Road Kill

...Where the dark abounds, a five-point buck hit by an SUV ghosted into my lane with car-wreck sounds, huge, pale and cartwheeling like an empty refrigerator box...

...the buck had not mounted and, floundering, killed me with sharp hooves of engendering...

...I set my hazards and walked back to where The buck lay broken in the autumn rain, so beautiful, the pouch of testicles at ease in pure white fur, and a small stain of blood at the mouth...

...This is a change in the church which is much more than laity auditing the books and checking on errant clergy...

...Thus, after one of Paul's missionary forays, he would move on and sometimes leave behind some-one to guard the teaching...

...and I was wounded down to the white bone, but somehow quickened by my watching, too, as if a god had bearded my night-black car with long white hairs embedded in the rubber...

...As a layman, I fear that no one's listening at the top...

...For whoso list to hunt—the hart, the hart—I thought my Previa took him in her stride, breasting the rain-slick road, always apart, not tangled this way, fell and underside so implicated in a single dart of time, horn and steel dragging through the pied landscape and the loud reek of viscera...

...He goes on to offer a possible solution to the "overload" of function on the contemporary office of "resident" bishop: Perhaps then it would be wise for Catholics to affirm explicitly, and not merely implicitly, that in the mod-ern church some of the principal activities of the Pauline apostolate, especially as regards offering leadership to face new religious problems, have been taken over by men and women who are not bishops—by theologians, by enterprising priests and religious who by circumstances are thrust into new situations, and by perceptive laity with their manifold competencies...

...Then there was the missionary apostle represented by Paul...

...Brown's assessment of the coalescence of apostolicity on the office of bishop is telling: The unexamined claim of apostolic succession [in the office of bishop] can cause confusion about the theological role of the episcopate in several ways...

...Over a period of time, the two apostolic functions (orthodoxy and missionary preaching ) devolved onto the "bishops," though that was clearly not their original function...

...Brown sees a continuing dialogue of theologians and resident bishops, but he concludes that only through such dialogue—drawing on the larger re-sources of the church—can apostolic succession be realistic...

...I said canticles of thanks to pure Diana once again: the windshield had not gone to particles...

...Road Kill Jesus in the flesh, were the guardians of "orthodoxy...

...Commonweal 2 0 September 10, 2004...

...I could not find even the little he sought in me, who lacked a simple weapon to end him with, so that his death was slow, a long indifference, like the rescission of splattered leaves, a passion in dumb-show...

...I recently attended an earnest conference on the role of the laity in the life and governance of the church...

...In the early church, bishops were the leaders left behind...

...I lost my balance, my hands gloved in his musk, and staggered free of that black gaze diamonded by the rill at the curb...

...High on the cannon bones I set both hands, intending to drag him out of the way my chance should not become another's chance—but saw as I did so that he stirred weakly: the net of breath still held...

...Excel-lent bishops have put themselves in a vulnerable and even ludicrous position by making dubious theological pronouncements, not because they were proud men, but because they felt that as part of their apostolic office they must supply the answers to the dogmatic and moral problems of the time...

...The ultraconservative construction of church collapses all the apostolic functions into the hierarchic office of bishop, centered ultimately in the magisterium and the bishop of Rome...

...Dialogue between laity and bishops was the demand of the day...

...it transfers direct apostolic function outside the vested episcopal hierarchy...

...The moderator challenged the audience: "What are you—bishops, priests, laity—afraid of about dialogue...

...An antlered gleam caromed in fragments out of my high beam...

...Brown's modest proposal changes the sense of church by locating missionary-apostolicity in the work of theologians and even the competencies of perceptive laypeoplemaybe even women...

...What is crucial in assessing the present circumstance of the church is that none of the apostles were bishops—even Peter who, though he may have gone to Rome, was certainly not in any manner "bishop of Rome...