Correspondence
Correspondence A convert's view Albuquerque, N.M. To the Editors: Is there life after ecumenism? [Jan. 29] A good question, aptly put. It is most often the middle-aged and elderly who have spent...
...Nor does it help to say the minister's faith will supply what the marginal Catholic's faith does not...
...What is the task of the minister in this situation...
...Those who view this whole matter as I do must often experience with me the uneasy feeling that, had we only remained in the Protestant tradition a few years longer, the Catholic church might have joined us, rather than the other way round...
...Therefore, we do not decide to withhold the gospel, but we share the Good News, face to face...
...Garvey's confusion is that he thinks the church's ministers are out there protecting the sacraments from being "reduced to sentimental social occasions...
...It is impossible, because it is Christ in whom we have faith, not the priest...
...To the Editors: Thank you for including Jules Rabin's article on "The Children's Campaign" in the Feb...
...to fill up the emptiness, to bring the light of meaning to a world drained of meaning's possibility...
...To the Editors: In her article on "Catholic Liberals and Abortion" [Nov...
...SISTER MARY THERESE DAHM...
...He offers the challenge: who indeed understands the mystery, from apostles to today's clergy, from age seven to age seventy...
...We must value the seeker enough to be honest...
...that we ministers of the church are turning people away...
...May we withhold from them the meaning of the rituals they are seeking...
...MARY MEEHAN Turning people away...
...The priest is not being baptized...
...The primary question is not this or that sacrament, for all sacraments alike are celebrated here by Catholic Christians...
...Frances Cabrini Church Children's crusade Saint Paul, Minn...
...This would be no favor to the marginal Catholic, for it would withhold from him or her this opportunity to enter meaningfully through this event into faith...
...It would be disrespectful - indeed dishonest - to dispense the sacrament apart from faith community...
...We have no right to tell them something is when it is not...
...It would be a formula for perpetual marginality...
...Hitchcock did not "indict" the Center of Concern, nor did he say that it issued position papers to encourage an anti-abortion stance by the Democratic party in 1976...
...In fact, the church's ministers are not in the protection business at all...
...So what is the minister's response to the marginal Catholic...
...those who seek sacramental rituals but refuse Christian community must be told there is no such thing...
...They sound uncomfortable but definite on the telephone, appear unfamiliar but adamant in the rectory or church office: all we want is a Catholic wedding, all we want is baptism for our little baby here...
...Prof...
...A group concerned about social justice and human rights should, it seems to me, realize that human rights begin when human life begins...
...I have for the last five years served as pastoral minister in an urban parish, with responsibilities for marriage preparation and baptismal instructions...
...He thus suggested that many of the clergy were idealistic and a bit naive, and also that they were so eager to promote some liberal causes backed by Network and the Center - and also by the Democratic party - that they were willing to overlook the pro-abortion position of the party...
...We offer hospitality, we offer respect, we listen, we seek out their story of alienation or suffering or separation, and we invite them home...
...Are you among us...
...May we absolve them of their responsibility for themselves and do for them what "we know is best...
...Garvey misses his own advice here, for the problem is not that the sacraments may "degenerate into merely social occasions," but rather as he himself says, that the church may not "fulfill its most profoundly important contemporary vocation - respecting the desire...
...We have a responsibility to respect the integrity of those before us and a responsibility to be honest...
...The primary question is Christian community, faith community...
...But I have seen little or nothing concerning those of us who are converts and have joined the church within the past fifteen or twenty years...
...Minneapolis, Minn...
...She might have made an effort to check such a reference and been able to discover that it was without foundation in reality: the Center has never issued "position papers" aimed at maintaining an anti-abortion stance by the Democratic party...
...Who decides his faith is so sufficient that he may stand in another's place before God...
...In this article, Mr...
...I wish that Father Henriot had noted whether the Center of Concern has a position on abortion...
...Washington, D.C...
...It's altogether ironic...
...To the Editors-: Commonweal December 4, 1981, carried an article by John Gar-vey entitled "Turning People Away: More Fastidious Than Jesus...
...We cannot make the sacraments something they are not...
...was not criticizing Network or the Center...
...20], Mary Meehan quotes a 1977 article by James Hitchcock which indicts the Center of Concern for influencing the 1976 election...
...It is most often the middle-aged and elderly who have spent a lifetime in the church who are said to feel the keenest distress because of the swift currents of change since Vatican II...
...Director, Center of Concern The author replies: Father Henriot misunderstood both the letter and the spirit of the Hitchcock reference...
...The problem is respect...
...We have no right to dupe them...
...12 issue...
...We welcome them to the Christian community, to share their faith with us and ours with them, all of us imperfect but gathered at the welcome table to celebrate our being made whole in Christ...
...Continued on page 190) Correspondence (Continued from page 162) Mr...
...The story of how a group of children, most of them from Vermont, organized and carried out a campaign for nuclear disarmament to the door of the White House is movingly written and should be widely read...
...Honest journalism on Meehan's part would have called for more reliable research...
...Garvey is talking about my daily ministry...
...REV...
...We are in the business of sharing the Good News, in word and deed, which requires honesty and compassion and more than a sentimental acquiescence...
...Let us respect the desires of those who seek the rituals and they will not be merely social occasions but rather will be social occasions with meaning...
...We follow Christ, who ministered to marginal persons of all kinds...
...severing) the last thin connection those people have to Catholicism," I see a lot of these "thin connections'' among the poor and among the rich, among the highly educated or barely literate...
...Garvey protests the pastoral demands made upon persons seeking, marriage or baptism in the Catholic church...
...It is impossible, because faith is a personal free decision to accept the love of Christ...
...He simply said that one of the groups that pressed Catholics to fall into line behind the Democratic party then, despite its pro-abortion stance, was composed of "clergy, many of them relative newcomers to politics and still flushed with the enthusiasm of untarnished idealism, who wanted the Catholic vote to be determined by position papers emanating from groups like Network and the Center for Concern...
...His comments are a wealth of sentimental confusion regarding the religious practice and community relationship of marginal and/or uncatechized adults...
...Hitchcock was criticizing such members of the clergy...
...We welcome them home...
...I would argue that these things, too, are vital to a living faith that is to endure in our rootless age...
...Well said, for our understanding grows with experience and learning and will never be complete in this life, if ever...
...We invite the marginal Catholic to the Christian community, and to do so honestly we must present the community as it is...
...It requires saying, sometimes: that which you seek is not here, but let me tell you what is here...
...Garvey is worried about marginal Catholics...
...FRANK SCHWEIGERT Pastoral Minister St...
...We do not judge...
...To demand too much clarity of people, too sure a purchase on their motives, may be as wrong in its way as demanding too little is," he suggests...
...IVAN INNERST Wild Jim Hitchcock...
...To defend this approach by reference to infant baptism is to advocate treating adults like infants...
...We cannot arbitrarily include those who do not want to be included...
...I, for one, became a Catholic not only because I came to believe at long last in the Catholic church as the one true church, but also precisely because of the awesome majesty and poetry I found there in its liturgy, sacraments, and tradition...
...Prof...
...Yet there is no way, consistent with respecting the integrity and infinity of the human person, to use this as a reason for not sharing the meaning of the sacraments at an understandable level and therefore requiring an understanding of the sacrament at that level...
...It is impossible, because we all approach God knowing our faith is not sufficient - "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you . . ." It is not the priest who is marrying...
...If she, or Hitchcock, is unable to substantiate such wild claims, then we request an apology...
...May we, indeed, treat them as inferiors incapable of faith commitment or cojn-munity membership and proceed to dispense the sacraments as though we owned them, as placebos or magic or prepackaged social entertainment...
...Many of us applaud, I believe, the most worthy and necessary of those changes, and no doubt approve of the "new" social consciousness we find throughout much of the church today...
...Garvey is concerned by the church's demand that those requesting sacramental celebrations understand the theology of those celebrations and further, that they articulate that theology...
...might ask, is enough...
...But just how far, we...
...PETER J. HENRIOT, S.J...
Vol. 109 • March 1982 • No. 6
