What's the most urgent question facing Christians?

Editor's note: For its opening convocation of the academic year, St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry in Albany recently held a panel discussion on "What is the most urgent question facing Christians today?"

Pat Pasternak, staff writer for The Evangelist, transcribed the panel's responses, which are presented here in edited form (including some changes to make for easier reading).

We present these as starter questions and ideas for Catholics to consider as they prepare to take part in the town meetings being held during October in every parish in the Albany Diocese on the topic of "mission."

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'Old boy network'

JOHN DWYER, adjunct professor of systematic theology: The first challenge for Catholics is coping with the consequences of the sexual abuse scandal. It is not over yet.

The second challenge is dismantling what I call the "old boy network" -- the clerical culture, which more than anything else was responsible for the abuse crisis.

The third challenge is dealing with the religious right and left. Both groups are convinced that God is on their side.

The fourth -- and the most serious -- challenge is dealing with the threat that we may no longer remain a Eucharistic community due to the unavailability of the Eucharist in an increasing number of parishes.

We can deal with these challenges with strong faith, solid spirituality, and a much deeper sense of who we are and who we are called to be.

We are called to demand homilies that make God's Scriptural Word live again. We are called to demand homilies which say in our words what the Scriptural writers said in their words.

The time has come to put ourselves -- as individuals and as Church -- under the judgment of the Word of God and to derive from that Word sustenance and love.

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Poverty and faith

SISTER PATRICIA SCHOELLES, SSJ, associate professor of Christian ethics: The most urgent question facing us is: How do we respond to the central problem of human existence?

That problem is simply that two-thirds of the world is living in substandard conditions; hunger and poverty, the lack of opportunity, the lack of sanitation, and oppression.

Salvation -- for lots of us for some part of our lives -- has been concerned with the afterlife; but, on a planet that is suffering, what does salvation have to do with this life? How do we experience God in a world that is torn and rendered in this way?

The questions for us have to be: How does God relate to human history? How does human existence and human history relate to God? How do politics relate to religion, and how should religion relate to politics? What is the relationship between God's provident care for us and human freedom? What is the will of God, and how do we act in response to the will of God in a world like this? How does the final salvation relate to our life here and now?

The more we waste time worrying about who may preach...whether they're ordained or not...whether they're male or female, we're really not addressing the central problem of our time.

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'Individual truths'

REV. CHRISTOPHER DEGIOVINE, campus minister, The College of Saint Rose, Albany: When I teach undergraduate classes, students now sit there and think, 'Okay, he has his opinion, and I have mine. I'll listen to his opinion; but, if it's not my opinion, he's wrong.'

There for me is the central problem facing our Church today: We all have our individual truths. If we live in a world where everything that I say is simply my opinion, then [the question] "is there any truth left?" becomes relevant.

If there is, where does one find it? In the Scriptures? Or is that just a question for the western world? Is there a different truth somewhere else? Is Jesus Christ the only Son of God, or is Jesus Christ just one way into the kingdom of God?

For me, the first question of this age is the question of relativism and truth. Is there any truth left in the world?

Is there truth in the world? If so, how do we find it? How do we take responsibility for this horribly wounded world when we say the Messiah has come?

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Living the Gospel

SISTER ANNE BRYAN SMOLLIN, CSJ, executive director of Counseling for the Laity, Diocese of Albany: My question is, "When will we be messengers of the Gospel, and really believe and act as Resurrection people?"

We're supposed to be counter-cultural. That means we're supposed to stand for the values in the Good News of our Gospel. So why are there war and hatred, hierarchy and patriarchy, injustices, poverty, exclusion of peoples instead of inclusion? Why do we build walls and fences, and choose to not stand next to each other? Why are we content to settle for mediocrity?

How will we react when we find out that people who ate meat on Friday are in Heaven? What happens when we find out that there is only one God, so the Methodists and Muslims and the Lutherans and our Jewish brothers and sisters have been praying to the very same God?

We must challenge ourselves and challenge our Church to be relevant today. The Church is not speaking to God's people. The hierarchy preaches one thing and does another. We're not hearing the cries of the poor, the neglected or the downtrodden.

Resurrection calls us to life, to live and to be fully alive in living the faith of our Gospel values...not to passivity or contentment, but to be actively involved in making our Church relevant today.

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Whose Bible is it?

DONALD GRAY, adjunct professor of systematic theology: Is Scripture part of the solution, or is it part of the problem?

The political situation in which we find ourselves has something to do with differing readings of the Bible and disagreements among Christians with regard to what the implications of the Bible might be.

I'm thinking about such issues as war and peace. And the whole issue of the relationship of religious faith to science has been widely poisoned by a certain way of reading the Bible and making use of it in our life.

The Bible was often used in the past to justify evils like slavery, and it certainly poisoned Jewish-Christian relations throughout much of Christian history.

I find Catholic students too often to be very fundamentalist in their understanding of their tradition. Their understanding of the Bible, about which they do not know a great deal, tends to be very literal.

There is much that is good in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but it provides no contemporary introduction to Bible study. It provides no sense of a history of the introduction of modern Bible scholarship into the Church. That is very unfortunate.

The Bible is potentially part of the solution; but, at the present time, it is still playing a large role as a problem in our life, in our society as well as in our Church.

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Into the deep

SISTER KATHERINE HANLEY, CSJ, associate dean of St. Bernard's: What is the deep to which we are called [as the Apostles were called by Jesus]? What keeps us from going there? And, if we do and Jesus changes our lives, what is the "everything" we are called to leave in order to follow Jesus?

What keeps us from going to the deep? Maybe we're too tired to take another risk. What keeps us from going there? The shallows are safe.

Do we know, on some level, that if we really put out into the deep and really find that enormous catch of fish, we may not know what to do then?

If the net is that large, might it contain some fish we don't actually want: seminarians with homosexual tendencies, women who believe they are called to ordination, folks who do not match my positions on the reverence for life continuum, prophets, oddballs, kooks, hawks, doves?

Of late, the Church seems more concerned to eliminate fish rather than to gather and bless them. Jesus is pretty clear: Don't be afraid. But there is a lot of fear among us.

What is the "everything" we have to leave? We may not have even begun to mull that question, but I have a sneaking suspicion we may not like any of the answers.

So back to the first question: What is the deep to which we are called, in the midst of our tiredness and discouragement and weariness, and what keeps us from going there?

Perhaps we might mull that one.

(9/28/06)