Enlightened Catholicism

Priests For Life On Life Support And Updates On Other Rock Star Priests

2012-02-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

This is not Fr Pavone. It's Tim Tebow the Evangelical superstar pro lifer. He's much better looking than the Catholic versions.......And it is my blog.

Tom Gallagher has just posted an update on Priest's For Life, which is in serious financial straights. It's really amazing how these organizations started by priests with more than a touch of narcissism, in this case Fr Frank Pavone, wind up in a pile of ashes. Maciel's Legion of Christ is still trying to resurrect some five years after it went down in flames, and it has Vatican support. Their latest crisis is the whole sale resignation of the leadership of it's women's branch, Regnum Christi. The problem with cults of personality is they tend to disintegrate once the personality has self destructed. Like founder, like organization. Here's part of the NCR article:

Priests for Life in $608,000 debt, faces financial peril

by Tom Gallagher - NCR - Feb. 21, 2012
In another urgent fundraising letter dated February 2012, Priests for Life is seeking $608,000 "in the next two weeks in to pay bills that are now over 90 days old."

Fr. Frank Pavone, the embattled national director of Priests for Life, states that the "financial problem we're facing is the combination of two things, really; neither of which we had any control over."

In this missive, Pavone drops from his letterhead the role of national director of the Gospel of Life Ministries.
The two outside factors that have put Priests for Life in this critical situation are the economy and donors reneging on paying their pledges, he writes.

As for the economy, Pavone plays dithering economist and says the economy has been "in a rut for three years now. And I have no idea when it's going to get back on track. But the continued high unemployment and low consumer confidence is wreaking havoc with families ... including our Priest for Life family. A fairly large percentage of your fellow Priests for Life supporters have been forced to cut back on their gifts to us for the simple reason that they are having a tough time making ends meet in their own families."

By the end of 2011, more than $600,000 in promised gifts never arrived.

Ironically, Pavone claims he was actually acting "prudently" in spending more than $600,000 on the basis of prior donations materializing at the end of the year. "Instead our bills kept mounting and mounting."

In a surprise move, Priests for Life "even trimmed our staff a bit and cut back on several projects and mission trips." No details were provided. In prior fundraising letters, Pavone wrote with bravado that he was not going to make any cuts in staff or the budget, as everything was full-steam-ahead.

Now Priests for Life print vendors are no longer doing business with the organization because of non-payment of past invoices.

Not surprisingly, Pavone never accepts some or all of the responsibility for the desperate situation in which Priests for Life finds itself. Pavone never suggests that his dysfunctional behavior and relationship with his own bishop, Patrick Zurek of the Amarillo, Texas, diocese, in which Pavone is seeking an intervention by the Vatican, might be to blame for scaring off donors. (Of course not, it's much easier to blame President Obama and the reneging laity for everything going south.)

In Pavone's world, the blame is always placed on someone else. Of course, Pavone rolls out the devil as the cause for Priests for Life's financial problems. (Ohh, I almost forgot. Pavone also claims to be an exorcist.)

Zurek seems prescient when he voiced deep concerns about Pavone's management and governance of Priests for Life many months ago.......

Tom Gallagher then goes on to outline how Priest's For Life could be saved by the USCCB and the Kof C. He never addresses whether there is actually a need for Priest's For Life. He finishes with his thoughts on what to do with Fr. Pavone.

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What to do with Pavone?
It's hard to imagine that Pavone will receive from the Vatican a "get out of jail" card that would allow him to be largely free from the Amarillo diocese and Zurek. As part of the reorganization outlined above, Pavone could become "national director emeritus" and be allowed to offer speeches around the country, but have nothing to do with the governance or management of Priests for Life, and he would be based in the Amarillo diocese responsible to the bishop. Pavone could be allowed to continue his TV appearances with EWTN. In this way, Pavone can still have a coveted microphone in his hands, but not the checkbook and control.

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The problem I have with Gallagher's solution is I seriously doubt Bishop Zurek wants Fr Pavone to have any more access to anymore microphones, and certainly not those of EWTN. I think the whole idea was to get Pavone out of the spotlight, off the speaking circuit, and away from EWTN. In the meantime Pavone is reduced to writing pathetically pleading letters to his various mailing lists for more donations. Such is the life of a fallen prolife superstar priest.

Bishop Zurick might have had that other EWTN exorcist priest who crashed and burned, Fr Thomas Euteneuer, on his mind. Which led me to wonder what had happened to these guys who made such news last year and when their egos were exposed as having surpassed their missions. Fr Thomas Euteneuer has really gone underground as nothing has been heard from him for over a year. You may remember Euteneuer as the priest who headed Human Life International, also became an exorcist and was called back to his home diocese under allegations of sexual misconduct within his exorcism ministry. I used to occasionally check out Euteneuer because of his affiliation with some serious right wing institutions. Way back in 2008 he was describing a very specific agenda to go after Planned Parenthood and also spreading the word about forms of birth control as abortifacients. I am hardly shocked that those PP attacks manifested in this election year, and all that misinformation about birth control is suddenly in our faces. I still don't think we know half of what we need to know about Fr Thomas Euteneuer and his various agendas. We probably never will.

Also going totally silent, is Fr John Corapi. He took down his Black Sheepdog website sometime in the fall and closed his Facebook page. No one seems to have any idea what's up with that, but it may be innocent. He's certainly got enough money to retire and write his memoirs. Or it maybe that Corapi is off to invent another persona. In any event, it appears no one will be hearing Corapi's baritone voice on EWTN, read his right wing propaganda on his website, or have to deal with his political candidacy--but one can still buy his multitude of CD's, just not any new ones.

I suspect Priests For Life will be taken over by the USCCB and saved by KofC money. I also suspect we will not hear anything more from Fr Frank Pavone for quite some time. After all Vatican wheels can turn exceedingly slow when it's convenient. I do wonder though, whether the fall of three pro life superstar priests in the same year is just a coincidence. It could also be the USCCB did not need the competition for attention given what they've unleashed on the American public.

Republicans, Bishops, And The Assault On Women

2012-02-20T11:04:00.003-07:00

This is what the Commonwealth of Virginia would mandate for every woman who seeks an abortion--no matter when she seeks such treatment or for what reasons.

On my days off I catch up on a lot of reading. This morning I came across comments to articles that my mind linked together. The comments followed articles on the USCCB religious freedom crusade and for me took this crusade to a deeper level. The first comment follows this article at Religion dispatches. The article by Sarah Posner, looks at Republican Representative Issa's stacked deck of a congressional hearing on the HHS insurance mandate. The committee testimony and participants were virtually all male and one and all against covering birth control. Here's the comment from 'wanda':

I left the religious right and the GOP in 1976 because I heard their messages loud and clear! Those messages are: Helping people is hurting them. Hurting people is helping them. Women are baby killers. I've been amazed that middle class Americans haven't listened until now. The GOP hates women with a passion and women who vote for them or legislate for them must be out of their minds.

Keep the bold sentences in mind when reading the next two comments from this NCR article on Cardinal Dolan's response to President Obama's insurance compromise. The article was written by Francis Rocca of Catholic News Services. It generated a great deal of good comment, but these two were two of the best:

Submitted by Kathy Sine (not verified) on Feb. 15, 2012

The state of Virginia has taken the issue even further with the passage of their
Personhood bill. A woman who is getting an abortion for whatever reason must now submit to an vaginal ultra-sound, which is an intrusion by the state into her body. By law the Doctor has to order this procedure and she must follow the law. This is to be signed into the law by Virginia's governor, who by the way has made no bones about being available as a VP candidate for the Republican nominee. Who are these people and what is going on? Talk about big government by the party that claims they are the party of small government. How in the world did we end up with this issue front and center when having a job and feeding their families is the concern of most people. Why this attack on women's health? Humanae Vitae allows artificial birth control for medical reasons.

It's called 'object rape' —

Submitted by AileenUSA (not verified) on Feb. 15, 2012.

It's called 'object rape' — sexually penetrating a woman against her will with a foreign object — ostensibly to "educate" her. It's actually an attempt to intimidate, humiliate and punish her for seeking an abortion. It's no different than the mindset of a common street rapist toward women.

In addition, there is no exception in this object rape law for women or girls who are already victims of rape, incest, (not even for a female internally injured from the violence of rape whom they will happily violate again) or for a woman or young girl who is seeking to terminate a pregnancy that is literally killing her. Imagine a woman or young girl who has endured a law enforcement rape kit collection, then having to be violated a second time with a foreign object before she can be given pills to prevent a possible pregnancy resulting from that rape. That is now Virginia law which the uber-Catholic governor is eager to sign.
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But the culture warriors believe that the end justifies the means in their unholy war — the worshipful "sacrifice" of denigrating and traumatizing the already born with state mandated rape is the end result of single-issue embryo-fetal idolatry. This is the culture warriors' supposed "right to freedom of religion".

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Aileen is one of my all time favorites at NCR and this might be the hardest hitting comment I've ever read from her. However, the subject she's discussing, Virginia's Personhood bill, deserves this kind of hard hitting commentary. And additionally it perfectly illustrates Wanda's point about our current Republican party. Their core platform does seem to have three foundational beams:

Helping people is hurting them. Hurting people is helping them. Women are baby killers.

I would hope that US citizens see through the verbiage and get to the heart of the matter. The culture wars are about returning to the days where a woman's contribution to the economy was the production of workers. This message can be found all over the Catholic world, from Gotti Tedeschi's (Director of the Vatican Bank) stupid rant about the European need to out birth the Islamic world, to the bishops in the Philippines threatening to excommunicate legislators who vote for the reproductive rights bill, to the USCCB insistence on marriage as only between a man and a woman, at heart of all of this is an atavistic need to get European and Anglo Catholics to have more babies. The only way that happens is to make sure women have no choice about it.

The world doesn't need more babies. The world needs more adults willing to find long term solutions for the babies the world already has. Those solutions are not coming from our bishops or the Republican party--and having written that, I will also admit I have no real faith those solutions will come from another Obama administration. My only hope is that with a second term and no possibility for a third term, President Obama will start acting like the man who promised us the hope for the entire world, but so far has delivered a couple of city blocks.

Pope Tells Cardinals To Forget The Power And Glory: I Burst Into Laughter

2012-02-19T10:26:00.000-07:00

Timothy Dolan gets ready to be installed in yet another level of power and glory.

John Allen posted about the homily Benedict XVI gave to his 22 new Cardinals. Seriously, I burst out laughing. Read the following and laugh---or weep.

Pope to new cardinals: ‘Forget power and glory’

John Allen - National Catholic Reporter - 2/18/2012
Pope Benedict XVI legendarily thinks in centuries, so it’s almost always a category mistake to read his public oratory as a commentary on current events. Yet it was hard to listen to him this morning without at least flashing on the recent Vatican leaks scandal, which has created widespread impressions of power struggles and senior churchmen stabbing one another in the back.

In comments today to 22 new cardinals taking part in Benedict’s fourth consistory, with most of the Vatican’s senior leadership looking on, the pope issued a strong plea for a spirit of service.

“Serving God and others, self-giving: this is the logic which authentic faith imparts and develops in our daily lives,” the pope said, “and which is not the type of power and glory which belongs to this world.”
Benedict noted that from the very beginning, not everyone in leadership positions among Christ’s followers has been up to that challenge. (And that holds even more true today.)

Reflecting on the New Testament story of James and John, two disciples who requested positions of honor when Christ returns, Benedict said “it is not easy to enter into the logic of the Gospel and to let go of power and glory.” (Allen then ends his article with more babble about Timmy Dolan being the first amongst his equals.)

The pope quoted two fathers of the church along the same lines.
“Saint John Chrysostom affirms that all of the apostles were imperfect, whether it was the two who wished to lift themselves above the other ten, or whether it was the ten who were jealous of them,” the pope said.
He then quoted St. Cyril of Alexandria: “The disciples had fallen into human weakness and were discussing among themselves which one would be the leader and superior to the others… This happened and is recounted for our advantage… What happened to the holy Apostles can be understood by us as an incentive to humility.” (Perhaps the reality is they were all jealous of Mary Magdalene.)

Benedict said the temptation to pursue self-interest and power is eternal.
“Dominion and service, egoism and altruism, possession and gift, self-interest and gratuitousness: these profoundly contrasting approaches confront each other in every age and place,” he said.
The Biblical reminders, the pope said, “represent an invitation and a reminder, a commission and an encouragement especially for you, dear and venerable brothers who are about to be enrolled in the College of Cardinals.”

Benedict created 22 new cardinals this morning, including Timothy Dolan and Edwin O’Brien of the United States. This afternoon, the new cardinals will hold receptions in various rooms of the Apostolic Palace, one of the few times it's open to the general public, and the Paul VI audience hall...... (Like there's no power and glory on display with these little shindigs.)

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John Allen is probably right, and this homily from Benedict is gentle Vatican code for "stop the back stabbing and jockeying for position because I'm not dead yet and you all are becoming an embarrassment." Cardinal Timmy Dolan is lucky then, that he has John Allen to pimp for him because then John Allen becomes the embarrassment.

Anyway, it's not quite so funny if Benedict didn't really intend to call his princes to some sort of real understanding of the relationship a Christian person is to have with wealth, power, and glory. If Benedict's real message was all about how to proceed with more decorum in Vatican politics then I guess it's not surprising that these new Cardinals could go from this homily right to the Apostolic palace for caviar and fine wine.

I'm getting the distinct message that Jesus's teachings weren't for the likes of Cardinal princes, Jesus's teachings were for the 'little people'. The lives of Cardinal princes are just way too complicated for the simple teachings Jesus taught his followers. The Cardinal princes get installed to tell the little people how to live Jesus' simple teachings, not to actually live those teachings. Those notions of humility, poverty, last shall be first, all are created equal, no slave or master, are for the simple people to give them some hope in their simple lives. In the meantime, Cardinal princes are the first of the Catholic clergy, they live like it, they don't believe for one minute in the equality of the laity, and there for simple American Catholics can look forward to more of Timothy Dolan's leadership in the USCCB's faux religious freedom crusade. After all Cardinal Princes need to do something to bolster their personal delusions about their own Christ like lives and cement their place idn Rome.

About Visions That Might Be Related To Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

This is a story of when I began to learn this truth--graphically.

There is a comment at the very end of the comments to an article John Allen wrote on the recently concluded Sexual Abuse Conference at the Gregorian in Rome that triggered this post. John's article concentrated on the estimated financial and personal cost of the crisis in the US. There are some interesting comments from some people with a particular ax to grind, but readers can read those for themselves. I'm interested in commenting on this one comment, because well, just because"

"It is interesting how many comments and stories that surround this scandal never seem to address the real problem: the spiritual battle between God and His enemy (or have we forgotten who that is).

As believers, I believe we continue to fail to comprehend that as we have weakened the liturgy so have we weakened our spiritual armor. As we have weakened our belief in the assistance of Heaven, from the Virgin's protection to Angelic intercession, we have allowed the other side to have a field day with us. How often we hear that no one wants to believe in the prophecy given to Leo XIII, or those to St. Faustina as Jesus says to her:

‘I will allow convents and churches to be destroyed.’

St. Faustina answered, ‘Jesus, but there are so many souls praising You in convents.’
The Lord answered, ‘That praise wounds My Heart, because love has been banished from convents. Souls without love and without devotion, souls full of egoism and self-love, souls full of pride and arrogance, souls full of deceit and hypocrisy, lukewarm souls who have just enough warmth to keep them alive: My Heart cannot bear this!

‘All the graces that I pour out upon them flow off them as off the face of a rock. I cannot stand them, because they are neither good or bad. I called convents into being to sanctify the world through them. It is from them that a powerful flame of love and sacrifice should burst forth.

‘And if they do not repent and become enkindled by their first love, I will deliver them over to the fate of this world … .'

Until our bishops and priests and nuns and laity get this, we will not win this battle.
For the Lord has delivered them for their lukewarmness to the "fate of this world." Only He can bring them back, not more rules and regulations or psychiatric nonsense nor money nor endless statistics.

It is almost Lent. The Novena to the Holy Face of Jesus began Sunday. What will we do? What will we sacrifice to Him for Him to act to end this crime and scandal?

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Since I am taking a real risk I will be accused of engaging in 'psychiatric nonsense' I have some thoughts about Sr. Faustina's alleged interaction with Jesus. First off, I can't help but notice the voice of Jesus sounds suspiciously like he is espousing Faustina's opinion of her own experience and judgments relative to her own spiritual efforts and those of her fellow nuns. I would call this a self fulfilling visionary state. How wonderful for Faustina that Jesus sees things just as she does, and if you read her diary to any length at all, Jesus is always on the same thought track as Sr Faustina. I have not been so lucky or so connected to the Jesus wave length.

My first real encounter with other 'non organic sentient beings' was entirely different. It happened when I was a senior in high school. Our sociology class was on a three day field trip. The first night we spent touring the college I eventually attended. I had applied for admission to this school but had heard nothing from them and so was not expecting what happened. The Admissions Department arranged a little ceremony at which I was singled out and given a full ride scholarship. My head barely got in the bus the next morning as we left for the first real stop on our trip. This was at the State School For The Mentally Retarded. Back in the day things were not so PC as they are now.

This was also in the days before the warehouse style institutions were emptied. There were 1200+ inmates housed here. I use the term inmates because that's what they were. None of us were remotely prepared for what we saw. There were concrete rooms with no furniture that held upwards of 75 adult men, some of whom wore hockey helmets as the 'treatment' for their head banging. We girls had the men all over us, picking at our hair and trying to fondle our breasts. The boys got the same treatment in women's day areas, which were once again, large concrete rooms with no furniture. The smell was overwhelming. After touring four or five of these areas, we were taken to Non Ambulatory ward where we saw the results of Mother Nature gone way wrong.

There was the hydrocephalic, Sam, who ran the institutions' primitive computer system and was a consultant for the State's much larger system. His head was four times bigger than normal and had to be strapped to his wheel chair because his neck couldn't support the weight. We talked with him for a good half hour as he couldn't believe that somehow this tour of high school kids from a small ranching community was allowed into the back wards. It was for him, such an overwhelming gift he would have to stop himself from crying. We also carried on a conversation with a three year old PKU baby who was as talkative as any three year old, but was 21 inches long and 8.5 pounds. The ward nurse holding her began to cry as she admitted she had fallen in love with her and well, knew that someday soon she would be mourning that love. Love is the operative word here. On those backwards I saw first hand what love for the least of the least really meant. I saw firsthand what lack of outside community interaction really meant. What being way out on the margins really meant. I saw how I knew nothing about real life.

As we all got back on the bus, our tour guide admitted that she had never been given permission to take any one but the State Board of Visitors on that extensive of a tour. We had seen everything there was to see. Most tours lasted an hour, ours had lasted six and a half. She hoped we got something out of it.

I can remember staring out the bus window, wiping off tears and listening to the sobs coming from the other kids. Suddenly I saw a vision of what I recognized as the statistical drawing of a bell curve. I heard a voice ask me where my IQ fit on the curve. I said, "On the edge of the left hand side." The voice then said that for every one of me, there was another human being in the backwards, non ambulatory, mute and completely dependent on the generosity, mercy, and love of their fellow humans. While I stared at that bell curve, letting this information sink in, the voice continued: "God doesn't see any difference in the two data points. Each of you is necessary for the bell curve to be drawn. Neither is more important than the other. Don't ever forget this or that God loves you just as God loves that precious PKU baby, or cherishes Sam for making the most he can of his particular situation. You are not capable of judging, so don't, just learn to love." End of vision.

The first thing that happened was my head deflated. I'm sure my classmates found that a relief. I have spent the rest of my life never forgetting the message of that first vision, continually drawing lessons, learning even more. God does not condemn, threaten, or judge. We do. Our task is not to control others or preen over our particular position on the bell curve, it's to love and to care about the other data points around us because none of us is more important than the other, and all of us are equally necessary for the picture the curve draws--and God loves all of us. Period. Happy Valentine's Day.

Archbishop Vigneron Attempts To Rebrand A Cancer Posing As Catholic--And It's Not A Left Leaning Enterprise

2012-02-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

Archbishop Vigneron does not see Michael Voris as the savior of Roman Catholicism, no matter how big the sword he carries.

Here's an interesting article from the Detroit Free Press about the fight between the Archdiocese of Detroit and Real Catholic TV. RCT is an inter net TV enterprise run by one Michael Voris. RCT is most certainly to the right of EWTN. I know, it's hard to believe that's possible, but it is true. Read the following excerpt to get an idea why the conservative Archbishop Vigneron of the Archdiocese of Detroit wants to take the 'Catholic' out of Real Catholic TV.

Views on provocative Real Catholic TV station anger Detroit archdiocese and others

By Niraj Warikoo- Detroit Free Press - 2/13/2012

.....For much of his life, Michael Voris of Ferndale was a lukewarm Catholic, someone who usually just went through the motions at church.

But after the sudden death of his brother in 2003 from a heart attack and the death of his mother from stomach cancer the following year, the former TV reporter became a changed man.
"Her dying really kind of started to wake me up," Voris recalled. "You have to face mortality. And then the questions came pouring in: What is the meaning of life? Who are we as human beings? Is there life after death? Those are fundamental questions everyone has to look for."

Voris found those answers in the Catholic Church. In 2006, he formed St. Michael's Media, a Catholic TV production company and studio in Ferndale. And in 2008, he helped launch Real Catholic TV. Today, the never-married 50-year-old is consumed by his passion to promote what he considers the one true faith. Working up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week, Voris is on a burning mission to save Catholicism and America by trying to warn the public about what he sees as a decline of morality in society.

But it's a vision that has rubbed some the wrong way. His critics said his remarks, at times, promote division and extremism. Catholic officials from Pennsylvania to Spain to Detroit have warned people that he doesn't speak for the Catholic Church. The Archdiocese of Detroit released two public statements on Voris, saying in December that the TV station was not permitted to have the word "Catholic" in its title. After receiving complaints from Voris' supporters, it sent out a second release last month reiterating its stance.

"Chaos has run through the church for the last 40 to 50 years," Voris said. "For people who are faithful Catholics, it's a source of great sorrow. It's definitely broken."

The Catholic divide
The tension between the two sides reflects an intense debate among Catholics over how to stem the number of Catholics leaving the faith. Liberals argue that people are leaving because the church is too strict and outdated, but conservatives such as Voris say the opposite is true.

Voris said the church's liberal tilt in the years after the 1960s reforms of the Second Vatican led to declining mass attendance and the decline of morality in the West. In his videos -- which on YouTube have drawn more than 10 million views -- Voris criticizes everything from abortion (comparing it to a holocaust) to contraception to liberal Catholics who promote feminism and homosexuality. In one of his more controversial videos, Voris said:

"The only way to run a country is by benevolent dictatorship, a Catholic monarch who protects his people from themselves and bestows on them what they need, not necessarily what they want."
After an uproar, Voris apologized, saying that he misspoke but he stands by his larger point, which is that a society needs strong morals in order to survive. (No, the larger point is society needs a strong daddy to parcel out what he thinks mommy and the kids need.)

Defending the faith
Last April, the diocese in Scranton, Pa., banned him from speaking in its facilities after it received complaints about his comments on other faiths.
In response to the criticism, Voris told the Free Press:
"Current culture doesn't let things be said plainspokenly. It's ... political correctness. Anything somebody takes offense at, whether it's true or not, seems to be out of bounds." (OK, I'll be plain spoken: You are an idiot, living in a delusion which makes you believe you and your kind have replaced namby pambly Jesus as our savior. There are good meds for this kind of thing.)

Despite the controversy, Voris travels the world to promote the Catholic faith. He has done shows in Nigeria, the Philippines, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and Germany and has upcoming trips to New Zealand and Australia.

Voris' efforts are financed by Marc Brammer, a business developer for Moody's who lives in South Bend, Ind., and is a member of Opus Dei, a somewhat controversial group known for its traditional views.
Voris started and owns a media company, St. Michael's Media, which Brammer contracts to produce Real Catholic TV. (OD is also known for it's elitism, secretiveness, and wealth.)

Like Voris, Brammer is concerned about what he feels is the liberal shift of the Catholic Church. They both criticize what they call "Americanism," a term they use to describe a post-1960s culture that they say has negatively influenced Catholics. (Actually, it's a series of heresies defined by Pope Leo XIII in his quest to remind American Catholics, but especially their bishops, that their real loyalties lay with obedience to Rome, not to any American ideals of individual freedom and/or it's democratic government.)

"Our Catholic Church is infected with Americanism that has gone wrong," said Brammer. "Not that America is wrong. But America's best days are not today; it was in the past, just like the Catholic Church."

While in Madrid, Voris bemoaned the American Catholics who attended, saying they were dressed immodestly.
"It made you downright cringe to see so many Americanized Catholics standing there at mass half-naked," he said in a video.

Voris and his backers are committed to forging ahead on a mission to save the Catholic Church and the U.S.
Many current church leaders are "namby-pamby," Voris said. "It's all about, 'Love your neighbor.'
What's needed instead, he said, is a muscular Catholicism that isn't afraid to encourage battle and sacrifice.

"Sometimes, you have to provocative," Brammer said.

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I find it fascinating indeed, that Archbishop Vigneron and other conservative leaning bishops are slapping down Real Catholic TV at the exact same time the USCCB is attempting to put the Roman Catholic Church above and beyond American notions of individual conscience and the common good. Just as our bishops are not exactly being 'namby pamby' with the Obama administration, Voris also finds himself at their mercy. Perhaps Mr Morris's crusade not to be 'PC' is shining too much light on another explanation for what may be the real agenda of the USCCB. Quite frankly, I am not at all interested in having the clerical or secular version of 'muscular Catholic men' dictate the terms of how I live my life. They can all go to the hell they need me to believe in, in order to buy their elitist misogynist religious tripe. I'll stick with the non muscular namby pamby Jesus who told Peter to put up his sword, and then walked off to be crucified so He could then rise from the dead.

Men Dealing Badly With Women: The USCCB And Women's Reproductive Health

2012-02-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

This graphic shows how little of a profile women actually have in discussing a subject that directly impacts only them. This whole brouha ain't just a Catholic problem. The USCCB is just the most 'in your face' picture of this paternalism.

When President Obama announced his compromise on birth control coverage in health insurance policies, I gave the USCCB about five seconds to announce their objections. I suspected they would state they were very concerned it didn't go far enough in protecting religious freedom and individual conscience. I was right, but it didn't take any ability as a prophet to call this one. What surprised me is they have gone much further in their concerns than I expected. Now it seems they are concerned about any one individual who works for or leads any business enterprise who might have objections to this that or the other thing and states their objections are on religious grounds. But then they also added 'moral' grounds to religious grounds. Maybe they are trying to respect the individual consciences of atheists with that addition, but I kind of doubt that. I think they are trying to rewrite the Constitution so that they are an agency outside and above the Constitution and not answerable to any form of secular government.

In the letter the fabulous five sent to their brother bishops they listed the following as their guiding principles:

Our brother bishops permit us to repeat the principles that are guiding us:

First, there is the respect for religious liberty. No government has the right to intrude into the affairs of the Church, much less coerce, the Church faithful individuals to engage in or cooperate in any way with immoral practices. (This sentence needs a corollary however, and the Fab Five aren't quite ready to state it--yet. They also believe the Church has the right to intrude into the affairs of governments and individuals and should be both free to do so without impediment, and have their intrusion enforced by government mandate.)

Second, it is the place of the Church, not of government to define its religious identity and ministry.
(Actually, this should read it is the place of we bishops to define Catholic religious identity and ministry as we see it. The USCCB certainly isn't speaking for the vast majority of lay Catholics, and they don't speak for women at all. They are speaking about themselves and their power and that has zero to do with us pew potatoes. They are stating in no uncertain terms American Catholicism is their church... period. The lay exist to pay for their Church.)

Third, we continue to oppose the underlying policy of a government mandate for purchase or promotion of contraception, sterilization or abortion inducing drugs. (Their real truth is they oppose reproductive health care for women but attempt to obfuscate that truth by listing effects like contraception, sterilization, and abortion inducing drugs. They won't state that their 'principles' reject the fundamental right of a woman to make decisions about her own life, and additionally go so far as to actually deny her any right to her own life in the reproductive process. That's too much truth to openly express and so it's spin, spin, spin.)

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I am becoming more and more curious as to why President Obama pays this much attention to the Fab Five. It's not like they speak for the majority of American Catholics. Even if I credence that the centrist and progressive Catholic periodicals and writers sided with the Bishops on this issue--probably out of guilt, self preservation, or juvenile tribal identity issues, I am still befuddled as to why President Obama felt the need to attempt this compromise. If he hasn't learned by now that there is no such thing as compromise with this kind of male mindset, then he has an awfully slow learning curve. But being the eternal optimist I like to pretend I am, I think President Obama might actually be playing a sort of end around. Sometimes the only way to deal with bullies is to let them hang themselves by providing multiple opportunities for others to see just how immature, self centered, fearful, willfully ignorant, and relationally inept bullies actually are. The idea is to let bullies make themselves their own worst enemy by giving them the attention they crave

Should President Obama accomplish this with the USCCB, by letting our erstwhile leaders think they can take this religious freedom issue to ridiculous ends, he would be doing a very great service for the American Catholic Church. The bishops have already alienated a huge percentage of Catholic women, now it's only a matter of time before more Catholic men see this power play for what is--an assault on American democracy.

Prop 8 To The Supremes Plus Some Interesting Poll Data

2012-02-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

This is a group photo of the USCCB hearing the recent news about where their lay flock stands on the issues they have been bleating about.

The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has voted by a 2-1 margin to strike down California's Prop 8, stating it violates the 14th amendment to the US constitution. That's the troublesome one which guarantees equal protection for all. The NOM crowd is not pleased, and will start petitioning for more funding to take this ruling to the Supreme Court. While they are at it they should probably come up with some better arguments. The ones they used in front of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals didn't impress the judges. The following is taken from Catholic News Service:

"Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently," said the majority decision, written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt. "There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted."

"Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California," it added.

All Proposition 8 did, the court said, was to strip same-sex couples of "the right to obtain and use the designation of 'marriage' to describe their relationships. Nothing more, nothing less. Proposition 8 therefore could not have been enacted to advance California's interests in childrearing or responsible procreation, for it had no effect on the rights of same-sex couples to raise children or on the procreative practices of other couples. Nor did Proposition 8 have any effect on religious freedom or on parents' rights to control their children's education."

Onward and upward as they say. The CNS article also had the statistics from a just released Pew Forum Poll on the gay marriage issue. Things have changed quite a bit in one year:

A Pew Forum analysis on attitudes toward same-sex marriage by religion released Feb. 7 said Catholics supported same-sex marriage 52 percent to 37 percent, with 11 percent undecided as of an October 2011 survey. That is up from a 46 percent favorable opinion (42 percent unfavorable) in a survey conducted in August and September 2010.

Hispanic Catholics are split, 42 percent to 42 percent, on same-sex marriage, while white Catholics approve of same-sex marriage by a margin of 57 percent to 35 percent.

Overall, same-sex marriage was favored by Americans 46 percent to 44 percent in the 2011 poll; in the 2010 survey, it was opposed 48 percent to 42 percent. The only religious groups remaining opposed to same-sex marriage in the latest survey were white evangelicals, 74 percent to 19 percent, and black Protestants, 62 to 30. Protestants overall remain opposed to gay marriage, 58 to 34.

Those numbers represent a significant switch in just 12 months. Given the reversal on the Komen decision and the release of two separate polls of American attitudes to the HHS religious freedom/birth control dust up--which also did not favor the USCCB position--this has not been a propitious week for the USCCB. The Catholic sheople are not being very good sheople. Maybe the lesson here is the more the shepherd sheople bleat the Vatican line, the less the lay sheople are inclined to follow.

Cardinal Egan Demonstrates Cultic Catholic Clericalism In All It's Sickness

2012-02-06T12:33:00.001-07:00

In this exalted clerical world of Cardinal Egan victims of clerical abuse just don't hit the radar screen.

Michael Sean Winters went on one of his rants today about an interview given by retired NY Archbishop Cardinal Egan to Connecticut Magazine. I have my issues at times with MSW, but I have to admit this interview of Egan's is a doozey. I have extracted some parts of the interview where Egan talks about his record on clerical sexual abuse, which was of course, flawless. There are reasons for this unique view of his and so rather than rant about it, the latter part of this post deals with some real reasons for Egan's unique view.

EGAN: You know, I never had one of these sex abuse cases, either in Bridgeport or here (New York). Not one. The newspapers pretend as though what happened under Walter Curtis (Bishop of the Bridgeport diocese from 1961 to 1988) happened to me. Walter was a wonderful, wonderful, dear gentleman. He had gotten very old and they were sitting there. And I took care of them one by one. None of them did anything wrong. One of them spent four years in treatment at the Institute of Living in Hartford. I investigated this and at the end I put him in a convent as an assistant chaplain in Danbury. Only once did I not use the Institute of the Living—I used Johns Hopkins because the man was in Baltimore.

CT Magazine: You mean Laurence Brett (a serial molester who was cycled through eight parishes in the diocese and a family of ten in California before relocating to Maryland, where he was accused of abusing more boys. He was still on the run from the FBI when he died in the Caribbean in 2010).

EGAN: Yep. I sent him to the most expensive place and I did exactly what we were told to do. And as a result, not one of them (the accused priests) did a thing out of line. Those whom I could prove, I got rid of; those whom I couldn’t prove, I didn’t. But I had them under control.
When I left Bridgeport—you can look it up—we had the most priests-to-people of any diocese in the country. Our seminary was the biggest in the nation. I built new schools there. We had a Catholic Charities thing that we did. So we had a wonderful diocese with this terrible thing that was hovering over the entire nation.
I’m not the slightest bit surprised that, of course, the scandal was going to be fun in the news—not fun, but the easiest thing to write about....

....CT Magazine: I believe you are. What about Fr. Pzolka? (A Stamford priest accused of raping, sodomizing and beating dozens of children. He died in 2009).

EGAN: Of course, that was in the newspaper one thousand times. I arrived in Bridgeport and found out there was a guy that was accused of all this. He never did anything while I was there. I sent him to the Institute of Living. I kept him there and kept him there and he broke his way out and escaped. Could you do anything more for a person you’d never heard of?
I sound very defensive and I don’t want to because I’m very proud of how this thing was handled. I never heard of the man. The same thing with Laurence Brett. In the beginning….I hate to go over this—why are we going over all this again?

CT Magazine: Because clearly this has been a key, a divisive, issue that has challenged the Church.

EGAN: Terrible. But are you surprised that any bishop who lived in that period and had any involvement with that stuff, by even inheriting it, that it wasn’t going to become the focus of the newspapers? I don’t think I should be upset about that, or you should be, or anybody else. The era was such that in every diocese, even someone that had no cases, was going to be beaten up with it.
I tell younger bishops, ‘Don’t let one overriding issue be the focus. Do your job, grow your diocese, strengthen your schools, build your charities, and even it does become an obsession with the media, that’s life.’
So I do think it’s time to get off this subject or at least say that this is a man who in 20 years heading great big dioceses never had a case. We had eight or nine or ten cases that I had to attend to from my predecessor, not from me. That’s never been printed. You couldn’t print that, nobody would ever dare print it, because it ruins the narrative. That is the truth. The narrative is what it’s got to be to sell newspapers.
It just strikes me that you could go around and find out that there were some pretty good things that took place.

CT Magazine: There is no doubt that you did many good things in Bridgeport. But one can not talk to a person in your position, from any diocese in the country, and not ask about this because it has so traumatized the faithful.

EGAN: Well it would be easy to write about without anything else. I’m not the slightest bit surprised that of course the scandal was going to be fun in the news—not fun, but the easiest thing to write about. If you have another bishop in the United States who has the record I have, I’d be happy to know who he is......

CT Magazine: Do you mean ‘good’ in that positive changes came about as a result of the crisis? EGAN: Good that…the record, I think, is an excellent record. And the fact that sex abuse becomes overpowering in people’s eyes, that’s a part of life.

CT Magazine:

EGAN: First of all, I couldn’t apologize for something that happened when I wasn’t there. Furthermore, every one of those cases was in litigation before a court, or threatened to be, and every one was handled correctly. I had the first fellow dismissed and the Holy See didn’t allow us to do that anymore, right?, and I handled every case exactly the right, I never hesitated to have the very finest treatment, the very finest of everything. And not any of them did anything out of line. If I was sure, I couldn’t do anything, if I wasn’t sure, I controlled them. No one could have done any better and if there was any mistake in any of that—I’m sorry—but I don’t think there was any mistake at all.

CT Magazine: In 2002, you wrote a letter to parishioners in which you said, “If in hindsight we discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry.”

EGAN: First of all, I should never have said that. I did say if we did anything wrong, I’m sorry, but I don’t think we did anything wrong. But I hate to go back over this. I think there’s more to life than that one issue, especially when I had no cases.

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The above quotes are pretty classic clerical narcissism. There is zero recognition of victims, unless one counts the predators like Fr Pzolka of whom Egan asks "Could you do anything more for a person you had never heard of?" In the clerical world of Cardinal Egan, priests are persons for whom he did all that he could--even he ones he had never heard of--but the victims of the priests aren't even on his radar. Hence he can describe his handling of the clerical abuse crisis as 'good' even though he never met with a victim; state "we never did anything wrong", and "I handled every case exactly right". He can say all those things because the actual victims don't and never did exist for him. How can this be, a less exalted lay type person might think?

Here's a link to an article on Catholica Australia written by former priest Richard Boehrer, who is the author of the recently released fictional novel "The Purple Culture" Boehrer earned a Phd in theology and rose to become a diocesan chancellor. It was during this period of his life that his bishop made a comment that started Boehrer on a different relationship with the Church: "You think it's more important to be a Christian, where as I think it's more important to be a Catholic." That's actually a true statement for any bishop who reaches that rank in the Church. At that point a man really can't be a Christian first and Catholic second, as Bishop William Morris found out. In the Catholica article Boehrer explains the signature traits of the Catholic Episcopal culture as aristocratic by history and tradition, cultic in their need for total control of the information flow, addictive, and culturally narcissistic:

......Another component of the purple culture is narcissism. The DSM-IV [LINK], the diagnostic manual for psychotherapeutic professionals, lists nine diagnostic criteria for narcissism, any five of which are said to confirm the diagnosis. Eight of them express behavior flowing from unwarrantable self-exaltation.
Professionals tell us that a large group of people can be narcissistic. For example, an elite military force, indoctrinated as being special, praised for their specialness, wearing the insignia of specialness, considering themselves warriors without peer, and having a sense of invulnerability. When shown to be vulnerable they can react with violence even on innocent non-combatants or prisoners.

It is theorized that we all begin life as narcissists and lose that characteristic as we mature. Professionals point out, however, that narcissism can be re-acquired. People can reach a degree of other-centeredness and then re-cultured into a return to self-absorption. We hear bishops refer to their assembly as "the most exclusive club in the world", and their society containing those cultural behaviors as a "perfect" society. And then, there is their disdain for the laity's wisdom.....

......It is clear that bishops did not experience guilt in their abetment of and cover-up for priest sexual abusers. They did not experience guilt because their addiction to their purple culture blinded them to the devastation. They did not experience guilt because they were able, consciously or not, to give themselves a personal exemption from wrongdoing. They were acting for a higher cause, their divinely decreed culture. They did not experience guilt because it would question the perfection of their culture and themselves as reflections of that culture. They did not experience guilt because their eyes, ears, minds and hearts are turned in one direction, and it is not towards the laity. The laity are totally discounted. (With the possible exception today of attorneys)......

If one adds the fact Egan made it into the even more exclusive global club which wears red, his take on his performance in the abuse crisis should not be shocking at all. None of which bodes well for what we can expect from the soon to be Cardinal Dolan. All of this is why I too call myself a Christian first, and Catholic second. It's why I have no delusions about whether or not the 'reform of the reform' is about anything other than keeping the Purple Culture exclusive, aristocratic, and perfectly in control of all things Catholic.

Religious Freedom? Or Disempowerment Of The Lay Voice?

2012-02-06T10:10:00.001-07:00

Quite appropriate that the silencer on this American lamb is a black collar.

I've been watching this current 'religious freedom' crusade of the USCCB with a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. I haven't been sure what's really been going on. As Bill Lyndsey notes in his current post on the shenanigans which went on inside the Komen Foundation relative to Planned Parenthood, the Catholic pro life movement is aligning itself with some pretty ugly agendas in it's monomania with abortion. My cognitive dissonance comes from the fact I really have a difficult time believing our bishops have any deep personal motivation for this monomaniacal attitude about the issue of abortion--as opposed to their anti gay marriage crusade. With that crusade I can easily see a great deal of deep seated personal psychological motivation for some of them to beat their breasts about the so called evil gay agenda. But abortion, and now birth control? I don't see any real personal motivation other than career advancement. Maybe that 's because this monomaniacal focus seems to have worked very well for Cardinal elect Tim Dolan, the gregarious smiley face of this strategy and Archbishop Charles Chaput, the not so smiley face.

If it's career advancement pushing this fight with Obama, that just kicks things up another notch to the Vatican. Why would the Vatican be interested in the USCCB creating a war with the Obama administration over birth control in insurance coverage? Especially given Catholic employers have already been doing just this in some form or another in 28 states and a whole host of other countries, and lay Catholics have utterly rejected the teaching on birth control? I have finally had to admit it doesn't have anything to do with abortion or birth control or the good of the souls of the laity. It has to do with protecting the hegemony of the power distribution in Roman Catholicism and enhancing it's perceived global foot print. This is a war that has nothing to do with the body of Christ and everything to do with duping the laity into continuing to allow the bishops, and through them the Vatican, to be the ONLY voice heard in Catholicism. It is a covert attack on the power of the laity to have a voice by appealing to tribalism for us to just hand our voice over to them. It is directly in keeping with the mindset of the past two popes and this current Vatican who have made it a point to disembowel Vatican II teaching on the Church as the People of God, any power for the laity, and the teachings on subsidiarity. That this solo voice also speaks for the interests of the 1% should not go unnoticed, because it is this 1% with whom our hierarchy wishes to maintain it's primary association. The rest of us are expected to ignore all that while we eat our bread and maybe get to drink our wine.

In case readers haven't figured out by now, I am really angry about the brazenness of this campaign and it's duplicity. If mainstream Catholic writers and editorialists refuse to see this and insist we lay Catholics support this so called 'religious freedom' crusade, I will be generous enough to assume it's because they draw their daily bread at the sufferance of one bishop or another. I am not in that position and so I feel very free to call this campaign what it is--an attempt to destroy the power of the alternative lay voice in the Roman Catholic Church by having us meekly hand it over to them.

Super Sunday!! But Is Football Moral?

2012-02-05T11:12:00.000-07:00

TD Jesus overlooks another Saturday Catholic macho Love feast in South Bend.

First off I will admit I watch and like watching American football. I like hockey and baseball better, but that's a cultural family thing. I will also admit if I had had a son I would have actively discouraged participation in football, but allowed hockey. The reason for the seeming contradiction is for the most part players in hockey look to avoid hits, not seek them out. Even those hockey players known for their hitting spend the vast majority of their time skating and not hitting. This isn't true for most positions in football.

The NCR has an article by Ken Briggs about the relatively recent studies being conducted by the NFL and the NCAA on head trauma and it's long term impact. The question Briggs raises is about whether it's moral or ethical for Catholic colleges and high schools to invest in football when we are now learning it poses demonstrable risk to long term brain function in players. We also know this is true from studies being conducted by the NHL, whose prime poster boy, Sidney Crosby, has been shelved for a year from concussion symptoms of one sort or another and whose NHL ranks were thinned this past summer by the early deaths of three of it's 'enforcers'. Head injury in contact sports is being taken very seriously, finally, on the professional level. I'm sure this relatively recent interest in head trauma has a great deal to do with the financial explosion in professional contracts. (Not to mention lawsuits from retired players or their families). No owner relishes the idea of paying a Sidney Crosby or a Peyton Manning millions of dollars not to play. Fans of their respective teams, and the rest of the team itself, can lose interest pretty fast when a player of this caliber is lost. Just ask Indianapolis fans who had to suffer through the just completed season with out Peyton Manning. I don't think hosting today's Super Bowl is going to make up for what just passed for a football season in Indianapolis. Given all that, I expect to see this issue taken seriously on the professional level for millions of pre$$ing reasons.

Unfortunately Catholic colleges and high schools have no such financial motivation with respect to their players. There are no multimillion dollar long term contracts, no unions with pension funds, no advertising revenues to split, and only minimal insurance coverage. Players don't share the pot. The pot goes directly to the colleges and high schools--and too much of that pot on the college level goes into the pockets of the coaching staff. Perhaps these are the ethical problems which need addressing by ethicists and moral theologians.

If college and high school sports officials want to seriously address the long term effects of high school and college contact sports they could start with the insurance issue. They could even take some of their advertising revenue--say from jerseys and other apparel--and put together some kind of long term insurance coverage for both current and former players. Instead of putting all that money from Reebok and Nike for displaying their swooshes on uniforms and shoes, directly into the pockets of head coaches, they could put it into long term medical and mental health care for sports related injuries, especially catastrophic injuries. They could and really should, but since these suggestions don't help the bottom line or the won/loss record, they won't. Notre Dame could take the lead and win one for the 'gimpy', but I'm thinking that would take the intervention of Touch Down Jesus and a real miracle.

However, football is not the only high school or college sport in which long term physical harm occurs. I've just spent the week reading up on eating disorders in sports. This issue occurs in sports like figure skating, gymnastics, diving, long distance running, wrestling, weight lifting, rowing, etc etc etc. Eating disorders have one of the highest lethality ratios of any mental illness including brain trauma. All the aforementioned sports take the kind of personal drive and dedication of a Sydney Crosby but we don't hear much about eating disorders as they relate to competitive sports. Experts suspect this is because eating disorders are perceived to be a 'girly' issue in little teen age female gymnasts and not a manly issue like concussions in big burly male football players. Guess what, that is rapidly changing in men's competitive sports, especially in sports where weight is important. After all, eating disorders are the dirty little secret in jockey's quarters at race tracks across the world.

If we ever do get into a real discussion about ethics and morality in sports, I sure hope the discussion goes beyond the concussions and brain trauma in the revenue generating contact sports. The Olympics will be fast upon us and maybe then we can raise some issues about other health risks to our elite athletes and their young hero worshippers. And maybe raise some questions about our fascination and need to be fascinated with our athletic heroes and teams, and maybe even ask how much of a price these heroes need to pay to qualify as our heroes.

As far as today's Superbowl, I'm thinking the emotionless all bottom line Bill Belichick's New England Borg ergghhh Patriots, will prevail. No offense to Giant fans, I'm just not all that excited about these two teams. I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. Well, a lot of Lion fans probably have watched the last 46 Super Bowls for the commercials--but our day might be just around the corner. I'm thinking I just need to pray to Touch Down Jesus to exorcise the curse of Bobby Lane.

An Oldie And Maybe A Goodie

2012-02-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Job issues have really curtailed my ability to write new posts, so I thought I might do a little search of my own writing to bring back some oldies. Anyone who thinks the USCCB's current campaign on religious freedom is current needs to understand..... it's not at all current. Here's one from 2009 that sort of proves this campaign is both old and still current. Sort of makes one think it might be an 'agenda'.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

"Self-described Catholics Also Include Bishops"

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio would qualify as one of Bishop Richard Malone's 'self described Catholics'.

Here's a message from Bishop Richard J Malone of the Diocese of Maine. It concerns the group Catholics for Marriage Equality and is pertinent to the rest of this reflection--especially the end.

A group of self-described Catholics who have chosen to dissent publicly from established Catholic doctrine on the nature of marriage as the union of one man and one woman recently published a paid political ad entitled “Statement of Conscience by Maine Catholics Regarding Marriage Equality.” (Wow, I always thought that after one was baptized in the Catholic faith one was Catholic--permanent indelible mark on the soul and all that. I guess it's not so permanent or indelible.)

The evidence for their dissent runs through the statement and is crystallized in the following sentence: “…we find disturbing any suggestion that formal Church teaching obligates all Catholics to oppose marriage equality.” (I do too.)

In contrast, please let your conscience be formed by these clear and authoritative words of Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger): “In those situations where homosexual unions … have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty."(Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, July 2003)

A Catholic whose conscience has been properly formed by Scripture and the teachings of the Catholic Church cannot support same sex marriage. Please vote YES on question 1. (What ever happened to the teachings of Jesus? The usually cited scriptures don't include the words of Jesus. His apply to adultery.)

Most Reverend Richard J. Malone, Th.D.Bishop of Portland

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There's been a trend developing recently that seems to be threatening to some of our hierarchy. Progressive Catholics, or Catholics open to REASON are beginning to speak out.

Bishop Malone's sarcastic tirade is just one voice of many attempting to put a stop to this voice. The reality probably is that the existence of Catholics for Marriage Equality can be left at his doorstop. Had he not spent so much money on this campaign and made such an in your face big deal about this, Catholics for Marriage Equality might not even exist.

While the vote in Maine appears to be deadlocked, the damage Malone has done to the Church in Maine will last far beyond the outcome of this legislation. Maine Catholics are still going to demand an accounting of the $550,000 the diocese spent on this campaign, especially in view of the fact the bishop is citing financial short falls for closing parishes. Why is it reasonable to spend this kind of money on taking away the right of a small minority while closing parishes? One might be led to think the parish closures aren't an issue of money, but an issue of lack of priests.

What I find fascinating is his quoting Benedict's statement on the duty of Catholics to oppose same sex marriage. To be honest I find this totally laughable in face of the fact no such statement was issued on the duty of Catholics to oppose other social movements, Nazism comes to mind, but opposition to gay marriage is now a binding moral duty. Sorry, can't buy this one. It's hard for me to fathom that gays marrying people they love is going to precipitate a world war or bring down society or threaten the ecological balance. It just isn't reasonable.

I've also just finished reading the USCCB's opposition to all the health care bills. According to Archbishop Chaput, real Catholics are duty bound to oppose all these bills:

"To put it bluntly: all of the health-care reform solutions currently facing Congress violate human dignity in potentially grievous ways. Unless these proposals are immediately changed to reflect the concerns of Congressman Stupak, other like-minded members of Congress, and leaders of the national Catholic community, Catholics need to vigorously oppose and help defeat this dangerous legislation …"

The operative word in the above statement is 'potentially'. The USCCB statement uses the words potentially and might and could quite a number of times. And of course we are to oppose all these health care reform bills until they reflect the 'leaders of the national Catholic community'. Not having much in the way of insurance myself, I'm not quite sure I want to torpedo health care reform on potential violations. The Capps ammendment seems pretty reasonable, especially given the fact the USCCB isn't calling on all good Catholics to give up their current private health insurance if it covers abortion or birth control. I guess if you have such insurance you get to keep it, free from sin or any obligation to attempt to change it. Kind of grandfathered in I guess.

Given their distrust of Obama and all, I wonder why our bishops don't institute a Catholic health insurance plan, say through the Knights of Columbus. The K of C have the necessary infrastructure and also seem to have quite a bit of discretionary income. That way the USCCB could write the plan and have it pass muster without worrying about all those 'potential' problems they now worry about in congressional plans--and want good Catholics who still have their permanent indelible mark--to oppose. Maybe they don't think there are enough of those kind of Catholics left to fund such a plan.

In the meantime they are leading me to believe they no longer believe in the power of Jesus, or the real authority of their teachings to correctly inform Catholic consciences. They seem far more tied to the idea of legislating society to enforce their teachings. That, if they thought about it, is a really sad statement. It says to me they too might just believe their own authority no longer has much influence with Catholics, and it really is the culture and it's reflection in the state which move hearts and minds. If that's true, they have no one to really blame but themselves. Going back to the past and threatening condemnation from the pulpit no longer works and neither will campaigns to politically change what they don't like in the culture.

The Church threw their credibility out the window in the last century when they refused to openly oppose fascist dictatorships, and instead worked with them to preserve Rome's last vestiges of of political secular authority. Pope John XXIII saw the truth of this and called Vatican II to find another path to authentic institutional authority. Too bad those still enamored of that old kind of authority got the upper hand in the Vatican. Now we have a church that thinks it's a wiser use of limited funds to take rights away from a minority than to keep open Catholic communities, and that is also makes sense to deprive uninsured Americans of health insurance on the basis of potential conflcits, instead of finding ways to provide sacramental access for it's adherents. Kind of a sad statement all the way around.

And finally here's an even sadder statement from one of our bishops. Bishop DiMarzio is supporting New Jersey State Representative Vito J Lopez even though Lopez is endorsed by NARAL, is prochoice, and voted in support of gay marriage. Now why would Bishop DiMarzio appear to be a 'self claimed Catholic bishop' in regards to this politician? It seem Lopez was the legislative leader in torpedoing a bill which would have extended the statue of limitations in New Jersey for sexual abuse victims. Lopez saved the diocese a ton of money. Who says Catholic moral teaching isn't for sale? Not me.

Forget Conscience, Let's Talk Corruption

2012-01-31T10:01:00.000-07:00

I wonder if Cardinal Bertone felt the need to send Archbishop Vigano packing because the good Archbishop was photographed hanging with the wrong people.

John Allen has just posted another piece on Vatican corruption. In this one the Vatican denies they are really linked to the corruption. This time the corruption involves a Dominican friar, Rev Francesco Maria Ricci, who somehow accessed two million dollars which he invested and lost in an Italian ponzi scheme. The denied connection stems from the fact the Dominican was a postulator for the causes of saints on behalf of the Dominican order, not an employee of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. In other words said friar was a client of the congregation, not a member of the Congregation. Here's the text of the Vatican denial:

The Rev. Francesco Maria Ricci, who is spoken on in the article, is a religious of the Dominicans, who works on behalf of his Order.
He does not belong in any to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. In fact, it’s important to note that postulations and postulators are ‘clients’ of the Congregation, to which they address themselves to promote their causes, but they absolutely are not part of the Congregation.
Therefore, it must be underscored that the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and its Prefect, Cardinal Angelo Amato, have absolutely nothing to do with the events spoken of in the article in question.

The Vatican is pretty funny sometimes. Fr Marcial Maciel was not an employee of the Vatican either but he sure was up to his neck in corrupting the Vatican and in Vatican corruption. Fr Ricci may be one step removed from actually working for the Vatican, but he is not one step removed from funneling money into and out of the Vatican by virtue of being a 'client postulator' of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Sainthood does not come cheap, even for Dominican saints and somehow this particular postulator found himself with 2 million Eu in disposable funds. I will be very interested in following this story because I suspect there will eventually be other names associated with this scandal who also have access to serious funds from unaccounted sources with Vatican connections.

This brings me to the other Vatican corruption story John Allen has been reporting on, that of Archbishop Vigano and his sudden transfer from the Vatican to the US as Papal Legate. Archbishop Vigano is a man I can truly respect. Too bad Cardinal Bertone and his like minded cronies didn't respect him. But of course John Allen comes to the rescue to explain Bertone's and Benedict's actions. I just love Allen's excuses. They are so inventive:

First, it's never wise to take everything you hear in the Italian press at face value. Some of what passes for reporting in Italy would make the biggest blowhards and scandal hounds in the American media look like Edward R. Murrow. (And some of it is absolutely true.)
Second, much of what Viganò's letter refers to as "corruption" may have a relatively innocent explanation, especially by the norms of traditional Vatican culture. For instance, when bidding procedures are fudged to award contracts, it's not necessarily because somebody's been bought off, but rather to reward firms and individuals seen as loyal to the pope, to the church or to key figures in the hierarchy. That's not to defend such practices, simply to acknowledge they're not what Americans usually mean by "corrupt." (So corruption is not corruption if it's done in a traditional culture of corruption. This must be why Macial and the Legion gave 'donations' not bribes. How quaint this all is.)
Third, by most accounts, and despite his background in diplomacy, Viganò didn't always have a deft touch in terms of office politics. His transfer, in other words, wasn't necessarily a referendum on his financial philosophy so much as his rocky relationships with other personnel. (Vigano made the big faux pas of 'not going along to get along'.)
Fourth, if Benedict XVI truly wanted to repudiate Viganò, there were certainly plenty of options other than naming him to arguably the most prestigious position Vatican diplomacy has to offer. (Benedict couldn't afford to have it appear that he was in fact punishing Vigano for ruthlessly cutting out the corruption and Vigano certainly doesn't buy the 'promotion' bs.)

So there we have it, Archbishop Vigano was promoted for a job well done and there is no corruption in the Vatican just a bit of slop in how business is conducted. Personally I'm trying to figure out how Archbishop Vigano was able to save the Vatican City States some 44 million in less the 14 months. That's a lot of slop. It leads me to believe all those contracts rewarded for 'loyalty to the Vatican' had a lot of paybacks to those who let those contracts. This would be business by the Mafia model, not the Jesus model. But then Jesus didn't need to take kick backs because Jesus could make His own bread. Just a stray thought.

As bad as the sexual abuse crisis is, I made the point a very long time ago that the root of all the corruption associated with the Roman Catholic Church is money. I wrote when the lights begin to shine on how the Vatican does business the real rats will be exposed. One of those rats is the cronyism and the cultivating of generations of clerics to maintain the Vatican's version of 'the Family'. My prophetic instinct tells me the next financial scandal to be exposed will center on Mr. Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the head of the Vatican Bank and the global reach of Opus Dei--especially in South America. Archbishop Vigano has only exposed the very tip of very big iceberg.

Ramblings On Sex And Religious Conscience Exemptions

2012-01-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

Jesus understood legislating Platonic ideals was an exercise in futility. People evolve and mature into living those ideals. Our Bishops seem to have a different less 'human' understanding--especially when it comes to sex and women.

I have to admit I have found the religious conscience exemption brouhaha over birth control to be utterly fascinating. There have been millions of words written on this topic in the course of the last month. Too many of them utter hysteria, and most of those kinds of words coming from the mouths of Catholic Bishops. I do agree with these bishops on one point, this has now become a battle with serious implications for religious freedom, who gets it, how far it goes, and whether conscience clauses are the domain of the individual or another ill advised extension of individual rights to corporate entities.

What I really hope is the Catholic conversation gets much deeper, goes beyond the religious freedom debate and into the heart of matter. I can not get past the fact that at this moment in time everything uttered by our Catholic leadership is sexually oriented. It doesn't matter if it's the dissembling about the clergy abuse scandal or gay marriage or abortion or now the current birth control debate. The Catholic conversation is about sex. For a while the Liturgical changes took center stage, but inevitably the hierarchical conversation always comes back to sex, and always about sex as it pertains to women and gay men--which really means men who act sexually like women. Rarely, if ever, do we hear anything about sexual morality as it applies to straight men--see the recent Catholic convert and multiple adulterer Newt Gingrich.

All this talk about controlling the sexuality of women and gays sends one incredible message about Catholic spirituality. That message seems to be the if humanity can 'control' their sexual urges they become instantly spiritual. Unfortunately that's not true. Usually humanity becomes emotionally and spiritually stunted because their sexuality never gets integrated into the totality of their person. They are always at war with a very deep and powerful aspect of the human condition. Spiritual peace is very difficult to achieve under this set up--as is any form of real wisdom and maturity.

The even deeper message is that straight men can only become more spiritual by forcing women to be the controlling agent of male sexuality. In heterosexual marriage it's women who have the moral mandate to say "NO", but not the physical or psychological strength to enforce it. Historically this arrangement has worked out terribly for millions and millions of children who weren't wanted or couldn't be supported by either of their biological parents. I know, I work with the 'fruits' of this arrangement every single day. I tire of hearing my clients say they would have been better off aborted or never born. I should probably mention here that my clients are the sickest of the sickest. For the most part they are the mentally ill who have been sexually and physically abused as children, born of addicted or mentally ill mothers, abandoned by their biological parents, and raised in the children's institutional system. They wouldn't recognize real love in their lives unless it was accompanied by a kick in the head. Too many of them were raised Catholic.

Forced sexual discipline is not spirituality, especially when that forced discipline is only directed at one gender. It's just an exercise in male self delusion. Jesus didn't address individual sexual morality except in context of marital infidelity. If there's a message there it isn't about birth control, and it isn't about gay marriage, and it isn't about abortion. It's about marital infidelity and casting stones at 'others'. People don't become saints because they don't engage in sex. They become saints by relating deeply with others and not demanding sexual gratification as an inherent right or without accepting the responsibility for the consequences.

The fundamental flaw in this whole Catholic debate is our sexual morality is being written and 'enforced' exclusively by male celibates who think sexual continence is some how related to 'holiness' and who seem to firmly believe that unless men take vows of chastity on behalf of and under the direction of Holy Mother Church it's up to regular unholy women to set the boundaries on the sexual lives of the less devoted males. It's no wonder real life men and women have utterly rejected Humanae Vitae and roll their eyes at JPII's Theology of the Body. Those two papal teachings might work well in some Platonic world of absolute ideals, but that's not the world lay Catholics actually live in.

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.