BishopAccountability.org
	Corporate Style Shuts out Dialogue Paul Ginnetty Is Director of the Institute for the Study of Religion at St. Joseph's College in Patchogue By Paul Ginnetty Newsday [Long Island NY] June 11, 2006 http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opgin114776319 jun11,0,3584883.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines Next Sunday, Catholics observe the feast of Corpus Christi, which celebrates the belief that Christ's body and blood are present during Mass in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. This celebration arrives as the Diocese of Rockville Centre focuses on the Eucharist with a 2-week-long series of lectures and worship events highlighting this central mystery of the faith. A related Catholic belief is that the church community is itself a manifestation of the Lord's body. So it is ironic that the body of Christ that is the diocesan community on Long Island appears to be suffering from some serious wounds. Even after the shame of the priest sex-abuse scandals, lay people remain not fully enfranchised in church affairs on Long Island. The diocese is at crucial moments being run with a corporate high-handedness and bureaucratic insensitivity that we might expect of General Motors. In the process, the administration of Bishop William Murphy risks losing congregants and discouraging potential new ones who prefer to be part of a dialogue. Potentially the diocese's influence could become marginalized, and a major factor enriching life on Long Island diminished. Recent events have intensified the baseline of mistrust for Bishop Murphy spawned by the priest sex-abuse crisis. Murphy still refuses to allow the Catholic reform group Voice of the Faithful of Long Island to meet on church property and refuses to even engage in a dialogue with its leaders. It should be acknowledged that his no-talk policy arose after the group called for his resignation in response to the Massachusetts attorney general's 2003 report that described Murphy as having a tangential role in the Boston cover-up that transferred errant priests from parish to parish. There is growing sadness and even a sense of scandal about this impasse between the shepherd and several thousand members of his flock, most of whom are deeply immersed in church service. This embarrassing standoff recently prompted 22 priests to donate funds for a professional mediation session between the parties. Voice of the Faithful has embraced such a process; so far the bishop has not. Morale across the diocese also has been tested by the recent heavy-handed edict reconfiguring the diocesan Pastoral Formation Institute, a respected training program for lay people most of whose 1,600 alumni went on to serve in parish ministries. The administrative staffing has been drastically reduced from 33 to five, and the program dispersed among several parishes where clergy can be expected to exercise more control. It's possible that the shakeup aims to eventually eliminate the Institute, which has produced the kind of empowered, theologically aware believers who also happen to gravitate toward Voice of the Faithful. There's also a danger that the diocese is subtly reframing the lay apostolate as something largely confined to service within one's family and secular profession and non-leadership church roles, with more substantive policy matters left to the professional clergy who jealously guard their distinctive role from being somehow watered down by collaboration in ministry with the non-ordained. The newly appointed rector of the diocesan seminary, Msgr. James McDonald, is widely acknowledged to be a robust traditionalist and champion of clerical prerogatives. The Pastoral Formation Institute flap arose only months after the messy firing of three religious sisters from their posts as college campus ministers. A diocesan spokesman explained that they were not a good fit with the more "traditional" and "sacramental" thrust of the emerging model of "new evangelization." What has been most hurtful to those terminated from both the catechetical programs and campus ministry has been the dearth of consultation and proneness to fait accompli evident in the diocese's disconcertingly corporate style. Dismissed employees describe the process as being more like getting pink-slipped by a huge corporation than invited to a meaningful discussion about the future of a particular ministry and the individual minister. This sends a sad message to people inside and outside the diocese: Don't think this place is going to be any warmer or fuzzier than Wal-Mart. Collectively such events seem to be local implementations of a broader agenda at work in a number of dioceses, efforts to rein in some perceived excesses of the Second Vatican Council by promoting a 1950s "Father Knows Best" style of lay-clergy relationships. The National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly newspaper, recently chronicled a dramatic example of this trend, describing how the new prelate of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., a member of Opus Dei, has with warp speed dismantled or severely slashed progressive educational and social justice programs nurtured by his three predecessors. Chief among his targets was the diocese's renowned adult education program, New Wine, strikingly similar to Rockville Centre's Pastoral Formation Institute. The authoritarian aspects of such evangelization efforts here and elsewhere ultimately could miss the mark with most Catholics, both practicing and inactive. Despite the church's confidence that it possesses definitive, revealed truth, it must still market its message in a culture that expects free and open discussion and in a religious marketplace where adults increasingly rethink their denominational ties. The stout self-confidence of this neo-orthodoxy could yield a band of staunch believers who sadly become increasingly fewer in number and less engaged in the society in which they are supposed to be a leaven. It's great that church leaders are highlighting the importance of the Eucharist. But being a truly eucharistic community means addressing the injuries that fracture the unity of Christ's body. In the words of Sister Lauren Hanley, the summarily dismissed director of the Pastoral Formation Institute, "Until the reason for the pain and anger of so many is acknowledged, healing cannot happen." Cognizant that confessing one's sins leads to a more worthy reception of Communion, the bishop might have scheduled a Reconciliation Congress before the eucharistic one. Jesus was quite clear in this regard: "So then, if you are bringing your offering to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, go and be reconciled with your brother first, and then come back and present your offering." (Matthew 5:23-24)
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.