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Valerie SchultzJanuary 08, 2001

Our Renew 2000 group met yesterday. The seven of us talked about the Eucharist: its implication in our daily lives, as well as its liturgical meaning and beauty. Then we went to work at the parish food pantry. We are between seasons of Renew, which is a small-group, faith-sharing program in which many parishes in our diocese have participated for two years. Our group meets between seasons as well, because we enjoy getting together so much. We are of many ages, of both genders, of differing political persuasions and varied professional and vocational callings. Yet we have in common the one, holy, catholic, apostolic church.

So imagine my dismay when in today’s mail there came a solicitation from the Catholic magazine Crisis that, on the outside of the envelope, trashes Renew 2000. The envelope warns me, before I even open it, to pray hard that the nightmare called Renew 2000 does not assault my parish. Apparently Renew is the modern-day equivalent of Eldad and Medadthe fellows in the Book of Numbers who dared to prophesy without the proper blessing from Mosesbecause the Renew meetings are conducted without the presence of a priest. (As I recall, Moses denied the entreaties of the people to stop Eldad and Medad and instead encouraged them to continue their good work.)

After opening the envelope, I am told that this magazine is orthodox Catholic. Indeed, the salutation of the pitch letter reads, Dear Fellow Orthodox Catholic.

The letter takes on the sacrilegious Paulist fathers who publish the Renew 2000 materials and reveals that this magazine can’t be found on just any newsstand, because its readers are above average. Their readers are educated, articulate and zealous Catholics. Just like me, right?

Actually I am offended by the Renew-bashing this magazine is using to sell itself. Renew has been only beneficial to my faith life, and I know the rest of my group would agree. In fact, if Satan wanted to infiltrate our parish, getting folks to meet together in one another’s living rooms to share their Catholic faith and to encourage one another to put that faith into action would be a mighty poor plan.

In my parish we have a small but vocal group who, in fact, opposed our parish’s implementation of Renew 2000. In the five years I’ve been a parish employee (as director of religious education), I haven’t quite known how to handle them. These are devout and fervent worshipers, family oriented, well intentioned and principled. They would be an asset to any religious education programif only they weren’t opposed to religious education on the parish level. They oppose most education that does not happen in the home. They homeschool their younger children and have formed a private academy for their high school children.

I respect their right to homeschool their children. If only every family had such demonstrable faith in the home. But I am angered when I hear third-hand of members of this group casting aspersions on the churchgoing habits and/or qualifications of the volunteer catechists in our program. Of course there is room for improvement in our parish religious education programstarting with me. I am no theological scholar. Five years ago I was a volunteer catechist with a B.A. in theater who was asked to give running the religious ed program a try. The enrollment had grown to the point where it was too much work to ask of a volunteer. I have read voraciously and attended conferences and sucked up all the information I could, but in truth I am not a traditionally qualified D.R.E. But I would defend the faith, integrity, knowledge and intentions of our catechists to anyone. I resent any gossip about them.

Until now I have seethed quietly, or I have unloaded on my pastor. I do not envy our pastor, into whose lap the rest of us deposit our squirming issues. Somehow he manages to keep us all working, if not together, at least side by side.

No one in this group communicates directly with me. But they make their positions known, and I try to accommodate their wishes in the interest of preserving parish unity. I have often thought their behavior exclusive and cultish, that they were just an odd bunch who had landed in our parish, of all places. But this mailing has opened my eyes. Our group has a name: orthodox Catholics, who apparently are much more prevalent than I thought, who have their own magazine like a mother ship and are on a mission to bring the rest of us back to fundamental catechesis.

I am not a belligerent person, but here is where I will fight. Renew 2000 has brought people who might otherwise drift from Sunday Mass to Sunday Mass into communion with one another. People have discovered or rediscovered the traditions and teachings of the church and have examined their lives in the light of Christ’s example. Catholics who have been at best non-participatory have come into the life of the church. Catholics have shared and prayed aloud together, and it’s not Sunday. If small faith communities are good enough to be commended by Pope John Paul II, then I will defend mine.

God bless the Paulists. In giving voice to my beliefs, I understand that avoiding confrontation is not the same as forging peacewhich all sounds pretty orthodox to me.

Eldad and I are looking forward to the next season of Renew.

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17 years 2 months ago
Valerie Schultz (“Renew the Face of the Earth!” 1/8) should not be amazed at the outrageous attack the journal Crisis made about the Renew program. It is par for the course. Any time a work in the church, no matter how fine it may be, does not fit into their peculiar definition of Catholic, it will be attacked.

Renew is one of the finest programs both for evangelization and the continuing education of people that has been developed in the church over the past 20 years.

I have been following the course of Renew and have found its programs well formulated and fitting into the finest of Catholic thought. Msgr. Tom Kleisler, the founder of Renew, is one of the most intelligent and zealous priests in the U.S. The editors of Crisis have peculiar concepts of what Catholic thought and action are—today, or truly in any day in the history of the church.

17 years 2 months ago
Valerie Schultz’s “Renew the Face of the Earth!” (1/8) again raises a question that begs for a response: With Catholic universities, graduate schools, presses, journalists and journals galore, why do we not have serious and ongoing efforts to understand the self-proclaimed (but never defined) “orthodox Catholic” phenomenon? What explains their selective orthodoxy and the highly selective past they would conserve? Why their preoccupation with abortion but seeming indifference to the deadly poverty in the third world and the social Gospel in general? Why the rush in some “orthodox” quarters to defend Augusto Pinochet’s murderous record? What explains their antipathy to the Second Vatican Council and 100 years of scriptural and theological scholarship that is largely ignored in the new catechism they espouse—if selectively?

What explains the readiness of their publications to misrepresent the We Are Church renewal effort, Call to Action and other progressive activities and to adopt, so frequently, a nasty tone in referring to people I personally know to be devout, committed, faithful Catholics? Why is there no self-criticism in the “orthodox” camp?

Given the heavy “orthodox” influence at the widely circulated Catholic Register and Our Sunday Visitor; the ample subsidies of Crisis, First Things and Catholic World Report; and the myriad pronouncements of “orthodox” voices from the pope to the increasing number of Opus Dei and other “loyalist” bishops, why do identifiably conservative Catholics continue to top out at no more than 5 percent of American Catholics?

Conversely, why are Catholic publications that, like the overwhelming majority of American Catholics, embrace Vatican II reforms, not more popular? Why have so many “Vatican II” or progressive Catholics failed in handing on the faith or practice of the faith to their children? Why do so many appear not to bother rationalizing their embrace of the abortion liberty? Why have progressive Catholics been so nearly invisible and ineffectual on the political scene except in such major struggles as civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam and the contra wars? The “orthodox” would, of course, multiply these few questions. Why is there so little effort to talk over this widening gulf?

17 years 2 months ago
Valerie Schultz (“Renew the Face of the Earth!” 1/8) should not be amazed at the outrageous attack the journal Crisis made about the Renew program. It is par for the course. Any time a work in the church, no matter how fine it may be, does not fit into their peculiar definition of Catholic, it will be attacked.

Renew is one of the finest programs both for evangelization and the continuing education of people that has been developed in the church over the past 20 years.

I have been following the course of Renew and have found its programs well formulated and fitting into the finest of Catholic thought. Msgr. Tom Kleisler, the founder of Renew, is one of the most intelligent and zealous priests in the U.S. The editors of Crisis have peculiar concepts of what Catholic thought and action are—today, or truly in any day in the history of the church.

17 years 2 months ago
Valerie Schultz’s “Renew the Face of the Earth!” (1/8) again raises a question that begs for a response: With Catholic universities, graduate schools, presses, journalists and journals galore, why do we not have serious and ongoing efforts to understand the self-proclaimed (but never defined) “orthodox Catholic” phenomenon? What explains their selective orthodoxy and the highly selective past they would conserve? Why their preoccupation with abortion but seeming indifference to the deadly poverty in the third world and the social Gospel in general? Why the rush in some “orthodox” quarters to defend Augusto Pinochet’s murderous record? What explains their antipathy to the Second Vatican Council and 100 years of scriptural and theological scholarship that is largely ignored in the new catechism they espouse—if selectively?

What explains the readiness of their publications to misrepresent the We Are Church renewal effort, Call to Action and other progressive activities and to adopt, so frequently, a nasty tone in referring to people I personally know to be devout, committed, faithful Catholics? Why is there no self-criticism in the “orthodox” camp?

Given the heavy “orthodox” influence at the widely circulated Catholic Register and Our Sunday Visitor; the ample subsidies of Crisis, First Things and Catholic World Report; and the myriad pronouncements of “orthodox” voices from the pope to the increasing number of Opus Dei and other “loyalist” bishops, why do identifiably conservative Catholics continue to top out at no more than 5 percent of American Catholics?

Conversely, why are Catholic publications that, like the overwhelming majority of American Catholics, embrace Vatican II reforms, not more popular? Why have so many “Vatican II” or progressive Catholics failed in handing on the faith or practice of the faith to their children? Why do so many appear not to bother rationalizing their embrace of the abortion liberty? Why have progressive Catholics been so nearly invisible and ineffectual on the political scene except in such major struggles as civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam and the contra wars? The “orthodox” would, of course, multiply these few questions. Why is there so little effort to talk over this widening gulf?

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