1. Final Rector’s Conference for Fall 2018
    December 2, 2018
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    This evening we come to the near-end of the first formation term for this year. It is a propitious time for the Church. In the past four months, we have been racked with the emerging scandals, not necessarily of new news, new information, but with the reality that our leaders, those who have been charged with the future of our Church, given that task by God Himself, have feet of clay.

    In the past four months, we have seen our good people losing confidence in the institution that all of us, no matter how we stand in the hierarchy of things, have devoted our lives to building and maintaining.

    In the past four months, we have learned some men whose sacred task to govern and protect God’s people have lied and given themselves to that task of governing and protecting an indefensible aim, protecting a tottering structure, the structure of false politics and false ego.

    In the past four months, we have lived four decades of scandal and over and over again, heard unfolded for us in lurid detail, the sins of our brothers, and they are our brothers no matter their sins and crimes, we have heard these shortcomings replayed and replayed. It is tiresome and painful, tiresome and painful but absolutely necessary.

    We might think of these last four months as a kind of examination of conscience. It seems like that is what Pope Francis is asking our bishops when he instructed them not to move too swiftly to answers in their recent gathering in Baltimore. His dramatic interruption of last month’s conference proceedings may well have been an invitation to sit for a moment in our weariness and weakness, to remain here in the soul of crisis in order to realize, at the rock bottom of our collective consciousness, who we are.

    During the recent Thanksgiving break, I was reminded of some words of Winston Churchill in his early writings:

    He wrote as a reflection on his young life.
    Hear this young men and women everywhere and proclaim it far and wide. The earth is yours and the fullness thereof. Be kind but be fierce, you are needed now more than ever, take up the mantle of change, for this is your time.
    This is your time.

    My brothers, no matter what your end in the Church may be, this is your time.

    This is your time. We are in a troubled time, but I think we must ask ourselves this question:

    Are these times given to us to offer us an opportunity, for change and for new leadership? Brothers, you are called to be men of change and men of profound leadership in the service of Christ, the Divine Master.

    You are called to be men of change who offer new solutions to old problems.

    You are called to be men of change whose radical commitment to the Gospel is the keystone of our forward momentum in a world seemingly less and less committed to anything at all.

    You are called to be men of change. What does that mean? I believe it means that you must look at what is there; you must look at it honestly and unflinchingly. You cannot deny the sins of the Church and claim to be its minister. You cannot become an instrument of change without seeing everything for what it is.

    But we must also ask ourselves honestly: What change is needed? I would say, first and foremost, an acknowledgment of hypocrisy. We cannot claim to stand for one set of values and pursue another set of values. We cannot hope to conform our life to the service ideals of Christ and mock those very values with our behind-the-scenes activities.

    Playing politics is not an option for us. The Church is not a political entity. The Church is a service entity. We cannot lie to the people we serve. We must work with the people, with the world, to forge a reality in the Church that mirrors the reality of Christ, a passion for goodness and service.

    What change is needed? We need to stop something that is endemic in the Church today, endemic, I fear, even among us. Brothers, we have to stop this behind-the-scenes battle of wits and forces. We have to stop the gossiping. We have to stop the speculation. We have to stop the criticism of the staff, the faculty and each other. It has to stop. It will stop because it is un-Christian. This division, this creation of parties and division, is the work of Satan to tear our Church apart.

    What change is needed to remedy this ailment? The change is needed in our very souls. I am asking you to consider that change. I am asking you to consider these questions:

    Are you concerned about the orthodoxy of what is taught here? Are you concerned about the competence of the faculty who teach you? You need to come and see Dr. Alvis or see me. There is no room in this seminary for heresy or any position that does not fully respect and represent the teachings of the authentic magisterium.

    Likewise, there is no room here for criticism of the Holy Father or the magisterium. You will make a proclamation here before ordination in which you will promise, I daresay vow, to uphold the authentic teachings of the magisterium. If you think that you understand those teachings better than the Holy Father, see me and we will find a comfortable place for you to express these kinds of thoughts.

    Are you concerned about the question of sexuality? Here is what I have to say. We need to be honest here in dealing with the question of sexuality. If our current problems in the Church have told us anything, it is that this is necessary. Are you wondering if this one or that one is sexually active, if he is homosexual or not? Is he an addict to pornography?

    On the one hand, I would say that it is none of your business. It is the bishop’s business and it is my business. I go back to the fact that I am hearing a lot about speculating about people’s sexual orientation. Let me be clear. It is none of your business. If a man is living a chaste life, if he is struggling to live a chaste life, if he desires with all his heart to live a chaste life, is that not the important thing?

    If we have a prurient interest in what other people are doing sexually, thinking sexually, experiencing sexually, we may ask about our own needs that are not being met in our ministry of kindness, charity and sacrifice. I can tell you this: deciding “what to do” with homosexual candidates for priesthood is not my priority. Here we follow the dictates of the dioceses and the bishops.

    I do have standards, we must have standards, and these standards of chastity in behavior must be met and, I can absolutely assure you, that behavior will be met, but we must also remember that God calls whom He wills and if that call is given to one we find unworthy, we must question I think, the propriety of our judgment. We work with weak and struggling men. You are weak and struggling men. I am a weak and struggling man. In Christ, we can be strong and we need the opportunity to engage that project of strength without the background noise of gossip and innuendo.

    Are you concerned about the maturity of some of the men being formed here? So am I. There comes a time in formation, there comes a time in life, when we just have to grow up. I have said this so many times that it makes me feel a bit queasy talking about it now. What does it take to get people out of bed in the morning? All of us, seminarians included, are so tired of the excuses. I’m feeling ill. My alarm clock doesn’t work.

    The bottom line is this: You are not participating in the program of formation here. You are missing out on things. And people don’t respect immature seminarians and priests. Is this a widespread problem? No, I don’t believe it is, but it is a problem for some.

    Are these major problems? Perhaps in light of the current situation in the Church, they are not, but they are problems. A Church that is not united, for whatever reason, is divided. Small problems accumulate into larger ones. It is so interesting to me that those who truly believe they are the answer to the Church’s problems are most likely the propagators of the Church’s problems.

    Can we move, I wonder, from wondering about all of these things and moving toward a consuming passion for something else? Can we begin to become more passionate about the message of the Gospel, not a message of politics or rancor, but a message of service?

    Now let me turn for a moment to a brighter note: We have so much here that we can be thankful for, so much here that I am thankful for. As we begin this season of Advent, perhaps it is a time for us to begin again. Perhaps every day is a time for us to begin again. I was thinking about our readings from last Monday:

    The reading from Revelation with its vision of a triumphal Church, a triumphal Church in end times, the Gospel with the woman giving her small portion, in poverty but in great generosity, standing among the influential and the powerful full of confidence in her place in the radical scheme of things. I think of the psalm with its soothing words of hope:

    Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face

    There is the proverbial fly in the ointment.

    Two different people that long to see the face of God.

    We have the clapping, crying-out people of Revelation: Forehead written, thunder peeling, harp playing, Lamb followers.

    It is a mighty vision, a celestial vision. And of course, it is the Church, the Church of triumph, the Church of absolutes, the Church of wonder and glory and praise.

    A magnificent vision and that is what we are, that is who we are, that is what we must be.

    Lord, this is the people that long to see your face, and we do see it, every day, in the Eucharist, in this gathering of the Church, God’s people in one another.

    It is what we long for, what we imagine, as we strive here day and night to build a Church of triumph.

    And yet there is another fly squirming in our ecclesial ointment.

    Here is the old lady, rather anonymous. She is dressed in tattered clothing. She is not as clean as she once was. Her mind, still clear and swept over by memory. She is thanksgiving Aunt Pearl with her moth-eaten coat and dangling old purse with its quarter stick of gum.

    Here she is presenting herself in the temple of the world. She is mother Church, wobbling a little, but presenting herself nevertheless.

    She is far from the triumph of revelation and, yet so close.

    She is bold and fearless in her poverty because she knows one thing: in the world of the temple and the temple of the world, she has a right to be there. She may be the only one with a full right to be there.

    Lord, this is the people that long to see your face.

    A people of triumph yes.

    And the lady Church. Striving to give her gift, overlooked and yet so central.

    In her bent, crippled posture, she is nevertheless the spine of the world, giving as she does, everything, not in triumph but in want.

    What kind of Church do we have, do we need, in these waning days?

    Are you seeing these things? I hope you are because these are the kind of things I believe Saint Meinrad is about. Brothers, this is your time:

    This is your time. Let it be a time of love.

    This is your time. Let it be a time of sacrificial service.

    This is your time. Let it be a time of sorrow for sins, the sins of our fathers and our own sins.

    This is your time. Let it be a time of wonder and praise, a time of openness and gentleness, a time of true peace.

    Ask yourself this question: What is my measure of service? Am I looking to serve Christ totally, engulfingly? A change is needed in our very souls. Am I concerned about that or am I clamoring after ephemera?

    Let me go back now to the quote from Churchill.
    Hear this young men and women everywhere and proclaim it far and wide. The earth is yours and the fullness thereof. Be kind but be fierce, you are needed now more than ever, take up the mantle of change, for this is your time.
    Image Source 
    Image Source
    Posted by
    Labels: Catholic Rector Seminary


  2. Rector's Conference Three
    October 28, 2018
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB


    Last week I was in a meeting with the staff and, of course, the topic of the abuse crisis came up. I say “of course,” because no matter where we begin the topic always comes up, it is the ghost lurking in the corner of every room. Our discussion was a good one, an honest discussion and a well-thought-out discussion.

    After the meeting, one of our long-term staff members turned to me and said: “We are going to be dealing with this for the rest of our lives.” My first, internal response was: “Oh my, I hope not.” On further reflection however, I realized that she was probably right.

    The first encounter with this issue began for me before I was ordained, over 25 years ago. It has been the dissonant background music to my whole priestly life. It has manifested itself in different ways through the years. It has affected the way we look at our priests, and now, our bishops. It has touched profoundly the lives of our people, our parishes, our schools, and our young people. It has now come to affect the highest arenas of Catholic life, cardinals, even the pope.

    Our ministries, my ministry, have been circumvented with programs like Safe and Sacred and Virtus. We have to present credentials when moving from place to place, even to concelebrate at weddings and ordinations. When I come into a room of non-Catholics today, I feel somewhat self-conscious. I am highly cognizant of being alone with any child, no matter what the circumstances. We are living, my brothers and sisters, in a bruised Church. What has this led to?

    I believe that one thing it has led to is a defensive or apologetic priesthood. It has led to a defensive attitude toward our essential vocations, what we have been called by God to do. What have we been called to do? Our task, as priests, is to announce the Good News of Jesus Christ to an anxious world. Our task, as priests, is to make that same Jesus Christ manifest in the Eucharist, in the other sacraments, and in our presence to people in the world. Out task, as priests, is to be the ones called to lead others to salvation, to call others to follow, to engage others in the saving message of Christ and to do that without compromise and without any sense of concession.

    The message that we are called to give is not only a nice message, but a message that facilitates eternal life. Everything we have, everything we are, everything we need to be is dependent on that message, mediated for all of us in the saving action of the Eucharist, the christus prolongatus, the prolonged presence of Christ in the world.

    Why does Christ need to be in the world? Because his presence, and his influence as Salvador mundi, Savior of the world, indicates who we are, our nature, what we are called to be. Without the preached message of the Gospel, the world cannot find its center, the world cannot spin properly. What do I want to create in these schools? I want to create ambassadors of Christ that never fail and never falter, because they are convinced that the good of the world centers on the work they do.

    But what do we encounter in fact? So often, we encounter priests and ministers of the Gospel who are timid, who are reluctant to call people to conversion. They say: we are only going to have a very short Mass, which will be at your convenience. We won’t keep you too long. Don’t worry, you can get on with your life and, by the way, drop a couple of dollars in the basket if you please.

    These parishes of convenience, run by timid pastors, are “not asking too much.” They are not educating their people. They are not nourishing their people. They are not calling their people to active service. These places are afraid of alienating a reluctant flock by asking too much of them. No singing. No music at all. No servers. No readers. No anything. In and out. They believe that this method serves the needs of a people who are reluctant.

    I say it does the opposite. It instills in the people of God a sense that faith is so easy. It requires very little time and effort. It is not ultimately about too much. Well, brothers and sisters, this is a lie. This faith is all we have. This faith is all we are. This faith is all you have to give to the people, all mothers and fathers have to give to their families. This faith is the flashpoint of life and, when we priests sell it short, or try to make it something easy, something that it is not, we do so at the peril of our souls. The bricks of minimalism pave the road to hell.

    Furthermore, if we perceive that this apologetic approach, this defensiveness, is the necessary outcome of a Church humbled by the abuse crisis, then I say this: The devil has already won this battle. As a priest, I will not be stifled in my authentic ministry because of the sins of some of my brothers. I will not be quieted in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because some of my fellow priests have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

    I will instead be bolder, because in the cacophony of a media-drenched world, in the noise of fear and confusion, in the midst of authentic heartache and pain, the Word must be proclaimed more loudly than ever. Because it is a healing Word. Because it is that balm of Gilead that heals the sin-sick souls of people drowning in materialism, in artifice, in populisms, in the flesh.

    The devil wants to minimize our ministry. We will not have it. The people of God deserve too many things from us. The people of God deserve our time. The people of God deserve our attention. The people of God deserve priests and deacons who study the Word day and night. The people of God deserve men of prayer. The people of God deserve priests who are intelligent. The people of God deserve men whose lives are poured out at the altar of this world’s challenges, who are willing to die rather than ever give up their tireless preaching of the message: For God so loved the world, he gave his Only Son and whoever believes in him will have eternal life. It must be. It will be.

    This crisis for us is a wake-up call. It is a clarion call bounding off the broken walls of this world’s edifices. Come and serve Christ. Come and serve the Creator of the Universe. Come and be a witness and know, know full well, that is all you are called to do.

    When all of our good lay folks, when all of our religious, when all of our deacons, when all of our priests, when all of our bishops can be determined in this direction and this direction only, we will have life and have it in the full. Until we can get to this fullness, we have nothing but stories in the newspapers, sorry, pain, misery.

    Last year, I had the opportunity to present some reflections on the priesthood, particularly focusing on my four priest-heroes from history. For my jubilee in May, Deacon Tim Pick created a musical celebration based on those talks. I do not feel the need this evening to revisit those heroes. They have an attractiveness of their own and followers of their own. They earned both. Instead, this evening, I would like to focus on a series of questions as I asked our then-deacons, now priests, at our celebration of promises in the Spring.
    Do any of us here tonight expect that our lives will be easier because we believe in God, because we cast all of our hopes on Christ? They will not.

    Do you expect that privilege will be offered to you because of the so-called sacrifices you are making, that in giving your life to the Church there is a showcase showdown awaiting you even in this present life? There is not.

    Do you believe that there are easier days ahead than the hell of this seminary you are currently enduring? There are not.

    Brothers and sisters, do not kid yourselves, we are not living in an age of comfort or a time of privilege; we are not conformed to the world of reward as we understand it in the popular culture around us.

    We are living in a moment in history when the world must hear the Word of God proclaimed boldly and fearlessly, or the world must perish. We are living in a time when we in the Church must be bold and fearless or we shall perish, or worse, we shall render ourselves useless, archaic.
    You have no idea how much I stand by those words tonight. Here is what the priest must be. He must be a man whose prayer has both strengthened him and worn him out, a man whose commitment to prayer is without compromise. Ultimately, that is what I care about, maybe all I care about. He must be a man who is willing to live anonymously, whose every accomplishment is not trumpeted, who is willing to sit in a dank confessional for hours because souls need to be reconciled to God and he is the instrument of that reconciliation.

    He must be a man who is willing to prepare a homily every week, every day, in the knowledge of what his parish needs, his people need, because he is a doctor of souls. He is a man who never lets his personal opinions and tastes overwhelm the sensitivities of the people he has been called to serve. He is a man who desires above all things to be a herald of the Gospel so that everything else falters; no other attraction can have sway in light of this central reality.

    This priest is always saying this: I want to draw nearer to God. I want to be an ambassador of love. I want to be a crutch for others. I want to be a challenging teacher of God’s Word. I want to be a custodian of God’s sacraments. I want to be an agent of trust. I want to stand with the lonely. I want to hold the hand of the widow. I want to care for those whom society throws away. That is all I want until my end.

    Do you know something? We have many such priests in the Church, but they are not known, nor should they be. We have many such priests in the Church. They do not necessarily have a massive social media interface. We have many such priests in the Church who labor day and night in little towns in Kentucky or Alabama or Arkansas or Korea, or Chile, or name any place. We have many such priests who serve without counting the cost and die with holes in their shoes, who suffer pain and misunderstanding, but who never lose their sense of humor or their smile. These are the kinds of priests the Church deserves and, by God, they will have them.

    We do not need any more preening, narcissistic, lying cads infecting our Church. We do not need any more raging ideologues who put their own versions of orthodoxy above the cries of the needy and the poor. The integrity of the Church’s teaching will take care of itself, if you attend to the cries of the poor. But if you do not attend to the cries of those who are suffering in our world, all of those cultivated syllables are nothing but dead notes, dry as dust, trailing in the wind of indifference. We do not need that.

    We do not need any priests more concerned with the petty politics of the chancery than they are in the real dramas unfolding in the nursing homes, the hospitals, among the shut-ins, the sick and dying in their benefices. I want to write an examination of conscience for priests, to guide them. I want those priests to understand where the energy of their priesthood must be.

    We do not need priests who cannot love, who are unwilling to be grasped and hugged and kissed by old ladies, who will not brave a brownie because they are “on a diet,” whose workout supersedes the daily tasks of ministry and then who complain they just have no time to attend to those who need their attention. You never will if your workday extends from 11 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon with a two-hour, six-martini lunch thrown in.

    We do not need priests unwilling to cry, unwilling to bleed, unwilling to be held, unwilling to fall in love, unwilling to be honest with the flock, unwilling to scream at injustice, unwilling to lay prostrate on the floor of their room in penance, unwilling to confess, unwilling to be crushed under the daily burden that belongs to every man, woman and child who is truly alive, unwilling to put aside for now, for a moment, the godforsaken banner of personal entitlement and comfort and put on the breastplate of righteousness and the mantle of a justice received on the knees.

    I may have to live the rest of my life in the aftermath of this crisis, but I can tell you this. If I have to drop dead doing it, the priests that leave here, the deacons that go through our programs, the lay ministers that we prepare, are going to serve the Church well. They are going to give the Church the ministry it deserves; they are going to represent our Church without compromise, so help me God. 

    Posted by
    Labels: Catholic Rector Seminary



  3. Rector’s Conference Three 
    October 7, 2018
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    I want to talk to you this evening as though you were priests already. Certainly, I understand that you are not. I know that some of you may not be destined for priestly service, but as you also know, one of my points of emphasis is that here you must be set on preparing to be a priest, not merely on four years of discernment.
    In the Ratio Fundamentalis, the document produced by the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome to oversee seminary formation, the ideal of priestly formation is the ideal that what we call theology is not a time of discernment; it is a time of preparation. Theologians should not be in an active discernment mode; you should be preparing to be priests. So, I will speak to all of you as priests, as men destined for service in the Church, as mature men, as men who only (ONLY) have the needs of the Church in your minds and hearts.
    This evening, then, I want to look momentarily at a passage of St. Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 19:
    But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
    Jesus said, let children come to me.
    Jesus said, do not hinder the natural attraction that children have for the reality of God.
    Jesus said, the realization of the Kingdom of God is dependent upon our care for children.
    Interesting and troubling.
    Our current dystopian narrative – one in which we are called increasingly to NOT believe that people have rights, that people have value, that people have responsibilities – in our current climate, the human quality of childhood has been called into question. We have watched countless films, read books and looked at stories about children who commit crimes, and are otherwise seen as perpetrators of violence on others. I think the most dangerous expression of this is the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade, a decision that gave free reign to a culture to kill children in order to promote the freedom of the parents.
    Given this, why the focus on the Catholic Church? Why are we given so much press when other Christian groups and other religious institutions share in the guilt in failing to look after children properly, of ignoring the words of Jesus?
    But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
    To me the answer is simple: We are supposed to stand for something greater. We are supposed to be exemplars of what it means to live in a healthy world, a healthy culture, a healthy Church. We are supposed to be better and, when we fail, our failure looks all the more dramatic. Our failure also looks dramatic when we fail and will not admit that we have failed. If we know that children have been hurt in our churches, by members of our clergy, if we know that and do not call those people to justice, the failure is all the greater.
    How can we have a Church that stands for the goodness and peace of Christ, the same Christ who said: Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven? When we fail in that, our fall is mighty. When people find out that we, who claim to stand up for Christ and his world and his righteousness, fail to protect the most vulnerable and lie to protect a corrupt institutional structure, we have failed mightily.
    What are we supposed to stand for? My brothers, we are supposed to stand for integrity. We are supposed to stand for justice; we are supposed to stand for Truth, the Truth that is Jesus Christ. And if we are going to stand for integrity and justice and Truth, then we must be, first and foremost in our world today, men of healing. So I say: aim your formational goals in this direction. Become men of healing.
    The priest is called to healing or service leadership and cultic leadership; healing leadership for the sake of cultic leadership. The priest leads by confecting the Eucharist in the exercise of his unique power. The Eucharist makes the Church and thus is the full manifestation of the new condition of humanity. The Eucharist is the source of human success in its striving to touch the transcendent, to grasp the things of heaven in a way the Icarian pretense of human pride could not.
    If the priest is set apart in Holy Orders from all the others who have been set apart in Baptism, his status is for healing and service in the cultic action of the constitutive Eucharist. Like Joshua, the priest fights against the citadels of the compromised expectations of our condition and opens the gates of grace, not for his own sense of victory, but to feed a hungry people left to wander the desert. The priest has a dignity that is manifested in his willingness to fight for the people, even as Joshua railed against the walls of Jericho, even as Christ fought, all the way to Calvary.
    The priest has a dignity that is bound up with the fate of the people. The priest has a dignity that is directed always over the shoulder to encourage a people moving forward freed from the burdens of the earth. The priest has a dignity that is not his own, a dignity that rightly belongs to Christ. The priest has a dignity that is always emptying itself like the breast blood of the pelican to give life to others. The priest has a dignity rooted in sacrifice. The priest has a dignity that bridges the fully human and the fully divine.
    The priest has a dignity that carries the people on his shoulders so that they can have a better look at that rich valley, that Promised Land, that God has called us to in calling us his sons and daughters, brothers and sisters in our dear Lord, Jesus Christ. The priest has a dignity that serves as a living icon of that dignity to which we are all called. The priest has a dignity that is not his own. The priest is not his own. The priest is for God and the priest is for us. Yet, in some places, that dignity has been ruined.
    When we examine the condition of the holy priesthood today, we must say that in its character, in its essence, there is no compromise to the priesthood. The priesthood today is what Christ realized it to be in the institution of the sacrament of Holy Orders on the night he was betrayed. The priesthood, in essence, is what it is and its inherent dignity is complete and inviolate. But in our time of trouble, the perception of the dignity of the priest is another story.
    The essence of the priesthood is safeguarded by the matter and form of the sacrament and the assurances of apostolic succession. The perception of that dignity, however, is undoubtedly compromised. What, or perhaps who, has compromised the perception of the dignity of the priesthood? It is true that this perception has been assailed in the pretensions of an overweening, media-saturated culture. But let us not place the blame completely out there. The loss of respect experienced by the priesthood is not only the product of persecution; it is the product of our own folly.
    What compromises the dignity of the priesthood? First, I would say a lack of personal character on the part of priests. All of us are the products of our environment. Many of us have been raised in a highly commercialized culture in which we were told that we can have everything. We cannot. The character of the priest is dependent upon his ability to understand his nature, his function, and his place in the social and ecclesial order. The character of the priest is compromised when he tries to have his cake and eat it, too. It is compromised when he remains with one foot in the world of the so-called “secular” and another in the sacred.
    It is compromised when it fails to reach its true potential in Christ because the priest is engaged in other activities that begin to take precedence over his life of prayer and service. The character of the priest is compromised when he fails to accept completely who he is, when he tries to hold on to that which is not priesthood. It is compromised when he tries to live an ontological lie, when he brackets in any way his essence for the convenience or pleasures inherent in not bearing the heavy responsibilities of the priesthood.
    Let me give some more concrete examples. The priest is compromised when he is lazy. Laziness is a trait that has to be overcome in a serious way because we live in a culture of leisure. It is a false leisure. All of us have the necessity, I would say the responsibility, to recreate in the truest sense of the word. That is not the question.
    Laziness is doing what I need to do to get by and nothing more. It is fulfilling obligations at the bare minimum in order to do what I want to do. The lazy priest rushes from Mass in order to catch the game or his show. The lazy priest abandons the confessional to do something fun. The work ethic in our culture has been severely compromised by the cult of leisure. We work not to fulfill a mission, but to have the resources to spend on having fun. Laziness eventually overwhelms the priest, making him a mere functionary.
    God can use the mere functionary character of his priesthood, but at what price to his own dignity and at what cost to his reputation? The lazy priest makes excuses not to go to the hospital, the nursing home, not to make communion calls. He “says” Mass. He gets homilies off the internet. He gives lip service to his responsibilities so he can do what he wants. The lazy priest is no leader. Neither is he a follower. He is a lounger and thus compromises the dignity of which he is possessed. The lazy priest holds the treasure of his priesthood in a reclining chair. Then he wonders why no one shows him the proper deference due his office. After all, he has sacrificed so much to be a priest.
    The perception of the dignity of the priest is compromised also by crudeness. This can take several forms. One is poor hygiene and poor grooming. The priest looks slovenly and then protests that his appearance is the result of a commitment to evangelical poverty. This is nonsense. While we may reject the Wesleyan axiom that cleanliness is next to godliness, cleanliness is respectful. I show respect for the people I meet by appearing clean-shaven and not reeking of body odor.
    Crudeness can also take the form of impropriety of speech. The use of crude and shocking language as a matter of course is not prophetic; it is ignorant. It demonstrates a lack of humanity, particularly when it is directed to a sexually exploitative purpose. No one can take the celibate commitment of a priest seriously when he is continually using foul language about women and telling off-color jokes. Refinement of speech is not un-manly; it is human.
    Another form of crudeness is a lack of manliness. That may sound somewhat contradictory but I would say that true manliness, as expressed in the priesthood is something we might find ourselves lacking. What is manliness? I think it is the ability to truly be a man, to be strong, to be forthright, to be Truthful but also to show emotion, to commiserate with others, to truly and authentically love others. Manliness is compromised by false senses of the masculine, usually lived out in little boudoirs of the masculine ideal, the drinking of cocktails and idle speculation on the sexual identity of others in the community. Those who hold secret conclaves to debate others’ sexual identity are not men, they are voyeurs. My Great Aunt Pearl had more manliness in her patent leather pocketbook that those men who spend their lives obsessing about the sexual identity of other men. Such scandalous calumnies have no place in religious life. Those that spread them have no place in priestly life, because their character does not exhibit manliness, a healthy appropriation of which is necessary for priestly life. 
    Another means of compromising the inherent dignity of the priesthood is the expression of an anti-intellectual bias. We wonder, even aloud, about the necessity of the study that we undertake here for our future pastoral engagements. I say, if you do not take your studies seriously, even if you are not the best student, if you do not take seriously the need to know the teachings of the Church and the Tradition, I hope to God you never have any parishioners to inflect your ignorant and unformulated opinions upon.
    The damage wrought by the material heresy of what they claim as well-meaning, anti-intellectual priests is real and devastating to the fabric of the Body of Christ. The cavalier attitude that some priests take toward doctrine is not only shocking; it is sinful. As priests, we bear a tremendous responsibility for the orthodoxy of the Christian people, and that orthodoxy cannot be of our own construction. It must be forged and forged hard at the anvil of the Church’s intellectual life, a life to which all of us, no matter our native talents, have access.
    One manifestation of this anti-intellectual attitude is cultural narrowness. A cultural perspective that is woven together only from distended threads of popular music, the internet, social networking, electronic games, commercial television, etc. is not likely to weave a tapestry of inspiration. A cultural bias that is earthbound is not going to offer us the opportunities for cultivating such practicalities as a celibate life or a literate imagination for preaching and teaching.
    It is commonplace in our society to disdain higher culture. We scoff at those who care about art, music, literature and theater. We laugh at the pretensions of those who seek the things that are above. And yet, it is these things that have the potential to unite us as a people by appealing to our better selves, whereas the manifestations of a low fanciful culture merely reinforce the self-gratification and selfishness that tear at the fiber of the Body of Christ.
    The dignity of the priesthood is compromised by too close an identification with popular culture. We think that “being in touch” with the world is inspirational to our youth. I would suggest that familiarity breeds contempt and that young people are more often inspired by alternatives to the dead-end culture that surrounds them.
    Another means by which the perception of the dignity of the priesthood is jeopardized is a lack of engagement with the spiritual life. An old adage in the world of formation is that after ordination, the prayer life is the first thing to go. Outside the structures of seminary life, the priest simply cannot find the time or the energy to pray. We make excuses for neglecting the breviary and the holy hour. We live into falsehoods such as: “my work is my prayer.” We discover, all of a sudden, that we are burnt out and the pastoral life has little meaning.
    Why should it if we have discarded the essential relationship with God expressed in prayer that gives meaning to our pastoral engagement? We fool ourselves if we do not think prayer is the key to priestly life and service. We fool ourselves here if we are not convinced that a dedication to prayer is the most important thing for me to do. We fool ourselves if we believe that people do not know when we no longer pray, when our spiritual life is not only dry, but dead. We compromise the dignity of the priesthood when we continue to present ourselves as that bridge between heaven and earth and fail to acknowledge that the bond has been broken by our lack of prayer.
    Finally, I would like to mention the sin that is rank clericalism. I use this expression “rank clericalism” intentionally. An authentic clerical spirit recognizes the uniqueness of the vocation and accepts the responsibility that that uniqueness necessitates. Rank clericalism claims privilege without responsibility. Rank clericalism is more about the dress than the service. Rank clericalism insists upon respect without offering. Rank clericalism is all about the look of the thing and nothing about the substance of the thing. Rank clericalism legislates according to tastes. Rank clericalism exercises power without consultation. This kind of clericalism destroys perceptions of the dignity of the priesthood by being all about me.
    But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
    As priests, we cannot be the instruments of hindering others’ relationship with God. We are in need of that healing. We will become accustomed to that healing when we start thinking as men of God and stop thinking as men solely concerned with self. This is for our good and the good of our Church in troubled times. So I speak to you as though you are already priests: Know what the holy priesthood is and live it. Live it now.

     Image Source

    Posted by
    Labels: Catholic Rector Seminary




  4. Friday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Times
    Sunday, October 7, 2018
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.
    I’ll bet the disciples eyes popped out of their heads. Not because Jesus was fighting the Pharisees, they were used to that. Not because Jesus was restating some of their traditional teachings, that too was old stuff. I’ll bet their eyes were popping out of their heads because, really for the first time, Jesus is insisting that the behavior of his disciples, his disciples actions, they must be more strict, even holier than the teachings of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were this stuck-up, holier than thou little group who snubbed their noses at Jesus’ ragtag followers. EWW! The Pharisees were like the mean girls in Jesus’ high school for discipleship. They had it all, they knew it all and nobody, NOBODY really measured up to their expectations, their high values and their ways of doing things. But throughout his ministry, Jesus has certainly given them the old eschatological one-two. Their rules were antiquated. They were old maid aunts, whose ways of the world were outdated. They were hypocrites, tellers but not doers of the Law. They put others down while posting themselves on a pedestal. And the disciples loved Jesus little digs, his jibes. The folks who followed Jesus had no desire to be a part of the Pharisees world, it was too elitist and too uppity, and besides, it was too hard, at least if you followed the rules.
    Except now. The Pharisees interpretation of the marriage Law seemed fine, until Jesus puts his nose in it.
    Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.
    One wife, no divorce, no out, no escape clause, no prenup. Keep your spouse, remain together for life, be a part of each other through whatever thick or thin one can conceivably imagine. It is all too much, all to taxing. For once, Jesus is more strict than the Pharisees and that is, a bit, troubling.
    What about us? Well, first of all, I would say this is a hard passage to preach in our chapel here. By taking the short version of the Gospel this morning, we leave behind the little children quote from the longer version. All we have is the marriage conundrum and for us, marriage means weddings, persnickety brides, their more persnickety mothers, drunken groomsmen, drunken bridesmaids, all decked out in pastel colors and rented tuxes whose sole purpose in life is to make the priest miserable. Weddings are awful and trying to keep some semblance of holiness in a sacrament where people may not care all that much is challenging.
    We know how the Church understands marriage. We know how the Church understands this passage:
    Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.
    But we also know the statistics. We know that Catholic incidence of divorce and remarriage is just as high as that of say, atheists. We know that our Church tribunals are overflowing with cases of folks who believe this stellar law of God’s providential love for humanity never applied in their situation. They did not have proper assent. They were compromised in some way. And sometimes that is true. A great deal of your priesthood is going to be spent explaining the Church’s understanding of the sanctity of marriage and getting people into marriage, and another big chunk of it is going to be spent helping them get out of marriages they feel were untenable for them from the start. Too harsh? I don’t think so. What I’m saying is that the message of Jesus is as hard for us to hear as it was for those earlier disciples. Like them we must be murmuring to ourselves, “Are you nuts, Mr. Messiah?” or chuckling to ourselves, “You, Mr. Jesus, just don’t understand how things work in the wicked old world.”
    Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.
    I wonder though, I wonder if Jesus hard message may have found some resonance not only in his time but in ours as well. Jesus’ laxity with the disciples over certain rules of faith, following the Sabbath ideals, pots and pans, whatever, Jesus’ relaxation of certain of the truly ancient rules of the Law, and his strictness in other areas, may have been setting them up for something. Maybe Jesus is saying: You, my dear disciples are now entering a different world, a world in which adulterers are forgiven and tax-collectors are welcomed into your home. Here is a new world where everyone sits down at the table together, in which old faults are put aside and forgiven. In which the dirty and the lame become clean and walk. In which lepers leap and the blind become visionaries. Here is a new world in which folks are raised from the dead, God is crucified, people speak in different languages at the drop of a hat. And how is this possible? It is possible because in Christ, God has joined something together. God has joined himself to the human condition. God has touched our weakness with his glory. God has invested himself forthright in the human problem. God has come among us as a weak and helpless baby, born to poor people, a barefoot man who traverses the highways of the human condition. God has come among us not afraid of weakness but reveling in weakness, saturated in weakness, because he loves us so much, he wanted to feel what we feel, suffer what we suffer, and he did, pain and hunger and thirst and life and joy and laughter and death. Yes, even death on a cross. God did that, and God is doing that because he wanted to be joined to us and so I say:
    Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.
    So often and for so long in the Church we have wrestled with the idea that marriage is something inferior, that marriage is for those who cannot take the rigors of a manly celibacy, whatever that means. Marriage is for the masses while saying Masses are for the elite. Well, that is BS (which stands for baloney and silliness). Marriage is our stamp on immortality. Marriage is the sacrament of God’s consecration with us. Marriage is the everlasting sign of God’s commitment to us. Marriage is held sacred because we must find a way to conform our lives, our celibate lives, to God’s ideal in marriage.
    Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.
    We must look to the struggles of the married couple to find meaning for our struggles. We must look to the heartache which husbands and wives endure to comprehend our pain. We must see in the joys of being parents, and the trials of being parents, a pattern for our spiritual fatherhood. We don’t have a more exalted vocation than married couples. I would say we are the same, both consecrated by Christ, in his image, in his likeness, in his intimate bond with the Father. Of course, I have never been a biological father, but I do know what I believe to be the essence of both their vocation and my vocation, a desire to suffer with you, to comfort you in your pain, to understand, to challenge and encourage. That vocation too comes from God. Our bond comes from God. Our ingathering here comes from God, and I say this:
    Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.
     Image Source

    Posted by
    Labels: Catholic Homilies Rector Seminary




  5. Overseers Presentation
    October 5, 2018
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    As all of you “old hands” know, this is usually the time I take each year to go over the numbers. This is the part where I smile and tell you how wonderful things are, how the new seminarians and graduate students are adjusting to the life of the community, how many new deacon programs we are starting and all of that.
    I am not going to do that sort of thing this year. You have your folders and you have the reports of each division. In my estimation, for an institution such as ours, it is vitally important for us to address head-on the elephant in the room; that is the current abuse crisis that is threatening the Church. I was shocked a few weeks ago when a story came out about an archbishop speaking to a group of seminarians who stated that “we have a bigger agenda than to be distracted by all of this.”
    I don’t know if the quote is accurate. I don’t know if it is taken out of context. I do know that it seems to be somewhat “tone deaf” in a Church where people are hurting and leaving, in a Church where people are confused and doubtful. If would also seem to be a very irresponsible thing to say to a group of seminarians, men who are struggling to support and remain faithful to a Church where some leaders, certainly not all, seem to care very little for that Church’s reputation.
    What is the current situation we are facing? How is it different from what we have already seen? The “spotlight” was first turned significantly on the Church in 2002. At that time, dioceses and religious communities were struggling as various stories came forth about abuse situations, most involving priests and many, if not most, involving minors, both male and female. This was a difficult time for the Church.
    In terms of study, the bishops commissioned what is today referred to as the John Jay Report.  Produced by the John Jay School of Criminal Studies, the report found that during a period of 52 years, from 1950 to 2002, over 10,000 persons had made allegations of child sexual abuse. (Remember that this was the focus in 2002.) These accusations affected about 2 percent of the clergy in the United States. Of the accused, however, very few (about 6 percent) were convicted.
    Looking at a timeline, it was discovered that the number of allegations increased in the 1960s, peaked in the 1970s, declined in the ’80s and settled in the 1990s. As it was designed, the report offers many statistics, some of which may be accurate today, some of which may be called into question today. The study goes on to offer some profile of the abuse scenarios. It found that, “Like in the general population, child sex abuse in the Catholic Church appears to be committed by men close to the children they allegedly abuse.” And, “many (abusers) appear to use grooming tactics to entice children into complying with the abuse, and the abuse occurs in the home of the alleged abuser or victim.”
    The study characterized these enticements as actions such as buying the minor gifts, letting the victim drive a car and taking youths to sporting events. The most frequent context for abuse was a social event, and many priests socialized with the families of victims. Abuses occurred in a variety of places, with the most common being the residence of the priest. When looking at victims, 81% were male, 22% were younger than age 10. The kinds of abuse ranged from inappropriate touching to penetration.
    Concomitant to the Jay Report, the USCCB bishops produced the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. This document is often referred to as the “Dallas Charter.” The focus of the Charter was the provision of a safe environment for young people in the life of the Church. The bishops adopted, at this time, a series of uniform procedures relating to accusations of misconduct among priests. This policy has been known as the “zero tolerance” policy, and it necessitates the removal of a priest from active ministry if he is accused of misconduct until an investigation can be undertaken. At the time, a handful of bishops objected that the rules were too strict, saying that in some cases of a single violation long ago, a priest should have an opportunity to serve in ministry.  The results of this scenario were played out again in the Evansville papers a few weeks ago.
    The outcome of the Dallas Charter for seminaries was the necessity of detaining a dismissed seminarian from entering another seminary for a period of time. I have spent a great deal of energy through the years fighting seminaries that chose purposefully not to follow these rules. Others have criticized the Charter because it does not deal specifically with the consequences for bishops who are accused. Bishops are the overseers of the process and thereby do not fall under the particular outcomes envisioned for the priests. Some have claimed, and indeed are now claiming more vocally, that this is unfair. If a bishop is accused, they say, he must step down until his name is cleared. Another area not dealt with adequately in previous policies is the consequence of covering up allegations. This is an area where the bishops are under particular scrutiny today.
    How have these issues been addressed and what is the condition of the Church, now, 16 years after the 2002 scandal? First of all, dioceses, as far as they have been able, have followed the Charter in letter, if not always in spirit. Most dioceses have put programs in place, have dealt with the crisis in a forthright manner and are currently participating in significant ways. For the most part.
    There are, however, dioceses that continue to operate on the “internal” business model, holding onto records, knowing things that they hope do not come out, etc. Bishops, whose personal failures in this regard are not dealt with in the Charter, have used the “out” given them to “fight” allegations made against them, which were not available to similarly accused priests. Likewise, civil authorities’ responses to abuse allegations have been uneven, sometimes, even winking at the Charter. Catholics in the pews, for the most part following the 2002 crisis, have remained faithful to the Church. Today, however, I believe many young people, some of whom are already holding on to Church observance by a thread, may be propelled over the edge to leave the Church. I fear it may be the case.
    What about our priests? Going back to the statistics, only a handful of the clergy are directly involved in these allegations and many of them from times in the distant past. That does not change, however, how people are thinking about priests today. We know that in years past, being a priest, becoming a priest, was the greatest vocation a young man could aspire to. Today, I would say it is largely a battle. I can also say this, however, judging by the seminarians at Saint Meinrad. These men are courageous, intelligent, faithful and devout men. It is my concern that they understand, unflinchingly, the situation in the Church today and move forward, healing and caring for a wounded people.
    How should this be accomplished? I return now to the situation the Church faced in 2002. The problem existed, or so we were told at the time, with priests. This was both true and not true. Certainly, the spotlight was on priests in this scenario, but bishops were also responsible. In fact, in the aftermath of the scenario, several bishops were removed at that time. I think of the dioceses of Lexington and Knoxville.  It is true that priests were basically involved and so, in its wisdom, the Vatican decided to embark upon a visitation of seminaries.
    It seemed like a logical move. It asked important questions such as: Were there deficiencies in seminary formation? Were there problems with the screening process? There was a great deal of energy expended at that time on examining seminaries. We here at Saint Meinrad, likewise, underwent an investigation. Nothing was found. Some adjustments were made here, including the necessity of teaching Latin, some staffing changes, but overall very little. In recent weeks, there has been some call on the part of some “commentators” in the Church to visit seminaries again.
    Let me say this outright. Saint Meinrad and other seminaries that follow the guidelines and are attempting to do things according to plan, and furthermore to do them creatively, are not the problem. I would add, however, that there are some seminaries that are not following the plan and are not submitting themselves to the guidelines of the USCCB and the Vatican. Some of these seminaries do not believe, for example, that psychological testing is important. Some do not believe that they are required to follow the guidelines by consulting other seminaries a student has attended when matriculating into a new seminary. These lax seminaries are problematic, but they do not indicate that the Church’s current challenges are seminary based.
    In the aftermath of seminary visitations, what were we told? We were told that we needed to clamp down on “outside” influences in seminary life. The seminary should be a refined, cocoon-like environment, a hothouse of formation. We should not allow women to be overly influential in seminary formation.  We should not allow lay people to be too prominent in formation. We should have only priests doing this or that. I think that is humorous, since the very bishops who have called for an “all priest” environment seem quite unwilling to offer priests either for graduate studies or for work in the seminary. We tried to balance our structures to accommodate these requirements and these perceived values.
    Now we are told that we need more lay people around. Cardinal Ouliette says we need more women around. The Congregation for the Clergy encourages bishops to provide more priests for seminary work. What are we to do? Are we to respond to this new request, knowing that in a few years the ideological tide may turn again and we will go back to a highly clerical environment? It is difficult to navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of this issue. Seminaries are told: Provide us with the very best, but, of course, we don’t want to pay for it.
    There are other problems as well. There are problems in our dioceses. Dioceses are struggling today with many issues that we have rehearsed in this group before. Dioceses are almost universally dealing with parish restructuring, with a perceived clergy shortage, with growing cultural diversity, with an, at times, antiquated school system, with generational problems, to name just a few. Dioceses, however, are also dealing with a clericalized culture that is highly problematic in the current climate. I would say that many priests in many places know many things that they have never spoken about, and not just those things they have heard in the privileged context of confession. Priests know things, but they don’t talk.
    Likewise, religious communities, many of which are struggling to stay afloat with dwindling numbers and resources. Many communities of men and women are in shutdown mode. This is the reality. One thing we do know is that the Church can no longer rely upon the authentic witness of religious sisters, brothers and priests to provide good role models at the level they once did. The ethos of the various religious charisms is being lost in the Church today, at least as a regular contributor. I would add to this that the ethos of the diocesan priest is one still being debated and ironed out.
    What about the bishops themselves? Here is what I know from personal experience. Our bishops, for the most part, like our priests, are good men. They are holy men. They are learned men. They are good pastors. They come from hardy priestly stock. I would say that they are also suffering men. They are men who find themselves in dioceses, having been cut off from familial and presbyteral support systems that they relied on in their lives as pastors, lonely and sometimes faltering. We seldom think about how we can support our bishops as people, as struggling men with real needs. Our bishops, who wanted nothing more when they were ordained than to serve God’s people at the altar, in the hospital, in the confessional, now find themselves inundated with spreadsheets, lawsuits, and anger from almost every corner. They have no peers in dioceses (for the most part) and their peers in other dioceses are also completely inundated with crisis and hardship. I can tell you this: I love our bishops and I pray for them, each of them by name every day. Is that to say I don’t recognize it if they make mistakes? Not at all, because of their place in the Church, they must be held even more accountable. They are bishops, but they are also men.
    Let me now turn in this long manifesto to some additional topics of concern in this crisis of abuse and cover-up. I would like to begin by offering a few reflections on what I see as mistaken ideas in the current situation. The first mistaken idea is that all of this is about celibacy. This is not about celibacy. A discussion of the theological importance, the relevance, of celibacy is a necessary one in the life of the Church. The reality of sexual abuse is not an argument against celibacy. I recently received a letter from a Saint Meinrad alumnus. In the letter, he said this:
    Earlier this year, I had my first experiences attending an Anthiochean Orthodox Church – I just fell in love with it; the liturgy had such spiritual depth. Then I came across a site for victims of abuse by Orthodox clergy – and was absolutely horrified – and this by a church which allows its priests to be married. Under the “convicted” names, there were sixty-nine alone listed whose names began with “a”[ … ] (when questioned about this a priest responded) There are going to be sinners.
                I mention this man’s letter because it demonstrates a point. I receive many letters and many responses to, for example, our appeal letters, that are critical of the Church. Some of these promote the idea that celibacy is a cause of the crisis. It is simply not true. I do believe that some priests are not able to live the celibate life. I do believe, along with the late Cardinal Francis George, that a vocation to celibacy needs to be foremost in the discernment of a vocation to the priesthood. I do not believe that celibacy can be seen as an “undesirable” condition for priestly service. I also know that celibacy is difficult. It is difficult but not impossible. In our formation program, we must promote two things: First is the importance of priestly celibacy, its significance in Church life, and second, the practical ways by which celibacy can be lived.
    I am sick to death of language about celibacy that is so spiritually sugar-coated that it means nothing. Our failure to talk about sex, sexual realities, sexual struggles in the Church among we priests, is part of our current problem. As priests, we not only remain thoroughly sexual beings, but sexuality, inter-personality is our way of exercising our priesthood. Genital relationships in marriage are only a part of our sexual identity. I am exercising my authentic sexuality in every interpersonal relationship I have. I am expressing my sexuality in worlds as mundane as table conversation and as profound as sacramental encounter. What does this look like in daily life? St. Paul says:
    The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
    Healthy sexuality for the priest looks like the joy of getting up in the morning, or perhaps more in keeping with our context here, the joy of staying up late, not to revel in our own solitude, and whatever activities that solitude begets, but to be with others, to interchange with others, to be there for others, to serve others. Is that to say that we introverts are at a distinct disadvantage here? Not at all. What we introverts lack in energy, I would say, we make up for in depth. We want to be there deeply for others, to suffer with others, to be an offering for others, not too many at a time, but then, it doesn’t take too many; it only takes one. Extroverts live out their sexuality in the crowds. They love the crowds. That, too, is good ministry. That, too, is the work of God. Our sexuality, our relationality, is comprised of offering what we have as a gift and giving it generously no matter what form it takes.
    Sexual energy in diocesan life gets lived out in the thousand events of the day. Here is something to bear in mind for the priest and future priest. My encounters during the day are predicated on two things. The first is my own mood, my own interest, my own energy, my own investment of time. How willing am I to compromise mood? How willing am I to chasten my interests? How willing am I to expend energy, perhaps at the end of the day, when I think I have nothing left to give? What investment of time am I willing to make? That is the first part, but the second part is more tricky. What does the other need? How often I have found myself on a standard end-of-day walkabout and popping my head into someone’s open door, I have discovered need. There is a phone call just received. There is a temptation just overcome. There is pain or there is sorrow. There is just confusion.
    Here is where my interests and my energy meet their need. And of course, as in any exchange, we may like a bit of reciprocation but we do not count on it. We are called to serve, not to be served. We are called to give and not receive. We are called to pour out our lives, even late at night and for what, the building up of ourselves, our egos? Certainly not, unless we have learned the key to a healthy sexuality, unless myself and my ego are dependent upon service and that alone. I become my own congratulations, by living my life in integrity and not for gain. Gain is in the service, not in the reward for service.
    A second aspect of our sexuality is our need to encounter in a meaningful way. Self-understanding and knowledge of the world is essential to a fruitful priesthood. In other words, good priesthood, built upon a solid foundation of celibacy, is the fruit of wisdom. Wisdom is merely the understanding of the various types of encounter that we meet. What are these encounters?
    First, there is an encounter with yourself. Of all the people in the world, please do not lie to yourself. Do not tell lies to yourself about yourself. Will this lead to suffering, a shivering, self-awareness? It most certainly will, but our encounters with the souls of others, that intimate encounter, must proceed from an honest place in ourselves.
    The worst kind of co-dependence and enmeshment is the one who uses a privileged spiritual relationship to fulfill one’s own need, a need about which they are not honest with themselves or with the other. If you are falling in love with a parishioner, for God’s sake do not compound the problem by trying to be a priest to her. Do not confuse in her mind your infatuation and the service of Christ in the Gospel. 
    Celibacy, chastity, prepares me to look into the mirror and not only understand what I see, but like what I see, warts and all. The authentic and truthful encounter with myself allows me to encounter the other in all honesty. In all honesty, I know who I am; in all honesty, I hope to look to you. Chastity prepares us for this encounter by stripping away any false ideals of romanticism, false understandings of what our relationship is about. We encounter the other. I encounter you, also, when I am willing to accept you as you are, in your weakness, in your doubt and in your pain. I want to accept you as you are. I want to lead you someplace else, to a place of peace, a place of true personal justice.
    I can tell you this: The greatest pain I feel in life is to experience your pain and to know that I have no power to take it away. I see your pain probably closer than you realize, and it hurts that you must live there. Every pastor knows this. Every confessor knows this. There is nothing more heartbreaking than to hear confessions week after week and know that, for some internal obstacle, the penitent cannot accept God’s love and forgiveness, that the confessional is not a place of peace but a place to rehearse their deepest sense of unworthiness, week after week. Here we must rely on God’s grace. Here we must depend upon his mercy.
    Encounter with self and encounter with the other leads to a real encounter with the Church, not in its institutional forms, its bureaucracy, its codes of conduct, but to the Church living and breathing in its members. An encounter with the Church is not an encounter with perfection. It is, rather, an encounter with the perfection that comes to be in the realization of brokenness. Encounter with the Church is an encounter with the broken Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
    Encounter with the Church is encounter with his blood, poured out in the Mass certainly, but also poured out in the streets of the world, in our streets, in the violence that sometimes overwhelms us. Encounter with the Church is encounter with God in prayer, and that encounter is not always neat and formal. Sometimes our prayer is raw. Sometimes our prayer is a pouring out of sweat and blood, just as Jesus experienced on the cross. Sometimes our prayer is hoarse whispers, realizations from the back of our throats that come from that vacant place that celibacy and chastity have forged.
    If that, in my opinion, is what this crisis is not, we must ask ourselves, at the core, what it is. To me: This is a POWER issue; more precisely, it is a false power issue. Speaking in theological terms, we must admit that priests have power. They have the power to confect and the power to provide for the spiritual needs, the real spiritual needs, of people through Eucharist, through confession, through anointing. Power is real in the Church and priests have, in these sacramental ways, unlimited power. Priests have this power and yet, in many ways, they are not given the tools for handling this power. Every crisis we face in the Church today, from priests, bishops, whomever, every crisis is generated around the fact that there is an understanding of the power of the priest, and the priest does not know how to exercise that power in a humble and meaningful way.
    And so he lords his opinions over people. He makes his opinions about liturgy, for example, divine law. He refuses to listen to good counsel from the laity. He thinks that he can cover up misconduct, his own or others’, because he is invincible. He exists in a clerical world that often supports this kind of behavior and thinking. Many times, in previous formation scenarios, these priests suffered from a kind of intellectual (and sometimes somatic) narcissism. In my years as rector, I have come to understand one thing: narcissism is absolutely incompatible with the priesthood. Thinking of one’s self as god almighty is incompatible.
    We know that a clinical diagnosis of narcissism as a personality disorder is relatively rare. Residual narcissism, however, is much more prevalent and is often the outcome of the conditioning of a culture bent on radical individualism and selfishness. Clerical circles seem to be awakening to the effects of narcissism in the lives of priests in ways previously unrecognized. Very simply, narcissism is the inability to view the world outside of one’s self. It is chronic selfishness, at times, seemingly incurable self-reference. Everything in my worldview proceeds from my particular interests or the ways in which phenomena impact me.
    Everything must be created in my image; all activities should center on me. At some level, we find chronic narcissism humorous. The old adage of, “let’s stop talking about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think of me?” is a bit tired, but certainly also has a ring of truth in it. Narcissism, when it can be overcome, is very difficult to overcome. It lies at the heart of other modern chronic conditions, such as pornography and even overweening social networking. Narcissism, by its nature threatens relationships. Narcissism is problematic for the average person; it is fatal to priesthood. A person with chronic narcissistic tendencies cannot be a priest because priesthood requires a perspective of the other, a regard for the other, a respect for the other.
    Priesthood is about compassion, suffering with the other. A personality that allows for neither suffering nor the other cannot effectively be a priest. Narcissists cannot make a meaningful promise of obedience because there is no ability to truly listen and respect someone else. The narcissist may look obedient – he may even look hypervigilant in obedience, but it only works as long as he is satisfied with the outcome. Any challenge to the narcissistic worldview and the priest revolts. Narcissism has many forms, but intellectual narcissism is perhaps the most dangerous for the priest. I know more than anyone else. I know better than anyone, including my bishop, including the Church, including Christ.
    I believe that this description goes a long way in diagnosing part of our abuse crisis. In this crisis, we have priests who feel powerless because of illness and given no way of helping them deal with illness. They then assert their lack of power over those who are helpless. I also believe that this kind of personality problem was not dealt with in previous generations of seminary formation. We did not adequately screen candidates. We disdained the usefulness of psychology. We spiritualized problems that were not spiritual, but mental. We turned a blind eye to misbehavior in an era when the power of the priest was not questioned. And everyone did this, brother priests, parishioners, law enforcement, bishops, everyone.
    Now, what must we do here? I would see our tasks as multifaceted and difficult. That is all the more reason for us to undertake them. First, I think it is the duty of this seminary and school of theology to train students away from inauthentic clerical culture. I cannot tell you how sick I am of thoughts about priestly life and culture that center on the best scotch and the best cigars. Ideals of clerical privilege are bred of overwrought desires to “soften the blow” of priestly service by creating pockets of self-comfort.
    Authentic clerical culture must depend on prayer, on sacrifice, on service, on bleeding oneself dry in caring for others. I have said many times that I hope to drop dead at the altar. I can tell you that is how I focus my comments to these men. We must do that or our credibility will be lost in a haze of cigar smoke. I believe it is essential to prepare these men to tell the truth about everything. We must not rely on the internal forum as a shelter for hiding problems that must be dealt with publically, for the good of the Church. We cannot have seminarians here who try to submarine their way through seminary so they can promote a vision of the Church that is both inauthentic and unhealthy in so many ways. If it was authentic and healthy, they would proclaim it from the housetops. We must have good processes for dealing with problems and questions. We cannot be shy about addressing these questions full on. If an accusation is made, it must be dealt with promptly and thoroughly, but also charitably. There is a great deal more I could say about these questions, and that will undoubtedly come in future talks.
    In conclusion, I would like to mention a book I have recently read and close with some suggestions for the way in which this body can assist us as we move forward. One of my favorite authors is Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her various biographies about great leaders have been very inspiriting to me through the years – Lincoln, the Roosevelts. Her latest book is called Leadership in Turbulent Times. Frankly, I am somewhat smitten with it. She is very forward in her discussion of how times of fracture and fear must make true leaders even bolder.
    I mention the book only to focus on one of her many conclusions, and that is, a leader, or an institution, is never judged in the long run on how well it functions in ordinary time. We are going to be judged by how well we handle ourselves in times of trouble, and doubt and grave difficulty. In other words, this is the time for us to stand strong as an institution and to help guide and direct the course of our Church through these difficult times. You, Overseers, are our partners in this enterprise, and I look to you for support and good counsel in the months and years ahead. My experience has certainly been that this is something upon which I cannot only rely, but find true personal support in, support in building up the Church, day by day, stone by stone, into that heavenly Jerusalem.


    Image Source
    Posted by
    Labels: Catholic Rector Seminary




  6. Oblate Conference: The Domestic Church
    September 22, 2018
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    When the Benedictine movement was established in the sixth-century, the signs of the times read one thing: Trouble. Benedict established the ideals of the Benedictine ethos in times of trouble, in times of social and political upheaval. Today we offer the quaint expression “barbarian invasions” to name this movement in Europe.

    It means very little to us today, but at the time, the barbarian invasions signaled the wholesale destruction of culture, the breaking apart of the Roman Empire, of its political and social ideals, of its cultural institutions, its education systems, and its literary world. Whole swaths of intellectual history preserved by the Romans were lost, including the works of historians, philosophers, poets and playwrights.

    Into this morass of violence and normlessness, Benedict came to provide, as far as possible, an oasis of sanity and tradition to a world careening out of control. What was the Benedictine ideal? How can we describe it? I believe St. Benedict understood that Christian identity and Christian practice must be at the very heart of the ideals of the Church.

    He also understood that this identity and this practice must be total; it must encompass every aspect of the human person. It must be something that one wakes with in the morning and goes to bed with at night. Christian identity and Christian practice meant informing not only MY life, but that of all I might encounter through my witness to the world. It was the new evangelization of the sixth century.

    Benedict also understood what we today refer to as the domestic church, the ideal of a church that exists not only within the parameters of formal worship, but also within the ideals of daily living. Is this not also the ideal of Benedictine oblation, of living the realities of discipleship in the world? There can be little doubt that there is need for such a witness today.

    Like Benedict, we are living in difficult times. We are living in times of pain and scandal for the Church. We are being challenged every day to forage through the mess of what we are almost hourly encountering in unfolding problems for the institution. Like Benedict’s own time, we are living in a world of normlessness, of confusion, and part of that mess lies squarely in the institution of the Church. How can we Benedictines help our Church (and our world) to heal?

    The State of the Domestic Church Today: A U.S .Perspective

    Examining the ideals of the domestic church in a contemporary U.S. perspective, one must keep in mind the foundational principles of U.S. culture, particularly the separation of church and state. This ideal has afforded U.S. Catholics a great deal of freedom from a historical point of view, but it may also have had an eroding effect on the ideals of Church as understood by classical ecclesiology, that is, the full integration of Church into the social order.

    For many of us, the Church is not a daily reality, but a place to go for a very limited time on Saturday or Sunday. The Church gives you a 45-minute hint of spirituality once a week and you are on your way. We do not necessarily think of our parishes as a place to spend time, much less as places that offer us something real to take into the world.

    Our Fr. Cyprian Davis, of happy memory, once said that the institution of the Church must be thought of as a train station, a place to pull in to take on new passengers and dispatch others, refuel and be on our way. Being on our way, engaging the world with Christian values, understanding how that “fuel” of that station informs every action of that way, these are the realities that we must attend to most carefully in cultivating discipleship. But, when we view our “state” responsibilities as something so removed from Church, we are left with a dilemma: How can we be faithful Christians in the world, how can we live our values, cultivated in Church “out there”?

    Another challenge for the domestic church in contemporary U.S. culture is the general demise of domesticities. The home and the extended family are no longer the norm in U.S. culture the way they were 100 or even 75 years ago. As family units become increasingly distended, they provide less of the formational matrix that they once did.

    Likewise, as family members engage in individual projects, they seem to be less likely to engage religious activities or really any activities as a family. As family life fragments, members turn to alternative support mechanisms, and sometimes family life can become a kind of battleground as these individual mechanisms compete for dominance.

    Just as the domestic church is demonstrating problems of identity, likewise the contemporary ecclesial environment is having problems. The battlefield of the sexual abuse crisis in the U.S. has left many, if not an advancing majority, with negative reactions to the institution of the Church.

    An adage of previous generations was that young adults generally drifted away from the practice of Catholicism until the time of their marriage, or the first appearance of children. Then they tended to rejoin ecclesial structures, go to Church and participate in the activities of parishes and schools. This is less the case today.

    While the same drift exists in 20-somethings, there is not a concomitant return of young people as family structures begin to develop. In a recent study, the following was observed about a meeting of young adults:

    The low attendance was discouraging. It told me that the church is irrelevant to their lives. They do not even care enough about church to come and tell us why they don’t want to come. For them, the church is a dead letter, not good news.

    Given these realities, there is a need to reinvigorate the domestic church beyond the parameters of ecclesial understandings, at least for the present. Cultural norms are changing and growing, as the institutional Church reforms itself for a new generation; likewise, the domestic church must be strengthened and encouraged into a new strength and position.

    Rule of St. Benedict – Guides and Principles

    As cultural norms within the Church continue to change and grow, the development of the domestic church seems to be not only a desirable outcome, but possibly the means of establishing a new credibility for Christian practice. If Christian ideals are to thrive, they must be given a wider place of involvement than formal institutional structures. The Church must move to the workplace, the school, recreational centers and, of course, to the home.

    In framing new attitudes to assist this necessary expansion, it is helpful to turn to a tried-and-true Christian ideal for community building, The Rule of St. Benedict and, in particular to the ideals of Benedictine oblation. In his rule, Benedict presents as series of ideals for building the community of faith at the local level. These seem to apply quite readily to the domestic church.

    First is the idea that there is such a thing as the domestic Church. Again, this is something that cannot be taken for granted in our contemporary cultural setting. A culture inundated in the “separation of church and state” frequently places the ideals of living outside the parameters of formal religious institutions in the area of “state” and thereby closed off to influences theological, liturgical and specifically moral.

    St. Benedict proposes the ideal of finding God in all things and glorifying God in all things. True practice of faith becomes not esoteric knowledge, but wisdom distilled from the daily. Situating the presence of God in daily life becomes the first task of building the culture of the domestic church.

    Second, prayer is the center of the domestic church. Domestic church members have the task of centering prayer in the church at home. Prayer is often seen as the domain of the institutional Church, yet there is the possibility of seeing prayer as an essential element of life and thereby practiced outside the material parameters of the institution.

    Teaching people to pray at home, with one another and alone, and to pray in the workplace, the school, the shopping center, becomes part of developing the personality of domestic Christians. Ritual is a part of life, an essential anthropological theme, and thereby must be practiced in every place where human persons find themselves.

    “Pray without ceasing for this is the will of God” is not only a temporal ideal, but a spatial one as well. Benedictine oblation instills in its adherents the necessity of consecrating the day through active prayer and to see prayer as a part of the oratory, certainly, but equally an activity of the field and workroom.

    Third, St. Benedict is convinced in the Rule that cenobitism (people living together) is the best way to live. Benedict favors a community life and one that stretches over the long term. He wants people to be at home and develop themselves at home. A monastery, like a family home, is not just a place to sleep and leave your things.

    It is where we work out our identity, in the living crucible of family life, as rewarding and frustrating as that might be. Family rituals help to create an environment where this is possible and encouraged. Benedictine oblation helps to focus the activities of the family certainly, but also the realities of daily living, the way in which very normal activities are engaged.

    Fourth, meals are a major place to meet. Taking a cue from the Gospel, St. Benedict promotes the idea of meals as a central place to meet and express values. Presence at meals is essential in the Rule, and the meal is the place where values are expressed, the connection being explicit between table fellowship and the fellowship of the altar.

    What is the condition of the family meal today? In many families, it no longer exists. Eating is no longer an opportunity to express essential values of human living, but becomes a pragmatic means of gaining fuel for additional, sometimes directionless, encounters. Within the context of oblation, meals become the place where family life is focused and consecrated.

    A fifth important point for St. Benedict is that everyone has a job. Work in the home and for the benefit of the family is essential. Work provides not only for the accomplishment of necessary tasks, but also uses labor as a means of establishing connection and ownership in the domestic environment. The reward for work is justifiable pride in the domestic church and its environment. Work is also accompanied by prayer. Again, finding a connection between spirituality and the mundane tasks of life becomes an essential component of strengthening ecclesial identity in the home.

    Sixth, for St. Benedict, objects are always to be respected. Material things, even the most lowly, have value and should be respected. The institutional Church has its objects that inform identity – liturgical garments, vessels, images, etc. Likewise, in the domestic church, there is a need to honor creation.
    How will the domestic church understand its material culture? One way in which this might be realized is through the establishment of a home oratory. The presence of a home prayer space provides a needed focus for everything else that happens in the home.

    Finally, time is to be respected. St. Benedict demonstrates in the Rule an authentic love for temporality. Everything in the course of the day is observed, acknowledged and sanctified. This respect for time and space is very much a product of Benedict’s authentic incarnational theology. As in the person of Christ, we find the divine in the ordinary, the prospect of daily life.

    These are the basic principles for realizing the Benedictine ideal, in the home, in the world, through the real spirituality of oblation. I believe that this is also the way in which our Church might be renewed.

    Again, dear oblates, we are living in troubled times, particularly for the Church as an institution. Domestic life, oblate life, is not an alternative to a stumbling institution. The purpose of the institution is to strengthen discipleship in the world. It may also be the case that an empowered domestic church may have the benefit of raising up ramparts for the institutional Church that highlight its essential character in the world. The Church is one and we are one in the Church.


    Image Source
    Posted by
    Labels: Archabbey Church Rector Seminary


  7. Rector’s Conference – Graduate Degree Weekend
    September 15, 2018
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
    These words of St. Paul from the Letter to the Romans, in naming the attributes of our Divine Master, ask each of us an important question as well: Who are you?
    This, of course, is a very deep existential question. Nevertheless, as we begin our time together this year, I think it is an important question for us to ask.
    Who are you? Who am I?
    Blessed John Henry Newman offers us some insight here, I believe, or at least my invoking of John Henry Newman offers you some insight about how I perceive things. In his seminal work, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, Newman spends considerable intellectual energy on the idea of how we become who we are.
    Against, the reductionist tendencies of his time, the middle of the 19th century, Newman refuses to accept easy answers to what he considers complex questions. For example, we know that Marx reduces human endeavor to the least common denominator of capital. Freud sees sexual energy as a defining factor of human experience. Likewise, in Newman’s time, religion was seeking simple answers, even to the complex question of God.
    Newman, however, sought a different approach. In his way of thinking, drawn from what he believed to be the experience of every human person, life was complicated. We would like to believe it is easy. We would like to think it was solvable, but it is not. We cannot be reduced in the depth, the richness of our experience, our perceptions. And this, of course, is a glorious by-product of having been created, not only by God, but in the very image of God.
    Listen again to the words of St. Paul:
    Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
    Newman understood this passage quite well. He knew that God was a mystery, something that was infinitely pursuable, infinitely knowable, and infinitely capable of loving and being loved. And we are created in the image of God. For Newman, this meant that human relationships, human societies, and human situations were filled, absolutely filled, overflowingly filled, with possibility.
    In Newman’s vocabulary, this was a sensibility of the human person known as the illative sense. The illative sense is the power of the human person to process data, sensory perceptions, emotions, sounds, feelings, everything we experience, and to use all of that, twisting it into a kind of rope, so that our ideas and our ideals are completely and securely our own and are built up over time, strong, powerful and brilliantly complex.
    In other words, to truly know another person, we must enter into a relationship of depth with that person. To truly know our parishioners, we must become intimately involved in their lives in the most pure sense. To know you, I must take time and invest energy in finding out who you are, what makes you tick, how you think and, also, how you are broken.
    Let me give you an example of this: Say, over time, a period of several months or even years, I begin to notice certain tendencies or ways of behaving in a person. He does this. She copes with problems like this. She acts like this under pressure. Often, this will prompt me to go ask myself questions. What were her experiences here and here, as a child or a young adult? What is his family like? What about past relationships?
    In no way, absolutely no way, do I view these past occurrences or tendencies as any kind of fatal WAY in which you will necessarily engage the world, but they might be pointers to why you are doing this or that, acting in this particular way. Of course, that is just one way. Another way, a better way, is for me to ask the person. Depth analysis of our relationships here begins in honest conversation. But what do we sometimes do?
    We judge and we pre-judge. This one is dumb. This one is too effeminate. This one is a drunk. This one is intelligent. This one is … fill in the blank. But the other thing we have to remember is that in reducing our brothers and sisters to stereotypes, or relying too heavily on first impressions, we are failing to deal with the complexity that is in each person, the illative sense of that person, and our own need to look deeply into not only the souls of our brothers and sisters here, but our own souls.
    Sometimes, reducing our brothers and sisters to stereotypes allows me to reduce myself to a stereotype. I become prejudiced against myself. Many times in my years of formation, I have had to confront a student’s perception of himself as stupid, or worthless. We learn some of those lessons early on.
    They are hard to unlearn, but brothers and sisters, you may have this or that character challenge, we all do, but you are also capable of becoming more that you have been led to believe that you are. When we harshly judge others, it is usually because we harshly judge ourselves. When we hate something in others, it may well be that is the thing I am most ardently seeking to deny in myself.
    We are complex people, and your success as a minister or just a good member of the Church, that is, if you are going to give people what they truly need, is going to come from realizing the illative nature of life and acting on it, always seeking depth and meaning after the pattern of God Himself:
    Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
    Here is what I know: I have been involved at some level with formation for the last 30-plus years. I have seen it all. I have seen tragedy and triumph. I have experienced laughter and tears. I have been on target and I have made mistakes. This is the drama of life. It is lived out here.
    I would say, through my experience, that today, in our schools, we have the best group of folks in formation that I have ever seen. Of course, I say that every year because I believe it every year. We are getting better. You are getting stronger. You are talented people, good people, holy people, struggling people, broken people, wild people, tame people.
    There are many wonderful attributes of our students today. The first is that you take your faith seriously. If you are here, you take your faith seriously. In general, the generation to which you belong is fading away from the Church. We know this statistically. Many young people are leaving the Church and so, if you are staying, and more so, if you are here, you are serious about your faith.
    You take God seriously. You take the Church seriously even in times of trial and, sometimes, really gross error. You take it seriously and you want to be evangelists. You view your work, or even your presence in the Church in the coming years, as a kind of missionary work. In general, you understand the problems facing our world today and you know, that even in a country such as ours, there is real missionary work to be done.
    There is a mission to announce the Good News in the cities. The urban sprawl has created a kind of perverse anonymity that allows people to fall through the cracks of the sidewalks. Broken and afraid, they need to have the message of hope and Truth preached to them. Who will go? Who will go as announcers of God’s love to a people who have lost the ability to even ask the question of Love? How can we preach to those who have so lost their way that they no longer even believe there is a way, except perhaps in the depth of their souls, a place they have been assiduously taught to avoid?
    There is a mission to announce the Good News in the rural places. If we believe that the countryside has been exempt from the cultural challenges faced by the cities, we are wrong. Many of you are preparing for ministry in farm communities and smaller towns. The challenges and problems are there. Drug abuse is there. Prostitution is there. Poverty and destitution is there, here. But you also have cynicism, hopelessness, prejudice, a lack of values. These sins, these evils, are no respecters of population or property lines.
    There is a mission to announce the Good News on campuses. What are our schools like today? Undoubtedly, many are the same wholesome institutions they have always been. But school violence, shootings, a lack of serious funding, teachers at the end of their ropes, students at the end of their hopes, all of these make for an environment that exceeds the drama of adolescence and young adulthood and sinks into the quagmire of destitution and desperation.
    Instead of schools becoming places of hope, they become places of danger. There is something wrong when the Department of Education stands back and allows teachers to arm themselves with monies earmarked for education. There is a deep problem there.
    There is a mission to announce Good News to families. It is interesting to me that the teachings of the Church on the family, so rich and so profound, are, in many places today, seen as quaint and out of date. The Church stands for something, but that something is seen as too idealistic. Broken families, divided families, angry parents and children, isolated and lonely. All of these characteristics speak to a world in which the ideal of family life, spoken by our heritage and attested to in our teaching, is under attack.
    Look at what is happening in Catholic schools regarding sexuality and sexual preference. Look at the divorce rate among Catholics. Look at the attitude of Catholics toward issues like same gender relationships. Our teaching is not getting through. How can we change that? How can we convince a jaded world that the depth and richness of Catholic teaching will make them better human persons in the observance?
    But likewise, how can we help people who sin and struggle to come back to the faith and not feel ostracized or left out? It is one thing to pass judgment on sin. It is another thing to love the sinner and make him or her feel welcome in the Church. We are all welcome in the Church, and that is our pastoral challenge and our personal, as much as the careful and deliberate conveyance of doctrine.
    Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
    All of these are challenges, but here is what I know. You, all of you, are not only ready to meet those challenges, you are on fire to do so.
    That is not to say there are no challenges for students of theology today. There are challenges.
    There are challenges presented by the world. These I have spoken of at length. In our world today, largely created by the reductionist tendencies of the Enlightenment, there is an alienation of the human person. Because we do not, or cannot, accept Newman’s complex vision, we are caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of a message sent by culture and a message drawn by God in the sinews of our hearts.
    There are challenges presented by the Church, and again we know these. I won’t rehearse them again this morning; there are sins in the Church. But we also have to hold true to the reality of what I have been trying to emphasize here. The Catholic Church is the fullness of God’s revelation, and we as minsters of the Church must remain faithful and true. We must stand winnowing away the smoke that obscures the world’s vision of the pure and holy Church, a smoke often created in the furnaces our failings and our sins.
    And of course, as I have said, there are challenges presented by WHO YOU ARE and WHO I AM. How well we meet those challenges demonstrates the quality of our theological education and our formation.
    Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
    May God bless you as you embark on this new endeavor. You will be challenged here and loved here; your illative sensibility will be promoted here. It is my hope that you will also be blessed here. Many blessings for your days and months to come. 

     Image Source
    Posted by
    Labels: Catholic Conference for Lay Students Fall Rector



  8. Rector’s Conference, or Dad’s Little Talk about the Stove
    September 9, 2018
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB     
    I want to spend a few moments this evening offering some reflections on formation and at least some of the principles, the ideals, that govern our life together here. A seminary can be, perhaps must be, a fragile ecosystem. We are all here for a particular purpose. We are all here to test ourselves, sometimes to the limit, whether we understand that testing as academic, spiritual, pastoral or personal. Seminary formation is difficult, and it requires not only all that you have, but all that we have in creating and maintaining a formation environment that is healthy and whole.

    With these ideals in mind, I would like to offer some comments tonight that fall into two distinct categories. The first category that I would like to address is what our responsibilities are in formation, both yours and ours on the formation staff.

    First of all, as you have heard me say before, this is a community of adults and it is a community primarily concerned with forming adult men for the priesthood. That means that we are always going to treat you like adults. We are not going to hide things from you; we are not here to play games. We are not here to say one thing to you and another to your vocation director.

    That is not to say that communication is always perfect, but I think we can agree that we want to be transparent with you and it is important that you be transparent with us. I also know that sometimes things happen in the seminary, such as the departure of a seminarian seemingly quite suddenly, that CANNOT be openly discussed to guard the privacy of the person. This, again, is not a game, but a real issue of privacy.

    I can guarantee you that I have no energy for playing games. Now, don’t play games with us. If you have a problem, come to us. Every year we have at least one situation of this one or that group that has nothing better to do with their time than gripe and complain about the formation staff.

    These little cabals are usually centered around someone who wants to set himself up as a guru of orthodoxy, or prophetic utterance. Small worship services, centered on the guru, are conducted behind closed doors. The guru knows better than those of us with a combined hundreds of years’ experience. There is a great deal of judgment passed about this priest or that sister and whether they measure up. I have no stomach for such behavior. If you have a problem, certainly consult with your confreres, but ultimately, only one of us can solve your problem.

    You are here to be formed for the priesthood, and we are presuming that you take that seriously AND that you take your life seriously. While this is a community of men, it is not a fraternity house. A positive sense of recreation is important, but all of us need to ask ourselves here: what is my reputation among others in the community?

    I think it should be, first and foremost, as a man of prayer. When people are in need, when their families are in need, are they coming to me for prayers because they perceive me as a man of prayer, or am I better known as the “life of the party”? Be the life of the party, within reason, but also be known as a man of serious intent and prayer, a man seen in the chapel as much as in the gym, a man distinguished in the classroom as much as in the UnStable.

    Am I known as a man of prayer or am I the one who stands in the background bitching about everything that goes on around here, but failing to have the testicular fortitude to make an appointment with the rector and say something about it? I said this is a community of adults and open and honest communication is essential. If there are issues in this regard, you will hear from me.

    In terms of our responsibilities, another I will mention in a particular way is attendance. If you are going to miss class or be away, communicate with your dean, your prefect and faculty members for your classes. If you are ill or need some attention, let your dean, your prefect and one of the infirmarians know. If you are absent from Morning Prayer or Mass, let your dean know why.

    This is a community of adults, so don’t make us come looking for you. If you are assigned to some liturgical function, fulfill it on time. If you are supposed to be at a particular meeting or setting up in the dining room, be there. These are responsibilities we have to make our home a true house of prayer and formation. Nothing cuts into the fiber of a community’s morale more than someone who will not pull his weight or does not take the values of the seminary seriously.

    Clarity about our purpose here also means that I have the responsibility to point to a few principles that, in a community of Christian living and a community of formation, must be considered of paramount importance. I am stating without hesitation and confidently that the serious infraction of these ideals means that the individual can no longer live here and be formed for ministry. I also want to give you concrete examples of what a serious infraction would entail. That is for the good of the Church. That is meeting the needs of the Church.

    Last year, this talk got the nickname of “Dad’s Little Talk about the Stove.” Let’s have it:

    The first of these principles is chastity. Living a chaste life here is an absolute value that must be maintained. It must be. No one here is in the sacramental position to live an unchaste life. Failure to live a chaste life, whether that is through overt sexual activity, a seemingly incurable addiction to pornography, grossly inappropriate humor, or the inability to deal with others in a sexually appropriate way, either physically or verbally, is an infringement not only of Christian values, but on the trust we must have in one another.

    Living a chaste life is not easy. Many here struggle with temptations and overcome them. Some do not. I am not talking about struggle. Struggling heroically to live the chaste life is part of who we are as Christian men and women. Whether we are married, single or have made a promise or vow of celibacy, the chaste life is a struggle, for some more than others.

    We have many resources here to help you live a chaste life. We have our counseling center, which has done wonders for so many, including me. We have understanding formation staff members, who only ask for honesty in dealing with difficult questions. But honesty is necessary. It is a violent affront to those who struggle heroically to live the ideal of chastity when a person takes that ideal less than seriously.

    Transgressions against chastity that warrant a severing of the formation relationship include any physical genital activity with another person, but would also include aggressive physical advances that are unwanted. We must also be aware that we should not find ourselves frequenting bars or other places where casual sexual encounters are the order of the day.

    One of the things we must learn at the beginning of formation to guard against is damage to our reputations. Often we can be misled into thinking: I can go there. No one will know. Brothers and sisters, God knows and, frankly, so do others. What do you think it does to the reputation of an already embattled Church when you show up in a bar like that? If you have doubts about what I mean by this, ask me. Believe me, I will tell you.

    Living a life of chastity also means a serious commitment to address the question of internet pornography. How can we have a vision of the life of God if our visions are clouded with exploitation and degeneracy of the beauty of human sexuality? If you have a problem with internet pornography, please get some help for that problem. If you would like to talk about it in the external forum, see me. It is probably better for you to see me than for me to have to see you.

    A second principle that insures the good order of a house of formation is sobriety. While the use of alcohol is not regulated as in some other institutions, an incident of public drunkenness is unacceptable and may lead to further consequences. Alcohol, if it is used, must be used responsibly.

    For some, because of their particular circumstances, this applies in a more concrete way. Sobriety is the mark of a good priest, and no priest should find his reputation damaged by the improper use of alcohol or any other substances. If your claim to fame is your liquor cabinet, you may need to stand back and reprioritize. The use of alcohol is often tied to a lowering of inhibitions. Do not threaten to compromise your integrity, your reputation or your virtue because you are under stress. Learn to deal with stress in ways that do not involve alcohol.

    Likewise, the use of any illegal substance is unacceptable. The priest needs good judgment, and artificial means of compromising that judgment is behavior incompatible with the priestly state. At this point, you may say: Why isn’t there regulation? Why do you have an on-campus bar? Brothers, there is no regulation “out there.”

    Teaching you to control yourself can only be accomplished in the context of what is there. My forbidding you to have beer in your rooms will frankly not keep you from having beer in your rooms. I do not inhabit that fool’s paradise. Sobriety is also a singular ideal of a person of prayer. Again, if you need help in this area, you need only ask someone. Help is yours. It will be given happily and freely, but to struggle in secret, to keep excessive drinking a secret, is not serving the Church. We have already seen far too much of that.

    A third important principle of this community is charity toward others. We must learn to show kindness and generosity to others. It is essential not only to our life here, but to our lives as priests as well. Showing blatant disrespect to others through acts of physical or verbal abuse is unacceptable behavior that indicates a seminarian’s lack of ability to be formed for the priesthood.

    This is a house of charity. In all that we do, the love of God must be foremost. I also know that this is a house of mostly men. It is a house where base competitiveness can take over. It is a house where some base instincts can guide the day when the going gets tough. How we handle stress and how we deal with difficult situations, dare I say, people, is a mark of our character.

    The priest needs only one instance of losing his temper or an act of physical violence to damage his reputation forever. Another example of this is off-color humor, telling sexually explicit jokes or humor that denigrates a particular gender, race or ethnicity. If you feel hurt by the way in which others express themselves, please speak to them about it. If they seem insensitive to your concerns, see me.

    I mention these essential values and the behaviors that compromise these values for the sake of clarity. As we progress in our resolve to live the life of discipleship in the particular vocation of the priesthood, we are called to an increasing accountability for our actions. If you have questions about these, please talk to your deans or talk to me.

    I hope that all of you know that this is a place of real conversation, where real questions can be raised without threat. This is a place bent on assisting you in becoming the best you can be. I hope that you come to appreciate that in the coming days, months and years. I hope you come to see that this is really a place of safety and trust. There is no problem that cannot be overcome, if we deal with it honestly.

    Again, I hope this place is a place of adult approaches to the world, a place of trust and a place where the staff, while not your friends, can be your guides and mentors in a serious way. I look forward to this coming year, of getting to know our new men more personally and our old men more deeply. My door is always open, and my blessings and prayers are with you each and every day.

    Image Source
    Posted by
    Labels: Catholic Rector Seminary



  9. Opening Rector's Conference
    September 4, 2018
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    “Therefore I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame.”
    The reading tonight from Isaiah is a powerful one, coming as it does in the context of the suffering servant narrative in Isaiah, but also engaging an authentic Christological foreshadowing. I would also say it is a prescient passage for those of us who are conformed in the person of Christ, those who seek to serve Christ, those who are men and women of Christ. What does it portend?

    I have set my life to be in tandem with that of Christ Jesus, and I cannot falter. I cannot fail, no matter what forces of nature or society assail me.

    Tonight this reading is presented for us in the midst of scandal and real need among the people of God, the clergy, our bishops, in the Church and in this community of formation. We must begin this year, in my opinion, with an honest appraisal of our situation. As a theologian and a priest, I think I know the principle values our Church represents. I think I know that the Church, having been established firmly on the foundations of Christ, cannot ultimately falter. I know that there is an eschatological dimension to our Church that will see it through any storm.

    But I also know this: storms do come. Even an eschatologically sure institution is not immune to threat and danger. The power of Satan continues to rock the Church and our success, in our time, in our situation comes not only, perhaps not principally, from asserting the Church’s permanent reality, but in helping the Church to weather the storms that cannot be avoided.

    In other words, we do not compromise the Church’s essential divine origin, or its ultimate fulfillment, when we assert that, at this moment, we are very seriously in trouble.

    Now again listen to the prophet:
    “Therefore I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame.”
    Courage in adversity is, first and foremost, acknowledging the adversity.
    I am also reminded tonight of the Gospel reading from St. John that we had about a week ago. It comes within the context of Chapter 6. It is a chapter about scandal. Jesus has hard things to impose on the disciples. These sayings of the Lord are so hard that many abandon “The Way,” turning their backs on Jesus and his mission. Jesus asks the apostles if they, too, do not wish to move away from following him. Peter’s reply is important to us:
    Lord to whom shall we go?
    Lord, to whom shall we go?
    Ultimately, my brothers and sisters, that is the question.

    This evening I would like to say a few words about my father. I do not often speak about him, at least directly. My father died 38 years ago. He was 44 at the time of his death. Today, I am older by 11 years than my father. I only knew him as a young man.

    My father came from a family of 16 children. It was a very sturdy family of faith, many ministers, and endless church activities. It was a hardworking and upstanding family of men and women who sought beyond anything else to serve God in the way they thought best.

    He was a man of faith. He was a man of prayer. He was a man of charity. He was a man of strong opinions. He was a man of service, and all of this was done so quietly that no one might have noticed if it was not for his rather large frame.

    In 1977, he and my mother converted to the Catholic Church, having grown up in conspicuous and devout Baptist homes. In converting, my father was largely abandoned by his family. While he seldom talked about it, I know that loss weighed very heavily on him.

    His conversion to Catholicism, however, also transformed his life. His attitude toward the world was radically changed. I do not believe there could have been any saint or martyr who loved the Catholic Church more than he did. He read and studied every day, with the same fervor he had once pursued his Baptist faith. He worked hard, or as hard as he could, in the parish. He befriended the priests. He was president of the Vincent de Paul Society. He was a man of the Church through and through for three years, until he died of kidney failure at that very young age.

    In my admiration for the man, I sometimes ask myself: What would my father’s reaction to the scandals be? After all, as a new Catholic, one filled with idealism, he would surely have been disappointed. I don’t know. I am sure, as a man of the world, he understood weakness. At least he always understood my adolescent weakness.

    I don’t know if he could have accepted that there were priests who lied and cheated their way through life, priests who abused small children, priests who abused vulnerable adults, priests who abused those under their care, priests who abused their office in the confessional, priests whose stoles would have more profitably served as nooses for their damage to the Church, bishops who lied and covered up for others, even if they were not complicit themselves, bishops who sent serial abusers from parish to parish to renew in other pastures their predatory behavior, bishops who failed to look to the needs of their flocks and sought to preserve an institution that ought to have been standing up for the weak and powerless but instead made itself weak and powerless in the face of lies continuously being revealed.

    These men have willfully damaged our Church, they damaged themselves, they created a simulacrum of perfection that was nothing more than a house of cards. They have disappointed the faithful. They have scandalized the world in their inability to tell the truth. They have made men and women despise the God whom they proposed to represent.

    They have become wolves instead of shepherds, and we stand today in shame on their decimated killing fields. The wonder of the Church has been stained by blood. The grandeur of the Church has been washed in vomit. The goodness of the Church? O my, the goodness of the Church …

    What would my father think of the Church he loved being exposed in this corner and that corner as fraudulent?

    I don’t know, but I would give anything to be able to talk to him about it.

    I do know this: he could never abandon his faith, the faith he fought hard for, the faith that gave shape to his short life.
    “Therefore I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame.”
    “Lord to whom shall we go?”
    Since I am speaking very personally to you this evening, I would like to tell you about two experiences I have been reflecting on. Somehow, they speak for themselves.

    The first one actually happened a few years ago when I was residing in Anselm Hall. It was in the summer, and I was in my room when the alarms began to sound in the building. It was not the time of day for “practice drills” nor had we been given any warning of practices. I looked out the window and saw that it was dark and foreboding: storm.

    However, it was odd in that the alarm sounding seemed like both a tornado warning and a fire warning. Needless to say, I made my way to the basement. Others were equally confused. Was it a fire, or a tornado? Should we go outside and avoid the “fire” or stay inside and risk a different kind of fate? Fortunately, the so-called emergencies ended soon enough, but I so distinctly remember standing in the doorway near Health Services and wondering: which way must I go?

    Which way shall I go? You have heard me say many times in the context of our various conferences over the course of years that: Everyone will break a promise. There is no priesthood perfectly lived. There is no priesthood that does not incur the price of sin. I don’t care how perfectly continent you are. I don’t care how perfectly obedient you are. I don’t care how faithful you are in reciting your prayers. For some of those perfect priests, their point of fall becomes the pride they have in being perfect priests. All will sin. All.

    Everyone will damage the fiber of the Church by giving bad example. I am having a bad day and I spout off at the staff or parishioners. I am upset about something and I take it out on the nurses at the hospital where I am visiting. I lose my temper in traffic. I become irritated at the doctor’s office.

    Or more seriously, I find myself in a relationship in which a parishioner and I are verging on the prospect of inappropriate behavior. I am on vacation, and who will ever know if I engage this or that kind of encounter. I am at a wedding reception and have too much to drink and I drive home drunk. I make it or I don’t make it.

    There is no perfection. That is especially true if we are authentically living our priesthood. We all have struggles. We all have falls. We all have challenges. There is no perfection, none at all. But there is honesty.

    How can I react honestly to the scandals plaguing the Church? There are many responses that might be realized, both from priests and Catholics in the pews.

    There is resignation, a casual acceptance of failure or even the need to cover it up. We have seen all too much of this. We might say: the Pennsylvania report is biased. We might say there is a political motivation to the accusations against this bishop, that cardinal, for God’s sake, the pope. We might say all of this excrement is in the past, and to some extent it is. But wishing it away or trying to explain it away is not an option. Excrement does not stink any less because it’s under the rug.

    Or we might respond with bitterness and anger. So many victims have, and it is certainly understandable. How could our priests do this? How could our bishops do that? We cannot understand how those who hold themselves up as moral exemplars, and perhaps infallible moral exemplars, can fall.

    Some, of course, are leaving, either leaving the Catholic Church, or more tragically, abandoning belief in God altogether. I cannot understand their actions from a personal point of view, but I do appreciate that people are hurting, hurting to the point of forsaking God or at least forsaking the God that some in our Church are inadequately representing. How can that be?
    “Lord to whom shall we go when you alone have the words of everlasting life.”
    In the face of all of this, somehow, my brothers and sisters, we have to hold firm to these words. You Lord alone have the words of everlasting life and we must wade through the refuse to gain a pure revelation of those words, but that pure revelation is there. It is surely there.

    In spite of scandal, the Truth still remains:

    The Truth still remains, in the classroom and on the playground of the parish school.

    The Truth still remains in the quiet ticking away of hours of prayer offered up on behalf of an often-indifferent flock.

    The Truth still remains in the words of teachers lecturing, and students taking notes.

    The Truth still remains in quiet words of kindness offered to those who are hurting and confused.

    The Truth still remains in the hard decisions that must be made and the easy decisions that are ready made.

    The Truth still remains in the confessional and the sacristy of the church.

    The Truth still remains in the hospital room and in the nursing home.

    The Truth still remains in the parish offices, the Tribunal, the dicasteries of the Church.

    The Truth still remains in the heart of the Vatican.

    The Truth still remains as I kneel beside my bed every night and say my prayers:
    Lord now let your servant go in peace…
    Let your fragile and fallible servant go in peace for in him, in me, your Word has been fulfilled, poorly, weakly, falteringly, but nevertheless, fulfilled in the very act of kneeling by my bed.
    In spite of scandal, the Truth still remains.

    My brothers and sisters, we are guardians of that Truth. The faculty, whom we renew and bless tonight, are holders of that Truth, communicators of that Truth. They have a great deal to teach you, but if they teach you with words and not deeds, their words are useless. We have a faith-filled faculty and I am proud of them.

    We have staff who are holders of that Truth. In spite of our rampant humanity, we can help you find and carry the Truth, because you, my brothers, are the carriers of that Truth, the holders and guardians of that Truth. You carry and hold and guard in so many ways, some that you know and many perhaps you cannot see so clearly. Your fidelity, our fidelity, to the Truth that is Christ Jesus is what will carry us beyond the scandals we are currently experiencing, but we must walk, step by step, through it all.

    Finally, I would like to recount for you a dream I had last week. I was on vacation (in the South, of course) and I had booked a room in a really nice hotel by the beach. The porter took my bags at the desk and showed me to the room. He opened the door and I could tell two things right away. It was a grand room beautifully appointed, a view of the ocean, absolutely magnificent; and two, it was trashed.

    There was literally crap everywhere, carpets torn up, bed unmade, the furnishings fouled. The porter looked very embarrassed and said how sorry he was that the room was in such bad shape. It really was their best room. He asked me if I wanted another smaller room, and I said no. This room was fine. We just had to clean it up.
    “Lord to whom shall we go?”
    “The Lord GOD is my help, therefore I am not disgraced. Therefore I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame.”
    Image Source 
    Posted by
    Labels: Catholic Rector Seminary



  10. Closing Mass
    May 11, 2018
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you.
    For the past few weeks we have been in what I call the seminary downhill marathon.

    There is all that packing. All those tests. All those farewell speeches and, of course, all of those homilies.

    This is the end

    We are now approaching the end

    The end is near

    All good, all meaningful, all extremely heartfelt.

    And of course, they go nicely with the readings, Jesus’ farewell discourse.

    I am going to the Father. The Father and I are one. I am in the Father and the Father is in me.

    Blah, blah, blah

    And so it goes, all of this going away and putting aside, and storing up and anticipating the end. It’s bad in English, it’s even more tedious in Greek.

    Let’s be honest. Aren’t we all a little tired of the packing up scenario, whether we understanding that practically or eschatologically?

    Filling up the cardboard boxes of our lives, our dreams, our realities, packing and stacking ourselves into a storage unit that may never be opened?

    Basta! Finito!

    Nobody can really read this convoluted discourse for weeks on end and not think: If you’re going to go, go already. Get out! I’m going to find lunch!

    It is a divine cry as much as a rectoral cry.

    Here’s what I want to propose:
    Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you.
    In other words …

    Let’s just get the hell out of here and get on with life.

    Let’s spend less time morbidly dwelling on the past and how miserable we are to be leaving dear old Saint Meinrad and start welcoming the new whatever it might be.

    I propose we put away our elegizing and our eulogizing and boldly begin what we are called to do, 
    called in no uncertain terms to do, all of us, and that is: Fearlessly write the future of our Church.

    Let’s stop thinking about where we have been and start thinking, start dreaming about where the Spirit of God is leading us.

    Because there is no doubt that the Spirit of God is leading us today, toward tomorrow, to a new Pentecost.

    The Spirit of God is coming and is already here and brothers and sisters he is writing a message on our hearts and lives that transcribes the morbidity of the present and the nostalgia of the past.

    The Spirit of power

    The Spirit of a world of joy

    The Spirit of authority

    The Spirit of enthronement

    The Spirit of confidence

    The Spirit of graciousness

    The Spirit of courage

    The Spirit of mercy

    The Spirit of peace

    The Spirit of charity

    The Spirit of love, of love, of love

    Write it in the stars, write that Spirit’s name in the stars.

    O my brothers and sisters, in spite of any sadness we may know or feel

    We know assuredly by faith that the Spirit is still alive in the Church. He is alive in the men and women who struggle daily through hardships almost unimaginable to us, depravations, violence and persecution descended upon them because of their faith in Jesus.

    That spirit is alive in a thousand humming places, in small villages and towns around the world where people gather to hear God’s word and open the floodgates of his grace in surreptitious celebrations of the Holy Mass. We are called to go there, to be there.

    That spirit thrives in the ceaseless devotion of the helpless, the confused and the alienated who, in the hour, the moment of their greatest need turn their hearts over irrevocably to the Spirit that sustains, the Spirit that rejoices, the Spirit that alone gives life.

    That spirit is living in all of us who celebrate here today, no matter where you are from, no matter where you are going, you are called into the company of angels as we make real the promise of Jesus, behold, I am with you always, even to the ends of the world.

    That spirit is alive in each of us in the eloquence of the ministry to which we have all been called and upon which we cast ourselves, like bread strewn upon the waters. The witness to that Spirit that alone can carry the burden of a world weighed down by the millstones of sin, and pain and despair, the white dragons of our collective sense of uselessness.

    Do we not know how much we need the spirit? Do we not realize how hopeless our brothers and sisters can become? Even in their wealth, their style, their popularity they long for the thing that money can never give, style can never maintain, popularity can never ensure. They long for dignity. They long for meaning. They long for respect. They long for excellence, for arete. They long for, hunger for life and they long for the assurance of something greater than themselves, an assurance that hovers over them and then buoys them up in the violence of call, of cry, of rampant beating wings.

    What does the Spirit say?
    Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you.
    That spirit, which we anticipate so keenly on the coming Day of Pentecost continues today, in this place, among us. This is the Upper Room. This is the day of Pentecost. We are the gathered number longing to hear God’s word, that comforting word, that reassuring word in our own language, the language spoken in the beating, the frantic beating after recognition of the human heart.

    That spirit guides and protects us even when we don’t realize we need to be guided, refuse to accept it, even in our self-sufficiency. We know it, we know it, we know it because we need it. And that will sustain you in future days. You will be sustained in future days because you pour out your lives in service to the God who gave you that life, who is giving you that life. And my brothers and sisters, that is Good News.

    We are not lamenters of the past. We are Good News for the future.

    We are the new Pentecost sweeping the Church.

    We are death to sin and violence to remorse.

    We are the future of the world writ not in microcosm but writ large upon the sky in giant letters
    Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you.
    Praise God the Spirit cannot be silenced.

    He is Risen and comes to us with startling revelation, like the wings of a dove shining effervescently
    across the expanses of a clear summer sky.

    Image Source
    Posted by
    Labels: Catholic Homilies Rector Seminary
Subscribe
Subscribe
Fr. Denis Robinson, OSB
Fr. Denis Robinson, OSB
Fr. Denis Robinson, OSB

Fr. Denis Robinson, OSB, is president-rector of Saint Meinrad School of Theology in St. Meinrad, IN. A Benedictine monk, he is also an assistant professor of systematic theology. A Mississippi native, Fr. Denis attended Saint Meinrad College and School of Theology, earning a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1989 and a Master of Divinity in 1993. From 1993-97, he was parochial vicar for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Memphis, TN. He joined the Saint Meinrad monastery in August 1997. Fr. Denis also attended the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, where he received a master’s degree in theology in 2002, a licentiate in sacred theology in 2003, and doctorates in sacred theology and philosophy in 2007.

View my complete profile
Links
Links
Blog Archive
Blog Archive
Categories
Categories
Loading
Dynamic Views theme. Powered by Blogger. Report Abuse.