Monday, March 01, 2004

VOTF-SL Meeting, Fr. Donald Cozzens, and Fr. Groeschel's position

Fr Donald Cozzens will be speaking at Voice of the Faithful St Louis on Saturday, March 13.
Information is available at www.votfsl.org.
Enough information is available on VOTF to determine why many bishops have banned them from meeting on church property.

Fr Groeschel wrote an article discussing a book of Fr. Cozzens some time ago.
The full article by Fr. Benedict Groeschel can be found here at Catholic Culture.

I will add just a few excerpts below. Perhaps these could be considered as talking points or questions if there are opportunities to ask questions?
Excerpts:
His book reminds me of a visit I once paid to a progressive seminary. The librarian, a priest, boasted that 80% of the books had been written since 1965. He was less than amused when I told him that the place reminded me of a large pamphlet rack.
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There are also eight pages on themes of Carl Jung. There are only two references, both of them rather negative, to John Paul II. Although the Pope has written extensively on the priesthood and the theology of love, chastity and sexuality, none of this monumental work is even alluded to.
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There are four references and two pages of Andrew Greeley's thought but no mention at all of saints like Augustine, John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, Alphonsus Ligouri and John Eudes, who all wrote extensively on the priesthood.
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Hans Kung and Richard McBrien each get several references but no mention of Avery Dulles' superb book The Priestly Office. De Lubac, Congar, Guardini and von Balthasar are all missing. They all wrote on the priesthood and shaped its identity since the Council and still inspire many.
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His view of the priesthood is very much limited to what might be called progressive American Catholicism, an approach that has been co-terminus with the drastic reduction of the number of seminarians and the loss of vocations.
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Fr. Cozzens does not appear to be adequately aware of the limitations of theories and he certainly seems to blow caution to the winds with the Oedipal theory of the priest's relationship to the bishop. This gets 20 pages, and again religious order priests are left out. I felt like singing, "I ain't got no daddy." Along with a fourth of the priests in the United States who are not diocesan priests, I still managed to be validly ordained without an Oedipal relationship to a bishop or abbot.
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The point that needs to be emphasized and explained is that the particular psychological theories that Fr. Cozzens is using, those of Freud and Jung, are outmoded at the present time.
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I categorically and emphatically reject (his) philosophical notion of transcendence as the Christian experience.
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Fr. Cozzens, having given us a very inadequate description of transcendence, then takes up the other dimension of priestly development, namely — intimacy.
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His thoughts on friendship and intimacy show a depth of pastoral experience and understanding, although the ghost of Sigmund Freud seems to be standing in the corner.
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Now we come to a part of Fr. Cozzens' book that I totally agree with — his criticism of the pre-Council seminary. I think he is too kind in his assessment.
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Fr. Cozzens falls into the trap of equating psychological maturity with spiritual growth. This is a semi-Pelagian idea, which has been so popular in recent years that it is accepted as a truism.
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Finally we come to what is the most objectionable part of Fr. Cozzens's book. This is his discussion of what he calls "gay priests and seminarians." I object to the use of the word "gay" because it is a serious ambiguity. This cynical word was generated by the active homosexual community years ago in order to communicate the fact that people were not happy with this life-style. In the film The Boys in the Band there is a sarcastic remark — "Show me a happy homosexual and I will show you a gay corpse." Unfortunately, this word, which, if one is honest, means a life-style contrary to the teaching of the New Testament and the Church, is used here simply to mean homosexual, and not gay. Homosexual is a neutral word. A person could be homosexually oriented and a saint. A homosexual can lead a totally chaste life and many do. On the other hand, the word "gay" refers to the gay scene — an immoral subculture, one of many in our society. While Fr. Cozzens may not be using it that way, his use is entirely ambiguous.
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I did not find any clear moral statement that the engagement in homosexual genital acts is wrong and morally unacceptable.
Again, the full article by Fr. Benedict Groeschel is at Catholic Culture here.

All of the above are quotes from Fr. Groeschel's article.

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