PRAYING WITHOUT PRIESTS ON 9/11

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From The Washington Post, 9/7/2011

Praying without priests on 9/11

By Anthony Stevens-Arroyo

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New York’s Mayor Bloomberg has ruled out clergy leading prayers at the 10th anniversary commemoration of 9/11 at the site of Ground Zero. Instead, stated the Mayor, the victims’ families and survivors can say their own prayers or quote from scriptures: clergy or First Responders can do so at other events. Jumping to the conclusion that only the clergy can pray, the American Family Association, considers the mayor’s decision to be “an insult to God,” conveniently adding an email address for donations. The right-wing echo chamber picked up on the orchestrated protest. Ms. C. M. Flowers at the Philadelphia Daily News broadsides her insight that this is “a brownnose gift to the PC crowd,” dubbing Bloomberg “Mayor Agnostic.” Professing that clergy prayers never intrude on public events, Dr. Donohue of the Catholic League forgets the Lutheran minister expelled from his church for participating at a Yankee Stadium event that allowed a Muslim to pray publicly. The ire of these protesters, I think, proves the wisdom of the mayor’s decision to keep religion from fanning political partisanship.

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9/11 was not a religious event.

The bombers of the World Trade Center in New York and intended attacks on other symbols of US power pursued terrorist aims, not religious ones. Similarly, public commemorations of this attack are not so much moments to worship God, as they are invitations to reflect on human mortality and humanity’s capacity for transcendent meaning. It is simply not true that only the clergy can express this transcendent meaning and give it a definable shape. I think it entirely proper that the religious experience of those who actually died or survived is celebrated rather than clerical sermonizing about it. Besides, choosing who represents religion today has become a thorny issue, especially for the churches we used to simply call “Protestant.” When the list includes newer definitions like “evangelical, Pentecostal, Mormon, mainline, Christian” it gets too long.

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It used to be that we Catholic lay persons found it difficult to pray without priests or rote memorizing. While others could close their eyes, hold hands and come up with beautiful prayers before meals, we often would lapse into a predictable, “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts….” The Catholic Charismatic Movement has done much to change that. We are less likely today to depend on the clergy to do praying for us and we reach out for spirituality to shape our worship. Personal prayer witnesses to the holiness for laity that Blessed John Paul II called “the New Evangelization.” We have an obligation, moreover, to evangelize cultures and not just convert individuals to joining the Catholic Church.

I don’t think we have to be “denominational” to achieve spiritual meaning. Consider for instance that the new buildings and memorials at Ground Zero are constructed to allow a wedge of sunlight every September 11th to shine at 8:46 AM on the footprint of the destroyed North Tower. It is a use of nature not unlike the way Egyptians and Mayans constructed pyramids in line with astronomical predictions of sunlight. There is also a pear tree replanted in the square after surviving the rubble of 9/11. These symbols should not be easily dismissed.

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Some might complain that the sun and a tree are not as obviously religious as the cross formed by two steel beams that survived the bombing. But then again, the cross is a specific religious symbol that is not embraced by all. While it is part of the museum, the wedge of light and the pear tree are parts of the plaza.

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Catholic America should not be upset. In our creed at Mass, we profess that “God, the Father Almighty” is “Maker of heaven and earth.” These religious symbols that are in the public square being constructed in New York City may not express the fullness of Catholic belief, but they are welcome steps away from pure secularism. They do not need a priest, minister, rabbi or imam to make them spiritual and public. Moreover, they effectively perpetuate a message of transcendence beyond our finite individual humanity. The religious experience of 9/11 does not need the words of clergy to be understood.

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Remember 9/11 Prayer

Written by a Navy Chaplain

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Almighty God, the year 2001 will be

 indelibly inscribed in our memories.

We looked with horror on the terrorist attacks of that September 11th.

But we looked with honor on acts of courage by ordinary people

who sacrificed themselves to prevent further death and destruction.

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We shed our tears in a common bond of grief for those we loved and lost.

We journeyed through a dark valley, but your light has led us to a place of hope.

You have turned our grief into determination.

We are resolved to do what is good, and right, and just.

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Help us to remember what it means to be Americans—

a people endowed with abundant blessings.

Help us to cherish the freedoms we enjoy and inspire us to stand

with courage, united as one Nation in the midst of any adversity.

Lord, hear this prayer for our Nation.
 Amen.

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PRIESTS AND RITUALS

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From THE URANTIA BOOK
Part III, 90, 5
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The essence of the ritual is the perfection of its performance; among savages it must be practiced with exact precision. It is only when the ritual has been correctly carried out that the ceremony possesses compelling power over the spirits. If the ritual is faulty, it only arouses the anger and resentment of the gods. Therefore, since man’s slowly evolving mind conceived that the technique of ritual was the decisive factor in its efficacy, it was inevitable that the early shamans should sooner or later evolve into a priesthood trained to direct the meticulous practice of the ritual. And so for tens of thousands of years endless rituals have hampered society and cursed civilization, have been an intolerable burden to every act of life, every racial undertaking.
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 Ritual is the technique of sanctifying custom;

 ritual creates and perpetuates myths as well as contributing to the preservation of social and religious customs. Again, ritual itself has been fathered by myths. Rituals are often at first social, later becoming economic and finally acquiring the sanctity and dignity of religious ceremonial. Ritual may be personal or group in practice — or both — as illustrated by prayer, dancing, and drama.

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Words become a part of ritual, such as the use of terms like amen and selah. The habit of swearing, profanity, represents a prostitution of former ritualistic repetition of holy names. The making of pilgrimages to sacred shrines is a very ancient ritual. The ritual next grew into elaborate ceremonies of purification, cleansing, and sanctification. The initiation ceremonies of the primitive tribal secret societies were in reality a crude religious rite. The worship technique of the olden mystery cults was just one long performance of accumulated religious ritual. Ritual finally developed into the modern types of social ceremonials and religious worship, services embracing prayer, song, responsive reading, and other individual and group spiritual devotions.

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 The priests evolved from shamans up through oracles, diviners, singers, dancers, weathermakers, guardians of religious relics, temple custodians, and foretellers of events, to the status of actual directors of religious worship. Eventually the office became hereditary; a continuous priestly caste arose.

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 As religion evolved, priests began to specialize according to their innate talents or special predilections. Some became singers, others prayers, and still others sacrificers; later came the orators — preachers. And when religion became institutionalized, these priests claimed to “hold the keys of heaven.”
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 The priests have always sought to impress and awe the common people by conducting the religious ritual in an ancient tongue and by sundry magical passes so to mystify the worshipers as to enhance their own piety and authority. The great danger in all this is that the ritual tends to become a substitute for religion.

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 The priesthoods have done much to delay scientific development and to hinder spiritual progress, but they have contributed to the stabilization of civilization and to the enhancement of certain kinds of culture. But many modern priests have ceased to function as directors of the ritual of the worship of God, having turned their attention to theology — the attempt to define God.
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 It is not denied that the priests have been a millstone about the neck of the races, but the true religious leaders have been invaluable in pointing the way to higher and better realities.

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