Davenport Column: Church Change Is Illusive

By Gene Davenport
Jackson Sun
April 12, 2012

http://www.jacksonsun.com/article/20120412/OPINION/304120003/Davenport-column-Church-change-illusive?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s

In June of last year a group of approximately 300 Austrian priests published “Appeal to Disobedience,” a document in which they pledged to pray and work for several major reforms in the church. The number of signers now has been expanded by priests from other parts of the world.

The document was primarily the work of Father Helmut Schuller, at the time a chief aid to one of the Austrian bishops and one of the best known priests in Austria. Noting the serious decrease in the number of men entering the priesthood, the document set forth the signers’ pledges 1) to pray, at every ceremony, for church reform; 2) not to deny Holy Communion to “believers of good will” — even to non-Catholic Christians and to Catholics who have remarried outside the church; 3) to avoid offering Mass more than once on Sundays and holy days (primarily to avoid offering it at more than one church), but at churches not having a priest to have a “priestless Eucharistic celebration”; 4) to ignore the rule that only ordained clergy can deliver a homily (or a sermon); 5) to oppose the merger of parishes as a means of solving the shortage of priests, but to insist on parishes having their own leaders, whether male or female; and 6) “to use every opportunity to speak out openly” in favor of the admission of married men and of women to the priesthood.

In an interview with a Catholic magazine Schuller said that he had at one time hoped for changes in the Church in line with the work of Vatican Council II, but that now he fears the Church is in the hands of leaders who want it to “go backwards ... and (be) a fortress against the world.”

Last week, the Pope responded publicly to the document and referred to some of its issues as already definitively defined “by the Church’s Magisterium.” He referred specifically to ordination of women as an issue about which Pope John Paul II had “stated irrevocably that the church has received no word from the Lord.”

For half a century the winds of change have been blowing with increasing intensity throughout most churches, including the Catholic Church. Phyllis Tickle says that such change occurs approximately every 500 years, resulting in great realignments within the church. We are now living, she says, in such a time.

Sometimes, churches have pre-empted reform movements by embracing them and bringing them under their authority. The monastic movement is a classic example. At other times, resistance has led to schism. The question that changes always raise is: for what purpose are they taking place? Though the goals of the Austrian group range — in my opinion as a Protestant — from appropriate to long overdue, some supporters sound as though they are seeking churchly parallels to changes in the secular world. If their purpose is to stay up to date with the secular world, the changes, if achieved, will not result in benefit for either the church nor for the world, but in mere adaptation to the world.

Walking the tight rope between legitimate change and change for the sake of being socially acceptable or “relevant” always is difficult. The former holds hope for the future; the latter, the death of hope in a flurry of popularity.

Dr. Gene Davenport is former Professor Emeritus of Religion at Lambuth University. Readers can send e-mail to him at genedavenport1@yahoo.com