2-23-2020 On the Canonization of Cato the Elder

A Series of Essays “On the Business of Religion” by the Rev. Know-it-all

 Essay Three: On the Canonization of Cato the Elder

I would like to suggest that we consider Cato the Elder, an ancient Roman from the times even before Christ, the times of the Roman Republic.  I think he might provide a valuable model for creating vital and viable parishes in our times.

Marcus Porcius Cato; 234–149 BC, also known as Cato the Elder,  was a Roman soldier, senator  and historian known for his practicality and  opposition to Hellenistic fripperies. He is the very image of Roman practicality. He was not a patrician but was a Senator. He was what the Romans called a new man, not from one of the old noble families so he had to try harder. He believed that he was superior to these so-called aristocrats who were men of business. He clung to the practical rural values that made Rome flourish. A noble Roman could make money only from farming. Oddly, the construction business was considered a form of farming because bricks, wood and stone came from the land, so but if a noble Roman wanted to make money he had to espouse the pious old Roman values but had to make his money through dummy manufacturing corporations, secret investments and land acquisitions  all run by agents who knew business and could be discrete. Cato did very well, thank you. He believed in the old Roman ways and that money; especially real estate mattered most. His quotes are most interesting.

“Sell worn-out oxen, blemished cattle, blemished sheep, wool, hides, an old wagon, old tools, an old slave, a sickly slave, and whatever else is superfluous. The master should have the selling habit, not the buying habit.”

This is most certainly the way to run a business. Maximize assets! Dump old stuff and old workers so you don’t have to care for them in old age. Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. If some fool is willing to buy the stuff dump it like a bad habit, things, animals and people! Why should you have to feed and care for an old slave? That’s no way to run a business.

I hear these days that a parish should be run much more like a business than it is, best practices and all. It only makes sense. After all money is life’s report card is it not? A parish should be judged by a very few criteria: the size of the congregation, the size of its income and the condition of its real estate. We are kidding ourselves if we think the church is a family and not a vast international corporation. Truly an approach Catonian! Does it matter that some old employee or schoolteacher has served the Lord and the parish for thirty or forty years at sub-standard wages? Not in the least. Does it matter that a congregation may be poor and small but very holy and a place of great service to the poor? Not in the least. Such places are just not structurally or financially viable these days. I remember a parish whose congregation was about 300 and whose collections came to about $70,000 a year while its expenses were close to a million. Somehow the bills were always met. They educated poor immigrant children at almost no cost to their families. They fed and clothed thousands every month. The children of the wealthy came and waited on the poor there at the soup kitchen. Above all God was worshipped and Christ was preached. Scores of people were converted to the faith by the example of the volunteers and under paid staff. Some went on to the religious life and the ordained priesthood.

The place is closed now. It continues some operations for a while yet, but it no longer exists as a parish. Such a place was just not viable. Too small, too poor.  The only way we are going to make it is the way the mega churches do, big buildings, big congregations, big collections and big screens with the words to the hymns so they can be seen back in the cheap seats by the espresso bar. Another Cato quote. He uttered it at the end of every senate meeting: “Furthermore, I think Carthage must be destroyed.”

Eventually it was!  St. Cato the Elder, Guide us!

2-16-2020 On the Welcoming Spirit of the Early church

A Series of Essays “On the Business of Religion” by the Rev. Know-it-all

Essay Two: “On the Welcoming Spirit of the Early church” 

Return with me to a simpler, grubbier, smellier time in History:  ancient Rome around 190 AD, a Sunday morning. We visit the Subura, a vermin-infested stinking district in the heart of old Rome. Around you are five, even ten story tenements wedged in so tight that sun rarely hit the narrow stinking streets. They are prone to burn to the ground or just collapse. Meet two residents of the Subura, Gaius Introspecticus and his friend Narcissus Maximus. They are up early, as most Romans were, and Gaius mentions to his friend that there is a relatively new religion in town, a sort of Jewish sect that isn’t mostly Jews. They have a meeting every Sunday morning in the spacious house of Senator Superbus Ebrius Pazzo on the very chic Palatine Hill quite near the palace and the Great Racetrack.  

One hears that all are welcome. A trip to the Palatine across town might be just the thing. At least it would get them out of the stinking rat hole they live in and there was bound to be a decent meal. So, they climb the Palatine, find the house and are welcomed by a rather burly sort of man, a slave, a sort of usher, called a porter or ostiarius. He’s clearly just a slave but is given great deference by those entering as if he were somehow important. it turns out they don’t just hire or buy a porter, they ordain them! On with our story. In comes an older fellow. They all defer to him call him “Papa, or Abba Victor.” They are all treating this Victor as if he were some famous gladiator. The amazing thing is that he doesn’t look very Roman. He is dark skinned! In fact, he comes from Africa and one of his parents was a black-skinned Berber!  

Anyway, the service commences with a short prayer, some readings follow from the Jewish holy book and then some newer stuff written by some missionaries from Judea and Galilee. Then this “Big Daddy" Victor gets up to speak and he is quite interesting. He claims that some Jewish rabbi was executed by the 12^th legion in Jerusalem about a hundred and fifty years ago but rose from the dead. There was an old fellow in the congregation, must have been 90 if he were a day. He said that his grandfather had been in Jerusalem when it happened. As a boy, the man’s old grandad had seen the empty tomb and his aunt and uncle had run into this Jesus when they were travelling on the road to the coast! It was all getting very interesting and there were a few loaves of bread and I could smell wine and was getting hungry.

Just when things were getting interesting, this burly usher fellow, a slave, ordained or not, asked me and Narcissus ‒ Roman citizens mind you! ‒ to kindly leave. The rest of the service was private and only baptized believers in good standing were welcome… WELL, I NEVER…THE NERVE OF THESE PEOPLE!!! I know what was going on. There were more women there than men and I smelled wine. They were going to have an orgy. I just know it, and us, not welcome!!! There were a lot of people there who were slaves. They weren’t there because they were rich. I bet they were there for some other reason in that swank neighborhood at some Senator’s house with only a few people rich enough to foot the bill. Next time the city magistrates want to round these people up, I’m going to tell them everything I know. That should fix them! Cut us out of the orgy. Just try! Ha! 

The early church wasn’t as welcoming as you might think they didn’t want to expose the faithful to unnecessary risks. They didn’t need members. They wanted disciples. They weren’t there to entertain people who needed to feel welcome. They wanted to open heaven’s gates to those seeking salvation and those who were willing to be martyrs in the arena. Christianity was noted for its charity and kindness to all, not for its inclusive and welcoming spirit. It attracted followers because of its charity, moral example and bravery, not by good marketing and welcoming services. On the contrary, they were always telling the Romans that if they didn’t repent, they were all going to hell! That’s why they threw them to the lions. Now that’s entertainment!

Catholicism Isn’t as Complicated as You May Think!

A Series of Essays “On the Business of Religion” by the Rev. Know-it-all

Essay One: “Catholicism Isn’t as Complicated as You May Think!”

Things are in bit of a pickle in the Catholic Church in our times. To make sense of the crisis, one must understand the structure of the Catholic church. The Catholic church is arguably the largest and among the oldest institutions in the world.  It has an unbroken governance of almost two thousand years. Around 170 AD St Irenaeus of Lyon wrote:

“For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority. The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the Epistles to Timothy.”(Adversus Haereses III,3.) 

This is authority rests on the belief that Peter was the leader of the apostolic church. Peter was thought to have founded three churches, one in Antioch, one in Alexandria through his assistant St. Mark, and one in Rome, where he was martyred and where he was buried. This counted for a lot in the minds of the first Christians and whether you agree with the concept of Petrine authority or not, it seems certainly to have existed in some sense by the end of the first century. The Church of Rome is a very old institution. And it has become a very large institution. As of this writing it has 1,300,000,000 (one billion three hundred million) members. We constitute more than half of the Christians (2,400,000,000) in the world. Those 1.3 billion Catholics are governed by a rather small bureaucracy of just over 200 cardinals, around 6,000 bishops and perhaps 3,500 Vatican bureaucrats. This is just under 10,000 people. That comes to around one official for one million plus Catholics. The federal government of the U.S. employs around 4 million people in a country of 300 million. That’s more like one out every hundred.  Each diocese has its own chancery office or pastoral center some small, some large, but these are not part of the universal governance of the church, just as state governments are not part of the federal system. 

This church government is a hierarchy.  Most people think of hierarchy as chain of command similar to a military structure. This is not the actual situation. The word “hierarchy“ means sacred leadership. Each diocese has more autonomy than you would think. In fact, the pope has selected local bishops only since 1871. Before that the process was much more complicated and involved much local control both civil and religious. The church does not have a chain of command. A bishop of one diocese may not go to another and order the clergy or faithful around. They have authority only over their immediate diocese unless, like the cardinals, they are otherwise designated by the pope as able to minister without the express permission of the local bishop. The essential unit of the church is the diocese, a bishop assisted in serving the faithful with his presbyters (priests) and deacons. It is really a very simple structure. The pope is simply a bishop ‒ the bishop of Rome. He has no special papal ordination, but he does exercise a universal ministry because of Peter’s mandate to “strengthen the brethren,”  (Luke 22:32) The pope is the protector of the tradition and of doctrine and must assure that good and faithful men are chosen for leadership in the church.

So, where do the cardinals fit in? A cardinal is a pastor or deacon of one of the ancient churches in the city of Rome. These are called “cardinal” in the sense of “primary” or “important.”  Since the middle ages, bishops, priests and even non-ordained laymen have been given the title of “cardinal’ of a church in the diocese of Rome. Because the cardinals are the pastors of Rome, they elect the bishop of Rome, who is, by his office, the pope of the universal church. At home a cardinal may be a bishop, in Rome he is a ranking pastor of an ancient church of the diocese of Rome. In sorting it out it is absolutely essential to remember that the Bishop of Rome is the Pope. The Pope is not the Bishop of Rome.  A man is elected as the pastor of this ancient diocese. That is job one. His task is to maintain the sanctity and fidelity of this ancient heritage to the Gospel and to Christ so that all the other churches of the world can behold its beauty, truth and charity, and so be reassured in their work for the salvation of souls.

During the middle ages, these cardinal pastorates of the diocese of Rome were conferred on men, usually bishops, who were not always Romans, but were important bishops in their own countries. In this way popes could have representation with the crowned heads of Europe and those crowned heads could have their representatives in Rome. Thus, the Roman church became very centrally involved in the politics of Europe and the Roman (Byzantine) empire centered in Constantinople, The papacy struggled to rein in the ambitions of the monarchs of the Christian world, and in the process became a political force themselves.  Dr. Rodney Stark, sociologist of religion at Baylor University speaks of the church of piety and the church of (political) power. If I read him correctly, he contends that from the time of the emperor Constantine until some point in the middle ages, the church of piety and the church of power were at odds They reconciled through the development of the monasteries. I’m not so sure. There is evidence of the church of power earlier than Constantine. Just look up the heretic Bishop Paul of Samosata and his political collaboration with the rebel queen Zenobia of Palmyra (270AD) There have been ambitious sect leaders since the first days of the faith and the church is still inseparably enmeshed in civil politics, e.g. liberation theology and the church tax of Germany. The church of power and the church of piety have always been and will always be at loggerheads, often struggling within the soul of individual Christians.  Despite Jesus having said that his kingdom was not of this world, His more ambitious followers have always differed with Him on this point.

Musings of an aging pastor...

Dear Friends,

I am republishing a letter I wrote a while ago. There is a reason. I received a letter from the priests’ placement board asking about my plans. There are twelve boxes from which one can choose. The box that pertains to me reads, “I will be of retirement age in 2019 but am interested in discussing the possibility of staying in my current assignment beyond retirement age.” I will be 69 years old in a little over 4 months. That means that my scheduled retirement from parish ministry is less than one year away. The date of my retirement will be June 30th, 2019 unless I am asked to stay on, which I will most certainly do if possible, health allowing, and the Lord and the placement board willing. There are however several things to consider. 

The Archdiocese is undergoing a sweeping change. As far as I can tell all parishes are facing one of three possibilities:

1. To continue as a parish
2. To join with one or more other parishes to form a completely new parish
3. To be closed. 

St. Francis Xavier and St. Joseph just north of us are already in the process of becoming one new parish. I don’t think that there is any danger of St. Lambert’s being closed because the vitality of the parish is an important factor. We are a parish filled with young people. We currently have two young men preparing for the priesthood, though we share one of them with an eastern rite parish. Our religious education program is full, and our church is full of children and young families.  However, I worry that the many groups that exercise a ministry in the parish are unaware of the other ministries. This is a potential problem.

Years ago, when I was pastor at St. Thomas of Canterbury, we had a large Vietnamese community. They wanted to have their own ethnic parish, so we had a lot of meetings to figure out how best to accommodate the need. One of the Vietnamese choir members said, “Why don’t we just make St. Thomas a Vietnamese parish. There is nothing else going on here.” I was thunderstruck. He was ready to close the parish because he was completely unaware of what the parish did. We had a school filled to bursting with refugee children who were essentially getting a free Catholic education, a huge soup kitchen, a clothing room, and a food pantry. We had mass in five languages. The parish was a magnet for people who wanted to enter the faith. This Vietnamese fellow had no idea what was going on.

St. Thomas was a very vital parish. So is St. Lambert’s. Did you know that we have five choirs? They are the Latin Mass Schola, the Plain Chant Choir, the High Mass choir (10 AM), the contemporary (family) choir and the beautiful Filipino Choir for special events. We have Youth Church (RE) and then the Youth Group (SLY). There is the Senior Activities group, the Wednesday Novena group, the Rosary group, the Hospitality groups, the Ministers of Care, the Parish Council, the Finance Committee, the Filipino Families of Skokie, Couples for Christ, Spanish Bible Study/Rosary group, the Thursday Bible Study, the Wednesday Bible study, Ushers, Altar Servers, Lectors, the Gardening Committee, the Brat Fest committee, and the monthly prayer chapel. We have the ethnic celebrations, the Haitians who celebrate Our Lady of Perpetual Help and the Sri Lankans who celebrate St. Sebastian. I bet I am missing half the groups in the parish.

I would like to propose an informational meeting of all these groups sometime in early fall. I think that it is important that we have a sense of what is happening here in order to prepare for the future. I am asking that each group put forward a representative and if I have missed any groups I would like to know what they are and who will represent them. The purpose of the group is information. It will not be assigned tasks, it will not be asked to raise funds or make decisions. We need to have a sense of the parish as we go into the future.

The second thing to consider, and the reason I am re-publishing an old article, is that as I age I find myself less able to do what I once did. I really believe that the church must be an intentional society, one that we join because of faith and not simply custom. The person who comes to mass rarely yet demands the sacrament services of the church has killed the church as we knew Her. The church that was just down the block when you needed Her is already dead.  We killed Her by neglect. The church that survives into the future will only survive because of a commitment by Her members. I remember an angry person who once called me to let me know that he was a perfectly good Catholic. He attended mass every Christmas and every Easter without fail!

Lukewarm commitment has killed the casual church and I don’t want to preside at her wake.  I want to serve the living church and her Lord. I am too old to waste what time is left by waiting on a corpse. 

Fr. Simon

The following first appeared January 14, 2018

“I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”  - John 10:14

Friends,

Happy New Year! Things change. The Church and the world are facing new realities. Catholicism is not hereditary. God has no grandchildren, only sons and daughters. The Catholic Church will continue to exist only where its members and leaders understand that personal conversion to Christ is necessary for church membership. In other words, I am not a Catholic because my parents were Catholic. I am Catholic because I choose to be Catholic and hold Catholicism to be true and beautiful.  Our current way of doing business, and I do mean business, is counterproductive to the mission of the Church. For instance, it is absurd to want a Catholic wedding when I have not been to church since I was a child. It is absurd to want to receive Holy Communion unless I believe that it is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ and intend to live the Catholic Life.

We don’t worry much about this now, but in times past people wondered what happened to a non-baptized soul after death. The theory was that if they had lead good lives, they would live in eternal happiness in the limbo of the just. Only the baptized who had died in the state of grace would see God in heaven. If, however, a baptized soul did not fulfill the obligations of the Christian, that soul would be cast out into the outer darkness.

Pope Benedict reminded us that this is just a theory and that God in His justice and mercy will work things out. The catechism says that we are bound by the sacraments. God is not. However, I bring up this old theory because when a person is baptized, it is still true that he takes on the solemn obligation to attend Mass weekly and on holy days of obligation. He takes on the obligation of charity, of regular confession and communion and a whole host of other obligations. It is mystifying to me why someone would want to have their children baptized when they are not living the Catholic life and have no intention of teaching their children to fulfill their obligations as Catholics. Why would I want to hold someone to a solemn oath that they have no intention of fulfilling themselves? I suspect that by baptizing a child, who will never practice the faith, you hurt them more then you help. You start their lives off with a lie. Baptism and all the other sacraments are the most solemn oaths; they are not good luck charms or photo events.  I will no longer participate in a dishonest exercise of sacraments. If I don’t think that a person has made a decision for Christ and the Church as is evidenced by participation in the life of the Church, I will not join in their act of perjury.

I am bound as a pastor to serve my parishioners. If someone who is legitimately my parishioner thinks that they are in good conscience I am bound to share the sacraments with them. This being so, it is very important to define a parishioner. A parishioner of St. Lambert’s is a baptized Catholic living in the square formed by south of Greenleaf, east of Kenton, north of Jarvis and west of McCormick.

That definition also extends to people who attend St. Lambert’s regularly, are registered in the parish and use the Sunday envelopes. Why the Sunday envelopes?  They are the only objective evidence I have that one is regularly attending. I have often said that it does not matter how much if anything you put in the envelope. I don’t count the money. I have no idea who gives what. I never ask and don’t want to know. It is an offering to the Lord. Not to me.

It is common to have people register and then to request a sacrament next week, never to be seen again. This is just plain dishonest. It is fine for a person to register and begin regular participation and then after a reasonable period to request the services of the parish, but to register one week to have a baptism and then forget about the parish is dishonest.

There is a third category that I would define as parishioners, that is someone with whom I have a pastoral relationship. Remember that for me to participate in sacraments, I must have a canonical obligation to do so, or a real belief that the person requesting the sacrament is involved in real conversion to the Lord and the faith. Please don’t count on this third category. I see about two thousand people on a weekly basis. If you say, “Father, what do you mean you won’t give me a letter of recommendation to be a godparent to my niece? I come to church every week!” Perhaps you do but go out the side door and I have never seen you or talked with you but once or twice. I stand in the vestibule after almost every mass. USE THE ENVELOPES!  Again, I am not out for your money.

I want your soul!

If a person has grown up in this parish and has parents or significant family still participating in the parish, an exception can be made by providing a letter of good standing from the church where they currently participate. Sacraments should be received in the church community where people are currently active. The same is true of funerals. The church is not a building or a reminiscence. It is a living relationship.

This all may seem harsh, but if we don’t get used to the Church as an intentional society it will die. I have no desire to participate in the destruction of the Church to which I have dedicated my life by reducing her to a fond memory, a good luck charm or a photo event.

Fr. Simon

P.S. You can register with the parish by using the following link:

http://www.stlambert.org/registration-and-other-forms

Isn't the Bible self-contradictory? part 5

Letter to Fidel Labrador continued…

Here’s how St. Paul got his chance. Remember that Emperor Claudius had a penchant (Fancy French word used by the pretentious, pronounced “pawn-shawn” meaning a bit of a tendency) toward women of ill repute?  His first wife, Urgulanilla was forced on him by his grandmother the Empress Livia whom he divorced for committing adultery and murdering her sister in law. Two wives later he married his cousin Valeria Messalina who seems to have had a contest as to stamina with the head of the guild of interesting and available women. (I’m being discreet here) the Romans seem to have had a guild for everything. (By the way, Messalina won).

The morals of the Roman ruling class may shock you, but they are really no different than those of our ruling class, the politicians and Hollywood luminaires. Both have the moral sensibility of weasels. His final wife was his niece, Agrippina. She was the mother of Nero. Yes, THE Nero who didn’t actually fiddle whole Rome burned, he did blame it on the Christians. Before he started killing Christians, he was tolerant of them because they were just another kind of Jew as far as anyone new. That’s certainly what most Christians thought, as evidenced by the aforementioned Chrestos riots.  Agrippina managed to get her son Nero adopted by Claudius (they were actually sort of cousins) and he was made joint heir along with Claudius’ underage son whom Nero later had killed. Once it was a sure thing that Nero would be the next emperor, Agrippina fed her husband/uncle a dish of poisoned mushrooms and that’s all she wrote.

Nero seems to have allowed the Jews to return to Rome gradually. He killed his first wife, his cousin Claudia, then married his friend Otho’s wife Poppea Sabina and sent Otho off to be the governor of Portugal. Poppea is important I suspect. She was Nero’s girlfriend before she was his wife and according to Josephus she was a friend to the Jews, though I’m not sure of all the dates. Things were definitely looking up for the Jews and that small Jewish sect, the Christians. By the way, just for the sake of salacious gossip, Roman authors wrote that Nero kicked Poppea to death in 65 AD while she was pregnant with his child. She had gotten into a hissy fit about all the time he spent at the race track. Ever after, Nero was disconsolate at the loss of her.

The author of naughty novels and man about town, Petronius found Nero a substitute for Poppea. First the good news: the substitute looked exactly like Poppea. Next the bad news: the substitute was a 14-year-old boy. This was easily remedied by gender re-assignment surgery. You thought all this was modern stuff. It’s just as disgusting now as it was then. Nothing new under the sun. This is the world, not unlike our own, in which Christianity was born and which the faith conquered. All this allowed the Jews to return to Rome and with them the Christians. I believe that St. Paul wrote his letter to make the point that, as the Church of Rome was being re-founded, it should be founded as a CATHOLIC Church, that is, a Universal Church with no distinction between Jew and gentile.

St. Paul provides a reasoned way to extrapolate from the Law of Moses that the rigorous following of dietary and sacrificial law is no longer necessary. He points out that Abraham was not a Jew. It was impossible to be a Jew before Moses because to be a Jew is to follow the law scrupulously. There was no Law of Moses before Moses. Jews will disagree with this, but it makes sense to me. Abraham had a righteousness that cannot come from the Law of Moses because it predates the Law of Moses.

James and Paul are not contradicting each other. They are agreeing. St. James is saying the same thing in his epistle when he writes,

 “O foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is worthless? Was not our father Abraham justified by what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith was working with his works, and his faith was perfected by what he did.…”  (James 2:20-22)

 In other words, Abraham could only do this if he completely trusted the Lord. St. Paul makes exactly the same point. Both Paul and James point to Abraham, who could not have been justified by the Law of Moses. James is using that reality to point out the responsibility of Christians for one another especially the rich for the poor. Paul is using the example of Abraham to point out that Greeks and Jews now have something beyond the Law of Moses. This is precisely where Orthodox Judaism and Christianity part ways. Christians and Jews agree completely that righteousness includes good works. Paul never absolves the Christian of the need for good works. In the very same letter to the Romans, Paul says clearly that without good works we cannot enter eternal life.                             

God “will repay each one according to his deeds.” To those who by perseverance in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow wickedness, there will be wrath and anger… (Romans 2:6-8)

Notice that the translation I have chosen uses the word deeds not works. This is a little dishonest. The word in Greek is “ergon” which means (a) work. It is exactly the same word used in the phrase Works of the Law, erga tou nomou in Greek. I don’t think it could be more clear. We are bound by the obligation to charity and the Ten Commandments which predate and supersede the Law of Moses.

This may all seem a bit obscure and tedious, but I assure you wars have been fought over the relationship between faith and works, and are still being fought   though, thank Heaven, with pen and no longer with sword.  I remember meeting a much respected evangelical theologian who had just finished sending Mother Teresa to hell, that is if she thought her works had saved her. His theology taught that if you believe you are saved by a work, then you are not trusting Jesus and you are bound for hell. I had to ask myself, “Has this fellow ever even read the Gospels?” There are whole wings of Christianity since the Reformation that having never seen things like the Dead Sea Scrolls tried to figure out what was meant by the phrase, “You are not saved by works.” they came up with the convenient theory that you need do nothing to go to heaven if you are saved. I hope they are right. I suspect they are wrong.

Rev. Know-it-all