A invitation to diaconal dialogue

The editorial staff at America magazine devoted much of their current issue to the permanent diaconate. At the instigation of editorial director Karen Smith and on-line editor Maurice Timothy Reidy, they are looking to establish an on-line dialogue on the diaconate.

So, when you get a chance, go to The Diaconate Today: A Conversation. This page has links to articles on the diaconate by Bill Ditewig, Greg Kandra, and me. Read them and then, as Deacon Greg says, "toss in your two-cents' worth." We'd like to know what you think!

"She glides across the water"

Echo and the Bunnymen playing Lips Like Sugar is our Friday traditio. As they say (whoever they are), it is an oldie but a goodie: "She'll be my mirror/Reflect what I am/A loser and a winner/The king of siam/And my siamese twin/Alone on the river".

Archbishop Vlazny on "The blessing of diaconal ministry"

Deacon Greg, author of The Deacon's Bench, posts something really encouraging, a column by the archbishop of Portland, Oregon, John Vlazny (formerly bishop of the Diocese of Winona, Minnesota), in his archdiocesan newspaper The Sentinel. His Excellency's article is entitled The blessing of diaconal ministry.

He concludes his column with these words:

"deacons have been a great gift in the Church over the centuries, a gift that was seemingly forgotten for many centuries but now is acknowledged and celebrated throughout the current world, no place more significantly than here in these United States. I thank God for the gift of the deacons who serve us. I ask you to pray for them and for those who are involved in diaconal formation. Their calling comes from the Lord and from the Church. Their generous response involves sacrifice and commitment. As we pray for our priests in this special year, let’s not forget some of their closest collaborators, our good and faithful deacons!"

Speaking of deacons, a lively conversation is going in the combox for Bill Ditewig's article of the permanent diaconate over on America magazine's website. Dr. Ditewig himself is participating. This is a great opportunity to learn about deacons from one of the church's foremost experts on the subject!

A picture with a few words is worth gallons of ink and gigs of bytes

The bishop of Salt Lake City, The Most Rev. John C. Wester said at this rally: "We are gravely concerned about the collateral human consequences of immigration enforcement raids on the family unit. Many of our local churches, wards, synagogues, and temples have helped to respond to human needs generated by enforcement actions."

Photo and quote by Intermountain Catholic newspaper's Christine Young

Of movies and (profit) motives

Last night, or, early this morning, my two older children went to see the first showing of the new Harry Potter movie with my son's godfather. So, this evening my youngest daughter and I are going to see The Half-Blood Prince. I have to admit to being excited about going to see this film!



While I am getting back into the swing of things, abrupt transitions will have to suffice. Therefore, I want to draw attention to an article in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi on the object of Hammerin' Hank Paulson's TARP- Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine: From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again . The timing of the article is great, given the public release of the Holy Father's Caritatis in Veritate. Also, Gabriella commented on my post announcing the encyclical's release. In her comment she quoted a Lord Griffiths, who is "a trustee of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Trust and Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs International" to the effect that it is people and regulations that need to change. There are no people who need to change more than those, like Lord Griffiths, who are involved with Goldman Sachs. Because it deals with finance and morality, I added Taibbi's article to my Church and Moral Issues bibliography of post-residency articles on morality that I am compiling to complete my post-residency assignment.

We'll all be relieved to know that, according to the NY Times, Goldman is back to profitability.

Taibbi's take includes this straightforward assessment:

"The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere — high gas prices, rising consumer credit rates, half-eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts. All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth — pure profit for rich individuals."

In his encyclical, Pope Benedict writes this about profit:

"Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty. The economic development that Paul VI hoped to see was meant to produce real growth, of benefit to everyone and genuinely sustainable. It is true that growth has taken place, and it continues to be a positive factor that has lifted billions of people out of misery — recently it has given many countries the possibility of becoming effective players in international politics. Yet it must be acknowledged that this same economic growth has been and continues to be weighed down by malfunctions and dramatic problems, highlighted even further by the current crisis. This presents us with choices that cannot be postponed concerning nothing less than the destiny of man, who, moreover, cannot prescind from his nature" (italics in original).

A deep diaconal bow to Eric Bugyis writing over on dotCommonweal for drawing my attention to Taibbi's piece just as my ire was building over reports of Goldman's profiteering. You can watch an interesting video with Taibbi (Tie-bee) on the RS website.

A mid-summer reflection

I really didn't mean for yesterday's post to sound like a valedictory address, but I was very happy and, for me, happiness leads to gratitude. Now if I can just be grateful when things aren't going so well! I also feel that being able to publish something for a wider audience is a vindication of my blogging, even though my blogging lately has been reduced.

Some say that blogs are already a thing of the past and have been overtaken by Facebook, Twitter, and other new forms of so-called social media. I am convinced that quality writing on matters of interest will always be timely, even in print! I hope that my blog occupies a unique space. I think back to the reason I began to blog on a regular basis: requests from people in my parish. Initially, it was a place to further discussions about theology, politics, spirituality, and popular culture. I like that way of seeing what I am doing in this (cyber) space.

Besides, there are precious few deacon bloggers. I very much see blogging as a part of my diaconal ministry. I consider it ministry precisely because I do not hold back, which does not mean being irresponsible, though I have undoubtedly exercised questionable judgment at times, which is why I seek and cherish being held accountable by my readers. For anyone not familiar with these pages, I encourage you to go back and read in the archive, even as I endeavor to write about new things, or old things with new insights.

Deacons in America

Prior to appearing in the print edition, my humble contribution to America magazine's ministry issue, which has a focus on the permanent diaconate, is available on-line, along with the contributions of my brother deacons, Dr. Bill Ditewig and Greg Kandra. My participation in this issue is the result of both men: Deacon Greg suggested me as a possibility and Deacon Ditewig's numerous and insightful writings on the permanent diaconate have helped inform me as I continue to work on my Integrated Pastoral Research project on developing the ecclesial identity of the permanent deacon in light of the twin realities of priesthood and lay ecclesial ministry.

I cannot fail to mention the friendship, personal mentoring, and scholarship of Deacon Owen Cummings, whose encouragement after reading a first and very rough draft of the article helped me to realize that I could do this. Along with Dr. Ditewig, Owen has labored hard as both a deacon and a theologian to lay a solid foundation for a sound and progressive theology of the permanent diaconate. While I have been informed by the writings of many, Deacon Cummings has been instrumental in my formation over many years. There is another Greg to whom I owe a debt of gratitude, Dr. Greg Sobolewski, who is a brilliant theologian, master teacher, mentor, and friend. The genesis of this article was a lengthy ecclesiology paper, written for a class I took from him: Vatican II’s Restoration of the Permanent Diaconate: ressourcement and aggiornamento.

Dr. Ditewig's article touches on an area that needs a lot of clarification, the relation of matrimony and holy orders in the life and ministry of the permanent deacon- Married and Ordained: The ministry of deacons. Deacon Kandra's contribution is entitled A Deacon’s Lessons: Seven things they don't teach you in formation. I am guessing that space limited him to only seven things! Finally, there is my brief outline of the restoration of permanent diaconate thus far: Looking Back and Ahead: The theology behind the permanent diaconate.

Bishop Wester in the Deseret News

Last Friday the LDS-owned Deseret News published a wonderful story on Bishop John Wester, who serves the Diocese of Salt Lake City. It is a generous and gracious article about a generous and gracious man. Bishop on a mission: Wester aims to maintain community cooperation, by Scott Taylor. I think it is very true that bridges are built between "those of different faiths are based in simple friendship and understanding."

Indeed, as Bishop Wester points out, "There are all kinds of values that we cherish together and so much we can do together," he said, adding that while doctrinal differences may exist, "you work on what is common."

Lessons in deaconing

Deacon Greg Kandra, author of The Deacon's Bench and no stranger to self-sacrificing service, posts something wonderful and inspiring- "Behind the Walls with the Man Behind the Stole". This post and the story to which it is linked is about Deacon Donald Dashnaw's experience as a prison chaplain.

Deacon Dashnaw and many permanent deacons like him are the best reasons, the only reasons, for the restoration of the permanent diaconate.

Living our humanity differently because we encountered Christ

In a very insightful post regarding the flap initially stirred up by George Weigel’s National Review Online critique of Caritatis in veritate, the tone and tenor of which Weigel sustains in a Newsweek column in which he apparently sought to cast aspersions on today's meeting between pope and president before it even took place, on America magazine’s In All Things blog, Michael Sean Winters causes me to wonder if he has been attending School of Community. He mentioned CL once before in a post prior to the release of the encyclical. The reason I am posting the quote below, however, is not to speculate about Mr. Winters, even if in a good way, but because it is beautiful-

"Obama was a community organizer when Bernardin was archbishop of Chicago. The future president was inspired by his leadership and his compassion. In other words, Cardinal Bernardin, by showing how he lived his humanity differently because of his encounter with Christ, changed the heart of another person by his example. There is a word for that: evangelization" (underlining emphasis mine).

Here's clip from Politico of President Obama's Vatican visit that is circulating widely throughout the Catholic blogosphere
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The Holy Father in the Vatican; it doesn't get anymore Friday traditio than that- a deep diaconal bow to my Facebook friend Fred!

As is her wont, the irrepressible Peggy Noonan offers the wisest and most realistic media take on Gov. Sarah Palin's decision to resign from office in her Opinion Journal piece- A Farewell to Harms: Palin was bad for the Republicans—and the republic.

"[T]ruth is not something we produce"- CL on Caritas in veritate

We are grateful to the Holy Father that in his social encyclical he has again proposed the originality of the faith and the contribution that Christians can give to social life and development.

To us it seems critical that at the beginning of an encyclical dedicated to human affairs, the Pope, with great realism, is recalling everyone to something basic and evident, which, if denied, leads every human effort to become unjust to the point of violence: "Sometimes modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. This is a presumption that ... is a consequence ... of original sin. The Church’s wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin in social conditions and in the structure of society." Recent experience, in fact, teaches us that the claim of self-sufficiency and of being able to "eliminate the evil present in history by his own action alone has led man to confuse happiness and salvation with immanent forms of material prosperity and social action."

On the contrary, the truth about ourselves is first of all "given": "[T]ruth is not something that we produce; it is always found, or better, received." This is why the Pope affirms that "[c]harity in truth ... is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity... In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person."

Benedict XVI recalls us to the fact (which, as current events show, is more and more often forgotten) that a "Christianity of charity without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance. In other words, there would no longer be any real place for God in the world."

Caritas in veritate asserts that the Church “does not have technical solutions to offer and does not claim to interfere in any way in politics,” but does have a mission to accomplish: proclaiming Christ as "the first and principal factor of development."

Along this path of witness we feel challenged to verify, within the context of daily life, the import of faith in Christ, as the One who places us in the best conditions for facing the myriad of problems in the economic, financial, social and political fields enumerated by the encyclical.

In the next issue of Traces, the monthly international magazine of the movement coming out next week, a booklet with the text of Caritas in veritate will be enclosed.

CL press office
Milan, July 8, 2009