some communicants are less welcomed because of their political views. Alluding to bishops who have urged Catholic supporters of abortion rights and gay marriage not to receive communion, she said, “I wonder if I’d be allowed at the Eucharistic table if they knew what was in my head.” At that point, one of her peers stood up and said with a smile, “I’m tempted to push back,” and she did, obliquely—arguing that there’s no cause to feel unwelcome during the Eucharistic celebration because “it’s a table that belongs to Jesus,” not to anyone else. A young man with a Spanish accent added that bishops have a right to be “prophetic” on the question of who’s worthy of communion, but shouldn’t be “coercive.” Sitting in a wingback chair before the fireplace and holding a glass of white wine, the woman in the shawl did not disagree but pointed out, “I just live in a world where people put gates around the Eucharist.” The next morning, the guests were gone, and project members went behind closed doors to have their own discussions. The confidentiality is part of
creating what several of them referred to in interviews as a “safe” haven for dialogue—an environment where they can speak without concern that comments could come back to haunt them when they seek tenure and promotions or encounter their local bishop. The day contained talk of producing a book or other publication mirroring the group’s dialogues, according to Ospino, who said that the role of lay theologians in the institutional Church continued to loom large in the off-the-record exchanges. The same topic occupied a private session on August 15 with Boston’s Cardinal Seán O’Malley, OFM Cap, involving nine members of the Catholic Conversation Project steering committee. “We’re trying to talk together in a way that breaks” with the bellicosity of much Catholic debate, said Kathyrn Getek Soltis, who facilitated the discussions with panelists and, with her three-year-old doctorate from Boston College, directs Villanova University’s Center for Peace and Justice Education. She added, “And frankly, we’re still figuring that out.” n
Being of this world By Lisa Sowle Cahill
The laity’s charge following Vatican II
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n gaudium et spes (joy and Hope)—the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World issued at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council in 1965—the questions of special urgency all had to do with ethics and politics. Marriage and family were addressed first, followed by the development of culture, socioeconomic life, and political community. Though a Catholic document, Gaudium et Spes in fact addressed “the whole human family.” The world, and not only the Church, it said, is created in love, fallen to sin, and “emancipated now by Christ.”
That approach to the modern world exuded energy, optimism, and engagement, in a vein that was more collegial, more global, more empowering of the laity, and more ready to learn from individuals and groups beyond the Church’s borders. It was in some ways very much of the 1960s, hopeful and upbeat about putting our collective shoulders to the wheel to produce widespread social change through engagement in public issues. The question is, was the optimism warranted? Unfortunately, the evidence of history does not clearly substantiate it. To be sure, there has been change in some
areas, such as human rights, women’s rights, and care for the environment. But here in the United States, to look more narrowly, most Catholics are not, in fact, committed to addressing economic inequality. According to Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), 80 percent claim that helping the poor is important to Catholic identity, yet 60 percent believe that one can be a good Catholic without actually doing so. In his book Racial Justice and the Catholic Church (2010), Rev. Bryan Massingale of Marquette University shows how racism is and always has been endemic in the U.S. Catholic Church, despite lip service to the contrary. Worldwide, civilian deaths in wars and civil conflicts are at an all-time high; and the gap between the richest and the poorest is widening. Therefore, a major 21st century challenge to the Church’s public agenda is to be realistic about the intractability of global exploitation and violence, yet socially engaged, committed to solidarity, and hopeful about the future. a key development of the second Vatican Council has been the twinning of natural law and Gospel as the foundations of the Church’s engagement in the public arena. At its most basic, natural law is simply the idea that human beings are similar enough, despite cultural pluralism, to agree about what constitutes basic human needs and goods and what the minimum requirements are for cooperative social life. At the same time, the Council’s 1965 Decree on Priestly Formation calls for moral theology to be “nourished” by Scripture. But to what degree and how does this Gospel identity enter into the public sphere? The combination of natural law and Gospel in the effort—called aggiornamento—to “bring the Church into the modern world” has produced a major tension around which identity or source will control in which situation or with what audience. We have seen some conflicted debates about who owns Catholic identity and its social expressions, how to interpret natural law and Scripture, and which provides the normative bottom line on which issue. For instance, one way in which the
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