Conversing across the generations

Bishop Richard J. Sklba in the "Herald of Hope" column in our Catholic Herald elaborates on his dialogue with a Dutch Reformed Church campus minister at the recent World Council of Churches meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

She felt strongly that Christianity had become synonymous with too many rules imposed on younger generations without an appreciation for the need to modernize the faith and relax the rules.

She's from the EU and worries that the Church has too many rules? He didn't have that comeback, but he did have an extended response.

Then he thought of what he should have said.

I wanted to add that what might feel like mere "rules" were in fact truths sadly discovered in the course of life. Anyone acting otherwise was sure to be hurt eventually, and perhaps badly wounded. The major "rules" were succinct ways of passing on great wisdom, at least that’s the way I see them.

He said similar things about the rules known as rubrics. A few months later he sounded like the campus minister, denouncing rubricism as heresy. I hope we won't be reading his self-denunciation for "rulism" in a few months.