Structures For a New Church Model
". . .At the dawning of the Third Millennium, a serious question confronts democracy. There is a tendency to see intellectual relativism as the necessary corollary of democratic forms of political life. In such a view, truth is determined by the majority and varies in accordance with passing cultural and political trends. From this point of view, those who are convinced that certain truths are absolute and immutable are considered unreasonable and unreliable. On the other hand, as Christians we firmly believe that 'if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism' (Centesimus Annas, n. 46)" -- Pope John Paul II to the Sixth Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, February 24, 2000.
Truth by consensus, see-judge-act methodology to achieve that "truth," small base communities, conscientization, and faith-based Alinskyian organizing are the five pillars on which a new "model of church" (to use the terminology of a prior Encuentro document) is being built. These elements, while not blatantly designed into the Encuentro 2000 Conference, were nevertheless a very real part of its activities, as evidenced by at least one speaker, one sponsoring organization, by the documents of the past Encuentros, and by a number of Encuentro workshops, providing a clue as to what has deeply disturbed conference critics, namely that the laudable conference goal of ethnic harmony -- at least within the Church herself -- will be swallowed by a darker goal, the destruction of the essential elements that are Catholicism.
MACC
The Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC) was deeply a part of the Encuentro conference, particularly through its president, Sr. Maria Elena Gonzalez, who served on the bishops' subcommittee for Encuentro 2000 and on its national steering committee. She is also one of the regional directors of the "Hispanic Ministry" created through the Encuentro process over the past 25 years or more (see "Part 1: Many Faces in God's House," see The Wanderer August 3, 2000). MACC speakers participated in or ran seven Encuentro 2000 workshops. MACC has also been instrumentally involved in developing some of the NCCB Hispanic Ministry's materials.
Fr. Virgil Elizondo, MACC's founder, speaking at the 1999 Jubilee Justice Gathering, a precursor of this Encuentro, told participants there that spirituality is not based on dogmas, doctrines, laws, or directions but is a result of love and fascination for God. "We are called to be architects of a new earth and a new heaven."
In those few words, Elizondo gives a great deal of insight into his organization. This is of concern because of the common philosophical threads connecting these people: They share a communitarian dialectic (i.e., truth as a relational discovery, and therefore mutable), they counter Jesus (or Spirit) against dogma (and the Church) as if the two were not inexorably interconnected, and they propose -- and have disseminated through a number of NCCB/USCC educational materials -- a liberationist pedagogy.
Conscientization: See-Judge-Act
The Hispanic Ministry materials are the vehicles through which the principles, both true and false, of the Encuentro will be carried back into local parishes. While catechesis about Christian truth and virtue is the most obvious need for addressing acts of prejudice and injustice, instead, the United States Catholic Conference distributes resources using liberationism's consciousness-raising pedagogy: see-judge-act. One finds this methodology explicitly used or urged in the following Encuentro-related materials (it can be found in other USCC educational materials, as well):
- Prophetic Voices, produced by the NCCB Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs, USCC, 1996, describes the "integral education" that the Church is expected to provide, including a liberationist pedagogy -- observe, judge, act. It commits the Hispanic Catholic community to promotion of comunidades eclesiales de base (base communities) and to "conscientization regarding the injustices that oppress our people." Prophetic Voices concludes that, "this new style of church is one of the richest aspects of the entire Encuentro. As part of the Church in the United States, the Hispanic Community proclaims in the Encuentro event and realizes through its process a model of Church in which the prophetic dimension stands out."
- National Pastoral Plan for Hispanic Ministry, produced after Prophetic Voices, by the NCCB Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs, USCC, 1988, links the creation of small ecclesial communities to conscientization, community development, and community organizing (see particularly "Section B: Evangelization" and "Section C: Missionary Option"). People associated with MACC, the liberation hub of the United States, were intimately connected with the preparation of these documents, which in turn are cited as resource materials related to Encuentro 2000:
- The Youth and Adult Jubilee Guidebook, session 2, "The Many Faces of God," developed in consultation with the NCCB Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs, the Secretariat for the Third Millennium and the Jubilee Year 2000, and the USCC Department of Education through the Secretariat for Family. Women, and Youth, Subcommittee on Youth, published by the USCC, 1999, is a resource material produced with MACC guidance. The section in it headed "Methodological Outline" explains the trinomial pedagogy of see-judge-act to be used throughout the program.
This is quite unlike traditional education, which teaches facts first, on which to objectively base judgments.
Truth By Consensus
Sr. Marie Chin, president of the Institute of Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, addressed the Friday morning portion of the conference. Her topic was "From Conversion to Communion." Sr. Maria Elena Gonzalez, mentioned above, who was a moderator of the Encuentro 2000 is also a Sister of Mercy and describes Sr. Chin as her "boss."
Chin examined what she called "habits of the heart," habits that require unlearning, as they keep us from arriving at the "peaceable realm." The first of these "habits" concerned how we look at power and "hold to the center." She quoted an unidentified source, saying:
"In a world of chaos, change, and conflict, there is still a point of balance . . . only if we hold the center. . . Holding the center means seeing the spark of grace that connects us all, beyond all differences, and in the midst of all strife. Love and grace are at the center. When I hold to them, a truthfulness emerges that is greater than me or the other, yet binds us together."
Sister seemed to be ignoring the fact that there are essential and inessential differences among people. Chin made no distinction, thus imposing an ambiguous mandate to value reconciliation above differences.
"I cannot help thinking how much we have to unlearn the experiences we have had of power as domination, manipulation, and control. I cannot help thinking that our churches, our communities of faith should be helping us grow into this way of being together in mutually empowering relational struggle -- never perfect, never without making mistakes -- but bound together by trust and a commitment to learn together more fully how to be ourselves in right relationship and live in the peaceable realm."
Chin said that, in our effort to truly become a multicultural Church, we will be ". . .tested by encounters with cultures and viewpoints not our own-- hopefully to be refined in the fires of genuine engagements. . . God wants us to engage in relational struggle in order to liberate and transform our world. In this shared journey of honest, reverent, patient dialog, we must learn to listen to each other. . . We must live out our truths, testing our own truth against the truth received by the other and all the while believing and trusting that God will work a greater truth in all of us than can be worked in any one of us standing alone. I sense that there is no witness more urgent for our multicultural, pluralistic world than for us to refuse to follow the cultural individualism of our times that assumes that truth is totally subjective, that there is one truth for you, another for me, and we don't have to worry about the difference. I fear that this assumption can only lead to fragmentation and isolation."
The delicate ambiguities that Chin creates are not simply her failure in a given talk to clearly articulate her position. Her position has been clarified elsewhere. Chin told the 1999 Jubilee Justice Gathering in Los Angeles, for example, that Jesus did not come to bring a "book religion" but to "close the book and give us visible living witness."
Encuentro 2000 Workshops
Truth by consensus, see-judge-act methodology to achieve that "truth," and conscientization are more easily accomplished, as the Latin American liberationists discovered, in small base communities where loyalty and authority shift from the larger Church to the intimate fellowship. At least two workshops, "Welcoming God's Many Faces in Small Christian Communities" and "Small Christian Communities: Sources of Hope for Evangelization" promoted this horizontally restructured Church.
Fr. Virgil Elizondo, founder of the Mexican American Cultural Center, whose presence and influence was so much a part of the Encuentro 2000 Conference, has written: "As great and important as our priests and official liturgies are, you don't have to go through a priest or an official ritual of the Church to enter into communion with God. . . Hispanic Catholics have been at the vanguard of the renewal of Vatican II, introducing such breakthrough movements as . . . the basic Christian communities (small faith communities) and community organizing movements which are redefining the Church" ("Hispanic Gifts," The Catholic Update, St. Anthony Messenger Press, June 2000).
Close examination of the major document to come out of the Third National Encuentro, the National Pastoral Plan for Hispanic Ministry, produced by the NCCB Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs (1988) demonstrates the very conscious and deliberate intention to restructure the Church through the creation of small ecclesial communities, using programs such as RENEW to develop them (see section V. general objective). As one example of this restructuring, the plan determines that it will "identify a model of Church that nourishes and fosters ministries by women," and then immediately states it will "value the role of small ecclesial community in the promotion of women" (section VI-C3e).
The small ecclesial community is also the vehicle through which the plan will "develop a form of conscientization and commitment to justice" (section VI-B3b6).
There is one more pillar to this restructured "church." Community organizing -- that is, Alinskyian, faith-based organizing -- "at the national, regional, diocesan, and parish levels" is the tool of these conscientized small faith "communities" to do justice. The "responsible agents" charged in the National Pastoral Plan for Hispanic Ministry with "Conscientization on Christian Responsibility and Leadership Development" through "community organizing" are the USCC Committee on Social Development and World Peace and the Campaign for Human Development (see section VI-C3b).
Therefore, the Encuentro 2000 workshops "Community Organizing: A Vehicle for Conversion of Heart," "Parish-based Organizing and the Pastor," and "Faith-Based Community Organizing: Power to the Many Faces!" were appropriate to USCC/Encuentro vision. Whether they were appropriate to the mission of the Church to evangelize all nations and bring them to the truth of life in Christ Jesus is another question.
At another conference workshop, "Taking It Home: Effective Social Justice Ministry" one presenter, John Carr, director of the USCC Department of Social Development and World Peace, told a personal story. He had, reluctantly, been persuaded to accept a position in the social justice committee of his parish. He did not say if this committee was to be based on community social justice concerns or performance of spiritual and corporal works of mercy on a parish level.
Carr and his committee worked for months on a power and resource analysis of the parish. From this, they developed strategies to involve the entire parish in various social justice concerns. Before these strategies could be implemented, however, a new pastor with a serious attitude entered the picture. He told Carr in no uncertain terms that he wasn't a '60s kind of guy and he didn't want anything to do with Saul Alinsky. In particular, he vehemently rejected the justice training Carr was recommending he take -- without knowing that Carr had been instrumental in producing the program.
However, Carr was happy to report that despite the priest's preconceptions, the vast majority of the committee's strategic proposals had been implemented -- including re-establishing the parish's ties with the local community organization.
Similarly, many good Church people who utterly and passionately reject a new "model of Church" are being hoodwinked into it through the erection of five structures -- truth by consensus; see-judge-act methodology to achieve that "truth"; small base communities; conscientization; and faith-based Alinskyian organizing -- which they are told will bring about systemic justice. They forget that the change the Church wants in us is interior, drawing us into the Truth of Christ and transforming us so we can bring His grace and justice to the world and not that of some social change agent. © The Wanderer, 201 Ohio Street, St. Paul, MN 55107, 612-224-5733.
This item 3127 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
