An American Elected as new Franciscan Minister General

Posted in Franciscan Spirituality, Pope Francis with tags , , , , , on May 22, 2013 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

Fr.-Michael-PerryAfter the Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor (the Franciscans), José Rodriguez Carballo, OFM, was named secretary of the Congregation for Religious, a new Minister General — the leader of the tens of thousands Franciscan friars worldwide and the successor to St. Francis of Assisi — needed to be elected to fill out the rest of Carballo’s six-year term. A special election took place yesterday consisting of electors that included the presidents and vice presidents of the respective language and geographic conferences of the Order, the Custos (provincial) of the Holy Land, and the General Council of the Order. In total, thirty-four friars gathered in Rome according to the General Constitutions (art. 201.1) of the Order and elected Michael A. Perry, OFM, to succeed Carballo as the Minister General and the 120th successor of St. Francis.

According to a press release this morning from the secretary for the English Speaking Conference of the Order out of Rome, “Br. Michael becomes the third American to serve as Vicar of St. Francis.  Former General Minister John Vaughn, OFM, of the St. Barbara Province held that post for two terms from 1979-1991; and Valentine Schaff, OFM, of the St. John the Baptist Province was General Minister who served 1945-46.”

The release goes on to list some more biographical details about the American friar elected to the highest office in the Order.

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1954, Br. Michael entered the Novitiate of the Province of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1977.  He served his Province in Theological Formation, Post-Novitiate Formation, International JPIC work and for 10 years he worked in the Missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He served also with the Catholic Relief Services and in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops before being elected Provincial Minister of his Province in 2008 [Sacred Heart Province of St. Louis and Chicago] and then a year later, Vicar General of the Order.

His academic curriculum includes a Ph.D. in Religious Anthropology, M.A. in Theology, M.Div in Priestly Formation and a B.A. in History and Philosophy.  He made his Solemn Profession of Vows in 1981 and was Ordained to the Priesthood in 1984.

Having served the last several years as Vicar General of the Order, he is well situated to take over after the sede vacante. 

I have lived with Mike in the past when we both were in Washington, DC, in neighboring Franciscan communities. He was working for Catholic Relief Services and the USCCB at the time and I was in graduate theological studies. A very down-to-earth, approachable, and nice person, Mike has spent most of his life dealing with questions of international concerns related to social justice. He earned a PhD in anthropology overseas and has worked in fields and organizations that focus on world poverty, violence, and other pressing matters of justice and peace. I can’t help but think that Mike is the perfect person to step into this worldwide leadership and service role at a time when Pope Francis is himself calling the whole church to focus precisely on these issues.

Photo: Order of Friars Minor

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Hans Küng on Pope Francis and Saint Francis

Posted in Pope Francis, The Papal Watcher, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , on May 21, 2013 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

Hans KüngIt is exciting to see Hans Küng, the great Catholic theologian and well-known papal cynic (for lack of a better description, seem so enthused by the decisions and actions of Pope Francis so far. In a National Catholic Reporter piece, titled “The Paradox of Pope Francis,” which shares a similar thesis to my earlier America essay, “What’s in a Name? The Significance and Challenge of St. Francis for Pope Francis,” Küng offers a personal reflection on how he sees the promise and challenge of the intention Pope Francis has seemingly laid out in his decision to take the name after the famous Saint of Assisi: “It is above all about the three basic concerns of the Franciscan ideal that have to be taken seriously today: It is about poverty, humility and simplicity.” He goes on to suggest why it hasn’t happened before: “This probably explains why no previous pope has dared to take the name of Francis: The expectations seem to be too high.”

Aside from the fact that I have pointed out that the some of the discussions about Francis of Assisi in light of the new Bishop of Rome have, as Küng does and admits to some degree, simplified and idealized the thirteenth-century saint and neglected the deeper and most significant dimensions of his life and legacy, Küng offers a unique contribution to the discussion at hand.

His essay centers on four questions about what lies ahead, structured around the basic premise that the institutional structures of the Roman Curia form an oppositional force to legitimate change and progress in the church’s constant need to return to the fundamentals, or what Küng calls “the early Christian concerns.”

He places Francis in opposition to his contemporary, Pope Innocent III in a way that is not entirely accurate. For example, Innocent III not only was a brilliant canon lawyer (something Küng notes) and theologian, but was an organizational genius. Nevertheless, his vision for the church was one of structure and order according to his time, while Francis, according to Küng, was not at all interested in these things because of his desire simply to attend to his so-called “early Christian concerns.” What is somewhat complicated about this, which gets overlooked, is that Innocent III provided the very condition of the possibility of the Franciscan Movement by granting the oral probation for its licit establishment in 1209 and, perhaps more importantly, Francis of Assisi sought this institutional approval that eventually culminated in the Regula Bullata of 1223.

Nevertheless, as I point out in my America essay, Francis was not a blind follower of Innocent or any other ecclesiastical leader. At various points in his life and ministry, Francis exercised what I anachronistically call “ecclesiastical disobedience” (akin to “civil disobedience”). Francis’s relationship to exercises of ecclesiastical power and structures of power, such as the curial interventions in his evangelical movement, are more complex than a narrative such as the one Küng tells — in genuine good will, I presuppose — can express.

The greatest take away from Küng’s piece is the final sections of the essay in which the German theologian gets to the main point: there will be resistance from those who exercise power to maintain the status quo. How that is overcome remains to be seen. I agree that as the whole church, that is the Body of Christ, we need to reform ourselves and our institutions of power. However, his last paragraph is one that comes across as a bit confrontational in a way that I’m not sure will be helpful. Küng writes:

We should then in no way fall into resignation; instead, faced with a lack of impulse toward reform from the top down, from the hierarchy, we must take the offensive, pushing for reform from the bottom up. If Pope Francis tackles reforms, he will find he has the wide approval of people far beyond the Catholic church. However, if he just lets things continue as they are, without clearing the logjam of reforms as now in the case of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, then the call of “Time for outrage! Indignez-vous!” will ring out more and more in the Catholic church, provoking reforms from the bottom up that will be implemented without the approval of the hierarchy and frequently even in spite of the hierarchy’s attempts at circumvention. In the worst case — as I already wrote before this papal election — the Catholic church will experience a new ice age instead of a spring and run the risk of dwindling into a barely relevant large sect.

Ironically, this confrontational approach “from the bottom up,” at least as Küng seems to present it, actually contradicts his desire to point to Francis of Assisi as a model for reform. Francis did not provoke “reforms from the bottom up that will be implemented without the approval of the hierarchy.” On the contrary, he sought approval from the pope and his curia from the beginning (in fact, his entire lifestyle shift began with the approval of his local bishop, Guido of Assisi around 1206).

I agree that change is needed. Big change!  I agree that Francis of Assisi is a powerful model for what that could look like and mean.  However, I’m not sure that Küng’s well-meaning proverbial call to arms is the answer. It appears to be just a reiteration of his earlier calls for similar action. I think that a serious look at Francis of Assisi’s negotiation of these relational structures of power between his movement and the church’s leadership, between his desire to follow in the footprints of Christ and his solidarity with the marginalized, between his expressed loyalty to the church and his willingness to act out of conscience — this is more nuanced, subtle, and effective than rallying something of a quasi-democratic grass-roots movement.

Perhaps it is time we all really take Francis of Assisi seriously.

Photo: File

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Thomas Merton’s Most Famous Prayer

Posted in Thomas Merton, Uncategorized with tags , , , , on May 20, 2013 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

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My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahed of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that
I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am
actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for You are ever with me,
and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.

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Signs of the Time: The ‘Francis Effect?’

Posted in Pope Francis with tags , , , , , , , on May 16, 2013 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

pope_francis.jpg.size_.xxlarge.promo_In a CNS article titled, “Archbishop says people returning to confession because of pope,” we read of the anecdotal evidence for some changes in the Italian pastoral landscape marked, in part, by a rise in sacramental confession and an increase in the attendance of visitors at public papal audiences. Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, “said during an early May visit to southern Italy and in conversations with priests from northern Italy where he grew up, he repeatedly heard reports that ‘a lot of people have been going to confession and many have said that while they hadn’t gone in a long time, they felt touched by the words of Pope Francis.’”

I’m not entirely sure, from a social-science perspective, how much weight to give such a claim. However, I am positively disposed to the gesture; namely, that Pope Francis’s public presence, well-known simplicity in lifestyle, casual and approachable demeanor, humility in liturgical celebrations, and accessible and heart-felt preaching has garnered a lot of understandable attention that might very well contribute to broader shifts in public opinion about the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church and its role in the world today.

While Archbishop Fisichella does not prefer the term “Francis Effect,” I’m less put off by the phrase. When I hear that term, I first think of St. Francis of Assisi and call to mind the world-changing effect he had in his own time that has so rippled through history to reach our own day. I think of how this one man from the Medieval Umbrian town of Assisi could draw so many people to him and his memory that he would, 800-years later, remain the most popular saint (after Mary) in the church. I think of how there is really something to the name that Pope Francis adopted after his election as bishop of Rome and, in large and small ways, lives out in the same spirit.

The CNS article reports the secretary of the council’s surmising about what is happening:

“People want to be present, listen to his voice and see him, touch him, because he makes a connection (with people) that is very moving,” the archbishop said, adding that the pope’s popularity reflects the “importance of the faith, the importance of being Christian, and the importance of the pope at this moment in the history of the church.”

There is a danger, of course, that this is only a superficial interest that people have — something more akin to the pontificate of John Paul II, the so-called “rock-star pope.” Yet, while JPII was a world traveler and charismatic figure, and his energy seemed to arise from his personality rather than actions, Pope Francis’s appeal seems less focused on himself (although this is no doubt a factor here) and more on the striking, at-times iconoclasm that he has unleashed on the peripheral aggrandizing dimensions of the pontifical office. His eschewing of ostentatious formalities and vesture, his casual preaching tone and presence (especially from the ambo and not ex cathedra), his willingness to create a new international advisory committee — these things are not insignificant signals of some change, of some kind of “Francis Effect.”

Granted, it is still far too early to begin forecasting long-term “effects” of Pope Francis. However, it is my hope that these signs — mixed as they are with more ambiguous and complicated negotiations with contentious inherited items like the LCWR investigation — might signal a truly powerful shift in time. I still believe that, for example, the LCWR investigation was wrong-headed, something confirmed by the public-relations melee from within the curia in recent weeks, but I’m not sure I entirely understand Pope Francis’s current relationship to it and, in the meantime, I’m hoping for the best. This also goes for the unfolding political drama in Puerto Rico, where my confrere Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez, OFM, the archbishop of San Juan, has been caught in the middle of some as-of-yet still unclear political battle with one of the Vatican dicasteries and local political nationalistic movements. It remains to be seen how these sorts of matters play out and what leadership role — either directly or through episcopal appointments — Pope Francis plays in them.

Nevertheless, I’m hopeful and continue to sit back and see what happens. If the “Francis Effect” does, in reality, lead to greater participation in the sacraments — not just sacramental confession, which is one of the most misunderstood of the seven — then it is a good effect indeed. If the “Francis Effect” does mean real change in antiquated structures of partisan cronyism in curial offices, then I think it is a good effect indeed. If the “Francis Effect” does draw women and men closer to the Gospel of Jesus Christ to live lives in the footprints of the Lord, then it is a good effect indeed.

We will have to wait and see.

Photo: File

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The Dangers of Ecclesiastical Leadership and Power

Posted in Scripture, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on May 15, 2013 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

bishopsIn today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Paul is remembered for having spoken to a group of presbyters (elders or ministers) at Miletus as he prepared to depart from them. His speech is significant, not just for its candor and concern about what might lay ahead, but for the relevance it seems to bear today. He warns of the dangers of what we might anachronistically refer to as ecclesiastical leadership and the power that can and will eventually lure some people away from the purpose and goal of their ministry and calling. He names this misuse of power in several ways: (a) through the perversion of truth so as to gain one’s own followers; (b) through the desire — in contrast to Paul’s experience — for gold and other property; and (c) through the lack of willingness to serve others and help the week.

“Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock
of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers,
in which you tend the Church of God
that he acquired with his own Blood.
I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you,
and they will not spare the flock.
And from your own group, men will come forward perverting the truth
to draw the disciples away after them.
So be vigilant and remember that for three years, night and day,
I unceasingly admonished each of you with tears.
And now I commend you to God
and to that gracious word of his that can build you up
and give you the inheritance among all who are consecrated.
I have never wanted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing.
You know well that these very hands
have served my needs and my companions.
In every way I have shown you that by hard work of that sort
we must help the weak,
and keep in mind the words of the Lord Jesus who himself said,
‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

Paul’s advice goes directly to those responsible for the community entrusted to their care and guidance. His advice is to return always to the Word of God, to the message of the Gospel or Good News of Christ, to follow in the footprints of the one whose name they will come to bear.

The pertinence of this passage is striking given another text today, this time from the Washington Post titled, “Cardinal Dolan and America’s Troubled Catholic Church.” It is clearly an unfavorable reflection on the status of the USCCB president’s tenure, offering four “strikes” against his leadership: (1) the apparent rift or division between the USCCB and the American Sisters; (2) the lack of correction to bishops and laypeople who spoke out in partisan, discriminatory, and inappropriate ways; (3) the disaster that was the ‘Fortnight for Freedom’; and (4) the “undercutting” of the USCCB’s policy on the Ryan budget by offering contradictory support after the conference came out against it.

It’s clear that these are primarily political concerns or at least disappointments regarding or critiques about the ostensible political activism of Cardinal Dolan and his confreres. The short article begins with a lede about Dolan’s new personal spokesperson, a former Palin campaign staff member.

Nevertheless, whether one agrees with Anthony Stevens-Arroyo on these points or not, the challenges he raises here offer us something of a modern echo of St. Paul’s warning to the Christian leaders of his time: be careful that you are doing the right thing for the right reasons.

At the heart of both sets of concerns stands the relationship ecclesiastical leaders have to other Christians. In other words, the concerns are centered on the exercise of power.

Power in these instances is deployed for good or ill, for personal gain or for justice and empowerment, for social change or for the perpetuation of an unbalanced status quo. Power is always and everywhere ambiguously present within these sets of relations, so it’s not really possible to say with clarity that this person or that person is exercising it in this or that exclusive way. Nevertheless, Paul’s concern and Stevens-Arroyo’s critique should both cause us to pause and reflect on what the point of ecclesiastical leadership really is.

The point is made clear in today’s Gospel from John when Jesus is remembered, according to his departing discourse, to reveal that God’s will is unity of all people. This does not mean hegemony or uniformity. Unity amid diversity is a mark of authentic catholicity and that which ecclesiastical leaders — presbyters or bishops — are called to promote and to protect.

When unity amid diversity, and the maintenance of both, is sacrificed for political power, attention, money, or the like, then what Paul had warned about comes true: savage wolves have come among us and the ministry of the Word is sacrificed for personal gain.

Photo: Stock

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Sacramental Imagination and Christian Hope

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , on May 14, 2013 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

walking young man over field and sunsetThere are many reasons to celebrate and far-too-many excerpts to share from an important new book titled, Hope Sings, So Beautiful: Graced Encounters Across the Color Line (Liturgical Press, 2013), by Christopher Pramuk. Chris is a theologian who teaches at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is also a friend and colleague.  He and I have served for the last two years on the Board of Directors of the International Thomas Merton Society and it has really been a great privilege to get to know him over the last several years. His first book, a study of Thomas Merton’s Christology, was also an important and award-winning text, and it is clear that Chris’s latest book will not disappoint those who were waiting for his next project.

A full review of Hope Sings, So Beautiful is in order, Chris’s bold and significant theological engagement with the challenging subjects of race, white privilege, theological anthropology, suffering, violence, music and culture, among other themes, is presented in a unique and creative way that deserves a laudatory response in itself. He draws on a variety of sources, especially that of music and the work of Thomas Merton and several black theologians. However, the one thing that I wanted to share today was a paragraph that appears later in the book on the sacramental imagination and the meaning of Christian hope. It is my hope that this selection might speak to you, challenge you, and inspire you to consider reading the whole text.

For the Christian and Catholic sacramental imagination, hope rises from what pulses beneath the surface of things, calling our freedom forward, inviting us to imagine and make room for another possible future, the future of God’s own imagining. As a theological virtue centered in the incarnation, Christian hope rises not from human vision or effort alone but from the commingling of human and divine freedom, history and eternity, matter and spirit, freedom and grace. In other words, the mosaic is still being imagined and, while promises of great wonders spring forth from the mouth of God, nothing is fixed ahead of time. Our freedom as sons and daughters of God hinges on the present moment of imagination and decision, pregnant with possibility and risk. “See, I am doing something new! Not is springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isa 43:19).

Photo: Stock

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St. Francis and the (Im)possible Gift of Love

Posted in Franciscan Spirituality, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , on May 8, 2013 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

the-practice-of-generosity giftOne of the problems with the idea of a gift is that it typically sets in motion an economy of exchange that, unintended by the giver and receiver, can set up a sense of inequality and debit that is not easily overcome. We’ve all been in this social situation before: someone at work gives you a holiday present, unexpectedly, with the sincerest desire to be kind and nice. Yet, you feel indebted, even embarrassed perhaps, for not having something ready at hand to give in return. This exchange sets up an imbalance that denies the possibility of a true gift, for a true gift is freely given and received without there being established such pressure for reciprocation, without there arising a sense of self-gratification or embarrassment, without the possibility of something ever given in return.

The French philosopher Jacques Derrida was, along with many other topics, deeply concerned about the possibility of a true gift. He believed that for something to truly be a gift it must not appear as such and can only be ‘given’ outside of the confines of the economy of exchange that elicits a response in return that, in effect, ‘annuls’ the gift’s debt. What he means by this is that even if the only response a recipient can offer is a polite “Thank you,” the inherent elicitation of that response arises from without due to the imposition of the ‘gift’ or gesture of another.

This is indeed paradoxical. What does it mean have a genuine gift? Can one escape the ostensible aporia of the dynamics of giving and taking?

St. Francis had an intuitive sense of the impossibility of the gift and the dynamics of relationship that it implies. In his Admonition XXVI, Francis writes:

Blessed is the servant who loves his brother as much when he is sick and cannot repay him as when he is well and can repay him.

What an odd, little aphorism for a thirteenth-century mendicant to share with his brothers. Love, something Derrida also had philosophical concerns about in a way not unlike the possibility of a genuine gift, is tied up in Francis’s admonition within the same economy as Derrida’s gift.

True love, as the later heading for this admonition will term it, seems to move beyond the ordinary dynamics of what is seen and experienced. It exists only in the absence of the possibility of return. Contrary to the “Prayer attributed to St. Francis,” the true gift of love does not take place such that, “it is in giving that we receive.” No. It is, for Francis, only possible to “give” true love when it is impossible to receive in return.

This is a call to love as Jesus Christ did: an exercise of agape, self-giving, disinterested love.

Francis echoes this sensibility in the next admonition, when he writes:

Blessed is the servant who loves and respects his brother as much when he is far away from him as when he is with him, and who would not say anything behind his back that he would not say with charity in his presence.

It is the absence that marks the difference in this sense of the gift of love. When there is no possibility of return because the other is not present, when one has no obvious way to give the gift of kindness, of charity, of compliment — this is when impossible gift of love is possibly given.

Too often people think of the way of Christ’s love as “giving one’s self totally” in terms of what one does in an observable way for another. But what is the true gift? Can we give it? Can we love without the slightest possibility of return? Can we give without acknowledgement or acceptance? Can we give without the gift ever being received?

Derrida says that the possibility of such a gift is inextricably tied up with its very impossibility, but the longing for the genuine gift — as well as genuine love, forgiveness, mourning, and so on — is nevertheless essential. Perhaps this is the meaning of Christian discipleship in action, the striving toward the Reign of God in our actions, longing to love as Christ has and as Francis admonished.

Photo: Stock

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