A Sound of Sheer Silence

In the past, I have written about the project that I was a part of called the Community of Mary, Mother of the Redeemer .  As of last Thursday, I am no longer part of CMMR.  It still exists, just without me (and other core members).  I would love to be able to say that I have all the confidence in the world that CMMR will grow and flourish, but that would be a lie.  I think the far more likely outcome is that CMMR is heading for a fiery crash of one of a couple different sorts.  And part of me thinks that flourishing, at least of the public sort, would be the worst possible outcome for all concerned. In any event, my participation in CMMR is over, and thus one could say it was a failure.  In fact, I would definitely say it was a failure.  There are some people who want to relativize failure, to say something along the lines of "well, it wasn't a failure because I learned from the experience."  It is good to learn from experiences, to be sure, but that doesn't make the

When I was in the process of becoming an Episcopalian, a close friend of mine--someone who was a serious Christian, a priest actually, but not a Roman Catholic--expressed very serious concerns about the project.  One of his concerns was over my perceived (correctly perceived, as it turned out) lack of institutional loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church.  In his mind, once you are on a particular team, you need to stay on that time--a somewhat ironic position for him since he himself was once a convert, but nonetheless his position.  But his other, more interesting, objection is that he viewed the Episcopal Church as the "off ramp" to Christianity.  In other words his position was not that the Episcopal Church was not a "real" expression of Christianity, but that it tended to be a way station for people who eventually stopped practicing Christianity altogether. Implicit in that formulation is the notion that what is truly important is to be a practicing Christian no m

"So, what do you think about the bishops wanting to deny Biden Communion?" I've gotten that question a lot. There are a number of ways to approach this issue that I think are interesting on their own merits, but not ultimately the heart of the conversation.  For example, the lawyer in me is fascinated by the applicability of Canon 1405 p.1 , which states that "[i]n the cases mentioned in Canon 1401 [which includes ecclesiastical penalties such as denying Communion], the Roman Pontiff alone has the right to judge . . . Heads of State."  That seems pretty black and white to me--the U.S. Bishops' Conference has no jurisdiction over Biden so long as he is the President.  And, if you think through the "legislative history" of this Canon, it was surely written to prevent local bishops from mucking around with the Pope's broader diplomatic and spiritual initiatives.  In other words, exactly the kind of scenario we have right now.   Along those lines,