GUESTVIEW: No good deed goes unpunished
The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Father Joseph Fessio, S.J. is founder and editor of Ignatius Press, which is the primary English-language publisher of the works of Pope Benedict XVI and which has published several books by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. He is also publisher of Catholic World Report magazine.
By Father Joseph Fessio, S.J.
Did Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna “attack” Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals and former Vatican secretary of state? If The Tablet weekly in London were your only source of information, you’d think so, because that’s what the headline screamed.
What happened?
Cardinal Schönborn, who like his mentor Pope Benedict is a model of openness and transparency, invited the editors of Austria’s dozen or so major newspapers to a meeting at his residence in Vienna. How many bishops can you name who have extended such an invitation to the press?
The journalists agreed that this would be an “off the record” meeting so that everyone could take part freely and frankly. Was this to impose silence on the press? To cover up once again the misdeeds of clerics? No, it was an attempt by Cardinal Schönborn to be as open as possible and to make himself available to answer any question that was asked. It was an attempt to help educate the press on matters that the press often finds difficult to grasp—such as the essential foundations of the hierarchical and sacramental structure of the Church, and the intricacies of moral theology.
Cardinal Schönborn is a Dominican and a professor. Which means that he has a serious scholar’s grasp of the foundations as well as the conclusions of moral theology, particularly as expounded by St. Thomas Aquinas.
“Sister Smile” film tells sad story of the Singing Nun
Remember the Singing Nun? If you’re old enough to recall the song “Dominique”, you might want to see a new Belgian film“Soeur Sourire” (“Sister Smile”) about the nun whose hit song topped the charts in Europe and North America in 1963. Then again, you might not … The song was far more upbeat than the sad story behind it.
Jeanine Deckers, or Sister Luc Gabrielle — better known by her pseudonyms Singing Nun in English and Soeur Sourire in French — was a Belgian Dominican sister who scored a one-hit wonder with “Dominique” in 1963. The record was released under her pseudonym. But the song became such an international hit that she finally went public and even appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in the United States She never had another hit and the 1966 film “The Singing Nun” starring Debbie Reynolds ended with her giving up music to work in Africa. Deckers later described that film as “fiction”. “Soeur Sourire” sticks closer to the facts
As the film depicts it, the rebellious Deckers enters the convent to find refuge from her heartless mother and her youthful confusion at advances by male and female admirers. She has trouble adjusting to convent life but her singing catches the attention of Belgium’s Catholic television and her mother superior is persuaded to let her record “Dominique.” Celebrity goes to her head, she leaves the convent and moves in with Annie, the female admirer. When she tries to launch a new career, she cannot not use the pseudonym Soeur Sourire because it belongs to her order.
Things go downhill from there, with pill popping and binge drinking becoming more frequent. During a disastrous tour of Canada, the local Catholic hierarchy gets a Montreal concert series stopped because she sings a song in praise of contraception, “Glory be to God for the Golden Pill”. The final straw comes back in Belgium, where the authorities demand back taxes due on her royalties from “Dominique”. She had handed them all over to the order, but has no receipt. Overwhelmed, she and her partner Annie commit suicide. Director Stijn Coninx has found a way to put a soft spin on the ending, but it still ends tragically.
The film is mostly in line with the facts. It starts off well, recreating the atmosphere of late 1950s Belgium, but takes too many shortcuts once Deckers’s life starts going downhill. There are some strange Church-related scenes (for example, a bishop who scrambles to don his zucchetto when a phone call wakes him in bed in the middle of the night) and the cars all seem to date from the late 1950s and early 1960s despite the passing years. Deckers lived until 1985.
The film has already won two awards at a film festival in Valenciennes, a French city just across the border from Belgium. It opened on Wednesday in Paris in a multiplex at the Forum des Halles, one of the ugliest places in this beautiful city. It was a midday showing, so it was difficult to say if the nearly empty cinemreflected its box office prospects. Most of the moviegoers were, like me, old enough to remember the Singing Nun and wonder what became of her.
Could a film like this cross the Channel and the Atlantic as easily as “Dominique” did?
This is a truly tragic tale. Her appearance on the music scene pre-dates Vatican II, yet she seemed in tune with what was to come. I believe it had an effect on the Church in much the same way Sidney Portier’s performance in “Lilies of the Field” opened up the windows for a dialogue about race and the Church. As a young Catholic, seeing her perform on Ed Sullivan and watching this simple song edge it’s way “to the toppermost of the poppermost” (John Lennon), was truly an inspiration.
This looks like a film I would like to see.
Dominicans warn Dutch brothers against Catholic schism
The Order of Preachers, better known as the Dominicans, is warning its Dutch province against sliding into schism by pressing its proposal to allow lay Catholics to say mass if they have no priest available to do so. The Dutch Dominicans have proposed that because the worsening priest shortage means many congregations there don’t have anyone to celebrate the eucharist.
The Dutch Dominicans caused an uproar last autumn when they mailed a booklet called “Church and Ministry” (“Kerk en Ambt“) to parishes across the Netherlands without informing the country’s bishops beforehand. In it, they said a congregation should be allowed to appoint any devout Catholic as a lay minister — “Whether they be men or women, homosexual or heterosexual, married or unmarried is irrelevant” — and did not need the local bishop’s approval. The bishops promptly denounced the booklet and the order’s Rome headquarters distanced itself from it.
Now, the order has produced its own report (here in French under “lire le rapport“). It is — not surprisingly — highly critical of the radical proposals. It says they “risk not only worsening the polarisation within the Dutch Church but also encouraging schism.” The author of the report, French Dominican Father Hervé Legrand, said the Dutch must know “the concrete results of the ordination of a gay bishop in the Episcopal Church in the United States: nationally, the creation of new schismatic and competing dioceses, internationally, the split in the Anglican Communion.” Any congregation acting on these proposals would “dissolve into a sect,” he wrote.
The Dutch Dominicans have pledged to translate Legrand’s report from French into Dutch and distribute it to all the Dutch parishes that received a copy of “Church and Ministry.” They see this as part of a debate they want to continue. They stress the lay-led mass would be an exception, only when no priest is available, and that they do not want to create a schism. But they want to discuss the worsening shortage of priests.
Interestingly, Legrand commends them for discussing the priest shortage and says the Church might one day reconsider celibacy. But this could only be done by the whole Church, he said. Pope Benedict is firmly opposed to any such change.
Legrand’s report mostly refutes theological points brought up in “Church and Ministry” (which he said was so full of holes “that no Catholic theology faculty in the world would support it”). I don’t have the time to translate it and don’t know if an English version is planned, but at least being in French makes it more accessable than Dutch. Several weeks passed before Kerk en Ambt was translated into English last year, which caused some confusion as readers turned to dodgy computer translations to try to figure out Dutch articles on it. One blogger made a rough translation of a press release — not the full booklet itself — and then confidently declared that an accurate report on Kerk en Ambt was flawed! So much for computer translations…
We work with the original documents and try to link to them, regardless of the language, so you can go right to the source.
We confuse church dogma with the importance of Church life. Many of the historical figures from the Bible were married, had families and were called on by God to perform extreme tasks in their lives. They lived under simple laws that were set down to manage the affairs of daily life.
Over time, the church created canon laws which set down rules for the the religious ordained. These laws were designed to place restrictions on conduct, behavior and to create a type of class of itself. The higher you are elevated in the church, the more prestigious your accouterments. You go from basic black, to black with purple, to purple, to red to white. Each level up you wear more embellishments and have more aides in attendance.
God’s Church never meant for our churches to be so focused on all of these unimportant trappings. The plan book He gave us simply states “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt 18:20)
But it is hard for any large governing body to change, especially if it means giving up authority and potentially, loosing prestige. But change is necessary. A religion that fails to change with the ages, will fall victim to stagnation and, eventually, obsolescence.
When I talk of change, it is not the message that must be changed – that remains pure and will survive passage of years. What changes I speak of are protocols, procedures, attitudes and stumbling blocks that have remained in place for no good reason. This is what will kill a church. It will drive people away to a different brick and mortar building (church – small c) so they can be in communion with God’s Church (Capital C).
Are they doing the right thing here? Time will tell.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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objective depravity. This is what the church calls part of God’s creation – the gays.
No wonder they are driven to suicide, and sometimes murdered. by the church of “life”
The whole world is changing. Fancy words, and ideas from an age of the ‘anything but’ holy roman empire cannot change the fact that gay people are more and more being accepted as the good people they are. While the church in Europe is dying quickly, and splitting here.
And btw, the two states with the lowest divorce rate in the USA are Mass and Conn. Two of the first states with gay marriage.
And lets not forget that the church has yet to EXcommunicate Hitler. Born and Baptised a catholic in very Catholic Austria. Where he learned his hatred of the Jews – Jesus own people- from the poison the church put into society over a millenia. And it was this hatred that hitler leveraged to get elected. And 50 million people died.
And in 2009, RATZInger UNexcommunicated a Bishop Williamson, who is a holocaust denier / minimizer. To bring Williamson’s 600,000 mad followers back into the church.
At least Argentina had the you know whats to throw Williamson out of the ocuntry. And just recently their legislature passed a gay marriage bill.
I used to think that Ratzinger was a hitler in disguise. Now I believe he is part of Gods plan to help change, or destroy, the church that has always needed some victim to hate, to sell their corrupt brand of love.
The catholic church is, as we’ve seen in endless revelations of the cover up of sexual (and mental) abuse of children, like a Pathological liar. So corrupt that it cant possibly even understand its own corruptness.
it fits perfectly the definition of Power: Power corrupts,and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And when you claim to speak for God, it gets just that much more worse.