Meaningful Shades of Grey.

I am always struck by the difference between life and the daily routine in seminary and that of a parish priest. On the one hand you have the ‘crème de la crème’ of the Catholic hierarchy with its baroque churches round every corner and huge towering basilica’s. People can become acculturated and even institutionalised, rarely looking beyond the Catholic Church as it exists here in Rome. This is particularly true if you live within a seminary where you eat, sleep and breathe Catholicism. On the other hand the trick is never to allow yourself to loose sight of who you will be ministering too when you return to England, individuals who don’t live in a Catholic world, who live very ordinary, but infinitely complex and important lives. This is something I had lost sight of over the past few months. I thought too myself, if this is all Catholicism is – pomp and splendour, but ultimately hollow – ‘smells and bells’ Catholicism concerned with how good a service this is or what hymns are appropriate, then I don’t want any part of it! But whenever I get a visit from G this vision of, (I am right and everyone else is wrong so there) Catholicism soon disappears.I had not seen or spoken to my V.D. for quite some time (I meant Vocations Director, what else could it possibly be!). He came out to visit the college as we are getting two new seminarians from our diocese (we have 3 new candidates starting in September – two here and one at Ushaw College - positively unheard of!). He also came out with a recently ordained priest who had studied in Rome and had a somewhat infamous reputation of not getting involved in community life but doing his own thing and not being afraid to point out the obvious flaws within the seminary.It never ceases to amaze me that whenever I meet G (the vocations director). He has a way of giving me a great boost of enthusiasm for what I am embarking upon. He really brings home to me what priesthood is about, or what I believe it should be about. We usually chat about how I am finding things, any problems, what he has been doing over the last few months and his interactions with the parishioners, plus the latest developments in our diocese.G does not portray the image of priesthood that many parishioners or priests for that matter would expect. He is a part time radio D.J. for one – which seems to raise a few eyebrows amongst the clergy. I also think that he is somewhat similar to me in that he struggles a great deal with some of the Churches teaching and sees many of the laws as being open to change.He was telling me about a friend of his, who is also a parishioner, who was going through the ordeal of deciding whether or not to have an abortion – he did not go into the reasons why (and rightly so). He explained how he had accompanied her to the abortion clinic just to be there to support her in whatever decision she eventually made. Now obviously abortion goes against Catholic teaching, but in that brief conversation you could see that he had genuine concern for his friend and did not put him self in the position of judging her. I wonder what the response of other clergy would be – hopefully the same. We then started to discuss a priest who had recently left active ministry and eventually the priesthood in order to live in Spain with his partner. Obviously the clergy of that particular diocese had strong opinions on the matter and when G was asked what he thought he simply said as long s he is happy that’s fine because he must have gone through a tremendous struggle. G was telling me these stories because he could see how much I had been struggling with particular teachings of the Church.I guess you have ultimately got to ask yourself, in your ministry as a priest, do you see things in black and white and follow the Church teaching in everything you do, or do you look at the world in meaningful shades of grey, examining every individual case or situation differently and looking beyond the teachings of the Church? Do you put Church teaching first or make the welfare of the person your ultimate concern? I think it would be a pretty sad state of affairs if every priest saw black and white and did not acknowledge the complexity or the human condition and world we live in. I am glad there are priests who see things differently and that is something I had lost sight of for a moment. I guess if you can’t reconcile a decision or teaching in all conscience and you have the best of intentions at heart then what more basis do you need for justifying your opinion or actions?

The Last Word.

As you can probably guess I am a bit of a pluralist when it comes to religious belief – or at least more so than many, if not all of my fellow seminarians. As time here has progressed I have been more and more shocked by the attitude of some students and student priests towards other Christian denominations and religions. I couldn’t believe some of the comments, especially from one student priest in the house. He is usually a genuinely nice person, but when you get him talking about Islam, he morphs into someone completely different. It begs the question, how many of the students here have actually sat down and had a chat with a Muslim or person of any other religion?

I took these concerns to my spiritual director (a fellow Geordie). Who unequivocally said that there is no place in the Catholic faith for religious intolerance of any kind. He then proceeded to point me towards some Vatican documents, one from the Second Vatican Council, ‘Nostra Aetate’, concerning the Church’s relationship and regard for non-Christian religions and ‘Dominus Iesus’ an encyclical launched in response to pluralist and relativistic attitudes, stating that the Church has the fullness of salvation in Jesus and anything else is deficient.

It goes without saying that every religion believes it has the fullness of truth and I don’t think anyone would argue with that. . ‘Nostra Aetate’ seemed to be very open to the possibility of dialogue and spoke of the inherent goodness in all religion, but, once I began to read ‘Dominus Iesus’ I felt the Church had taken a step backwards and become very arrogant. I was shocked by some of the content. One of the statements in particular caught my attention; “Religions other than Christianity are considered to be "gravely deficient." Their rituals can constitute "an obstacle to salvation" for their followers.” It also spoke of religious dialogue being important for the purpose of evangelisation;

“The Church has been willed by God and instituted by Christ to be, in the fullness of time, the sign and instrument of the divine plan of salvation. . . . Against this background it becomes easier to see why and in what sense inter-religious dialogue is an integral element of the Church's evangelizing mission.”

Now this to me seems to come across as incredibly arrogant and egocentric. The Church is, in effect, putting down other religions and saying that they are not as important as it is. The document even goes so far as to say that; "Churches such as the Church of England, where the apostolic succession of bishops from the time of St. Peter is disputed by Rome, and churches without bishops, are not considered 'proper' churches." They suffer from "defects."
Now undoubtedly statements like this sparked a great deal of reaction form the Church of England and representatives of other faith communities. The World Council of Churches stated that; “This document not only damages unity, but could be in danger of stopping relations altogether.”

Vikram Masson (A Hindu) is a co-chairperson of Navya Shastra wrote in response to the document that:

"Ratzinger has described Hindu meditative practices as 'auto-erotic' and has stated that the Hindu doctrine of karma is 'morally cruel.' Clearly he is misinformed about the central practices and tenets which bind the world's 800 million Hindus."

The news release continued: "At a time when religions must work together to spiritually regenerate an increasingly secular planet, such doctrinal narrowness and lack of understanding of other traditions will only serve a divisive function."

There were many more angry responses to the document, each one essentially stating that the Catholic Church is unequivocally wrong and inward looking.

I don’t know what to think on this matter. When reading the responses of the other religions and Christian denominations to this document, it was like reading a political manifesto from an opposition party belittling the party in power. None of them simply said the Catholic Church is entitled to its views but I don’t agree with them because of x, y and z. People seem to have such clear ideas on what God is; father figure, personality watching over them, distant, close etc. Many religions are fighting for their right to monopolise God and place him in a nice tidy package. Surely it doesn’t matter what you believe - be that ‘traditional’ spirituality or not - as long as it works for you and leads you to compassion. To take a quote from Karen Armstrong (an ex-nun and religious writer) “Nobody has the last word on God.”