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January 2, 2000

Survey details priest shortage (Orlando Sentinel 10/16/99)

A new survey shows that 17 percent of U.S. Catholic parishes lack a resident priest. In most cases such parishes are served by a priest from another parish, but others are administered by deacons, sisters or brothers in religious orders, or lay members. The findings come from a survey of parishes by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, affiliated with Georgetown University. The survey said lay ministers outnumber priests in every region of the nation. The center's report said the average U.S. Catholic parish consists of 850 households and 2,000 individuals, among whom about. 40 percent attend weekly Mass.

New Catholic identity is seen from Vatican Council changes from Louisville RECORD, 12/16/99

Florida Bishop addresses Louisville archdiocese leadership institute

The way Bishop Robert Lynch sees it, the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s have evolved over the last 35 years. But the result won't be fully realized for another 65 years or so, he said.

And once this century of change has run its course Bishop Lynch said, "the next generation may be even closer to God than we have been."

Bishop of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Fla., Bishop Lynch was speaking Dec. 9 to a daylong Archdiocese of Louisville Leadership Institute program on "Nurturing Catholic Identity." And while he recognized that change has resulted in a new sense of identity for modern Catholics, he suggested that much of the difference between past and present is positive.

"While we've lost some things over time," he explained, "some very worthwhile things have succeeded them." But it takes at least a century for the church to come to grips with the way it has done things in the past and determine what it will do in the future, he said.

For example, we all know Catholics who "would gladly die" for kneelers in church, he noted. "But no (church) document mentions kneelers, and the rest of the world's Catholics stand for eucharistic prayer."

"It's true that some Catholic identity has been lost," Bishop Lynch said, "but there are things we do better now. People pray infinitely better; they sing better. We've expanded our exposure to more of the Old and New Testament, and today we have a much greater sense of coming together as a community of faith."

In the past, it was the nature of worship in the Catholic Church that gave its people their religious identity, he explained

"Seventy percent of our worship was in Latin," he said. "Our passivity in weekly worship marked us as different .... No one dared to speak in church because Christ was present in the sanctuary. And we never, ever shook hands."

In those days, if you saw the color black in church you knew someone had died. And we could tell how much they had given by the number of candles lit," he said.

These days the nature of the church "means much more than Friday abstinence," he said. "A lobster dinner on Friday night won't bring me as close to the Lord as a powerful Sunday liturgy."

"We are a eucharistic people," he explained. "And today our preaching is better; sharing the word is better; our appreciation of other religions is better."

"Ninety percent of our people love their faith," he continued. They love the pope and identify with their parish priest. They are Catholic by grace and by choice."

Without the changes brought about by Vatican II, Bishop Lynch said, "it is my belief we probably would not have retained half the people we have today."

(Note: 90% of the people "love their faith" and less than 50% attend Mass every week.)

Church can seek pardon for the dead. From Louisville Record, 12/23/99

Catholic News Service

The Catholic Church is a mother who can ask God to forgive her children, even those no longer alive, said theologians meeting at the Vatican.

The International Theological Commission met to discuss on how the proposed document on how the Catholic Church can ask pardon for the historical sins of its members. Pope John Paul II has said that at the beginning of the new millennium, "the church should become more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in history when they departed from the spirit of Christ and his Gospel."

The pope is scheduled to preside over a March 12 ceremony of asking pardon, and members of the theological commission hope to have their document published before the event, said Dominican Father Gus DiNoia.

The priest, a commission member and executive director of the U.S. bishops' doctrine and pastoral practices office, said the theologians found support for the corporate request for pardon in the many Old Testament references to Israel as a whole asking God for forgiveness.

Some church leaders, citing theological and practical concerns, have expressed doubts about the appropriateness of the Catholic Church making such a request.

Father DiNoia said the theological commission focused on three main problems:

The church is holy and, therefore, cannot sin. The theological truth must be affirmed even as the church asks forgiveness for the wrongs committed by individual members of the church.

"Usually you ask pardon for things you have done yourself. How can you ask pardon for something someone else did?'

While certain actions may be identified as sinful, assigning blame or passing judgment requires having enough historical evidence to assess culpability, including knowing what the person was thinking at the time.

Among sins the pope has mentioned are actions contributing to the division of Christianity; intolerance and. the use of violence in defending the truth, as during the inquisition; anti-Jewish attitudes and incidents; and complicity or inattention to modern evils.