Wednesday, April 14, 2010

More Craziness From A Vatican Spokesman. This Time It's The LCWR Up Against The Whipping Post

Archbishop Burke feels uppity nuns of the LCWR are not sufficiently obedient and respectful when it comes to the fallible political opinions of bishops and some of those nuns should cease to call themselves Catholic.


Vatican Official Slams 'Obstinate Betrayal' of Nuns, Cath. Health Assoc.
By Kathleen Gilbert MUNDELEIN, Illinois, April 12, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) -

Catholic consecrated religious who openly dissent from the authority of Rome and the church's teaching on life are "an absurdity of the most tragic kind" and should cease identifying themselves as Catholic, said Archbishop Raymond Burke, the head of Rome's Apostolic Signatura.

Burke gave the remarks in his keynote address Friday at the Institute for Religious Life’s national meeting at Mundelein Seminary in Illinois. The Institute also honored Burke with their Pro Fidelitate et Virtute Award at a celebration of the legacy of Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, SJ.

In excerpts of the address published by Thomas Peters of the American Papist blog, Burke took a moment to express his exasperation with the defiance of Catholic religious sisters in the U.S. who supported the federal health care bill - a measure dubbed the most pro-abortion piece of legislation since Roe v. Wade, thanks to its vast expansion of government abortion funding.

"Who could imagine that consecrated religious would openly, and in defiance of the bishops as successors of the apostles, publicly endorse legislation containing provisions which violated the natural moral law in its most fundamental tenets – the safeguarding and promoting of innocence and defenseless life, and fail to safeguard the demands of the free exercise of conscience for health care workers?" Burke questioned. (Whoa, is he using the words 'failed to promote and safeguard'? As in children from abusive priests?)

The Vatican official also severely criticized "public and obstinate betrayal of religious life by certain religious" towards Rome's ongoing apostolic visitation into U.S. religious orders.

After the visitation began last spring, Sr. Sandra M. Schneiders of the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary said in remarks published on the National Catholic Reporter that nuns should receive representatives of Rome "politely and kindly, for what they are, uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house."

"Who ever could have imagined that religious congregations of pontifical right, would openly organize to resist and attempt to frustrate an apostolic visitation, that is, a visit to their congregations carried out under the authority of the vicar of Christ on earth, to whom all religious are bound by the strongest bonds of loyalty and obedience?" he asked. (Oh, the Legionaires probably could imagine quite a bit more and did. Are you looking looking for an envelope? Sorry, not until you have a red hat.)

Abp. Burke indicated that the attitude of sisters towards the visitation represents "a growing tendency among certain consecrated religious to view themselves outside and above the body of Christ as a parallel institution looking in upon the Church with an autonomy which contradicts their very nature." (Hmmmm, most interesting choice of phrase. Didn't a certain bishop or two think the same thing about the Legion and Opus Dei?)

"Religious life lived in the heart of the Church, and for that reason religious congregations are, by their very nature, bound in strictest loyalty to the Roman Pontiff," he said. "It is of course an absurdity of the most tragic kind to have consecrated religious knowingly and obstinately acting against the moral law. (The Pope never issued a teaching on the senate health bill or are you expecting consecrated religious to conflate bishops with the Pope?)

"The spiritual harm done to the individual religious who are disobedient and also the grave scandal caused to the faithful and people in general are of incalculable dimensions."

Burke also directly challenged Sr. Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, as well as Network, a pro-abortion lobby group of U.S. nuns, whose support for the bill the Obama administration openly acknowledged as critical to its success.

"Was not the Speaker of the House [Nancy Pelosi] glowing to report that so many religious sisters were in support of her proposed health care plan?" he asked. "Was not a religious sister [Sr. Carol Keehan, President of CHA] one of the recipients of a pen used by the President of the United States to sign the health care plan into law? (Did not Bart Stupak sell you down the river? Give Nancy Pelosi the needed votes? What congregation of nuns does he belong to?)

"Now is the time for us all, and in particular for consecrated persons to stand up for the truth and to call upon our fellow Catholics in leadership to do the same, or to cease identifying themselves as Catholics." (Hear, hear. Let's start with Cardinal Bertone. He's not telling the truth and he's in leadership, and he calls himself Catholic. And then there's Rode and Sodano and.........Burke?)


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If this isn't enough to make you shake your head and weep, try this one. I don't even know what to write. I am like so not believing any of this. I've had seriously psychotic clients that have had a better over all grasp on reality.

31 comments:

  1. Burke is an ecclesiastical bully. That was very evident in how he treated the parishioners and priest at St. Stanislaus when he was Archbishop of St. Louis. I don't suppose Burke has any help to offer the uninsured in this country apart from telling them that they aren't as important as a fetus, and concern for life ends at birth.

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  2. Yes, I just love hearing how it's my duty to die uninsured to prevent a woman from POSSIBLY using my tax dollars to fund an abortion. Then on the other hand I get to fund ACTUAL organized murder with my tax dollars under the guise of two patriotic wars and hear nothing about that from Burke and the other bully bishops.

    This is all just too crazy.

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  3. Too true. I really think Burke and Brandt (to say nothing of Benedict, Bertone and Sodano, to name a few) are inhabiting an alternative reality.

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  4. Psychosis is when it's just one person. Folie a Bunch (new diagnostic category!) is what we have here!

    Yes, one psychotic individual you can cope with. But bunches of them???

    Truly, we are all going to go round the bend. Or the Vatican/hierarchy will HAVE TO BEND!

    That photo! I must use it for my coming blog! It is so OVER THE TOP! These fools are set for a fall!

    Verifying word: "createb"... I think it means... God says, "Time for Plan B!"

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  5. "Catholic consecrated religious who openly dissent from the authority of Rome and the church's teaching on life are "an absurdity of the most tragic kind" and should cease identifying themselves as Catholic, said Archbishop Raymond Burke, the head of Rome's Apostolic Signatura."

    ## Unlike Vatican officials, Bishops & Cardinals & Popes, who deny or delay justice to the weakest members of the Church, or molest them, or cover up the crimes of the molesters, who are heroes of the Catholic Faith, battling valiantly against the hordes of Jews, homosexuals, secularists, relativists & other apocalyptic beasts, all of whom are solely & entirely to blame for the hatred in which the Church is held.

    The sight of the defenders of the Pope defending Cardinal Bertone's words, when Rome has disowned them, would be comic in any other circumstances.

    I no longer wonder at the contempt many atheists have for Catholicism - in fact, I'm beginning to agree with them; there are often far more Christian in their values than the CC.

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  6. Colleen,

    Add these in too:

    Abortion is bad. Unless a priest gets a woman (could be a nun!) pregnant. Then it's ok.

    Abortion is bad. Because a child could be a priest's next victim! Especially the "unwanted child" - who might be the very "easy victim" (in need of attention) that a priest could entice.

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  7. "The Vatican official also severely criticized "public and obstinate betrayal of religious life by certain religious" towards Rome's ongoing apostolic visitation into U.S. religious orders."

    ## No doubt that criticism included Cardinal Rode, also a religious. Unlike the cash-strapped (because poor) Cardinal R., I, being a layman, could not begin to afford that lovely frou-frou. 15 yards of watered red silk train ? When did St. Francis of Assisi, or the Apostles, ever have that :) ?

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  8. The Bish says:

    time for all consecrated persons to stand up for the truth

    Now.. that I agree with! We are all, by virtue of our Baptism, consecrated persons. And absolutely, we should all stand up for the truth! Which is what the nuns are doing! And what we are doing!

    The hierarchy, on the other hand, is standing up for the pope. Despite their delusion that he is infallible (and they've stretched that to mean anything they doctrinally endorse...), apparently the truth has left them!

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  9. Rat-biter you are on a roll: "who are heroes of the Catholic Faith, battling valiantly against the hordes of Jews, homosexuals, secularists, relativists & other apocalyptic beasts, all of whom are solely & entirely to blame for the hatred in which the Church is held."

    And by gosh they dress like super heroes too.

    TheraP, I am honestly trying to figure out how a priest could seriusly tell a psychiatrist that he didn't use a condom because it was against church law, but then somehow justified participating in sex and the subsequent abortion. It must be OK because he wasn't gay--or something.

    The irony of pedophiles preying on poor kids who weren't aborted is too much for brain to handle. Seriously.

    I'm still trying to figure out why is is un Catholic for consecrated religious to disagree with the fallible political opinion of a pack of bishops. I can't find it in the catechism.

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  10. I've only just read the caption and can say..... they have really gone totally nuts and this is utter hysteria from a bunch of dirty old cranky babies in the Vatican! Whine, whine, whine is all we hear from them! These are not credible leaders, they are credible nut jobs!!

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  11. Rat-biter:

    I will consider dedicating my next post to you. And your phrase: "lovely frou-frou." I'll see if I can't work that in somehow...

    I agree with Colleen: You are on a roll! (then again... I think many of us are!)

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  12. Yes, apparently, we must bow down and agree with everything these darkened souls mandate, let their apocalyptic horses loose to destroy the world and any sanity in it!! We must be obedient to their culture of death and not say a word when they are abusive and clearly deranged. We must die uninsured and forget we have a brain or a soul or a spirit or a conscience united to Christ.

    We must forget about all of that and help these men carry their long red silk to their gilded thrones and pay them for their mansions and fancy dresses, and not say anything regarding the Truth.

    No, no, we must not speak. We must not call ourselves Catholics anymore. We must just let them walk all over us and treat us like scum.

    No, no, we must not be civic minded and care for our fellow neighbors in need. We must only care about fetuses. We must not care about anything else or we should not call ourselves Catholics, even though we are baptized Catholics.

    I am ashamed to call myself a Catholic. I am more than that. So is anyone who has any integrity or intelligence much more than how these yellow ducks quacking about in the Vatican believe a Catholic ought to be. Their very definition of Catholic needs to be redefined. They are all out of whack.... quack, quack, quack go the yellow ducks in the Vatican. Quacks of the faith they are.

    word is unemodi

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  13. Mr. Burke needs to be reminded that the opening words of the Motet, 'Ecce Sacerdos Magnus', can just as easily be translated as:

    'Behold! A fat priest!".

    :D

    The incredible spiritual blindness Bully Burke exhibits in his words are shocking only to those who have not been completely brainwashed by 'Churchspeak' from various conservative/orthodox source.

    ...and for delighting in 'frou-frous' & random ludicrous & expensive trapping of his self-exaltation, I almost referred to him as Billy Burke.....whom you would remember as Glinda the Good Witch from the Wizard of OZ. She also was the widow of Florenz Ziegfeld.

    Burke the Grand Inquisitor sees his excess dress as emphasizing the status of his office. But ppl who intentionally wear the ostentatious and archaic to (over) state their power, are trying to prove something. To themselves.

    One starts to wonder what is in his 'closet' (of whatever kind...) which impels him to such grandstanding.

    Colleen - you & others have pointed out the obvious incoherence & dupicity in what Burke says. The most obvious being his lack of concern for LIVING innocent children. Among other things, I do not see his Curial cronies stepping up to the plate to materially support women in crisis pregnancy.....which is the MAIN REASON most women even consider abortion.

    The other glaring injustice is his taste for the most elaborate in episcopal frou-frous.

    Seemingly it has not crossed his mind that in every city of the world, hungry children scour garbage dumps for food. Or oftne go hungry. Because a selfish prelate wants to spend vast sums on his comfort & couture.

    Burke needs to re-read the Parable of Lazarus & the Rich Man....and comprehend it while God still allows him breath.

    Anon Y. Mouse

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  14. Anon Y Mouse - I was just going to say something about the clothes these four in the picture are wearing. I wonder what it cost for each outfit? And, as you say, there are children in garbage dumps looking for food and these awful men dressing up for a Ball in pious poses that fool no one but the blind.

    There are layers and layers of material they are wearing that are probably all custom made, by slave labor most likely. And look behind these four and there are so many candlesticks and probably made of gold. And we are too materialistic?

    It's sick. So very sick!!

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  15. butterfly... wait for my next post... Probably noon on Friday - in honor of the crucifixion. And all the starving children or perhaps child laborers (!) enabling popes and prelates to parade and pose!

    You too have outdone yourself in today's comments!

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  16. butterfly... I got the day wrong. It will be Thursday - high noon!

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  17. This guy is a space traveler from the 1950's. You can see by his clothes he rejects or never experienced Vatican II. He speaks with those only like himself.
    He is a living workshop on how the rape of children came about and how the current church functions behind closed doors, out of the light of day.
    Thanks for the women who don't accept this and the folks in St. Louis who got him kicked upstairs.

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  18. So I'm not American and I don't make any claim of understanding the intricacies of American politics and legislation.

    Burke is wrong about the facts and more to the point he is a sore loser. That's not me speaking. It is the considered analysis of George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H. writing in the New England Journal of Medicine on 7 April 2010.

    http://healthcarereform.nejm.org/?p=3286

    "The Real Pro-Life Stance"

    "There is no politics like abortion politics, and there are political winners and losers in the abortion-funding sideshow. President Obama is the big winner: he got a bill passed when passage seemed impossible, and he remained constant in his pledge that under his plan, “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” Stupak’s political future will be decided in this fall’s election,3 but in the eyes of many, including me, he has gained stature by agreeing to support health care reform without his amendment. Political losers include Pitts and the fundamentalist Christian political leadership group known as the Family or the Fellowship, as well as the Catholic bishops, all of whom insisted that health care reform should not be passed without the inclusion of the Stupak–Pitts amendment.

    Perhaps the most conspicuous winners are the Catholic Health Association of the United States and the Catholic women’s religious orders, whose members deliver health care in 1200 facilities and organizations nationwide.4 In mid-March, shortly before the final vote, both groups came out very strongly in favor of the Senate bill without the Stupak–Pitts amendment; the nuns noted that the bill “will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It will uphold longstanding conscience protections, and it will make historic new investments . . . in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it.”5 Amen."

    p2p

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  19. p2p I don't know that anyone understands the intricacies of American politics anymore except FOX news and Sarah Palin who is making good bank off both.

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  20. I'll come back in the fold when the Sisters are running the show. The whole show. I don't see the guys in the pointy hats down in the trenches helping to alleviate suffering. Pure dressed up right wing politics.

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  21. There's an ex-LC priest down in Texas who has an electronic parish, or web presence anyway.

    He's virulently opposed to abortion. No surprise. He also has a picture of Ronald Reagan featured prominently on his website. On the one hand I think he has the freedom of speech but on the other hand I think it shows very poor judgment to feature politics on his parish website. I made a comment, that he did not publish or respond to, about the irony of featuring Reagan.

    It was Reagan who signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act into law as Governor of California in 1967. Why is he treated so differently from Obama?

    Well that's not the whole story. I also made a snide remark about his affiliation with the LC and an article he'd written. I said the ordinary LC/RC were either willing dupes or dopes. Which was he?

    p2p

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  22. The Bishops are all acting up now to deflect attention away from the sexual abuse of children that they LET HAPPEN over and over and over again for so many decades.

    They just want to change the subject. They don't want to address the real issues.

    They live in their own world and they have their own agenda.

    The thought crossed my mind, that if the Bishops were to ever demonstrate any grace at all they would invite the Sisters to a delicious dinner and wash their feet.

    Silly me for thinking the impossible for fake representatives of Christ, the Quacks like Burke, Brandt, Bertone, Benedict, Sodano!

    Fakes!

    False!

    Pretenders!

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  23. I'm with you on that one coolmom. None of my dinero goes directly to any diocesan campaign. It's all direct to individual causes or groups.

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  24. I'm with you. All my money goes to the Sisters from here on.

    p2p

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  25. Butterfly -

    Agreed about the horrid & usually uncomprehended by the laity cost of vestments & over gilded accessories.

    Colleen - perhaps an appropriate photo montage would be this picture of Burke & entrouage in mufti....and a picture of a Poor Box in a church (empty)....and a picture of a homeless child.

    http://www.exquisitevestments.com/

    http://www.gaspardinc.com/

    A fiddle-back Chasuable can run about $1400; mitres for around $500. And this is not counting, cassock, cincture, stole, alb, etc.
    And I only looked up stock items. Most of what Burke wears is likely custom tailored.

    What he is wearing - not counting the members of the entourage - could total around $5000.

    ...and then there are the proverbial gold candlesticks.

    Meawhile, Jesus - in the person of the starving Lazarus - would love to eat of the crumbs which falls from Burke's well laden table.

    Anon Y. Mouse

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  26. Thanks for the link Anon. I really loved how one of the very first things that comes up on your link on eclesiastical wardrobes is options for financing.

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  27. I'm bowled over by Archbishop Burke's conclusion: "Now is the time for us all, and in particular for consecrated persons to stand up for the truth and to call upon our fellow Catholics in leadership to do the same, or to cease identifying themselves as Catholics."

    This after he has just reminded us of the high apostolic status of his office.

    Yes, I recall it clearly: Jesus did tell his apostles to drive the sheep off as quickly as possible. Tell them to walk away.

    Not.

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  28. Now Burke is followed by Tobin and Brandt. Which means Chaput and Morlino can't be far behind and then there will also be the obligatory onslaught from Latin America.

    Opus Dei must be feeling the heat and calling on their shills. What with the Legion fiasco and all.

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  29. This is off-topic, but the photo Colleen chose to go with this thread has a SERIOUS amount of Catholic bling in it.

    I identify as a conservative Catholic, and that much bling is too much even for me.

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  30. I thank God every day that this preference for bling is as limited as it is amongst our clergy. I have to keep reminding myself it's not the norm it's the exception and that this is a Benedict papacy phenomenon.

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  31. Very interesting comments here. I liked the one about the bishops washing the feet of the Sisters. Could you see Archbishop Burke doing this? That would surely be the day. Yes, Burke is surely a bully. I am Polish and what he did to the people of St. Stanislaus is an outrage. But within one year after Father Bozek arrived the size of the parish doubled. And since the church building belonged to the people and they wouldn't hand the deed over to Burke, he could not close the church. He still must be smarting over that.

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