Wisdom Wednesday | July 17th

Welcome to Wisdom Wednesday, July 17. Shooting survivor Donald Trump and his Republicans gather in Milwaukee. Did God protect Trump? Yes and no opinions offered. Also, Religion News Service notes that Trump’s VP pick is J.D. Vance, “an adult convert to Catholicism and married to a Hindu woman.”

How big is the gap between AUSCP emphasis on Eucharist as the Sacrament of Encounter and the Indy emphasis? A Eucharistic Congress emcee spelled it out: “Everything flows from the practice of just sitting and watching and looking at Jesus.”

The assassination attempt

Conflicting views: “God protected President Trump,” said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. A writer for Religion News Service disagrees. “I’m glad Donald Trump is alive, and I’m quite confident God is, too. But my understanding of Christian theology makes me certain that God did not save the former president from assassination.”

The GOP Platform

The new Republican National Convention platform endorsed by Donald Trump is missing the strong pro-life stance evangelicals have come to expect from the GOP. Instead of calling for a concerted national push to curtail abortion, as the official party platform has done for the past 40 years, the new document removes that language and deems the matter best left to individual states to decide.

Politics: Just the facts, ma’am

Religion News Service reports “Five faith facts about Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance,” pointing out that, “If Trump is elected, Vance would be the second Catholic vice president in US history — after Joe Biden.” Pew Research offers “Ten facts about Republicans,” beginning with the fact that “Republican voters are overwhelmingly White, though less so than in the past.”

Associated Press: A trusted source

The AP has covered election news since 1848. With accuracy. With the facts. For late-breaking news or what happened last weekend, the AP is a go-to source.

The Eucharistic Congress

The official website invites attendees for “a profound personal revival,” to kick off a year of national evangelization. “God hears our prayers for the renewal of our Church as He will answer them through a life-changing transformation of our own hearts. The 10th National Eucharistic Congress is an invitation to experience profound personal revival so we can be sent out to share Christ’s love with a world that so desperately needs it.”

‘Sitting and watching and looking at Jesus’

Religion News Service describes the National Eucharistic Congress as a Catholic mega-event, to kick off an evangelization year. The Rev. Josh Johnson, an emcee of the congress, described adoration: “Everything flows from the practice of just sitting and watching and looking at Jesus.” He said the Catholic practice of contemplating the consecrated Communion host comes from Jesus’ mandate to the disciples to sit with him in the Garden of Gethsemane before his crucifixion. “Adoration draws us to imitation and participation in his work,” he said.

Sex and gender complications

• A prominent and prolific theologian in the Church of the Nazarene will face a church trial later this month for advocating for LGBTQ affirmation at a time when the denomination is doubling down on its opposition to same-sex relations.
• A Jewish seminary is investigated for sexual harassment. Now its critics want the findings made public. The investigation at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles was completed last month, but not made public.
• Robert Morris, former senior pastor of the prominent nondenominational Gateway Church headquartered in Southlake, Texas, resigned two weeks ago after Cindy Clemishire accused him of molesting her for four years, beginning when she was 12. The case has prompted calls for reforms not only in the church but at the state Capitol.
• California became the first U.S. state to bar school districts from requiring staff to notify parents of their child’s gender identification change. The law bans school rules requiring teachers and other staff to disclose a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to any other person without the child’s permission. Proponents of the legislation say it will help protect LGBTQ+ students who live in unwelcoming households. But opponents say it will hinder schools’ ability to be more transparent with parents.

Financial crimes at the Vatican

The chief prosecutor defends Vatican’s legal system after recent criticism of the pope’s absolute power. Prosecutor Alessandro Diddi’s defense comes as the Vatican tribunal finalizes its written reasonings for its December 2023 verdicts. The tribunal convicted a cardinal and eight others of various financial-related crimes related to the Holy See’s 350 million euro investment in a London property, but has not yet explained its decisions.

‘Enrolled in a major that no longer exists’

Meredith Mead, a conservative Christian with a love of words, enrolled in Cornerstone University three years ago, choosing the 83-year-old nondenominational school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, over other top Christian schools because of its creative writing major.

When she received an email from the university on June 13 announcing her major had been cut, she said, it felt like a gut punch.

Exploring the synodal document

• The Catholic Church is split on women deacons, says Reuters News Service, examining items on the agenda, included and excluded. Noting that women deacons will not be on the synod’s agenda, it said “theological reflection (on the issue) should continue, on an appropriate timescale and in the appropriate ways.” Priestly celibacy — another contentious area for potential reform — was not mentioned, while the document said African bishops are studying “the theological and pastoral implications of polygamy for the Church in Africa.”
• The implications of polygamy were brought into focus last year. Delegates at the first session of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops encouraged Catholic Bishops in Africa under their collective forum, the Symposium of Episcopal Conference of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), “to promote theological and pastoral discernment on the issue of polygamy.” A November 2023 report came from ACIAFRICA, a service of EWTN.
• Women, ordained ministry, synodality, the tragedy of abuse: all of these ecclesiastically sensitive themes are all present in the preface Pope Francis has written for a new book entitled “Women and Ministries in the Synodal Church.”The volume is a collaborative effort by three female theologians and two cardinals. The pope invites readers to avoid falling into the trap of “considering fidelity to ideas more important than attention to reality.”

Sunday’s Gospel

A Mennonite pastor examines Sunday’s Gospel reading (for July 21): “And right here, when Jesus’ plans for getting away and being alone are ruined by this needy crowd, is a miracle we often overlook: Jesus has compassion for them.”

Civil Rights Pilgrimage

Black, white, Catholic, Baptist and others build community on a bus trip and an experience of slavery, lynching and voting rights during a Southern Justice pilgrimage to Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery. (A home-grown story.)

Part of God’s Plan(et)

We’re All Part of God’s Plan(et) is a national Laudato Si’ awareness and engagement campaign to educate and inspire U.S. Catholics to more fully embrace and act upon the teachings of Laudato Si’. This campaign especially encourages Catholics–from families to parishes and from universities to religious communities and businesses–to participate in the Vatican’s global Laudato Si’ Action Platform.

Teilhard de Chardin documentary

Many assembly attendees saw a new documentary, Teilhard: Visionary Scientist, and met for discussion with the producers, Frank and Mary Frost. The two-hour documentary premiered in May on Maryland Public Television and is now available to the general public. The Frosts hope you will encourage groups to gather and discuss the film.

U.S. Bishops cut social justice staff

The AUSCP has taken a reluctant step, seeking an explanation from the U.S. bishops of how and why staffing was cut by half at the bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development – the department that is focused on social justice. Religion News Service provides the details in a news report, and the AUSCP has issued a news release.

Eucharistic Congress

As many thousands of clergy and lay faithful plan to attend the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, you deserve an explanation of why the AUSCP will not be present.

Catholic pilgrims are in the middle of a two-month journey on four routes across the United States. They’re planning to converge on Indianapolis in mid-July for a climactic stadium gathering called the National Eucharistic Congress, the first such event in more than 80 years.

The Eucharistic pilgrimage to Indianapolis brings to mind a pilgrimage continuing over more than a thousand years to Santiago in Spain. While it’s traditionally a Catholic pilgrimage, ending at the shrine of the apostle James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, secular pilgrims today embark on the Camino for all kinds of motivations beyond. A report, from Religion News Service.

Two weeks ago (June 16) in Saudi Arabia, masses of pilgrims embarked on a symbolic stoning of the devil in Saudi Arabia under the soaring summer heat. The ritual marks the final days of the Hajj, or Islamic pilgrimage, and the start of the Eid al-Adha celebrations for Muslims around the world. A look back with Religion News Service.

Slavery in Catholic St. Louis

An assembly participant, in a private conversation, said he just discovered that two schools he attended in St. Louis – DuBourg High School and Kenrick Seminary – were named in honor of slaveholders. A new report details slavery in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. Nate Tinner-Williams reports from Black Catholic Messenger.

National Park Service provides an article, “The Slave Trade in St. Louis.”

St. Louis Bishop DuBourg, about a family he “owned” – in a letter to his co-adjutor: “. . . you should always regard [the family of Harry and Jenny Nesbit] as the property of the bishop; but I see in some time to come though the marriage of the children, that this would provide prolific descendants to provide enough workers for the estate of the Bishop of St. Louis and for the seminary.” The story was published in the archdiocesan newspaper.

Reparations: Descendants of slaves that were forced to build St. Louis University say the Jesuit school owes them more than $70 billion in reparations. The figure was calculated by economists, based on 70 people identified as slaves of the Jesuits earning a low wage of $0.05 an hour between 1823 and 1865, and adjusted for inflation, according to a PBS article posted on the website of Descendants of the St. Louis University Enslaved last week (mid-February 2024.] The report is from the New York Post.

Election section – Your Conscience, Your Vote

In the opinion of Michael Sean Winters at National Catholic Reporter, Biden’s debate disaster leaves democracy in peril.

MAGA evangelicals grab all the headlines. But it’s swing state faith voters — Catholics, mainliners and Black Protestants — who will likely decide the election. The report comes from analysis at Religion News Service.

“Let’s Slow the Rush to Dump Joe,” says a writer in Vanity Fair. “Tune out the West Wing fan fiction. Swapping out the president at this stage in the race would be a political—and logistical—nightmare.” Vanity Fair limits free access to its articles.

Viganò in schism

This is not just schismatic; it is bizarre, says Michael Sean Winters about the behavior of the former U.S. Nuncio. “It is one thing to wrestle with this or that teaching of the church, to like or dislike this pope or that. But to so question and undermine the authority of the church itself such that you find yourself charged formally with schism, this is a grave thing.”

Transitions

Bishop Sean Rowe of the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania and the Diocese of Western New York has been named the next presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, succeeding Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, who concludes a nine-year term later this year.

Mother Mary P. Patterson, who was the widow of a Church of God in Christ presiding bishop and became known for her efforts to preserve the history of the historically Black Pentecostal denomination, died on Monday (June 24).

Meet the Crop of New Leaders in Catholic Higher Education: A report by the National Catholic Register.

According to the official statistics released by the German Bishops’ Conference on Thursday, more than 400,000 people officially left the Church in 2023.

‘Climate catastrophe is here’

The editors of Christian Century conclude, without a doubt, that the Climate Crisis is upon us. Swaths of US land are becoming uninsurable, even uninhabitable. Climate catastrophe is here. Not coming, already here. Not just in the hotter parts of the developing world—though they are certainly bearing the worst of it—but here in the United States. Not just in low-lying coastal areas, but all over. And not just according to scientists and activists, but according to decision makers in the corporate world.

Sports notes

Simone Biles leads Black Catholics headed to the 2024 Paris Olympics. The U.S. Olympic qualifiers for gymnastics and track and field took place this month in Minneapolis and Eugene, Oregon, respectively. The report in Black Catholic Messenger.

The Vatican cricket team takes on England Seniors.

In two matches at the stupendous Wormsley Estate, the Vatican faced off against the England Over 60s. The Vatican batted first in the initial match, and started strongly, but struggled to capitalize on this early success. In the second match, the Vatican gave up a few early wickets, but recovered exceptionally, but England came through near the end. Details from Vatican News.