Enlightened Catholicism

Some Thoughts On Catholics Crossing Rivers And Catholic Hemispheres

2012-01-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

Archbishop Lois Antonio Tagle of Manilla may lead the both the Philippine Church and the global church through some interesting times.

In all the coverage of Benedict's creation of the Anglican Ordinariate I've never found any numbers about the influx of Catholics into the Episcopalian Church. Instead I've found glowing reports about the influx of Anglicans into the Catholic Church through Ordinariate. This is true whether the coverage is from mainstream media or Catholic media such as America, Commonweal, or the NCR. It's always about those Anglicans/Episcopalians coming in, and dead silence about the route out. The following excerpt is taken from Episcopal Cafe and lo and behold, it gives the statistics for the boats on both the Tiber and the Thames.

.......Thus far, 100 priests and fewer than 1,400 people in 22 church communities have expressed an interest in the ordinariate. Gather them all in Washington National Cathedral, and the place isn’t half full. Only six of these 22 communities have more than 70 members, which suggests that their longterm viability may be an issue. And there is no evidence to suggest that these small congregations are the thin edge of an as yet invisible wedge. (If 16 of these communities have less than 70 people then the long term viability of the Ordinariate should be a concern.)

The prominence the ordinariate has achieved in the media has unsettled some Episcopalians. As a denomination, we are still recovering from several years worth of news stories in which the departure of some three percent of our membership for a more theologically conservative body was variously described as a “schism” or an “exodus.”

In part to bolster Episcopal spirits, and in part to provide reporters with some sense of perspective, I thought it might be helpful to take a look at some numbers. According to the 2004 U. S. Congregational Life Survey—which I believe is the most recent one available—11.7 percent of Episcopalians were formerly Roman Catholic.

The Episcopal Church had slightly fewer than 2,248,000 members in 2004, indicating that not quite 263,000 of its members were former Catholics.

The Episcopal Church has shrunk some in the last seven years, and now has about two million members. Assuming that the percentage of former Catholics in the Episcopal Church has remained constant (I think it is likely to have risen, but that’s an essay for another day), there are currently some 228,000 former Roman Catholics in the Episcopal Church. (I would think the percentage has risen as well and that the influx of Roman Catholics has had somewhat the same effect Latin immigration has had for Catholicism.)

There may be a good reason that the departure of fewer than 1,500 Episcopalians to the Roman Catholic ordinariate deserves extensive media coverage while the departure in recent years of more than 225,000 Roman Catholics to join the Episcopal Church goes unmentioned even in stories about the creation of the ordinariate, but I don’t know what it is.

The stories on the ordinariate also report that as many as 100 priests—many of whom may be Episcopalians—have also applied to join the ordinariate. Is this evidence that the Catholic Church is winning priests from the Episcopal tradition? It reads that way, unless one knows, thanks to the Church Pension Group, that 432 living Episcopal priests have been received from the Roman Catholic Church.

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For all the ballyhoo surrounding the Anglican Ordinariate the truth is the river flowing out of Catholicism and into the Episcopal Church has a whole lot more traffic in both clergy and laity. There is plenty of reason to think this isn't going to change in the near future, especially in North America and other Anglo countries in which both Catholicism and Anglicanism are historic churches. As for the developing South, well, that is going to be a very different story.

The Catholicism of the South is not the Catholicism of the North. The same is true for Protestant Christianity. In the North the talk is of reform and a return to a less hierarchical and more inclusive Christianity which includes acceptance of homosexual unions, an ordained ministry for women and the openly gay, a relational approach to sexual morality, and all of this with an emphasis on the individual spiritual journey rather than the collective identity approach of our ancestors. None of this is on the radar of Catholicism in the South where traditional sexual and gender roles are sacrosanct, patriarchal authority holds cultural sway, collective spirituality is what gives life to the individual journey, and the miracles, exorcisms, and Divinity of Jesus are not just literal truth, but the main point of discipleship. In some respects this is a Catholicism that is about a 'return on one's spiritual investment', especially in areas in which the modern western approaches to healing and mental illness are few and far between or economically beyond the reach of the poor and impoverished.

There's certainly no question that the Catholic tradition supports these notions of healing and exorcism, and the power of the Virgin Mary, the Communion of Saints and Angels, and Charismatic practices flourishing in the South. It was in these beliefs that missionaries connected with the original indigenous populations. And it's equally true that the long Catholic tradition has very little support for any notions of gender equality, gay unions, a relational sexual morality, or a less authoritarian clerical structure. It would seem then that global Catholicism will not reflect the reforms hoped for by progressive Northern Catholics. The river into the Episcopalian/Anglican Church will stay quite congested.

At first glance the future for Catholicism appears to be centered in the exploding Catholic South where traditional piety, traditional sexuality, and traditional forms of male hierarchy hold sway. This would be especially true in the poorer urban areas with a high population density from rural immigration. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is at it's most base level in these situations. Ideas which need freedom from physical survival angst don't come up on any one's radar---like women's ordination. However, ideas which do impact one's physical survival do hit the radar screen---like women's access to birth control.

This is one reason I closely follow the debate in the Philippines between the hierarchy and the government over women's access to birth control. This is one place where the Vatican plan to use the South to sustain it's current structure and theology is clashing head on with the actual needs of people in the pews. In a real sense, the Philippines is a Southern hemisphere clash of wills over Humanae Vitae and the celibate male authority that teaches it. This battle played out in the North almost fifty years ago and much of the call for reform began with it's utter rejection by the laity. The Bishops and their supporters have managed to keep the bill from being finalized for some ten years, but it finally appears the tide is turning because women and young Filipinos have had enough and together they represent a lot of votes. There is a growing sense of moral betrayal by the hierarchy in the Philippines which may be one reason the Vatican appointed Louis Antonio Tagle, something of a pastoral moderate, as Archbishop of Manilla.

If the Vatican is truly banking on the South to sustain it's power and prestige Benedict and JPII certainly had different ideas about how that should play out in the Vatican itself. JPII had a College of Cardinals that was 40% from the South and Benedict has almost totally reversed that trend. I wonder if that's not because the flavor of the Church in the South appealed more to JPII the Mary worshipping Polish mystic than it does to Benedict XVI the German intellectual theologian. In some respects, Pope Benedict is presiding over a global Catholicism for which neither the pentecostal South or the rebellious North have much appeal. No wonder he's rumored to be considering retirement.

If we've learned anything from the Arab Spring it's that today's youth are very well connected with access to all kinds of information, that the Internet/cell phone explosion is creating something new in collective humanity, and that it won't be easy for existing power structures to deal with the change this implies. The Vatican is not immune to this. Catholicism was the first truly global social entity, but if it wants to maintain relevance in today's global world, it can no longer afford to think in centuries. We can make pretty accurate predictions about the demographic look of the Church fifty years from now, but how that demographic will practice Catholicism is another thing entirely. One thing for sure, it won't be in any Anglican ordinariate.

A Well Formed Conscience: The Topic Of The Day

2012-01-23T12:15:00.002-07:00

This photo has always bugged me and now I know why. Anyway, it doesn't have much to do with the post, but it is a great papal guilt trip.

The NCR has just posted an article by Santa Clara University ethics professor David DeCrosse. It's probably the best explanation I have read delineating where the USCCB is coming from in their definition of conscience as opposed to where I am coming from--except for one thing. Catholic reasoning on conscience has always placed a huge emphasis on authoritative teaching and personal practical reasoning. I've always felt this was incomplete no matter which aspect a given Catholic gave pre-eminence. Jesus added practical compassion to the reasoning part, and most certainly gave place of primacy to the spirit behind a given law rather than the words or the speaker of the law. Laws promulgated and/or acted on without compassion are a form of tyranny, not justice. Just think back to the nine year old girl in Recife, Brazil, or Sister Margaret McBride in Phoenix.

Later on in this essay--I have only extracted a number of paragraphs which explain the reasoning of our bishops--David DeCrosse quotes one of my favorite lines from A Man For All Seasons. It's the one in which Sir Thomas More speaks about man's role as serving God in the tangle of one's mind. When I was much younger that really spoke to me, but as I've matured I would change it. The real service comes from serving God in the tangle of one's heart. Now to David DeCrosse:

......With this emphasis on law, the distinctiveness of the bishops' model of conscience comes into view. Where a theologian like Thomas Aquinas speaks of conscience combining obedience to moral law and the exercise of practical reason, the bishops heavily favor the former over the latter. On the one hand, this means that conscience is best understood as the way by which we adhere to the moral laws requiring respect always and everywhere -- in the bishops’ eyes especially meaning turning from what they call the “intrinsic evils” at stake in the use of the artificial means of birth control; in gay marriage; and in taking innocent human life from conception onward. On the other hand, the bishops’ emphasis on law as the pre-eminent category of conscience means that they leave little room for practical reasoning to help the conscience figure out what to do in the face of complexity. Practical reasoning, in this view, is wishy-washy, feckless, diluting the clear demands of the moral law. Or, as Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., said when explaining why Illinois bishops did not seek an exemption from a state law legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples that could have required Catholic Charities to place foster children with such couples: “It would have been seen as, ‘We’re going to compromise on the principle as long as we get our exception.’ We didn’t want it to be seen as buying our support.” (God forbid the USCCB be seen as selling out to both the left and the right.)

What has led to the diminished role for practical reason in the way the bishops understand conscience? Two key conceptual matters come to mind, both taken from concerns laid down by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. One is the sharp opposition to the “creative conscience” outlined by John Paul II in the 1993 papal encyclical called “Veritatis Splendor.” In that document, John Paul criticized any number of developments in Catholic moral theology including one that argued that conscience’s use of practical reason in the face of a host of particulars could lay the basis for claiming occasional exceptions to the otherwise universal mandate of the moral law. But the pope said that this view of the “creative” possibilities of conscience had things precisely backwards. It’s not the creative use of practical reason that should determine what is morally required in a particular situation. Rather, it’s the moral law -- “requiring meticulous observance,” as John Paul put it -- that determines what reason should conclude that a particular situation demands. In “Veritatis Splendor,” John Paul was taking aim at theologians working in the area of interpersonal and, especially, sexual morality. But, I believe, his powerful views have shaped the position of the bishops on the current matters of conscience, which pertain primarily to issues of sexual morality in a political, not interpersonal, context. (For JPII obedience trumped reason each and every time in each and every situation. All hail the Catholic Borg.)

Along with the “creative conscience,” John Paul also condemned what he called the belief that complex situations could yield a “double status of moral truth.” In fact, the issue of “double status” is another way of articulating what is at stake with the use of the “creative conscience.” The notion of “double status” holds that while there may be one truth at a doctrinal or abstract level, there may be another truth -- even one proclaiming an exception to a doctrinal truth -- that emerges in the face of the complexity of concrete conditions. As with the “creative conscience,” John Paul dismissed this notion outright. Moral truth is not divisible and, anyhow, the clarifying truth of the moral law holding always and everywhere tells us pretty much everything we need to know about what any concrete situation requires. (Had Jesus subscribed to JPII's thinking, the woman caught in adultery most certainly would have been stoned with Him throwing the first stone.)

But the issue of the “double status of truth” is not only an intra-Catholic matter of moral theology. Instead it also must be considered in light of the overwhelming emphasis of John Paul and Benedict on the threat to truth spawned by what they regard as the runaway relativism of Western democracies. And this brings us to the second conceptual factor behind the bishops’ reduced emphasis on practical reason in the exercise of conscience: The fear that human reason in a democracy like the United States is so damaged by relativism and sin that it is all but incapable of attaining moral truth on its own via an exercise of practical reason. John Paul argued that this dismal tendency of human reason was at the heart of the contemporary “culture of death” at work in a place like the United States. Benedict has similarly decried what he has called the way that human reason all too often does not accept truth because it does not really want to know it. Faced with such a negative judgment about the capacities of human reason, what is the Catholic conscience to do? Among other things, not assume it has the rightful freedom to exercise too much practical reason in the face of the complex circumstances of democratic life. In the eyes of the Catholic right, this was the downfall of those Catholic Democrats in Congress in 2009 who invoked their own prudential judgment to cast the decisive votes in favor of federal health care reform -- and who, in doing so, defied the official opposition of the American Catholic bishops to the bill on the grounds that it would violate the moral law against abortion.

It is important to note that the close link of conscience and the moral law speaks poignantly to the transcendence of the human spirit. The Arab Spring in 2011; Poland in the 1980s; Selma and Birmingham in the American South in the 1950s and ‘60s: The people in the streets in these times and places moved the conscience of the world because they witnessed to a demand for justice that always and everywhere surpasses the claim of oppressive power. By contrast, the problems of conscience now facing American Catholic bishops have nowhere near such stark dimensions. And this is true no matter how often some bishops and their allies on the religious right liken contemporary gay activists to the Ku Klux Klan (as did Cardinal Francis George of Chicago) or see in President Obama the alien spearhead of a war against Catholics (as did columnist Michael Gerson writing in the Washington Post).............

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DeCrosse's article is well worth reading in it's entirety, as are the comments which follow. Whether or not the USCCB intended to do so, the topic of conscience is well and truly on the minds of a lot of Catholics. I personally think this is excellent as the spiritual path is all about serving God through the choices we make in the tangle of our minds and hearts. Spirituality is not about obedience to authority. Religion is about obedience to authority. Spirituality is about going with in and forming an integrated self in union with the Divinity in one's eternal soul.

DeCrosse also touches on another of my pet peeves with this line:
The fear that human reason in a democracy like the United States is so damaged by relativism and sin that it is all but incapable of attaining moral truth on its own via an exercise of practical reason." This irritates me because the Church in which both Popes Benedict and John Paul II matured failed humanity miserably for the just the opposite reasons. It blindly supported fascist autocrats which resulted in the utter devastation of Europe and the deaths of millions during WWII, and that Church did so without uttering anywhere near the condemnation of dictatorial fascism the last two popes have uttered about secular democracies. To describe the current Western democracies as 'cultures of death' is laughable given what happened under fascism. As one commenter mentions after this article, it is no wonder that the Church in Europe is more or less an empty shell. The Church lost any claim to any kind of moral authority during WWII, and it's rapidly losing any claim for moral authority in rest of the world because of it's criminal handling of it's own morally depraved priests and it's continuing support for autocratic right wing ideologues in Africa and Latin America. Of course this is the kind of thing that happens when obedience to authority is given a higher place of importance than compassion towards one's fellow man.

For me the battle for the soul of Catholicism revolves around personal conscience and what will be the driving value in the formation of that conscience. The past two Popes have emphatically demanded that value be obedience, but I firmly believe Jesus demanded that value be compassion. My own personal experience has shown me time and again that compassion bears more positive life changing fruit than reflexive reliance on authoritarian control. Unfortunately, the current clerical system isn't set up to demonstrate the value of compassion to it's members. Obedience, well that's a different story. That virtue is the reason the individual members of the USCCB are where they are and get to tell us what they do.

Irish Church Leadership Return To The Past To Find A Clerical Future

2012-01-22T11:53:00.000-07:00

It's kind of strange to view Pope Benedict in a suit and tie, but then this was back in the days when he was unafraid of the vision of the Church articulated by Vatican II. He looks downright dashingly secular.

Eugene Kennedy currently has a piece at the NCR about the recent decision of Irish bishops to remake Maynooth seminary into a more monastic setting. The idea according to the rector is about "trying to get the balance right between the need for the seminary to be a distinctive prayerful community and ensure that the seminarians have all the benefits that the Maynooth campus has to offer." In my own mind I didn't make the initial connection that Kennedy did with prisons. I made the connection between the residential situation of big time college athletic programs and this seminary idea. Isolating young men from their peers seems to be a tried and true method for authoritarian male leadership to enculturate their pet values in their captive audiences. The truth is that these kinds of artificial living situations don't lead to any kind of 'balance', they lead to the creation of serious imbalances in the maturation in some members of the captive audience. The graduate school I attended has recently admitted they might have a problem with rape in their football program after the latest allegation involved three football players in a date drug gang rape.

I've never been a fan of isolating young adults by gender or age or activity. Where as these kinds of living situations might not be detrimental for most young adults, for others it is seriously detrimental as it can create all kinds of victims and enhance the worst aspects of these distilled cultural milieus. That's one thought I had, but Kennedy had one paragraph in his piece I think deserves to be immortalized:

In short, the Irish bishops think they are solving a problem whose roots can be traced back to the isolation from the healthy experiences with others that characterized the supposed golden age before Vatican II spoiled everything by reminding the church that its whole purpose was to embrace the sinful world and relieve its suffering rather than to push it away like a leper whose suffering might contaminate it.

Those lines just really struck me as getting to the root cause for the 'reform of the reform'. Vatican II had to be respun precisely because it spoiled everything by reminding the church that its whole purpose was to embrace the world, not push it away. It really doesn't surprise me that our current Pope is the biggest champion of this reform, because virtually his whole life after WWII has been spent in a clerical world designed to keep him safe and secure from the leprosy of secular contamination. In some respects it appears he's substituted Hitler's demands for protecting the "fatherland" from the contamination of non Aryans with protecting Holy Mother Church from secularists and atheists. It's really a juvenile boy thing, not a mature man thing. I've seen this retardation of male maturity play out over and over again in numerous different settings and it's always at the expense of women and the least powerful. It's the human version of the juvenile male elephant phenomenon. It needs to be eradicated from Catholicism, not resurrected.

The Power Of The Minority In Pursuit Of It's Own Survival Is Not About Faith

2012-01-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

Not a particularly banner headline in global Catholicism.

Fr Richard McBrien's latest NCR post makes a couple of really important points about the period just after the Second Vatican Council. He brings these points up in reference to the Year of Faith Pope Benedict has instituted for October 2012 to November 2013. The last Year of Faith was called by Pope Paul VI, and that one did not turn out to be all that good a year for anyone's faith, least of all PP VI. The following is an excerpt of the original post.

......This is not the first time the church has been called to celebrate a Year of Faith, Benedict XVI pointed out. His predecessor, Pope Paul VI, announced one in 1967 to commemorate the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul.

Unfortunately, it began almost a year before the lowest point of his pontificate; namely, the publication of his last encyclical, Humanae Vitae ("Of Human Life") in July 1968 -- "last" because Paul VI was so taken aback by the negative reaction to the encyclical that he vowed never to write another one, and he did not.
The encyclical had declared that contraception is always seriously sinful. The central words that Paul VI used were that "each and every marriage act must be open to the transmission of life" (n. 11). (I sometimes wonder if the JPII generation actually understands how vehement the reaction was to this encyclical. It wasn't just a case of 'self centered' laity reacting--it was across the Catholic spectrum and included the vast majority of bishops. Unfortunately for laity, loyalty to the Vatican trumped personal conscience in way too many of these leaders. It sent a very loud message to Catholic laity about how far 'subsidiarity and solidarity' went between bishops and flock--as in nowhere.)

One might also place the publication of Paul VI's Credo of the People of God, which concluded the Year of Faith in 1968, as a distant second in relation to Humanae Vitae as another low point in his pontificate.
Benedict XVI said the Credo was "intended to show how much the essential content that for centuries has formed the heritage of all believers needs to be confirmed" (n. 4).

The Credo of the People of God was issued on June 30, 1968, just under a month before the release of Humanae Vitae, on July 25.

In my column for July 19, 1968, I wrote: "Insofar as this document allows the views of one particular school of theology (a minority view, let it be added, that was clearly rejected at Vatican II) to intrude itself upon the ground of authentic Christian tradition, the 'Credo' has transformed itself from an expression of common faith binding the whole Church together, into a personal brief on behalf of one party in the current theological debate." (Six days after Fr McBrien pens these prophetic words Humanae Vitae was released and we all learned just how much power that 'one party in the current theological debate" had in the Vatican.)

On the other hand, Benedict XVI did well to begin his own Year of Faith on the 50th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II to "provide a good opportunity to help people under-stand that the texts bequeathed by the council fathers 'have lost nothing of their value or brilliance' [John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, n. 308]" (n. 5).

And he concluded his apostolic letter on a very high note. He made it clear, in typically Catholic fashion, that faith without works is dead (James 2:14-18). He also cited Matthew 25:40: "As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me."

"What the world is in particular need of today," Benedict XVI wrote, "is the credible witness of people enlightened in mind and heart by the word of the Lord and capable of opening the hearts and minds of many to the desire for God and for true life, life without end" (n. 14).

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I find myself in disagreement with Fr McBrien about Benedict's thoughts as quoted in the last paragraph. I would word it differently. "What the word is in particular need of today is the credible witness of people enlightened in mind and heart by the Law of Love and capable of opening the hearts and minds of many to the desire for God's love and for the true life that comes with that Love." Too many people already think they know everything there is to know about the word of the Lord and use those words to engender hate. We don't need any more of that. We have had enough of that.....and enough of the rules and doctrines those Words of the Lord have generated in an attempt to control the rest of us.

The minority theological view that McBrien references in the above was perfectly exemplified in Humanae Vitae. The Law of Love is based in compassion and and in the idea of growth towards a fuller understanding of God's love and how that love is expressed amongst each other. Humanae Vitae was the antithesis of that understanding, reducing sexuality to it's base biological function, utterly devoid of the concept of compassion and divorced from any notion of relational love. I sometimes find myself laughing when PPVI is called 'prophetic' because of some of the observations in Humanae Vitae. It didn't take a prophetic genius to predict once married couples could actually plan for their children that they wouldn't have a dozen children and that the birth rate would fall to or below replacement levels. That was the whole idea in the first place.

What didn't happen was any forward thinking political solutions to deal with that very predictable demographic fact. The one obvious solution is immigration and population redistribution, but of course, that means white hegemony is dead in Europe and soon to be in North America. For all our Christian love, we can't be havin' that. Pope Benedict must not want that either if his recent batch of Cardinals is any indication. The truth is the last thing Mother Earth needs is relatively wealthy white consumers having more hordes of relatively wealthy white consumer children. There is not enough Mother Earth to sustain that level of consumerism.

All of which brings me to Martin Luther King day. This was a man who was well on the path to understanding the Law of Love and the incredible demands it places on evaluating our attitudes towards our fellow travelers on the road of life. The Law of Love demands we see our fellows travelers exactly as we see ourselves. There are no 'others'. There is only 'us'. That is a very difficult command to follow because we have to shed all the years of conditioning which have told 'us' we are 'us' because we are not 'them' and 'they' are not 'us'. Every time I read of some Bishop or another who is defining Catholicism against one or another 'other' of the month, I want to cringe. All of this is utterly antithetical to what Jesus taught and lived. This is not love. This is not Faith. This is plain old fear.

Pope Benedict Continues To Create The Church In His Own Image And Likeness: White European Male

2012-01-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

Not exactly a picture of representative demographics for a global church. A whole lot of red and a whole lot of white--and of course, no women at all.

I've been meaning to post on the recent appointments to the College of Cardinals because I found the appointments mind boggling. Two, just two appointments from the South, just makes no sense. Catholicism is exploding in Africa and South East Asia but instead of even a token attempt to represent that fact in the College, Benedict adds 18 white European and North Americans out of a total of 22 appointments, and 12 of those are Vatican bureaucrats.

The following excerpt is from John Allen's NCR piece and deals specifically with this issue of global representation:

.......During his recent trip to Benin, his second voyage to Africa as pope, Benedict XVI praised the African continent as a “spiritual lung” for humanity and pointed to it as a critically important zone for the future of the Catholic church.

Yet in the appointments announced today, Africa was conspicuous by its absence.
In the run-up to today’s announcement, it was widely believed that at least two Africans would be on the list: Archbishop Telesphore George Mpundu of Lusaka, Zambia, and Archbishop Cyprian Kizito Lwanga of Kampala in Uganda. In the end, however, neither made the cut. (The Philippines was also conspicuous for it's absence, and their one voting Cardinal turns 80 this year.)

At the moment, there are eleven Africans among the voting-age cardinals. Once the Feb.18-19 consistory takes place, there will still be 11 Africans, alongside 11 cardinal electors from the United States alone – despite the fact that Africa has more than twice the Catholic population of the United States.
In November, the number of African electors will drop to ten, as retired Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria turns 80.

Part of the problem may be that Benedict’s picks today were disproportionately skewed to Vatican officials, and the two Africans who hold senior positions in the Roman Curia are already cardinals: Peter Turkson of Ghana, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and Robert Sarah of Guinea, President of Cor Unum.

In general, today's nominations reinforce the dominance of the West in the College of Cardinals. Only three of the 18 new electors come from the developing world -- one Brazilian, one Indian, and one from China (Hong Kong). In that sense, the College of Cardinals will continue to be unrepresentative of Catholic demography, given that two-thirds of the 1.2 billion Catholics in the world today live in the global south, a share projected to rise to three-quarters by mid-century. (The designate from Brazil has spent the last twenty or so years in Rome, so he might just as well be added to the tally of Vatican bureaucrats.)

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Allen never does offer any real explanation for Pope Benedict's choices, which leaves the field wide open for me to speculate. I can't help but speculate that Benedict has spent way too much time in the Vatican and for him the real Church is the white Eurocentric Vatican and the global church has some nice places to visit, but isn't 'mature' enough to participate in ruling the Church. Some people might see this as a continuation of colonialism. I would be one of them.

It's almost like Benedict is terrified that he will go down in history as the Pope who presided over the demise of the Church in the West. Numbers don't lie and in spite of all the talk of the New Evangelization, he IS presiding over the demise of the Church in the West. Stacking the College of Cardinals with Western, mostly Italian technocrats, is not going to change this fact, and does nothing to further the advancement of the Church in the South.

There is also something else that is nagging at me about these appointments. If the priority is to protect the wealth of the Church it makes sense to appoint a pack of Italian and North American Cardinals, people who are joined at the hip to Western economic power. In that case giving a red hat to Wall Street's favorite Archbishop makes more sense than giving one to Dublin's thorn in the Vatican side, or Westminster's Archbishop Nichols who seems to be one of the few Western Catholic leaders who sees gay marriage for the red herring it is. In the meantime the two thirds of the Catholic world who aren't invested in Wall Street or Fleet Street will just have to deal with the fact pastoral ability is not an apparent qualification for appointment to the College of Cardinals.

A Cardinal Eats Some Crow And Catholics Take Notice

2012-01-08T12:59:00.001-07:00

I see where Cardinal George has apologized for his remarks about the LGBT movement turning into some version of the Ku Klux Klan with it's anti-Catholic virulence. It only took him some two weeks, but better late than never. In the meantime this brouhaha generated a great deal of comment, and some of it was truly worthwhile. One commentary I found particularly on target was this article from Jamie Manson in the NCR.
Cardinal George, given that his unfortunate choice of words were uttered in a FOX interview, truly did seem to be appealing to the fringe at the expense of the marginal. I personally felt, if only for that reason, he did need to issue an apology. And so he has.

There was one comment written in response to Jamie's article that I found brilliant, and have chosen to reproduce both that comment and the comment that precipitated it. The first comment is written by one the thousands of Catholic traditionalists named anonymous and the response to it by Presbyter Felix.

What are equal rights for LGBT persons? If it is to be treated with respect as human persons, then I agree with the author. If you are talking about the "right" to engage in sinful activity or to live in same-sex "marriage" then you have not understood the Church's constant teaching (or at the very least you disagree with this teaching). I myself am gay, but I am liberated by the truth however difficult it may be. Please don't fight for my "right" to live in sexual union with a person of the same sex. Fight rather for my right to be seen as a child of God deserving of respect. And this exactly is what Cardinal George is doing. He is a good shepherd who loves all of his flock, but who does not capitulate to untruths.

Cardinal George did not exactly show much respect for gays as children of God, and no body has attacked this writer's right to follow Church teaching. What is in dispute is forcing non Catholics to follow Church teaching and using the debatable immorality of gay sexual acts as an excuse to deny the benefits of marriage to loving gay relationships. Onto Presbyter Felix:

When you ask that others not fight for your right "to engage in sinful activity," you enter into a very dangerous area of politico-moral theology, or politico-moral enforcement. We have been through laws of miscegenation based on many people's understanding of the black races as belonging to the biblical Ham. We have witnessed slavery justified biblically in both Testaments with such citations as, "Slaves, obey your masters."
The Taliban demands strict adherence to Sharia law. How far shall we legislate biblical law? The Puritans went after dancing, card playing and even the external celebration of Christmas. Prohibition went after drinking, or at least selling alcohol. To say that there should be no public area open to anyone who opts for things that you consider sinful can quickly devolve into horrendous persecution. The church fully supported the Crusades and killed many Moslem citizens, ordinary people, in the process.

If homosexuality is not a sin, but an objective moral disorder - just as blindness is an objective physical disorder - then sinning while being homosexual is less of a sin than sinning while having no such moral disorder. That makes other sexual sins to be much more serious - such as practicing birth control, which is an entirely free-will act. Firing teachers, for example, for refusing to be tested for the use of birth control pills, etc. should be much more acceptable to you than the firing of homosexuals for acting out of an "objective disorder." Did not Jesus say in John's Gospel that the man born blind was sinless.

Your desire to close off all areas where sin can be committed would lead to a completely policed religious state, as in Saudi Arabia today. Your only hope would be that you always fall on the side of the police.

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I really like the point Presbyter makes about the relative moral culpability between succumbing to an 'objective disorder' or committing similar such offenses while having no such moral disorder. I've written in the past that given the preponderance of weight that the Church places on the procreative aspect of sexuality, that sins of heterosexuals should be weighted far heavier than those of non procreative gays. After all it is by far and away the sins of heterosexuals that destroy families and create the unwanted children which result in those abortions which Catholics condemn.

While I'm sure it's very ego convenient for straight men to have gay sexual acts against which to minimize their own sexual immorality, such rationalization won't impress God when the final bell tolls. Just as I'm sure putting all the consequences and blame for abortion at the feet of women serves a similar function. And just as operating from traditional ideas of gender place primary responsibility for raising children on mothers has given way too many men the freedom to bail on their biological children--or become, in the strict heterosexual biological sense, nothing more than sperm donors.

In a number of crucial aspects gay marriage really represents an evolution in the morality of sexual relationships in that they are about a practical equality between partners and a shared responsibility for the sexual expression of the relationship. Marriage in this context is no longer about a 'right' to sexual expression, but more about the responsibility of sexual intimacy. Spouses are not primarily objects of an 'ordered sexual attraction'. They are gifts from God in human form that one loves with the care and concern one extends to ones self, and that kind of relationship ordering is the perfect place to raise children.

If President Kennedy Wasn't Ruled From Rome, Why Does Santorum Pretend He Is?

2012-01-05T19:56:00.000-07:00

I don't think this particular Catholic presidential candidate is much like John F Kennedy, or much of a Catholic for that matter. Oh yea, didn't he spend time living in a 'Family' residence on C Street in DC?

Seriously, the following article in Faith In Public Life Action Blog by John Gehring is one of the most succinct take downs of a religious right cafeteria Catholic I have ever read. Rick Santorum is no True Believer Catholic, unless you throw out Catholic tradition on Just War, Social Justice, and a host of other Vatican and USCCB taught concepts. Rick's concept of Catholicism, and I'll admit that to some extent one can make a historical and traditional case for it, is that Rich White Men Rule And Deserve Too.

The Catholic Case Against Rick Santorum

January 4, 2012, 12:42 pm | Posted by John Gehring

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a proud Catholic who often speaks about his faith on the campaign trail, is attracting some formidable buzz from pundits who view his strong showing in the Iowa caucuses as a sign that the former Pennsylvania senator might have enough mojo to rally a coalition of religious and blue-collar voters.

New York Times columnist David Brooks waxed poetic Monday about Santorum’s Catholic conservative sensibilities and touted the candidate as an authentic antidote to “the corporate or financial wing of the party.”
Evangelicals are also taking notice. Writing on CNN’s Belief blog, Chris LaTondresse, the founder and CEO of Recovering Evangelical, calls Santorum a post-religious right candidate “whose concern for poor and vulnerable people” is “firmly rooted in his Catholic faith.”

It’s easy to see why Santorum might appeal to some culturally conservative Catholics and moderate evangelicals who are wary of Democrats but also turned off by the Republican Party’s cozy embrace of economic libertarianism and tireless defense of struggling millionaires. Santorum is more comfortable with communitarian language, has been a strong supporter of foreign aid to impoverished countries and connects with personal stories of his blue-collar upbringing.

But it’s a political delusion to think Rick Santorum is a standard-bearer of authentic Catholic values in politics. In fact, on several issues central to Catholic social teaching – torture, war, immigration, climate change, the widening gap between rich and poor and workers’ rights – Santorum is radically out of step with his faith’s teachings as articulated by Catholic bishops and several popes over the centuries.

Immigration
Catholic bishops, priests and women religious have been at the forefront of the fight for comprehensive immigration reform. Catholic leaders have called for an earned path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and consistently oppose draconian policies that break up families. Santorum has publicly challenged the Catholic bishops on this issue, telling the Des Moines Register: “If we develop the program like the Catholic bishops suggested we would be creating a huge magnet for people to come in and break the law some more, we’d be inviting people to cross this border, come into this country and with the expectation that they will be able to stay here permanently.”

While promising he doesn’t want to “break up families,” Santorum recently justified massive deportations that do, in fact, separate parents from children. He blithely said of those facing deportation to Mexico (a country currently ravaged by grinding poverty and gang violence) that “we’re not sending them to any kind of difficult country.” Tell that to the student brought here as a young child who doesn’t remember the country of her birth and doesn’t even speak the language.

Poverty, Inequality and Financial Regulation
Pope Benedict XVI has decried the “scandal of glaring inequalities” between rich and poor, and Catholic social teaching supports a more just distribution of wealth. Santorum, in contrast, told the Des Moines Register: “I’m for income inequality. I think some people should make more than other people because some people work harder and have better ideas and take more risks, and they should be rewarded for it. I have no problem with income inequality.” As a Senator, Santorum voted for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which greatly exacerbated the gap between the top 1% and the rest of us.

The Vatican also recently released a major document on the need for more robust financial regulation of global markets to protect workers and the common good. Santorum clings to the thoroughly debunked lie that regulation caused our nation’s financial collapse. He told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz that “it wasn’t deregulation…it was government regulation” that in part led to our current economic problems. In Congress, Santorum also voted for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which deregulated risky financial schemes that led to the economic crisis of 2008.

While Catholic bishops defend vital government programs that protect the most vulnerable, Santorum recently voiced support for Rep. Paul Ryan’s immoral federal budget plan—a plan the bishops expressed deep concern about because it would cut life-saving programs while spending trillions on massive new tax breaks for the rich. Even worse, Santorum said that the poor who receive government aid could learn by suffering more. When questioned about how his economic views clash with the Catholic demand for a “preferential option for the poor” in public policy, Santorum was completely unfamiliar with this bedrock Church teaching.

Workers’ Rights
The Catholic Church has defended the vital role of unions since 1891, when Pope Leo XIII released Rerum Novarum, an encyclical that puts the dignity of work and labor rights at the center of Catholic social teaching. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church clearly states that workers have a right to “assemble and form associations” and that unions are “a positive influence for social order and solidarity, and are therefore an indispensable element of social life.” Rick Santorum, on the other hand, has argued that all public sector unions should be abolished. In a presidential candidates’ debate, Santorum said he would “support a bill that says that we should not have public employee unions for the purposes of wages and benefits to be negotiated.”

Climate Change and the Environment
Pope Benedict XVI, who has been dubbed the “Green Pope” for his attention to environmental justice and climate change, recently urged world leaders meeting for climate talks in Durban, South Africa, to “reach agreement on a responsible, credible response” to the “disturbing” effects of climate change. Catholic dioceses across the country have encouraged Catholics to limit their carbon footprint, and national advocacy organizations like the Catholic Climate Covenant work to educate Catholics about their faith’s teachings on environmental stewardship. Santorum must not be listening. In an interview with Rush Limbaugh, he described the fact that climate change is caused by humans as “patently absurd” and a “beautifully concocted scheme.” Just this week, Santorum blasted a new Environmental Protection Agency rule limiting emissions of mercury and other air toxins from coal-fired power plants. Catholic bishops hailed the ruling as “an important step forward to protect the health of all people, especially unborn babies and young children, from harmful exposure to dangerous air pollutants.”

Torture and War
Many Catholic conservatives ignore the Church’s teaching about “a consistent ethic of life” and excuse a candidate’s position or record on the economy, immigration and the environment by downplaying their moral importance compared to the issue of abortion. Catholics can disagree in good faith on some issues, they assert, but not over “intrinsic evils.” Unfortunately, even under this standard, Santorum fails. When it comes to torture, which the Church calls an “intrinsic evil,” Santorum is a proud proponent.

The Catholic bishops describe the barbaric practice as an assault on the dignity of human life. “The use of torture must be rejected as fundamentally incompatible with the dignity of the human person and ultimately counterproductive in the effort to combat terrorism,” they wrote in Faithful Citizenship, a political responsibility statement released before every presidential election. But Santorum eagerly endorsed “enhanced interrogation” techniques during the first Republican primary debate.

Santorum’s predilection toward pre-emptive war also clashes with mainstream Catholic theology. When the late Pope John Paul II warned against the invasion of Iraq, Santorum vocally championed the war. And while the Catholic bishops repeatedly called for a responsible withdrawal, Santorum remained a staunch defender of the occupation – blasting the “media” and “liberals” for undermining support for the war.

Catholic politicians across the spectrum will all find aspects of Church teaching that challenge their ideological agendas in discomforting ways. But for too long Catholics in public life have only been scrutinized when it comes to abortion and same-sex marriage. This does a disservice to voters, ignores the Catholic social justice tradition’s broad moral agenda and lets Catholic candidates like Rick Santorum off the hook even when they consistently disregard their faith’s teachings on key moral and political issues.

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Nothing has irritated me more this political season that right wing politicians who pull the Catholic card because by saying they are against gay marriage and abortion. Puhleasse. Those are only two Catholic cards in a deck of far more than 52. What has irritated me even more, is that most Catholic bishops seem to let this little fact pass by them, as if they were playing some sort of card game in which abortion and gay marriage are magical wild trump cards when it comes to politics, and religious freedom--as they define it--is what this card game is all about. That leaves me at a loss for words and logic. But then, that does seem to be where I really am when it comes to the official version of Roman Catholicism in the good ole USofA.

A Bishop Ponders The Catholic Exodus

2012-01-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

Ooops, here Bishop Hubbard engages in syncretism. Must be one of those Spirit of VII guys.

Fr. Richard McBrien has a post generating a great deal of comment. In it he writes of the musings of Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany NY, on why there are so many cradle Catholics leaving the Church. Bishop Hubbard has actually written a number of interesting articles for the Diocesan paper, of which the one McBrien cites is one of Hubbard's more courageous pieces. Bishop Hubbard also wrote a three part series about his recent Ad Limina visit to Rome which is really fascinating for what it doesn't say. The exodus out of the pews also came up in his Ad Limina visit, but his reporting of it seems to imply that Rome sees but has no clue about what to do. I suspect they don't know what to do, because some of those 'to dos' would seriously impact the current clerical structure, and that would include the Vatican and it's maze of bureaucracy. (Kind of the same situation we currently see in all the failed attempts and hand wringing by politicians over reforming congress.)

Bishop Hubbard has held his See since 1977, which means he was a Jadot appointment and that makes him pretty unique amongst American bishops. I don't find it surprising that Hubbard would be the one bishop who is seriously pondering what is going wrong with Catholicism in the Anglo US. If there is one thing I have noticed about JPII/Benedict appointments it's that they are not allowed to seriously ponder what might be wrong with how the Church is functioning, especially as regards their own behavior. Although Pope Benedict has stated on more than one occasion that Evangelization has to start with personal conversion on all levels of the Church, talk is cheap. Real conversion is a price this Vatican is not willing to pay. Just ask Bishop Morris of Toowoomba or Archbishop Martin of Dublin. Given that, I am thankful for Bishop Hubbard's willingness to even look at the truth of US Catholicism.

The comments following the article bring up some really good points, especially about why younger generations are less than enthusiastic about organized religion. It's not just that there is enough hypocrisy to fertilize a thousand acres, or an intransigence about even attempting to deal with the knowledge coming from virtually every scientific field, or an insistence on Truths, which aren't Truth in any meaningful sense, it's also very much due to the lack of spiritual meaning or spiritual challenge. It's easy to go to Mass on Sunday and sit through a boring sermon, but it doesn't really challenge one to go out and do as Jesus did. In fact, it often substitutes for going out and doing as Jesus did. One young man jokingly told me he puts more real effort into his softball team than what's required of him to be considered a faithful Catholic. Well, I guess that's not really funny, because in his case, it's true. Now that I think about it, I turned golf into a spiritual practice because I spent way more time at golf than I did at Mass. (Golf in the Kingdom my ultimate golfing tome.)

The more I think about reforming Catholicism, the more I begin to understand that changing structures and disciplines is only a small step. Jesus wasn't just teaching a spiritual system, He was teaching a way of life that led to spiritual insights and breakthroughs. He meant it when He said we could do as He did, and more. The cost of converting to that understanding is very very high. Real reform of His Church is going to exact a very very high price because the Church must reflect the spiritual understanding of it's founder. It can no longer afford to work in opposition to core Christian teachings about egolessness, lack of attachment to material assets, service to the poor, or the importance of non judgmental love. In other words, Catholicism needs to start acting like a New Testament Church and a lot less like an Old Testament Church. I think before that happens there will be a much bigger exodus and eventually that exodus will coalesce around a more mature and deeper Christian spirituality and even further down the road Rome will accept all of the change and claim it was always so---and Jesus will laugh.

2012: "Rebuild My Church"

2012-01-02T10:37:00.000-07:00


The interior of "Martyrs of Uganda" Catholic Church in Detroit. Parish was closed in 2006.

The above photo served as a reality check for me on a couple of levels. I had just read this article about the next spate of parish consolidations and closures in the Archdiocese of Detroit. The linked article features St Leo's parish, which NCR readers will know is the parish at which Bishop Tom Gumbleton served for years--and still does. The photo above is of another parish located in a similarly blighted Detroit area. The destruction of the interior has taken just five short years, aided by looters and the homeless looking for shelter. The city of Detroit is in serious straights and those straights are mirrored in the Archdiocese and in too many respects the Archdiocese reflects the incomprehensible damage the Roman Catholic Church in the West has suffered at the hands of it's leadership.

As I look at the interior of the Martyrs of Uganda, I can't help but reflect that Cardinal Vigneron's predecessor, Cardinal Maida, sunk over 35 million of the Archdiocese's money into the JPII Center in Washington DC. A boondoggle of a project that was just recently purchased by the Knights Of Columbus and will never ever make any money or be able to pay back Archdiocese of Detroit. Taken together, the two buildings paint a damning picture of the real priorities of too many of our bishops. In Maida's case his hero worship of JPII was taken to Imperial levels at the expense of the desperate jobless poor of Detroit. That one bankrupt DC building will ultimately be responsible for the creation of many more 'Martyrs of Uganda' and this go round of closure will take out St Leo's, a beacon of hope in an otherwise very destitute downtown landscape. A sort of "Martyrs of Detroit'.

And yet on another level, the above photo speaks to the spiritual soul of Roman Catholicism in the twenty first century--at least in the West. What appears to be an invincible edifice on the outside, is rapidly decaying on the inside, being cherry picked by spiritual leeches for it's last bit of life.

My hope and prayer for 2012 is that those who truly care about the soul of this Church, and I know that includes many silent voices in leadership, use 2012 to engage in a serious reality check. The real Catholic Church in the US is not about Cardinal George making KKK references about gays, or Archbishop Dolan spouting affirmative nonsense, or Cardinal Donald Wuerl pretending he's on the same theological level as Sr Elizabeth Johnson. It's about the thousands of 'Martyr's of Uganda' being closed in the middle of our poorest sections of our poorest cities. It's about the rot that comes when one chooses to serve Mammon and a self serving tradition over the service to others and complete detachment from material desire called for by The Way.

St Francis heard God command him to "rebuild my church", and Francis took it literally and rebuilt St Damiano, another abandoned and decayed sacred place. God is again making the same call. How many will answer?

Pope Benedict And The State Of The Church

2011-12-26T12:01:00.001-07:00

Love this photo. Poor bishops and archbishops stuck in the second row on inferior chairs. No wonder some people so desperately want that red hat. It's the only way to get a good front row seat.

The following excerpt is from Pope Benedict's Christmas message to the Vatican curia. It's a sort of his State of the Church message. The full speech can be read here, courtesy of Rocco Palma's Whispers in the Loggia Blog.

.....As this year draws to a close, Europe is undergoing an economic and financial crisis, which is ultimately based on the ethical crisis looming over the Old Continent. Even if such values as solidarity, commitment to one’s neighbour and responsibility towards the poor and suffering are largely uncontroversial, still the motivation is often lacking for individuals and large sectors of society to practise renunciation and make sacrifices. Perception and will do not necessarily go hand in hand. In defending personal interests, the will obscures perception, and perception thus weakened is unable to stiffen the will. In this sense, some quite fundamental questions emerge from this crisis: where is the light that is capable of illuminating our perception not merely with general ideas, but with concrete imperatives? Where is the force that draws the will upwards? These are questions that must be answered by our proclamation of the Gospel, by the new evangelization, so that message may become event, so that proclamation may lead to life.

The key theme of this year, and of the years ahead, is this: how do we proclaim the Gospel today? How can faith as a living force become a reality today? The ecclesial events of the outgoing year were all ultimately related to this theme. There were the journeys to Croatia, to the World Youth Day in Spain, to my home country of Germany, and finally to Africa – Benin – for the consignment of the Post-Synodal document on justice, peace and reconciliation, which should now lead to concrete results in the various local churches. Equally memorable were the journeys to Venice, to San Marino, to the Eucharistic Congress in Ancona, and to Calabria. And finally there was the important day of encounter in Assisi for religions and for people who in whatever way are searching for truth and peace, representing a new step forward in the pilgrimage towards truth and peace. The establishment of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization is at the same time a pointer towards next year’s Synod on the same theme. The Year of Faith, commemorating the beginning of the Council fifty years ago, also belongs in this context. Each of these events had its own particular characteristics. In Germany, where the Reformation began, the ecumenical question, with all its trials and hopes, naturally assumed particular importance.

Intimately linked to this, at the focal point of the debate, the question that arises repeatedly is this: what is reform of the Church? How does it take place? What are its paths and its goals? Not only faithful believers but also outside observers are noticing with concern that regular churchgoers are growing older all the time and that their number is constantly diminishing; that recruitment of priests is stagnating; that scepticism and unbelief are growing. What, then, are we to do? There are endless debates over what must be done in order to reverse the trend. There is no doubt that a variety of things need to be done. But action alone fails to resolve the matter. The essence of the crisis of the Church in Europe is the crisis of faith. If we find no answer to this, if faith does not take on new life, deep conviction and real strength from the encounter with Jesus Christ, then all other reforms will remain ineffective.
On this point, the encounter with Africa’s joyful passion for faith brought great encouragement. None of the faith fatigue that is so prevalent here, none of the oft-encountered sense of having had enough of Christianity was detectable there. Amid all the problems, sufferings and trials that Africa clearly experiences, one could still sense the people’s joy in being Christian, buoyed up by inner happiness at knowing Christ and belonging to his Church. From this joy comes also the strength to serve Christ in hard-pressed situations of human suffering, the strength to put oneself at his disposal, without looking round for one’s own advantage. Encountering this faith that is so ready to sacrifice and so full of happiness is a powerful remedy against fatigue with Christianity such as we are experiencing in Europe today. (Faith fatigue in Europe has a lot to do with the blatant hypocrisy and self survivalism of Christian leadership. Both Roman Catholic and Protestant leadership sold out to the fascist dictators that tore Europe to shreds. That was only the latest sell out in a long historic line of sell outs. The same 'fatigue' is showing in South and Central America and for the same reasons.)

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Pope Benedict's message then goes on to extol the virtues of World Youth Day. He mentions five things that impressed him in Madrid: 1) The universal 'catholicity' of the participants. WYD was a statement about the global Church. 2)The volunteerism and sense of self sacrifice of youth leaders. 3) Eucharistic Adoration. 4) The more central place of Confession. 5) A sense of joy.

I wasn't the least bit surprised that the bulk of his talk dealt with World Youth Day and his trip to Africa because in his opening paragraphs he concedes the Church in the first world is old and dieing off, the seminaries are hardly full, and skepticism reigns supreme. He even goes so far as the concede the need for reform, but gives no direction for that reform. Instead he switches his talk to the wonders of the thoroughly orchestrated WYD. Benedict also fails to mention in the West, it is amongst the generations attracted to WYD that the church has failed most miserably--unlike in Africa. But then in it's purest form, it has always been among the poor and disenfranchised that Christianity has thrived. It is at it's core a spirituality by a poor and marginalized Man for the poor and marginalized. The real question is how do you make Christianity relevant to people who don't have any particular need to hear it's core message? I guess that's where Eucharistic Adoration comes in. On the other hand, I imagine Benedict would have a tough time preaching the truth of the marginalized/poverty thing while sitting on his throne in the splendors of the Vatican with his hierarchy ranked by chair and row in front of him.

Pope Benedict gave a number of well thought out and interesting speeches and homilies during this Advent and Christmas season. I just have a real problem hearing his words on St Francis of Assisi when they are juxtaposed against such incredible wealth. By the way I'm not meaning to imply that Benedict is obsessed by wealth because in fact, I don't think he is at all. Comfort maybe, but not wealth. I don't see wallowing in wealth as being particularly high on his bucket list. What I do see though, is a man who seems to be getting more unsure of himself as he spends more time in the Papacy. I do believe he sees the incongruities between the Church on the ground in Benin, and the hierarchical church with which he was surrounded as he gave this speech. I think he knows where Jesus is most apt to be alive and well, and it wasn't sitting in front of him. I just don't think he has the energy or will to do anything about that perception. I think he was telling us that.

2011-12-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

Merry Christmas to one and all.

The Religious Right Definition Of Marriage: One Man With One Woman At One Time

2011-12-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

I can't help but wonder if Sarah Palin carried Newt's marriage record if she would have ever been considered for VP.

I came across this bit of information on Religion Dispatches. Joanna Brooks writes that according to the head of South Carolina's Southern Baptist Convention, Christian conservatives will have an easier time fumbling (compromising themselves) their way through the fact Newt is a serial monogamist, than they will that Mitt is a Mormon.

.....But just as Romney’s numbers were picking up again and I was preparing to sound a note of caution about over-hyping anti-Mormonism, this little gem came across the wire: the new head of South Carolina’s Southern Baptist Convention (the largest religious group in the state) says that for many faith-motivated voters, Mitt Romney’s Mormonism would be a greater moral problem that Newt Gingrich’s serial adultery.
Rev. Brad Atkins told a local South Carolina newspaper franchise that conservatives could “process and pray” their way through Gingrich’s adultery but will “struggle to understand how anyone could be a Mormon and call themselves a Christian.”

This just days after Romney scored an endorsement from South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.
Conservative pastors are pitting the specter of popular anti-Mormon sentiment against the Republican establishment, and legitimizing that sentiment in the process. It’s quite a spectacle, and quite a mess the GOP has on its hands. Is this what happens when you outsource a political party’s grassroots operation to the religious right?

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I don't know why anyone would be surprised the religious right is trashing Mitt Romney for not being a Christian. All one has to do is look at what the religious right has done with President Obama. For many of Newt's followers President Obama is a Muslim who was never an American citizen. Quite a convoluted way of avoiding the whole issue of Obama is of mixed race.

I don't believe the issue has anything to do with who is actually Christian, but whether they belong to the tribe. In this sense Newt has always belonged to this particular tribe, and so of course the tribe will overlook his multiple marriages, but can't quite get over Mitt's non tribal Mormonism. Newt seems to hold the position of the brother who went off to college and that no one quite gets anymore. Never the less, he is still the brother. Mitt on the other hand, is foreign to the family and therefor all the values and ideals held by the family. Almost as bad as that Obama guy. Joanna is right, the Republican nomination process is becoming a spectacular mess and one that's getting queasier and queasier to watch.

But the other thing I found queasy in this article is how plastic the need for the 'one man one woman' definition of marriage seems to be for the religious right. I guess it really means one man with one woman at one time. The least they could do is add that to the definition of marriage. They would look far less hypocritical. As it stands now they just look provincial and tribal. Maybe in the final analysis that's the whole message of the current Republican party. It's certainly one of the strongest messages being sent by Roman Catholic leadership, no matter if it's dressed up as Catholic identity and religious freedom. It's still fearful provincial tribalism rejecting the truth the real world is bigger and more diverse than they can handle.

To What Traditional Family Is Archbishop Nienstedt Referring?

2011-12-19T21:05:00.001-07:00

Too bad for Archbishop Nienstedt, but this is not the traditional kind of family he wants to defend.

Here is the prayer that Archbishop Nienstedt is requesting be read at Masses in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St Paul. It's his idea of calling on God to defend traditional marriage from gays horning in on the idea. The man seems to me to have a real problem with gays, or...... in his ability to find a different issue on which to advance his career for the red gallero. Abortion, after all, is pretty much used up.

Heavenly Father,

Through the powerful intercession of the Holy Family, grant to this local Church the many graces we need to foster, strengthen, and support faith-filled, holy marriages and holy families. (Problem here is Jesus had a step father and was conceived of an unwed mother. In it's time, neither situation was considered 'holy' or particularly traditional.)

May the vocation of married life, a true calling to share in your own divine and creative life, be recognized by all believers as a source of blessing and joy, and a revelation of your own divine goodness. (Nothing here to preclude gays from sharing in the blessings and joy and revelation of God's divine goodness.)

Grant to us all the gift of courage to proclaim and defend your plan for marriage, which is the union of one man and one woman in a lifelong, exclusive relationship of loving trust, compassion, and generosity, open to the conception of children. (No. Marriage has not always been this way. It's a fairly recent invention. King David had some fifty wives, (plus one serious male lover named Jonathon.) Jesus had no wives, and His mother Mary had a husband with whom she was never open to the conception of children. I am seriously not getting how the Holy Family has anything to do with Nienstedt's notion of the traditional family.)

We make our prayer through Jesus Christ, who is Lord forever and ever. (But unmarried for ever and ever.)

Amen.

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Seriously, I think there are times cats and dogs make more sense to me than some Catholic Archbishops. And cats and dogs are not nearly so duplicitous.

And Now For Some Humorous Truth

2011-12-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

The Story of Adam & Eve's Pets

Adam and Eve said, 'Lord, when we were in the garden, you walked with us every day. Now we do not see you any more. We are lonesome here, and it is difficult for us to remember how much you love us.'

And God said, I will create a companion for you that will be with you and who will be a reflection of my love for you, so that you will love me even when you cannot see me. Regardless of how selfish or childish or unlovable you may be, this new companion will accept you as you are and will love you as I do, in spite of yourselves.'

And God created a new animal to be a companion for Adam and Eve.

And it was a good animal and God was pleased..

And the new animal was pleased to be with Adam and Eve and he wagged his tail.

And Adam said, 'Lord, I have already named all the animals in the Kingdom and I cannot think of a name for this new animal.'

And God said, 'I have created this new animal to be a reflection of my love for you, his name will be a reflection of my own name, and you will call him DOG.

And Dog lived with Adam and Eve and
was a companion to them and loved them.
And they were comforted.

And God was pleased.
And Dog was content and wagged his tail.

After a while, it came to pass that an angel came to the Lord and said, 'Lord, Adam and Eve have become filled with pride. They strut and preen like peacocks and they believe they are worthy of adoration. Dog has indeed taught them that they are loved, but perhaps too well.

And God said, I will create for them a companion who will be with them and who will see them as they are. The companion will remind them of their limitations, so they will know that they are not always worthy of adoration.

And God created CAT to be a companion to Adam and Eve.

And Cat would not obey them. And when Adam and Eve gazed into Cat's eyes, they were reminded that they were not the supreme beings.

And Adam and Eve learned humility.

And they were greatly improved.

And God was pleased..

And Dog was happy.

And Cat . . .

didn't give a shit one way or the other.

A shout out to my good and lasting friend Barb for emailing this gem.

A Couple Of Eye Popping, Jaw Dropping Stories, And One That's Just Sort Of Depressing

2011-12-18T11:52:00.000-07:00

This is a delightful send up of one of NOM's more pathetic commercial efforts: "The Gathering Storm"

I've read some articles the last couple of days that have truly left me speechless with bugged eyes. Here's the latest on the Penn State mess. Jerry Sandusky's defense team is going to use the 'hygiene defense'. Jerry was only teaching those young boys shower hygiene. Well, maybe Jerry used a condom as part of his shower curriculum.

I guess I just can't fathom the kind of desperate narcissism implied in this defense. Jerry Sandusky allegedly raped a boy in the Penn State football locker room because that locker room represented Jerry's ultimate place of power. Jerry's alleged shower activities were not about hygiene. They were all about his very real power over dependent young males.

Then there is the always insightful and relevant Maggie Gallagher and NOM. Seems Maggie is beyond joy that Republican front runner Newt has signed her NOM Marriage pledge. Just to keep things updated, Maggie started the National Organization For Marriage and had a lot to do with the Marriage Pledge, but now NOM is run by Brian S Brown. Brown is a career 'marriage supporter', having come from a pro marriage group in Connecticut. And like Maggie, Brian is such a pro marriage careerist that he won't tell us who those five major financial supporters of NOM actually are, although one is reputed to be closely affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church---like sitting in cathedral chairs closely affiliated.

Anyway, NOM is now targeting Ron Paul as the only Republican candidate who is anti marriage because Ron hasn't signed their pledge. Hmmm. Ron has been married 54 years to the same woman and seems to have the well tested understanding that no body else's marriage really effects his. Newt, on the other hand, just seems to be testing marriage partners, but somehow signing NOM's pledge makes Newt more pro marriage than Ron. This is a classic case of actually 'walking the talk' having zero meaning relative to just 'talking the talk'. But then Newt himself has said that it doesn't matter what he actually does, only what he says. Seems to be the operative paradigm for NOM---and some other organizations that come readily to mind. So in this way of thinking, as one commenter observed on Maggie Gallagher's post, it would be authentically meaningful for Cardinal Bernie Law to endorse a day care center.

And we see this same Newt philosophy of talking the talk, forget the walk, playing out in this article from John Allen on the papacy of Pope Benedict. John thinks Pope Benedict will go down in history as one of the great teaching popes of all time. Allen is probably right, but for the wrong reasons. Teaching and writing are a whole lot easier than really living what you are teaching. There's a cost to be paid for living what Christ taught, and that cost is living on the margins of society with little in the way of temporal wealth, power, and status. These are the inbuilt price of Jesus' teachings because it's virtually impossible to understand the full meaning of His teachings while hanging on to temporal wealth, power, and status. There are multiple gospel stories which spell out this fact. A person can not transcend material reality by hanging onto it's most addictive parts.

For me personally, I find a lot of what Benedict writes to be worthwhile in a sort of academic sense, but almost none of it from a spiritual sense. This is precisely because Benedict lives the way he does--in an island of temporal wealth, power, and status. It's easy to see where belief in his Catholic Jesus has taken Benedict to the apex of Catholic power as countenanced by his Catholic Jesus. For myself, I'm waiting for Benedict to actually heal a blind man or something. I've long since lost any expectation that anything truly transcendent can come from belief in Benedict's version Catholic Jesus.

Real Catholicism, Or Just Plain Social Compliance?

2011-12-13T19:30:00.002-07:00

That is ultimately the decision we all come to terms with-or maybe just avoid. I happen to think we choose and make real what is our ultimate decision. For me the ultimate does not suck. It actually can be made manifest in this all too often sucky reality.

The following is taken from Clerical Whispers. It brings up some important questions. I've been thinking about some of these questions for a long time. I suspect a lot of priests and run of the mill lay Catholics have as well. Ultimately the real questions, as our teachers present them to us, seem to revolve around the idea of Magic Church and Magic Jesus, or real life experiences with real life questions. The most meaningful answer is all about our own path, and not about absolute tangible consensus answers. I wish it was different, but it's not.

A friend has pointed me to an article by Lynne Kelleher in the Irish Independent, which was taken up by an American blogger calling himself The Deacon’s Bench.

The article quoted Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin as suggesting that Ireland’s lapsed Catholics should have the maturity to leave the Church.

In an obvious reference to “cultural Catholics” who want to be married in a church and have their children baptised for purely social reasons, the archbishop is alleged to have said:

“It requires maturity on those people who want their children to become members of the Church community and maturity on those people who say ‘I don’t believe in God. I really shouldn’t be hanging on to the vestiges of faith when I don’t really believe in it.’”

He was followed by Fr Michael Drumm from the Catholic Schools Partnership who said that the Church in Ireland would be firmer in future with parents wanting to have their children baptised as Catholics.

The blog led to some interesting comments in the posts that followed: a fellow US Catholic deacon stated that “in a few cases I’ve refused to marry a couple or baptise an infant until the adults involved demonstrated that their faith would be meaningful and practised”.

Yet another deacon related that he was asked by his parish priest to baptise the baby of a non-churchgoing, unmarried mother and also give her instruction – and that she did come to Mass sometimes afterwards.

Generally the responses were evenly divided between those who agreed (cautiously) with Archbishop Martin and who felt that if it were known that the family did not intend to raise their child as a Catholic, baptism should be delayed until their attitude had changed; and those who felt this attitude lacked compassion: lost or wavering sheep should be welcomed and supported, not shunned. (Inevitably, a few posts said the Irish Church was in no position to preach to anyone, given her recent history etc).

I am never sure which way to jump in this debate – and priestly responses vary.

One priest I know always baptises on request with no questions asked, believing he should give non-practising parents the benefit of the doubt; yet another used to firmly insist on attendance at sessions of instruction beforehand, as a way of showing parental commitment.

I also recall an elderly priest, on the occasion of a First Communion family jamboree, telling me with sadness that he did not expect to see the parents or child again in the church – and he was proved right.

If I were a priest I would want to point out that baptism shouldn’t be done just to please the grandparents; that First Communion is more than an occasion to buy an expensive dress for family photographs; and that a church wedding shouldn’t be requested in order to have a tasteful backdrop.

But what if this puts off the enquirers from coming to church again?

Is mercy rather than justice required here?

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I first want to apologize for not posting for awhile. Life has it's ups and downs and I was trying to determine if I was in an up or down. I think ultimately for me it's an up, but for others it may be a down. That kind of thing is always in the hearts of the beholder. It's the same thing with this article. I don't think it's a matter of mercy or justice, it's a matter of belief or knowing. If the priest believes and knows what he is doing in Baptism or Marriage makes a real difference, he will follow through with the Sacrament. If one doesn't believe, then it doesn't matter.

But what if belief matters? What if one's belief is all the difference in the world? What if the more we believe the more things change? I sometimes think that the fear of the right wing is more believable than the hope of the non right. I would say left wing but that's not true. The left is not moving on hope, but reacting against fear.

It seems to me we can let fear rule, or we can move beyond fear. To do that is to give up the ego. It's to stop worrying about survival and trust we do survive beyond our material self. Jesus was all about going beyond survival and for two thousand years we've done our best to prove He was wrong. He wasn't and we are . It ultimately doesn't matter what any priest decides. It only matters how people live the experience. That has zero to do with control and everything to do with faith. Unfortunately the Roman Catholic Church had decided control is more important than faith and that's really sad. More than that it spells the end of it's existence.

Leonardo Boff On The Shamanic Dimension

2011-12-07T09:16:00.001-07:00

This short video is well worth watching because in it the Dalai Lama gives Leonardo Boff a lesson in shamanic wisdom.

The following article was posted on LeonardoBoff.com. It describes far better than I could, what my own path has been about for the last thirty five years. For those who don't know, Boff was one of the original Liberation Theologians targeted by Ratzinger's CDF. He was silenced in 1985 for his book: Church: Charism and Power, and threatened again in 1992 for his participation in the Eco Summit in Rio de Janeiro. At that point he left his Franciscan order and the Roman Catholic Church. He was highly involved in the Base Christian Community movement in Brazil and other parts of Latin America. The BCC movement had over one million communities in Latin America, the Philippines, and Africa and was a huge inspiration for Liberation Theologians. BCC's are still a vibrant part of the Church in some parts of the Catholic world, but their autonomy was seriously impacted by JPII through the appointment of more conservative bishops. The Vatican was not particularly enamored of the blurring of the roles between priest and laity and the potential for 'Marxism' which was seen to be a major issue with these lay led communities. I've often thought the BCC movement was and is a precursor to what a reformed Catholicism will eventually look like.

In this article Boff describes the shaman dimension in it's ability to make intuitive connections, to see wholeness where others see division, and to foster the sense we are all one and part of something much bigger than just us human types. If humanity is ever going to get off the continual path of self destruction, more of us need to see the world through shamanic eyes. Jesus certainly did.

To Awaken the Shaman Dimension

06/12/2011 - Leonardo Boff

The concept of sustainability, considered in its widest sense and not reduced just to development, embraces all actions focused on maintaining the existence of other beings, because they have the right to coexist with us. And only starting from this premise of coexistence do we utilize, with sobriety and respect, a part of them to satisfy our needs, while also preserving them for future generations. (The Shamanic mind always factors in future generations--always.)

The universe also fits within this concept. From the new cosmology, we now know that we are made of the dust of stars and that passing through us is the mysterious Basic Energy that nourishes everything and which unfolds into the four forces –gravitational, electromagnetic, nuclear strong and weak– that, by always acting together, maintain us as we are.

As conscious and intelligent beings, we have our place and our function within the cosmologic process. Although we are not the center of everything, we certainly are one of those forward points through which the universe turns into itself, that is to say, the universe becomes conscious. The weak anthropological principle allows us say that, for us to be what we are, all the energies and processes of evolution had to organize themselves in such an articulated and subtle manner that our appearance was possible. Otherwise, I would not be writing here.

Through us, the universe and the Earth look at and contemplate themselves. The capacity to see appeared 600 million years ago. Until then, the Earth was blind. The profound and starry sky, the Iguaçu Falls, where I am now, the green of the nearby jungles, could not be seen. Through our sight, the Earth and the universe can see all of this indescribable beauty.

The original peoples, from the Andean to the samis of the Arctic, felt one with the universe, as brothers and sisters of the stars, making a great cosmic family. We have lost that feeling of mutual belonging. They felt that the cosmic forces balanced the paths of all beings and acted within them. To live in consonance with these fundamental energies was to have a sustainable life, filled with meaning.

We know from quantum physics that consciousness and the material world are connected and that the manner a scientist chooses to make his observation affects the observed object. Observer and observed object are inseparably linked. Hence the inclusion of consciousness in scientific theories and in the very cosmic reality is a fact that has already been assimilated by a large part of the scientific community. We form, in effect, a complex and diversified whole. (Unfortunately I'm not sure Roman Catholic teaching authority knows how to handle this basic fact that human consciousness does in fact have a great deal to do with creating reality--both personal and collective.)

The figures of the shamans are well- known. They were always present in the ancient world and are now retuning with renewed vigor, as quantum physicist P. Drouot has shown in his book, The shaman, the physicist and the mystic (El chamán, el físico y el místico, Vergara, 2001) for which I was honored to prepare a prologue. The shaman lives a singular state of consciousness that allows him to enter into intimate contact with the cosmic energies. The shaman understands the call of the mountains, the lakes, the woods and the jungles, the call of the animals and of human beings. The shaman knows how to direct such energies towards healing ends and to harmonize them with the whole.

Inside each of us lies the shaman dimension. That shaman energy causes us to stand speechless in the face of the immensity of the sea, to sense the eyes of another person, to be entranced on seeing a newborn child. We need to liberate the shaman dimension within us, so as to enter into harmony with all around us, and to feel at peace. (And to take responsibility for the world we are creating.)

Could not our desire to travel with the spacecrafts in cosmic space perhaps be the archetypical desire to search for our stellar origins, and the desire to return to our place of birth? Several astronauts have expressed similar ideas. This unstoppable search for equilibrium with the entire universe and to feel that we are part of the universe pertains to the intelligible notion of sustainability.

Sustainability includes valuation of this human and spiritual capital. Its effect is to generate within us respect, and a sense of sacredness, before all realities, values that nourish the profound ecology and which help us to respect and live in symbiosis with Mother Earth. This attitude is urgently needed, to moderate the destructive forces that have overtaken us in recent decades.

Has Newt Left His Compassionate Conservatism For Paranoid Tea Partyism?

2011-12-06T14:41:00.000-07:00

This all happened before Newt converted to Catholicism and while he was practicing his 'compassionate conservatism'.

The following short excerpt is taken from a much longer Salon article by Gary Kamiya, "The infantile style in American politics". I want to thank Bill Lyndsy who linked to this article in his most recent post on the current Republican front runner -drum roll please- Newt Gingrich. Bill wonders where Newt's spirituality and politics begin and end. Good question and one that seems really hard to answer. Newt has said he's psychologically a Protestant but appreciates the depth of Catholicism and likes to read the Psalms. One could say that religious eclecticism is indicative of a savvy politician. But what there can be no dispute about, is the fact Newt is pandering heavily to the Tea Party and the very right wing of the Republican party, and seems to be heavily funded by the same sources that fund those factions.

Kamiya's article deals with the seeming irrational paranoia that washes over the conservative parts of the US in cyclical waves. What we are now seeing in US politics is the mainstreaming of what use to be the margins of the conservative movement. It's not that conservative paranoia is new. What's new is there is a whole lot more money behind this movement and consequently it has a much much louder voice. Like McCarthyism of the 50's, it has no sense of decency:

"In 1954, during the Army-McCarthy hearings, Army lawyer Joseph Welch asked McCarthy, “Have you no decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?” McCarthy was crushed; his reign of terror was over. It appeared that the American right was a spent force. Hofstadter, however, had the wisdom to see deeper. At the end of “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt — 1954,” he wrote, “[I]n a populist culture like ours, which seems to lack a responsible elite with political and moral autonomy, and in which it is possible to exploit the wildest currents of public sentiment for private purposes, it is at least conceivable that a highly organized, vocal, active and well-financed minority could create a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.” "

Given the performance of the Republican Party over the last three years, it's pretty apparent we have at least one party that is no longer capable of rational pursuit of the common good, well being, and safety of the US. I'm not intending to imply that the Democrats are the party of rationality and reasonableness, but at least they have tried to find some common ground, even going so far as to seem more Republican than Reagan Republicans, but it's been to no avail. I fail to see where the new Catholic Newt is going to have any meaningful impact on making the current Republican Party useful in governing this country, at least the Newt of this current reincarnation.

To be honest, I don't think effective governance is what this paranoid parody of the Republican party is interested in. It's interests lie not in any common good, but in promoting a form of 'self stimulation', in which they set up issues, often peripheral but well funded, in which their adherents can engage in angry frustrated head banging. In Catholicism we have a sort of reverse thing going on because the conservatives have all the institutional power. In this case our paranoid conservative hierarchy set up issues, also often peripheral and also well funded by the same people, in which progressives can engage in their own version of angry head banging. I know this all too well, because I frequently have a head ache. The best of the best of these issues are the unsolvable peripheral ones which get both sides head banging, issues like abortion. In the meantime, the common good swirls down Wall Street drains along with our health care and pension funds.

What I found most salient about Kamiya's article is that what he is describing are the traits of people who have had childhoods steeped in fear, and have carried that fear into adulthood with little in the way of mature coping strategies. If there has been very little learned in the realm of mature coping strategies, there isn't going to be very much of that skill to use in adulthood. It's almost counter intuitive to think that keeping oneself in a constant state of anger and pain is soothing, but it is, if that's what your brain has been trained to think is normal.

When I train new employees for the psychiatric residential program where I work, I try to make the point that it's much easier to 'control' behavior when one gives up the thought of controlling clients and replaces it with compassion for the clients. This change in attitude sets up a whole different relational environment in which healing has a chance to replace externally controlling behavior. What we find is it takes our youngest clients, the ones coming from the children's system, about a month or so to stop trying to trigger us into engaging in controlling behavior and for them to stop the vast majority of their repetitive self soothing behavior. In other words, the head banging stops when compassion, not coercion, rules. It is not an easy thing to do, but the rewards are priceless.

I remember the days when Newt was considered a compassionate conservative--which doesn't necessarily have to be an oxymoron. If he really wants to lead the Republican Party out of it's current mess, he needs to meditate on the power of compassion while he's listening to his wife sing at the noon Mass in the choir at the Washington Cathedral. Who knows, he might even find himself experiencing a real conversion.

Bishop Eddie Long Leaves His Pulpit Still Singing The Collection Basket Blues

2011-12-05T12:33:00.003-07:00

Bishop Eddie got some seven figures in Faith Based Intiative $$$ from this ex pres.

I like to keep up with the Bishop Eddie Long story to remind myself that clerical racketeering and sexual abuse is not limited to certain personality disordered Roman Catholic clergy. The same can be said of all the various True Believers who insist on maintaining their blindness and deafness in the face of mountains of evidence which have long since convinced many of us to stop enabling our own fleecing.

I posted on Bishop Long when the allegations surfaced last year which accused him of sexual dalliances with teen age males in his Congregation. He subsequently settled with five victims for an undisclosed amount of money--rumored to be in the 25 million range- plus the proverbial gag orders. For Jesus' representatives like Bishop Eddie, silence is more golden than gold.

There have always been accusations of financial impropriety around his ministry including allegations of running a Ponzi scheme with another friend. A scheme which Bishop Eddie pushed from the pulpit of New Life Ministries, and then just lately, the news of the on again, off again, on again divorce from his second wife. Anyway, according to beleaguered Bishop Eddie, he just needs a break from the evil media and some time to spend fixing his family problems. The following is from the website pimppreacher.com, which is affiliated with The Church Folk Revolution.

Eddie Long took the stage at 8:00 AM. Everyone surrounded the pulpit and he continuously wiped away tears. He told us over 5 times that him and Vanessa still love each other. He said, about New Birth: "We are a family. She is your mother, and I am your father." (Except, mother still wants to divorce the father.)

He talked about the impact the allegations have had on his family for years, including long before this last year. He said the greatest thing the church can do is continue to show up, and continue to give money. We don't need to listen to the media. (Or to those father has abused with in 'the family'.)

He compares his situation with the Israeli battles where Moses had to keep his hands raised and Aaron would hold up his arms when Moses was tired. He said the battle has lasted longer than originally thought, and he needs us to hold up his arms.

Eddie Long said he needs to take time away to take care of his family and we shouldn't worry. He always puts good people in front of us. He said to still believe in all the prophecies of 2011 and that he already had all of 2012's lesson plans laid out.

The attacks from the media were taking a toll. There are things he'd like to say but can't because he's been advised not to, but he said the divorce has nothing to do with infidelity or the allegations. He said he is not Superman and he doesn't want to be compared to him. He then said he would pray for our families, and he wanted us to pray for his.

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In reading other commentary on Bishop Long's 'sabbatical' I was literally sickened by all the people claiming they would pray for dear old Bishop Eddie, but who somehow didn't feel the need to pray for any of Bishop Eddie's victims. It never ceases to amaze me just how well these 'men of god' can play the victim card and how the media never reports facts, just attacks them and 'takes a toll'. So off into the sunset of reparitive family therapy goes Bishop Eddie all the while singing the collection plate blues, and lest any of his flock forget him, he has already laid out the entire homiletic for 2012. Good Oh.

The good thing about all this was the time I spent reading the exposes of the various other Eddie Longs on the Church Folk Revolution and pimppreacher websites. It was a good reminder that Catholic flocks aren't the only ones being fleeced by their shepherds. The only difference between Bishop Eddie and some of our least and dimmest is Eddie is new clerical wealth and ours are old old clerical wealth. The hope lies in the fact that some of the flock these prosperity frauds have used and abused are now beginning to organize to stop the abuse and greed--especially in the African American Church. Here's part of a flyer given out at Bishop Eddie's last hurrah and tear fest:

......Politicians and preachers have a long - too long - uninterrupted record of doing nothing to advance the welfare of the masses of the Black community. The people must now rise up to 'occupy the pulpits' the tithe money bank accounts and the portfolios of the clergy class. And use the land, real estate and financial resources of the Black Church (multiplied- billions) to assume full responsibility for the social, economic, financial and spiritual redemption of the total African American Community. Sermons and 'salvation-for-a fee have not, can not, and will not SAVE the black community....

If there is a moral to Bishop Eddie's story it lies in the fact Christians of all persuasion are beginning to understand we can't bring in the Kingdom of God on Earth by making unaccountable kings out of narcissists masquerading as God's self anointed representatives. We just make those self anointed representatives hellaciously rich at our expense.

Catholic Pride? In What Pray Tell

2011-12-02T06:46:00.000-07:00

Archbishop Dolan gives a rousing pep talk to Team Bishop, while the rest of the American Catholic world yawns.

Michael Sean Winters has finally gone where I thought he would go in his one track mindless need to believe that the Obama Whitehouse is at war with team Bishops over contraception and religious freedom. He wants us to believe our Catholic pride will kick in and we will support team Bishop. Even if, no matter what, on account of, just because we are Catholic. I don't even support the Detroit Redwings that mindlessly.
The following is an excerpt of his latest silliness. The link is at the bottom of this excerpt.

One of the more interesting developments in the debate about whether or not to expand the conscience exemptions regarding mandated insurance coverage for procedures the Catholic Church finds morally objectionable, such as contraception, sterilization and some drugs the Church considers abortifacients, is the fact that so many Catholics who do not share those moral objections are nonetheless vociferous in urging a broader exemption. Friends who denounce the bishops as naïve or willing tools of the GOP, who think that contraception is fine, or who otherwise seldom miss the opportunity to trash the hierarchy, nonetheless find themselves disturbed by the idea that the federal government would force Catholic institutions to abide by rules that conflict with the dictates of the Church. (He has way different Catholic friends than I do. Mine think the bishops are demanding the exemption to enforce the ideas in Humanae Vitae on Catholics and non Catholics alike.)

Some of this concern manifests an understandable awareness that if the government can mandate contraception today, it might mandate abortion coverage tomorrow. Many Catholics who are not morally troubled by contraception remain morally troubled by abortion. Some also perceive the essential religious liberty issues at stake. Unlike those champions of the “wall of separation” like the ACLU, who now can’t climb over that wall fast enough in order to tell Notre Dame or Catholic Charities what insurance plans they must buy, these Catholics recognize that the government should be wary of intruding into the religious sphere. (The government is not mandating that people have to use contraception. They are mandating it be available as a normal medical choice.)

But, there is a yet deeper issue, and one that I suspect has not occurred to the people at the White House advising the President. It has to do with Catholic pride. There was a time when Catholics had to build their own schools because mainstream schools like Harvard did not welcome Catholics and public schools forced Catholic students to pray with Protestant texts like the King James Bible. The vast array of Catholic social service agencies often began as a ministry to immigrant co-religionists who faced all manner of hostility and little succor from the government. To the great credit of the Church, those ministries continued even when they were no longer primarily serving Catholics.

Those institutions were built by our ancestors, who often had only their pennies to contribute. They are “ours” not only in a legal sense but in a cultural sense. And, Catholics do not take kindly to institutions their forbears built because the mainstream culture would not admit them to their institutions, now being ordered to change their ways by the same people whose forbears kept Catholics out in the first place....

At this point, Micheal Sean Winters then goes on at some length to compare his burgeoning Catholic Pride with the White Pride movement in the South in the seventies over blatant discrimination in private Christian schools. You can finish his entire article here.

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Mr Winters has certainly been beating the drum for his wishful thinking that Catholics will march in prideful lockstep against our own consciences and interests in order to support team Bishop against the anti Catholic Obama administration. MSW also seems to think Prez Obama will lose Pennsylvania if he doesn't cave into to team Bishop. This wishful thought is truly indicative of how far out of touch MSW has become. Pennsylvania Catholics have absolutely zero reason to support team Bishop given the repeated abuse Pennsylvania Catholics have taken from their own Bishops in Philadelphia and Scranton and Pittsburgh.

MSW is also attempting to confuse us poor sheople by sloppy writing. HHS is not mandating contraception. It is mandating contraception coverage because the use of birth control is an almost universal medical option amongst the US population, including the vast vast majority of Catholics. The tiny minority who do not believe in contraceptive use will be perfectly free not to use contraception--and it is a very tiny minority. Just because some of that minority happens to be male Roman Catholic Bishops does not give them the right to deny coverage to every American who happens to work for them, or in Catholic hospitals, or the students who attend Catholic colleges.

What MSW needs to do is review the theology concerning the importance of the 'reception' of a teaching. It goes back a very long way and has a whole host of theologians from the last one thousand years who have maintained that a doctrine or teaching which is not accepted-or received- by the faithful is not binding on the conscience of Catholics. It may be a teaching given by legitimate authority, promulgated by that authority, but if it is not held to be valid by the faithful, it is not a binding teaching. Humanae Vitae qualifies in spades as a teaching not accepted by the Faithful and not binding. I personally have no desire to punish the Obama White House over a teaching that Catholics have soundly rejected just because team Bishop says so. Team Bishop has been telling us not to use birth control since 1968 and the laity haven't paid much attention, so why in the world would any of us determine our vote on the basis of it?

It's all crazy.

The Hopes And Concerns Of Cardinal Burke

2011-12-01T14:50:00.001-07:00


This classic clerical ensemble is just a bit too monochromatic for my taste, and sort of queenly what with the apron and all the lace. It's hard to see the male Jesus in all this lace and finery.

CNA has an article/interview with Cardinal Burke. Hard to believe but it's been a year since he was elevated to the College of Cardinals. I edited some of it, because it's just all too much anyway.

Cardinal Burke reflects on his first year in the Sacred College
Rome, Italy, Nov 28, 2011 / 06:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, one of the Catholic Church's top U.S.-born clerics, is marking the first anniversary of his November 2010 elevation to the Sacred College of Cardinals.

"Well, it’s been a very fast-moving year," Cardinal Burke told CNA in his Roman apartment just yards from the Vatican, where he serves as head of the Church's highest court.

"But, it’s been a very good year, I'd have to say. And I’ve certainly come to understand more fully what it is to give this service to the Holy Father and hope that I am doing it better.".....

......Cardinal Burke, 63, has had a remarkable journey from America's rural Midwest—where he grew up as the youngest of six children—to his current post as Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.

"I never dreamed of it, to be honest with you," he said, reflecting on God's guidance of his path to the Vatican.

"I grew up, thanks be to God, in a very good Catholic home," he recalled. "We were small dairy farmers in Wisconsin, which was a very common situation in that part of the world. But I see how God has been at work all along, and I marvel at it."

While much has changed since those days, his life as a cardinal is "not unrelated to what my parents were trying to teach me from the time I was little."

"And, the truth of the matter is that the older I get, the more I appreciate those first lessons that were taught to me, that early formation in the faith."...(You may have gotten chronologically older, but the question is did you really get much older?).....

.....A patriot with an obvious love for the United States, the Rome-based cardinal remains invested in the struggle for his country's culture.

"It is a war," he stated, describing the battle lines between "a culture of secularization which is quite strong in our nation," and "the Christian culture which has marked the life of the United States strongly during the first 200 years of its history."

He says it is "critical at this time that Christians stand up for the natural moral law," especially in defense of life and the family.

"If Christians do not stand strong, give a strong witness and insist on what is right and good for us both as and individuals and society," he warned, "this secularization will in fact predominate and it will destroy us."

Cardinal Burke favors realism over pessimism, and believes "things are getting better" in America, particularly among the young. (This is just the most egregious of a number of wishful thinking beliefs.)

"I think that sometimes the young people understand much better the bankruptcy of a totally secularized culture because they’ve grown up with it," he observed.

Many youth "have seen their families broken" and "have been exposed to all the evils of pornography," leading them to conclude that the secularization project "is going nowhere and that it will destroy them" if left unchecked. (Maybe the Roman press hasn't covered Occupy Wall Street.)

But the cardinal also thinks persecution may be looming for the U.S. Church.

"Yes, I think we’re well on the way to it," he said, pointing to areas of social outreach - such as adoption and foster care - where the Church has had to withdraw rather than compromise its principles. (The Church Chose to give up government monies as a government contractor of these services. Nothing forced them to remove themselves totally from these areas of social outreach. Apparently they would rather spend their own money lobbying than for taking care of children.)

This trend could reach a point where the Church, "even by announcing her own teaching," is accused of "engaging in illegal activity, for instance, in its teaching on human sexuality."

Asked if he could envision U.S. Catholics ever being arrested for preaching their faith, he replied: "I can see it happening, yes.".... (This is not realism. This is teen age paranoia.)

........Above all, the cardinal hopes for a "new evangelization" of the United States - starting with faithful families, strong religious education, and reverent liturgical worship.

The family, he noted, is where a child "first learns the truths of the faith, first prayers, first practices his or her life in Christ." But the Mass itself is the "source of our solid teaching, of our solid witness," and also "the most beautiful and fullest expression we give to that teaching."

Cardinal Burke is also responsible for overseeing the Church's liturgy as a member of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship.

He is grateful to Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI for giving the Church "a font of solid direction" regarding worship, based on the Second Vatican Council's vision of a "God-centered liturgy and not a man-centered liturgy." (Priest centered liturgy is what he means.)

That intention was not always realized, he said, since the council's call for liturgical reform coincided with a "cultural revolution."

Many congregations lost their "fundamental sense that the liturgy is Jesus Christ himself acting, God himself acting in our midst to sanctify us." )

Cardinal Burke said greater access to the traditional Latin Mass, now know as the "extraordinary form" of the Roman rite, has helped correct the problem.

"The celebration of the Mass in the extraordinary form is now less and less contested," he noted, "and people are seeing the great beauty of the rite as it was celebrated practically since the time if Pope Gregory the Great" in the sixth century. (Try since Trent and limit your observations strictly to the Roman Church. The TLM was never a big deal for most laity. It was the theology of the TLM that was the big deal and now we've had that jammed down our throats in English--well, sort of English.)

Many Catholics now see that the Church's "ordinary form" of Mass, celebrated in modern languages, "could be enriched by elements of that long tradition."

In time, Cardinal Burke expects the Western Church's ancient and modern forms of Mass to be combined in one normative rite, a move he suggests the Pope also favors.

"It seems to me that is what he has in mind is that this mutual enrichment would seem to naturally produce a new form of the Roman rite – the 'reform of the reform,' if we may – all of which I would welcome and look forward to its advent." (If this is part and parcel of the New Evangelization, or the direction the new translation is to take the Church, it's another attack on collegiality and transparency. Of course losing those two notions is also part of the "reform of the reform."

Cardinal Burke's main role, however, is to uphold the Church's legal system. He describes canon law as "the fundamental discipline which makes possible our life in the Church," since it is "not a society of angels" but a communion of men and women who require norms for living.

He acknowledges that canon law fell out of fashion beginning in the late 1960s, during a period where many Catholics bristled at the notion of such rules.

"The whole euphoria that set in within society – and in the Church itself – was that this was the age of freedom, the age of love, and so, in those years nobody talked anymore about ‘sin,’ this was considered to be negative talk." (And you were in high school and all this sexual talk scared you and you have never gotten past this. Wonder why that is?)

But since "human nature didn’t actually change," the "lack of attention to discipline and to law" produced a great deal of "bad fruit."
One consequence, the cardinal believes, was the mishandling of clerical abuse accusations.

"Absolutely, there’s no question in my mind about that," said Cardinal Burke. He pointed out that both the 1917 and 1983 canon law codes put "a discipline in place" to confront an "evil" the Church had faced before.

"All of that was in place," he reflected, "but, first of all, it wasn’t known in the sense that people were not studying the law, were not paying attention to it, and so, if it wasn’t known or studied then it wasn’t being applied."(Nice try Cardinal, but you conveniently left out that Canon Law required Pontifical Secrecy. The problem stemmed precisely from the fact that Canon Law was applied.)

Historically, he believes, it was an "unfortunate coincidence" that a cultural upheaval accompanied Blessed Pope John XXIII’s call for a reform of canon law.

"This added to the notion that we didn’t really have a law anymore – then the attitude developed that we don’t need it."

Bl. John Paul II resolved the situation after his election in 1978, implementing a new code of law by 1983. Cardinal Burke remains "deeply grateful" for the late Pope's action.

Since he is a cardinal, he could someday cast his vote for a future Pope. But could divine providence ever call the son of a Midwestern farming family to the papacy himself?

"Oh, I don’t believe so," Cardinal Burke laughed.

"I hope that the present Holy Father lives a long time. He’s a tremendous gift to the Church and that’s my great prayer – that the Lord gives him many more years."

*******************************************

I almost feel sad for Cardinal Burke. It's actually easier for me to identify with him than it is his counter parts Cardinal George in Chicago or Cardinal Pell in the land of OZ. George and Pell comes across as narcissistic opportunists, Burke comes across as a man who lost himself between God and gonads in his teen age years. This isn't to say Burke can't wreak a pot of full of damage by meddling in American politics from Rome. I left out the part in this article where he attacks Kathleen Sebelius as part of his 'our Church is under attack' delusion; or that he isn't capable of leading and not just abetting the attack on Vatican II theology. Maybe it 's just that I personally can't take this man very seriously.

I swear that every time I see a photo of Burke I flash on a little boy pretending to say Mass. Back in the fifties when all us Catholics went to parochial school we all play acted priests or nuns-- some of us both priests and nuns. They were our everyday authority figures so that should come as no surprise. Most of us moved on beyond all that and it wasn't because of the cultural revolution of the sixties. It was just because we grew up. I swear for some reason Burke got stuck back there in the fifties and can't find his way out. The truth is he has no incentive to find his way out, because he's done well for himself through that part of the Church stuck in the fifties. And especially well since Benedict has been running the Church, which has really been the last twenty five years or so.

There's just over twenty years difference in age between Burke and Benedict. Burke could have been one of those rebellious students that drove Benedict out of Tubingen, but he's the exact opposite of those students. This makes Burke utterly reliable and that quality far surpasses any other quality Burke might lack. In Benedict's Church there is no one better than Burke for the responsibility of running the Church's legal structure. Unfortunately like many teenagers, Burke is far better at seeing what is wrong with others, than he is in seeing what's wrong with himself. Oh, but then that also describes a signature trait of a narcissist. I guess that explains all the gold in the above picture.

The Best Priestly Review Of The New Translation

2011-11-29T13:04:00.000-07:00

All the regalia a Cardinal is entitled to wear. No question the new translation works well with all this.

I was made aware of this review from Bill Lyndsy's blog Bilrimage. There are times humor, even somewhat off the wall humor, makes the point better than even 80 word sentences with multitudes of commas, and four semi colons, plus full colons, no sentence breaks, and of course, no paragraphs. The review was posted as a comment to this dotcommonweal article.

Fr Euruproktos Epiphanes 11/28/2011 - 9:52 pm
I don’t care what any of you people think, I simply love, love, love the new translation! I feel so important, saying all those big words, while all you little ontological wormies crouch on your knees adoring me! Yes, as a matter of a fact, Jesus was consubanshle with the Father and I’m consubanshle with Jesus, and it’s about time you people started treating me that way. This mass is a wonderful tool for catechizing you on the doctrine of my holy priesthood.
And I love, love, love, love how we finally wrote all those dirty, stinky, female people out of the script. (As if any priest would ever bother coming down from Heaven for the sake of their salvation!) What liturgy could be more like the Beatific Vision than just wonderful, precious me and my fabulous, divine brethren all alone with half-naked Jesus up on the cross? (I am so ready to boot those revolting little altar-females out of my sanctuary, which I plan to do as soon as I’ve bought myself a golden chaliss with lots of elegant little swirly-curlies engraved on it, just like Pope Benny has. And there won’t be any laypeople putting their mouths on my precious chaliss, you can bet on that, nor any disgusting old tuna holding it down there at the foot of the altar for people to drink from.)
Oh, how beautifully I prayed the new mass, very slowly and importantly with plenty of intonation, just like Maria Callas singing “Pace, mio Dio”, and how elegantly I waved my sacred, venerable hands around all the while, just like Gandalf at the bridge in Moria! And I sounded so marvelously imposing and poetic, just like a Harry Potter book. Who cares what all those funny words mean anyway? I can’t understand one word of that Shakespeare stuff, but I go anyway because I simply adore the costumes and swordplay. Nobody comes to mass to hear some ridiculous Word, (duh!), they come to see me in my glamorous costumes. I just hope my butt didn’t look fat as I precessed up to the altar in my new cappa magna.
Next on the agenda: I do think the non-ordained should kneel throughout the mass. Like who do you all think you are, standing in my holy presence? Did you not hear the part about how consubanshle I am with God? I have already written to Princess Georgie, who says the Queen agrees completely and will put a motu out as soon as possible, but it seems poor old Queenie spends most of the time in the Holy Shitter these days, trying to motu his proprio old bowels.

Censoring The Internet Is Coming Up For A Congressional Vote

2011-11-29T11:37:00.001-07:00

This is just me engaging in a public service announcement. I just received the following email from moveon.org and thought I'd pass it on. The Big Brother wants to censor the Internet. How shocking, but I imagine it's tough to get all that Double Speak through if you can't shut up all the big and little bloggers who just don't buy the Double Speak. I can just imagine the USCCB going after all us little fish who use the term Catholic in our blog sites and who don't happen to buy their double speak either.

Dear MoveOn member,

As soon as this week, Congress will start debating whether to give the government the power to turn off parts of the Internet. If that sounds like a terrible recipe for abuse of power, that's because it is.

If enacted, a new law would make it so a simple allegation of copyright infringement—with no review process—could lead to the shutdown of sites from YouTube to Wikipedia to MoveOn.org.¹ Any website, foreign or U.S.-based, could be wiped out on suspicion and made unavailable to everyone in the world.

For example, if you (or Justin Bieber) wanted to post a video to YouTube of yourself singing a Beatles song, a record company could force the Department of Justice to shut down YouTube. Really.²

But as you may have guessed, Congress didn't come up with this tragically terrible idea on their own. Lobbyists representing Comcast, Pfizer, record and movie companies, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce³ have been pushing Democrats and Republicans to pass bills to allow this new kind of Internet censorship. And they're close to getting their way.

But a small number of Democrats are standing strong and saying "No" to these powerful special interest groups. They need our help.

Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon is one of our champions. He has promised to start a historic filibuster of the Internet Censorship Act where he'll read the names of every person that signs a petition against Internet censorship.⁴ It's the perfect opportunity for 5 million Internet-connected progressives to visibly add their voice to a Senate debate. The more of us that sign, the stronger this effort to block this terrible law will be.

Click here to add your name and say NO to Internet Censorship.

We know that the Internet's openness, freedom, and lack of censorship are what make it a bastion of infinite possibility, continued innovation, and job creation. Innovative companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Mozilla, and Yahoo have spoken out against this law, saying:

We should not jeopardize a foundational structure that has worked for content owners and Internet companies alike and provides certainty to innovators with new ideas for how people create, find, discuss, and share information lawfully online.⁵

Internet venture capitalists say that the legislation is "ripe for abuse,"⁶ and leading law professors reject it because it will "allow the government to block Internet access to websites."⁷

We condemn censorship overseas when it happens in China or Iran. But today, we need to stand up for freedom of speech on the Internet here at home.

Some Synchronicity

2011-11-25T19:57:00.000-07:00

One of the ways I can generally tell if the 'spirit is moving' or to put it in a more secular language, if a new consensus understanding is developing, is through synchronicity. Synchronicity is defined as the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection. The following article by Australian Catholic Priest Peter Kennedy was posted on the website for St Mary's in Exile in Brisbane. Followers of this blog may remember St Mary's in Exile as the Australian parish that was told to shape up or ship out, and decided to ship out. Kennedy's post went up the same day I wrote this:

"Catholicism is dieing as an influence for change because our leadership is in its heart, terrified of change. This is especially true if that change threatens their position in the Church. Better for them that those of us that have real problems with their fear and utter lack of integrity leave the fold. It's about as forceful a way as possible to tell us all that their Church is not about us. It's about them.

Peter Kennedy is saying the same thing, only slightly differently and comes to the same conclusion. Catholicism can not be a positive influence in today's culture operating the way it does.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH A POWER FOR GOOD IN THE WORLD?”

Melbourne Town Hall - November 15, 2011

In 2009 the ABC Australian Story produced a feature film entitled “Holier Than Thou” which documented our forced removal from St Mary’s Church in South Brisbane into Exile.

At the end of the filming of our story at Natural Bridge in Qld I went down with the production team for a coffee at the roadside café on the road between Nerang in Qld and Murwillumbah in NSW. As we sat down on the veranda a classic Aussie bloke dressed in stubbies and thongs shot a glance in my direction and pointed me out to his wife. Shortly after they got up to leave and he put his hands on his hips, looked down to me and said “Stick it up ‘em mate”. A little surprised, I half stood up and said “what’s your name mate” and he said “it doesn’t matter what my name is mate, just stick it up ‘em”.

Only later did I realise how pivotal that encounter was for me – a light bulb moment, a road to Damascus moment, except it was on the road to Murwillumbah.

The insight that arose was that the ordinary man and woman, the bulk of the church’s membership, the battlers, the mums and dads, who built the churches, hospitals, schools - who were loyal all their lives to the church to its bishops, priests religions and its rules and regulations, its doctrines and its dogmas - frankly - had had enough - they were voiceless in a church ruled by an elite, clerical caste who demanded and expected that the “laity” that derogative term, should just pray, pay and obey. They have had it up to here and they’ve left in their hundreds of thousands, never to come back -“stick it up ‘em mate”!

My argument is simple: – that the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church that arrogantly refuses to allow its membership, its most loyal supporters, a voice in its governance cannot be a force for good in today’s world where increasingly democracy and human rights is the primal cry of people who know the pain and suffering and disempowerment of dictatorships – especially women.

The Roman Catholic Church is such a totalitarian regime e.g. to become a bishop, male of course, a priest has to promise obedience of mind and will, to one man the bishop of Rome, the Pope, in whom all authority resides.

To argue that Jesus established the church in this way and that the church cannot be more democratic, involving the people in its governance, is based on a fiction, a lie – known as apostolic succession,
Stay with me… the bishops claim to be the successors of the twelve apostles with the bishop of Rome claiming to be the successor of the apostle Peter, who was no.1 in Team Jesus. They argue they have that same authority to rule over the church today. Please note it is an authority of power – it ought to be an authority of love.

The Pope as No.1, claims to be – wait for it – the Vicar of Christ- well, I don’t know about you, but from my reading of the gospels I think Jesus would be far more at home with the Vicar of Dibley!

The facts are very different. In the first 3 centuries of Christianity in the various communities of faith that dotted the Mediterranean there was no one form of liturgy, no one form of governance, no one theology. Instead you had communities of equals where both women and men exercised the various gifts given to them by the Spirit. e.g. The gift of leadership, the gift of healing, the gift of prophecy, the gift of preaching etc. (Those very same gifts that have been virtually lost to the Church and synchronistically with the rise of the Constinian Church.)
In the 4^th Century of the C..E the Pagan Emperor Constantine used the fledging literalist community in Rome to unify his empire. In order to bolster their claims to authority, the church leaders invented the fiction of Apostolic Succession which is still the basis of governance in the Roman Catholic Church today.

As Harvey Cox, Emeritus Professor at Harvard writes in his book “The Future of Faith” – “as the empire became notionally Christian, the church that had been from its beginning fiercely anti – imperial became its fawning imitators blurring the essence of Christianity almost beyond recognition. (And muting it's pure essense and true power, which is in love, not dominance.)

The paradox is that when the Roman Empire collapsed, up bobbed a pseudo-religious empire – the Roman Catholic Church. As the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the 17^th Century wrote – “the Church, the papacy became nothing other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting on the grave thereof.
Let me now speak from my own experience and that of our community, now in exile in our struggle with such absolute, ruthless and callous authority.

On that fateful day when I saw the Archbishop in 2008 as I was leaving his office, I turned towards him and with some compassion said “You know John, you are going to cop a fair bit of flak from our community”.
He paused and said “This is the Roman Catholic Church. You put me in a corner and I’ll come out fighting”.
People began writing to him respectfully and as intelligent people of faith. He wrote to me saying “if you think that what they’re saying is going to change my mind, let me tell you, it will do the very opposite.” He added “I obey the Pope, you should obey me, and they should obey you”

I tell you this – not to denigrate the Archbishop but to indicate to you the mindset of total obedience of the bishops of the church to absolute Roman Papal authority.

Such an undemocratic church cannot be a force for good in today’s world. Until the Church falls unto the hands of the people it cannot be a significant player in today’s world – a world that demands and expects that the voice of the people be heard.

Peter Kennedy

When Fear Rules Integrity Dies A Painful Death

2011-11-23T10:20:00.001-07:00

The following excerpt is from Richard McClory's latest post at NCR. It deals with the issue of personal integrity in relationship to the current environment of institutional Catholicism. I've written about this integrity issue more than once in the history of this blog, and I also believe very strongly it can never be stressed enough.
I've omitted the middle of the article where Richard goes into some of the statistics from the latest survey of Catholics which points to the integrity issue as the impetus for Catholics leaving the fold.

The high cost of lost integrity

Richard McClory - National Catholic Reporter - 11/22/2011
In commenting on my article concerning the nonreception of church teaching ("When is dissent not just dissent?" Nov. 17), Jim McCrea made some valid points well worth considering: "How many of us know priests and lay people, active in parishes and dioceses, who compromise their core beliefs so as to carry on the good work they are doing within church structures? Whether the issue is Eucharistic inclusivity, option for the poor, a thinking laity, married clergy, women's ordination, homosexuality, contraception, our Church fosters a culture of keeping quiet so as to keep going. Sometimes the pressure from above is overt, but we are all subject to that subtlest form of institutional intimidation which everyone registers without it having to be articulated. (Jim McCrea is a frequent commenter at Bilgrimage and a long time member of this blog community. His insight is usually right on target.)

"We watch the few who persist in standing against it being marginalized or pushed out altogether; their whole lives can be taken apart. Many, both young and lifelong churchgoers, can no longer accept it and are walking away. Meanwhile those who slip into capitulating to it progressively deform their spiritual integrity.
"Of course, the Protestant tradition and secular society have long picked up the tenor of hypocrisy about Catholicism. After Vatican II, though, many of us felt we were on the way to being freed from it. But the volume now seems to be ratcheting up again. How can we commit to the Church we love without dancing to this particular tune?" (This institutional capitulation deforms spiritual integrity because first and foremost it feeds personal fear.)

I believe a great number of priests and other church employees share Jim's discomfort in this atmosphere of 21st century Catholicism. It is not a healthy environment conducive to robust, confident breathing. In order to do their service to the church, they must hold their tongue on a variety of matters they consider important for the future of the church. And when asked what they think in public, they dissemble or just lie. If it's not hypocrisy, it is, as Jim states, a diminishment of their integrity so vital to authentic ministry......

......I may be wrong but I submit a direct link exists between these survey findings showing the withdrawal of trust people place in church leadership and the inability of church leaders to be open, candid and transparent about their convictions. You may include here a great number of priests, religion teachers, laity working in Catholic hospitals, universities and other institutions, pastors, chancery officials and those bishops who understand what's going on. They remain outwardly discrete and noncommittal lest honest candor cost them their jobs. And everyone sees through this thin disguise. The result is often not sympathy for their plight but sad disillusionment among many Catholics and angry cynicism among others.

********************************************

Fear rules in Catholicism. It has for eons. It's grip has gotten much tighter in the last twenty five years. The more our hierarchy attempts to rule through fear, the tighter it makes this grip, the more integrity is loses, and the fewer the people who stay. It's a very straight line relationship. Beyond all that is this other simple fact: The more fear rules, the less Jesus does. Whether it's an institution or person, once integrity is lost, so is the the spiritual life.

We no longer talk in Catholicism about an inclusive Jesus. We talk instead about excluding 'others'. We no longer talk about the life giving attributes of living The Way. We talk on endlessly about the 'culture of death', as if the Church itself isn't part and parcel of that culture of death, as if it has no responsibility, as if it is somehow above it all. That our leadership can act this way in the face of so much truth which says exactly the opposite, the less credibility they have, and the more the spiritual life of the Church dies.

Catholicism is dieing as an influence for change because our leadership is in its heart, terrified of change. This is especially true if that change threatens their position in the Church. Better for them that those of us that have real problems with their fear and utter lack of integrity leave the fold. It's about as forceful a way as possible to tell us all that their Church is not about us. It's about them. If that's the case, then it's hopeless to look to Catholicism to be a major player in ushering in the Kingdom. The Kingdom is all about flipping the status quo. It's all about living without fear. It's about love and compassion which are incompatible with fear and lack of integrity.

It's not suprising to me that our youth are seeking spirituality and not religion. Religion is proving to be a dry source of genuine spirituality. It can be no other way as long as fear rules and integrity takes a back seat to coerced obedience in our major religions. This doesn't mean I think Catholicism as a spiritual force has reached it's nadir. It does mean we need to teach Catholicism as the powerful spiritual and life changing reality Jesus intended, and not a set of religious dogma. That teaching will not come from very many of our current leaders because on that path there is real personal challenge and very little guaranteed security. Jesus warned us all about those facts.

He also showed us something else. He showed us in His passion and death that it was pointless to rely on most male leadership to witness to the Truth. The Apostles ran. They denied. They hid. They fell asleep at the switch. They missed the Resurrection. They demonstrated no integrity. It was one man, John, and the women disciples who witnessed everything, walked the total path with Him, who maintained their integrity and witnessed the Resurrection. As it was then, so it is now. God willing it won't be this way in the future.