I had decided some weeks ago I was going to write something for this issue on the war. Trouble is, as I sit down to write this a week before the publication date, the situation is changing. Rather than just preparing for war, as we have for so long, it now appears that we will be at war by the time this comes out, maybe even in a matter of hours.

I wanted to make three points, which will still be valid a week from now, unless we win the war in a matter of days, or if Saddam Hussein abdicates. Neither event is likely.

One is to acknowledge that not all Catholics are opposed to the war. I cannot pretend to state their case because I disagree so strongly, but I have to point out that they do so in good conscience. So, if there is anyone at Malachi’s who is inclined to write an article in support of the war effort, Communio will gladly print it. As with many issues we talk about, our coverage tends to be a bit one-sided and we could use a contrary viewpoint.

Two is to state clearly that I am opposed to this war. For the second time in recent memory, I find myself agreeing with the Vatican, which doesn’t happen very often these days. The Pope could find no justification for this war, and for that matter, neither could Jimmy Carter in a recent New York Times op-ed piece. Carter said there are several criteria for a “just” war, and this one meets none of them. As I read it, much of the rest of the world is opposed, which should count for something, but it hasn’t. Little will be accomplished with this war that couldn’t be done through peaceful means, and much destruction will ensue, perhaps even some in the U.S.

Three is a caution. One of the great shames of the Viet Nam era was how the anti-war activists came to vilify people serving in the military, many who were doing so unwillingly. As this war drags on, and it might, and as public outrage builds, and it could, we must ensure that we never come to that. Let us continue to pray for those who are serving our country even though we may disagree for the reason of the service.

And on that note, let me point out again the great job Dolores Sullin is doing with our e-mail prayer alert ministry. She now has a special format she uses for people asking for prayers for those in the military. Not only does she list the current prayer request, but is keeps a running list of all those mentioned in past e-mails, so that all can be kept in prayer. If you have a request for a loved one in the military, please submit it through the Rectory to Judy Bozell or Carol Lavelle at 216-781-3110 or 216-861-5343. If you wish to be added to the e-mail list, or to be removed from it, contact Dolores at dasas@nccw.net 

But as the war goes on, and as our Homeland Security department issues its color coded terror warnings, many of us will be justifiably frightened. We need to keep in mind that we have nothing to fear in Christ.

Now three notes related to the war:

One is to point out again the Prayer Walk for Peace that leaves from the St. Malachi parking lot every Wednesday at 7 p.m. It is organized by our Social Action Committee and all are welcome.

Two is a prayer effort making the rounds by e-mail asking everyone to stop what they are doing at 9 p.m. each day and spend one minute praying for the safety of the U.S., its citizens and for world peace. Even if you hate chain e-mails – and this is one – it’s a worthwhile idea.

Three is the grassroots campaign to send rice to the White House, asking President Bush to feed the people of Iraq, not to attack them. Here are directions: place a half-cup of uncooked rice in a small plastic bag, squeeze out the excess air and seal the bag. The address is: President George Bush, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington DC 20500. Send along a brief note: “Dear President Bush: If your enemies are hungry, feed them. Please send this rice to the people of Iraq. Do not attack them.” Postage should be $1.06, or use three 37-cent stamps. But you might want to check the weight first with a good postal scale.

In past issues, I have encouraged experienced Community leaders to come forward and run for Council this year. That is, people who understand our Community’s unique role in the local and universal Church, people committed to continuing the reforms of Vatican II, people who are activists at heart and know how to translate needs into action, and not just words.

Here are the people to call to get on the ballot: Ron Perger at 216-228-3050, Council Vice President Cynthia Bender at 216-521-4488, or Council President Luis Gutierrez at 216-226-7726 (e-mail Lou at redcuban@yahoo.com). The Annual Meeting is Apr. 27, and the nominating committee would like to have the names in by the end of March so they get biographical information and personal statements publicized.

Finally, I would like to thank Fr. Tony again for his detailed explanation of the situation at the Mart last issue. That was much needed. Many questions remain, but I am going to back off, unless something new develops, and let others have their say. This month, I defer to an article by Frank Schiros. One final point: there must be a reconciliation of Community members who have been alienated by the Mart situation.

Thanks to Frank Schiros, Bill McLaughlin, Fr. Shannon and Steve DeJohn for the material in this month’s issue. The next issue of Communio is Apr. 27th with a deadline of Apr. 13th.

Father Tony’s rather lengthy article in the February Communio lays to rest, at least for me, any lingering questions about the removal of Bonnie Mar from her position. Bonnie was a popular manager, but if she chooses to preserve the confidentiality of her employment, she has a perfect right to do so, and nothing more can be said. Except perhaps looking at it from Bonnie’s personal point of view, it should not be a major issue for the Community, but a minor one.

Let me make one more point on this: the new manager’s title of “chief operating officer” is very odd and corporate sounding choice for use at Malachi Mart. Are 7-Eleven store managers called chief operating officers? Is this a sign of a new direction at St. Malachi’s? I hope not.

But Father Tony’s detailed explanation did not lay to rest a disquieting question about the Community. In the recent past, we have lost more active, dedicated members than are currently involved in committees and ministries because we seem to have lost control over the community’s direction.

I’ve been a member for 21 years. In that period, all the major institutional services at St. Malachi’s have had the Community’s imprint on them. Why does the Community or its council have so little control over these services? Why do we now need a Board of Trustees and also a Board of Members to make decisions for the Center that are highly relevant to the interests of members of the Community? Is it because the powers that be don’t feel the community is capable of making its own decisions?

Ask any Community member to name the persons on both boards and it’s like asking a high school student to locate Wyoming on the map. Members’ awareness of both boards is virtually nil and we probably wouldn’t recognize them if we sat down to lunch with them. After all these years, I’m still unaware how members of both boards are elected or appointed, and if the Community has any important input in their selection or election.

How was it determined that these entities are distinct and autonomous? United Way provides funding to distinct and autonomous agencies, but controls their functions with its financial resources. Corporations that create subsidiaries would also not normally allow this. Why does the Community have no real influence or oversight over such services in spite of the fact that members unselfishly made the existence of these services possible?

I have news for my readers: There are several communities around the country where the laity maintains control of all services and programs and even holds title to the properties. Priests are free to follow their priestly ministries without concern or pressure over services and property. If the Community can overcome its timidity and become more assertive, it could better manage its own social concerns and activities.

I agree with Father Tony that we do not often direct our concerns to him and other interested parties (perhaps because they are inaccessible?). As I once before addressed Father Tony, I again invite him to take up this unsettling concern about Community mandates over the ministries it has created either from the pulpit, or if that’s uncomfortable, in dialogue at a coffee hour brunch in the cafeteria, or if even that is still too uncomfortable, come and have dinner at my house with other interested Community members.

Finances are very boring for most individuals so I hope to be brief with my comments. I am in a quandary in trying to explain the financial situation I think the Community may find itself in another year. As we all know, donations to all charities nationwide have diminished. For the Catholic Church I think that it is because of the economic situation coupled with the sex abuse scandal. In prior years the community has been very fortunate, with collections being much greater than our spending. This has enabled us to construct challenging budgets knowing that the level of spending would be covered by the generous donations of the membership.

However, this year is different: through February our regular collections are over $14,000 less than last year, reflecting the decrease in church attendance we’ve all noticed. Over 70% of our expenses are fixed. These expenses include salaries and benefits, Diocesan support, and parish support. Because of the sharp decline in collections we will be drawing on our cash reserves for the current year with 3 months’ salary in reserve at the end of the fiscal year. Next year we will just about eliminate all our cash reserves.

What can we do to increase the income to the Community? Do we have a fundraiser, a raffle? Do we hope that the regular collections increase to pay all the expenses? I don’t have any answers. I hope that the collections increase this year and next so that we may continue our mission.

This brings me to my third topic: a more concrete reflection on the role of the laity in the mission and teaching of the Church. In the light of an understanding of the Church as the union of all the baptized, Vatican II developed a new way of looking at the “apostolate of the laity.” Those of you who may have been involved in Catholic Action groups back in the 1940s (If you were involved then, now you probably have gray hair and carry a cane). Anyway, you will remember the definition of Catholic Action given by Pius XI: “the participation of the laity in the apostolate of the hierarchy.” Note what this statement says: the apostolate, the mission, of the Church belongs to the hierarchy. Through Catholic Action the laity are allowed to participate in that mission, but this is an act of largesse on the part of the hierarchy, to whom alone that mission belongs.

Vatican II changed this. It speaks of the role of the laity “as a participation in the saving mission of the Church itself. Through their baptism and confirmation all are commissioned to that apostolate by the Lord Himself.” (l. G, art.33) In our day the shortage of priests has made even more important the involvement of the laity in the Church’s mission and ministries.

In this context I want to speak about the contribution the laity make to the teaching of the Church. I want to put the question: “Is there a place for public opinion in the Church?” Before attempting an answer to this question, I want to clarify what I mean by “public opinion.” I do not mean casual thinking, much less self-centered or self-seeking ways of thought. I mean “public opinion” in a theological sense, public opinion as the sensus fidelium (the sense of the faithful), namely, that charism of practical knowledge belonging to the body of the faithful by reason of their concrete living of that faith in response to the Holy Spirit. It is an understanding of faith that grows out of their experience of striving to live Christian Faith and the values set forth in the Gospel.

In fact, it is important to point out that the first mention of infallibility in the Church speaks of the infallibility that belongs to this “sense of the faithful” (the sensus fidelium): “The body of the faithful as a whole, anointed as they are by the Holy One (cf. Jn. 2:20, 2, 7I) cannot err in matters of belief. Thanks to a supernatural sense of the faith, which characterizes the people as whole, it manifests this unerring quality when, from the bishops down to the last member of the laity, it shows universal agreement in matters of faith and morals.” (L.G.art. 12) In a book written in 1959 (therefore several years before the Second Vatican Council convened) Karl Rahner wrote that besides the divine help that the Magisterium needs to carry out its responsibility to teach, it also needs human help. To quote Rahner: “Public opinion,” he says, “is one of the means whereby the Church’s official leaders, who need human help as well as divine, get to know something about the actual situation, within which and taking account of which, they are to lead and guide the people. They need to know how people are thinking and feeling, what they have set their hearts and wishes on, what their problems are, what they find difficult, in what respects their feeling have changed, where they find the traditional answers or rulings insufficient, what they would like to see changed…and so on.” (Free Speech in the Church, 22) Thomas Merton took the same position as Rahner, though in fewer words. Writing on July 17, 1965 to Bishop John Wright, then Bishop of Pittsburgh: “There is such a thing as public opinion in the Church and now, if ever, is the time for it to be articulate.” (hgl, 610) [In parenthesis I suggest that these words could have been spoken today.]

All that I have said thus far may be understood as creating the necessary context for answering the question: “What assent must the laity give to the teachings of the Magisterium?” The answer to this question is found in the notorious article 25 of Lumen Gentium which tells us, first, that the authentic teaching of the bishops requires of us obsequium religiosum of will and mind. This obsequium religiosum must especially be given to “the authentic teaching of the Roman Pontiff even when he is not speaking ex cathedra.”

Second, article 25 goes on to speak of the assent that must be given to statements that are infallible, namely, pronouncements of truths solemnly proclaimed as belonging to the deposit of faith, whether by a solemn act of the Pope or by the ordinary and universal magisterium (that is the Body of Bishops united with the Pope). Such pronouncements must be accepted as divinely revealed and call for the assent of faith.

This article suggests, therefore, that there are two kinds of magisterial statements:

Those that are infallible and call for the assent of faith and those that are not infallible and call for what the article calls obsequium religiosum. 

What did the Council Fathers mean by the term “obsequium religiosum of will and mind” Obsequium religiosum is difficult to translate. Both at the Council and after it the meaning of these two Latin words has been much discussed. Some use it in a strong sense and take it to mean “submission” of will and intellect. Others have given it a weaker meaning, thus, Bishop Christopher Butler, auxiliary Bishop of London, England at the time of the Council, suggested that it means “respect.” The late Richard McCormick, who was one of our best American moral theologians suggested the following way of understanding it: “a docile personal attempt to assimilate the teaching, an attempt that can end in ‘inability to assent.’“

Another name for this “inability to assent” is “dissent.” The right to dissent from non-infallible teachings has long been a part of Catholic belief (though frequently forgotten or ignored). It came under serious discussion in at the time of Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical of Pope Paul VI on birth control. That document met with dissent from a number of Bishops’ Conference and a number of theologians. The right to dissent from non-infallible teachings of the Church seems to be a necessary consequence of the proper understanding of the meaning of assent to such teachings. Assent is a particular act directed toward a specific teaching. It is not an act of obedience to Church authority, for obedience is primarily an act of the will, whereas assent is an act of the mind. Assent is a free act whereby I personally appropriate a particular teaching and make it my own.

Now since a non-infallible teaching always carries within it the possibility of error (otherwise there would be no distinction of infallible teaching and non-infallible teaching), a situation could arise in which a person, however strong his dispositions to the contrary, might find himself or herself unable to assent to a particular non-infallible teaching. Since the free act of assent is psychologically impossible in such a situation, the only alternative consistent with true freedom and personal integrity is to dissent. Dissent is not disloyalty to the Church or a denial of the Magisterium’s right to teach. It is simply the inevitable consequence of the inability in a concrete instance to give one’s assent to a specific teaching of the Magisterium. It is the necessary corollary of true freedom of assent.

All this seemed very clear until the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith added a new category of teachings, namely, all those teachings that are proposed definitively by the Magisterium. This was applied to Vatican teaching in the Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II: Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (May 22, 1994) in which the Pope stated: “the Church has no authority to confer priestly ordination on women and this judgment is to be held definitively by all the Church’s faithful.” In an explanation of this new category of truths, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith made clear that between this new category of teachings – namely teachings presented definitively by the Magisterium – and the category of infallible teachings, there is “no difference with respect to the irrevocable character of the assent which is owed to these teachings. The difference is that the first category (infallible teachings) calls for an assent to God revealing; the second (teachings taught definitively) is based on the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the Church. It is a declaration of the ordinary universal magisterium.

The Congregation also made clear that anyone who denies a doctrine proposed definitively by the Church “would be in a position of rejecting a truth of Catholic doctrine and would therefore no longer be in full communion with the Catholic Church.” Such definitive teaching would include, besides the non-ordainability of women, such teachings as the condemnation of euthanasia, the canonization of saints, Leo XIII Apostolic letter declaring Anglican orders invalid, etc.

I must conclude now and I don’t want to end on a dismal note. I earnestly want many of things I have said tonight to give us hope for the future. There is need, I would suggest, for another Council of the Church – a Council much more representative of the whole people of God, since the gift of the Spirit is not limited to the hierarchy, a Council that, for one thing at least, will revisit chapter three of Lumen Christi – the chapter on the hierarchy. There is in that chapter an exaggerated emphasis on the role of the Pope. It’s almost as if chapter two – on the People of God – has been forgotten. Chapter three is difficult to fit in with Jesus’ understanding of authority as servant-leadership. It is overly patriarchal in its understanding of Church structure. What Rosemary Haughton said years ago about feminist theology could win the concurrence of many men in the Church as well. Her words might even be a kind of theme for another Church Council. Here is what she said: “We don’t want a piece of the patriarchal pie. We want to bake a different pie.”

The InterReligious Task Force on Central America reports that the following Ohio protesters at the School of the Americas, now officially known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation and unofficially referred to as the School of Assassins, located in Fort Benning Georgia, have received the following sentences for their actions last November:

“The Pianist,” I believe, has a greater impact on the viewer than “Schindler’s List” because the story focuses on one individual and his horrendous experiences, rather than the mass genocide that is almost impossible to integrate because of its enormity. The sights, sounds and unexplainable hatred are too much for a moral, religious person to bear. (If only Israel would keep in mind the memory of the Holocaust and find some way to reconcile with the Palestinians besides mass destruction.)

It is also a cautionary tale of war’s madness and, in the light of the possible pre-emptive war on Iraq, it is a reminder that we as Americans can protest and prevent its tragic waste of life. Hopefully, this survival story should inspire the audience. Unfortunately, the horror of genocide is so inhuman, yet so commonplace, that the populace is beginning to take it for granted.

“The Pianist” gives us a portrait of hell. It is the true story of a Jew witnessing the ongoing horror in and around the Warsaw Ghetto, one of the darkest episodes of human history in the 20th Century. This is the story of someone who lived to tell an unspeakable tale. We get to feel the cold and deprivation he felt; the misery and cruelty he saw, and that’s what makes the viewing so memorable.

Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a pianist, starts out watching the brewing storm of war with a level of denial, hardly able to imagine what it will mean for him. Little by little, the Nazis take away the rights of Jews, then the dignity, and finally the lives of Warsaw’s Jewish population. After he is separated from his family, who were herded like cattle to one of the concentration camps, he survives by hiding himself in the Warsaw Ghetto. Within this sector, he finds survival is determined by the whims of sadistic guards.

Later, he opts to take his chances on the other side of the ghetto wall where it is “verboten” for Jews to dwell. He relies for his existence on Polish friends who provide him with some food and shelter. He begins to lead the life of a feral dog with the wily adaptive knack of an animal, looking for both food and shelter wherever he can. Szpilman survives one day at a time with an instinctual desire to live. For him, staying alive is a matter of chance and providence, not heroism or accomplishment. He not only experiences plummeting dignity, but physical decline. Nevertheless, by the time the Russians came in, he had lived to tell this unspeakable tale.

One critic (Forrest Harriman) writes, “this tale is so meaningful that to miss it is to miss part of our collective education.” Another critic (Michael Elliot) writes, “God does not promise us that we won’t see hard times or injustices at the hands of our fellow man. He does promise that all injuries and injustice will be addressed to our complete satisfaction.”

* * * * * * *