{"id":1012,"date":"2010-02-19T22:12:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-20T03:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=1012"},"modified":"2010-12-17T20:30:09","modified_gmt":"2010-12-18T02:30:09","slug":"out-of-egypt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/02\/19\/out-of-egypt\/","title":{"rendered":"Out of Egypt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Egyptian mystic and author Fr. Henri Boulad, SJ, was born in 1931 in Alexandria and studied in Lebanon, France, and the US. He has visited 50 countries on four continents, has published 30 books in 15 languages, knows every bishop in Egypt personally, and knows personally several cardinals around the world. He now leads the Jesuit College in Cairo, of which more than half the 1,600 students are Muslim. He wrote a private letter to Pope Benedict XVI<\/a> in 2007 calling for a fundamental renewal of the Catholic Church, which he believes is in a worldwide crisis. Through no fault of his the letter was accidentally made public recently. On the web it is now available and reported on in various languages, but not yet in English as far as I know. My interest in the mystic\u2019s letter is liturgical, though that is not the focus of his letter.<\/p>\n

I am, by background, temperament, and monastic profession, rather traditional in my liturgical tastes. I was raised on no-jeans-in-church, and outside of church it was no-caps-indoors and pants-pockets-are-for-things-not-hands. The social codes, in church and without, are very different for those just one generation behind me. I think a lot about the traditionalism of our liturgy (and of monastic life, but that\u2019s a topic for another day) and how well this works in our cultural context. I personally don\u2019t have a problem with the Vatican\u2019s increasingly traditional (and lacey) liturgical style. But I do worry about whether it is an obstacle to the credibility of the church and the proclamation of the Gospel in today\u2019s world. Our Catholic liturgy bears the marks, from top to bottom, of highly stratified and hierarchical and formal and aristocratic cultures of past centuries. Many of the resulting aesthetic artifacts are quite lovely. But\u2026 I think you know what the \u201cbut\u201d is, if you care at all about inculturation for the Gospel\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t much care for today\u2019s casual informality. But wouldn\u2019t it be so<\/em> like our God to call me (again) to something I think I don\u2019t like or doesn\u2019t fit my preconceived notions? Today\u2019s informality could be a sign of a culture in decay. But it could also be the blowing of the Spirit bringing us to egalitarian and inclusive ways of relating to one other. You see why the letter from the Jesuit mystic, with its call for a new style in the church, so interests me. Take a look at a few excerpts below, and then tell us how you think this would apply to liturgical renewal today.<\/p>\n

“Holy Father, I make bold to address you directly because my heart aches when I see how our church is in the process of sinking into an abyss.” The church needs a \u201cnew language.\u201d The language of the church is \u201cobsolete, anachronistic, boring, repetitive, moralistic, and utterly outmoded.\u201d It is \u201cby no means a matter of swimming with the tide and engaging in demagoguery, for the message of the Gospel must be presented in all its demanding objectionability. What is much more needed is the \u2018new evangelization\u2019 to which John Paul II invited us.\u201d For this we need a new language \u201cwhich speaks of the relevance and importance of faith for people of today.\u201d One notes \u201cthat our faith is very intellectual, abstract, and dogmatic, and speaks little to the body and heart.\u201d \u201cOne cannot solve the problems of today and tomorrow by relying on the past and gathering together its ruins.\u201d \u201cThe apparent vitality of the church in the Third World is deceptive. In all likelihood, these young churches will have to encounter sooner or later the same crises as in the older Christendom of Europe.\u201d Today\u2019s church badly needs \u201ca pastoral reform in order to rethink inherited structures from the bottom up\u201d and \u201ca spiritual reform in order to \u2026 understand anew the sacraments, give them an existential meaning, and integrate them into daily life.\u201d The church of today is \u201ctoo formal and too formalistic. One gets the impression that the institution chokes off charisms and ultimately only cares about external stability and respectable superficiality. Are we not in danger of one day being treated by Jesus as \u2018whitewashed tombs\u2019?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through no fault of his, this Egyptian Jesuit mystic’s letter to Pope Benedict was accidentally made public. 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