Irish Bishops praying for the Holy Spirit to execute Vatican demands for the renewal of the Irish laity.
The Irish Bishops have been in Rome to consult with the Vatican concerning the devastation multiple government investigations into clerical child abuse have had on Irish Catholicism. As far as any answer which might have had some credibility, the Irish Bishops might just as well have gone to Pluto. The Bishops are towing the Vatican line and calling for the renewal of the laity, not the reform of the clergy.
In Wake of Scandal, Irish Bishops Call For Renewal
CNA/EWTN - 10/23/2010 - Rome, Italy
The Irish bishops have announced plans for a year of prayer for renewal in the light of clergy sexual abuse scandals that have roiled the Church.
Using Pope Benedict XVI's guidance as the core of the initiative, the bishops hope to promote healing within the Church through reconciliation, adoration and Scripture reading. (What ever happened to reforming the clergy?)
At the conclusion of their annual meeting Oct. 19, the bishops indicated that their program would be based on suggestions made by Pope Benedict XVI in the pastoral letter he sent to Ireland’s Catholics in March.
Beginning with the first Sunday of Advent, Nov. 28, the Irish Church will begin a year of prayer, penance, and spiritual renewal.
In his March 19 letter, the Pope had invited Irish Catholics to devote their ordinary Friday penances to the intention of healing and “the long-term process of restoration.” He also encouraged them to fast, pray, read the Scriptures, and works of mercy "to obtain the grace of healing and renewal for the Church in Ireland."
He also encouraged them to go to confession more often and to spend more time in prayer before the Eucharist. (Maybe Benedict has gotten confused about this whole abuse issue, he seems to think it was about Irish laity and their children raping priests. Why else could he ask for conversion of the laity and leave out reformation of clergy?)
The bishops said they will put these suggestions into action, recognizing the need for "profound renewal." They proposed that the "first step" in the process to be the observance of the Year of St. Matthew.
The renewal will follow the Church’s liturgical reading of the Gospel of Matthew in the Sunday Mass celebrations. This, the bishops explained, will be "an opportunity for all to avail of Scripture-based prayer to guide the renewal of the Church in Ireland at this time." In addition, the bishops will encourage Catholics to participate in Eucharistic adoration, confession and Friday penance. They will also pray the special prayer for the Church of Ireland included at the end of the Pope’s March letter. (And make no institutional changes at all?)
In a statement, the bishops said they welcomed the upcoming Vatican investigation of certain dioceses as well as seminaries and religious congregations in the country. They hoped that it "will assist in purifying and healing the Church in Ireland and will help to restore the trust and hope of the faithful in our country." (In the country? What about restoring trust and hope in the Church and it's clergy?)
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How do these men think they have anything to say to a post modern society like the Irish, when they refuse to comply with the minimal ethical standards of what the Vatican terms 'secular relativism'? Minimal standards like accountability, transparency, and an attempt at some kind of integrity. Asking your victims to renew their commitment to the unreformed institutional structure which victimized them is a very good definition of insanity. Or abuse. Or rubbing salt in wounds, or whatever.
This is not just a request for the laity to return to Catholic sacramentality as a cure for what ails the clergy, but it's a request to return to a 1950's sacramental theology which was all about the transcendent magic of the clerical caste and it's sacramental system. This particular call for 'renewal' is truly an insult to thinking Irish Catholics. Essentially it's a call to renew the very lay thinking and attitudes which enabled the massive abuse numbers and the decades long cover up. It is not going to appeal to the large majority of Irish Catholics who have been legitimately offended and scandalized by the actions of the hierarchy.
I keep wondering why it is so difficult for these men to admit the system is rotten and abusive. I can see why men like Raymond Burke refuse to see it. It's taken him to the heights of his wildest personal fantasies, but there are others like Cardinal Schonborn and Archbishop Martin who see the truth. And yet Benedict suggests they shut up, and they do. Where is their integrity and what are they so afraid of? Do they have nightmares about the demise of JPI and Oscar Romero? Makes me wonder who is really calling the shots in the Vatican. It sure doesn't seem like who ever it is has any connection with Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit. It doesn't seem like they give a damn about how many Catholics in the Western world leave, or why they do so. It doesn't seem that anything other than money and access to power really matters. (See Legionaries white wash.)
Given the apparent real agenda, money and power, I guess it's not surprising that the Vatican is insisting laity pray for their own renewal in the system which generated all the Vatican wealth and power. When I look at current trends though, I can see a scenario in which it all comes tumbling down. When it does it won't be pretty. It won't be the lapsed Catholics, or the dissident Catholics, or the Recovering Catholics, or the Episcopalian Catholics whose faith is utterly devastated. It will be the spiritually infantilized 'true Catholics' Benedict thinks of as 'the simple people'.
The truth is that the Vatican knows they have lost the vast majority of the West. They also know that unless there are radical changes in how the faith is formulated and presented, changes which directly impact how power and authority in the church is conceptualized and expressed, they can not recover the post modern Western mind. Instead they have turned their eyes to the South, where the fields appear greener. They have not however, allowed for anything like equal power sharing with their non European clerical brothers. Given the make up of Benedict's College of Cardinals, any real power sharing is not likely to happen in the near future. Roman Catholicism will continue to be dominated by the wealth and political power of white conservative westerners well into the later stages of this century.
And now for a jump shift.....My predictions only count if the Vatican survives in it's current manifestation and there are reasons to think a lot of our pet theological ideas and institutions won't survive in their current manifestations. In the last two weeks there has been more mainstream media UFO coverage than ever before. The linked website explores the idea of exopolitics and credible UFO sitings. That's a notion which calls for dealing with a much greater reality. For what it's worth, I can verify from a personal conversation with a Malmstrom AFB Intelligence Officer that UFO's have made that particular SAC base and it's missile command centers a frequent stop, and that the shut down of the two missile command centers in 1967 really did occur. It has also happened in the Soviet Union. I personally have seen the kind of flying lights mentioned in some of the articles. That's not surprising since the family ranch is right in the middle of two missile flights.
We have been kept in the dark and lied to about this phenomenon since the late forties. My guess is there are people in the Vatican who are well aware of the truth of this interaction and have been in the knowledge loop from the very beginning. That's why we are now getting articles like this one.
What I can't figure out is why the authority of these Irish bishops is so lacking in their own country that they have to go to the pope to get a prescription for needed healing. And why on Earth they can't be bothered to at least get a second opinion. This would be a demonstration of true pastoral care IMHO.
ReplyDeleteThis is little more than a demonstration of the obedience to the pope that they expect the Irish laity to show them.
Oh, and I came across another article. Apparently the pope thinks good Christian women are nothing more than sweetness and light. The idea that women [and by extension the laity as a whole] might have to stand up for themselves against those who would abuse them seems to have never entered his thoughts.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1004414.htm
Veronica
Veronica, I loved this line of Benedict's from your linked article:
ReplyDelete"In fact, the great Christian tradition recognizes that women have their own dignity and -- following the example of Mary, queen of the Apostles -- their own place in the church, which without involving ordained priesthood, is just as importance for the spiritual growth of the church," he said.
I love the emphasis on spiritual growth. Apparently women's own dignity has nothing to do with the reality in which they have to so kindly and generously raise their families.
Maybe Benedict is attempting to deal with this reality: losing Catholic women means far fewer priests because it is mothers who provide the impetus for their sons vocations to the priesthood.
It is true however, that women seem to have a much greater facility for connecting to the spiritual universe. It's also true they aren't listened to by the men who rule the earthly church.
That's why I've found it very fascinating that really connected Native men almost always have a female sit be side. Her task is to protect him when he is cavorting in the spiritual realms as she has the aptitude in those realms.
It's the mark of a dysfunctional family that the children always have to reform. Be good, be quiet, do homework and chores, don't complain. No one says a word that if might help if Daddy stopped drinking.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's the main symptom of insanity: to take the same action, again and again, and expect a different result.
The situation in the Irish church has gone beyond dysfunctional to flat-out crazy.
Lest we forget the Irish Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse:
ReplyDelete"The Commission's report said testimony had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential, that some religious officials encouraged ritual beatings and consistently shielded their orders amid a "culture of self-serving secrecy", and that government inspectors failed to stop the abuses.[2]
Among the more extreme allegations of abuse were beatings and rapes, subjection to naked beatings in public, being forced into oral sex and even subjection to beatings after failed rape attempts by brothers.[3] The abuse has been described by some as Ireland's Holocaust.[4][5] The abuse was said to be "endemic" in the institutions that dealt with boys.[6] The UK based Guardian newspaper, described the abuse as "the stuff of nightmares", citing the adjectives used in the report as being particularly chilling: "systemic, pervasive, chronic, excessive, arbitrary, endemic".[7]
The Report's conclusions section (Chapter 6) supports the overall tenor of the accusations without exception.[8] However, the Commission's recommendations were restricted in scope by two rules imposed by the Irish government, and therefore do not include calls for the prosecution or sanction of any of the parties involved.[9]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_to_Inquire_into_Child_Abuse
p2p
About the UFO's - Yes, there have been many reports for years and a few airports in China have shut down for hours at a time when pilots and others saw UFOs in the last several months in the area. Wish I had the links still to the videos that were taken in the daytime.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that the other night I had a dream and in the dream I was with a group of people and walking to my car and I looked up in the sky and there was a huge UFO. There was another one hovering not too far away. That's not the only strange thing about this dream though: all of us walking to our cars were led to an area, like a T in the path and one had to choose which way to go - down a chute or sliding board to who knows where or towards either of the UFOs. That dream woke me right up!! It really felt real... Here is a video from PA that was taken a few nights ago.... the same night as the dream.... The link is from the link you provided Colleen. Just a little synchronisity here with my dream and the video being on the same night.... that to me is startling.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmqmQTpUesU&feature=player_embedded#!
Toronto's Archbishop Tom Collins is one of the four appointed by the Pope to inquire into the Irish Child abuse.
ReplyDeleteToronto's reputation as a tolerant and decent place to live began in the 1840's when the Protestants here accepted so tens of thousands of Irish Catholic refugees from the famine.
Back in Ireland, and even here in Canada, Irish Catholics continue to hold grudges against the Protestant ministers who would open soup kitchens and feed the starving on the condition that they convert. We haven't forgotten. What makes the Vatican think that a race famous for holding grudges and being belligerent will react differently this time?
I'm one of them. It will be more than 150 years before this current RC clerical abuse is forgotten, if ever.
Collins had better consider we're still bitter about the 1840's choice about "taking soup".
p2p
Irish mothers and grandmothers will not let their children forget.
I'm curious, colkoch. You said:
ReplyDeletequote
Maybe Benedict is attempting to deal with this reality: losing Catholic women means far fewer priests because it is mothers who provide the impetus for their sons vocations to the priesthood.
unquote
Certainly I've heard the priests say this; and the hierarchy uses it to show that women really do have power in the Church [the hand that rocks the cradle and all that] despite having no direct authority in the system. Somehow I'm thinking that not the sense in which you meant it. So what's your meaning?
Veronica
Veronica, that is the way I meant it. No alternative meaning. Actually if you think about it, it does make sense. A priest son isn't going to become a priest because he followed in his dad's footsteps.
ReplyDeleteInteresting synchronicity butterfly. The reported UFO sightings have gone off the charts this month. Sceptics say it's all secret military stuff. Right.
ReplyDeleteP2p, I agree with you that the Irish are not going to 'convert' their memory banks about this betrayal by the Church. These priests and bishops truly did bite the hand off that fed them.
ReplyDeleteThe Irish never forget!
ReplyDeleteMy mother told me that when she was a child, her dad would go on rants about Oliver Cromwell. Oliver Cromwell was the source of all evil. Hearing these rants, she came to think that Oliver Cromwell must still be alive. Or, if dead, he must have died very recently.
The Irish have a very long collective memory...
ReplyDeleteWestern Canada breathed a collective sigh of reief when Thomas Collins was "promoted" to Toronto. Aside from being the requisite restorationist and consumate "yes man", his time in the west was marked by the arrogant triumphalism he displayed towards other denominations, his divisive leadership style, misogyny, and a deep dislike of the laity - in particular, educated laity who didn't know their place.
Any "inquiry" Collins is involved in will be more akin to the Inquisition than genuine pastoral work. He has no interest (or aptitude) in working towards a healing process with the Irish; he's a solid careerist working for a red hat.
I'm sorry for the Irish - it's more of the same from Rome. On the other hand, Rome ain't gonna know what hits them when the Church in Ireland finishes imploding.
The correspondent who talked about soup kitchens should consult the research of Fr Liam Swords, who showed that proselytization was a very minor phenomenon, of which both Catholics and Protestants were guilty, and that generally the Protestants did stalwart and disinterested relief work.
ReplyDelete