EMPTY CONFESSIONALS: Not yet in line
Marget, Madeline
Long before I became a Catholic, my Jesuit-educated husband, born into and faithful to the church, told me that if I ever entered it, I wouldn't be eligible for confession. He explained that...
...Holy orders are out as far as I'm concerned, and so far I haven't needed the sacrament of the sick...
...How long can we afford to lose this critically important segment of the Catholic church in favor of a moral theology of sexuality that appears so rigid and static...
...In my congregation there is a man who left his position as an active priest in the wake of Paul VI's Humanae vitae...
...Rather, it is about the church learning from the lived wisdom of her members and having the courage to (here is that word...
...Scrupulosity aside, the greater reason, the real reason, I think, that I haven't yet been to confession is the encompassing, perhaps sufficient, glory of the Mass, at least for a new participant like me...
...The documents issuing from Rome and diocesan offices come across as totally abstract and divorced from real life...
...Oh well...
...Have they ever had any firsthand, practical experience with marriage...
...Most of them have long ago put aside church teaching on birth control...
...Both of these Commonweal articles are priceless and full of wisdom from men who have actually "been there and done that...
...The writer is Metropolitan Archbishop of the Orthodox Catholic Church of America...
...Anxiety, it seems, is part of the human condition...
...Each time I share in the Mass, I'm nearly overcome with its beauty and promise and depth...
...incorporate it...
...The entire issue of human sexuality and the gospel tradition is, it seems to me, not so much a matter of church versus individual conscience...
...One wonders in what spatial reality their authors live...
...Maybe that's why there is such massive apostacy among young people of marrying age, as well as so many who are married...
...GEORGE R. FITZGERALD, C.S.P...
...It's exciting to read something like Johnson's refreshing insights...
...ANDREW GALLIGAN Tracy, Calif...
...Perhaps: it certainly doesn't bring me closer to God...
...I'm a eucharistic minister), and I was married in a Catholic ceremony, so I've got four sacraments down...
...Is anybody listening to them...
...On different planets Luke Timothy Johnson's critique of Pope John Paul II's reflections on sexuality was the most theologically cogent and pastorally persuasive commentary I've read in years about Catholic sexual teaching...
...That leaves confession...
...I must admit, sadly, that in my thirty-six years as a priest, most married persons—and those to be married—with whom I have spoken feel that the church doesn't really address the complex problems couples face today...
...I leave tired from the effort to pay attention to so much...
...sometimes I find it hard to separate the psychological from the spiritual...
...Keep 13 us free from all anxiety," prays the priest in the embolism of the Our Father...
...E. BRIAN CARSTEN Angola, Ind...
...That phrase strikes me every time...
...We have the Mass: the greetings, and the penitential rite—sins of omission as well as commission included, "all that I have done, and all that I have failed to do"—the readings, the profession of faith, the songs and the homily and the alleluias and amens and the Eucharist...
...But is it the worrying itself that's separating me, or some wrong I've done in the still unsorted tangle of a human relationship...
...I haven't been...
...MADELINE MARGET 14 (Continued from page 4) Lived wisdom Luke Timothy Johnson's persuasive article on John Paul II's theology of the body is perhaps the finest article of its kind I have read in forty years...
...Is worrying a sin...
...But, alas, people like him who try to introduce fresh ways of looking at such questions, while preserving the deep values of our faith, often find the welcome mat snatched out from under 23 them...
...Anyway, shouldn't I be more concerned with the political, the global...
...It is in church, during Mass, that I pray for the thinning and the eventual erasure of those thoughts and actions that stand between me and God, and for the understanding and will to bring me closer to him...
...MOST REV...
...Though I'm much older and calmer than I was when my husband made his serious joke about pastoral counseling, part of the reason I haven't confessed is connected with his analysis...
...For that very reason—the church's enormously generous blessing, my path now to God's love—I can't brush off the promise of any of the sacraments, to which my Pocket Catholic Catechism refers as "Channels of Grace...
...For the almost thirty years of my marriage, I've been a Catholic fellow-traveler, but it was only this past Easter that I was baptized...
...I'm still dizzy with all there is for me to try to absorb, and to live by...
...Each time we gather at the Lord's table, I see in his eyes, lo these many years later, the struggling wisdom that is so evident in Johnson's words...
...I continue to receive Communion (and give it...
...Perhaps James O'Toole is mistaken when he says, "an effective means has yet to be found for Catholics to express their recognition that they do not always live up to the ideals and standards they profess...
...To be sure, Luke Timothy Johnson will not be joining Avery Dulles at the next consistory...
...Of course, both will be decried by those who believe Catholics should all walk in lock step with any current papal teaching, especially in matters of sexual ethics...
...REV...
...No red hat Luke Timothy Johnson's incisive critique of John Paul II's pronouncements on love, sex, and pleasure should be studied and openly discussed in every Catholi college and Newman Club in the nation—together with Paul Baumann's humorous reflections on George Weigel's biography of our pope ("Crossing the Threshold," December 3, 1999...
...I don't know what I'd say, exactly...
...He explained that I was scrupulous—I imagined that I had sinned when I had not—and that therefore pastoral counseling was the thing for me...
...I'd better think whether I have something to say, worthy of confession...
...Vail, Colo...
...24...
...I was confirmed then, too, and received Communion...
Vol. 128 • February 2001 • No. 4
