January 28, 2011

"Wellsprings of Living Water"

Most Rev. James D. Conley, S.T.L., Auxiliary Bishop of Denver, delivered the following address at the Archdiocese of Denver's Marriage Tribunal Day of Reflection on Jan. 28, 2011, in the Pope John Paul II Pastoral Center, located in Denver, Colorado.

John 4:1-22

First of all, I want to thank JD for his kind invitation to speak to you today. I am delighted to be with you during your time of prayer and reflection together. I think it is very important to take time away from your vital work in order to celebrate the Eucharist together, to pray and spend some time in silence and to reflect on the Word of God. In doing this, we are part of a very long tradition of the Church.

As most of you know, I spent twelve years in Rome, two years as a student priest and ten years working for the Congregation for Bishops, one of the 9 Dicasteries of the Holy See.  Like most Vatican staffers, I made friends among the various offices of the Holy See and I gradually came to understand the basic workings of each.

But among the many departments and offices of the Holy See, one stands out as unique from all the rest and is surrounded by mystery -- the Sacred Tribunal of the Roman Rota.

Actually there are three tribunals in the Church: the Roman Rota, the Signitura and the Sacred Penitentiary (this is not a prison!) All three are located off campus, so to speak. That it is to say, they occupy space in what is known as the extra-territorial property of the Holy See. It goes by the name of the Cancelleria and is located as part of one of the ancient station churches in the city of Rome, San Lorenzo in Damaso. It was out of this church that Pope Saint Damasus I (died in 384) sent Jerome to Jerusalem to translate the Hebrew and Greek scriptures into Latin which became the Vulgate bible, still the only official text of the Holy Scriptures.

San Lorenzo and the Cancelleria are located just across the Tiber river from the Vatican on the Via del Corso Emmanuele, right around the corner from the Campo di Fiori – the outdoor flower, vegetable and fish market in the historic center of Rome – a very colorful and lively piazza!

The Cancelleria is a very ancient and beautiful edifice and contains some splendid rooms. It is in this building that these three tribunals operate and carry out their important work for the Church. In a way, it is appropriate that they are separated from the rest of the Vatican (not unlike our Tribunal which is separated from the central offices of the Archdiocese of Denver) because of the unique and confidential work that is carried out in those offices. 

To be sure, I had a general understanding of the purpose of the Rota and I actually lived in the same house with two of its judges at the Villa Stritch, the residence for priests from the US who worked in the Vatican. But being a moral theologian and not a canon lawyer, much of the work carried out in those tribunals was a mystery to me.

I think this is probably true for most people.  Tribunals undertake important work.  But because canon law is so foreign to most Catholics, the Tribunal is often misunderstood.  Many people, priests and deacons among them, think that Tribunal work is a lot like making sausage: the end product is fine, but getting there is messy and best left undisturbed.  This is the reason why Tribunals often have a sense of soldiering on in relative obscurity, outside the mainstream of the Church.

When all of us would go off to work, oftentimes the judges on Rota would work from home. One of the judges had on his screen-saver “Judging 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” He did that because we would sometime give these guys grief for not going into their office everyday.

While the Rota ran on its own time and in relative obscurity, there was one event each year that was highly publicized and made for a great photo op! This was a tradition that was much anticipated each year in the city of Rome. What I am speaking of is the annual welcome to the Holy Father, who comes to the Rota each January to encourage its members to fidelity, integrity and holiness in their ministry. I mention the photo opportunity because the judges on the Roman Rota are clothed in their colorful judicial gowns when they meet the Holy Father in the Apostolic Palace. This includes their purple cassocks, mozetta, biretta, and their ermine lined capes! Google it!  

In honor of that tradition, and on behalf of our Archbishop, I am glad to be here with you today.

I began this talk by reading from the Gospel of Saint John, the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, and this is what I want to talk with you about today.  You all know this beautiful and touching story of mercy and forgiveness. Jesus is alone at a well in Samaria, at noon, tired and looking for a drink.  He sees a Samaritan woman drawing water.  He asks her for a drink.  She is surprised that a Jewish man would ask a Samaritan woman, a cultural outcast, for water.

Jesus decides to talk with her about living water.  Living water, he tells her, is the water that quenches all thirst, water that becomes eternal life.

The woman asks for some and Jesus tells her to come back with her husband.  She says that she has no husband and Jesus tells her that she has had five husbands and that the man she lives with is not her husband.

Jesus is receiving the first Preliminary Questionnaire in the history of the Church, and to use a canonical term, it's a doozy!

But Jesus is not frustrated, not judgmental, and not dismissive.  He calls this woman to worship God.  He calls her to conversion.  And finally, he reveals himself as the Savior to her.

Jesus’ ministry to that woman is so effective that it begins a renewal, a firestorm really, in her town.  Within hours, because of her witness, Jesus was preaching before a crowd of Samaritans, many of who came to faith that very day.

There are three reflections from this beautiful story I would like to offer you today that I think pertain specifically to your important work for the Church and for souls. 

The first is that Jesus told the woman the truth, in love, but without compromise.  The second is that Jesus offered her the water of life because the salvation of souls, the salus animarum of canon 1752, was paramount to his ministry.  And the third is that Jesus’ ministry stemmed from his own life of holiness.

In his address to the Rota in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI offered this reflection:
“The action of those who administer justice cannot prescind from charity. Love for God and for neighbor should inform every activity, even if it appears to be the most technical and bureaucratic. The perspective and the measure of charity will help focus attention on the fact that the judge is always dealing with people, beset by problems and difficulties.”

I used to go confession at Saint Peter’s Basilica on a regular basis. It was wonderful because confessions were heard every day, all day long. I used to go to wonderful young Polish priest. I would always identify myself as a Vatican official to give him a little background. He already knew I was an American because of my accent! For a priest, working a 9-5 job (in Rome it was actually 8:30am to 1pm) it can be a little monotonous and tedious work. And sometimes I would wonder, was I ordained for this? It didn’t seem to be very pastoral to me. But he would often tell me: “my son, never forget that behind every piece of paper you touch each day, behind every letter you type, there is an immortal soul for whom the Lord Jesus has laid down his life on the Cross so that they might enjoy eternal life.” Wow. So much for whining and self-pity! 

Christ is calling you to profound charity in your work.  But truth is an essential part of charity.  In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Benedict XVI writes: “If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is ‘inseparable from charity,’ and intrinsic to it.”

In another place our Holy Father writes that Charity without truth is merely sentimentalism or emotionalism, a kind of false compassion. And Truth without charity is nothing more than a cold and often harsh set of rules and regulations.

Justice is telling the truth.  When Christ told the woman at the well that she had had five husbands, he didn’t do so to embarrass her.  He didn’t do so to complicate her life.  He did it because knowing ourselves in truth is the foundation from which we love God.  Had the woman continued to live a lie, she would have continued to live in darkness.  So above all else, I exhort you to seek the truth in your ministry and to speak it faithfully in love.

To tell the truth in love is to accept the brokenness that brings people to the Tribunal.  Petitioners come to the Tribunal because they have experienced, at the very least, one broken relationship.  Many have other broken relationships, and broken families, in their past.  Many parties to Tribunal cases have no real relationship with the Church.  To speak as Jesus does in the Tribunal is to call the broken to healing, the captives to freedom.  My spiritual mentor in the faith, Blessed John Henry Newman, said that to speak as Christ does is to speak from your heart to the hearts of others.  Cor ad cor loquitur.

In his address to the Rota just last week, Pope Benedict pointed out that the Tribunal speaks not only to petitioners and respondents, she speaks to the whole Church.  “Ecclesiastical tribunals send a univocal message about what is essential to marriage in harmony with the magisterium and Canon Law, speaking with one voice.”  The impact of Tribunal ministry, and its witness to the truth about marriage, can and should impact marriage preparation, diocesan pastoral ministry, and catechesis about matrimony.  Tribunals do not operate in a vacuum; their ministry calls all of us to greater fidelity to the Church’s teachings on marriage.

Whether a tribunal decision is a negative or an affirmative, it is a call to conversion.  Those who will again attempt marriage are called to reflect on what didn’t work, and begin anew. Those who are not free to attempt marriage struggle mightily and are challenged to prayerfully accept what the Church asks of them.

In either case, resolution of a marriage case in the Tribunal is a call to a deeper relationship with Christ and his Church.

I urge you to keep this in mind when speaking to petitioners, respondents, and advocates.  It's easy to reduce the Tribunal process to a bureaucratic function divorced from spiritual realities.  In your practice, you know this is untrue.  To the extent possible, consider ways in which your interaction with petitioners and respondents might be an influence in spiritual renewal.  Make invitations to return to the sacraments when appropriate.  Encourage parties to pray as their cases develop.  Using monitums and vetitums to help parties grow is a prerogative the Church entrusts to judges because they can be the mechanisms for healing and freedom.

Do not be afraid of the hard truths, because hard truths are challenges to grow in sanctity.  When faced with a call to conversion, the Tribunal can represent the triumph of hope over personal failures in the past. Finally, remember the authority from which Jesus spoke to the woman at the well.  Jesus spoke the truth in love because he knew the truth.  He saw truth clearly because of his own life of holiness.

Effective Tribunal ministry hinges on your own pursuit of a life of Christian virtue.  Ministry in the Church always hinges on our own pursuit of holiness.  Above all else, I urge you to frequent the sacraments, to spend time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and to immerse yourself in the Word of God.  The strains of Tribunal ministry in the spiritual life are obvious.  Serving on the front line of brokenness can bring with it a depression, a cynicism, and a kind of callousness.

The temptations to compromise truth in service to false charity or to despair at the overwhelming influence of a culture rooted in self-delusion and cynicism are the dangers of Tribunal ministry.  They are omnipresent threats in your work.  The solution is to seek from Christ our Redeemer, the living water which “will become... a spring … welling up to eternal life."

Thank you for your service to our Archdiocese and to the People of God.

+May the Lord bless you in your work in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.