Is The Vatican Spinning Illusions Of Truth?

The first illusive attempt:

"I can understand abortion": Montreal cardinal
This is taken from the Cathnews website

In an interview with a local newspaper, Montreal, Canada, Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte has said that while he is against abortion "I can understand that in certain cases, there is almost no other choice than to practice it."

Lifesite News reports that Le Devoir newspaper published a story based on an interview with Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte of Montreal, during which the Cardinal contradicted the teachings of Catholic Church on abortion and condoms. (Nuanced, rather than contradicted, might be a better way to think about his statements.)

"Personally, I am against murder," Cardinal Turcotte was quoted as saying, "but can understand that sometimes, when someone is being attacked, they need to kill someone in self-defense. I am against abortion, but I can understand that in certain cases, there is almost no other choice than to practice it." (His use of the word 'almost' is what makes this view nuanced rather than contradictory. In the original Lifesite translation they omitted the word 'almost'. They have since corrected this interesting omission.)

Cardinal Turcotte made the comments in the context of addressing the announcement of the excommunication of those involved in the abortion of the twins of a nine year old Brazilian girl. He called the move by Brazilian Archbishop Cardoso of Recife, who had announced the excommunication, a "clumsy move."

During the interview, Cardinal Turcotte also addressed the controversy over Pope Benedict's remark against condoms during his recent trip to Africa. According to Cardinal Turcotte, it would be "ridiculous" to suggest that Pope Benedict said condoms should not be used. (True, Benedict did not say condoms should not be used. He's also never said they should be used.)

"Essentially, the pope said that it took two things to fight this disease, the means, but also a change of mentality. He pronounced this sentence to show that condoms were not in and of themselves the perfect solution; we took his words out of context and all this was largely amplified," said Cardinal Turcotte. (Here's the actual sentence: "The problem cannot be overcome with the distribution of condoms. This only aggravates the problem," What Benedict said is they 'aggravate' the problem. Nothing taken out of context here.)

"As if the pope had said that condoms should not be used. This is ridiculous! When someone has AIDS, it is his or her responsibility to protect the people with whom he or she has intercourse." (Except Benedict has never ever said anything like this.)

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Now here's the latest Vatican take on Pope Benedict's condom statement and what he really meant:

VATICAN CITY (AP)--April 19, 2009

— Critics of the Catholic Church's social teachings are trying to intimidate Pope Benedict XVI into silence, the Vatican charged Friday in responding to attacks on the pontiff's remarks about AIDS and condom use. (I admit I burst out laughing at this sentence. Seems to me that's Benedict's favorite club--intimidating and then silencing the opposition. Karma Karma Karma....)

In a strongly worded statement, the Vatican defended the pope's view that condoms aren't the answer to Africa's AIDS epidemic and could make it worse. On his way to Africa last month, he said the best strategy is the church's effort to promote sexual responsibility through abstinence and monogamy.

France, Germany, the United Nations' AIDS-fighting agency and the British medical journal The Lancet called the remarks irresponsible and dangerous. The Belgian parliament passed a resolution calling them "unacceptable" and demanded Belgium's government officially protest.
Belgium's ambassador to the Holy See lodged the formal protest Wednesday, prompting the Vatican Secretariat to issue its tough statement denouncing the Belgian vote.

The Vatican deplored "the fact that a parliamentary assembly should have thought it appropriate to criticize the Holy Father on the basis of an isolated extract from an interview, separated from its context." (I think the operative here is that a parliamentary assembly dared to criticize the Holy Father. The Holy Father, of course, has dared to criticize any number of Parliaments and secular governments on sexual issues. Karma Karma Karma.)

It said Benedict's remarks to reporters had been "used by some groups with a clear intent to intimidate, as if to dissuade the pope from expressing himself on certain themes of obvious moral relevance and from teaching the church's doctrine." (Maybe it isn't Karma, maybe it's just plain old psychological projection, or even Shakespearean insight, as in 'me thinks he doth protest to loud.')

The Vatican said the criticism of the pontiff was followed by an "unprecedented media campaign" in Europe extolling the value of condoms in fighting AIDS while ignoring Benedict's message about the need for responsible sexuality and to care for those suffering from AIDS.

The statement was the latest sign of the Vatican's increasing defensiveness and frustration as it tries to get Benedict's message out. It follows a maelstrom of criticism — including from within the church itself — after the pope lifted the excommunication of a bishop who denied the Holocaust.

Vatican officials said they acted so forcefully this time because the Belgian criticism required a formal, diplomatic response.

"The Vatican is responding to this protest in a measured and balanced way, but also firmly and clearly," said a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. "We are making it clear that the pope and the church won't be intimidated by these criticisms or by media campaigns and will continue to staunchly support Catholic positions on moral issues." (So is Notre Dame making it clear they 'won't be intimidated by these criticisms or by media campaigns' as they staunchly support the need for dialogue on Catholic positions in a secular society.)

The Belgian resolution, which passed April 2, said Benedict's comments ran against numerous international declarations and actions taken by the U.N. and groups fighting AIDS and other transmittable diseases. It called the remarks "unacceptable" and said the Belgian government didn't share them.

The Rev. John Wauck, professor of literature at the Pontifical Santa Croce University in Rome, said the Vatican's response was diplomatically appropriate and was actually restrained in that it didn't highlight the enormous work that the Catholic Church undertakes in caring for AIDS sufferers.

"Sending a package of prophylactics signifies a lot less in terms of self-giving in comparison to someone who has left their country and dedicates their lives to caring for people sick with AIDS," Wauck said. (This is a cheap shot. The Catholic church isn't the only NGO whose people sacrifice in order to deal directly with AIDS patients.)

He noted much of the criticism came not from Africa but from the West. Africans "weren't up in arms about what the pope was saying. The people who were up in arms are in Brussels," he said.

(This is not precisely true. There was opposition in Africa to Benedict's statement.)

The Roman Catholic Church opposes the use of condoms as part of its overall teaching against contraception. It advocates sexual abstinence and sexual faithfulness between husband and wife as the best ways to combat the spread of HIV. (I think it's important to note, that the condom ban has nothing to do with HIV prevention, and everything to do with contraception. In this case obedience to the contraception ban trumps the prevention of HIV transmission. The problem is not everyone in Africa the church works with is Catholic, nor are they married, nor are they monogamous, nor do they give women the right to say no in any marital situation.)

While some churchmen have said condoms are a "lesser evil" in combatting the spread of AIDS, others say condoms can increase the scourge by providing a false sense of security.
The Vatican said it was consoled that Africans and some members of the scientific community had appreciated the pontiff's remarks.

The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, ran an article Friday summarizing reports in mainstream Western newspapers quoting experts who have questioned the efficacy of condoms alone in fighting AIDS. (I do not know of any NGO who has ever said condoms alone would solve the problem. The message has always been a both/and strategy, and that's been true from the very beginning when Institutional Catholicism didn't give a rat's ass about AIDS because it was the 'gay' disease and a scourge from God. It was the religious women affiliated with LCWR that cared about this issue long before their official clerical brethren did.)

Wauck cited those reports in saying the criticism of the pope was scientifically uninformed.
"I don't think it necessarily comes from hostility, but what you got was very instinctive reactions based on presuppositions that turn out not to be the case," he said. (This is another out right lie. The science supports the use of condoms as preventive in all kinds of other places, including parts of Africa.)

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Pope Benedict made a mistake in his comments on AIDS and condoms. He really did. There is no way to spin a mistake into a non mistake. Cardinal Turcotte, who is not anyone's idea of a flaming liberal, is not helping when he states it's ridiculous to say the Pope said condoms should not be used. To my knowledge, Benedict has never said condoms should be used by anyone. He can't and remain absolutely faithful to Humanae Vitae. Cardinal Turcotte seems to want us to believe that silence in this case should be construed as consent.

Can condoms fail? Yes they can. However, the failure rate also implies that for every one who does contract HIV while using a condom, 98 people don't. It's hard to make a case for condoms aggravating the transmission rate of HIV with these statistics. Here's another fact. Abstinence and monogamy if practiced by everyone, would not completely stop the spread of HIV. HIV is spread in a number of other ways besides sexual contact. Here's a question, if latex condoms are porous and don't work, why do Church health workers bother with latex gloves? Could it be because latex does prevent the transmission of HIV?

I sympathize with Cardinal Turcotte because all he's managed to do in trying to spin these two events, the Brazillian nine year old and Benedict's statement, is inflame the traditionalists. The Catholic Church is never going to be able to take a nuanced or reasonably compassionate position on condoms and therapeutic abortion as long as the traditionalists hold sway in the Vatican.

It doesn't matter how many living people die because of these absolute stances, because for a traditionalist, life is secondary to the perceived absolute TRUTH of the doctrine. That's because the next life is far more important than this life. The present matters only in so far as it impacts the perceived future. It's better for people to die of HIV than to commit a sexual sin. It's better for the mother of a nine year old carrying twins, for her child to die, than to participate in the decision to abort her daughter's pregnancy. There's always confession, but what if the mother gets hit by a bus before she can confess. It's better for the mother to risk her child's life than to risk losing her own soul.

Believe me when I say, I've been there when I really and truly thought there was nothing I held in my hands that was more important than my own soul. I'm not there anymore. I was shown very graphically that I hold everyone's souls in my hands and that the only way to bring others (and myself) to union with God is through union with all those others. I also found out that one can't maintain that union while condemning others, or withholding compassion just because I personally found their 'lifestyle' abhorrent.

This is probably why I wound up working for a bail bonds agency. It was there that I finally understood the real way one followed Jesus was by extending a hand of compassion and reconciliation because it was this attitude which fostered personal conversion. Jesus is all about fostering personal conversion. Conversion can't be coerced or enforced, it can only be fostered because it's about healing the entire person. Jesus's individual acts of physical healing were always accompanied by personal conversion. Both the healing and the personal conversion were simultaneous acts of restoring a person to wholeness.

Somewhere in it's long history Catholicism has lost this particular TRUTH. We are not called to save souls, we are called to selflessly bring each other to conversion and wholeness. It's in doing this that we save ourselves and recover our souls. It's not about converting people to a particular set of doctrines, morals, and dogmas. It's about helping them to convert or connect to the truth Jesus taught about love, compassion, non judgment, and dieing to one's ego. When that happens people engage in right relationships and all those doctrines and dogmas are unnecessary statements of the obvious. Until that conversion happens those same dogmas and doctrines are far from obvious and no amount of proselytizing is going to make them obvious.

On the other hand, once that conversion happens it becomes equally obvious that some of the doctrines and dogmas are just flat wrong or counter productive, and no amount of proselytizing is going to make them believable. It's here that Pope Benedict seems to get caught in the cross fire and no amount of spin will work. Instead of complaining, he should just walk his talk or admit he might have made a mistake. Letting the Vatican curia and assorted clerics attempt to spin his case just makes it all look like an illusion of truth.

If the real world has no ears to hear the message it could be because Pope Benedict has no eyes in which to view the real world, as his are too focused on the future world. It may be that this is where the real communication failure is occuring and if so, spinning like a top won't help.

A Catholic Sojourner And The LCWR Investigation

The real Sojourner investigating a two toned boulder on Mars. This Sojourner can't go home again either.

The following is from the keynote speech given by Sister Laurie Brink (Sinsinawa Dominican) at the 2007 LCWR annual assembly in Kansas City. This excerpt deals with the third of four options which Sister Brink saw as directions taken by LCWR member congregations with regards to their present and future. You can read more of the speech here.

These four directions were: 1. Death with Dignity and Grace 2. Acquiescence to Others’ Expectations 3. Sojourning in a New Land not yet Known and 4.Reconciliation for the Sake of the Mission.

Of these four directions, it would most certainly be number three, "Sojourning in a new land not yet known" which would have caused concern to the CDF. The following is Sister Brink's definition of a sojourning congregation.

The dynamic option for Religious Life, which I am calling, Sojourning, is much more difficult to discuss, since it involves moving beyond the Church, even beyond Jesus. A sojourning congregation is no longer ecclesiastical. It has grown beyond the bounds of institutional religion. Its search for the Holy may have begun rooted in Jesus as the Christ, but deep reflection, study and prayer have opened it up to the spirit of the Holy in all of creation. Religious titles, institutional limitations, ecclesiastical authorities no longer fit this congregation, which in most respects is Post-Christian. (I'm not sure I agree with the notion Post-Christian. In as much as I see a great deal of myself in this description, I prefer the term Trans-Catholic.)

When religious communities embraced the spirit of renewal in the 1970s, they took seriously that the world was no longer the enemy, that a sense of ecumenism required encountering the holy “other,” and that the God of Jesus might well be the God of Moses and the God of Mohammed. The works of Thomas Merton encouraged an exploration of the nexus between Eastern and Western religious practices. The emergence of the women’s movement with is concomitant critique of religion invited women everywhere to use a hermeneutical lens of suspicion when reading the androcentric Scriptures and the texts of the Tradition. With a new lens, women also began to see the divine within nature, the value and importance of the cosmos, and that the emerging new cosmology encouraged their spirituality and fed their souls. (In my own journey, understanding the new cosmology of macro and micro quantum physics forced me to re think my understanding of Catholicism and Jesus. It's a process I'm still working at.)

As one sister described it, “I was rooted in the story of Jesus, and it remains at my core, but I’ve also moved beyond Jesus.” The Jesus narrative is not the only or the most important narrative for these women. They still hold up and reverence the values of the Gospel, but they also recognize that these same values are not solely the property of Christianity. Buddhism, Native American spirituality, Judaism, Islam and others hold similar tenets for right behavior within the community, right relationship with the earth and right relationship with the Divine. With these insights come a shattering or freeing realization—depending on where you stand. Jesus is not the only son of God. Salvation is not limited to Christians. Wisdom is found in the traditions of the Church as well as beyond it. (I have written in the past and will do so again in the future. True spirituality is all about right relationships. Right relationship is also the story of quantum physics.)

Sojourners have left the religious home of their fathers and mothers and are traveling in a foreign land, mapping their way as they go. They are courageous women among us. And very well may provide a glimpse into the new thing that God is bringing about in our midst. Who’s to say that the movement beyond Christ is not, in reality, a movement into the very heart of God? A movement the ecclesiastical system would not recognize. A wholly new way of being holy that is integrative, non-dominating, and inclusive. But a whole new way that is also not Catholic Religious Life. (This notion of sojourners is not just true for some Catholics, it's true for spiritual practitioners of all faiths and traditions. Perhaps this is why so many healers work with other healers from all traditions. Amongst us there is no domination, there is equality, inclusiveness, and integration. As in heaven, so below.)

The Benedictine Women of Madison are the most current example I can name. Their commitment to ecumenism lead them beyond the exclusivity of the Catholic Church into a new inclusivity, where all manner of seeking God is welcomed. They are certainly religious women, but they are no longer women religious as it is defined by the Roman Catholic Church. They choose as a congregation to step outside the Church in order to step into a greater sense of holiness. Theirs was a choice of integrity, insight and courage.

Like Hagar wandering the wilderness with neither guide nor Israel’s God, the congregations that choose the way of the sojourner may leave the land of religious familiarity, but they will also become a great nation, for women and men are hungering for their leadership, insights and inspiration.

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I am not surprised that the CDF is investigating the LCWR leadership for doctrinal errors. I am not surprised the three areas are women priests, religious inclusivity, and homosexuality. I am not surprised because in the spiritual circles I have been led to by the actions of my own other side mentors, these three areas are viewed entirely differently.

In these circles spiritual leadership is a matter of proven talent and wisdom, not gender, not magical ceremonies. First and foremost you must be able to walk your talk. The idea of excluding women is preposterous precisely because women are recognized as usually the stronger of the two genders in psychic/healing spiritual modalities and therefor have real authentic authority to lead ceremonies. Women have their own priceless wisdom about life, creation and how humanity best fits in the grand scheme of things.

The idea of one spirituality or religion taking precedence over another is seen as insulting not just to living members, but to their ancestors and the inner dimensional spiritual beings who work with those traditions. All are welcome, and all are honored, from heaven and earth, the living and the dead, the immaterial and the material.

At my core, Christ is the center, but that doesn't insure my salvation, rather it allows me to recognize and value the spiritual centers of others. I sense no rejection of anyone at those levels. All are welcomed, all are loved, and all are honored by Jesus Christ Himself.

Many of us see gays as bridges between other dimensions and the material dimension and this is reflected in the fact gays seem to have that same ability in bridging the gap between genders-- especially as close personal friends. In this context gays are seen as gifts, not evil and not disordered. They are welcomed, they are loved, and they are honored--and so are their partners.

In these three areas, American women religious represent a crucial point in Roman Catholicism and it's place in the coming future. The spiritual future, as opposed to the religious future, of the planet will trend towards inclusiveness, integration, and respect for all of creation. This will be reflected in political and cultural systems and has already started. There will however, be a backlash, as systems which can't adjust to this new reality fight for their life.

This path of inclusiveness, integration, and search for wholeness (holiness) is the only path that can integrate a global society and bring peace and prosperity to all. It's the only path which reflects the reality of those beings who are not of this world and who resonate closest to God. This is the path which Jesus showed and taught and He had a lot of help from inner dimensional beings.

Right relationship on earth is a coherent relationship reflecting the right relationships embodied in heaven. As in heaven so below. But that's true in the opposite direction as well. Lower dimensional levels reflect the wrong relationships embodied on the earth. In other words, as on earth so in hell.

This is precisely the reason the Church teaches Jesus descended into hell before He rose from the dead. He recognized the relationship not just between heaven and earth, but also between earth and hell. He had to, because both relationships are quantum truth. He could not manifest a transcendent form of biological human reality without dealing with the reality of man's relationship to lower levels of reality. We are our brothers keepers in more ways than one.

I've been a sojourner Catholic for a long long time now. I can certainly see where I am no longer considered Catholic by traditionalists, and I don't have a problem with that. I don't think congregations in the LCWR for which the Vatican will find ample evidence to discipline on doctrinal matters, are going to have much of a problem with it either.

For me traditional Catholicism is like Cape Canaveral. The view from the ground was great, as long as I stayed on the ground. But once I got the courage to get on the spiritual rocket and got launched into the heavens, that view and that knowledge changed everything. It's an awe inspiring view and because I'm not alone, I can never run out of fuel. It's a good thing too, because according to the dogma of Cape Canaveral their landing pad is off limits to me. I'm a permanent sojourner, and I suspect a few congregations of the LCWR will find themselves permanent sojourners.

As far as traditional Judaism goes, Jesus was a sojourner as well and He marked out a pretty good trail. This is really not a bad place to be, and the view is beyond description.

The Reiki Ban And The LCWR Investigation Go Hand In Hand

Not to be confused with Catholic nuns using Reiki. Can be confused with Catholic bishops making more bishops.

A couple of weeks ago, when the USCCB came out with their denunciation of Reiki, I wondered why they were bothering with Reiki. It's not like there aren't other more pressing issues for them to deal with, oh say, like the loss of over 1/3 of their practicing flock. At the time I wrote that I thought it was a swipe at New Age spirituality, which it was, but now it looks as if it might have been the opening salvo in the investigation of American Women Religious.

According to this article in the NCR, a number of religious communities use Reiki as part of retreats or in their health centers, and most of these are run by congregations of sisters affiliated with the Leadership Conference of Women's Religious. The letter from the USCCB on Reiki came out at the end of March and the letter sent to the LCWR from the Vatican announcing this latest investigation was received on March 10. Interesting timing. Our bishops sure do seem to be on top of things.

This following excerpt from today's NCR article amply demonstrates how little regard the clerical system has for anyone other than the clerical system:

Capuchin Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, executive director of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices, commented on the Cincinnati Mercy Sisters’ interpretation of Reiki, saying, “If you try to turn it into something that’s authentically Christian, then it’s no longer authentically Reiki. But it seems that if you keep it anywhere authentically Reiki, then it’s incompatible with Christianity.” (It's a technique for hands on healing, a tool, a spiritually neutral philosophy, as such it can be used in a Christian context. A wrench is still a wrench even if it's used as a hammer.)

He said that the classical Reiki literature reviewed by the bishops’ doctrinal committee places Reiki therapy in a philosophy and theology of “New Age pantheism hugging into the cosmic forces, that sort of thing, that has nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s purely a Gnostic kind of therapy.” (I wonder what Fr. Weinandy thinks about theoretical quantum physics and those notions of cosmic forces.)

Gnosticism refers to a number of heresies in various periods of Christian history that focus on esoteric human knowledge rather than divine grace as a source of salvation.

When asked to compare it with other relaxing techniques offered by alternative therapies, he said, “We don’t condemn relaxing techniques, but this is not just a relaxing technique.”

When NCR asked Weinandy if the committee’s research included any interviews with Catholic practitioners of Reiki, he said it did not. He called the committee’s investigation an “academic study” of how Reiki therapy is understood by its adherents. He said the committee based its conclusions about the incompatibility of Reiki with Catholic teaching on “a purely academic type of research, in the sense that we read books and went to Web sites and we amassed a huge amount of material, but we didn’t interview anybody.” (Of course they didn't interview anybody. They never do. That might expose them to the fallacy of their academic conclusions. How do they claim to know how Reiki is understood by it's Catholic adherents if they never interviewed any?)

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I hate this kind of ecclesiastical teaching. You know, the kind that's based on searching through material to support the answer you already have in mind. They weren't engaged in an academic study of Reiki. They were engaged in damning Reiki in order to get at those orders of religious women who use Reiki. How do I know that? Further along in the article Fr. Weinandy insinuates it: "He also said that “it’s obvious, isn’t it?” from Web Google searches that most of the Catholic retreat centers targeted by the doctrinal committee’s statement are run by Catholic orders of women religious."

This whole Reiki thing looks to me as if it was designed to put the LCWR on the defensive and get them off balance. I suspect it's having it's intended effect as the NCR was unable to get any comment from any order who uses Reiki as a part of their retreats or medical care. Nice job boys. I bet Fr. Weinandy is well on his way to bishop Weinandy.

I guess if a Catholic nun invoking the name of Jesus in the laying on of hands using a Reiki technique is superstitious nonsense, then turn about is fair play. So much for the laying on of hands that consecrated Archbishop Dolan yesterday, it's superstitious nonsense with no scientific validity and I don't have to pay one bit of attention to anything that regular ole human man might have to say.

I think I'll start with this totally bogus 'academic' study on Reiki, as I have reams of files and scientific data which show something totally different about the efficacy of Reiki and other forms of 'gnostic New Age' healing modalities. Some of those files even include statements from real live doctors who certified results they had no explanation for and were in awe of, and oh, by the way, referred their patients to us because they could offer no other hope.

But in the end I guess it isn't about hope, it's about orthodoxy and spiritual authority and who gets to wield it and who doesn't. I guess it isn't enough for the Vatican to get all pissy about women priests, they now have to get all pissy about women healers. God can't seriously be expected to work through any woman other than Mary. It's been the Tradition since forever.

Vatican Men Enter The Uppity Liberal American Nun Battle

The LCWR readies for battle with Bishop Blair.

The following is an excerpt from a longer article published on the NCR website yesterday.

It deals with a second investigation the Vatican is launching into the state of American Religious Women. This second investigation involves the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The LCWR represents approximately 95% of American Religious Women. It is an association of leaders of Congregations of Religious Orders. It is somewhat analogous to the USCCB in that it's composed of the leadership of the various orders. It certainly isn't analogous in any sense of authority.

The Vatican assessment has become necessary, according to Levada, because at the 2001 meeting between the women’s leadership conference and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which took place in Rome, the women were invited “to report on the initiatives taken or planned” to promote the reception of three areas of Vatican doctrinal concern: the 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis, the 2000 declaration Dominus Jesus from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and “the problem of homosexuality.” (At least they seem to have gotten the abortion thing right.)

Ordinatio sacerdotalis, Latin for “On the Ordination to the Priesthood,” was a Vatican document that reasserted that Catholic ordination to the priesthood is reserved for men alone and that the church “has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.” (I've always found it kind of fascinating that this is the only issue on which the church claims they have no authority.)

Dominus Jesus was a declaration that, in part, insisted that non-Catholic Christians are “in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the church, have the fullness of the means of salvation” and that non-Catholic Christian communities suffer “defects.” It was viewed at the time by some Catholic theologians and leaders of other religions as a major setback in interreligious dialogue. (That's because it was a major setback.)

In a 1986 letter written by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, to the world’s bishops, he wrote: “Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.” (The most misleading term in this sentence is to refer to homosexuality as an 'inclination' as opposed to an intrinsic orientation. Notice how the word intrinsic is used to describe it's moral evil. In other words, this is the devil's work and not a God given orientation.)

Regarding the investigation of the women’s leadership conference, Levada informed conference leaders: “Given both the tenor and the doctrinal content of various addresses given at the annual assemblies of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the intervening years, this Dicastery can only conclude that the problems which had motivated its request in 2001 continue to be present.” (It's only been eight years, at least you could have given them fifty years like you did Maciel and the Legion.)

As a result, Levada said, the Vatican had decided “a doctrinal assessment” of the “activities and initiatives of the LCWR would be helpful.” (I'm quite sure that's already been done and that the answer to that has already been written.)

Levada added that the decision was reached while in communication with Cardinal Franc Rodé, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
Under Rodé’s leadership, his congregation last December announced it had begun its own investigation of U.S. women’s religious communities with the expressed aim of assessing the “quality of life” among their members and to determine why numbers of women religious have fallen in recent decades.

The Rodé study is being conducted under the direction of the superior general of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mother Clare Millea, whom Rodé appointed as apostolic visitator.
The new assessment of the women’s leadership conference, Levada stated in his letter, will be conducted by Leonard P. Blair, bishop of Toledo, Ohio, a member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine. (Bishop Blair is as orthodox as they come. So orthodox he himself says the Extraordinary form of the Mass.)

Levada said Blair’s principal purpose is to “review the work of the LCWR in supporting its membership as communities of faith and witness to Christ in today’s church, and to offer any useful assistance.”

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It looks to me like the big boys in the Vatican decided Mother Clare Millea wasn't up to the task of taking on the big bad women of the LCWR. Apparently Mother Millea doesn't have the right equipment to represent Jesus in this task of investigating American Women Religious. First and foremost I see this second investigation as a major insult to her and her abilities. If Mother Millea actually thought she had the confidence of the Vatican, I guess she now knows she doesn't.

The commentary on the NCR site was interesting to read. There weren't near the number of orthodox coming out to support the CDF as there were for the announcement of the first investigation. Are even the orthodox a little queasy about this second investigation? Why do American nuns merit two Vatican investigations when the Legion reluctantly only gets one, and the seminaries who cranked out all those abusers only got one? Does this mean uppity nuns are more intrinsically evil than sexually abusive priests? Or does it just mean it involves tricky treacherous women and tricky treacherous women need two Vatican salvos, not just one.

I keep waiting for the Vatican investigation into the USCCB and their penchant for covering up sexual abusers. Seems to me that's done a whole lot more damage to the American Catholic church than the tricky treacherous uppity nuns of the LCWR. Why that's even cost some dioceses to throw convents of nuns out on the street so they could sell off their property to pay off lawyers and abuse victims.

Of course those nuns were also placed under a gag order and removed from their property under their vows of obedience. Those are REAL nuns, not uppity treacherous liberal nuns. On the other hand there are these observations from an ex nun in the above linked article.

"One of the reasons I left is you have no voice," said Gutierrez, who wore the habit for eight years in the 1960s. Now retired from a second career teaching English, she expressed dismay that the Los Angeles archdiocese, after being pilloried for its reluctance to investigate allegations of sexual abuse, appeared to have gone to ground again.

"It's the same mistake all over again: 'Be quiet, be quiet. Don't say anything. Don't rock the boat,' " Gutierrez said.

Another former Bethany sister, Evangelina Diaz, said the defensive posture was also apt to hurt recruiting, seldom easy for the Catholic Church in recent decades.

"Look, a gag rule on three nuns! Holy mackerel!" said Diaz, 74, in the parking lot outside the convent. "They do this to the ones who've been around for 57 years? No wonder they don't get more vocations. Would you want to join?"

Perhaps Mother Millea will want to investigate why an Archdiocese would kick out three old nuns in order to sell their property. It may shed some light on quality of life issues as well as the recruitment problem.

I hardly think Bishop Leonard Blair would be motivated to take on such an investigation himself. He's had his own problems since coming to the Diocese of Toledo, and my gosh, one of his biggest problems involved an uppity nun.

This link is actually pretty fascinating. Toledo happened to be home to one of the most sensational of the abuse stories. A story that involved satanic ritual abuse, the murder of a nun and the subsequent cover up by both the diocese and the Toledo police. The priest, Fr. George Robinson was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

Another kind of fascinating coincidence is that Toledo is the home diocese of Barbara Blaine the president of SNAP. The USCCB considers Barbara Blaine to be a very uppity and treacherous woman. She is not particularly fond of Bishop Blair and I'm sure the feeling is mutual. SNAP and the diocese waged quite a battle over opening a window of opportunity for abuse victims beyond the statutory limit. This was the Ohio bill for which Bishop Tom Gumbleton testified and where he admitted to his own abuse by a cleric. It was subsequently amended to remove the year window and then signed into law.

Bishop Blair did himself proud to get that year window out of SB 17 and now he gets to take on the LCWR. Barbara Blaine could probably give the LCWR some insight into the strategies of Bishop Blair---one of which was to call in the male clerical troops to take on uppity lay legislators from their pulpits. Apparently it worked well enough to get SB 17 amended to the Bishop's liking.

Personally, I'd love to see Bishop Blair go toe to toe with Sr. Joan Chittister. I'm sure Blair would win the day, having the entire Vatican male clerical corp behind him, but Sr. Joan would win the war of words, and in the end that's real power.

In the meantime, Mother Clare Millea has already been run over by the male clerical corp in their obsession with uppity liberal American nuns. I wonder if she realizes she has their tread marks all over her body?

A Cardinal Walks The Talk

Naples cardinal launches microcredit institution to help the poor

April 14, 2009--CNS

Saying he wanted to give Easter hope to those "crucified on the cross of selfishness," Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe of Naples announced he was setting up a microcredit lending institution and donating a year's stipend and part of his savings to start it.

At a press conference April 8, Cardinal Sepe announced he was using about $65,000 of his own money to establish a "bank of the poor" and he asked the faithful of the archdiocese to give what they could.

The cardinal also asked the deans of each area of the archdiocese to work with pastors to conduct a census of those in their neighborhood in need of food, clothing and help paying rent and utility bills.Diocesan and parish soup kitchens and food and clothing banks would be strengthened according to need, he said.

Explaining the initiative in a pastoral letter for Holy Week, the cardinal said that, with the global economic crisis and the high unemployment rates in Naples, Christians find it difficult to imagine "the joy of the Resurrection because we have in front of us a crowd of hungry people who, like sheep without a shepherd, are asking for bread."

Just in Campania, the region that includes Naples, he said, 200,000 jobs have been lost because of the economic crisis; "200,000 families from our marvelous and martyred land are asking for bread and that number is added to the already large number of people living in situations of extreme poverty," the cardinal wrote.

"I hear their cry. I listen to them every day during parish meetings or as I read the letters they write, and I ask myself if one can remain insensitive to so much pain and suffering. Could a father plug his ears or tell them to go somewhere else for food? Can a bishop, a witness of Christ, be indifferent to so many who ask for help and compassion?" he said.

"As pastor of my beloved flock, I will take the first step toward an ethics of solidarity, giving part of my personal savings and a year's stipend to open the 'bank of the poor' fund," he said. (This is one Cardinal who understands the meaning of the word pastoral. It's not brow beating your flock, it's standing in solidarity with them in their need.)

Cardinal Sepe said the new project would be named after Cardinal Sisto Riario Sforza, archbishop of Naples in 1845-1877, a member of an important and wealthy Italian family, who opened the archbishop's residence to people left homeless after an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the 1860s and who gave away his personal fortune to help the poor of the archdiocese in the 1870s.

The fund, Cardinal Sepe said, would give priority to young people struggling to find a job and to those who recently have lost their jobs.

"Far from being a handout, microcredit will help the creativity and ingenuity of our people emerge," he wrote in his pastoral letter. "Giving microcredit to someone who cannot offer a guarantee other than the promise to pay the money back interest-free with small payments over time means having the courage to believe in men and women and to trust in the possibility of multiplying loaves and fishes," like Jesus did, he said. (WOW, this is quite the statement and it's also Christian belief in it's purest form.)

The archdiocese said the regulations for determining eligibility to receive funds and instructions for applying for the loans would be published after a period of fundraising.

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It's not often lately that a person can find a story about a Cardinal which has no sexual or political overtones, but is instead, a story about real pastoral care. Maybe the winds of change are beginning to blow through the hierarchy. Here's another story, about another bishop, who like Cardinal Egan, is coming out in favor of married priests. However, unlike the soon to be retired Cardinal Egan, Bishop Gosler is a recent appointee:

New bishop calls for married priests---

The Tablet, April 11, 2009

A priest who is in favour of ordaining married men and increasing the decision-making powers of women and bishops' conferences has been appointed a bishop to the bilingual diocese of Bozen-Brixen (Bolzano-Bressanone) on the Austrian/Italian border, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

Bishop Karl Golser told the weekly church paper of the Innsbruck Diocese, Tiroler Sonntag: "In future we will have a pastoral structure which is no longer as clerical and as concentrated on priests as it used to be. The question of ordaining proven married men - whose marriages have proved stable - and who are respected in their communities will therefore come up more and more often. (Knock me over with a feather.)

"The bishop pointed out that the Eastern Churches in full communion with Rome ordain married men, but added that it was a question of consensus and regional bishops' conferences should be given more decision making powers because the attitude to ordaining proven married men varied from continent to continent. (Less clericalism and now decentralization of authority. I'm getting a whiff of Vatican II.)

Bishop Golser said he also thought that women should be more involved in decision-making in the Church. "The Church will grow wherever women are given more such decision-making powers," he said. (Power sharing with women? Is this the winds of Vatican III?)

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These are two very encouraging articles. It's hard to believe that here in the States the conversation is still firmly centered on the evils of Notre Dame because elsewhere in the global Catholic world other and more important issues are taking center stage.

There are days I am truly glad American Catholicism is not representative of Global Catholicism and this is one of those days. Kudos to Cardinal Sepe and Bishop Golser for realistically dealing with serious pastoral issues. One wonders how many abortions Cardinal Sepe's 'bank of the poor' will prevent because he has the courage to loan money to people who otherwise wouldn't be eligible for loans. I suspect he will be surprised with how self sustaining his experiment in 'loaves and fishes' will turn out to be. Oh that our own bishops would put their own money where their mouths are.

Peace, Love, Joy And UTube

This link will take you to a video which became a cause celeb re over the weekend on Utube. I first saw this on Friday and just fell in love with it. Shot in Antwerp's Central Station, it's actually part of a reality TV show, but it's really wonderful none the less. I suppose it doesn't hurt that the music is from the Sound of Music and features Julie Andrews at her best.

In the short article accompanying the video, a Salon writer states:

"The dancers are presenting the purest form of art imaginable: art simply and truly for the sake of art...They managed to punch right through my cynicism and show me that good things are still out there and there are good people in the world...In a small way, I have a deeper understanding of what it is to be human because of the actions of 200 fellow humans in a train station in Belgium."

I have to admit, I watched it again on Saturday after I posted about my own cynicism regarding the Hierarchy. When I watched this the second time it really struck me again, just exactly who are the People of God. Hope you enjoy this as much as I did. (Well, me and a million others and counting.)

And then yesterday, I came across another really clever video. This piece, part of a video contest sponsored by AARP, was particularly relevant to me because I have been doing quite a bit of thinking about the younger generations, comparing my youthful idealistic self with my current version. The current version, occasional bouts of cynicism aside, seems to be returning to the hope and idealism of my youthful self, but with the addition of much more wisdom, and a lot less naivete. Here is the reflection itself, in case you have audio problems with the video. It more than stands alone.

Lost Generation by Jonathan Reed

I am part of a lost generation

and I refuse to believe that

I can change the world

I realize this may be a shock

but“Happiness comes from within".

is a lie, and

“Money will make me happy.”

So in 30 years I will tell my children

they are not the most important thing in my life

My employer will know that

I have my priorities straight because

work

is more important than

family

I tell you this

Once upon a time

Families stayed together

but this will not be true in my era

This is a quick fix society

Experts tell me

30 years from now, I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my

divorce

I do not concede that

I will live in a country of my own making

In the future

Environmental destruction will be the norm

No longer can it be said that

My peers and I care about this earth

It will be evident that

My generation is apathetic and lethargic

It is foolish to presume that

There is hope.
And all of this will come true unless we choose to reverse it .

Now, reverse this and read it from the bottom up.

Just like Julie Andrews reverses the scale in do re mi, we too can reverse---- no, we can transform our selves, and become more joyful, hopeful, caring, loving, and unified than we have ever been. Jesus wasn't just resuscitated, He was transformed into something more, and that, to me, is the message of Easter. It's not about returning to who you were, or to some former and more innocent state, it's about transforming into something more.

I hope all who read this had a joyful and meaningful Easter.

Two Holy Week Sermons Lead To A Bad Case Of Cynicism

Saturday, April 11, 2009-Irish Independent
Priests abused 'thousands of children over 30-year period'

THOUSANDS of children were raped and abused by Catholic priests, many of them serial offenders in the Dublin diocese over a 30-year period, a shocking report on clerical sex abuse will reveal next month.

The horrendous scale of the abuse between 1975 and 2004 was revealed yesterday by Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, who urged his priests and Catholic lay people to receive the damning report by Judge Yvonne Murphy with "humility".

Archbishop Martin said that since he took over the running of the country's biggest diocese five years ago, he had read secret files which he handed over to the Murphy Commission and had heard the tragic personal stories of victims.

From published statistics and from listening to victims, it was possible, he said, to name and identify at least 500 paedophile priests. (This is a staggering number for one archdiocese. I wonder if he's referring to the entire country.)

But he warned that because a number of these identified priests were serial abusers "the numbers of victims must be going into thousands". (I wonder how many of these serial abusers have ever seen the inside of a jail cell.)

"This is a sad thing to say," added the former diplomat who was appointed by the late Pope John Pope II five years ago to clean up the clerical sexual abuse scandals that devastated the period in office of his predecessor, Cardinal Desmond Connell.

Addressing the Holy Thursday Chrism Mass in Dublin's Pro-Cathedral, which was attended by priests from throughout the archdiocese, Archbishop Martin said that the full horror of decades of physical, sexual and psychological torture of children has not been recognised. (How could it be when it was kept secret and hidden by his predecessors with Vatican sanction.)

Admitting publicly that "the archdiocese of Dublin is facing challenges of a kind that it has not experienced for many years," he said "the Report of the Commission on Child Sexual Abuse will shock us all.

"It is likely that thousands of children or young people across Ireland were abused by priests in the period under investigation and the horror of that abuse was not recognised for what it is."

Last night a senior church source told the Irish Independent that the report of the Government-appointed Commission of Investigation into the Archdiocese of Dublin is likely to be published in "the next four to six weeks time".

The report is expected to be severely critical of the handling and covering up of abuse complaints by Cardinal Connell and his two predecessors, the late Archbishops Kevin McNamara and Dermot Ryan.

The Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation was established in 2006 to investigate allegations of child sexual abuse involving Dublin diocesan priests, as well as priests and members of religious orders who worked in or were attached to the capital's parishes and schools.

This report was considered necessary by Bertie Ahern's Government after huge public revulsion over the scale of abuse revealed in a similar inquiry into the Diocese of Ferns in Co Wexford.
In recent months Archbishop Martin had been bracing his priests and people for even worse findings in the Dublin report which had been due out in January, but was postponed after the Government extended its remit to investigate Bishop John Magee's handling of complaints in the Diocese of Cloyne in Co Cork.

In recent years Archbishop Martin has published an annual audit which has shown that between 1940 and 2008, child sexual abuse allegations were made against 77 priests of the Dublin Diocese, while suspicions were raised about another nine.

"The report will make each of us and the entire church in Dublin a humbler church," added Archbishop Martin.

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This forth coming report must contain some explosive material beyond just the staggering numbers. Archbishop Martin has been preparing the Archdiocese of Dublin for the contents for months now. Given the Irish Catholic reaction to the Ferns report, the Dublin report may turn out to be another nail in the coffin of institutional Irish Catholicism.

In the meantime, Pope Benedict castigated secular society in his Good Friday address:

Increasingly secular Western societies risk drifting into a "desert of godlessness", the Pope warned in his Good Friday address yesterday.

Speaking during the Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum in Rome, he said "religious sentiments" were increasingly ranked among the "unwelcome leftovers of antiquity" and held up to scorn and ridicule. (Maybe one reason religous sentiment is held up to scorn and ridicule is because it's been thoroughly earned by it's hypocritical leadership.)

He used this year's Good Friday meditations at the Stations of the Cross to compare attempts to purge religion from public life to the mockery Jesus faced from the mob.

The Bavarian-born Pontiff used uncompromising language as he attacked efforts to secularise society. Speaking at the seventh Station of the Cross, where Jesus was made an "object of fun", he said: "We are shocked to see to what levels of brutality human beings can sink. Jesus is humiliated in new ways even today.

"When things that are most holy and profound in the faith are being trivialised, the sense of the sacred is allowed to erode. (Given what your Archbishop of Dublin disclosed in his Holy Thursday talk, these words ring incredibly hollow and very self serving.)

"Our life together is being increasingly secularised. Religious life grows diffident. Thus we see the most momentous matters placed among trifles, and trivialities glorified." (This is precisely what institutional Catholicism did with priests sexually abusing children--treated a momentous matter as trifling.)

The Pope prayed that Christians would respond to the problem by growing in faith. "May we never question or mock serious things in life like a cynic," he prayed. (Sometimes it's very difficult not to be cynical.)

Priestly sexual abuse is not going to go away until Church authority does something besides mouth platitudes. Bishops and other enablers have to be disciplined. Pope Benedict needs to own up to the fact that the years of this report correspond with his years in the CDF. He and John Paul II are in many respects the greatest of all the enablers. All the blaming for this criminal behavior on the sexual revolution, gays, Vatican II, etc. etc. etc. has to stop and the Vatican has to get honest. The hierarchical church in this instance acted no different from any other global criminal enterprise. They don't deserve a free pass because of their collars and mitres. They can't keep falling back on notions of forgiveness in place of accountability.

The US Church has paid out 2.6 billion dollars of the laity's money to compensate for the criminal indifference of it's espiscopacy. I don't find this particularly humbling. I find it particulary infuriating. I want strategies in place which provide the transparency and accountability needed to bring this insanity to an end. As it stands right now, we still don't have such measures in place, as evidenced by Cardinal George's behavior in Chicago.

Pope Benedict can continue to lament the evils of secularism all he wants, but his concerns ring hollow when he refuses to deal with the evils of clericalism with in his own Church. That's not cynicism, that's just fact.

Passover--Remembering The Crucifixion Of the Tutsi's

The pierced, ‘disfigured Christ looks like me’

Révérien Rurangwa was a devout Catholic until the Rwandan genocide left his body scarred and his faith shattered.

Ros Wynne-Jones meets him10 April 2009--Catholic Herald UK

Like many Rwandans, Révérien Rurangwa was brought up in a staunchly Catholic family. His village, Mugina, on the main road south from the capital, is dotted with one-room churches and a convent. In 1994, at the time of the genocide, there were 30 nuns living close by, and two Spanish priests.

Révérien remembers that not a Sunday went past without his family going to Mass, no meal passed without a blessing and no evening without a prayer. At night, he went to sleep to the sound of his mother's whispered Hail Marys coming from the living room of the family house.

But 15 years ago this week, the Rwandan genocide shook a country's faith to the core, and shattered Révérien's relationship with the God he prayed to daily.

On April 20 1994, two weeks after the start of the genocide, during which a million mainly Tutsi Rwandans were killed in just 100 days, Révérien's entire family - 47 members in all - were massacred in front of his eyes. He watched his parents, Drocilla Nyiramatama and Boniface Muzigura die alongside his siblings, Sylvie, 13, Olive, 11, Pierre Celestin, nine, Marie, seven, and Claudette, five. Révérien, their eldest child, somehow survived the attack, despite horrific wounds, his arm hacked off, his eye cut out, his nose cut off, his body battered with a studded club.

His book, Genocide, translated and published in English this week to mark the 15th anniversary, is an extraordinary account not only of his life from that day onwards, but also the spiritual battle that began the moment his Hutu neighbour - a man who owned a local bar which Révérien's family sometimes visited - took a machete to the "Tutsi cockroaches" hiding in a tiny, dank goat shed on the Rwandan hillside.

"I cried out for God that day," he says. "We were very religious. My mother died praying to God. Deliver us from evil, Amen."

But Rwanda, betrayed by the United Nations and by western countries, had also been abandoned by its nuns and priests.

"In Mugina, the nuns - around 30 of them - were picked up by military vehicles, along with our two Spanish priests, by the soldiers of UNAMIR (the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda) right at the start of the genocide on April 7," Révérien remembers. "The priests were called Jean and Isidore. I liked them a lot. They had lived in Mugina for 30 years and spoke Kinyarwanda as well as our parents, and without any accent. They had become one of us, but they dropped us just like that."

Standing on the hillside with 25,000 other frightened men, women and children, hearing that the plan for Tutsi extermination was now fully underway, Révérien watched the exodus.

"I saw them leave with their pots of flowers and their dogs," he says, when we meet in Switzerland, the country that accepted him for medical help after the genocide. "Couldn't they at least have taken a Tutsi baby with them?

"They left with their dogs and their flowers and they left everyone else to die because they were Tutsis."

The nation's simple churches became the places where hundreds of thousands of Rwandans sought sanctuary - and thus the scenes of their deaths.

"Where was God?" Révérien asks. "Why didn't he do anything? At 15, I may have sinned, but what about the babies, what could they have done?"

"When you see the Hutu priests coming with the machete and killing, and you see a church that 25 Tutsis died in is cleaned up and people go on praying there - and that the ones who pray in that church are the ones who killed... "There is not a church in Rwanda untouched by Tutsi blood."

A week earlier, on April 12 1994, more than 1,500 Tutsis were killed as they sought refuge in Nyange Catholic church in Kivumu, western Rwanda. Bulldozers were used to knock down the church building, and those who escaped suffocation were hacked to death.

Fr Athanase Seromba, a local priest, was later found guilty by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and sentenced to life in prison for his role in the demolition of his church and convicted of the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity.

There were Catholic heroes of the genocide too, like the Bosnian priest, Vjeko Curic, whose story is told in the British film Shooting Dogs - his character is the basis for John Hurt's "Christopher" - but only a tiny percentage of clergy remained beyond the early days of bloodshed.

Still, it was Christian charity that persuaded Révérien's guardian, Luc Dupraz, to take him in to his home in the Swiss Alps, and offer him a new life. And it is in Luc's humble mountain chapel that Révérien continues to struggle with questions of God, theology and spirituality.

In his book, Révérien tells how Luc repeatedly asks him to consider forgiveness, but the western clichés of making peace and closure are not something he is prepared to countenance.

In 1995 he went back to Rwanda determined to track down his family's killer and see justice done. He found the man, Simon Sibomana, still working in the same bar, unpunished for the deaths of Révérien's family and others who died on the Mugina hillside. Révérien challenged Sibomana at the bar, and then went to the authorities and reported him. But after a brief spell in prison, Sibomana was released and it was Révérien who was forced into hiding after an attempt on his life. As the lone surviving witness of this massacre, Révérien believes Sibomana hired contract killers to kill him. Because of his scars he is easily identifiable, and has also been attacked in Switzerland and in Belgium for being "that Tutsi witness".

"People ask if I have forgiven the man who did this to me, and killed my family," Révérien says. "I would ask the question, how could one pardon someone who has never asked to be pardoned? "It's not up to me to propose this to them, people who killed night and day for three months. People who were tired from killing. People who still want to kill me today. People who don't have any regret. How can one pardon these people?

"Yes, I think even today it can happen again. Victims are not being protected. They are still being killed with machetes and being poisoned. I've written a book and I am very public. "I can't go back to Rwanda. It is not my home any more. A home is where you have family. A home is where you have security. My friends here are my family now."

Standing in the United Nations building in Geneva, where this week Révérien will attend the formal commemorations of the genocide, he says he has reached a conclusion on his spiritual conflict.

"I am finished with God," he says. "I understand now that I must be my own god.

"Yet at the end of his book, he tells a curious story. The final chapter is a long burst of rage against God, where Révérien is one cold night kneeling in his guardian's bare private chapel, unable to sleep, shouting at the Cross, and flicking through Luc's Bible, finding only more words to spur on his anger. "Blessed are the meek." "Deliver us from evil." Every phrase seems to him a lie.

Then he approaches the crucifix at the front of the chapel, and notices something

shocking.

"Suddenly strange similarities leap out at me between His injuries, His wounds, His frailties, His gashes, His dislocations and mine, and those of my massacred brothers," Révérien writes.

"This Christ, disfigured, bruised, hacked away, pierced, cut, looks like me. As if it were a brother. He looks like a young Tutsi from the Mugina hillside, dismembered on April 20 1994 by men who should have been his brothers. He looks like the victim of the Tutsi genocide. He looks like all the victims of all genocides, of all massacres, of all crimes, of all wrongs...

"As daybreak spills over the Alpine peaks Révérien is passing in and out of sleep on one of the chapel's hard benches. "Perhaps I was dreaming, but I thought I saw, for just a second, the Tutsi Christ smiling at me. Was it the delirium of the insomniac?"

A question occurs to him suddenly: "If this God is dead in me, why, one day, could I not be dead in Him?"

Révérien Rurangwa's book, Genocide, is published this week by Reportage Press, translated by Anna Brown, £8.99 (http://www.reportagepress.com/)

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I will think a lot about Reverien Rurangwa this weekend, and meditate on his last question. "If this God is dead in me, why, one, day, could I not be dead in Him?"

I suspect that Reverien knows the answer to his question is never. He will never be dead in the heart of Jesus. Ultimately this is what this weekend is truly about. In His death and resurrection Jesus saw to it that we would never be dead in His heart, even though He may not find room in ours, and certainly He understands and forgives when His room in our hearts have been driven out by the prejudice and judgement of others.

I also think there's a lesson for American Catholicism in the Rawanda genocide. This was a situation which pitted Catholic against Catholic, Christian against Christian, and where sanctuary sought in churches proved to be nothing more than a certain death sentence. Ethnocentrism trumped Faith, and every single Christian denomination actively participated in the slaughter.

An article from the African News Service, entitled the Cross and the Genocide ends with the following paragraph: Hatred propaganda against Tutsis, Hutus or the government, such as propagated by the Comboni Missionaries, meets general disgust among the awakened Rwandan clergy of today. Although the churches remain in a complex relation to their own past, the local clergy certainly has learned that the unity of the Rwandan peoples is a precious gift not to jeopardised by promoting one group at the cost of another.

Any time a Christian denomination promotes one group at the cost of another it denies the reality of the teachings of Jesus and the cost He paid for those teachings. Anytime a Christian denomination promotes one group at the cost of another, they create the exact climate that Jesus experienced this week two thousand years ago in Jerusalem, and the results are very often the same. Someone, or in the case of Rwanda, almost a million someones, die.

One of the mitigating causes for the participation of Christian denominations in the genocide was the personal connections of church leadership to the political leaders in Rwanda. These connections were why, two priests and thirty nuns were removed before the attack was made on Mr. Rurangwa's village. This was no novel occurrence, as the genocide was not a random event but rather, a coldly calculated event. Church leadership in bed with politicians may protect church leadership, but the cost is born by the laity--always.

As American Catholicism continues to split over culture issues, we may want to look to Rwanda for a few lessons. This is not a good path we've embarked on no matter what our politicians tell us. The Notre Dame controversy might seem like a very pale version of the Rwanda genocide, but the seeds are the same and division in the Body of Christ is the result.

This weekend, I will see the tortured body of Reverien Rurwanga on the Cross, and meditate on it's meaning. I probably won't like all of what's reflected back at me, but that's part of the price we all pay when we embark on the Way. We are not just Christ crucified, we are also Christ's crucifiers. I will also remember His heart is big enough for both and take comfort from that, and pray that we all get a little enlightenment about mixing politics and religion.

Gay Marriage And The Generational Gap

The following is an excerpt from a recent post on Fr. Geoff Farrel's blog about the Iowa Supreme Court decision regarding gay marriage.

Immediately after the court ruled in Iowa, the republican minority leader in that state’s senate approached the democratic majority leader and asked him to co-sponsor a bill to take away full marriage equality from same gender couples. The senate majority leader Mike Gronstal responded as follows:

"One of my daughters was in the workplace one day, and her particular workplace at that moment in time, there were a whole bunch of conservative, older men. And those guys were talking about gay marriage. They were talking about discussions going on across the country.

Any way, my daughter Kate, after listening for about 20 minutes, said to them: You guys don't understand. You've already lost. My generation doesn't care.

I think I learned something from my daughter that day, when she said that. And I've talked with other people about it and that's what I see, Senator McKinley. I see a bunch of people that merely want to profess their love for each other, and want state law to recognize that.

Is that so wrong? I don't think that's so wrong. As a matter of fact, last Friday night, I hugged my wife. You know I've been married for 37 years. I hugged my wife. I felt like our love was just a little more meaningful last Friday night because thousands of other Iowa citizens could hug each other and have the state recognize their love for each other.

No, Senator McKinley, I will not co-sponsor a leadership bill with you."

His daughter’s quote offers a chilling insight for the forces that wish to manipulate and control both individual lives and societies. You are receiving a richly deserved new status of becoming irrelevant. This is primarily what churchmen in America fear the most.

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Fr. Geoff makes a serious point, when he says that those who want to use the state to enforce their ideas of sexual morality are becoming irrelevant. This is especially true in younger generations, who quite rightly see the gay marriage issue as one of love between two people, not sexual acts. They do not buy the argument that gay marriage effects straight marriage. I suspect this is true because these generations have actually been exposed to gay people, and gay people who are not self hating, but comfortable with themselves as gay people.

That's a huge advantage over my generation. Most of us raised in Catholic homes never heard the word gay or homosexual until we left home. Hearing anything about sexuality at home was a rare event, much less homosexuality. Growing up on a ranch I certainly knew a lot about sexuality, but we never discussed it in the house around my mother. In fact, we would use metaphors for sexual or pregnancy related issues. A pro lapsed uterus in a cow was never referred to by it's technical name, it was called a basketball case, due to the fact that's what a prolapsed uterus looked like. Bulls never had penis problems, they had Popsicle problems.

I suspect my mother went along with all of my dad's inventions because she thought it was funny. I can only remember one time homosexuality was referenced, and that was the time my dad had to admit he bought a gay bull. He kept this bull through two full breeding seasons in which the bull threw exactly two calves because my dad couldn't deal with this obvious fact. I guess he was hoping the bull would grow out of it or something. Neither my dad nor the bull grew out of it.

The younger generations have grown up with gay friends and openly gay relatives and to them it's not an issue, it just is. Just like bulls, they know people don't grow out of it. Unlike bulls though, people can choose to live in denial, or lie about it, or repress it, or lead guilt filled lives, or kill themselves. Those were the accepted strategies of the older generations referenced by Senator Mike Gronstal. Gays stayed in their assigned hidden closets. When that's what you're used to, it's what you think is the correct social strategy. That it's completely irrelevant to your children's generations is not easy to deal with because it implies your views are irrelevant and dated. From there it's easy to see yourself as irrelevant and outdated, and no one likes to feel irrelevant.

The truth is, the sexual moral issues that are so important to some in the older generations, are mostly irrelevant to the younger generations. To them sexual responsibility is becoming the moral issue. From these generations one hears more about parental responsibilities in men. They do not accept the 'love em and leave em' attitudes of earlier generations. As with homosexuality, they know a whole lot more about the ravages of divorce, because half of them have lived through one or more divorces. They know all about the problems of integrating families, and dealing with step brothers and sisters. It's not gay marriage they're concerned with, it's heterosexual marriage because failed straight marriages have impacted them.

Why would they care about two gays down the street marrying, when the divorce in their own family is what really impacted them? When I read the above quote about the older gentlemen in the place where the senator's daughter worked, I wondered how many of them were divorced. Odds say that half of them were divorced. It's a nice defense mechanism to blame gays for the breakdown in marriage. Takes all the pressure off from having to admit it might be straights and straight attitudes towards the sanctity of their own marriages which is the bigger problem.

It also serves to distract churches from dealing with the pastoral issues around straight marital break ups. I wonder how much more pastoral benefit would have been derived from taking all the money that California bishops spent on passing Prop 8 and instead putting that money into marital encounters and pre cana programs. But again, that would be putting money towards pastorally dealing with a problem and not state enforcement of a moral issue. Can't have that, there's no political power in that.

The religious right may becoming irrelevant, but they are not about to give up. Here's an email response from the Catholic league about the Vermont decision:

"Which state has less religious men and women than any other? Vermont.

Which is the only state to have a socialist senator? Vermont.

Which state has the second lowest birth rate in the nation? Vermont

Which state has the second highest proportion of whites? Vermont.

Which state legislature was the first to legalize gay marriage? Vermont.

In other words, Vermont is a lily-white state populated by left-wingers who are anti-traditional marriage and anti-family. Exactly what we would expect of a population where more people believe in nothing than anywhere else in the nation."

That about sums it up in a Christian charitable way. Vermont is a lily-white cesspool of socialist liberals who hate traditional marriage. Except Vermont's divorce rate, like most East coast states, is lower than the national average. Their divorce rate has dropped since it legalized civil unions in 2000. Apparently there is no evidence that civil unions impacted traditional marriage in Vermont. But what are facts in the face of fear.

Interestingly enough, the highest divorce rates in the country and the highest teen birth rates are amongst Evangelicals and Fundamentalist Christians. But again, what are facts when it comes to defending traditional marriage. According the the Family Research Council:

"Same-sex 'marriage' is a movement driven by wealthy homosexual activists and a liberal elite determined to destroy not only the institution of marriage, but democracy as well.

I'd like to see FRC's 'researched' facts for this analysis, but something tells me I better not hold my breath. I suspect I might be told the facts are irrelevant. It is however, exactly this kind of statement which leaves the younger generations shaking their heads and deciding those who espouse this aren't relevant. On the gay marriage issue, the generational gap will be bridged by the older generations moving to the younger generation's point of view, as happened with Iowa Senator Mike Gronstal. It will not be bridged the other way around.

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Here's a little synchronicity. Just as I posted this, an article pops up on clericalwhispers in which Tony Blair makes this very same point about the generational gap on attitudes towards gays. He also maintains there's a pretty substantial gap between Church authority and the average lay Catholic. So do I.