{"id":3160,"date":"2008-05-05T10:53:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-05T10:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/05\/chaput-on-priests-politics-and-battling-pastoral-despair.html"},"modified":"2008-05-05T10:53:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-05T10:53:00","slug":"chaput-on-priests-politics-and-battling-pastoral-despair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/05\/chaput-on-priests-politics-and-battling-pastoral-despair.html","title":{"rendered":"Chaput: on priests, politics and battling “pastoral despair”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A nice blogger friend<\/a> sent this my way last week, and I finally got around to reading it. Denver’s Archbishop Charles Chaput on politics, priests, laity and a lot of other important things<\/a>. It’s just superb: <\/p>\n

Catholic leadership in the secular world belongs to laypeople, not to clergy or religious. The visible role of the priest in public affairs\u2014if by public affairs we mean political affairs\u2014should normally be pretty small. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s very dangerous for the Church to identify with one political party. It\u2019s not my business to tell people to vote for John McCain or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. And while I worked for Jimmy Carter\u2019s presidential campaign as a volunteer when I was a young, I don\u2019t think any Catholic should feel comfortable today in either major political party\u2014Democrat or Republican.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t really get us off the hook, does it? The problem is that the Church teaches moral truth, and truth has obligations for human behavior\u2014including the social, economic, and political kind. The Church is never mainly a political organism, but her witness for justice always has political consequences. For example, killing unborn children is a form of homicide. It\u2019s a profound attack on human dignity, because all other rights depend on the right to life. It\u2019s not the only important issue facing our country. But it is the foundational one at this moment in our nation\u2019s history. We can\u2019t ignore it. Cooperating in abortion or quietly tolerating it is a grave evil. We can incrementally seek to restrict and eliminate abortion, but we can never accept it as a so-called right. And if that truth inconveniences one or another political candidate, well, that\u2019s their problem. It\u2019s not the fault of the Church.<\/p>\n

It is the job of Catholic laypeople to change the thinking of their political party and their political leaders with the tools of their Catholic faith. But it is the job of priests to give people those tools\u2014to form Catholic laypeople to think and act as disciples of Jesus Christ, in a manner guided by the teaching of the Church. Just as Catholic laypeople should be the leaven of Jesus Christ in the public square, so we priests need to be the leaven of Jesus Christ in lives of our people.<\/p>\n

As priests we know that, during the Easter season, the Church invites us to reflect on the Acts of the Apostles in a special way. It\u2019s important to remember that the title of the book is the Acts of the Apostles\u2014not the Good Intentions, or the Excellent Plans, or the Plausible Alibis of the Apostles, but their Acts. Words are important. Actions are more important. Christ said he loved us. Then he died to prove it. He said he would rise from the dead and give us new life. Then he really did it. And when the first Apostles said they believed in Jesus Christ, they acted like they meant it, because they did\u2014and then they proved it by turning the world upside down with the gospel.<\/p>\n

A handful of simple and imperfect men made the greatest revolution in history\u2014a global revolution of God\u2019s love. And Christ, through his Church, ordained you and me to follow in their footsteps and do exactly the same thing. So a reading from Acts is always the first reading on each day of the Easter season\u2014the season of new life.<\/p>\n

The focus of these readings is typically the preaching of St. Peter, and Peter always preaches about the Resurrection. But the Resurrection isn\u2019t only the content of Peter\u2019s preaching; it\u2019s also the means or energy of his preaching and his whole ministry. Clarence Jordan, a Protestant minister, once said, \u201cThe crowning evidence that Jesus was alive was not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship; not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away Church.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, we know that Jesus rose physically from the dead, and the grave really was empty. But Jordan was making an important point. What makes the Christian faith convincing today is a \u201ccarried-away Church,\u201d and if this is true about the Church, it\u2019s also true about the priesthood\u2014without which there is no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist there is no Church. The health of the Church depends directly on the spirit of her priests. So priests need to be more than simply honest or diligent or even faithful. We need to be carried away by our love for God, our love for the Church, and our love for the Catholic faith.<\/p>\n

A feature of many priestly lives these days is an attitude toward the Church that could be called \u201cpastoral despair.\u201d In one sense, it\u2019s a good thing to be tempted by despair about the Church, or at least by despondency, because that\u2019s a sign that our hearts are unsettled and longing for something more. If we aren\u2019t in some ways disappointed in ourselves and in the Church, disappointed in how our Catholic people live their faith, then it\u2019s probably a sign that we\u2019ve made peace with the current situation. And that\u2019s never good. <\/p>\n

Because of Easter, however, we\u2019re not permitted real despair. Just recently, I attended the ordination of Bishop Gerald Dino of the Byzantine Eparchy of Van Nuys. During his episcopal ordination ceremony, at many points the community sang, \u201cChrist is risen from the dead! By death He trampled death; and to those in the tombs He granted life!\u201d What a wonderful way to capture the Easter spirit. Yes, we should grieve for the Church; that\u2019s a sign of our love. But as St. Paul says, \u201cWe do not grieve as those who have no hope.\u201d We learn from the Resurrection accounts in Scripture that we should not look for the Risen Lord among the dead but among the living.<\/p>\n

We have hope because it is the risen Christ who has willed that his Church be the principal form of his visible presence in the world. We know with confidence that in the Church, God\u2014as in Christ\u2014is reconciling the world to himself. We need to remember this because sometimes we priests become cynical. We know ourselves too well. We sometimes don\u2019t really believe that God can do anything new in us. We accommodate to sin and failure and death. But Easter reminds us that any despair or despondency we have should be turned away because \u201cJesus trampled death, and to those in the tombs He grants life.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been talking about the \u201cnew evangelization\u201d for more than twenty years in the Church, as if it were some kind of magic platitude. Now we know what it means. And yes, the latest Pew Research Center data are very unsettling\u2014but also very valuable. They show us exactly how fluid, weak, and unreliable \u201cAmerican Catholic identity\u201d has become. The place of the Catholic Church in the United States is much more precarious than we like to think, and the large number of people that self-identify as Catholics nationally is seriously misleading. In fact, we\u2014and by \u201cwe,\u201d I mean Catholic leaders in my generation especially\u2014have done a bad job of forming and keeping our people. We\u2019ve been deeply naive about the congeniality of American culture toward Catholic belief. In general, sacramental practice and Mass attendance are declining, and young people are not stepping up to take leadership in the Church in the way their parents and grandparents did. Plenty of exceptions do exist, but overall the picture is not good.<\/p>\n

This national softening trend applies especially in places like Colorado and other western states, where the Church is young and the environment is very secular. But it\u2019s happening here in Rhode Island and everywhere else. There\u2019s more hostility to the Catholic Church in more state assemblies today than at any time in the past eighty years, and the clergy sex-abuse scandal is only one of the reasons why, and often not even the most important reason. Nor will the influx of Latinos into our country automatically renew or sustain the Church. The data show that Latinos in the United States abandon the Catholic Church at about the same rate as every other ethn
\nic group. The secularizing fallout of American political and consumer culture, along with the cafeteria effect of so many religious choices, undermines the Catholic roots of Latinos.<\/p>\n

That means we need to think of the Church in America as a missionary church, and each of us priests as a missionary priest. We\u2019ve probably known this all along, but now it has an immediate, practical urgency. Catholic demography is changing. So is our political environment. Additionally, we can\u2019t count on the continued financial health of the Church in our country if our active Catholic base diminishes over the next generation\u2014which is quite possible and already happening.<\/p>\n

Of course, we need to balance these concerns with our strengths. Compared to the Church elsewhere in the world, our priests, parishes, diocesan programs, renewal communities, finances, and patterns of religious practice are quite strong. The Church here is healthier, with more energy and better leadership at many different levels, than nearly anywhere else in the world. So we have the freedom to do something about our problems. But we need to be realists. The conflicts facing the U.S. Church over the past decade, external and internal\u2014from the abortion issue to immigration to war and peace to marriage and family life\u2014will probably continue for the foreseeable future. These struggles will require an example of leadership to sustain our people and draw others to the Church. And that example has to start with our priests. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read on<\/a> to see what he has to say. It’s sensational.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A nice blogger friend sent this my way last week, and I finally got around to reading it. Denver’s Archbishop Charles Chaput on politics, priests, laity and a lot of other important things. It’s just superb: Catholic leadership in the secular world belongs to laypeople, not to clergy or religious. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}