SIR – “Few would deny that 2018 was an annus horribilis for the Catholic Church in the United States.” So write the editors of the Jesuit weekly, America.
Ed Condon of the Catholic News Agency writes about one aspect of this horror in his recent article about “The Fall of Cardinal Wuerl”, the now retired and discredited Archbishop of Washington. “Washington Catholics,” Condon writes, “are saying they want a bishop with the courage to make decisions rooted in truth and justice, not policy and procedure, and one with the mind and heart to explain those decisions patiently, and without reservation, to a world which may not understand or accept them.”
Unnoticed by both the public and the media in this country is a junior prelate who fits this description to a tee. He is the 49-year-old auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, resident in Santa Barbara, Robert Barron. Prior to his episcopal ordination in 2015, Barron was rector of Mundelein Seminary in Chicago, the country’s largest. It was there that he started to develop a media evangelistic ministry which is now parallel to none, Catholic or Protestant.
Barron has had special success addressing the “Nones”: those without religious affiliation, now the second largest denomination in this country. Barron is a born teacher (the bishop’s primary task) and reconciler.
Placing such a young auxiliary in Washington would be unprecedented – a signal that the Church was no longer practising “business as usual”. Worse, it would be a rebuff of every archbishop in the country, starting with those already mentioned for Washington: Atlanta, San Diego and Seattle. Can there be any doubt, however, that such an appointment would be greeted, by laity and lower clergy alike, with a chorus of gratitude and joy?
Impossible? Humanly speaking, yes. Truly to be, however, what the Lord has called us to be, the Church must live by a higher standard, familiar to believers from biblical times: apud Deum nihil impossibile – with God nothing is impossible.
Fr John Jay Hughes,
St Louis, Missouri
SIR – I enjoyed Joanna Bogle’s energetic article on the growing female religious orders (Cover story, January 18). At times though, her sympathy with “new congregations” seems to have blurred her use of the facts and downplayed the sheer scale of the joy that Sisters bring to our world.
First, she hurries over the theological and spiritual consequences of reinventing the charism of orders in manners which may not deeply consider their histories. Contrary to what she suggests, for example, there is nothing particularly Dominican about being extremely “contemplative”. The Order of Preachers was established to support apostolic, mendicant communicators, not cloistered communities, and the undoing of their charism in many instances could be traced to the building of costly contemplative priories in illustrious locations as much as any other factor. Meanwhile, even some of the houses she mentions have been riven with internal conflict and personal pain despite their development.
Second, globally there is an exponential increase in the health of diocesan and other religious congregations; just not, generally, in the culturally tired West. One only needs to look, for example, at the work against human slavery supported by John Studzinski’s Arise Foundation to understand how women Religious on every continent remain at the forefront of protecting the weak (Feature, December 14).
There are in fact nearly a million Sisters going about their service and their very existence is a sign of contradiction that all of us, including the wonderful Mrs Bogle, ought to celebrate more.
Francis Davis
Professor of Communities and Public Policy, University of Birmingham, England
SIR – With reference to Peter Hitchens’s letter (January 18), here in Hereford many people have been treading the path he recommends for some years now. Catholics often attend evensong at Hereford cathedral, and Anglicans come to Vespers at Belmont Abbey. Monks from the abbey sing monastic Vespers at the cathedral once or twice a year, and the cathedral choir (which sang at a papal Mass in Rome last year) has sung Vespers in the abbey church, including last Epiphany Sunday.
In May, a group from the cathedral will be joining the Ledbury & Belmont Abbey Walsingham Group for a pilgrimage to Walsingham, where we will share in each other’s liturgies insofar as is allowed, and pray for unity among Christians.
Together we will mark the feast of St Ethelbert, an East Anglian saint with strong Hereford connections, on May 20 in the grounds of the ruined priory and Holy House. Yes, it is a “bare ruined choir”, but there are also tiny grassroots of hope when we respect and appreciate each other’s traditions.
Menna MacBain
Hereford, England
SIR – Fr Raymond de Souza (January 18) says he is perplexed by the Holy See’s obvious reluctance to criticise Maduro’s government of Venezuela and Ortega’s regime in Nicaragua.
The reason for this seems fairly obvious: Pope Francis is a Jesuit, and one formed at a time when the Society had turned its back on devotion to the Faith and the papacy, and thrown in its lot with Marxist regimes around the world.
This was epitomised by the situation in Nicaragua when Ortega first rose to power, and certain Jesuits not only took up arms on his behalf, but also held prominent positions in his Marxist government.
The spread of Liberation Theology (a strange amalgam of Catholicism and Marxism) spread across Latin America. The Society of Jesus is, even today, in thrall to this type of theology. It is therefore highly unlikely that the Vatican of Pope Francis will allow any criticism of socialist governments, no matter how abhorrent these governments may be.
Sue Mawson
Gurnard, Isle of Wight, England
SIR – Last Sunday Pope Francis launched one of the most striking initiatives of his innovative papacy. During his Angelus address, he launched a new app, Click to Pray, which will help Catholics around the world to pray for one another.
Now, for the first time, a Catholic in, say, Warsaw will be able to see the prayer request of another member of the faithful in Washington and pray for that intention. After posting a prayer request on the app, you can track how many people around the world have prayed for your request.
I hope that as many Catholics as possible will download the app (available for both users of Android and iOS). This will help to create a new digital prayer network that will surely help the Church through its present crisis.
Sonia McAndrew
San Diego, California
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