DE TRINITATE
Newsletter of the Society of the Holy Trinity
Societas Trinitatis Sanctae
Volume 5, Number 2, Pentecost 2002
From the Senior
WITH
OUR BROTHER PRIESTS IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
The
pastor of a large Roman Catholic parish nearby is a veteran of the Vietnam War.
Nothing—he recently confided to his congregation—nothing since two years on the
front line of battle has caused him such emotional trauma—nothing until now.
Lately he cannot sleep. He is overcome with anger. He prays against the sin of
despair. He is speaking, of course, about the trauma of scandal and deep
offense in the wake of revelations of the sexual abuse of children and young
people by priests. I do not refer to his suffering (multiplied by that of
thousands of faithful priests) as if to measure it against the suffering of
those who were abused by their Christian pastors. He certainly would not stand
for the comparison. It is the victims’ suffering that is at the center of his
own. And with it there is the betrayal of the priesthood that is his very station in life, and the perceived smear
on holy celibacy, already incomprehensible to most of the culture, but to which
he has given himself body and soul. Added to it all is his dismay at the
apparent pattern of disastrous mismanagement.
It
is only right that we members of this pastoral society express our desire to
“weep with those who weep,” and to share, with all public ministers of the
Church of Christ, the sorrow, the sense of shame, and in prayers for corporate
repentance. It is only right, because neither the facts nor our love for the
one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church will allow us any denominational safe
distance from the tragedies of pastoral betrayal. As you pray for those who
have suffered at the hands of priests, pray also for those who will struggle on
in faithfulness under the burden of public scandal and suspicion.
In
the froth and frenzy of public scandal, important distinctions get blurred.
Certainly the public debate about the nature and remedy of the present crisis
is littered with distinctions-begging-to-be-made. One distinction, however, we
in the public ministry of the Church ought to be very clear about: forgiveness
of sins and reconciliation with God is one thing, continuation in the public
ministry another. Forgiveness comes by grace alone. Public trust does not.
Forgiveness frees us for eternal life; it does not in all cases free us from
the temporal consequences of our failures and betrayals. Pastoral wisdom and
Christian love (which “hopes all things”) will naturally search for a way to
salvage a wrecked vocation. But it is no “mixed message” to speak in the same
breath about forgiveness of sins, the power of the gospel to transform lives, and the sometimes inevitable
consequences of pastoral betrayal. We who have been entrusted with the holy
mysteries and the care of souls would do well to cultivate the holy fear of
Sin’s inexorable temporal consequences.
THE
GENERAL RETREAT, SEPTEMBER 17–19
The Senior of the
ministerium shall gather the whole Society in retreat for no less than 48 hours
once each year in a place suitable for prayer, worship, and study (Rule,
Ch. III).
Details
for your planning and registration are enclosed. The travel equalization plan,
which provides remuneration for those who bear larger travel costs, depends on
securing the lower air fares available when you book early. Please make your
plans now.
The
retreat will mark the fifth anniversary of the Society’s founding. The Illinois
Chapter is leading the way in helping us to celebrate. On Wednesday afternoon,
we will travel by coach from the retreat house in Techny to the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of St. Luke in downtown Chicago, to join in the celebration of
the Holy Eucharist, and to be the guests of the parish at a banquet to follow.
Thanks to the good will of David Abrahamson, STS, and to the generosity of the
congregation (along with a bit of extra fundraising), the plan will entail no
additional cost to our members.
When
the plan was proposed to the STS Council, there was some concern about
“breaking out” in the middle of a retreat for a longish bus ride and a banquet.
At the same time, the council recognized the opportunity to invite ecumenical
guests and lay supporters, and to make
our common work and prayer better known—not to mention the opportunity to offer
our common work and prayer to the One who has offered himself for us, as
Christ’s people gather at Christ’s altar.
“NO”
TO LUTHERAN SECTARIANISM
This
is the beginning of a reflection about our common work and prayer that will
continue in prayerful conversation when we gather as a General Chapter in the
Fall. I hope a second, maybe even a third “installment” will reach you before
then.
The
Society of the Holy Trinity was founded in a time of crisis and deep conflict
among Lutherans. The crisis is now manifestly acute in the largest of the
Lutheran denominations. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is set to
make momentous public decisions about the sexual ethical standards it will
commend to its public ministers and, therefore, what the denomination will
teach (or refuse to teach) to the faithful about marriage and sexual love. The
“issue of homosexuality” is at the symbolic and strategic center of the conflict.
But the conflict is much broader than any discrete issue; it has to do with
wide-ranging and long-standing
questions about religious authority, Lutheran identity, the church’s relation
to the culture, the nature of ecclesial fellowship, ecumenical vision, and the
very shape of the life we are saved to live.
Many
confessional Lutherans are alarmed. Not a few speak words like “apostasy,”
“heresy,” “schism” as they look toward upcoming ELCA churchwide assemblies. In
this confessional reaction inside and outside the ELCA, there is much shared
anger, but little shared vision. Given our Lutheran history, given the mix of
“Lutheranisms” merged in the ELCA, this is not surprising. It is, nevertheless,
one of the saddest aspects of the present situation—that the pressures of the
present moment are deepening the fault lines, not only between radical
revisionists and “confessional” Lutherans, but between various incompatible
“confessional resistance” groups.
In the
midst of the conflict, what is to be the public posture of the Society? We who
have signed our name to our common Rule—to what sort of engagement have we
committed ourselves? What is a faithful confessional response in the present
crisis? With whom do we make common cause? Pondering the questions, I venture
these convictions, intuitions, and judgments. For brevity’s sake, and to
provoke searching conversation, I speak in the imperative voice. But, in fact,
I have little self-assurance in the necessary discernment of spirits.
As
ordained pastors in the Church of Christ, our persistent and common appeal
within our churches is to the Word of God, heard in the Church, that is, in a
spirit of ecumenical accountability and baptismal solidarity within the Body of
Christ. With regard to public utterances about the meaning and morals of sexual
love, for example, we must pray and plead and demand that the ELCA will not act
as a sect, betraying its own formal commitment to Church unity with a practical
denominational unilateralism based on its private interpretation of the Word
(“our Lutheran hermeneutic”?).
As
a catholic Christian, I speak of faithfulness to the Word and ecumenical
accountability in the same paragraph. We must learn again to think
“faithfulness” and “unity” in the same thought. There is no movement toward
church “renewal” that is not at the same time a movement toward Church unity.
How we came to think otherwise in a post-Reformation church is a familiar (but
not necessarily well-understood) story.
This
means that we must not betray and undercut this appeal to faithfulness with any
form of “confessional” sectarian reaction. To fight a liberal sectarianism with
a conservative sectarianism is to abandon any ecclesial high ground. We must
publicly repudiate all “break away” strategies, all threats of further schism,
all whispers about a “confessing synod” all attempts to form semi-ecclesial
“fellowships” (with the inevitable implication of breaking fellowship with
those we criticize). Anyone who thinks that “STS” was proposed as a fresh
acronym in the list of Lutheran ecclesial “fellowships” or synods has not been
listening or reading the Rule.
Should
not a truly confessional Lutheran be humbly considering the possibility that
the present debacle in Lutheranism is God’s judgment on all self-contained,
self-perpetuating Lutheran denominationalism—a judgment that cannot be dodged
by yet another attempt to purify Lutheranism? Should not the dream of purifying
Lutheranism be discarded as reactionary? No more reform movements within reform
movements! The only way ahead is by gestures that call into question all
self-perpetuating denominationalism.
Is
this a call to abandon the “Lutheran” confessional documents? On the contrary,
it is in fidelity to those documents that we are obligated finally to
disassociate the vocation of being “Lutheran” confessors from a separatist
Lutheran denominationalism. For the confessors at Augsburg sought to confess, not to circumscribe gospel
proclamation by their confessional constructs or tie it to the fate of a
“Lutheran” confessing party. Are we not in the present moment being given
opportunity to finally allow the Augustana its distinctive and clarifying
ecumenical witness—if only we will refuse to keep pretending that our
confessional heritage represents a covenant with God for the existence of
“Lutheranism”?
Of
course, for those who say “Church” and mean really “Lutheran Church,” there is
more than one denominational option in North America where that way of thinking
is at home. But the Society has brought together Lutheran pastors (from several
denominations), and how the Rule to which they have subscribed speaks “Church”
can be quickly discerned in Chapter VIII (Ecumenical Commitments). I urge
anyone considering subscribing to the Rule to notice that this chapter is not
an appendix.
The
way forward in the present crisis is radically and unpredictably ecumenical.
How will the way present itself? Will we be ready for it when it does present
itself? Surely any “next step” must begin in prayerful conversation with
sympathetic orthodox Christians in other communions. For, as Father Jay Scott
Newman likes to describe the present situation, many who are in the same church
are separated by different religions, and many in different churches are united
in the same religion.
Especially,
as our Rule makes clear, we must work in our lives, our parishes, and as a
Society, to walk the ecumenical bridges and tunnels that may, in God’s time
span the Catholic-protestant breach. That is no side road off the way to
faithfulness, it is the main route.
“So
then,” I hear the question coming, “What is a faithful pastor in the ELCA
actually to do, if the denomination publicly abandons the historic and
ecumenical consensus fidelium in its
teaching on marriage and sexual ethics?” To my mind there are only two faithful
options, and I will spell them out next time.
Phillip
Max Johnson, Senior
Chapter News
CHESAPEAKE-POTOMAC
CHAPTER
Dean,
Paul C. Lundmark, plundmark@aol.com
The
Chesapeake-Potomac and Susquehanna chapters of the Society will gather for a
joint retreat June 3–4 at the Precious Blood Spiritual Center in Columbia, PA.
Richard Ballard, STS, will serve as our teaching theologian on the Pastoral Rule
of Pope Gregory the Great.
ILLINOIS
CHAPTER
Dean,
Paul G. Bieber, paulbieber@unidial.com
Eleven
pastors attended the St. Mark’s Day retreat of the Illinois Chapter of the Society
in April. Among those attending were an ELCA pastor who declared his intention
to subscribe to the Rule and an ecumenical guest, a Servite priest serving in
the Archdiocese of Chicago, who attended his second STS retreat.
Wolf
Knappe, STS, served as teaching theologian, offering reflections and
remembrances on “The Christian Church Under the Nazis.” The son of a Lutheran
pastor in Munich who opposed the Nazis, Wolf was a boy when Hitler assumed
power; he was drafted near the end of the war. Tim Hubert, STS, served as
chaplain, leading the daily office and preaching at a Eucharist commemorating
St. Anselm of Canterbury. Pr. Bill Callister, who earlier stated his intention
to subscribe to the Rule, presided at the Eucharist. Individual confession and absolution
was offered, as was time for meditation and conversation.
Paul
Bieber was elected to a second term as the chapter’s second dean. Frank Senn,
Vicar, presided at the election. Steven Tibbetts, STS, was appointed chapter
treasurer, with Wolf Knappe retiring from that position. Chapter members
discussed local arrangements for the upcoming General Retreat in September,
which we look forward to hosting. Informal conversation also included making
plans for an inquirers retreat in Wisconsin that could lead to the organization
of a new STS chapter in that state.
Reported
by Steven Tibbetts, STS, Illinois Chapter
NEW
JERSEY AND NE PENNSYLVANIA CHAPTERS
Dean,
John D. Larson, lcmrutgers@yahoo.com (NJ)
Acting
dean, Ronald Yergey, ronald.yergey@verizon.net (PA)
Our
New Jersey and NE Pennsylvania chapters were fortunate to have our Lenten
retreat on March 10, the day of Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome, A.D. 604. With
our times of prayer, silence, meals, and confession and forgiveness, we had the
opportunity for Christian reflection on important sections of the Holy
Scripture’s Pastoral Epistles, related quotations from St. Gregory’s Pastoral
Rule, and our Society’s Rule on congregational practice, Chapter VII. All this
was focused on our pastoral ministry centered in the proclamation of Word and
Sacrament in Christian speech and Christian living. Nine of us were together,
stimulated and refreshed by the Spirit of God among us.
Reported
by John Larson, STS dean, New Jersey Chapter
SUSQUEHANNA
CHAPTER
Acting
dean, Beth Schlegel, baschlegel@christlutheranyork.com
A
joint retreat is scheduled for the Susquehanna and Chesapeake-Potomac chapters
of the Society on June 3–4 at Precious Blood Spiritual Center. (See previous
report from Chesapeake-Potomac.) We regret the resignation of Paddy Rooney,
STS, as chapter dean due to a heavy workload in the parish and synod. We thank
God for Paddy’s leadership and appreciate his ongoing participation in the
Society and support for the chapter. An election of dean will be held at the
June retreat.
UPSTATE
NEW YORK CHAPTER
Dean,
Richard J. Niebanck, catspike@dmcom.net
The
Upstate New York Chapter of the Society met in retreat at Stella Maris,
Skaneateles, on March 12–13. Ten pastors were in attendance. The daily office
was prayed, private confessions were heard, and the Order for Corporate
Confession and Forgiveness was held. John Priest, STS, served as chaplain and
confessor, and the dean as preacher. Wesley Hamlin, STS, had a discussion of
the Augsburg Confession and Apology, Articles 1 through 21. This was the first
in a series of studies of the Book of Concord.
The
next retreat is to be held August 13–14 in Derby, NY. It is hoped that the
location will make possible the attendance of pastors from NW Pennsylvania and
NE Ohio.
WASHINGTON
CHAPTER
Dean,
Ronald Marshall, deogloria@foxinternet.com
On
February 12, the dean of the chapter, Ron Marshall, made a parish visitation to
First Lutheran Church, Tacoma, WA, that included the sacrament of penance.
The
Washington Chapter held a spring retreat May 17 at First Lutheran Church of
West Seattle, WA, with prayer, meals, and the discussion of a paper on the
prohibition of divorce and same-sex blessing.
News of Chapters in
Formation
CALIFORNIA
Contact
Bruce Lundberg, bglundberg@yahoo.com (No. CA)
Contact
William Hampton, prwrh@aol.com (So. CA)
Plans
are being made for a “preorganization” chapter retreat to be held in the
Sacramento area. The date will be determined following the General Retreat of
the Society.
OHIO
Contact,
Joy Schroeder, jschroed@capital.edu
The
“provisional chapter” that has been meeting for the last several years in the
Dayton, OH, area voted to establish a chapter and formalize its relationship
with the Society.
Seven
pastors and two seminarians gathered in retreat at the Maria Stein Spiritual
Center (60 miles northwest of Dayton) on April 7–8. A dean has not yet been
elected, nor a name for the chapter decided. The next retreat is tentatively
scheduled for November 10–11 at Maria Stein. Most of those who attended the
April retreat plan to attend the General Retreat in Chicago this September.
From the Vicar
The
Rule of the Society of the Holy Trinity nowhere says that the Society is an
evangelical catholic organization. But
the various commitments in the chapters of the Rule express an evangelical
catholic sensibility. We are committed to an historical and ecumenical form of
common prayer, the use of individual confession, a biblical and traditional
moral life, a catholic and orthodox liturgical life in the parish, a study of
the fathers and doctors of the church as well as the Scriptures and
Confessions, and an ecumenical vision that includes reconciliation with the
Bishop and Church of Rome. I don’t know how someone without an evangelical
catholic sensibility could be comfortable in the Society.
In
his famous dictum, Vincent of Lérins identified the catholic faith as “that
which is believed everywhere, always, by all” (ubique, semper, ab omnibus). He said this in the face of the
invading Arian Goths who overran Western Europe. It takes a certain chutzpa,
not to say imagination, to be a good Catholic in the face of overwhelming
evidence to the contrary, matched by a resolute unwillingness to succumb to
sectarianism. His stance must have been like the late Arthur Carl Piepkorn’s
frequent public descriptions of “the Church of the Augsburg Confession” that
few of us saw in practice in our own Lutheran congregations and denominations.
“Evangelical”
refers to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel surely must be the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, who was crucified for our offences and raised for
our justification. Lutherans have expressed this gospel by the proposition of
justification by faith for Christ’s sake according to the Holy Scriptures. We
have used this proposition as a criterion for judging doctrine and practice. In
the Lutheran Reformation this led to a critique of the received catholic
tradition, but not a rejection of it.
We
believe that the Holy Spirit continues to create both personal faith and the
whole Christian church on earth (“catholic” means “according to the whole”—kata holos). That which has proven true and useful is retained by us because
it testifies to the work of the Holy Spirit in history. This includes traditions and historical
institutions such as the Divine Liturgy and the Holy Ministry. Note the
adjectives modifying these nouns. We don’t believe that these developments in
the life and mission of the church are purely human. Indeed, the whole life of the church is the work of the Holy
Spirit who creates a human community on earth that reflects in its life
together the divine Community of Persons in heaven we call the Holy Trinity.
There
is not space in this newsletter to lay out all the characteristics of
evangelical catholicity. Instead I commend the following basic bibliography.
Leafing through the annuals of Lutheran
Forum and Pro Ecclesia will
undoubtedly yield other important articles.
Gustav Aúlen, “The Catholicity of Lutheranism: A
Contribution to the Ecumenical Discussion,” World
Lutheranism of Today (1950), 3–20.
Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, editors, The Catholicity of the Reformation
(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1996). A good study book for chapter
meetings.
Sven-Erik Brodd, Evangelisk
Katolicet. Ett studien av innehall och funktion under 1800 och 1900 talet
(Uppsala: GWK Gleerup, 1982). A magisterial dissertation in Swedish with an
English summary on what “evangelical catholicity” has meant over the last two
centuries.
Yngve Brilioth, Eucharistic
Faith and Practice, Evangelical and Catholic, trans. A. G. Hebert (London:
S.P.C.K., 1965). Originally published in Swedish in 1930.
Max Lackman, Katholische
Einheit und Augsburger Konfession (Graz, 1960). A profound statement of the
catholic content and ecumenical vision of the Augsburg Confession.
George A. Lindbeck, “Ecumenical Directions and Confessional
Construals,” dialog 30 (1991),
118–23. Contrasts the agendas of the evangelical catholics and the
denominational Lutherans.
Jaroslav Pelikan, Obedient
Rebels. Catholic Substance and Protestant Principle in Luther’s Reformation
(New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1964). Essential reading on the topic.
Frank C. Senn, “The ‘Evangelical Catholic’ Debate Continues:
Who Said the Way Was Back?” Lutheran
Forum 25 (Advent 1991), 8–10. Two sidebar quotes from myself: “The way is
not ‘back’ to the ecumenical impasse of the Reformation era, but forward to new
ecclesiastical relationships.” “The clear thrust of evangelical catholicism is
to move out of the status quo of the present denominationalism and into the
future of the ecumenical church.”
Frank
C. Senn, Vicar
STS Calendar
May 26-28 Rocky
Mt. Chapter retreat, FCJ Retreat Centre, Calgary. Contact K. Glen Johnson.
June 3-4 Chesapeake-Potomac
and Susquehanna chapters retreat, Precious Blood Spiritual Center, Columbia,
PA. Contact Paul Lundmark or Beth Schlegel.
June 3-4 New
Jersey and NE Pennsylvania chapters retreat, Loyola House, Morristown, NJ.
Contact John Larson.
June 17-18 Virginia
Chapter retreat, Roslyn Retreat Center, Richmond, VA, Contact Lou Smith.
Aug. 13-14 Upstate
New York Chapter retreat, St. Columban Retreat Center, Derby, NY (SW of
Buffalo). Contact Richard Niebanck.
Sept. 17-19 STS
General Retreat. Divine Word International Techny Towers Conference Center,
Techny, IL (17m from O’Hare). Contact John Priest.
DE TRINITATE
News and reflection from the Society of the Holy Trinity
Volume 5, Number 2, Pentecost 2002
Editor: Constance
R. Seddon
Editorial office:
14 Oak Road, Briarcliff Manor, NY
10510-2311 / 914-941-5202 / cseddon@computer.net
Please direct
subscription inquiries or changes of address
to the Secretary, below.
Senior: Pr.
Phillip M. Johnson, St. Paul Lutheran
Church, 440-448 Hoboken Ave., Jersey City, NJ
07306 / 201-963-5518 / pmjsts@msn.com
Vicar: Pr. Frank
C. Senn, Immanuel Lutheran Church,
616 Lake Street, Evanston, IL 60201
847-864-4464 / fcsenn@aol.com
Secretary: Pr.
John E. Priest, Immanuel Lutheran
Church, 17 High Street, Delhi, NY 13753
607-746-2098 / jepriest@dmcom.net
Bursar: Pr. Mark
A. Hoffman, 200 St. Ann Drive,
Apt. 1032, Mandeville, LA
70471 / 985-727-3879