Creating Rituals for Jubilee Year Celebrations--A Preconference Retreat with Miriam Therese Winter

Miriam Therese ("MT")Winters may be best known to us as the author of a wonderful song, "Joy is Like the Rain" which we sang years ago and still love. She gave a marvelous workshop on ritual. In the morning we learned a few songs and went over a guideline and checklist for ritual planning. Then we broke into small groups and created ideas for ritual themes and elements related to the Jubilee. Some wonderful ideas were shared. At our table a sister told how she planned to use a crystal bell that was given to her by some relatives in Slovania in honor of the millennium. We helped her design a litugy that included inviting others to bring their bells. We hightlighted the bell as music that calls us to listen, that touches us in a deep way, that calls us to change what we had been doing and start a new path. Another group shared a concept they called the "Jubilee Door." The door is decorated with images of personal, community, and worldwide concerns. Entrance and exit to the church would be through this door. A similar home version could be created as a banner that hangs from the door. The quote from Issaiah, "God has annointed me..." was suggested as a wonderful Jubilee theme. Another group developed a ritual around the chains of debt oppressing many poor nations. This ritual included entrance procession with paper chains and then having participants experience the strangling feeling of the overwhelming debt. The celebrants are led through a penitential experience, then break the chains. Remnants of the broken chain are brought home to remind participants of the committment to debt forgiveness.

After lunch, MT shared some of her experiences with music and ministry. She has developed a series of songs with new words put to familiar tunes.

MT described a liturgy with six parts:

1. The berakah
The berakah is Hebrew for blessing, and follows the form:
Blessed are you <insert a name for God>. Then ask for a blessing based on that name, for example:
"Blessed are you forgiving one. Teach us to forgive each other."

2. She Who Is <insert quality of God> be <insert quality of God> in us.
For example, She Who Is compassionate, be compassionate in us.

3. A credal statement following the form:
I believe <insert belief>. I no longer believe <insert belief no longer held>.
For example, I believe that God includes all. I no longer believe that God can be boxed in and defined.

4. Pastoral letters to the local church, the national church, and the global church. These follow the form of the epistles.

5. A just church is a church that is about liberation and reconciliation.

6. Prayers of the faithful

We then broke into groups and worked on different parts of the litugy. The outcomes were amazing! The participants created marvelous and varied liturgy in just two hours.

This workshop gave us many ideas on how to bring household objects as symbols for prayer and worship. Try making a ritual yourself--you might be surprised and delighted with the results.

Bishop Samuel, as he is called, told us stories from his life and ministry. He recounted how he started with "conventional" understandings of evangelizing the native peoples (Incas) of Mexico. He thought of old methods of evangelization as imposing our religion (and therefore our culture, because religion reflects one's culture) on indigenous people. Bishop Ruiz said he came to understand that true evangelization is discovering or revealing God's presence in indigenous cultures, in other words, God is already there, we just need to bring God out and help people to experience and understand God more completely.

He told us another story. When the evangelists translated the Lord's Prayer into an African language, they translated "thy kingdom come" very precisely but the Africans weren't moved by it; it didn't have special meaning to them. So the evangelists explained it more and the Africans came up with their own expression. They used the phrase "May your drum resound throughout the jungle."

Bishop Samuel reminded us that in the early church, when Peter and Paul were arguing about whether Gentiles had to become Jews before becoming Christians, that this was precisely the concept they were talking about. It was the understanding that the faith needs to come into the culture of the people, not be imposed on top of a people's culture. This is what Bishop Samuel is trying to do in Chiapas among the many indigenous peoples in his community.

Richard McBrien, Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and well-known and respected author of many books on Catholic teachings, gave us a preview of the controversial Vatican document, Ex Corde Ecclesiae. He recounted the history of the document. He said the earlier draft came out of consultations between the U.S. bishops and numerous unversity presidents and theologians. This early draft of Ex Corde had been approved 224 to 6--now that's democracy! (Some might call this "collegiality") Unfortunately the Vatican rejected that draft and required the U.S. Bishops' Conference to adopt a more juridical document, one requiring more oversight of theologians and Catholic universities on the part of the bishop (this is to be carried out through a "mandatum" from the bishop to the theologian).

Since McBrien's talk, the U.S. bishops have met and they voted to approve the Vatican's more juridical approach. Many theologians, however, are averse to getting the mandate from their bishop, so it remains to be seen how Ex Corde Ecclesiae will work out in the long term.

Hubert Feichtlbauer, leader of the We Are Church movement in Austria, said the reform people in Europe were greatly encouraged when the Austrian bishops invited input on reform from all the people and reported the results to the Vatican during their Ad Liminum visit. Their hopes were dashed when the Vatican wouldn't even listen to these ideas and discuss them with the bishops. To the dismay of the reformers, the Austrian bishops so far have not stood up to the Vatican. But the people are moving ahead on their own holding "purple stole" ceremonies, publishing their own pastoral letters, and they have begun training women to be priests. He said "Sometimes you are the statue and sometimes you are the pigeon. The people of Europe have decided they have been the statue long enough."

Bishop Lucker reported that talk among the bishops or reforming the Curia is rampant. It is discussed at all synods and council gatherings. The recent Oceania Synod included it in their report to Rome. But, Bishop Lucker said, Pope Paul VI tried to reform the Curia and failed. "If the Church (hierarchy) doesn't listen to the people, the people won't listen to the Church."

Jack Jezreel gave a great workshop on how he modeled a parish program for social justice on the RCIA program and to his utter amazement, transformed the parish.

Jesus preached the coming of the "kingdom of God" which the Jews understood to be the recapture of the Mosaic covenant. Jesus' pastoral ministry was about transformation - seeing things differently - and that leads to abundant life. Transformation is essentially "enlarging our hearts.

Jack will present this workshop next August at the West Coast CTA conference so we won't reveal more. Come and learn how to transform your parish at the August conference.

Michael Crosby also talked about the need to reform the Curia, asserting that the current paradigm is like a "parallel magisterium". Cardinal Ratzinger controls the three key groups in the Curia, dealing with defense of the faith, biblical scholarship, and theology. He said there is no dialog with the Curia, only monologue. He cited a personal example from his Capuchin Franciscan community. They elected one year a lay person (their order has lay as well as ordained members) as president because the whole community felt he was best qualified. They submitted the results to the Curia with all the documentation and the reasons for their choice. The response of the Curia was simply "Your arguments are not valid." No reasons, no dialogue. Everything the Curia does is secret, behind the scenes. The Curia also told the order to put into their rules that the President had to be a cleric. The community appealed the decision to the Pope. The response they got back was "It is the will of the Holy See." Through the back door, the community contacted the Pope's Polish secretary and asked if this was indeed the will of the Pope. The secretary said the Pope knew nothing about this!

"A Catechist is a person who harvests the thoughts of the whole community."

 - Bishop Ruiz

Diana Wear reviews Archbishop Quinn's Reform of the Papacy

Retired Archbishop John Quinn has provided an invaluable service to the church in his recent publication, Reform of the Papacy: The costly call to Christian unity (New York: Crossroad, 1999; $19.95). The book is ostensibly about overhauling the papacy, and, in fact, is written as a formal response to Pope John Paul II's encyclical, Ut Unam Sint, requesting such assistance in this venture. This book, however, offers much more than history lessons and strategies for reshaping some offices in Rome. This book is a must read for all Catholics--progressives and conservatives--interested in the governance of our church.

Quinn points out that the Pope's encyclical is addressed to no particular audience, that is, it is not just bishops who are asked to offer ideas for reforming the papacy, but also Orthodox, Protestants, and Catholic men and women. Equally important to the main story, is the way in which Quinn presents his material. He talks at length about why criticism is so hard for the church (e.g., the vivid examples from the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and the siege mentality that ensued), and then he demonstrates how to critique and offer suggestions through countless examples of balanced, evenhanded, fair approaches toward every theme he addresses. This reform package comes from a bishop who knows his material well, knows the system that need reform, and who has a deep love for the church that will benefit in the process.

Quinn argues that reform of the papacy is critical for ecumenism and that papal primacy in the way it is currently practiced is a stumbling block for unity. His proposals for change include how the pope needs to be more collegial as opposed to promoting the Vatican in such centrist and absolutist ways; that the world's bishops need to be bishops as they were in the early church and this concept is affirmed again and again in church documents; that local churches need to be actively involved in the selection and election of bishops as was done in the early church; and he makes many suggestions for how laity can and should be full, active participants in many areas of the governing church.

Quinn hits hard on reforms of the Curia. He says they need to be sensitive in terms of collegiality, subsidiarity, and diversity, arguing that this is what currently adversely affects Christian unity. His plans for reform of the Curia include: heads of curial offices need not be bishops--this will remove a "sense of superiority" and the jobs would be open to the laity; that we should set terms of service to be 10-15 years, in order to keep continuity, but not make these tenured appointments for life; and most importantly, to keep an eye on the common good, for the sake of unity.

Quinn's book is not simply about shaking up the status quo. He merely reminds the Pope, the Curia, his fellow bishops, and all of us in the church how things have been from the beginning, how some things have changed for the better, some for the worse, and he offers a balanced and reasonable plan for helping our church regain perspective--get back on track with many reforms set out at the Second Vatican Council. Archbishop Quinn has bestowed on us a splendid gift through this meticulously written book.