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	Must Read – a Fork in the Road By James Jenkins Voice from the Desert October 30, 2009 http://reform-network.net/?p=2373 The following must-read essay was written by Dr. James Jenkins, a clinical psychologist from the San Francisco Bay area. * * * A Fork in the Road Wednesday, 21 October 2009, I learned from the NY Times of the announcement in Rome by William Cardinal Levada, the Vatican’s chief doctrinal watchdog, that the Roman Catholic Church was taking steps to ease the way, more likely grease the skids, for conservative, reactionary Anglican bishops and priests to be fully accepted into the Catholic communion. There are continuing reports out of the Vatican that there is a lot of “inside-Roman-baseball” that underlies much of this story. Apparently, both Anglicans and Roman officials charged with shepherding “ecumenical dialogue” were caught off-guard and surprised by this audacious announcement emanating from Levada’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office of the Inquisition). My own speculation is that this whole incident demonstrates the preference of Benedict XVI’s papacy for exercising his absolute power through his most favored bureaucracy, staffed and stacked with his most trusted operatives, which he fashioned to his own will over two decades as its leader before becoming pope. We have to presume that Benedict is no fan of collegiality. For me personally, this moment seems more like the reflection poet Robert Frost offers in his poem, “The Road Not Taken.” Spiritually, religiously, and culturally, “Two roads diverged in a wood…” After years of revelations of the exploitation of children by sexually rapacious clerics, and the moral betrayal of supposed shepherd-bishops, shell-shocked Catholics are now treated to the spectacle of Vatican politicians, Benedict chief among them, of trying to cherry-pick the low hanging fruit off the Anglican branch of the vine. I can almost hear the Anglicans, and their fellow American Episcopalians, heaving a giant sigh of relief that finally someone is willing to take their embarrassing problems off their hands. How politically opportunistic! This is so rich, so Vatican! The Vatican apparently hopes to cannibalize Anglican misogynistic and homophobic misfits in order to prop up their own dead-end ideology and failed pastoral leadership of the past forty years? Where is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in that? Is this political ploy the fruit of Benedict’s chosen strategy to reclaim the spiritual heart of an alienated Western Europe and North America? These democratic societies are the very ones the Vatican considers in the throes of “moral relativism” and, by the Vatican’s repeated words and actions over the years, have wished again and again consigned to the historical ash heap. This comes in the context of other Vatican shenanigans. The Vatican is now in the midst of an “investigation” of American religious women, who after making decisive contributions to the cultural and economic development of Catholics in the United States, are now aging and dwindling in numbers. There are not a few of us Catholics who smell a clerical rat. I suspect that the true motivation for this investigation of American Catholic sisters is not to fathom the decline of religious life in American society. On the contrary, the Vatican seems to more likely to positioning themselves to pick the carcass of the sisters, who have limited but substantial financial and property holdings, in these days of diminishing and depleted church treasuries. I’m sorry, but I can’t think of any other motive for the clerics but power and greed. They want to be the beneficiaries when these American nuns are no longer able to offer any dissent, or cause trouble by educating the Catholic masses about their individual dignity and independent moral conscience - not highly valued principle by our Vatican clerical overlords. I digress. Let those who want to cling to Roman ways and traditions, continue to do so. I have to admit that I consider this choice a dead-end. The signs of the times are all around us, and have been for a long time: The clerical dominated Catholic Church is passing away. The child sexual abuse scandal ripped away any pretense of a healthy, vibrant community led by their celibate priests. Laid bare was the morally bankrupt and corrupt leadership of bishops and priests complicit in the rape and sodomy of children. The full scope of the clerics’ financial chicanery and fraud has been assiduously repressed and has yet to be fully disclosed. In a shocking reversal of the gospel, our shepherds now aided and abetted the wolves preying on the most vulnerable of the sheep, our children. The betrayal, the shame, the humiliation will be with Catholics for many, many decades. Millions of Americans no longer are even willing to call themselves Catholic, let alone attend or even associate with the church. Priests, most of whom are our friends and confessors, are dying off with fewer and fewer quality replacements. Parishes and schools are being sold off, many times to easy the financial hit from over $2 billion in settlements from the sex abuse scandal. The appropriate response of American Catholics, who seek a reformed and renewed Christian community, rooted in our own cultural and historical traditions, should be to declare our American Catholic Independence. We American Catholics should throw off “Old World,” Vatican religious and spiritual hegemony. Like the ancient Eastern or Oriental rites of the church, we should establish our own American Catholic Rite and be done with it. The Roman rite can remain a home for those who still cling to that clerical worldview. An all male celibate, hierarchical priesthood will most likely continue. The church over the centuries has always managed to suffer on and endure. The Vatican and pope could still function as a unifying force for Christianity maybe without the stifling need for absolute control. But this time, just maybe, in a more humble manifestation. This new rite would reflect American democratic traditions and individual freedoms, our unique indigenous culture. The new American rite could be a church where the PEOPLE DECIDE about our liturgy and prayer, how we manage and administer our resources, whom we ordain, how we designate our leadership. Anything less, it shouldn’t survive. The American rite will only give expression to a distinct cultural identity and spiritual integrity. It will be uniquely suited to pass on in the American cultural context the values of the gospel, the practice of the Beatitudes and corporal works of mercy, the singular vision of Jesus as the Prince of Peace. Taking a page out of the Vatican playbook, American Catholics should ask the Episcopalians for help and assistance in establishing and organizing our new rite. Most American Catholics would be surprised to learn how much the Episcopalians, while not perfect, already model the church we seek. We will need guidance in forming our governance, selecting men and women for our priesthood, and establishing a new pastoral identity. I am presuming that the Roman church will not be very generous in sharing the resources and infrastructure of the present American church with this new endeavor of a new American rite. With some striking out to find their own way, the clerics most likely will be hurt and feel abandoned especially when so many indicators foretell a bleak future. Yet, we will need places to meet for worship and prayer, places to educate and form our children. American Catholics, if we are to survive let alone endure, will have to begin from scratch. Like the traveler in Frost’s poem, American Catholics have a decision which path to pursue: Do we stay with the Romans stuck in an alienating reality? Or, do we strike out on our own fulfilling the best promise of Vatican II. An inexorable evolution toward a Peoples’ Church has already begun. The evidence has been with us for a very long time. It may take us decades, whole lifetimes, but we must begin this journey now. We must help this new Light burn brighter. Frost’s ending stanza can only give us hope: I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
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