From the Pastor
May/07/2009
While I was away with the priests and our Bishop of the Diocese of Palm Beach for the early part of this past week, at our annual priestly convocation, I noticed the great variety of cultures represented in our common priesthood. The majority of priests present were not born in this country; they are from Vietnam, Latin America, Italy, Poland, Ireland, the Caribbean, and the Philippines. This may be telling us something about the future of the Church in our country in the next thirty years, especially as the Hispanics will become the majority group of the Catholic Church in America by that time. Though our bishop ordained two American-born men this year (and no others) to the priesthood here, the future of priestly vocations seems to depend on contributions from foreign countries. Though that may mean we will have more priests for a while, there still is a
crisis in vocations that will not be solved with reliance on men from other countries. The scandals that plague our Church have certainly “hurt the cause,” but we cannot rely on just more and more priests to pour into our country to solve the vocation crisis.
It's with a great amount of sadness that we read again in the news about another priest who has hurt many
people in and out of the Church by his indiscretions. He has been a well-known and well-liked figure in the
Miami area, especially among the many Hispanic-American Catholics of that community, where his many
God-given talents had been utilized to draw many to Christ. Sadly, we hope that his actions will not have sent
many in the opposite direction. Though many of the faithful have placed their trust in him, human weakness
and folly now have caused him to tarnish his priestly image and damage the possibility of drawing more men
to consider the priestly vocation. Yet, the Church will continue in its mission to enlighten the whole world
with the message of the Gospel, and to gather together in one Spirit people of every race and culture. You may
ask, how will it do so? The answer lies in the fact that each of us, not just clergy, is called, by our Baptism, to
build up the Body of Christ; that's our vocation.
If our human vocation is to go on searching for new and deeper ways of belonging together, and new ways of working together and speaking with one another, then we can realize our capacity for building up the Body of Christ in our midst. But, achieving these goals can only really be reached in union with Jesus and His Church. Unfortunately, our concept of Church is not always crystal clear in our own minds, and often we run into difficulties in explaining our vocation – our way of life as true Christian believers – to others.
Such a mission requires us, first of all, to create in the Church mutual self-esteem, reverence and harmony. This we can do by acknowledging our unity under the authority of the successor of St. Peter – the Pope – without giving up our legitimate diversity. All of us who constitute the one People of God ideally should be able to engage in fruitful dialogue about those matters that help tie us more strongly into a unity in Christ. Realistically, we understand that there are those who have difficulty in dialoguing because they come with a closed mind, or with an altogether different way of understanding and even communicating what Christ was trying to explain to the first leaders of the Church – the Apostles, with Peter as their leader.
There seems to be an alarming division in Catholicism in America, for example, that might be very accurately characterized by the term “polarization.” This phenomenon is not merely that Catholics seem angry with one another – and not just laity with their clergy – but that they increasingly seem to be speaking separate languages.
When you bring people from these two “camps” into the same room for conversation or dialogue, they have moved so far down separate paths that even if there is good will for conversation, quite often a shared intellectual and cultural framework is missing. Maybe we can use “fragmentation” as a better word for the reality, since there is no such concept as “the liberal Church,” or the “conservative Church,” or even “the American Church.” It is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, whether it exists, in part, in America or anywhere else. Its common vocation is given it by Christ through Baptism, and is strengthened by Him through Communion.
“Union with Christ [in the Eucharist] is also union with all those to whom He gives Himself. I cannot possess Jesus Christ just for myself; I can belong to Him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become His own. Communion draws me out of myself towards Him, and thus, also, towards unity with all Christians.” (Pope Benedict XVI, “Deus Caritas Est” 14.
Very Rev. Canon Tom