When does it become unprofitable to continue a relationship? What if it is spiritually confusing for your flock? I wanted to say "spiritually harmful," but I'm just not that sure yet; these are all tentative thoughts I'm feeling around at the moment brought on by playing bells at St. Paul's Sunday service this weekend, the first time we've actually done worship with them as opposed to a Christmas concert.
I will admit that I have always been rather leery of St. Michael's relationship with St. Paul's. I'm grateful to them for letting us use their church for daily mass when ours burned down, but how far should that extend? I know that Father Don developed a friendship with Rev. Melody Eastman, but is that something he should be bringing into St. Michael's in his role as pastor or is it something he should keep personal?
I'll lay out my thoughts in order of least to greatest importance, though that actually puts them reverse chronological order, i.e. the least important were the ones I noticed most recently in the last month that we had rehearsals at St. Paul's and the most important are issues I've had problems with for a long time, even before I became Catholic.
1. ST. PAUL'S CHURCH 'CULTURE'
Most of this I noticed in the last month, though some of it I have noticed before. I don't want to judge the individual members of St. Paul's nor the church itself, since I don't know enough about it but these are things that have concretized the 'creepy' feeling I get at St. Paul's. In a lot of this, I'm comparing St. Paul's to St. Michael's but also to another Lutheran church I play bells at once a month, St. John's Lutheran. St. John's is a different breed of Lutheran, which I will get into later.
First, the entire church outside the sanctuary is plastered with every theologically liberal buzzword you can think of: tolerance, diversity, sharing, Christ in the poor and suffering. All of these are innocuous enough, and are true, but they're also things that send little red flags shooting up in my brain to be on the lookout for some very squishy theology and morality.
This is made worse when combined with the subject matter of all the bulletin boards and posters advertise church functions. There are your typical service ads, like ESSE and PADS and People's Resource Center. The adult ed/Sunday School class is on Charles Darwin and evolution (with a talk on Teilhard de Chardin, as well). There's "Cinema at St. Paul," a movie night with discussion afterward. The men's bathroom has information on getting help for sexual abuse or domestic violence (I don't know what the women's has).
What's wrong with these? I suppose nothing in themselves (though maybe the Darwin/Teilhard one may be very iffy). So what's creepy about it? It offends more in what is absent than in what is present. There are no promotions for a Bible study. There are no promotions for any type of spirituality class. There may be a monthly booklet of scripture readings and meditation on the back table, but I haven't looked there recently, but I know they had the ELCA's recent reflection on human sexuality back there, a completely revisionist take on the topic. I've seen no real resources for any type of spiritual growth offered.
This all seems really weird to me. St. Michael's has a lot of the same social concerns, but we have an abundance of resources offered for spiritual growth. We have numerous faith programs advertised in the bulletin and on the boards and in the announcements. St. John's Lutheran has numerous Bible studies advertised: men's, women's, high school, older ladies, midweek Lenten services, even private confession during Holy Week! Both churches just seem a lot more faith-oriented than St. Paul's. The only real 'religion' I got there was going to the service.
The worship space isn't that much better. I know it's a Protestant church, so it's going to be banal by Catholic standards, but c'mon...banners! Banners are just...tacky. They processed in with two large ones with which they then flanked the altar. The bell tables arranged up behind the altar are tacky, too, but to be honest, they just don't have anywhere else to put them, so that might be forgivable. I don't know. The cross that the children carried to go off to 'children's church' (another concept I tend to have problems with) looked like it had been painted by someone on acid.
I don't tend to find the people at St. Paul's have all that much respect for their worship space, either. They use the altar as a table and stick things on it, like the tub of candy the bell director always has during rehearsal and that players suck on during rehearsal, right up there behind the altar. Or they stack books or whatever on it. This is something they've done with the altar at St. Michael's, too, when the choir has rehearsed there for our Christmas concerts, setting their music on it and such and I've had to quietly remind them that it's not a table.
Maybe it's just me being oversensitive, but I try to respect others' worship space as I would want mine respected. I take off my hat when I enter St. John's or St. Paul's despite how inconvenient it might be with my hands full. I try not to set things on their altar out of respect for what they believe happens there. I don't genuflect or bow because, frankly, what they do there isn't real, despite what they want to believe, but I still try to have some respect. It's hard when it seems that they don't.
The liturgical prayers were rather banal and uninspiring, especially when compared to the wonderful liturgy at St. John's Lutheran and even St. Michael's. I didn't think the musical setting of the Kyrie was really at all penitential. There were only two readings, and neither one was at all Lenten, nor do I think the sermon referenced Lent at all. (Though I'll admit to being asleep through most of it because I worked the night before and was running on caffeine fumes). The only thing that was really Lenten were the tacky banners and Eastman's stole and chasuble. Not even the hymns or the music the bells played was at all Lenten. In fact, there was a note in the worship guide that said the liturgy was prepared by the music minister. Do they just put their own together in a hodge-podge rather than use a sacramentary and lectionary? St. John's definitely uses one.
2. WOMEN IN PASTORAL LEADERSHIP
This is another culture thing at St. Paul's but it also has a lot more serious theological problems and implications. The first and most jarring thing I ever noticed about St. Paul's was Melody Eastman in that Roman collar. It really does send my head spinning in confusion and my stomach doing flip-flops. I'm familiar with all the arguments for 'women priests' and women pastors and I'm not going to go into it all here, but quite frankly, they're all rather weak and have no biblical or traditional support. They've also been proven to have a detrimental affect on men's participation in church. This is especially a concern in a supposedly sacramental church like the Lutherans as opposed to the non-sacramental Evangelical churches.
St. Paul is a classic example. In the service, the only males near the altar was one altar server (junior high) and a 'communion deacon' (adult). None of them had speaking roles. The lector was a woman, the pastor is a woman, and the liturgical assistant or whatever was a woman.
I remember a couple years ago when we did our first Christmas concert at St. Paul's that the program or bulletin listed the pastoral staff of the church. Out of twelve to fifteen names listed, only two were men. Two. My gut tells me there is something seriously wrong with that situation.
This is an important point with regard to St. Michael's. In the American Catholic church where there is significant minority dissent from the teaching of the church regarding the ordination of women, should Father Don be trotting around a woman in a Roman collar in front of the church during official church functions, with the 'official' approval that seems to imply? The first year after the fire, he even had her give the homily - in full clerical garb -- at all the Sunday masses during Christian Unity week even though it is explicitly against the liturgical directives of the church that lay people (and she is a laywoman in the eyes of the Church) cannot give the homily. This is something he never did again, so maybe Father John or someone else set him straight. I don't know.
But Father Don is doing it again. For the Lenten mission he is having her preach at a prayer service on St. Paul, Martin Luther, and justification. I get the connection: Year of St. Paul > St. Paul's Church, but is this really appropriate for a Catholic Lenten mission? Are there no Catholics that can talk on the topic? The topic doesn't even seem very Lenten. And she will be there most likely in her clerical garb again and it will likely sow confusion among the Catholics in attendance.
3. CHRISTIAN MORALITY
This is the issue that troubles me the most about St. Michael's relationship with St. Paul's. St. Paul's is Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). This is the largest body of Lutheran churches, the mainline denomination, and a member of the World Federation of Lutheran Churches, which did the Joint Declaration on Justification with the Vatican (for what it's worth). But the ELCA has severe problems with regard to Christian morality. Like most mainline churches, as a general trend, it's theologically and politically liberal and squishy on abortion and homosexuality.
I mentioned the ELCA's revisionist document on human sexuality above, but that was only the start. Current ELCA policy is not to recognize homosexual partnerships and that homosexual clergy must remain celibate. An official advisory commission has recommended to the ELCA that it recognize homosexual partnerships as legitimate as a prelude to discussing the full ministerial ordination of homosexuals with active partners. This was supposedly the 'compromise' position because the homosexual lobby in the church also wants official church recognition of their 'marriages' (i.e. a liturgical celebration of homosexual unions), which the committee is advising against.
The commission also advised for a 'local option' for individual churches to reject a homosexual pastor, about which the homosexual lobby is also furious. This 'local option' was first invented by the Episcopal church when it decided on the issue of women priests and even, in Canada, on liturgical gay 'marriage' ceremonies. We can see where that has led the Episcopalians. The local option plays havoc with a church's ecclesiology and governing structure. The ELCA is quickly on its way down the same toilet as the Anglican Communion.
The ELCA is scheduled to vote on the recommendations of the commission in August. Conservatives have vowed to fight it, of course, but I don't know how strong the conservative lobby is in the ELCA. The Catholic Church has many of the same problems over these issues as the mainline body, with members squishy on abortion and homosexuality and some priests and even theologians trying to justify and promote them or water down Church teaching. However, unlike the ELCA and other mainline denominations, none of these initiatives are coming from the leadership of the Church or are even being given any sort of serious consideration. Popes John Paul the Great and Benedict XVI and the bishops have all consistently upheld the biblical and traditional teaching of the Church. Mainline denominational leadership has not, and has, in fact, been promoting deviation from Christian morality.
ST. MICHAEL'S AND ECUMINISM
This brings me back to the topic I led off with: How close should St. Michael's, a faithful Catholic church, be tied to St. Paul's given the above considerations? I certainly don't think that St. Paul's church culture should be a stumbling block to our relationship. That's a purely internal matter with St. Paul, but I think it does point in some disturbing directions. There should be no problem in working with St. Paul's in the works of mercy like PADS and ESSE and PRC, etc. Prayer and some kind of worship together (not mass) would even be appropriate if these were the only issues.
The women in ministry issue is a lot bigger more troublesome. It was entirely appropriate, I think, to invite Eastman to the dedication of the new church and to give her a generous thank you gift. I'm a bit iffy on whether it was appropriate to let her lector, however. Joint church concerts could perhaps still be done, though outside of a worship context. But I think that should be the extent of her engagement with St. Michael's. I do not think that she should have any role in official church functions, however. (She could, perhaps, say a prayer or something if she doesn't wear the clerical garb.) I definitely do not think it appropriate that she be preaching homilies or parish missions. Her presence just irritates the faithful, encourages the dissenters, and just confuses the rest. I'm not sure that the harm might not be greater than the good.
The biggest issue, however, is the issue of Christian morality. I do not know what St. Paul's and Melody Eastman's views of these cultural issues are. There was certainly no pro-life or pro-traditional marriage signage up in the church that I saw. But they did have the newspaper article up on the wall about the commission that made the recommendations regarding homosexual partnerships. It was more in the context of 'the ELCA in the news' with a bunch of other St. Paul mentions from the paper on the board, but still, if it's an issue you disagree with (i.e. oppose the commissions recommendations), then why would you highlight it?
This is the kind of thing I would seek clarification on with St. Paul's and Melody Eastman. Are they squishy on pro-life issues? Do they support the commission's recommendations expanding gay ministerial participation, or even authorizing official church liturgies for homosexual unions? If any of these is the case, then we really should have no official dealings with St. Paul's. If they take the 'local option', then things could perhaps continue, but it would still leave me troubled. This could become a much bigger problem after August.
I suppose that these concerns about St. Paul's will not be addressed as long as Father Don is at St. Michael's.
FRESHER ECUMENICAL FIELDS
This brings me to what puzzles me about St. Michael's ecumenical efforts and the ecumenical efforts of the Catholic Church in general. Other than the Orthodox, why do we put so much effort and attention into dialogue with ecclesial bodies that are moving in a diametrically opposite direction from us and ignore those who are very close to us? I understand that the mainline denominations have official bodies that can talk with official Catholic bodies while evangelicals and charismatics do not, which tilts the playing field.
St. Michael's should cultivate a relationship with the much more faithfully Christian churches around it than the ELCA. (Understand, I'm not making a ruling on St. Paul's yet, just a gut feeling). Why not St. John's Lutheran? St. John's is Missouri Synod Lutheran, a much more theologically conservative and faithful denomination than the ELCA. In fact, the Missouri Synod doesn't even recognize the ELCA as Lutheran and considers them to be an heretical church because of its acceptance of women pastors and its squishiness on Christian morality. The St. John's liturgy is much closer to the Catholic liturgy than St. Paul's, and St. John's takes its liturgy and music very seriously. In addition, St. John's frequently quotes Pope Benedict and other Catholics in the margins of their worship bulletin. They love Pope Benedict at St. John's Lutheran!
Wheaton is filled with vibrant, faithful Christians in its many evangelical churches. Yes, they are theologically more distant from us in some ways but they are much, much closer to us in their adherence to a Christian worldview. They take the Bible and Christian morality seriously. Perhaps our efforts would be better spent cultivating closer ties with evangelicals and Wheaton College, correcting stereotypes they may have about Catholics, helping them to better understand us (and us them!) rather than circling the drain with a mainline church. (Again, trying not to make judgments about St. Paul's yet.)
CONCLUSION
I apologize if this comes across as a bit harsh. It's really just me trying to work out loud some issues that have been percolating in my mind since the fire destroyed St. Michael's. The personal crux of the matter comes down to this: if St. Michael bell choir (or choir) does another joint performance with St. Paul, can I in good conscience participate? If it's a Christmas concert or the Faure Requiem (but not the prayer service) like in the past, then it might not be an issue, but if it's at St. Paul's worship service, should I opt out? What are my responsibilities as a faithful Catholic?
This extends to other events, as well. I'm already contemplating skipping Melody Eastman's Lenten mission talk on principle, though I am curious to hear what she might say. I just wish it wasn't part of the mission. I doubt she'll be giving homilies again in the future, but what about other functions?
It's a fine line to walk between loving the sinner, hating the sin and expelling the immoral from among you.
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