The nave of Saint-Merry Church in Paris, France / Diliff via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Rome Newsroom, Mar 23, 2021 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- An experimental pastoral center in the heart of the French capital closed down on March 1 on the instructions of the Archbishop of Paris.
Archbishop Michel Aupetit announced his decision to suppress the Saint-Merry Pastoral Center, in the Beaubourg-Les Halles area, in a Feb. 7 letter to the community.
The decision, which received widespread media coverage in France, is reportedly the result of years of tensions between some of the parish’s lay members and its three last pastors.
The pastoral center was created in 1975 by Cardinal François Marty, the then archbishop of Paris. Following the Second Vatican Council, the center was intended to be a place to “invent new modes for the Church of tomorrow.” It quickly became a hotbed of Catholic progressivism.
Activities in the 16th-century Gothic church were overseen by both priests and lay people, who could participate in the liturgy and preach during a Sunday Mass.
The Spanish theologian José Arregi has described the center as “an open church where neither legal papers, nor religion, nor doctrinal orthodoxy, nor sexual orientation, nor gender identity matter.”
In response to Aupetit’s letter, lay members of the community launched an online petition, which has gained around 12,000 signatures, urging the archbishop to resume dialogue and let them pursue their mission.
Karine Dalle, a spokesperson for the diocese, told CNA that the decision was in no way related to the pastoral nature of the center, but rather to serious excesses at the parish dating back many years.
She said that the two last pastors of Saint-Merry — Fr. Daniel Duigou (2015-2019) and Fr. Alexandre Denis (2019-2020) — resigned because they were unable to establish a dialogue with key figures at the pastoral center. Their predecessor, Fr. Jacques Mérienne, also left after nine years as head of the parish amid difficulties at the end of his tenure.
The spokesperson explained that the archbishop decided to revoke Saint-Merry’s special status after Fr. Denis departed a few months ago in poor health.
“The collaboration between priests and the lay was no longer one, and Archbishop Aupetit took a decision of responsibility in the face of a hopeless situation where his priests were falling ill one after the other,” she said.
In his Feb. 7 letter — seen by CNA — Aupetit denounced “the wickedness, the lack of charity and the will to destroy” which he accused the pastoral group of showing to successive pastors.
He said that the administrator he appointed after Duigou’s departure — Msgr. Benoist de Sinety, vicar general of the diocese — told him that a small group at the center “contributed to block any free discussion process” and “generated a climate whereby charity seemed to be totally forgotten.”
The last three pastors were known for their progressive views. Duigou, in particular, extoled the virtues of the experiment at Saint-Merry and its form of governance in a 2018 book entitled “Lettre ouverte d’un curé au Pape François” (“A pastor’s open letter to Pope Francis”.)
According to a well-informed source inside the parish, the poisonous climate was caused by a hard core of the community — about 20 people, mostly aged over 70 — whose “intolerance” and “sectarian mentality” also led to the departure of lay people, many of them young.
The source told CNA: “These people were all in their twenties in 1968 [a period of civil unrest in Paris] and they shaped this community together with a beautiful initial intuition. But then they grew old together with their own codes, without ever renewing themselves or welcoming new people, cutting themselves off from reality.”
“The youth fled because their proposals were systematically refused and they didn’t recognize themselves in such a Church environment.”
The source said that the group’s aggressiveness was mainly directed towards their pastors, who they regarded as unwelcome authority figures.
“It was not the person who was contested but his very office. They refuse the institution itself and they wanted the pastor to be quiet,” the source commented.
“During the pastoral meetings, they were systematically against the pastor’s ideas and opinions. They thought they were the only ones who understood what the Church of today should be and were incapable of questioning themselves.”
CNA asked the lay people concerned about these allegations, but they did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
In an interview with the French daily Le Monde, Guy Aurenche, a long-time member of the pastoral team, denounced the “radicality of a brutal and unilateral decision” by the Diocese of Paris, but noted that the last pastor “may have been challenged aggressively.”
Aurenche suggested that the decision to close the center might have been motivated by the diocese’s hostility towards a place of “unconditional welcome, for example, to homosexual Christians and remarried divorcees, the participation of men and women in the preparation of the liturgy and the co-responsibility of lay people and priests.”
This accusation, however, was vigorously denied by the diocese, which argued that if that were the case, then the archbishop could have ended the experiment a long time ago.
“We are aware that, behind all this, there were sincere people who used to go to that church regularly and did not understand the archbishop’s decision as they were not part of the heart of the group and did not experience the methods of governance from the inside,” Dalle told CNA.
While not excluding the possibility that the diocese might allow similar pastoral experiments in the future, she said that they could not follow the model of Saint-Merry, with people who reject the very institution of the Church as well as its foundations.
Despite the archbishop’s ruling, the center’s former leaders are seeking to reestablish the community. They recently launched the website Saint-Merri-Hors-les-Murs (“Saint-Merry Outside the Walls”), after the diocese regained control of the parish’s official website. They intend to “set up think tanks and look to their ecclesial future.”
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Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA praised Servant of God Vincent Capodanno at a memorial Mass marking the 55th anniversary of the death of the heroic chaplain Sept. 6, 2022. / Courtesy of Archdiocese fo… […]
Amanda Achtman’s last photo with her grandfather, Joseph Achtman. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Amanda Achtman
CNA Staff, Nov 5, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
When the Canadian government began discussing the legalization of euthanasia for those whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable,” 32-year-old Amanda Achtman said something in her began to stir. Her grandfather was in his mid-90s at the time and fit the description.
“There were a couple of times, toward the end of his life, that he faced some truly challenging weeks and said he wanted to die,” Achtman recalled. “But thank God no physician could legally concede to a person’s suicidal ideation in such vulnerable moments. To all of our surprise — including his — his condition and his outlook improved considerably before his death at age 96.”
Achtman said she and her grandfather were able to have a memorable final visit that “forged her character and became one of the greatest gifts he ever gave me.”
The experience of walking with her grandfather in his last days led Achtman to work that she believes is a calling. On Aug. 1, she launched a multifaceted cultural project called Dying to Meet You, which seeks to “humanize our conversations and experiences around suffering, death, meaning, and hope.” This mission is accomplished through a mix of interviews, short films, community events, and conversations.
Amanda Achtman speaks during the Evening Program at St. Mary’s Cathedral during “The Church as an Expert in Humanity” event in Calgary Sept. 23, 2023. Credit: Edward Chan/Community Productions
“This cultural project is my primary mission, and I am grateful to be able to dedicate the majority of my energy to it,” Achtman told CNA.
Early years
Achtman was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She grew up in a Jewish-Catholic family with, she said, “a strong attachment to these two traditions that constitute the tenor of my complete personality.”
Her Polish-Jewish grandfather, with whom she had a very close relationship as a young adult, had become an atheist because of the Holocaust and was always challenging her to face up to the big questions of mortality and morality.
“One of the ways I did this was by traveling on the March of Remembrance and Hope Holocaust study trip to Germany and Poland when I was 18,” Achtman said. “My experiences listening to the stories of Holocaust survivors and Righteous Among the Nations have undeniably forged my moral imagination and instilled in me a profound sense of personal responsibility.”
Shortly after her grandfather’s death, Achtman discovered a new English-language master’s program being offered in John Paul II philosophical studies at the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland.
“Immediately, I felt as though God were saying to me, ‘Leave your country and go to the land that I will show you — it’s Poland.’ At the time, the main things I knew about Poland were that the Holocaust had largely been perpetrated there and that Sts. John Paul II, Maximilian Kolbe, and Faustina were from there,” Achtman explained. “I wanted to be steeped in a country of saints, heroes, and martyrs in order to contemplate seriously what my life is actually about and how I could spend it generously in the service of preventing dehumanization and faithfully defending the sanctity of life in my own context.”
On Sept. 23, 2023, Amanda Achtman organized a daylong open-house-style event called “The Church as an Expert in Humanity” in Calgary, Alberta. Participants added ideas for how we, the Church, can prevent euthanasia and encourage hope. Credit: Edward Chan/Community Productions
The rise of euthanasia in Canada
In 2016, the Canadian government legalized euthanasia nationwide. The criterion to be killed in a hospital was informed consent on the part of an adult who was deemed to have a “grievous and irremediable condition.”
“The death request needed to be made in writing before two independent witnesses after a mandatory time of reflection. And, consent could be withdrawn any time before the lethal injection,” Achtman explained.
Then, in 2021, the Canadian government began to remove those safeguards. “The legislative change involved requiring only one witness, allowing the possible waiving of the need for final consent, and the removal, in many cases, of any reflection period,” Achtman told CNA.
“Furthermore, a new ‘track’ was invented for ‘persons whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable.’ This meant that Canadians with disabilities became at greater risk of premature death through euthanasia. Once death-by-physician became seen as a human right, there was practically no limit as to who should ‘qualify.’ As long as killing is seen as a legitimate means to eliminate suffering, there is no limit to who could be at risk.”
Euthanasia — now called medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada — is set to further expand on March 17, 2024, to those whose sole underlying condition is “mental illness.” Last year, Dr. Louis Roy of the Quebec College of Physicians and Surgeons testified before a special joint committee that his organization thinks euthanasia should be expanded to infants with “severe malformations” and “grave and severe syndromes.”
Renewing the culture
Achtman followed the debates around end-of-life issues in Canada and wanted to figure out a way to restore “a right response to the reality of suffering and death in our lives.”
“The fact is, our mortality is part of what makes life precious, our relationships worth cherishing, and our lives worth giving out of love. That’s why we need to bring cultural renewal to death and dying, restoring our understanding of its meaning to the human condition.”
At the Sept. 23, 2023, open-house event called “The Church as an Expert in Humanity,” there were table displays of ministries in the diocese who are doing the best work on suffering, death, grief, and caregiving. Credit: Edward Chan/Community Productions
On Jan. 1, 2021, Achtman made a new year’s resolution to blog about death every single day for an entire year in a way that was “hope-filled and edifying.”
It ended up being very fruitful to Achtman personally, but she said “it also touched a surprising number of people, inspiring them to take concrete actions in their own lives that I could not have anticipated.”
The experience, Achtman said, made her realize that it’s possible to contribute to cultural renewal through things like coffee shop visits, informal interviews, posting on social media, being a guest on podcasts and webinars, organizing community events, and making videos.
“Basically, there are countless practical and ordinary ways that we can humanize the culture — wherever we are and whatever we do the rest of the time.”
The Dying to Meet You project
When it comes to the mission of Dying to Meet You, Achtman told CNA that “God has put on my heart two key objectives: the prevention of euthanasia and the encouragement of hope” and added that “the aim of this cultural project is to improve our cultural conversation and engagement around suffering, death, meaning, and hope through a mix of interviews, writing, videos, and events.”
Achtman said the project is an experiment in the themes Pope Francis speaks about often — encounter, accompaniment, going to the peripheries, and contributing to a more fraternal spirit.
“There is a strong basis for opposition to euthanasia across almost all religions and cultures, traditionally speaking,” Achtman said. “Partly from my own upbringing in a Jewish-Catholic family, I am passionate about how the cultural richness of such a plurality of traditions in Canada can bolster and enrich our value of all human life.”
To that end, one of the projects Achtman has in the works is a short film on end of life from an Indigenous perspective to be released mid-November.
“It’s not so much that we have a culture of death as we now seem to have death without culture,” said Achtman, who hopes her efforts will help change that.
An inspiring hometown event
This past Sept. 23, Achtman organized a daylong open-house-style event called “The Church as an Expert in Humanity” in her home city of Calgary, which took place at Calgary’s Cathedral, the Cathedral Hall, and the Catholic Pastoral Centre. The morning featured a ministry hall of exhibits with 18 table displays of ministries throughout the diocese doing the best work on suffering, death, grief, and caregiving. In the afternoon, there were three-panel presentations.
The morning of “The Church as an Expert in Humanity” in St. Mary’s Cathedral Hall in Calgary, Alberta, featured a ministry hall of exhibits with table displays of ministries in the diocese doing the best work on suffering, death, grief, and caregiving. Credit: Edward Chan/Community Productions
The first involved Catholics of diverse cultural backgrounds speaking about hospitality and accompaniment in their respective traditions. It included a Filipino diaconal candidate, a Ukrainian laywoman working with refugees, an elderly Indigenous woman who is a community leader, and an Iraqi Catholic priest.
The second was called “Tell Me About the Hour of Death,” where participants heard from two doctors, a priest, and a longtime pastoral care worker.
The third panel focused on papal documents pertaining to death, hope, and eternal life. A Polish Dominican sister who has worked extensively with the elderly spoke about John Paul II’s “Letter to the Elderly.”
Later, an evening program was held in Calgary’s Catholic Cathedral and included seven short testimonies by different speakers that “were narratively framed as echoes of the Seven Last Words of Christ.” Among the speakers were a privately sponsored Middle Eastern Christian refugee, a L’Arche core member who has a disability, and a young father whose daughter only lived for 38 minutes. Afterward, Calgary’s Bishop William McGrattan gave some catechesis on the Anima Christi prayer, with a special emphasis on the line “In your wounds, hide me.”
“The day was extremely uplifting and instilled the local Church with confidence that the Church indeed is an expert in humanity, capable of meeting Christ in all who suffer with a gaze of love and the steadfast insistence, ‘I will not abandon you,’” Achtman told CNA.
Calgary’s Bishop William McGrattan listens to the seven testimonies echoing the seven last words of Christ during the evening program. Credit: Edward Chan/Community Productions
Our lives are not wholly our own
Many believe euthanasia is compassionate care for those who suffer. Shouldn’t we be able to do what we want with our own lives? And can suffering have any meaning for someone who doesn’t believe in God?
Achtman said these questions remind her of something Mother Teresa said: “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other,” as well as the John Donne quote “Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.”
“Our lives are not wholly our own and how we live and die affects the communities to which we belong,” Achtman said. “That is not a religious argument but an empirical observation about human life. If someone lacks ties and is without family and social support, then that is the crisis to which the adequate response is presence and assistance — not abandonment or hastened death. As one of my heroes, Father Alfred Delp, put it, a suffering person makes an ongoing appeal to your inner nobility, to your sacrificial strength and capacity to love. Don’t miss the opportunity.”
Amanda Achtman pictured with Christine, an 88-year-old woman who got a tattoo that says “Don’t euthanize me,” which is featured in a short four-minute documentary. Credit; Photo courtesy of Amanda Achtman
The mission continues
Achtman also organized a “Mass of a Lifetime,” a special Sunday Mass for residents of a local retirement home, on Oct. 15.
Attendees at the Mass of a Lifetime event, a special Sunday Mass for residents of a local retirement home held on Oct. 15, 2023, in Calgary, Alberta. Credit: Amanda Achtman
“I was inspired by a quotation of Dietrich von Hildebrand, who said: ‘Wherever anything makes Christ known, there nothing can be beautiful enough,’” Achtman said. “Applying that spirit to this Mass, we made it as elaborate as possible to show the seniors that they are worth the effort.”
Achtman also recently produced a four-minute short film about an 88-year-old woman named Christine who got a tattoo that says “Don’t euthanize me.” It can be viewed here:
Throughout 2023-2024, Achtman told CNA, she is basing herself in four different Canadian cities for three months each “in order to empower diverse faith and cultural communities in the task of preventing euthanasia and encouraging hope.” She started in her hometown of Calgary and is off to Vancouver this month.
In addition to her work with the Dying to Meet You project, Achtman does ethics education and cultural engagement with Canadian Physicians for Life and works to promote the personalist tradition with the Hildebrand Project.
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