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Monday, April 23, 2012

Festschrift for Fr Richard McBrien



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…

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. ...

Although some Roman Catholics don’t like him:

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.

“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.”

8 comments:

  1. 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.

    Buddy, if pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage Catholics are demoralized and discouraged, there's a name for that.

    Success.

    It's not the end-all, be-all. Conservatives - not just Catholics, by the way - have to think through and better communicate their positions. But for those whom the only sign of 'progress' in the Catholic Church can be measured in how closer they are to accepting abortion, same-sex "lifestyles", and heresy, demoralization isn't a bad result.

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  2. You don't get it. He's a Roman Catholic in good standing, celebrated by other Roman Catholics in good standing.

    Where's the love?

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  3. You don't get it. He's a Roman Catholic in good standing, celebrated by other Roman Catholics in good standing.

    Insofar as he agitates for women clergy, he's taking positions in opposition to church teaching - and your own column mentions at least some disciplinary measures he's experienced as a result.

    Or is your move here "Why hasn't the Church defrocked him?"

    Where's the love?

    Yours? It's wherever you store the sense, charity and judiciousness when the subject of the Catholic Church comes up. Meaning, buried in an undisclosed location.

    Go dig it up. It'll do you some good.

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  4. Not sure if you caught this in the other thread:

    David Wells noted this, “Revolution in Rome”, pg 8: “Present-day Catholicism, on its progressive side, is teaching many of the ideas which the liberal Protestants espoused in the last century. Though progressive Catholics are largely unaware of their liberal Protestant stepbrothers, the family resemblance is nevertheless there. Since these ideas have only come into vogue in Catholicism in the last two decades, they appear brilliantly fresh and innovative.”

    It's not just McBrien. It's the folks who put him in place and leave him in place. They deserve him.

    The Roman Catholic hierarchy is hopelessly divided and morally bankrupt. Pope Benedict is the oldest pope in a long, long time, and he's not going to live much longer.

    The bishops are already easing up the rules on homosexuality.

    C.S. Lewis noted that he wouldn't become Roman Catholic, not just because of what they believed at the time, but because he wouldn't know what they'd commit to in the future.

    They've already completely reversed "no salvation outside the church" to the point that "anybody who does good works according to his own conscience can achieve salvation" (or words to that effect).

    There's a lot more where that came from.

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  5. "Buddy, if pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage Catholics are demoralized and discouraged, there's a name for that.

    Success."


    Since married clergy are rare in Catholicism, the homosexual priests will just have to remain single.

    Happy?

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  6. EA,

    Since married clergy are rare in Catholicism, the homosexual priests will just have to remain single.

    Happy?


    I have no idea what you're even getting at with this comment. Really, spell it out, and I'll be glad to reply.

    For the record, I'm Byzantine rite. The debate over married priests is radically different from the debate over women priests, which in turn is different from the debate over "homosexual priests".

    Bugay,

    It's not just McBrien. It's the folks who put him in place and leave him in place. They deserve him.

    Yeah, he's exactly where he should be: neutered and irrelevant outside his tiny cadre of academic and liberal fans. You can see McBrien himself complaining that PJPII and B16 have both solidified the cardinals and bishops as conservative.

    What exactly are you asking for here? That McBrien get even worse treatment? Ah, but then we'd hear cries about how the Church stamps out dissent in a heartless manner.

    The bishops are already easing up the rules on homosexuality.

    In the fever-dream fantasy world of John Bugay, perhaps. Out here in reality? No, not at all. There are still liberals, they are still fighting. They are old. Their support base is gone - the sort of people who want to see a Church with liberal priests, gay marriage and more have in large part long gotten impatient and left, either for the greener pastures of outright Protestantism, outside of Christianity altogether.

    Meanwhile, the orthodox, conservative and traditionalists have seen gain after gain. The return of the latin rite mass. Every bishop in the US opposing Obama's contraception plans. The continuing success of the pro-life movement.

    Life ain't perfect, but man, it's actually not bad on this front.

    C.S. Lewis noted that he wouldn't become Roman Catholic, not just because of what they believed at the time, but because he wouldn't know what they'd commit to in the future.

    Irony of freaking ironies. He was Anglican, wasn't he?

    Do you think Lewis would be more at home with the Anglicans of 2012, or the Catholics? Hint: one of the two changed their teachings and practice severely since Lewis' time. It ain't the Catholics.

    How about your own church, John? How far back in history do we have to go to find where the last split came due to changes in belief and leadership? Decades? Less than that?

    But by all means, John - keep cheering on the homosexual activists, the feminists, the pro-abortion forces, etc. I want everyone to see what drives your anti-Catholicism - yours in particular, which exceeds even Steve's, quite a feat - and what it drives you to.

    Most of all, I want you to see it. Because I suspect if you ever come to grips with just what you're saying, and perhaps why you're saying it, you may well be in for a change of heart. Rather like when I woke up and realized that my once-upon-a-time disdain for YECs was unfounded. I disagree with them to this day, but man, did I ever have a change of attitude one day.

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  7. "Since married clergy are rare in Catholicism, the homosexual priests will just have to remain single."

    "I have no idea what you're even getting at with this comment. Really, spell it out, and I'll be glad to reply."

    In other words, the ranks of the priesthood have already been infiltrated by homosexuals. I'm not referring to "latent" or "homosexually oriented", I'm referring to actively homosexual priests, bishops, etc...

    Since the hierarchy has been co-opted (what does that say about the sacrament of Holy Orders?), the traditional gay marriage proscription serves as window dressing for the laity.

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  8. I want everyone to see what drives your anti-Catholicism - yours in particular, which exceeds even Steve's, quite a feat - and what it drives you to.

    I've been quite transparent here about what motivates me. And you're not touching on it, here, or anywhere else.

    But I will tell you, in addition to my other motivations, there's a little extra zing in my keyboard from knowing that I get under the skin of guys like you.

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