Catholic Church: Change comes when it comes

I’ve always heard something haunting but yet beautiful whenever I hear Karin Bergquist’s rendition of Over the Rhine’s “Changes Come” from the 2008 Cornerstone Music Festival in Bushnell, Illinois. She wrote the song, with her husband, Linford Detweiler, and the Cincinnati alt-country band recorded it five years earlier in Nashville on Oct. 19, 2003. The lyrics go partially like this:

“Changes come, Turn my world around, Changes come, Turn my world around. Jesus come Turn my world around Jesus come Bring the whole thing down Bring it down.”

Change comes when it comes.

For some reason, this song has been running through my head, as I reflect a bit on Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”) the 624 words in English language translation declaration on the relation of the Roman Catholic Church to non-Christian religions that Catholic bishops adopted 50 years ago today, near the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, which ended Dec. 7, 1965.

Perhaps it also resonates after the three-week Synod on the Family from Oct. 4 to Oct. 25, which just ended. One of the great issues of the synod, which advised Pope Francis, was whether civilly divorced Catholics who remarry, and haven’t received an annulment within the Catholic Church, might be admitted pastorally, if not doctrinally, to the sacrament of the Eucharist. The Church teaches that the sacrament of marriage is “indissoluble” and that remarried Catholics who have not received annulments are committing adultery and living in sin. They may receive communion if they abstain from sex.

Pastoral versus doctrinal. Discipline versus doctrinal. Orthodox versus heterodox. These are always the stuff of great Catholic debates among ourselves. Doctrine encompasses the overall teachings of the Church. For example, Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”) now Blessed Pope Paul VI’s encyclical teaching on birth control. Pastoral practice is how the Church applies doctrines in real life.

Doctrine is important, but not every doctrine is dogma, which refers to core Catholic beliefs, such as the Resurrection, which is foundational. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the kingpin upon which all of Christianity and Catholicism stands or crumbles. If Christ has not been raised from the dead then Christian faith is futile. No other prophet of any religion has come back from the dead. In the Apostle Paul’s First Letter to the Church at Corinth in (15: 14-19), he writes of the resurrection of Jesus as being the central doctrine in Christianity: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain,” Paul observed. And if Christ has not been raised, he added, God is being misrepresented because “we testified of God that he raised Christ.” Therefore, if Christ has not been raised, “your faith is futile: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” The entire Christian faith hinges upon the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus on the third day.

The Old Testament Mosaic law allowed for divorce and remarriage among the Israelites. The Israelites saw divorce as a way to dissolve a marriage and enable the spouses to remarry others so the Pharisees questioned Jesus when he taught on the permanence of marriage by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?

As we see in the Synoptic Gospels of Saints Matthew (19: 3-8); Mark (10: 2-9); and Luke (16: 18), Jesus answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.

“They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?’ He said to them, ‘For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.’”

Catholics therefore believe Jesus re-established the permanence of marriage among his followers and raised Christian marriage to the level of a sacrament, teaching that sacramental marriages cannot be dissolved through divorce, which was part of Jesus’ perfection of the Old Law, of which he said, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them.”

While there is much debate about what the synod’s advice on the subject to the Holy Father means, the final document offers divorced and remarried Catholics the possibility of returning to fuller participation in the Church, on a case-by-case basis, after receiving spiritual counselling from priests in what is called the “internal forum.” It says nothing about whether divorced and remarried Catholics may or may not receive communion. But it does say divorced and civilly remarried Catholics “must not feel excommunicated.” The document said that opening to Catholics in less-than-perfect situations was not a “weakening of the faith,” or of the “testimony on the indissolubility of marriage”; instead, it was a sign of the church’s charity.

In his closing address last Saturday night, Pope Francis said the Synod on the Family was “about trying to view and interpret realities, today’s realities, through God’s eyes, so as to kindle the flame of faith and enlighten people’s hearts in times marked by discouragement, social, economic and moral crisis, and growing pessimism.

“It was about bearing witness to everyone that, for the Church, the Gospel continues to be a vital source of eternal newness, against all those who would ‘indoctrinate’ it in dead stones to be hurled at others.

“It was also about laying bare the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families.

“It was about making clear that the Church is a Church of the poor in spirit and of sinners seeking forgiveness, not simply of the righteous and the holy, but rather of those who are righteous and holy precisely when they feel themselves poor sinners.”

Change comes when it comes.

Peter, the first pope, and the apostles that Jesus chose were, for the most part, married men, although the Council of Elvira decreed in 306 a priest who sleeps with his wife the night before mass would lose his job.

It wasn’t until Pope St. Gregory VII in 1074 that celibacy was imposed uniformly across the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. And It wasn’t until 1215 that the Fourth Lateran Council used the word transubstantiated, when speaking of the change that takes place in the Eucharist, while it would be a few years later at the Second Council of Lyons, convened in 1274, that the teaching of Pope Innocent IV was used to develop a formal declaration on purgatory.

In 1964 and 1965, a year after the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was enacted, the new mass (Novus Ordo) in the vernacular rather than Latin was introduced, the priest turned around and started celebrating mass facing the people, who could stand to receive the Eucharist, as the altar rails were soon to be removed.

Now Blessed Pope Paul VI proclaimed Paenitemini (Apostolic Constitution On Penance) on Feb. 17, 1966, which allowed episcopal conferences to permit Catholics in their jurisdictions to substitute some other penitential practice aside from abstaining from meat on Fridays, a prescription which had been in force in the universal church since Pope Saint Nicholas 1, also known as Saint Nicholas the Great, in 851 (with the exception in Canada of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday in accordance with the prescriptions of Canon 1253, proclaimed in 1983. Fridays are days of abstinence, but Canadian Catholics can substitute special acts of charity or piety on this day).

Following the lead of the Vatican and national episcopal conferences in France, Canada and Mexico earlier in 1966, the U.S. norms (which are similar but not identical to those in Canada) were approved in “On Penance and Abstinence,” a pastoral statement of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on Nov. 18, 1966. The first day Friday American Catholics could eat meat on Friday under the new regulations was the first Friday of Advent on Dec. 2, 1966.

Change comes when it comes. Or not. But history will not move backwards no matter how much I personally would like to hear monks chanting vespers in Latin at every mass.

Canadian Catholics, both heterosexual and homosexual, will continue to get married and divorced, either inside or outside the Church.

Same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada for more than 10 years since the federal Civil Marriage Act received royal assent on July 20, 2005. Carey Nieuwhof, a Protestant evangelical and lead pastor of Connexus Church in Barrie, Ontario, in a blog post last June 29 headlined, “Some Advice on Same-Sex Marriage for US Church Leaders From a Canadian” wrote, “Most of us reading this post have been born into a unique season in history in which our culture is moving from a Christian culture to a post-Christian culture before our eyes.

“Whatever you think about history, theology or exactly when this shift happened, it’s clear for all of us that the world into which we were born no longer exists.

“Viewpoints that were widely embraced by culture just decades ago are no longer embraced. For some this seems like progress. For others, it seems like we’re losing something. Regardless, things have changed fundamentally.”

Nieuwhof went onto write: “If you believe gay sex is sinful, it’s really no morally different than straight sex outside of marriage.

“Be honest, pretty much every unmarried person in your church is having sex (yes, even the Christians).

“I know you want to believe that’s not true (trust me, I want to believe that’s not true), but why don’t you ask around? You’ll discover that only a few really surrender their sexuality.

“Not to mention the married folks that struggle with porn, lust and a long list of other dysfunctions.

“If you believe gay marriage is not God’s design, you’re really dealing with the same issue you’ve been dealing with all along – sex outside of its God-given context.

“You don’t need to treat it any differently.

“By the way, if you don’t deal with straight sex outside of marriage, don’t start being inconsistent and speak out against gay sex.

“And you may want to start dealing with gluttony and gossip and greed while you’re at it.”

Meanwhile, abortion has been legal in Canada for almost three decades now, since Jan. 28, 1988 when the Supreme Court of Canada, in Dr. Henry Morgentaler, Dr. Leslie Frank Smoling and Dr. Robert Scott v. Her Majesty The Queen, struck down Section 251 of the Criminal Code of Canada, the 1969 therapeutic abortion criminal law, as unconstitutional, without force and effect, in a 5-2 decision.

The law was found to violate Section 7 the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it infringed upon a woman’s right to “life, liberty and security of person,” the court held. Morgentaler, Smoling and Scott had been charged in 1983 with performing illegal abortions at their Toronto clinic. A Supreme Court of Ontario jury had acquitted them on Nov. 8, 1984, but the Crown appealed and on Oct. 1, 1985 the Court of Appeal for Ontario set aside the acquittals and ordered a new trial. Morgentaler, Smoling and Scott then successfully appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada to have the Court of Appeal for Ontario decision overturned and their acquittals restored. The following year, on Nov. 3, 1989, then Progressive Conservative Minister of Justice Kim Campbell introduced in the House of Commons Bill C-43, which, had it been approved by both the House of Commons and the Senate, would have made it a criminal offence to induce an abortion on a woman unless it was done by, or under the direction of, a physician who considered that the woman’s life or health was otherwise likely to be threatened. “Health” was defined as including physical, mental and psychological health.

On May 29, 1990, the House of Commons passed Bill C-43 on third reading by a vote of 140-131. Although cabinet ministers were required to support the bill, it was a free vote for all other MPs. On Jan. 31, 1991, the Senate voted on Bill C-43. As with the House of Commons, it was a free vote except for members of the cabinet, in this case Senator Lowell Murray, leader of the government in the Senate. Of 86 senators present, 43 voted for the bill and 43 voted against it. Under the Rules of the Senate, the 43-43 tie vote is deemed to be a “no” vote, therefore Bill C-43 was defeated.

Pope Francis, the pope of mercy, understands how the world and families really are in the real world, rather than how we might simply wish them to be.

Divorce is reality.

Same-sex marriage is reality.

Abortion is reality.

So what are we going to do? As Catholics.

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Abandoned dreams: The empty Power store supermarket and its lone Vendorama ballpoint pen dispenser

Power store photos courtesy of City of Toronto Archives

The lone and lonely chattel: My morning walk from my house a few blocks away at 537 Nipigon Street to Oshawa Catholic High School in 1973 meant a walk by the empty Power store supermarket at Rosslynn Plaza at the corner of Rossland Road West and Stevenson Road North, which stood empty except for a perhaps forgotten 1960s-era Vendorama ballpoint pen dispenser. Such is the stuff of abandoned dreams.

Urban landscapes change, sometimes almost imperceptibly, sometimes suddenly and dramatically. Any visit to a city photographic archive will tell you that. Sometimes it’s the physical landscape; old buildings are demolished or altered through exterior renovation or addition; or empty spaces are in-filled with new buildings. At other times, the change is more subtle. Physically, the building may well look pretty much the same, but its use and signage may have changed. Or just the latter perhaps if a competitor buys up a property to carry on the same type of business.

Right here in Thompson, while the larger signage may still say Canada Safeway at City Centre Mall, if you look at the smaller legal fine print, Thompson’s largest full-line grocer has indeed been owned by Sobeys West Inc. since Nov. 4, 2013, supermarket banner notwithstanding. Safeway has been in Thompson since 1964.

Canada Safeway, with about 29,000 employees and based in Calgary, was a wholly owned subsidiary of the American parent company Safeway, headquartered in Pleasanton, California, making it the second largest supermarket chain in North America, surpassed only by the Kroger Co. of Cincinnati, started in 1883 by Barney Kroger with his life savings of $372.

Safeway got its start in 1915 in American Falls, Idaho when Marion Barton Skaggs purchased a tiny grocery store from his father for $1,089. By 1926 he was operating 428 Skaggs stores in 10 states. Skaggs almost doubled the size of the business that year when he merged his company with 322 Safeway (formerly Los Angeles-based Sam Selig Company) stores. In the 1930s, Safeway introduced produce pricing by the pound and open dating on perishables to assure freshness some of the first parking lots for customers.

A well as Safeway banner stores across Canada and the United States, Safeway also operates under other multiple banners as Vons stores in Southern California and Nevada, Randalls and Tom Thumb stores in Texas, a Genuardi’s store in Audubon, Pennsylvania, as well as Carrs stores in Alaska. None of the Safeway-owned stores in the United States were included in the Sobeys purchase of Canada Safeway.

John William (J.W.) Sobey started in 1907 with a horse-drawn cart as a meat delivery business in Stellarton, Nova Scotia. In 1924, his son, Frank H. Sobey, persuaded his father to expand the family business from meat and a few local vegetables to a full line of groceries. Sobeys tripled its size and became a national company when it acquired The Oshawa Group – a Toronto-based supplier to Canada’s IGA stores – in 1998, although it had opened a grocery store outside Atlantic Canada in Guelph, Ont. as early as 1987. It is now Canada’s second largest grocery chain, sandwiched between industry leader Loblaw Cos. Ltd. of Brampton, Ont. in top place and third place Metro Inc. of Montreal.

Loblaw, the largest food retailer in Canada, was started in Toronto in June 1919 by Toronto grocers Theodore Pringle Loblaw and J. Milton Cork. Bread salesman George Weston started George Weston Limited, also in Toronto, in 1882. Other Loblaw banners include Extra Foods, Shop Easy Foods, OK Economy, No Frills, Valu-Mart, Real Canadian Superstore, Provigo, SaveEasy, Fortinos, Zehrs Markets, Dominion, Red & White Food Stores, Atlantic Superstore, SuperValu, Lucky Dollar Foods, Freshmart, Maxi and Your Independent Grocer.

Before Sobeys Inc. was allowed to complete its $5.8-billion purchase of Canada Safeway, the federal Competition Bureau on Oct. 22, 2013 ordered in a consent agreement with Nova Scotia-based Sobeys that they sell 23 stores in Western Canada to preserve competition in certain markets in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

In the 1960s, growing up in Oshawa, Ontario, my parents liked to shop at the Power store supermarket in the Rosslynn Plaza the corner of Rossland Road West and Stevenson Road North. Power’s slogan was “More Power To Your Food Dollar.”

The origins of Power store supermarkets date to 1904, when Samuel and Sarah Weinstein opened a grocery store named after themselves in downtown Toronto. The family’s first store under the low-cost Power banner opened at Coxwell and Danforth avenues in 1933 with the slogan, “Why Pay for Fixtures?” Power was purchased by Loblaw Groceterias in 1953, but continued as a distinctly separate budget brand until 1972, when its parent company decided to spend $10 million improving its image. Leon Weinstein, the cigar-smoking son of founders Samuel and Sarah who oversaw the company’s expansion years, was briefly president of Loblaw from 1968 to 1970.

And what of that left behind building after the demise of Oshawa’s Power store supermarket in Rosslyn Plaza close to 45 years ago now? The plaza is essentially still a small strip mall more than four decades later and the old Power store has become a subdivided combination of several stores, including a Coffee Time outlet, part of a privately-owned Canadian coffee-and-donut chain started by Tom Michalopoulos in Bolton, Ontario, just northwest of Toronto, in 1982. The company is now headquartered in Scarborough, in the east-end Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Also in the mix is a Lovell Drugs pharmacy, one of the largest, independent drug store chains in Ontario with 12 locations now in Whitby, Oshawa, Kingston and Cornwall, started in Bowmanville, east of Oshawa, by David Stott in 1856 (the business was later joined over the next century by family owners and partners including A.W. Gregory, John H. Jury and generations of Lovells – Edwin, Stan, Everett, Arthur and Diana Lovell. Pizza Pizza and Subway round out the old Power store tenants.

And what of that abandoned Vendorama ballpoint pen dispenser in 1973 in the front window of the empty Power store in Oshawa?

In a Nov 16, 2013 Daily Kos post (the blog started by Markos Moulitsas in 2002) headlined “History 101: Pens and Ink,” the blog editor known as Ojibwa writes,  “The idea of using a rotating ball to distribute the ink to the paper was developed by the American inventor John H. Loud. His first patent for a ball dispenser pen was issued in 1888. This first design was intended for writing on rough surfaces, such as cardboard. Loud’s designs – he was issued several more patents – never reached the point of providing the user with the flow of ink needed for good penmanship.

“It was up to László Biro, a Hungarian living in Argentina during World War II, to use a spin-off of war technology to create a pen which could write on paper. In 1943, Lazlo Biro and his brother
György form Biro Pens of Argentina. Their design was licensed for production in the United Kingdom to supply the Royal Air Force who had found that the ballpoint pens worked better than fountain pens at high altitude. In 1945, Marcel Bich bought the patent from Biro and the pen became the main product of his Bic Company.”

In 1960, Victor Vending Corporation of Chicago moved into full production of its Vendorama ballpoint pen dispenser, known as the Pen Vendorama, which revolved and could dispense up to 168 ballpoint pens for a dime each. Different models of Vendorama ballpoint pen dispensers sold pens for either a nickel, dime or a quarter.

Alas, no word on the final dispensation of the Vendorama ballpoint pen dispenser in the window of the Rossland Road Power store, circa 1973.

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Shrived by the confessor: Fat Tuesday and Ash Wednesday arrive for penitents as the liturgical season of Lent is upon us, but not before one last rich feast of pancakes Feb. 17 as shrovetide ends

Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras.  Máirt Inide. Dydd Mawrth Ynyd.  Fastnacht. Fastelavn. Sprengidagur.  Güdisdienstag. Vastlapäev.  Užgavėnės.  Fettisdagen. Laskiainen. Shrove Tuesday. Call it what you will, but make sure you eat – and eat big and eat rich – on this moveable feast, based on the lunar cycles of the moon, and celebrated around the world, falling this year on Feb. 17 – next Tuesday – the last day of shrovetide before the penitential season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which is its colloquial name.  Dating to the A.D. 900s, the official name is the Day of Ashes.

“Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return,” will be said by Catholic priests in churches around the world Wednesday, as they make the distinctive of signing the foreheads of the faithful with the sign of the cross in ashes, blessed by a priest and made from burning palm fronds which have been saved from last year’s Palm Sunday masses.  Blessed ashes having been used in such religious  rituals since the time of Moses.

The historical reason that pancakes are associated with the day preceding Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent is that the 40 days of Lent form a period of liturgical fasting, during which only the plainest foodstuffs are eaten by the devout. Therefore, rich ingredients such as eggs, milk, and sugar are disposed of immediately prior to the commencement of the fast.

Pancakes and doughnuts are an efficient way of using up these perishable goods. The word shrove is a past tense of the English verb “shrive,” which means to obtain absolution for one’s sins by confessing and doing penance.

Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the shriving or confession that Anglo-Saxon Christians made immediately before Lent, a season of soul-searching and repentance.

For Roman Catholics, Lent runs from Ash Wednesday on Feb. 18 up to but excluding the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday on April 2. The evening of Holy Thursday is already part of the Good Friday liturgical day, the first of the three days of the paschal triduum, so it is not liturgically a part of Lent in the Roman Catholic Church, although it is still reckoned as part of the “40 days of Lent,” because the paschal triduum begins the evening of Holy Thursday and concludes with the evening vespers of Easter. The triduum includes Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and reaches it high point at the Great Easter Vigil. The name “Maundy” comes from the Latin antiphon Mandatum Novum, meaning “a new mandate.” The new mandate from Jesus is taken from John 13:34: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

In many mainline Protestant churches, Maundy Thursday is still liturgically part of Lent since many do not recognize the triduum as distinct from Lent.

In regards to fasting and abstinence for Roman Catholics during Lent, particular regulations vary in each country according to the norms established by national episcopal conferences and approved by the Holy See, so it is not always easy to know what regulations are in force. The Ottawa-based Canadian Conference of Catholics Bishops (CCCB) says, “Fasting means cutting down on the amount and richness of our food and drink. Done as a penance for sin, it helps us to pray better: an empty stomach can lead to more attentive prayer. The money we save on food should be given to others in alms, In reference to abstinence, the Canadian bishops go onto say, “This form of penance needs to be seen as a near cousin of fasting. We may give up meat or other desirable foods on one or two days a week during Lent, especially on Friday, the day of Christ’s saving death on the cross. Our abstinence is another way of sharing in Christ’s work of saving the world.”

The norms for Canada are based on the Canadian Conference of Catholics Bishops’ Order of Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours and Celebration of the Eucharist, known more commonly and simply as the Ordo, which is essentially a guide for clergy in Canada, updated from time to time, to aid in preparation of the liturgy. The Ordo dates back to the Middle Ages:

•  All Fridays are days of abstinence from meat, but Catholics may substitute special acts of charity
  or piety on this day;
•  The paschal fast is observed on Good Friday and, where possible, continued through Holy
  Saturday;
•  Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of fasting and abstinence from meat;
•  The law of abstinence from meat binds those who are 14 and older; the law of fasting binds
  those from 18 to 59 years of age.

While Canadian bishops have placed particular insistence on Fridays of Lent as days of penance, the “manner of fulfilling this duty is left to the discretion of the faithful.” (National Bulletin on Liturgy, 42 – from the 1966 statement of the CCCB on Penance).

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