Lay Theology

Corpus Christi, a celebration of giving and receiving. Michoacan, Mexico

In the Meseta Purepecha (Michoacan), the  celebration of Corpus Christi rests on an older indigenous festival related to the agricultural cycles, giving thanks to the generous land for the good harvests of the year, and calling to the gods so that there should be rains in the coming season. 

At the end of the procession starts the CH’ANANTSKUA , the festive time when members of each profession throw the products of their labor to the air,  offering them symbolically to the Gods and, by extension, to the people (coming from the neighboring villages) who are gathering there, receiving the gifts falling from the sky (from the Gods…) with their open arms.

It is said concerning many of the martyrs, that when they foreknew, either by revelation or by information received from one of their friends, the day on which they were to receive the crown of martyrdom, they did not taste anything the preceding night, but from evening till morning they stood keeping vigil in prayer, glorifying God in psalms, hymns, and spiritual odes, and they looked forward to that hour with joy and exultation, waiting to meet the sword in their fast as ones prepared for the nuptials.

“The intellect cannot be still unless the body is still also; and the wall between them cannot be demolished without stillness and prayer.”

~St. Mark the Ascetic

When your mother, your child, your husband, anyone, is sick, first call the priest, not the doctor! The Church has prayers for everything imaginable, and those prayers are very effectual. Turn to those prayers first, then proceed. If you are building a house there is a prayer for beginning this project; traveling there are prayers; studying there are prayers….

There is a group of Catholics in San Francisco who have taken out a full page ad which asks Pope Francis to fire their Archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone.

Regardless of the fact that no one reads the San Francisco Chronicle, and most could care less about the ads in that paper anyway, I find that taking out ads against one’s bishop in the local newspaper to be despicable on many levels:

–it is cowardly

–it is defamatory

–it is unkind, unchristian, and mean spirited

–it shows immaturity, selfishness, and childish behavior

–it is a crass and vulgar display of unchecked privilege

–it gives the impression that if certain Catholics have money, power, education, and political influence, they can somehow speak for the rest of the faith community

–it is unchurchy, anti-churchy, and devoid of all signs of “being church”

Even if I hate my father or mother, or neighbor or coworker, I am not going to go to the press and air their dirty laundry, their faults, their mistakes, or whatever it is that I dislike about them.

Even if I hate my bishop or archbishop, and feel he should be fired, I would rather confront him to his face, person to person. Accusing him and sentencing him as guilty in a newspaper is not due process of law; it is not giving him a chance to respond to me and face me, his accuser.

Both Jesus and St. Paul gave us a process for facing our enemies in the Church. Dragging their name through a public forum in a way that embarrasses them is NOT JUSTICE but showmanship and public scare tactics to bully a bishop and somehow hound him out of office.

Finally, the patent hypocrisy is not lost on us. When a more liberal Catholic is publicly humiliated in the traditional Catholic press or vlogs, there is great outcry that this is “foul” and a “character assassination.” But when a more conservative bishop is treated this way, it is somehow the “voice of the faithful.” Really? Seriously? Who believes that?

Hello,

If I may give a correction, first, to your question. Archbishop Cordileone did not spark “outrage amongst Catholics” in San Francisco. 

There are thousands upon thousands of loyal, faith-filled Catholics in the San Francisco archdiocese. I know that because I studied in the archdiocesan seminary for San Francisco 30 years ago. 

Out of those thousands and thousands, there were just 100 bitchy, whiny, bitter and nasty people who took out an ad against the archbishop. 

And make no mistake. They were not “normal” Catholic people, but people who had the prestige, political connections, and disposable income for a full page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle–at least tens of thousands of dollars.

What angered some well to do, Catholic fatcats? Your guess is as good as mine. The archbishop could have preached a sermon on how money and power makes you privileged, haughty, and full of yourself, and that alone could have put their underpants into a twisted knot. 

Or the archbishop could have said things like gay marriage is a sin, abortion kills a human being, that priests take a vow of obedience to the Catholic Church, or that Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead and the resurrection is not a fairy tale–you know, really shocking and earth shattering things that a Catholic bishop is not supposed to say too often.

There is a lot of rage also because the archbishop had a meeting with Catholic teachers, teaching in Catholic schools, where he had the nerve and the gall to tell them that they should profess and live Catholic morals in order to set a Catholic example. That alone makes him the enemy of “tolerance, diversity, and inclusion.” 

In other words, the archbishop is not watered down enough. The modern Catholics, you know, are trying to “Sing a New Religion” into existence and Cordileone has been far too old fashioned for their tastes. Therefore, he has been sentenced for the capital crime of being too Catholic, and taking religion way too seriously.