[Sundaycommunity] Thoughts

[Mary]

I have to add my two cents. As many of you know John and I have been married or 50 years and I have remained a member of the United Church of Canada with some adopted beliefs from the RCC. I especially love it when Brian choses the song “God is Love and all who believe in God will live and God will live in them”. Thank you Brian. I am supportive of all of you as you deal with your frustrations and pray that one day the RCC will adopt a change to female clergy, return to inclusive language etc. 
God is Love. 

Mary

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Catherine Walther via Sundaycommunity
Sent: August 7, 2021 9:10 AM
To: sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca
Cc: Catherine Walther
Subject: Re: [Sundaycommunity] Thoughts

Cathy, I hear you and have the same frustrations. I don’t think I’d have survived as a Chaplain if it wasn’t for the Taproot, CNWE, and Sunday communities.
 To have changed the liturgy to inclusive language and then to change it back was the last straw for me. It’s like being stabbed where you were just healing. 
What also irks me is that so few priests say ‘NO’. To have allegiance to a sexist, authoritative, homophobic institution over allegiance to God is just wrong. 
And while I’m at it, I believe theologies based on original sin rather than theologies based on God’s love and abundant generosity are crazy-making. God is Love, and that’s what our relationship with God should be based on. 
There, I’ve had my say. Thank you all for listening. 
Catherine 
On Fri, Aug 6, 2021 at 10:34 PM Catherin Cavanagh via Sundaycommunity <sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
Thanks Brenda!  A very interesting read by someone who is always worth listening to.  It doesn’t quite answer all the concerns that have bothered me for decades though, let alone the ones the last few months have thrust to the fore.

When he says there’s nowhere else to go, I can’t say I agree.  I mean there are in fact other churches where people like me (women)aren’t banned from positions or barred from preaching in the Sunday gatherings.  There are churches that paid the money that the TRC prescribed without complaint or prevarication.  There are churches where apologies were issued from their highest levels without any quibbling about who exactly should apologize.  The fact that no other church is perfect isn’t a sufficient reason to stay in a church that has failed to deal with its own sins and continuously teaches things we know are damaging to whole swathes of people.  It’s like telling someone to stay in an abusive relationship because, you know, nobody’s perfect.

I’ve been lucky enough to find this community and that’s keeping me here (thank you!!) but I’m really not at peace with the RCC (more so than usual that is). Here’s where I am:  I think it’s okay to stay but I don’t think it’s okay to stay without loudly, persistently and unapologetically calling on the Church to change.  I mean really loudly.  Indigenous people had no say in the operation or existence of residential schools.  Women have had no say in the theologies and restrictions applied to them.  LGBTQ people same thing.  So why do we always only apply our fabulous social Justice principles to issues outside the church and not inside?  We have a church that is openly and unapologetically sexist.  As the largest religious institution in the world it legitimates sexism.  But ho hum right for most Catholics?  Pass the host and check off being Catholic for the week.  Communities like this one we are in are so very rare on a global scale.  The Church teaches that the Eucharist is fundamental but does not always remember that oppressed are the Eucharist. 

I imagine I’m not the only one for whom this latest round of horrors is perhaps maybe the last straw.  I’ve been inspired by people who follow Christ and live the spirit in the world.  I’ve been inspired by our church.  I’ve been inspired by many of you.  The Catholic Church is in fact my ‘mother tongue’ and I don’t want to leave. But if the church is our home then there’s something rotten in the walls. We Catholics have to stop thinking we can ignore it by pointing out that good thing we once did.  Either we provoke change or we (or I, to speak just for myself) really do have to leave as a gesture to the Vatican and Church rulers that we do not consent to all the sin that has been a persistent part of RC church structure, teaching, and practice for generations. We teach the world through our actions after all.  

Rolheiser points out the great good the Church has also offered the world, but refusing restitution, reconciliation and reformation (around decision-making, power sharing, gender issues, etc) completely undermines the good.  I’m struggling to remain convinced that I still want to be part of that.  But this community, including our priests and so many of you who are an inspiration to me stand against that and keep me here for now.

One last thing.  I don’t think any part of the Trinity cares what Church I belong to.  This is entirely a human problem.

I’ve ranted here and I’m tempted to delete it all.  I think I’ll send it though and just thank you all for listening to my frustrations.  You are in fact the face of goodness in the church and I’m grateful.

Peace, 
Cathy C

Sent from my iPhone


On Aug 6, 2021, at 3:49 PM, Mr. Gillis via Sundaycommunity <sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

Thank you Brenda, a fantastic reminder in this age of cynicism!  We too are all complicit in sin. All we have to do is look at the climate emergency.  Once again a deep call to humility and metanoia!

Peace



Greg


On Fri, Aug 6, 2021 at 2:14 PM Dave Snelgrove via Sundaycommunity <sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
A terrific read!!  Worth re-reading.  Thank you, all responsible.  Rosemary Gray-Snelgrove

On Fri, Aug 6, 2021 at 8:30 AM Brenda Holtkamp via Sundaycommunity <sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
An interesting read….

W H Y  S T A Y  I N  T H E  C H U R C H ? 
J U L Y 1 2 , 2 0 2 1 - Author - R O N R O L H E I S E R , OMI
Several weeks ago after giving a lecture at a religious conference, the first question from the audience was this one: How can you continue to stay in a church that played such a pivotal part in setting up and maintaining
residential schools for the indigenous people of Canada? How can you stay in a church that did that?
The question is legitimate and important. Both in its history and in its present, the church has enough sin to legitimize the question. The list of sins done in the name of the church is long: the Inquisition, its support for slavery, its role in colonialism, its link to racism, its role in thwarting women’s rights, and its endless historical and present compromises with white supremacy, big money, and political power. Its critics are sometimes excessive and unbalanced, but, for the most part, the church is guilty as charged.
However, this guilt isn’t unique to the church. The same charges might be leveled against any of the countries in which we live. How can we stay in a country that has a history of racism, slavery, colonialism, genocide of some
of its indigenous peoples, radical inequality between its rich and its poor, one that is callous to desperate refugees on its borders, and one within which millions of people hate each other? Isn’t it being rather selective
morally to say that I am ashamed to be a Catholic (or a Christian) when the nations we live in share the same history and the same sins?
Still, since the church is supposed to be leaven for a society and not just a mirror of it, the question is valid. Why stay in the church? There are good apologetic answers on this, but, at the end of the day, for each of us, the answer has to be a personal one. Why do I stay in the church?
First, because the church is my mother tongue. It gave me the faith, taught me about God, gave me God’s word, taught me to pray, gave me the sacraments, showed me what virtue looks like, and put me in contact with some
living saints. Moreover, despite all its shortcomings, it was for me authentic enough, altruistic enough, and pure enough to have the moral authority to ask me to entrust my soul to it, a trust I’ve not given any other communal
entity. I’m very comfortable worshipping with other religions and sharing soul with non-believers, but in the church in which I was raised, I recognize home, my mother tongue.
Second, the church’s history is not univocal. I recognize its sins and openly acknowledge them, but that’s far from its full reality. The church is also the church of martyrs, of saints, of infinite generosity, and of millions of
women and men with big, noble hearts who are my moral exemplars.  I stand in the darkness of its sins; but I also stand in the light of its grace, of all the good things it has done in history.
Finally, and most important, I stay in the church because the church is all we’ve got! There’s no other place to go. I identify with the ambivalent feeling that rushed through Peter when, just after hearing Jesus say something
which had everyone else walk away from him, Peter was asked, “do you want to walk away too?” and he (speaking for all the disciples) replied: “We’d like to, but we have no place else to go. Besides we recognize that,
despite everything, you still have the words of everlasting life.”
In essence, Peter is saying, “Jesus, we don’t get you, and what we get we often don’t like. But we know we’re better off not getting it with you than going any place else. Dark moments notwithstanding, you’re all we’ve got!”
The church is all we’ve got! Where else can we go?  Behind the expression, I am spiritual, but not religious (however sincerely uttered) lies either an invincible failure or a culpable reluctance to deal with the necessity of
religious community, to deal with what Dorothy Day called “the asceticism of church life”. To say, I cannot or will not deal with an impure religious community is an escape, a self-serving exit, which at the end of the day is not very helpful, not least for the person saying it. Why? Because for compassion to be effective it needs to be collective, given the truth that what we dream alone remains a dream but what we dream with others can
become a reality. I cannot see anything outside the church that can save this world.
There is no pure church anywhere for us to join, just as there is no pure country anywhere for us in which to live. This church, for all its checkered history and compromised present, is all we have. We need to own its faults
since they are our faults. Its history is our history; its sin, our sin; and its family, our family – the only lasting family we’ve got.


D
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May you walk in joy as love calls us on.

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