A TEACHER'S DILEMMA
The dilemma for religious education teachers who are attempting to present the Church line on sexual morality is that many feel alienated from it and unable to defend it in as classroom debate centring on such issues as the spread of HIV, irretrievable marital breakdown, the value of regularising new relationships, cohabitation, premarital sex or unplanned pregnancy.
In the context of modern Irish society this whole area is a minefield for teachers who are likely to be told by their students that their parents are divorced, that a brother is living with a partner, or that a sister has had a child outside of marriage. Given the reality of many young people's lifestyles and home situations, the traditional Catholic sexual ethic has all the reality and immediacy of a fairy tale.
WHAT MAKES A PEOPLE CATHOLIC?
What the survey indicates about young people's attitudes would match my own experience - that being a Catholic is regarded by many young people in Ireland as their religious heritage: it is a part of what they are. Religion does indeed shape their moral decision-making; but many do not view morality primarily in sexual terms. The belief that a person's sexual behaviour is their own business as long as it does not harm others, is widespread. One notable exception to this is in attitudes to homosexuality which seems to excite almost hysterical opposition, particularly among teenage boys.
This critical sense of heritage has enabled many teenagers to separate in their own minds what they consider to be the important tenets of Catholicism - a belief in God, in the afterlife, prayer, spirituality and treating people in a Christian fashion from the 'trappings' which for many include large areas of the traditional teachings on sexual morality, and indeed the questions of women priests or married priests. The question which remains, as Greeley and Ward put it in their conclusion, is: What makes a people Catholic?
AS I WAS SAYING...
This is known in political and journalistic circles as 'The Silly Season'. Everyone is on holidays. The country has more or less shut down. Nothing much is happening. So we are reduced to such banalities as contemplating and discussing the nuptials of a young Dublin couple in France. The Silly Season is well named!
The various Churches did their best to awaken interest in matters ecclesiastical. The Vatican fired its Exocet against same-sex unions, drawing predictable counter-fire. The Anglican Church is in serious difficulty on related matters: the election of two openly homosexual men as bishops. Gene Robinson was elected bishop of Newhampshire in the USA, and Canon Jeffrey, a celibate homosexual was proposed (ie. elected but not appointed) as Bishop of Reading.
While both men were elected to positions within the Anglican Communion, there are notable differences in their respective circumstances. The former left his wife and family to live with a male partner. The latter, while open about his sexual orientation, has lived a celibate life for over a decade. The American man had a definite agenda: "This is a great day for gays and lesbians" he proclaimed on his election. The Englishman stepped down when he realised he might just become a source of division and disharmony in his Church.
Culture may have been as influential as character. It was characteristically American to plough ahead in the teeth of strong opposition. It is almost impossible to identify the precise point at which a healthy self-belief fuses into an unhealthy arrogance. The same issues surrounded the recent war on (or in?) Iraq.
Of course then the Catholic Church got involved, albeit indirectly, with its Roman declaration against making legislative provisions for same-sex unions. We must presume that the declaration was precipitated by the fact that three European countries had already made such provisions. Rome's fears were clear: if same-sex unions are set on the same legal footing as conventional marriage, then conventional marriage is devalued. So Rome argued that its intent was not anti-gay but pro-conventional marriage. Its case would have been far more convincing if its language had been less strident.
The core of the problem is of course the evolution of our (Western) attitude to sexuality. Up to forty years ago, sexuality was generally seen as 'generational'; a great many people today see sexuality as primarily relational. Generally speaking, this change has been cultural. (Are people shaped by culture, or do people shape culture? The jury is still out).
But there is a fundamental point at issue here -even more fundamental than sexuality itself- for both Churches: what stance does one take vis a vis popular culture? Does one become fully immersed in it to such an extent that one becomes shaped and moulded by it? Is it not a healthy thing to have some 'space' created between the Church and civil society or popular culture? We now recognise that, in the past, it was unhealthy for popular culture to be absorbed by the Catholic ethos so entirely. Is the boot now on the other foot? Are the Churches in danger of being absorbed by popular culture? Are we respecting that 'space' if we accept every relational configuration as being of equal value?
-Dick Lyng.
NEGLECT OF THE AESTHETIC
I have been struck by the discordance of a church spending hundreds of thousands on a pipe organ that (I will grant) enhances its worship immeasurably - yet hanging a 'greeting-card-art' banner behind the altar, or installing stained glass that befits an arts and crafts fair or a cosy restaurant.
Are these the sour grapes of a visual artist? Perhaps. But churches often neglect the aesthetic components of the life of faith, perhaps mistrusting the sensual or wary of the power of images; even churches that summon the aesthetic dimension through music and liturgy often seem unwilling to embrace the visual.
What is no better (perhaps worse), many churches display pious images that are overly sentimental, trite, and shallow. Pretty to look at, easy to read, they are unlikely to draw us beyond the surface or challenge our cherished idols.
-KAREN STONE, Image and Spirit, p. 134.
"Quote, Unquote..."
- "Every time I paint a portrait, I lose a friend." -John Singer Sargent.
- "It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions." -T. H. Huxley.
- "I used to be Snow White......but I drifted!" -Mae West.
- "You can't say civilisation don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way." -Will Rogers.
- "Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once." -Cyril Connolly.
- "Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us." -Peter de Vries.
- "Accountants are the witch-doctors of the modern world and willing to turn their hands to any kind of magic." -Lord Justice Harman.
- "I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone." -Tallulah Bankhead.
- "The ugliest trades have their moments of pleasure: Now, if I were a grave-digger, or even a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment." -Douglas William Jerrold.
- "I prefer old age to the alternative." -M. Chevalier.
BROTHER ROGER OF TAIZE
Taize is a tiny village in the hills of Burgundy, in the eastern part of France not far from the town of Cluny. Since 1940 it has been the home of an ecumenical community of brothers whose prayer, three times each day, is at the centre of their life. Today, Taize is a place to which visitors of all ages and backgrounds come on pilgrimage, to participate in international meetings of prayer.
Taize is synonymous with the name 'Brother Roger'. Roger first left his native Switzerland for Taize in 1940, at the age of twenty-five. For years he had been an invalid, suffering from tuberculosis. During that long illness, the call had taken shape in him to create a community where simplicity and kind-heartedness would be lived out as essential gospel qualities. He dreamt of starting a community "on account of Christ and the Gospel", and he chose to do so in an area, in those years, strongly marked by human distress.
It was wartime, and his house became a place of welcome for refugees, especially Jews, fleeing from the Nazi occupation. But every Sunday Roger also welcomed German prisoners of war (interned in a nearby camp) to worship with him. Not until 1949 was community life formalised. When the community had reached the sacred number of seven, they committed themselves, for life, to celibacy and to life together.
At first, the community was made up of brothers from different Protestant denominations. Today it includes many Catholics as well. By its very nature Taize is an ecumenical community. It is also international. Its eighty or so brothers come from some twenty different countries. All the brothers do not always remain in Taize; some live in small groups, among the poor of different continents.
From its beginnings, the community has worked for reconciliation among Christians. But the brothers do not view this as the end in itself: it concerns all of humanity, since it makes the Church a place of communion for all. For example, Br Roger has recently brought back a group of AIDS sufferers from Africa to Taize to be nursed by the brothers there.
Taize is now a 'Mecca' for young people between the ages of 18 and 30. They come every year in their thousands. They look for ways of living lives of prayer and commitment in their own local situation. Taize has enabled hundreds of thousands to participate in a common journey of faith. But Taize has always refused to create a 'movement'; instead it emphasises the importance of bringing the spirit of Taize back to ones own locality.
From the beginning, Roger has been revered as a prophet in France. However, he was viewed with some suspicion by Rome in the pre-ecumenical days. All changed with Vatican II. To date, John Paul II, three Archbishops of Canterbury, three Greek Orthodox metropolitan have all visited Taize. Endorsement could hardly be more universal! Today Brother Roger, at 88 years, remains a towering inspirational figure and still travels widely.
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