National Catholic Register on Bishop Vasa: "The Miter and the Blackboard"

Tim Drake has a piece in the March 4-10 edition of the National Catholic Register on Baker, Oregon Bishop Robert Vasa's role as a teacher:

BAKER, Ore. — Bishop Robert Vasa takes his role as teacher literally.

For many years, the 57-year-old bishop of Baker, Ore., has taught public classes on Tuesday evenings at St. Francis Church in Bend, Ore., drawing from Church documents to teach about the faith. He has taught using the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letters Veritatis Splendor and Ecclesia de Eucharistia (The Eucharist and Its Relationship to the Church), and books such as Jean-Baptiste Chautard’s classic The Soul of the Apostolate.

The presentations are videotaped so that they are available elsewhere in the diocese.

In his seven years as bishop of Baker, Bishop Vasa has spoken clearly on many of the Church’s social and moral issues. From homilies and weekly instruction to editorials in his diocesan newspaper and pastoral letters, Bishop Vasa has communicated the Church’s teachings clearly without compromising the faith.

***
... Such teaching is his response to the lack of adequate formation that has plagued the Church for the past three decades.

“The fruit of this absence or diminishment of teaching over the past 25 years is not very attractive,” said Bishop Vasa. “If we expect to produce a different kind of fruit, we need to take a different kind of approach.”

Bishop Vasa admitted that he favors a “stronger approach.”

That clarity manifested itself in February 2006 when Bishop Vasa used his diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Sentinel, to posit the question of whether the pro-abortion position is one of “heresy.” That article received a great deal of media attention.

“Those who maintain that any and all decisions about the disposition of pre-born human beings are exclusively the right of the mother or the parents, at least implicitly, reject the clear and consistent teaching of the Church,” he wrote.

“It is necessary to defend truth and not be too quick to rationalize, justify or excuse misleading teachings or teachers,” he continued. “There is a point at which passive ‘tolerance’ allows misleading teachings to be spread and propagated, thus confusing or even misleading the faithful about the truths of the Church. There is a very strong word, which still exists in our Church, which most of us are too ‘gentle’ to use. The word is ‘heresy.’”

Bishop Vasa believes that the Church is coming into a time of increasing clarity.

“I look at the Church of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s as a period of being kind of unsettled and overwhelmed by theologians and liturgists,” said Bishop Vasa.

“We’re now looking at a set of bishops who say, ‘I don’t have a degree in liturgy, but I do know what the Church is calling me to. I can read Veritatis Splendor and see what the Church is calling us to,” he said. “I can look at spiritual and moral theology and see where it is not in line with the Church.”

[More - Subscription required]

(emphasis added)


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
“Pro-Choice” Position is Heresy Says Oregon Catholic Bishop

Is Bishop Vasa Headed to Cleveland?