{"id":4937,"date":"2006-02-02T13:16:24","date_gmt":"2006-02-02T13:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/from-a-jesuits-pen.html"},"modified":"2006-02-02T13:16:24","modified_gmt":"2006-02-02T13:16:24","slug":"from-a-jesuits-pen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/from-a-jesuits-pen.html","title":{"rendered":"From a Jesuit’s pen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excellent piece in the Adoremus Bulletin – a Jesuit missionary priest ruminating on the pervasiveness of liturgical abuse in religious communities<\/a><\/p>\n

What makes this piece so different and well worth a read is Fr. Capuano’s balance, and deep, deep sense of charity. He works with men who do great, sacrificial work in the mission field, and he puzzles through the question of why they, brought together for study and formation, just ignore liturgical norms..and if it matters.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Who are the perpetrators of these liturgical abuses? I look around the room at my brother Jesuits here in Salamanca and I see a man who puts his life on the line every day in Timor, another ministering to Indians lost in villages in the Andes, another ministering in Mozambique. <\/span><\/p>\n

I see a Pole who tries to keep the faith alive in the midst of the vertigo of change in his country. I see Brazilians fighting against the oppressive poverty and fragmentation of culture that robs their people of their hope and faith. I see Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese worried sick about the growing secularism of Europe and throwing all their efforts into stemming the tide. I see real men of prayer and service. I see kind, generous priests who want to serve Christ. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is too simple to put all those who abuse the liturgy in the same barrel and condemn them. We must recognize that we live in an imperfect world and in imperfect religious communities. These imperfections manifest themselves most clearly in the liturgy. Weeds grow among the wheat.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the things that attracted me to the Society of Jesus was that Jesuits talk about the devil, spiritual combat and how the Good Spirit and evil spirit are present in the world and in our hearts. I consider this essay as an exercise in \u201cdiscernment of spirits\u201d. Ultimately, we must look for spiritual causes of liturgical abuse. It is the Good Spirit that sows the seeds of virtue and the evil spirit that sows seeds of vice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Liturgical abuse is now a cultural problem, the product of bad habits — vices, if you will — that have become part of a sub-culture of the Church and of religious communities in particular. In a sense the perpetrators of liturgical abuse are themselves victims of the formation they received and the subtle temptations of, as Saint Ignatius says, the \u201cenemy of our human nature\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

Peter Kreeft would say, \u201cthey are our patients not our enemies\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

So this is my dilemma: living in a religious community, where genuinely good men do not respect liturgical norms, what is a religious to do?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Via Diogenes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excellent piece in the Adoremus Bulletin – a Jesuit missionary priest ruminating on the pervasiveness of liturgical abuse in religious communities What makes this piece so different and well worth a read is Fr. Capuano’s balance, and deep, deep sense of charity. He works with men who do great, sacrificial work in the mission field,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom a Jesuit's pen - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/from-a-jesuits-pen.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From a Jesuit's pen - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Excellent piece in the Adoremus Bulletin – a Jesuit missionary priest ruminating on the pervasiveness of liturgical abuse in religious communities What makes this piece so different and well worth a read is Fr. Capuano’s balance, and deep, deep sense of charity. He works with men who do great, sacrificial work in the mission field,…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/from-a-jesuits-pen.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-02-02T13:16:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"From a Jesuit's pen - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/from-a-jesuits-pen.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"From a Jesuit's pen - Via Media","og_description":"Excellent piece in the Adoremus Bulletin – a Jesuit missionary priest ruminating on the pervasiveness of liturgical abuse in religious communities What makes this piece so different and well worth a read is Fr. Capuano’s balance, and deep, deep sense of charity. He works with men who do great, sacrificial work in the mission field,…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/from-a-jesuits-pen.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-02-02T13:16:24+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/from-a-jesuits-pen.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/from-a-jesuits-pen.html","name":"From a Jesuit's pen - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-02-02T13:16:24+00:00","dateModified":"2006-02-02T13:16:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/from-a-jesuits-pen.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/from-a-jesuits-pen.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/from-a-jesuits-pen.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"From a Jesuit’s pen"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}