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Mrvoll

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I was reading the Faith section of the K-W Record and there is a retired United Minister who has a guest coloum. For the Last 3-4 weeks he was dissed the catholic Churh.

These are the letters
"Benedict faces many challenges

FRANK MORGAN

(May 21, 2005)

Last week I wrote about Pope Bene dict being "called" to the papal throne -- an honour he did not want, but one he could not refuse because he felt it had come from God.

Today I write about the many problems the new Pope faces as supreme head of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church. It is a church that forces the views of the ingrown Vatican on all of the different and growing churches of the world.

The province of Quebec used to be the bastion of the Roman Catholic faith in Canada. When I lived there in the 1940s, an estimated 90 per cent of francophone Catholics attended mass every Sunday. Today, the figure is believed to be seven per cent.

In the 1940s, priesthood was the highest calling to which a young man in Quebec could aspire. Today, there are so many empty churches the search is on for someone to buy them.

If Quebec used to be the Catholic church's hope in Canada, Spain was its hope in Europe. But today, only 14 per cent of young Catholics in Spain consider themselves religious. And the country's socialist government is loosening restrictions on divorce, permitting birth control and leaning toward recognizing gay marriage.

Years ago, the well-beloved Pope John XXIII threw open the windows at the Vatican to let modern thinking blow through the church and bring it in tune with the changing world. Many liberal Catholics began to hope.

Then John Paul II was elected to the papal throne. He slammed shut the windows of change and locked them.

In his very long reign he appointed very conservative bishops all over the world, bishops who shared his theological outlook.

The hope and desire of many local dioceses to elect their own bishops was dismissed without argument. All authority would continue to come from the tiny Vatican city, no matter how the church was growing and changing in Africa and South America, no matter how much the countries and churches in those areas had different needs and different outlooks.

Here is another problem. Throughout the Catholic world, one parish in every two is today without a priest and many of the priests that do remain are beyond the normal retirement age.

But the suggestion that women might be ordained was anathema to John Paul, a great worshipper of the Virgin Mary.

In the diocese of Boston, pedophilia among priests was rife, but the cardinal there took such a relaxed attitude to the problem he had to step down. He was, however, given an honoured placed in Rome and even chosen to celebrate mass at the elevation of the new Pope.

This made many worried Catholics feel the Vatican did not take this problem at all seriously, but instead preferred to ignore it.

In South America, where there are so many Catholics and where economic conditions of the poor are terrible, the Vatican shut down liberation theology, which is designed to help the poor.

And in Africa, Pope John Paul opted not to encourage the use of condoms, which might have helped many to protect themselves from AIDS.

Can this new Pope, who was the right hand of the old Pope, heal the growing sickness of his church?

The hopeful are saying that he is 78, so it can't be too long. Others say the smooth operation of the Vatican was neglected due to the old pope's illness and that maybe the new one will just do an interior repair job.

Others who know the new Pope are saying, "Give him a chance to show what he can do." That is the only choice we have right now.

The other day, in a published letter to a newspaper, someone asked, "Just at what moment did the new Pope become infallible?"

Surely in this age it is time to jettison the belief that any human leader can be infallible. Infallible leaders usually bring much hurt to their people.

Next week I will suggest a few things I think might help solve the problems I have listed.

Frank Morgan of Kitchener is a retired United Church minister.


A great world church needs an interior reformation

FRANK MORGAN

(May 28, 2005)

Last week I wrote about problems in the church that Pope Benedict will face. And when I say "the church," I mean the Roman Catholic Church. I also said I would suggest a few possible remedies, so here they are.

The severest problem is that one in every two Roman Catholic parishes is without a resident parish priest. But there are several thousand competent parish priests ready to return to the pastorate if the church would only drop its ban on married clergy.

Priestly celibacy has only been mandatory for half of the church's life, so it could easily be dropped in this emergency.

From my own experience, I know that I have been a better pastor because of things my wife, Helen, taught me about leadership and getting along with difficult people. My daughters, Diane and Susan, have also made me a better pastor to young people by checking up on me when they thought I was out of date.

This is not a criticism of my celibate priestly friends, simply my personal witness to a tested way of ministering.

But there is another rich source of parish priests close at hand -- the women of the church. The church owes an unpayable debt to its nuns, for they have run hospitals, schools and missions of every kind. It would be greatly enriched to have a bishop here like Dr. Mary Malone, formerly of this area and now of Ireland.

My own denomination, the United Church of Canada, has had female ministers for generations. I know from experience that they exercise a ministry different from that of men, but it's one that enriches and extends the ministry of the church.

Many Catholics do not obey their church's rulings on birth control. Maybe if the Pope listened to his people, more of them might come back to church regularly.

The church also opposes abortion, even to save a mother's life.

There is now an effective morning-after pill that experts say would make 85 per cent of abortions unnecessary. This is where science is heckling outdated theology.

Political dictatorships are going out of style and so should religious ones. The Vatican says that outside the church, there is no salvation. But can you believe this in face of the billions of religious folk in other faiths?

Maybe the Pope should say our way is best for us, but we recognize your way is different and also good.

At present, the Pope appoints all of the cardinals and bishops in the entire church and always they are men who support his views.

In a democratic church, each country could elect its own cardinal and each diocese could elect its bishop. And if they differed with the Pope, that would make for a lively modern church, one more in touch with its members' needs.

Are any of these suggested reforms remotely possible?

Back in the 16th century, a dissatisfied monk named Martin Luther nailed a proposition to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany and the result was the Protestant Reformation, which did away with some of the wrongs of the church.

Later, the church itself began the Counter-Reformation, which did some more tidying up. It happened once and it could happen again with the right kind of leadership.

As a Protestant pastor, I write this in the hope that a great world church might have an interior reformation to better fit it for the ongoing battle against the world's evils and the scourge of rabid fundamentalism.

Frank Morgan of Kitchener is a retired United Church minister.

Thoughtful people should escape the grip of literalism

FRANK MORGAN

(Jun 4, 2005)

According to a news report from Seattle in last week's Faith section, an international committee of Roman Catholic and Anglican theologians has issued an 80-page document it thinks may bring Anglicans closer to the Roman position on Mary.

The document, called Mary: Hope and Grace in Christ, deals with the immaculate conception of Mary and with her bodily assumption into heaven after she died.

The Anglican Archbishop who was co-chair of the study group said: "The statement should have broad interest among other Protestants." Well, it certainly interested this Protestant!

Now consider this claim of Mary the Mother of Jesus being free from the taint of original sin.

It claims that by a special dispensation Mary was made clean of original sin from the very moment of her conception, long before she conceived Jesus.

This claim means you have to believe that the Garden of Eden was a real place and that Adam and Eve were the first humans on Earth only about 6,000 years ago.

Now there is no doubt about the existence of sin all over the world, but it is another question to say we inherited it from legendary parents such a short time ago.

You have also to consider the benefit that the doctrine of original sin has been to clergy of the world over. If you have inherited the fatal disease of original sin and your priest can cure you, then he is in a position of power and wealth.

Literalists will have no trouble with this belief. Nor will many ordinary Christians. But biblical scholarship can free us from the grip of literalism and thoughtful people ought to claim their freedom.

The committee's second claim is that after her death, Mary was taken up bodily into heaven, just as Jesus is said to have done at the ascension.

Tradition says the apostle John took Mary into his own home after the death of Jesus and looked after her until she died, probably in Ephesus. Here she died and likely was buried like the rest of us. But the report claims she was taken bodily into heaven.

Now this is the Space Age, so just ask any high school science student what would happen to an unprotected human body lifted into the vacuum of space. And what forces would impel it into orbit, headed for wherever heaven is supposed to be?

I have been trying to say in these columns that there was a physical Jesus who died by crucifixion.

But there is also the Jesus of faith, the reality that Christians know.

The ascension is probably a pictorial way of describing how the Jesus of history become the Christ of faith. But some people take this picture literally.

As I thought about this long theological discussion that took place between archbishops in Seattle, I wondered how different the report might have been had they had a few representatives from the Jesus Seminar to question some of their claims.

I also thought about the world in which these theologians sat and held their discussions in harmony and peace.

Every day women are raped and killed. Every hour children are killed in warfare. In many countries young children are pressed into the army and made to commit murder.

And U.S. President George W. Bush is going to veto stem cell research even if his congress approves it and even though scientists say it will save lives.

Two different worlds.

If what I have written makes you angry or puzzled, then think through these two questions.

Do you really believe that our first ancestors came to this earth as complete humans just 6,000 years ago and began life in a place we have called the Garden of Eden?

And as a person of the Space Age, do you really believe that an elderly lady could be taken up into heaven without space protection and land there safely?

There is a reminder in a well loved hymn.

"New occasions teach new duties;

Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still and onward

Who would keep abreast of truth."

- James Russel Lowell

Frank Morgan of Kitchener is a retired United Church minister.

Editor's note: Mary: Hope and Grace in Christ has been published in book form by The Morehouse Group (www.morehousegroup.com). The price is $14.95 US."

I want to express my opion to him via the newspaper's letter to the editor( My friend who is a priest also wrote him a long time ago.) What should I say?

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[quote name='Mrvoll' date='Jun 9 2005, 11:10 AM']I want to express my opion to him via the newspaper's letter to the editor( My friend who is a priest also wrote him a long time ago.) What should I say?[/quote]

I would pare all three articles down to the clearest points of theology with which he contends. He also makes some pretty strong claims (the clergy of Boston being "rife with pedophilia," for example). He provides almost no substantiation for any of his positions but throws them out as if they're self-evident facts. It should be pretty straight forward once you pare away the red herrings and speculation.

Many of the claims against literal interpretation suggest that he doesn't understand the Church's teachings on science and faith (that is, what we're bound to accept as doctrinal and what we are not). He also doesn't seem to see any connection between the liberalization in the American Church following Vatican II and the decline in attendance and vocations. I'd have to question just what his intentions are? To drive a beleaguered church into the ground?

Orthodoxy has only strengthened the Church. When he attacks orthodoxy, he's attacking the very thing that has borne up the Church during these difficult times (well, that and the grace of God).

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