SINGLETON DRONES ON ABOUT RELIGION AND CHURCH
A Retired Old Duffer's Blog Spot

In a recent conversation with a young fellow (and given my advanced years, that could any male under the age of 60), I spoke of myself as a Christian in the Catholic tradition. My young friend was adamant that he is A Catholic and wondered why I do not identify myself as such. At the time we were both in a community that is indeed in the Catholic tradition, but not a part of the Roman Catholic Church. He has since returned to the Roman Catholic Church and is even more adamant about being A Catholic.

I understand the word "Catholic" as a modifier of the word "Church." I don't understand the word "Catholic" as a noun. The Nicaean creed gives us four adjectives accompanying the article on the Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. I have never heard anyone claim to be a One, or a Holy, or an Apostolic. I recite that Creed every Sunday and major feast day. In doing so, I claim to be a part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I do not, however, claim to be A Catholic. I am incapable of the universality implied by the word, as is every individual I know. However, joined together in and through Christ under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, WE as the Church are indeed capable of being universal.

Thus Catholicity is-or should be-a characteristic of The Church. As the Body of Christ, the Church exists in union with-in identity with-the Incarnate One, existing from before time and beyond time, yet also in time. It is-or should be-universal in time and space.

Part of the point of our Baptism is that we are reconciled to God, to one another, and to the new creation through Christ, and are enfolded into Christ. We partake of his death and his resurrection, and become a part of Christ's temporal and spatial universality.

The operant word in the above paragraph is "we." The indispensible phrase is "through Christ." From this perspective, it is both bad grammar and bad theology to use a "Catholic" as a noun in reference to any specific individual. The word is properly a modifier for the entire Body of Christ as a collectivity. The individual use of the term "Catholic" has become divisive and partisan both by those who use it as a badge of identity and those use it as a term of opprobrium. That is ironic, given that "catholic" means "universal."

This, of course, brings us to one of the lesser definitions found in the OED: "7. As applied (since the Reformation) to the Church of Rome (Ecclesia apostolica catholica Romana) = ROMAN CATHOLIC, q.v. (Opposed to Protestant, Reformed, Evangelical, Lutheran, Calvinistic, etc.)" Wide spread usage, however, does not make good ecclesiology. I am aware, of course, that the assumption of a singular institutional identity of the Catholic tradition runs deep in our culture. For decades I have encountered people who scratch their heads at my insistence that some Anglicans and some Lutherans are in the Catholic tradition. These same folk are even more confused when I include some Methodists and some Presbyterians. Confusion turns to flabbergast when I mention a Baptist pastor in Australia who styles himself a "Bapto-Catholic."

When I refer to myself (or anyone else) as a being in the Catholic Tradition, I am drawing attention to a consciousness of the collective nature of those who have been called, baptized, and enfolded into Christ. I am suggesting an awareness of an essential unity with all those who have gone before and will come after. I am asserting that over centuries and wide geographical distribution we have some common symbols and practices that speak to that unity.

I would also argue that ecumenism should have more to do with recovering that sense of unity in the Body of Christ than in institutional arrangements. Thus I would encourage conversation across institutional lines among Christians that would:

A) Enlarge our view of the Church Catholic in such a way that we realize greater opportunities for witnessing to a world in need of the saving Word;

B) Lead us to pray for and work with the existing hopeful efforts at greater cooperation among Christians in the Catholic Tradition;
and

C) Refrain from easy solutions to ecumenical difficulties as we try to enlarge our scope of view, realizing that it is a joyous thing to be the Church. It is also very hard and frustrating work.

Before we get to these items, here are two caveats:

First Caveat: Fidelity to the Catholic tradition requires us to hold both unity and diversity in dynamic tension. The contingent reality of historical circumstances is a vital part of Christian anthropology, in which human finitude (including our inescapable historical contingency in this earthly life) is the reciprocal of the theology of boundless grace.

Second Caveat: I will be seeking the largest possible definition for Catholic. I would prefer to confine the definition to four major points: 1) adherence to the Ecumenical Creeds; 2) a conscious retention of the shape of the liturgy as it has evolved and adapted to various cultural environments; 3) a sacramental theology which denies a purely memorialist and subjective interpretation; 4) and a vision of ecclesia as something considerably more than a voluntary association.

What I have tried to do here is to define "Catholic" in such a way that we avoid both exclusivism and inclusivism. This is a problem we will just have to live with. It is not my goal to work toward an authoritative definition or set of institutional identifiers. My task is to walk a path between the extremes of a particularism that would exclude the Apostles (I have it on good authority that they never, ever said "Introibo ad altare Dei") and a universalism that would admit Wicca practices into the Church. Living in broad space is part of our pilgrimage.

In order to be faithful to the Church Catholic, we may have to let go of old bromides that may have served the faith well at one time, but simply gets in the way now. The first casualty of the early 2000s, hopefully, will be the "Vincentian Canon," which defines Catholic as that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all (quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est). Just on the face of it, we are going to do nothing but enter into endless divisions over that one. Furthermore, this venerable dictum simply is embarrassing in the face of scholarship on the early and Medieval Church, which makes clear the wide diversity in what was believed at different times and different places by different people. To summarize that scholarship, the pre-Sixteenth-Century pristine era of a unified Christianity, put forward by Henry Adams and other romantics, simply can't be supported by historical data.

Perhaps more useful is the "In essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity" formulation. The only sticky point there is trying to determine what are the "essentials." I would suggest that this needs to be a topic of ongoing conversation (a conversation in which we give up the idea of a firm and final resolution) where we lay our differing perspectives before Christ and allow the Spirit to move among us. Ecclesiastical politics inhibits the laying and the allowing. Conversation is clearly called for. Posturing is not.

Such conversation should lead us to pray for and work with existing hopeful efforts at greater cooperation among Catholic Christians. There are presently a number of promising portents, but the most notable are institutional arrangements, such as the various full communion agreements entered into by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. These are hopeful signs, but we ought not to let them obscure less dramatic but ultimately more important ongoing cooperative ventures which bring Christians together. Among these, I would draw attention particularly to the Liturgical Movement, the diaconate, the catechumenate, and the growing popularity of Taize vespers.

The Liturgical Movement has been, is, and will continue to be a place where Roman, Old, Independent, Lutheran and Anglican Catholics will continue to meet, pray together, and work together. It is instructive that the Roman Catholic liturgical conferences at Collegeville and Notre Dame are no longer exclusively Roman, that the Anglican Sewanee Province Summer Liturgical Music Institute now draws from across the Catholic spectrum, and that the Liturgical Institute at Valparaiso is no longer a Lutheran ghetto. It is even more instructive that the graduate program in liturgy at Notre Dame presently has two Lutherans on the faculty, and has had Anglicans as well as Roman Catholics. Liturgy will continue to be an important area of ecumenical activity and growing Catholic solidarity across institutional divisions. What can be said of the liturgical movement can also be said of the diaconate and the catechumenate. Institutions and workshops are increasingly ecumenical. Taize styles of worship draw upon the ecumenical strength of the community in France and draw increasing numbers of people from Anglican, Roman, Old/Independent and Lutheran communities together. They also attract many from beyond the Catholic tradition and introduce them to the meditative utility of icons, chant, and silence.

The point of urging the ecumenical activity is not to achieve organic institutional unity. Unity in Christian life and around the altar is far more important. It is going to be more and more difficult to tolerate Eucharistic separatism if we get to know one another as fellow Catholics, whether Old, Independent, Roman, Anglican, or Lutheran (or perhaps even Presbyterian or Methodist). Given our peripheral place in the world in which we are called to minister and proclaim, this separatism comes close to being an obscenity. At best, it certainly makes us look foolish to the world.

So, if we happily worship our way together we will have achieved Nirvana, right? Wrong! This takes persistence and sticking with relationships crossing institutional boundaries over a long period of time. From time to time we may get a foretaste of that feast when every tear shall be wiped away and denominational boundaries will be banished to perdition, but don't confuse that with the ongoing reality.

Oh, we have all had wonderful moments when the barriers were removed. Al most two decades ago an Old Catholic priest who had been active in ecumenical ministry in a Midwestern city died. Many clergy, including more than a few a few Roman Catholics, attended his requiem. At the Eucharistic Prayer, the barriers were down and there was a massive concelebration. We all have stories like this where canons were broken and we felt a sense of unity around the table--which is precisely where we should share a sense of unity.

I do not encourage such breaking of canons and crossing such lines. That might seem surprising given everything else I have had to say. In order to explain this, I will have to speak personally. I have received in Roman Catholic churches. I have also refrained from receiving. I will undoubtedly do both again. Every time I have received or refrained from receiving, I have been conscious of the decision and have felt the tension present in both actions. I know that as a baptized person Jesus Christ invites me to the meal. If it were that simple I would not have felt tension. More is involved than simply my personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We are also related to each other through Jesus Christ. That relationship is known as ecclasia. In the long run, ecclesia is ultimately transcendent. For the present, however, it has complex historical and existential institutional/incarnational realities that must be considered. Thus, I have never "simply" received, or "simply" refrained.

I generally take my cues from what I know of the specific assembly and the dynamic of the liturgy as it unfolds in that specific situation. The crucial question is whether I have a sense of being seated for the meal. Vague indicator that, and not always reliable, but it is what I have. I recall a mass at which a good friend was taking his final vows as a Jesuit. My sense was that I was not seated, and I was determined to refrain. During the distribution my friend brought the sacrament to me and communed me. After mass he said, "Greg, I would never invite you to dinner and not feed you."

I can live with either decision if it is achieved while dealing with the tension inherent in the situation. What would distress me is either receiving or refraining as a reflexive action without a serious consideration of issues of sacramental theology and ecclesiology. From those two perspectives combined, both receiving and refraining are flawed. More often than not I refrain as a conscious choice and allow the resultant pain and tension to be an impetus for escalating serious ecumenical endeavors. Perhaps there should be a place for ritual expression of the tension, the pain, and the hope involved in such a refraining. The pain is real. So is the hope. Perhaps our most effective witness to the world, and to each other, is to live with the tension and pain of our sinful divisions in such a way that our love for each other is manifest to a world looking for a sign of hope that a broken and flawed humanity can be healed.

So, this tired old Christian in the Catholic tradition has no answers. Perhaps there are no solutions. But there is the possibility that we can, in this specific historical circumstance, discover together what it means to be Church Catholic. And as we discover that, the circumstances will change, and we will have to continue discovering what it means. This is a pilgrimage we are on, and not a puzzle to be solved. It is a life to be lived together, in and under Christ.

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