News from South Brisbane is that Fr. Peter Kennedy was not excommunicated, but fired and offered early retirement. The letter from Archbishop Bathersby to Fr. Kennedy can be read here. The link will take you to Catholica Australia where there is other commentary on this situation and it's well worth reading.
It's of note that one of Archbishop Bathersby's problems with Fr. Kennedy and St. Mary's is they wouldn't play the secrecy game.
It looks to me like Archbishop Bathersby was searching for some sort of minimal solution in the sense it might placate the complainers while not completely alienating a vibrant and growing parish. There are no plans in place to close St. Mary's, just change leadership.
The thing that still amazes me about this story is that all it took was one rich complainer, who was not a member of this Parish, flying to the Vatican to set this whole chain in motion. It's kind of mind boggling when you think about it. Apparently the Vatican has the time to listen to one self appointed savior about one parish but is unable to do a simple google search in order to find out that SSPX Bishop Williamson is an anti Semite.
Speaking of Bishop Williamson he gave an email interview to the German magazine Der Spiegel in which he says he will research more recent data on the holocaust to see if maybe he needs to change his thinking. Apparently his thinking is based on research he did in the 80's. This will take an unspecified amount of time. I suggest he try Googling "Jewish Holocaust". He seems to know how to use email, this will save him a lot of time and put him one up on the Vatican.
I want to give a shout out to the American Papist blog site for the work Thomas Peters has done on the Legion and Fr. Maciel. His coverage has been even handed and the comments from Legion and Regnum Christi members have been enlightening. The order needs to do some real hard work because Maciel's double life had to have been enabled by Legion leadership. This needs to come out and appropriate action taken.
The Legion also needs to completely rework their formation process. I'll make it easy for them. Fr. Maciel was a narcissistic sociopath who had major control and sexual issues. His formation process is designed to prey on the vulnerable and manipulate them into a state of fear based compliant control. His leadership was based on team splitting, that is pitting one person against another covered by total secrecy and allegiance to superiors. It is the sick system of a sick man. Your formation system is designed to take young teen age males and make carbon copies of Maciel. You must change your formation program.
Please, grab a copy of DSM-IV and read the sections on personality disorders. You can google this, it's easy. You will see your founder in black and white, and I'm not talking clerical black and white. Maybe you will also begin to see why the Legion insists on pre seminary training. You must change your formation program. Please.
And now for something totally the same. We have this from Major League Baseball about Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod, baseball's designated savior, was also a secret steroid user. Ooops, not so secret any more. Once again the leadership of Major League baseball has steriod egg all over it's face. Mighty Casey has struck out---again. I imagine Barry Bonds is secretly laughing. Well, maybe not, he is after all facing criminal charges over his own need to keep his personal closet door shut.
In this new Age of Integrity, there are no closets in which to hide secrets. Not for the Legionnaires, not for the Vatican, not for Wall Street, and not even for Major League Baseball. This is a time for coming clean, a time of purification. You can get with the program or you can get steamrolled.
The email interview with Bishop Williamson is revealing. While he said he will not be visiting Aushwitz, which is a historical landmark that shows physical evidence that proves there were gas chambers and many witnesses testimony that he could follow up on by such a visit, he then says: "
ReplyDeleteWilliamson is quoted by Der Spiegel as saying he would re-examine "everything again and look at the evidence." However, he said he won't be visiting the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
"Since I see that there are many honest and intelligent people who think differently, I must look again at the historical evidence," the British bishop was quoted as saying.
"It is about historical evidence, not about emotions," he added, according to the report. "And if I find this evidence, I will correct myself. But that will take time."
Hello Bishop Williamson - LOOK at the evidence that is right in front of your face!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Open your eyes and ears and pay attention to the truth that is in front of you!!!!
Many are deceived.
Not deceived butterfly, he knows what the truth is. What we are seeing here is the aryian white supremist mentality at work. You will find almost identical rhetoric in contemporary nazi party literature.
ReplyDeleteCarl, I disagree with you. Spiritual blindness is what I truly believe this is about. It is about seeing the world differently and being sick in the head and not able to get out of a sort of prison of sick ideas.
ReplyDeleteTruth, which is right in front of him, he is truly afraid to see and so he finds falseness and lies.
Denial and fear are very real things to a sick person.
Then we must agree to disagree on this topic. I dont believe it is blindness on his part. I believe he knows exactly what he is doing, that this is nothing more than his deep seated resentment and hatred for the Jewish people being given voice.
ReplyDeleteWilliamson to me is just another Maciel, a sociopathic narcissist absolutely incapable of honestly relating to another human being outside of manipulation.
ReplyDeleteNeither the Vatican nor the SSPX itself will be able to shut him up. It's all about him and he will keep the spotlight on himself.
The problem with clericalism is that is provides the perfect place for pedophiles to hide and sociopathic narcissists to shine. This has to change. There have to be legitimate checks and balances.
Some things i have pondered as i have read the posts. . .
ReplyDeleteI really hear what Butterfly is saying and find resonance there. . .i do not know the core of this person but believe the hatefulness that is expressed is just an indication of his own deep woundedness, and the degree he has to go to deny his own guilt. I also agree with Colleen and see someone like Williamson as very narcissistic. One of the characteristics of narcissism, is they are always right and become quite indignant if others do not agree with them, and they are incapable of self analysis or looking at themselves and their own shadows. So i do not believe he will be changing, he may eventually give a snaky apology with his fingers crossed in order to maintain power. That is the clinical skeptic part of me.
But the biggest lesson challenge for me as i read his ugly woundedness is to not become snared by "peering in the the abyss too long and become a mirror reflection by spewing like energy back to those which see the world completely different than i do. That is when they win, by me allowing myself to be snared and to feel or reflect insult to insult.
Here in the Heartland we have a Minister from Topeka Kansas called Rev. Fred Phelps. He is the one, along with his church (mainly family members) that pickets the funerals of homosexuals, 911 victims and service men and women killed in action. They carry signs and shout slogans saying, "GOD HATES QUEERS,911 happened because GOD HATES QUEERS and some of the firefighters where homosexuals, and Your Son Died in Iraq because GOD HATES QUEERS!". . .Everything is the fault of homosexuality. . . They feed on the hateful, and when they can find someone that will reflect them they just become more inflamed.
( It drips with reaction formation Whew!))
I agree with Butterfly, to be in this world is to be in relationship. No longer do i ask the question is there evil in the world, i have come to accept that, but also believe deeply restoration and redemption is available for all. I hold that for people like Williamson and the Phelps. But the question of my life these days is; How to be in right relationship with all, including that which expresses as evil?. . .
Sometimes, people like Williamson and the Phelps live in their own dark moldy inner prisons, and the crime of hatred and vileness is an expression of how much that person hates himself. And it helps to remember that little people can cast huge shadows too.
I love Anne Lamott's saying; "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
People like Williamson and Phelps do not have the capacity to embrace their own shadows, someone once said; "Monsters live inside all of us and ghost are real too. They live inside of us and sometimes they win."
This concept has helped to transform my own way of seeing, and it has challenged me to stay connected to a situation like this until i can see the light that is spoken of in the below statement:
""If we penetrate deeply into all aspects and all areas of life, we will find that hidden behind everything is love. We will discover that love is the force, the power and inspiration behind every word and every action. This applies to all people, irrespective of race, caste, creed, sect, religion or of what work people do."
I can find love in these men, love of self,even though it is completely selfish, and antithesis to Christ, malicious and malignancy, still it has base in love. The reason i chose to see it as distored and diseased love is because it turns it from hatred that snares, where love passes through and hopefully can become energetically become purified with enough of us that are willing to be in right relationship with hatred.
My heart feels sad for each of you, i can so tell you love your Church and your Catholic faith. It is a beautiful faith with so much goodness and depth, i think that is why people like Williamson are so painful to hear, because you truly know this is not the truth of your beings or the Catholic Church.
I believe the collective Catholic laity is doing something really big these days, and the strength of your love will bring about a renewal greater than Vatican II ever imagined. Sometimes in the bigger picture there are dark angels that come along in order rise, so that they can be put down by the greater than is being born. Sometimes people like Williamson and Phelps are there for the collective to actively slay and that is what brings about a higher consciousness.
For that reason i can embrace the dark angels for theirs too is service.
Sorry this is so long, just my rambling and ponderings.
My word is thynes. . .I send all Thynes a HUG!
Thanks river. A wonderful and inspiring comment.
ReplyDeleteGreat comment River. This raising of the collective consciousness is happening all over Christianity, not just Catholicism.
ReplyDeleteThe issues are all the same, misuse of sexuality by male clerics and financial theft. Interesting in that these are the two big energy 'male' enhancers and both involve abuse of relationships and trust.
Colleen i have a short story for you and then a couple of links for consideration.
ReplyDeleteYears ago when i first started my work as a psychotherapist, i worked at a Community Mental Health Center. There i had a wonderful Supervisor from India that was a psychiatrist. Dr. E. was one of the sharpest men i have ever known and he would often share bits of diagnostic information that i had not received from the University. I had taken in everything, until one day he threw out a tid-bit that i have tossed back and forth for years. He made the simple statement that;" Women that often wear red shoes are hysterical personalities." At the time their was a woman in the group of counselors that often wore red shoes and she was busting out at the seams affectively, but still the comment is one i have held with an open hand.
But when i listen to men like Rush Limbaugh and other shock jocks i always have an impulse to look under the table and see if they are perhaps wearing red shoes? I see them with all their dramatic rants as male hysterics. I found myself wanting to look under Bishop Williamson's frock to see if he too is one of those men that wear red shoes, it has the feel and texture of male hysteria, much like the shock jocks that feed on shocking and getting reactions from others that horrify.
I decided to do a search on male hysteria for knew it is seen as a female disorder and remembered bits when Freud used the diagnosis in the development of Psychoanalysis.
I am going to link to articles on male hysteria, and in the first one there is brief reference, the root cause of hysteria is the Oedipus complex, which results in the fear of castration.
Colleen do you think for a priest ex-communication would be the spiritual equivalent of psychological castration? The Catholic Church is often called the Mother Church by its members.
There must be something Bishop Williamson is trying to work through in his deep psyche.
This was another comment in the review of Mad Men and Medusas by Mitchell i found interesting:
"Mitchell's reconceptualization of the familial relationships that subtend hysteria, allow for a new understanding of the manner in which the death drive, the life drive and sexuality are at work in hysteria, and this in turn allows for new ways of thinking about individual and social violence. According to traditional Freudian theory, the death drive and the life drive are opposed to one another and sexuality is rooted in the life drive. Mitchell argues that in hysteric sexuality, sexuality and the death drive come together. She writes, "Hysteria shows us how sexuality moves across the death and life drives"[p158]. This fusing of sex and death in turn explains the hysteria of soldiers and the phenomenon of war-rape. The soldiers' sexuality as hysteric only mimes the life drive; there is no actual reproductive tendency. Rather for the soldiers sexuality is related more strongly to death and via rape, only mimetically enacts the life drive."
Dr. E. said in one of her comments last week on The Moderate Voice that;
"Hatred of groups is sometimes a stand alone phenom, by choice, by people who are otherwise more or less rational. But sometimes the unoriginal and repetitive tropes as described, are strong markers for a syndrome we call perseverative cognitive disorder, or a version of undifferentiated character disorder..."
I would bet Shock Jocks, Shock Frocks, and Hate Groups would fall into both of these disorders, and with the undifferentiated character disorder prominent layers would be Narcissism and Hysteria.
The second article i found interesting also, because it speaks of the masculine reluctance in the field of psychiatry to use male hysteria because of their own bias and denial. And one does not have to stretch it too far to wonder if part of the dynamics with old waves of religious WWII era spiritual leaders concerning the Holocaust and the role the Pope took historically, is a bit like the history of male hysteria diagnosis?
Mad Men and Medusa
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?id=1263&type=book&cn=176
Men on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown by Andrew Scull
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5561196.ece
River, interesting comment about red shoes and hysteria ... especially since since so many of the magisterial authorities wear red shoes ... does make one wonder, especially in light of all of the hate rhetoric that has been flying from that group recently.
ReplyDeletevery good blog that the main thing a lot of interesting and useful! Brisbane turf
ReplyDelete