{"id":119,"date":"2012-06-05T13:04:38","date_gmt":"2012-06-05T19:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/?p=119"},"modified":"2016-05-02T11:09:38","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T17:09:38","slug":"the-stony-road-of-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2012\/06\/the-stony-road-of-scandal.html","title":{"rendered":"The Stony Road of Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\n<\/p>

Stones in the road
\nLeave a mark from whence they came
\nA thousand points of light or shame
\nBaby, I don\u2019t know . . .
\n~ Mary Chapin Carpenter, \u201cStones in the Road\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking about stones today\u2013particularly the stumbling stones in the road set down to trap and confuse us. The Greeks called a stumbling block or snare a\u00a0skandalon<\/em>, and it\u2019s from that root that we get the word scandal. The road we travel as Church seems littered this week with the stumbling stones of scandal, and I am stubbing the toes of my soul on a new one every day.<\/p>\n

By scandal I don\u2019t just mean the popular sense of titillating, how-are-the-mighty-fallen revelations, though Lord knows we\u2019ve had more than our share of those recently. From VatiLeaks to yet another media-famous Father fathering a child, plus the infernal stench as more news oozes out about the inept-at-best, deeply-sinful-at-worst handling of clergy abuse cases by the hierarchy, it\u2019s been enough to justify News Corp taking over\u00a0L\u2019Osservatore Romano<\/em> and turning it tabloid. People who hate Catholics\u2013and there are a lot of them\u2013do not always need an excuse to do so, but we are taking all the work out of it for them. \u201cTo all my foes I am a thing of scorn, and especially my neighbors, a horror to my friends . . .\u201d writes the psalmist\u00a0(Psalm 31:12)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Defensiveness is the natural reaction of institutions, and the Church is enough of an institution\u2013too much of one, many would say\u2013that going into lockdown mode is not surprising. And it\u2019s tempting to see a symmetry of finger-pointing in recent events. If the Church\u2019s male hierarchy and celibate priesthood have been a source of scandal to the world, so this unavoidably paranoid thinking goes, we\u2019ll turn the tables and start cracking down on women religious and those who would question the Church\u2019s sexual ethics. In the world\u2019s eyes, nothing would make more snse.<\/p>\n

But we are not the world. Our eyes should be better than this. The stones I am bruised by right now are not the traps set by enemies but the ones we are lobbing at each other from within.<\/p>\n

In my experience, there has always been a tradition of dissent within the Church\u2013a tradition I was happy to be part of at times in my own journey. There has always\u2013especially in the US\u2013been a sense that it is Rome vs The Rest of Us. As long as I can remember, though, and this includes the days of the difficult struggle of the Immaculate Heart community with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, there has been love underneath it all, and an understanding that we were wrestling with one goal: to be, in an imperfect world, the most unified and radiant expression of Christ that we could be.<\/p>\n

I have heard anger and frustration and pain (not to mention lots of black humor) in the struggles between traditional and progressive Catholics over the years, but I have not, until recently, seen signs of serious schism. I never imagined I would see it in a parish bulletin. But on Pentecost Sunday, Fr Doug Koesel, pastor of Holy Trinity Parish in Cleveland, published a\u00a0letter<\/a><\/strong> to his parishioners entitled \u201cWhat the Nuns\u2019 Story Is Really About.\u201d In his letter, Fr Koesel\u2013a priest with a long history of sensitive pastoral ministry, a pastor who has helped to forge a real community out of the ashes of three parishes closed in a contentious process even the Vatican found fault with\u2013openly dismisses the authority of the male hierarchy in favor of the witness of nuns:<\/p>\n

The problem with the\u00a0Vatican approach is that it places the nuns squarely on the\u00a0side of Jesus and the Vatican on the side of tired old men,\u00a0making a last gasp to save a crumbling kingdom lost long\u00a0ago for a variety of reasons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fr Koesel provides several examples of women\u2019s prophetic ministry, and then notes that \u201cthe number of popes and bishops and priests following in their [the nuns\u2019] footsteps, in Jesus footsteps, is ___?\u201d In setting up the Vatican as the enemy, Fr Koesel provides what sounds to me like the (anti)doctrinal formula of a schismatic American Catholic Church:<\/p>\n

The Vatican sounded like the Pharisees of the New Testament;\u2014legalistic, paternalistic and orthodox\u2014 while \u201cthe\u00a0good sisters\u201d were the ones who were feeding the hungry,\u00a0clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, educating the immigrant, and so on. Nuns also learned that Catholics are intuitively smart about their faith. They prefer dialogue over diatribe, freedom of thought over mind control,\u00a0biblical study over fundamentalism, development of doctrine over isolated mandates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is\u00a0skandalon<\/em> at its worst, a stone on which many will stumble. It\u2019s no surprise that the\u00a0HuffPost<\/em> and the\u00a0National Catholic Reporter<\/em> have published Fr Koesel\u2019s letter as gospel. With friends like him, who needs Maureen Dowd? There\u2019s no point in refuting him\u2013in pointing out, as my friend Michael did, for example, that in the Diocese of Cleveland, as in most dioceses across the country, the entire bishop\u2019s appeal goes to \u201cfeeding the hungry, . . . and so on.\u201d All I can do is rub the bruise, and wonder.<\/p>\n

Can anything good come out of Cleveland? Will the city where the river once burned be the place where schism catches fire? Have Catholics who believe as Fr Koesel does already left the Church, or are they casting a necessary first stone? Will the hierarchy\u2013beginning with Fr Koesel\u2019s ordinary, Bishop Lennon\u2013simply tighten down further, crack down harder, build the stones into higher, more impenetrable walls of division?<\/p>\n

The answers, from whatever side of the stony road you\u2019re on, may seem simple. But I find myself looking to the far less simple, far less predictable mystery at the heart of the Church: the\u00a0skandalon<\/em> that is the Cross.<\/p>\n

Where is the wise one? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not come to know God through wisdom, it was the will of God through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who have faith. For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a\u00a0stumbling block<\/strong> to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,<\/a> but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.\u00a0(1 Corinthians 1:20-25)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Out of this road full of stumbling stones, may the wisdom of God bring a Church renewed and united, built of living stones on the stone the builders rejected.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stones in the road Leave a mark from whence they came A thousand points of light or shame Baby, I don\u2019t know . . . ~ Mary Chapin Carpenter, \u201cStones in the Road\u201d I\u2019m thinking about stones today\u2013particularly the stumbling stones in the road set down to trap and confuse us. 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