The Sheepcat

Honouring Fr John Harvey: A Call for More Priests with Courage

Today, the Feast of St John, marks the second anniversary of the death of the co-founder of the Courage Apostolate, Fr John Harvey, OSFS, who so fittingly passed away at the hour of mercy. Here he is relaxing with little Aby at St Norbert's Rectory on his last visit to Toronto, in August 2009.

He was fondly remembered at the next year's Courage conference, not least by those who'd worked closely with him.

In this interview from that time, successor executive director Fr Paul Check said:

Father Harvey is still with us, although he has entered a new chapter in his life. Certainly, there’s a poignancy and sadness at the loss of his physical presence. I also detected a confidence and trust in the people as Courage enters a new chapter, building upon what Father Harvey gave to us and their hope for the future.

Emphatically agreed. Church teaching will stand the test of time -- and God calls people of every age to present it anew. Key to the New Evangelization is explaining how the gift of sexuality is linked to the gift of life; how chastity is part of the good news.

In 2012 one of the best, most concise and powerful contributions to this effort was from Fr Pontifex, in his spoken word video, "(The Church says) Yes to You" (lyrics available at the link). 

 

(A version with Spanish subtitles and lyrics is here, and a behind-the-scenes video is here.)

For more in-depth education, at the invitation of the local ordinary Courage offers four-part training as follows: 

Whenever Courage is invited for a clergy study day, the plan is always to address the question of same-sex attraction from four perspectives: theological anthropology (the natural moral law and Church teaching on homosexuality); psychological sciences (presented by an MD or PhD who works with Courage); witness talk (a testimonial by a Courage member); and a talk specifically about Courage.

If you or a loved one are experiencing same-sex attraction, such that you would be eligible for Courage or EnCourage respectively, why not approach your bishop and request that Fr Check be invited to schedule a presentation? Given that these requests are received from around the world, count on waiting a while for the event. In the meantime, please consider praying for and donating to the apostolate, and contacting the chaplain of the nearest chapter to request an approved member testimony. If you don't have a local chapter but are looking for support, please join a ListServ.

And consider attending our next Courage/EnCourage conference in Mundelein, Illinois, July 25 to July 28, 2013. (If you have a financial barrier, act now to request a scholarship from the head office or your local diocese.)

Separate Courage Latino and Oceania conferences are also available. Kudos to Most Rev Anthony Fisher of the Diocese of Parramatta in Australia for this homily on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.

Competent pastoral care for persons with same-sex attraction and their families is needed now more than ever. Do you know a priest, deacon, religious, or lay minister who is warm, orthodox, knowledgeable, quick-thinking, and non-squeamish? Might that person have a gift for working with Courage? If so, why not suggest that he or she attend the next conference to develop those gifts? Faithful priests are especially needed as chaplains, because they can hear confessions and celebrate Mass for local groups.

We hear all too frequently about priests who have either given poor guidance ("Why not just try monogamy? Get a boyfriend"); or who have been naive, hoping that all SSA is transient and not quite knowing what to do with those for whom it is deep-seated; or who have been too harsh, reducing homosexuality to a set of policy issues without recognizing that it affects real people in the pews.

As neighbours to one fine seminary and students of another, we are delighted to see the calibre of current candidates for the priesthood, who thirst for authentic tools to meet the needs of the people of God. As often as we can, we let seminarians and priests know about Priests with Courage:

a network of priests committed to ministering to persons struggling with homosexuality with the love of Christ and the full teachings of the Catholic Church, especially in the area of chastity.

If every reader of this blog post would share it with one good priest or seminarian, thousands of people could be reached with better pastoral care. In memory of Fr Harvey, will you take up our challenge today? Thank you, and God bless.

After the Pope's Visit, What Next?

Charlotte was Both sparks a lively discussion of the aftermath of the Pope's visit.

[W]hen you take a rather urgent sense that perhaps there were some areas of Church life that were functioning as obstacles to Christ, rather than doors, combine that with Scriptural and historical studies which had the ultimate effect of casting doubt on the trustworthiness of anything we think we know about what the Scriptures or the Church tells us about Christ, and then combine that with ideological battles and then mix all of that up in a culture in which authority is a bad word, relativism reigns and the Catholic Church is not, to its great surprise, the only game in town…you have massive confusion as to why we are doing what we are doing and what we are doing at all.

In other words…the “new evangelization” called for by these last two Popes is not about reaffirming Catholic identity in some abstract or institutional sense. It’s about confidently believing that Jesus Christ is the answer and then just as confidently helping people see and experience Christ in the Church: in its spiritual tradition, sacramental life, teachings, artistic heritage and sacrificial service to the poor, sick and dying.

In other words: Cultural Catholicism, RIP.

Sherry has some good content riffing off this at Intentional Disciples, though on both threads the galloping of certain comboxers' hobby horses threatens to drown out everything else.

AmCath Hemorrhage

Amy Welborn's hosting a fascinating combox conversation about why so many American Catholics have left the Church and what can be done to bring them back. The starting point is the Pew Forum's recently published U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. That the overall numbers of Catholics have remained relatively stable is an artefact of Hispanic immigration, not completely unlike the influx of Polish Catholics to the United Kingdom.

Sherry Weddell points out that for every U.S. Evangelical who becomes Catholic there are eight U.S. Catholics who become Evangelical.

I expect the trends are somewhat different in Canada. I'd be eager for some hard stats if anyone's got them.

Who Can Be Saved?

Avery Cardinal Dulles explains the development from New Testament times through Vatican II of Catholic doctrine on who can attain eternal salvation.

Meanwhile, Sherry at ID reports on a set of attitudes very common among young people, attitudes for which a youth worker called Christian Smith has coined the term Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. It goes, she says, with an assumption that all of us are saved, and that all of us have earned our salvation.

The upshot: Most of us are humble where what is called for is magnanimity (the aspiration to accomplish great things for God and others) and we are presumptious where we desparately need a dose of humility. (Just how good am I, really, and what does Jesus Christ have to do with any of this?)

Tom of Disputations puts forward three possibilities:

1. My neighbors can go to hell for all I care.
2. I don't think believing in Jesus makes much of a difference in terms of salvation.
3. I've got to preach Christ to my neighbors.

If I'm skeered of 3 and disapprove of the callousness of 1, then that leaves the waffle of 2. Lord, grant me courage.

Preaching Without Words?

On yesterday's memorial day, Br Matthew of Intentional Disciples looked at the famous command attributed to St Francis: "Preach the Gospel at all times and, if necessary, use words." The first trouble, he points out, is that it's apocryphal. But there's more.

This reminds me of a remark I heard when I was attending a theologically liberal Mennonite church where charitable works were much in vogue. Our guest speaker, visiting from the Midwest, had cooperated with some Baptists on a relief project for a town a tornado had hit. And one of the Baptists had said, our speaker recalled, "You know, you Mennonites are fine people, but you don't preach what you practice."

The Glory of Our Neighbour

Sherry at Intentional Disciples helped open a door to religious life for a woman she met briefly at a workshop she taught some 21 months ago. Sherry quotes C.S. Lewis's sermon "The Weight of Glory."

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load or weight or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strong tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you know meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations-these are mortal and their life is to our as the life of a gnat. But it [is] immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit-immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

Korean Martyrs

Today on the Feast of the 103 Korean Martyrs, read the powerful story of the founding of the Church in Korea. The role of lay people is notable.

Link via Sherry Weddell (Intentional Disciples). Holy martyrs of Korea, pray for us!

World Youth Day 2002

Five years ago yesterday, I watched in joy as the clouds parted and the sun beamed down upon the sodden ground at Downsview where 850,000 pilgrims had gathered to participate in the Papal Mass at the climax of World Youth Day. Some of the overnight campers had left already, driven away by heavy rains, but for those who persevered to the end, the reward was glorious.

At the time I was an ecumenically minded adherent of a Baptist church, one I'd been attending for nearly a year. I believed in gleaning whatever was of value in any Christian denomination, so I wasn't about to miss a chance to see and hear one of the great spiritual leaders of our age. Even if I didn't accept everything the Catholic Church taught, on many issues Pope John Paul II was clearly on the side of the angels. What a turnabout from his visit to Toronto in 1984, when I'd denounced the "sexist, homophobic" tyrant with such vehemence that after one outburst I felt compelled to gingerly ask one potentially offended co-worker whether he was Catholic. Uh, no, actually he was Jewish and didn't really see what the fuss was about--whew. But I digress.

World Youth Day brought a spiritual glow to our beleaguered city. On the subway, in the streets, especially on a pedestrianized artery running through my neighbourhood, I saw pilgrims with their distinctive burgundy and tan backpacks--even now, seeing someone with one of the backpacks gives me a little thrill of recollection. I struck up conversations with a few visitors, wishing them well even as I stumbled over quite what to say. For the most part I offered just a knowing nod of recognition: we are brothers and sisters in Christ.

On the Friday I had joined a few friends outside the Royal Ontario Museum to watch the great and terrible pageantry of the Stations of the Cross.

And now here I was, standing on my own in the midst of a great crowd of young people, who were cheering this frail old man as if he were a pop star. "John Paul Two, we love you!" This celebrity business I could do without, but when the Mass began, I was deeply stirred. What serenity and dignity! And what a powerful message of hope and lasting truth in his homily.

About the sexual abuse scandals then wracking the Church in the United States, the Pope maintained a careful reserve, reminding us of the good work being done by so many good and faithful priests. Had I been closer to the scandals I might have reacted differently, but it seemed to me that this was not the time or place for the airing of the Church's dirty laundry. In keeping with that same attitude, I recently heard Archbishop Collins say that a bad priest reveals nothing of what Christ and the Church are like--he tells you only about his own sordidness--while a good priest is a clear window pane, allowing the light of Christ to shine through.

I didn't receive the Eucharist, of course--I knew better than that. I didn't really understand the Church's logic, but I was perfectly prepared to play by the rules. I don't remember feeling particularly left out. As I recall, I just prayed while everyone else lined up at the multitude of stations.

* * *

In the evening, I made my way to my local laundromat, where I encountered a group of pilgrims, from Peru, I think. They needed help with the instructions on the machines. In fractured Spanish, I chatted with them about the work of the Holy Spirit, and what a blessing the whole event had been. I might well have told them I was satisfied with the Baptist church as at least a temporary resting place; I was still largely partial to the Protestant approach to Scripture and no doubt gave them an indulgent smile when they talked about some of the Catholic "distinctives" for which I couldn't see any solid warrant. We agreed to pray for each other, and we prayed for Christian unity.

I would go on to submit to baptism by immersion the next spring (despite having been baptized as an infant) and to become a full member of the Baptist church, but less than three years after World Youth Day came to Toronto, I resolved to enter the Catholic Church, and another two months later I was finally received into it. Deo gratias.

Ages of Faith

Ages of faith are not marked by dialogue but by proclamation.
--sociologist Peter Berger

Quoted by Retractiones, a newish blog by an evangelical seeker exploring Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

Link thanks to Amy Welborn.

St. Jerome's Names New President

St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, Ontario, has named a new president, Dr. David Perrin, O.M.I. When I studied at the University of Waterloo in the 1980s, St Jerome's, the Catholic college federated with the university, didn't make much of an impression on me one way or the other. I took a math course at St Jerome's, as I recall, and that was about it. The Pope, though, now there was another story, and he was definitely one of the bad guys!

I know nothing about the new president beyond what's in the news story, but let us pray for him that under his leadership the college (the alma mater of Toronto's Archbishop Collins) may live out its mission in a way that challenges the entire campus with the beauty and truth of the Catholic faith.