...

...People have such a narrowly churchy understanding The emergence of phenomena like the pentecostal of religion that they are often unable to identify con- movement within the liturgical churches is, among other version even when it occurs in their own lives...

...Before we speak a word of forgiveness, we parochial life...

...may be given to an entire congregation, and on modi- Positively, it means that the whole of Christian life is fication of the tridentine requirement for integral confes- baptismal, and that the repentance and faith required sion...

...publications...

...Our problem, like with one another, and as private sacrament clashes with that of some other churches as well, is the heritage of public rite...

...The church addresses on an unrepresentative segment of Roman Catholicism...

...regard to the confession of children and the populariza- Roman Catholicism, with other Western "liturgical tion of a new kind of public penitential service...

...government posts...

...because he spends three hours a week in the free clinic The church is suburbanized in the most radical sense, or with Legal Aid, and because he is a "church worker," for it has little to say beyond the hearth and the bed- volunteering to read the lessons and to sit on the finance room...

...First, it presupposes that baptism and citi- intimately familial sphere is the persistent lack of atzenship are coterminous, at least for all practical pur- tention to the question of a Christian's confession...

...Theoretical issues tend to a rejection of the notion of the church as the gathered converge on the question of whether or not absolution community of the elect, an assembly of twiceborn saints...

...Such a oriented toward a form of ministry appropriate only to course may give us some twinges about the lordship of the established church, where a professional and active Christ, but we ought to be able to theologize that few minister to the needs of the passive and inert many...

...ary life...

...canonical, nor ritual...

...Roman Catholic writers used to and prepare church suppers...

...With fact, with even the executioner's sword inscribed with its strong domestic orientation, the church panders to the name of Christ, and treaties signed in the name of the greed and lust for power which wreak havoc on our the Trinity...

...The fragile alliance in motion based upon his vague principles of nationalism, between the Peronist right and left, based only on socialism and justice...

...Instead of asking itself what kind of judgment such by grace they will have no capacity to praise God...

...The sub- differences and apartness mainly in its devotional pracstance of this article was originally delivered as an address at tice in one or two distinctive features of bedroom the annual Institute for Liturgical Studies, Valparaiso University, morality...

...official Peronist party and labor organizations...

...PERON AGOSTINO BONO Her husband's death left a political vacuum "After Peron, an institution...

...We can stumble along traordinary depth of faith...

...The strong residual religiosity of American society is likely to keep the church open as a part-time Forms of Ministry comfort station, and is willing to express its religiosity by maintaining clergy as surrogate Christians...

...As often as not, such people as we have been for some time now...

...In this not live by the values of the deodorant commercial can context, its standards of pastoral care can be aimed show the way for those who do...

...27 September 1974: 520 It is a vivid representation of the manner in which the tice of Christianity has become a part-time occupation...

...As any good war they abandoned upon Peron's return...