About This Meeting Of Cardinals

Perhaps the Vatican's team of cardinals will also have a dove amongst them.

Yesterday I linked to a couple of NCR articles (here and here)on the coming consistory in Rome of all our cardinals, those who are and those who are to be.  According to the schedule discussed by Eugene Kennedy the Vatican has set a pretty aggressive agenda for the single day of the discussions. It's a schedule that is far more about being lectured to, than it is about discussing with or debating about. 

The fact is all the information that will be given in all the lecturing at the cardinals could be emailed, and the entire day devoted to cardinals talking with and debating about the topics to be covered.  That's the way most modern institutions do things now. They don't waste expensive time, and this is an expensive proposition flying in all these cardinals, lecturing people about information that could be given beforehand. The value of these kinds of meetings is derived from the discussion about the topics.  For some reason the Vatican is opting for a lecture hall format.  I wonder what that reason could be.

In the comments section after the Kennedy article was one comment,  that in it's sheer emotional truth, put all of this purposeful manipulation in perspective.  It was written as a letter to Cardinal Schoenborn by a fellow priest: 

Dear Cardinal

Submitted by Fr Anthony (not verified) on Nov. 11, 2010.

Dear Cardinal Schoenborn,

Fifteen years ago, I went public about having been abused by two priests at Junior Seminary. I was young, fearless and angry. At that time, I received an anonymous letter from " A priest." In it he thanked me for having the courage to speak out on behalf of people like him - people who "no longer have the strength to speak out anymore." The letter was heart breaking.

He had been abused as a child by a priest and it was obvious from his letter that this man was suffering, suffering to the point of suicide.

I never found out what became of that poor man, my brother priest. I had no way of contacting him. My way of supporting him from afar was to continue to speak out and to ask for a more honest and courageous Church.

Shortly afterwards - in the same year that he wrote to a French Bishop who had covered up for an abuser priest, and hailed the Bishop "a hero" - Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos wrote to my Bishop, ordering him to shut me up. I was appalled and confused..... and so naive!

Years later, I find myself in a position I never thought possible then. I could write the same letter I received from that priest. I am broken, worn out and my confidence is in shreds.

Things have changed. My heart used to miss a beat when I read Karl Rahner - "I envisage a courageous, new, world-wide theology.. a theology which doesn't shun conflict... which doesn't just flick through the pages of our familiar friend Denzinger... a theology which listens to the wisdom from the East, which hears the cries for freedom in Latin America, a theology which hears the sound of African drums beating." (So do I Father Tony, so do I.)

Things have indeed changed because it is now the Catholic people of Europe and America who desperately need to be listened to. They are speaking a profound truth and your colleagues are simply not listening.

Cardinal Schoenborn, I met you last year. I was so impressed. You have the wisdom, the humility, the compassion and the courage to make such a colossal change to our Church. Someone has to speak out. Someone in the College of Cardinals has to say, "Enough is enough!" I believe you are that man.
Words from this Sunday's Gospel - "You will be hated by all men on account of my name, but not a hair of your head will be lost. Your endurance will win you your lives."

Please make your friend Benedict listen.


This is such a profound comment.  Cardinal Schoenborn could make Benedict listen.  He could start the process by standing up and insisting he not waste his time being lectured to like a college freshman.  He could say, "Enough is Enough".  He would only be voicing the truth for the majority of the People of God.  We have had enough. 

I suspect he would not find himself standing alone. I suspect a significant number of his fellow cardinals would stand with him--especially cardinals who had to fly in from distant points on the globe.  Hopefully, these cardinals would be joined on their flight by a Dove.  That would be something to see.

A Clash Of Consensus Realities

Pope Benedict and Archbishop Williams talk about everything ecumenical--except about what Benedict is doing behind Rowan's back.

I offer the following two extracts, one from a Time Magazine article on the defection of five Anglican Bishops to Roman Catholicism and the other on the status of the Reproductive Health bills in the Philippines.  For me they demonstrate just how out of touch, and yet desperate, Pope Benedict and his like minded followers are to preserve the old consensus reality regarding gender roles.

U.K. Bishops Defect to Catholic Church: Rift Worsens?

By Nick Assinder / London Thursday, Nov. 11, 2011

When Pope Benedict XVI made his historic visit to the U.K. back in September, the images and message were all about peace, reconciliation and understanding between churches and faiths. His meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, on Sept. 17 was particularly seen as part of the long healing process between the Anglican church and the Vatican. Fast-forward seven weeks, and that process seems to have shuddered to a halt. On Nov. 8, five Church of England bishops announced that they have "defected" and will convert to Catholicism — sparking talk of the biggest crisis to hit the church since 1534, when Henry VIII needed to swap wives without the Vatican's consent and broke away from Rome......(I think I've written previously that putting faith in too much of what Pope Benedict says is a mistake.  Like all of us, his truth is in what he does.)

But one of the bishops, John Broadhurst, told the Times of London he believes there will be significant further defections amongst the clergy and perhaps thousands of ordinary churchgoers. "There are lots of people interested," he said. "Some are actively looking at it. A lot of people are saying they will wait and see how it develops." Although it's a tough decision, he said, considering how Rome is not offering to replace the homes or salaries of any defectors, "I suspect thousands, not hundreds, of laity will go."

(Yes, well, the whole notion has always been about the ego identity and ego needs of the male participants and has never had anything to do with the teachings of Jesus.)

In the statement announcing their defection, the bishops declare that they feel recent developments in the church are incompatible with traditional Anglicanism. They argue, for example, that Jesus only chose men as his disciples so women should not become bishops. Campaigners such as Women and the Church (WATCH), however, point out that the church has regularly adapted its stance on controversial issues. Spokeswoman Rev Rosie Harper told the BBC: "That has been the story of the church. We worked out eventually that it wasn't God's will we should have slaves, and worked out we shouldn't be racist." (I love this line of argument. All the evidence to the contrary, and there is quite a bit, would not change this man's thinking. His enculturated ego would never give it credence.)

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In Benedict's vision of the Church, one part of the consensus reality mandates that men have sole ownership of the teaching and ritual authority of the Church. I used the word authority purposely, because Jesus's idea of servant leadership was ditched almost from the get go in favor of a definition of leadership based in personal self assigned authority. The 'other centered' servant aspect was assigned by this authority to women. We now call this split between genders, the complementarity of the genders. Traditional marriage is the ultimate symbol of this complementarity of 'other centered' service oriented women, and 'self centered' authoritarian oriented men.

I'm not using 'self centered' in the pejorative sense, but as a descriptor of how men are enculturated to organize their world view. In the case of the Anglican Ordinariate it's pretty obvious the people who are attracted to it are so attracted because they believe in the above described notion of gender complementarity and their assigned roles with in this paradigm. Pope Benedict has determined that Roman Catholicism will be the last best defender of this paradigm.

One of the major clashes with actual reality engendered by this world view is that it also contains a very reductionist conceptualization of sexuality.  That view of sexuality has lately been presented in absolute terms. The farther secular culture has gotten from the idealized notion of gender complementarity, the more hard line and absolutist the religious position has become. No amount of science or sociology or anthropology or plain old fashioned reality testing impacts the "truth" of the sexual teachings. As our consensus reality about gender roles change, the keepers of the old consensus are digging in deeper and meaner.


The Philippines is currently one of the 'hot zones' in this clash of consensus realities. I've followed the ups and downs of the various Reproductive Health bills for the last five or six years. It's beginning to look like the constant and continual presentation of 'reality checks' is having an effect on the fantasy of 'gender complimentarity' with it's absolutist position on sex. The following is from a Canadian Press Release:

Rep. Jose Maria Zubiri said the country's "overrapid and unsustainable population growth ... has already become a national security issue.".....

......Catholic church leaders oppose artificial contraceptives and say sex education, which is included in the proposals, is a parental responsibility. (Too many parents raised as strict Catholics don't actually know that much about sex.)

Rep. Luz Ilagan of the women's party Gabriela said the proposed law will limit unsafe abortions by reducing unwanted pregnancies caused by a lack of knowledge of family planning methods.

An estimated 560,000 women in the Philippines in 2008 sought abortions involving crude and painful methods, according to a report released in August by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights.
About 90,000 women suffer from abortion complications and an estimated 1,000 die each year, the report said, adding that complications are among the top 10 reasons women seek hospital care. (These are serious reality checks proving that making abortion illegal does not put a dent in abortion numbers. It just leaves more orphans.)


If the Philippines demonstrates the harsh reality of the absolute sexual position of gender complementarity, the Anglicans crossing the Tiber demonstrate the male self centered aspect of the paradigm. Jesus is no where to be found in men worried about their salary and housing--even if that worry is dressed up in the guise of concern for the families. If they were really worried about their families they would have accepted the Anglican overtures and stuck with the church in which they were ordained.


Reality says the consensus reality of gender complementarity has nothing at all to do with what Jesus taught. His teachings actually cut across all the traditional notions of what it means to be male or female. In His teachings being "HUMAN" meant freely choosing to be other centered in service, love, and compassion.


In the still developing new consensus reality on sex and gender we need to be very careful about not letting the new reality be co opted by the old reality. This would happen in two ways, if we accepted a notion of gender that freed women to approach life from a 'self centered' world view identical to men, or if we just flipped roles. We need to try what Jesus actually taught. That business about being other centered in service, love, and compassion and choosing freely to do that. That would respect and honor the individual while upholding the importance of healthy communities.


Encore presentations: Try these two latest NCR articles by Fr. Tom Doyle and Eugene Kennedy for two other view points about the clash of consensus realities.  And then try this one from Bilgrimage in which Bill Lyndsey quotes advice given to a faithful Catholic mother of a gay child by her Archbishop--Neinstedt: 

"Your eternal salvation may well depend upon a conversion of heart on this topic".  This is the kind of 'self centered' thinking I mentioned above.  It's given to a mother whose world view is other centered.  Essentially Neinstedt says, dump your sinful 'other centered' concern for your child for the self centered goal of your own salvation.   Give me a freaking break.  I don't what this is, but it's nothing Jesus taught.

Truth and Reality and Fantasy Are All Mixed Up In "Faithful" Catholic Journalism

Mural from St. John's Episcopal Church in Edinburgh. Pope Benedict would have passed by it on his recent trip to Britain

The editor of the independent Irish Catholic newspaper speaks some truth to power. Article taken from Clerical Whispers.

I won’t be gagged over more rights for women in Church

A Latin Mass priest tried yesterday to ban the paper I edit, The Irish Catholic, from his church for having the temerity to report in this week's issue that new research shows Catholic women do not feel appreciated by the Irish Church. 

Hardly a startling revelation. 

But from the priest's point of view it was dangerous.

Anger

The majority of people in the pews these days are women, and he didn't want to stir them up. 

And rightly, too, from his point of view because there is huge anger out there. 

Several dioceses have held listening sessions and one of the major issues coming back to Church authorities is that a rubicon has been crossed and there's no going back.

And it is as simple as this; the vast majority of ordinary decent people believe that if women had been involved in the decision-making processes in the Irish Church, at least some of them would have cried halt to the cover-up of abuse and the mis-management that saw paedophiles moved on from parish to parish to wreck havoc on unsuspecting families and their children.

The logic is, and it is unassailable, a woman, especially a woman who has her own family, could never countenance such behaviour, could never sacrifice the innocence of children to protect an institution.

A mother knows what a seven-year-old child is like, the innocence, the vulnerability, just as Archbishop Martin, when he came to Dublin, went to visit a class of seven-year-olds just to see for himself the youthful innocence and put context into the reports of abuse he was reading.

A friend of mine who has worked with sex offenders who themselves had been abused when young, once asked a few of them if their own abuse was awful.

Yes, they replied, it was horrendous. 

Then, he said, why the hell did you inflict that horror on others? 

They normally didn't reply, or threatened to report him for asking such searching questions.

Denial is alive and well. (Once one has switched from victim to predator it is not easy to deal with the victim part of one's own life.)

So when Fr Gerard Deighan, who is the administrator of Dublin's Harrington Street parish and was installed by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin as Chaplain to the Dublin Latin Mass community, rang the paper's accounts department to say that he was banning the paper for its "inappropriate headline and editorial", one has to wonder what does he think a Catholic paper is for?

If we in the Church can't handle the truth, the same truth that we propose to the wider world as the way to live a full human life, then how the hell can the Church stay open for business? (The Church is not in the business of truth based in objective fact, but truth based in a long standing fantasy about itself.) 

Pravda

Apparently from a late evening call from him which I received, on the foot of several journalists ringing his phone he decided to reverse his earlier decision, he still believes that a Catholic newspaper is a theological version of Pravda, which gives the party line and does nothing to upset the status quo.

The small problem with that thinking is that Catholics follow a creed that puts truth above all else, even loyalty to the Pope.

Ironically, Pravda means truth and a common Russian saying at the time the paper was in circulation in the Soviet Union was that "In the Truth there is no news". (This is 'true' on so many levels.)

 

Christians believe in Good News, which is not touchy feely news, but information that cuts away all the bull that marketers and advertising people, bankers and so on throw at us in our daily lives, it is simply real.

If the Catholic media, which in my paper's case is independent of the Church, cannot be free to publish the truth, then has this journey through cover-up and mis-management been for nothing?

Priests and bishops are fond of saying that the truth will set us free, it's a nice saying for many as long as it doesn't impinge on their set ways and ideologies. (And that's the truth.)

It's time for those who still don't get it, that the rubicon has been crossed and there's no going back to the clerical club mentality, it's time for them to 'get real'. (At this point that will only happen in our fantasies.)

 

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I can see where a Latin Mass priest would not want to get his 'women' all stirred up.  Who would do all that Latin Mass laundry?  Best to keep telling women that their anger is a symptom of too much pride and too little humility. Best not to credence any truth at all to the fact many Catholic women do not feel appreciated by the Church--Irish or Roman.

 

That's not the only clerical fantasy in this editorial.  The other fantasy, that Catholic newspapers and media should be nothing more than outlets to restate the Catechism, is as big an issue as the women issue.  It's how the Church intends to keep the women's anger issue a non issue--that would be the fantasy about who should control the content of Catholic news media.

 

There is a difference between restating Catholic dogma, and reporting on Catholic news and Catholic news makers.  Very often the second kind of reporting is not flattering at all to the teachers of the first kind.  We know when the second kind is upsetting the teachers of the first kind because they always call this second kind "anti Catholic bias".  Too much reality I guess, is not good for man made fantasies in Catholic truth. 

 

Unbiased reporting for bishops like Chaput (CNA) means reporting only on the kind of truth which is not subject to any kind of journalistic evaluation.  This is the kind of truth which is very reductionist in that it's really about whose personal opinion matters.  In the Catholic system it's the male hierarchy who claim to have the only truth filled personal opinions about how to act out the Catholic faith.  They even claim to represent Jesus Christ, speak for God the Father, and are the only ones the Holy Spirit is allowed to talk to.  That's a pretty good trifecta. 

 

This catechism regurgitation function for Catholic media is designed to insure the teaching authority has the sole right to claim their fantasy is reality and to bind the rest of us to accepting their fantasy for God's reality.  I can certainly see why it is not good for the Vatican male fantasy to have women gettin' all agitated about their assigned place in the scheme of things. 

 

I can also see why Benedict invented a new chapter in the Catholic fantasy for all those disaffected Anglican clergy who don't care for the fact Anglicanism dared to get real about women's place in the Anglican Church. But that's the trouble with fantasy, it isn't real.  Truth and fact will eventually force any fantasy, no matter how well entrenched, to better conform to reality.  When it comes to the reality of women's equality, the Roman Catholic male domino will indeed fall and the Church will move into the twenty first century.  It maybe at that point that Benedict's two pet projects, misogynist Anglicans and retro Latinists will find themselves lumped together sharing their fantasies--and doing their own laundry.

Science Of Mysticism Is Not An Oxymoron

Is this a map of the Internet or the Universe?  One does seem to mirror the other.  There's a deeper lesson in that.

US Catholic currently has a very interesting article written by Jesuit Richard J Malloy about how our current scientific understanding about the working of our universe should open up our view of God rather than threaten it.  In the following extract Fr. Malloy lists some of the incredible discoveries mankind has made about quantum mechanics and quantum cosmology:

We live in a vast, pulsating universe: trillions of stars, billions of galaxies. Scientific theories concerning black holes, string theory, and the multi-verse radically reorient our comprehension of the majesty and mystery of the universe and thus our awareness of the awesomeness of God. Our imaginations expand as we learn what scientists know. Thus science affects our religious meanings and cultural truths because we are aware of realities unimaginable to those who came before us. (And these should change our understanding of our basic religious cosmology.  At least it should if we want to maintain any kind of intellectual coherence between faith and science.)

The whole notion of spacetime as the context within which we exist, and novel ideas about the meanings of past, present, and future, marvelously open us to fascinating new conjectures about who God is and how God operates in and through physical realities. Teilhard de Chardin and John Haught contemplate a God who exists, not so much in the past or the present but in the future, calling all forward in time to culmination.
We Catholics should rejoice in the astonishing realities science reveals, and we are called to relate other ways of knowing to the ways science knows. To know by love and faith are also legitimate ways of knowing. Remember: science answers the questions "what" and "how"; the questions "why" and "what does it all mean" are above science's pay grade.  (Those last two questions can't be answered in any meaningful religious context if you reject the scientific answers to the 'what' and 'how'.)

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In his essay, Fr. Malloy doesn't deal with the current research in human consciousness, which also points to the need to reconfigure our understanding of the 'why' and 'what does it all mean' about self aware conscious humanity.  If astrophysicists explore our ever expanding cosmological reality, mystics explore our equally expanding reality of consciousness. 

What's fascinating to me is that the theorising coming from both ways of investigating reality are coming to the same conclusions about time.  That is that past, present, and future exist simultaneously--but in different resonances.  We live our biological experience of reality in one particular resonance, but our consciousness need not limit itself to the biological experience.  Most of us just opt to do that because that's the resonance the body needs for survival and that's the resonance in which we predominately relate to each other.  Most of us have had experiences in other resonances of time, but we usually ignore them or repress them.  The most common experience of this is what is known as deja vu--the feeling of having experienced a particular situation before.  This is actually entirely possible, and theories of time tell us it is possible.

The best explanation I've ever gotten to give my left hemisphere a handle on this particular aspect of time goes something like this.  The past, present, and future all contain within them possibilities of pasts, presents, and futures.  So the present has a possible pasts as well as possible futures with in it, but so do the future and the past.  Here's a story about a healing we did some years back which illustrates how this works.

We had a young boy of about five who exhibited really serious psychiatric symptoms, almost all violent in nature.  The parents had decided to put him in a children's psychiatric hospital but while waiting for their insurance to approve this treatment,  they decided to let a medical intuitive friend of mine put together a group to see if we could do something for the boy.  The group consisted of seven people from a number of spiritual traditions, but all seven people exhibited a fairly high degree of psychic talent.  What we found in a group meditative journey was that the boy had fallen off a bed at about six months of age and broke his neck at the the third vertebrae.  This injury had never been noticed in any previous medical check up, but was confirmed in tests taken on his neck after our meditative journey. The subsequent MRI also showed that the vertebrae had healed in such a way that surgery had to be ruled out. 

However in the journey itself, two people with medical backgrounds reset the vertebrae and subsequent energy work on that area finished the healing.  The vertebrae is no longer a problem.  The boy has gone on to be quite the academic whiz kid and a pretty decent athlete.  All of his psychiatric symptoms and acting out behavior stopped the day we did the original meditative journey.  He told his mother it was weird not to have any pain because it had been such a constant part of his life he didn't know it wasn't normal.

This was a case of seven of us consciously going back to a very specific past time in the boy's past, starting from our present time, making changes in the past event, and having those changes manifest in the present.  What we actually did was find a particular future probability in boys past, and by focusing on that particular probability event, make that probability his present reality.  I hope that made sense.  None of this violates the underlying quantum laws of the universe.  It's with in our right as self aware conscious beings to explore our abilities and our probabilities.  This same process must be how Jesus worked his healing miracles.  Healing is actually bringing another future probability embedded in a past event into the present.

I've also had one very vivid personal experience--of a learning sort--that validated for me that future probabilities work the same way. The future has with in it present probabilities that will manifest in this present time.  This is how precognition works or deja vu. 

In my own case in one meditative journey I met a future version of me who slapped me across the face.  I was totally unprepared for this and made no effort to defend myself. My future self then hugged me and said she did it for a reason and I would see the reason.  End of meditation.  With in a half an hour the entire right side of my face swelled up. I literally saw the reason.  I had the answer to my question about whether time in the future worked the same as time in the past.  It does. The swelling was gone by morning and I suffered no other ill effects, but I learned a lot.  Such as we don't know anything about our true reality or how consciousness works with in a interdimensional  quantum multiverse.  Jesus tried to teach some of this, but it's really hard to change the core way people view themselves, their ego identity, and their beliefs about how reality works.

I know that I'm probably hoping and wishing here, but I really would like to see the best of our Catholic thinkers start looking at the best of our Catholic mystics from a more scientific approach.  They might find out that the lives of saints like Padre Pio are really a huge gift to mankind in a scientific as well as spiritual sense.

I'll have more on this tomorrow.

Interior columns of Basilica of Sagrada Familia.  This church seems to have a much more feminine feel than the usual Cathedral or Basilica.

Benedict just finished a week end trip to Spain where he continued his attacks on secularism and his re evangelization of Europe. I was going to write about this yesterday, but after reading this report from Austen Ivereigh, I had to....well not write.  After you are done reading that report, you have to read Bill Lyndseys' take....just for fun.

The following extract is from the Christian Science Monitor.  I chose to focus on this report because there is some interesting information in it not found in other articles. Certainly not Austen Ivereigh's.

“The renaissance of modern Catholicism comes mostly thanks to Spain. But it is also true that laicism, a strong and aggressive secularism was born in Spain, as we saw in the 1930s,” the Pope said on board his plane just before arriving in the northwestern coastal city of Santiago de Compostela. “This dispute is happening again in Spain today. The future of faith and the relations between faith and secularism have Spanish culture as its epicenter.” (No, not the future of faith, or the relations between faith and secularism,  but the future of Roman Catholicism.  All through out this trip Benedict conflated faith and God with Roman Catholicism. They are not the same.)

While officially consecrating Barcelona's Sagrada Familia church as a basilica on Sunday, the pope continued his push.

“The Church opposes all forms that negate human life and supports everything that supports the natural order in the realm of institution of the family,” he told the 6,500 people inside, almost a fifth of them from the clergy. (There really wasn't anything particularly 'natural' about the Holy Family.)

But the low turnout to see Benedict XVI on his second visit to Spain as pope seemed to illustrate his concern that Europe is shedding its Catholic roots. (Other articles talk about the 250,000 who turned out on the streets in Barcelona, but this number is way down compared to his and JPII's previous visits.)
Crowds of in the tens of thousands sometimes seemed to only slightly outnumber the vast security detail that closed off much of Spain’s second-biggest city, and many streets along the papal route were nearly empty. Also, small, unusual protests such as a gay "kiss-in" by couples as Benedict XVI waved from his vehicle drew the ire of loyal Catholic followers.

King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia greeted the pope, were present in the consecration mass, and bid him farewell at the airport, but Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was conspicuously absent and only met the Catholic patriarch for a private meeting in the airport minutes before he returned to Rome...

....The fallout in relations between the current government and the Vatican, however, is not seen as a real challenge from the state. That would probably not be tolerated by a majority of Spaniards, analysts say.
Recent surveys show the number of practicing Catholics is dropping fast, to around 20 percent currently, mirroring a broader European trend, but the vast majority of Spaniards still declare themselves Catholics. And the Catholic Church has great perks here, starting with around $9 billion annually in different forms of direct and indirect government funds from tax revenue to financing of religious schools. The Spanish Church is the second biggest property owner in the country, trailing only the government.  (This should help explain why JPII and now Benedict enable and promote all the Spanish Catholics cults which have sprung up since Franco came to power.  Opus Dei, the Neo Cats and the Legionaries did not get where they are at in the Vatican because they prayed the rosary.)

Church defends its political perks

“Spain is a bastion of the Catholic Church in Europe. It doesn’t treat all religions equally. It has preferential treatment for the Church,” says Ferran Requejo, a political science professor in the Universidad de Barcelona. “Relations with the government have been cold for some time and the Vatican has been pushing to weaken the secular push.”

The Vatican has also been aiming to derail a government electoral promise to reform “religious freedom” legislation that is now broadly considered discriminatory against other faiths.
It has been indefinitely postponed, though, to avoid further alienating Catholics as the government is already facing massive discontent over the economic crisis. (And all along I thought this Papal attention was because the people were so faithful, but now I see it's really about money and power.)

Spain is not officially secular, as most western states are. Rather, it is legally neutral in terms of religion, implying it is a faith-based state. In practice that has translated into huge benefits for the Catholic Church that leaders from other religions, namely Muslims, Protestants, and Jews, say are unconstitutional because they are discriminated against when getting access to government aid and public space.
In Santiago, Benedict XVI met the leader of the main opposition Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy, who has promised to turn back secular laws passed by the Zapatero government if elected.


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I would really appreciate it if I could take anything this Pope says or does at face value, but it would be folly in the extreme to do so.  Every thing this Vatican does is always, in it's core truth, about power and money.  If throwing gays to the wolves or advising women to die in childbirth will convince a certain mindset to follow the Church, that's great,  because that belief translates into political numbers.  It translates into non accountable, non transparent power for the hierarchy.  No surprise then, at least on a symbolic level, that Benedict starts his campaign to re evangelize Europe with photo ops with Europe's last few remaining monarchs.

The image I will retain from the dedication of the Basilica of Sagrada Familia is that of one thousand male clerics and 150 male bishops enacting this particular production from the theatre of the absurd, while eight women nuns clean the altar and re drape it. Eight women with bit roles as cleaners, 1150 clerics and one monarchical pope as the stars of the main show. And underneath all the theatrics the issue is not Jesus, it's power and money.  Male power and money.  The 'natural' way of the family.

Bishop Morlino Involved In Another Crash On The Catholic Interstate

The following excerpt from the Wisconsin State Journal concerns a parish in the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin.  It involves an American Bishop, Robert Morlino,  whose career crossed paths with my own Catholic path.  I follow his career out of a sort voyeuristic interest to see how many other Catholics will take the same hike I did, and leave the official church.  What's happening in Madison is no surprise.

Donations plummet following appointment of orthodox Catholic priests in Platteville
Doug Erickson - Wisconsin State Journal - 11/05/2010

St. Mary's Catholic Church in Platteville, stung by a plunge in donations following the arrival of three controversial priests, has issued an urgent plea for money to keep its parochial school open.

The 75-year-old St. Mary's Catholic School is subsidized by the church, which has seen weekly donations fall more than 50 percent in four months, said Myron Tranel, chairman of the church's finance council.

The school, with 106 K-8 students, has enough money to operate until at least January but needs an additional $200,000 to keep the facility open through the end of the school year, he said.
The financial crisis coincides with Madison Bishop Robert Morlino's decision in June to bring in three priests from the Society of Jesus Christ the Priest to lead the parish. The group is based in Spain and known for traditionalist liturgy and devotion to orthodox Catholic teaching. (Shock, another reactionary/fascist Spanish religious group.  Spain pops these out like McDonald's makes hamburgers.  No wonder Benedict is visiting Spain this week end.)

Changes the priests have made, including barring girls from being altar servers, led to a petition last month signed by 469 of the church's approximately 1,200 members asking Morlino to immediately remove the priests. In a response letter to the parish last week, Morlino said the priests have his full support and will stay. He chastised parishioners for conduct he called "gravely sinful." (Hmmm, well at least it's not a sexual sin he's chastising them for. That's refreshing.)

"It grieves me to acknowledge that the reputation of three happy, holy and hardworking priests has been seriously tarnished by rumor, gossip and calumny — lying with the intent to damage another's good name — by some within the parish community," Morlino wrote in the letter, a copy of which the diocese provided the State Journal......

Brent King, spokesman for the Madison Catholic Diocese, said the diocese has "no intention of allowing the school to fail." He said diocesan officials, if asked by the church, would offer assistance in areas such as fundraising. But he stopped short of saying the diocese would provide money to help run the school, calling that an unusual and possibly unprecedented step.....(The chancery can read the numbers as well as I can.  Besides, Morlino needs to keep diocesan money flowing to the anti gay marriage folks.  Forget children.)

Morlino invited priests from the Spanish society to begin serving in the diocese in 2006, primarily in the Sauk City area. There are now eight society priests serving seven churches.

Their arrival at each church has ushered in similar changes. They reserve the altar server role to boys to encourage more seminarians. They eliminate participation by laypeople in the distribution of communion. And they preach homilies that supporters find refreshingly forthright in stressing Catholic teaching but critics find short on compassion. (I'm sure this last issue is the big issue.  Jesus came to bring the Good News and that involved a great deal about compassion. He did not die for Catholic teaching.)

While opposition to the priests has surfaced in other parishes, it has become particularly loud in Platteville, a city of 10,500 people 75 miles southwest of Madison. Fay Stone, a 25-year St. Mary's member, said the priests' decision-making approach seems heavy handed to her. While the Catholic church is not a democracy, some degree of collaboration with parishioners would be nice, she said.

"I know they probably have church law on their side, but just because you have the right to do something doesn't make it the right thing to do," she said. (But in Morlino's understanding of his role, the two are equated

People are leaving and taking their money with them, she said.

King, the diocesan spokesman, referred all parish-related questions to the Rev. Lope Pascual, one of the three society priests at St. Mary's. He did not return phone calls.

Weekly collections had been running between $10,500 and $11,500 prior to the priests' arrival and now average barely $5,000, Tranel said, adding that the finance council created a segregated fund so that donors can give directly to the school now.

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I wrote a friend the other day something to the effect that when a Church is willing to give up 80% of it's laity in order to keep 100% of the clerical structure, that was a Church that deserved to die. Benedict actually seems willing to give up the priesthood as well. It's amazing how many statements Benedict has issued in the last two years which call for individual conversion in the priesthood but totally ignores the conversion or reform of bishops and the College of Cardinals. The NCR is running another one right now. I'm sure we will hear more on these lines while Benedict is in Spain.



The Morlino's of the current Catholic world (and their continual promotion) are no surprise. What is sort of surprising is the silence of our bishops that aren't like the Morlino's of the Church. It makes me wonder what's going on under the surface of the supposed unity of groups like the USCCB. It makes me wonder about the reasons for the silence. Maybe I'm just deluding myself, but I can't believe the maturity level of all of our bishops is that of the Morlino's or the Burke's of the Church world. Not all of our bishops exhibit the kind of personality that thrives on the fantasy implied in the trappings and the pageantry of their position or insists on the kind of authority that's needed to make those theatrical kinds of fantasy come true.


The situation in Madison is a prime example of what happens when theatrical Catholicism-I won't call it traditional- collides with American Catholicism. People take their money and leave. They do not support a Catholic version of the 'theatre of the absurd'. See the comments following the NCR article about Burke.


I can find it easy to believe these three imported Spanish priests are good, and decent, and holy men, at least as defined by Morlino and Benedict. That doesn't change the fact they are also deluded if these men truly think many American Catholics find their Spanish/Trentan version of Catholicism 'Good News'. This is not a Church of Good News when it fixates on all the Bad News, especially the bad news about modern laity and the culture we live in.


In the past the Church was able to get away with force feeding the Bad News kind of theology that theatrical Catholicism needs to survive. Enough laity bought into it and the rest were able to tune it out. For the most part Catholics weren't expecting much depth in their spiritual life. By the age of ten most of us knew what it took to save our soul. People who actually wanted to grow in their relationship with Jesus joined religious orders. Parishes were sort of like full service gas stations. Laity filled up, payed up, and motored on. When they wrecked they could count on pastoral understanding from their spiritual mechanic and then got on the road again.


Vatican II merged with this sort of Catholic interstate at the same time high numbers of Catholics with advanced education merged on the same interstate. For awhile most everyone was traveling in the same direction and at Autobahn speeds. Then the Vatican flipped a U turn, with no turn signals, and insisted on staying in the same lane. Regular crashes have been occurring at frequent intervals. We no longer move at Autobahn speeds--if we move at all. Some one needs to get off this Interstate and according to the Vatican, it won't be them.


Morlino will not give any diocesan funds even if it results in closing the school. He will soothe his conscience by pointing out the Diocese did all that it could. Which in Morlino's mind will be self righteously true because 'doing all that he could' would not include money. Loosening up Diocesan funds would be the equivalent of enabling the grave evil of lay dissent. It isn't going to happen on his watch. Too bad for the kids but it's not his fault. His personal M1 Abrams tank - the one he got from his work 'overseeing' the School of the Americas- will continue it's out of sync travels on the Catholic interstate. If it runs over a few kids, well that's traditional part of the Catholic theatre of the absurd.

Emotions and 'Miracles' and Connectedness

 My grey tiger stripe is still young.  She's working on figuring out the toilet.  We are connected through the toilet paper.  What she unrolls I reroll--endlessly. 

Today I am going to get into the importance of emotion and I'm going to do so by using one of the areas with which educated western Catholics have some issues--miracles and sainthood.  To introduce the topic I've taken an extract from theologian Andrew Hamilton's editorial on the recent canonization of Australia's Mary MacKillop. It's from the Eureka Street webzine of which Hamilton is the consulting editor.

......The interesting thing about the encounter between the educated and the popular approaches to sainthood was that, as in Latin America, the popular approach seemed more interesting and potentially subversive. The easy accommodation of miracles and prayer was seen as strange, but also as attractively liberating because it addressed a hidden disquiet that the world is entirely worked out, and that the only questions that now matter are ones of technique. Within this view, pervasive in our culture, miracles and prayer are primitive survivals. The discussion of miracles focuses narrowly on whether they can be proved to violate scientific laws and to be an intervention of God. (This intellectual attitude, which basically says emotion is primitive, is really crippling.  I should know, it crippled me for a long long time on my personal path.)

Against such a constricted view of the world, miracles and prayers are signs of a larger world and of a reality which is much greater than we can ever comprehend. They do not prove the existence of God or that God intervenes from outside, but they point to a reality beyond what we can know and to a God who cares for it. That relaxed and open view of reality is valuable because it encourages curiosity about what we do not know. (Bring this topic up amongst most educated western people and the first reaction is usually a reflexive defensive dismissal.)

Once miracles are seen, not as events outside the order of nature that prove God's existence, but as inexplicable and non-replicable events that take place in the context of faith, they raise interesting questions. Spontaneous cures involve physical processes – tumours are absorbed into the body, lesions are healed and malignant cells lose their power. Intellectual passion and energy would surely be better deployed in research into such events and into the prima facie connection between them and mental states than in dismissing them in the interests of a narrow and controlled view of the world. (This is happening, but mostly by secular paranormal investigators.  What's fascinating is no matter how tight the experimental method and how high the significance of the results, mainstream science is still dismissing the field and research money is very difficult to obtain----except from governmental intelligence and defense agencies.)

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In my way of thinking, Andrew Hamilton has laid out the basic world view of the educated West towards the idea of the miraculous.  One difference I have is that rather than saying folk Catholicism is primitive, I would say most of us see folk Catholicism as a more child like form of faith expression.  We do identify with it, if only because it is the Catholicism many of us were raised in.  But we identify with it from our emotional child self and not our rational adult self.  The rational adult self finds it easy to dismiss. That's a mistake.

The fuel which triggers change on the quantum level is emotion.  Most of our saintly miracles involve people who are usually in serious physical states.  These states break through emotional denial because they threaten our existence and blow past emotional defenses.  Prayers from this kind of emotion and motivation are intense and focused.  Often times they are prayed by many people and carry even more focus and intent.  The saint is not the active doer, but the focal point for all the emotionally charged energy.  Sort of like a magnifying glass can be used to focus sun light and start a fire. So how does this result in miracles? 

In my quantum speak, I would say the saint, divine image, or ceremony (focal point) creates a singularity in space and time through which information is exchanged. In this exchange of information,  emotion is the biggest component of the information. In a very real way, emotion is the language in which the information is expressed and understood by the dimensions and entities of the quantum universe. In a 'miracle' the information which is returned from the quantum universe, is genetic cellular information and once that information is received, cells will act on it.  Voila, 'miracle'. 

I have personally participated in a dozen or so of these kinds of 'miracles'.  Which, by the way, does not make me a saint.  It does make me far more aware of how incredible our reality actually is and how we haven't begun to scratch the surface of the potential of human consciousness.  These events have proven to me that we know virtually nothing about the construct of the self aware personality or how the soul or spirit fits into all of that.  I've also learned that we really do not understand how time, as a force of this universe, works in the scheme things.  Einstein was right on about time being relative, he just didn't go near far enough.

It's also taught me that our Catholic world view, as opposed to what Jesus taught,  can be one of the biggest obstacles we have to overcome in order to 'live' effectively in this greater reality.  The other is our cultural world view, which denies and constrains emotional experience, especially for men.  The task should not be to deny our emotional experiences.  Emotions are how we experience life itself. The healthier approach is two fold:  The first is to learn basic discipline about expressing our emotion, and the second is to learn to live in the most positive emotional state for our own well being and that of others.  As Jesus taught, that would be a state of love.

Peace, love, hope, and joy have a very practical application in the greater quantum world and in our own world.  They are the prime organizing principles of the universe. They give us the beauties of life and the lessons of choice.   Fear, and it's other emotional flavors,  anger, hate, guilt, and shame, also have real effects.  They are the agents of chaos.  They produce the monsters of life and seek to control and dominate our choice.  Thankfully they also have a fundamental weakness.  Darkness can not exist in light and has no effect on light.  It works the other way around.  Which means, whether we want to believe this or not, the universe is stacked in God's favor. God did not play dice with the universe.  It only looks like it from our ignorance.  

Our universe and reality are His creation and everything is part of His creation and it is fundamentally good.  Once a person really gets that, a whole new world and universe opens up.  It's just easier to get this after we've transitioned at death.  It's time humanity made a real effort to understand some of this before we transition at death.  It would make this life a whole lot more enjoyable for a whole lot more people.







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About Last Night's Election

Looks like a lot of Mama Griz's fellow Alaskans dropped their bear rifles and picked up the lowly pen

I've spent some time this morning reading editorials about last night's election.  After laughing hysterically at Jim DeMint's musings on The Wall Street Journal, and David Brook's delusional take in the New York Times (neither of which is worth linking) I found this extract from Dan Glickman summed up some of my own beliefs:

The American public is growing increasingly tired of our political leaders seeming to argue for the sake of winning power, and our political leaders rarely reaching a satisfactory conclusion on any issue of public policy that benefits the public as a whole. Americans want to believe that the art of politics is to promote the common good where necessary, not to serve as a podium for the perpetual gain of political power by our elected leaders. If the election demonstrates anything, it is that the public is weary of excessive gamesmanship and is demanding that American politics become more realistic and responsive. And we have all grown more cynical about where any of this can happen.

I have some of my own thoughts about this past election, and most of them are strangely positive.  First I was heartened to know that wealthy individuals can not buy political office.  Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, Carl Paladino, and Linda McMahon all lost.  All put millions of their own money into buying their election.  Add up all that money and they could have bought up the deficit in a number of States.  They could have done something positive.  My hope is that in the next election Americans will figure out allowing corporate interests to buy elections for their personal lobbyists is an equally bad idea.

The Republican party has a huge tactical victory but it will turn out to be a huge strategic loss.  Mama Grizzly and her cubs, coupled with the heavy handed use of moneyed attack ads by corporations and wealthy individuals have destroyed any semblance of a Republican center. It appears the Repubs have harped on too many fears for one party to handle coherently. 

When I think about the 'gamesmanship' in politics, I think about 'point guard Palin' treating the political process and her own party as if it's some sort of basketball game she is orchestrating against the 'big boys'.  Unfortunately for her and her party, some of her players traveled way too much and cost her team some victories.  Sharon Angle's loss in Nevada was a huge win for the Democratic party.  On the other hand, the idiocy of Christine O'Donnell points directly to the stupidity of the Republican National Party if they think Palin is some sort of national player they can pin their hopes on in 2012 or that the Tea Party can be fully integrated into their ranks.  All they need do is look to Alaska where Mama Griz'z pet personal Tea Party cub, Joe Miller, appears to be going down to a write in campaign for Lisa Murkowski. 

The decimation of the Democratic Blue Dog contingency also sends a similar message to Democrats.  Placating Repbulicans in your ranks does not help your cause at the polls.  Over one third of the Democratic losses in the House came from the ranks of the Blue Dogs. It's time the Democratic Party stopped playing footsy with ideological traitors in order to feed from the corporate trough.  Corporate money swung virtually in total to the Republican and Tea Party candidates in spite of the fact Dems like Max Baucus handed corporations all they could want on health care reform, Obama sent 900 billion more to banks 'to big to fail', and then bailed out much of the Auto Industry.  The one place our corporations weren't handed everything they wanted was in finance reform.  Thank God Massachusett's Barney Frank is coming back.

The jury is still out on Archbishop Neinstedt's attempt to influence Minnesota's election for Governor.  Democrat Mark Dayton leads Neinstedt hero Tom Emmer by some 9,000 votes with all but four precincts reporting.  That margin would trigger an automatic recount.  If this one follows the same path as the Al Franken victory, it might be a while before we know whether the K of C has to keep their ceremonial swords in their sheaths.  In the meantime the State Republican party is already hinting at voter fraud, which is interesting since they took both houses of the legislature.  Maybe voters only cheated on voting for governor.

Pro life politicians had a mixed result, as some stalwarts went down to defeat including VA's Tom Perriello.  GLBT politicians did much better, indicating the culture wars are not nearly as persuasive as the fact the economy is in the toilet.  The message is that the rights of the pre born take a very back seat to the availability of pay checks for parents.  Some of us have been trying to make that very point for a long time.  Too many abortions are the result of poverty.   Maybe now it will be heard.

Over all Prez Obama has no one to blame but himself for the Democratic debacle in the House and even more sadly, he also has to thank the Tea Party for the fact the Dems still hold the senate.  His dithering on progressive issues like DADT did not garner him one single political advantage in the battle for centrist votes and cost him dearly in momentum and enthusiasm in his own base.  I hope he looks around and realizes there is absolutely no reason to placate any more Blue Dog Dems, or Republican Tea Party turn coats like McCain.  Mainstream politicians of both parties, who truly reflect the sane constituencies in their respective parties need to work across the aisle and pull this country out of it's economic mess.  They also need to make it plain to our corporations that the era of buying legislation is over.   Nothing else matters

Peter And The Keys To The Kingdom

17 Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.


18  And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,  and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.

19  I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

For Catholics, the above verses from Mathew 16. are used to justify the authority of the Papacy and the legitimacy of Apostolic succession.  On the surface this seems to be a logical conclusion.  This is especially true if one is raised in the consensus tradition of Catholicism.  A person so raised would not be predisposed to question the authoritative understanding of these verses.  My problem is that even though I was certainly raised in the consensus Catholic tradition, I was prompted to question the unquestionable assumptions very early in my Catholic formation.  These verses and the unquestioning assumptions they have generated are no exception.
 
I now think that Jesus is explaining to Peter and the other Apostles how reality works.  Jesus is very matter of fact when giving them the keys to creating their own reality. What is conceived of in the earth plane shall be manifested from the heavenly plane--or the quantum reality.  And those thoughts can be of a creating or destroying nature, binding or loosening, and they will manifest without judgement.  We create our own personal and consensus reality.
 
Chapter sixteen opens up with the Apostles having misunderstood something Jesus said which is really important about this concept of creating reality and Jesus goes to some lengths to correct their thinking:
 
1 The Pharisees and Sadducees came and, to test him, asked him to show them a sign from heaven.


2  He said to them in reply, "(In the evening you say, 'Tomorrow will be fair, for the sky is red';

3 and, in the morning, 'Today will be stormy, for the sky is red and threatening.' You know how to judge the appearance of the sky, but you cannot judge the signs of the times.)

4 An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah."  Then he left them and went away.  (What Jesus is saying is that the consensus reality taught and reinforced by the Pharisees does not contain any other conceptional reality except the Old Testament with it's stories like that of Jonah. Individuals can find enlightenment, after great trials, but the reality manifested by the consensus culture keeps on keepin' on.)

5 In coming to the other side of the sea,  the disciples had forgotten to bring bread. (This is important to note, because the Apostles have left the consensus reality of the Pharisees and have come to the other side of reality--Jesus's reality.  However, they have also brought their Pharisaical thinking with them.

6 Jesus said to them, "Look out, and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees."  (Leaven is a catalyst in the creation of bread,  just as authoritative teaching is a catalyst in the creation of consensus reality.)

7 They concluded among themselves, saying, "It is because we have brought no bread."

8  When Jesus became aware of this he said, "You of little faith, why do you conclude among yourselves that it is because you have no bread?

9 Do you not yet understand, and do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many wicker baskets you took up? (Jesus is reminding them that His reality transcends Pharisaical reality.)

10 Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you took up?

11 How do you not comprehend that I was not speaking to you about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees."

12 Then they understood  that he was not telling them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (Bingo!)

13  When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"

14 They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."

15  He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"

16  Simon Peter said in reply, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." 

17 Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood  has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.

This last statement of Peter's is really important because it indicates that Peter understands Jesus is teaching and manifesting something new about reality and how it should be thought of and that the old ideas are old ideas.  In my scheme of things he sees that Jesus has come to save them from their old consensus reality and to form a new one.  Jesus then goes on the give Peter the 'keys' to reality by essentially explaining how reality works.  We get what we think and believe and that will manifest without judgment from heaven--the quantum reality. 

No wonder in Jesus's conceiving of forming a new consensus reality (church) he placed such an emphasis on love and service to others and the sacrificing (transcending) of the need driven self aware ego.  Jesus's consensus reality would be known by it's manifestations from love, by it's egalitarian acceptance of everyone, and by it's signs and wonders--it's ability to transcend the known rules of material reality.  Authority was not predicated on genetic family line or intellectual accomplishment, both of which tend to maintain the status quo.  In Jesus's new consensus reality authority is based first on selfless service to others and secondly on the mystical connections one had developed. This is why Jesus commented on Peter's understanding of His messiaship as having come not from flesh and blood--the material reality,  but from the Heavenly Father--the creative quantum reality.

What's happening now in Catholicism is not a tug of war between competing political wings or theological ideologies.  It is a tussle over the description of the consensus reality manifested by adherents of Catholicism.  If it seems at times that we are engaged in the same conceptual battle Jesus was as to who is the 'leaven' of this consensus reality, it's because we are engaged in that same conceptual battle.

It would be novel if we actually tried to create the love based consensus reality Jesus taught and manifested.  We might find it not only makes life fairer and more just, but it's also hugely efficient in meeting basic human needs---like feeding five thousand people by replicating  loaves and fish from the quantum universe.  The thing is, in Jesus's reality you don't get to play on that level in the Kingdom if your personal reality is that of a self centered jerk--and that too is a lesson brought to us by Peter.

I'll be writing more on this notion of the creative power of consensual reality tomorrow.  Emotion is a big part of this idea, and fear, as a dominant emotion, creates a very polluted consensus reality.  It creates a reality in which authority figures, usually self selected,  are given (or just take) all the power of conceiving the consensus reality.  It's very spiritually disempowering for the vast majority, something which is used and abused by too many authority figures.  Just some food for thought, until tomorrow.

The "Smaller and Purer" American Government

Indiana parents told to drop disabled kids at shelters

Ken Kusmer - Indystar.com - 10/28/2010

Indiana's budget crunch has become so severe that some state workers have suggested leaving severely disabled people at homeless shelters if they can't be cared for at home, parents and advocates said.


They said workers at Indiana's Bureau of Developmental Disabilities Services have told parents that's one option they have when families can no longer care for children at home and haven't received Medicaid waivers that pay for services that support disabled people living independently. (Smaller government sure works swell for everybody, unless you actually don't fall into the mythical 'everybody' group.)

Marcus Barlow, a spokesman for the Family and Social Services Administration, the umbrella agency that includes the bureau, said suggesting homeless shelters is not the agency's policy and workers who did so would be disciplined.

However, Becky Holladay of Battle Ground, Ind., said that's exactly what happened to her when she called to ask about the waiver she's seeking for her 22-year-old son, Cameron Dunn, who has epilepsy, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Holladay, a school nurse, said she and her husband would go bankrupt trying to pay for services themselves, so Cameron spends most days sitting in his stepfather's truck while he works as a municipal employee.

"It's heart-wrenching as a parent to watch it. We are people and they are people," Holladay said, referring to her son and others with disabilities. "They have lives that are worth something."

There have been no confirmed cases of families dumping severely disabled people at homeless shelters because Indiana wouldn't provide the care needed.

But some families have been on waiting lists for waivers for 10 years. The lists contained more than 20,000 names last month, and one advocacy group predicted they will only grow longer because Gov. Mitch Daniels ordered budget cuts that have eliminated 2,000 waiver slots since July.

Budget cuts also have resulted in the state moving foster children with disabilities to a lower cost program that doesn't provide services for special needs and eliminating a grocery benefit for hundreds of developmentally disabled adults.

Kim Dodson, associate executive director of The Arc of Indiana, said her group has received reports of state workers in several of BDDS's eight regional offices telling families to take disabled adults to homeless shelters. She speculated that the suggestion resulted from frustration among BDDS staff as families become more outspoken about the effects of state cuts.

"It is something we are hearing from all over the state, that families are being told this is an alternative for them," Dodson said. "A homeless shelter would never be able to serve these people."

State lawmakers said they also have received reports from several people who were told they could always abandon their adult children at homeless shelters.

Rep. Suzanne Crouch, R-Evansville, said she found it "deplorable that people are being told to go to a homeless shelter." (Ms Republican -Evansville apparently doesn't understand the implications of losing government provided social safety networks.  Eventually there is only homeless shelters--or prisons.)

Leaders of several agencies serving homeless people across Indiana could not be reached for comment after business hours Wednesday.

Some parents said homeless shelters have also been suggested -- or threatened -- as an option by private care providers.

Daunna Minnich of Bloomington said Indiana Department of Education funding for residential treatment for her 18-year-old daughter, Sabrina, is due to run out Sunday. She said officials at Damar Services Inc. of Indianapolis told her during a meeting that unless she took Sabrina home with her, the agency would drop the teen off at a homeless shelter.

Sabrina, who's bipolar and has anxiety attacks, has attempted suicide, run away during home visits and threatened her older sister, Minnich said. Bringing Sabrina home isn't a viable option, but the two group home placements BDDS offered weren't appropriate, she said.

"I don't want to see the state of Indiana hasten her demise by putting her in a one-size-fits-all solution that will drive her to desperate acts," Minnich said.

Jim Dalton, Damar's chief operating officer, said he could not comment directly on any specific case but his nonprofit would never leave a client at a homeless shelter -- even though it is caring for some for free after they got too old for school-funded services and haven't yet been granted Medicaid waivers.

"We're talking about youth that absolutely require services, and no one is willing to fund them anymore," Dalton said. (Until they wind up in the prison system, and then they are funded.)

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Indiana won't be the last state whose advice of last resort for disabled Americans is homeless shelters.  The only other alternative will be prison, and prison will be the 'home' found by too many children caught in the no man's land between child and adult services.  When Americans take to the polls tomorrow I hope they take the time to factor in this truth.  American society will pay a price for the care of the least of our citizens.  The only question is how that price will be paid--through social services or the penal system.

When Tea Party and Republican candidates talk about how pro life they are, they aren't referring to those of us already born who face real difficulties assimilating in society.  It's so much easier to ignore the complications faced by the born in favor of the pre born.  To actually look at the situation described in the above article would necessitate some hard decisions about allocations of the funds of their 'smaller purer' government. In all the rhetoric I've heard, one thing becomes very clear.  The 'smaller purer' advocates would never consider cutting military spending in favor of social spending.  Our nuclear missiles, Trident submarines and B2 bombers will never go homeless.

Of course no Catholic election season would be complete without a sound bite from Cardinal designate Raymond Burke.  He had this to say about voting in this year's election as reported in the Washington Times:


""You can never vote for someone who favors absolutely the right to choice of a woman to destroy a human life in her womb or the right to a procured abortion," His Excellency said. "You may in some circumstances where you don't have any candidate who is proposing to eliminate all abortion, choose the candidate who will most limit this grave evil in our country, but you could never justify voting for a candidate who not only does not want to limit abortion but believes that it should be available to everyone,"

This is a more nuanced statement than Burke has made in the past.  He makes a distinction between voting for a candidate who desires to limit abortion as opposed to a candidate who is 'absolutely' in favor of a woman's right to choice.  If you read the Times editorial in it's entirety, this distinction goes unnoticed.  Principally because the Times is all about Americans voting for the Tea Party, 'smaller purer' government candidates.  All of their choices have taken on the abolitionist approach to abortion, rather than the limit abortion approach.  And as with all absolutist pro lifers, none of them have given Americans one ounce of any idea as to how this coercive approach is to be carried out.  Build even more prisons I guess.

I haven't written much about politics recently because I was so right about Obama.  The danger with his presidency was always that he would become Clinton II, with no hope of dot com boom to bail him out.  So we have 1994 all over again, right down to some of the same cast of characters, and for the same reasons.  Democrats stubbornly refuse to comprehend the fact Republicans are not about making government work. They are about creating the emotional conditions which put them back in power.  They don't seem to have a bottom line about this that they won't cross. They have reduced themselves to the juvenile party of "NO" and they seem to want to practice a form of juvenile justice, in which the answer to social problems and inequalities is shunning.  Build more prisons to keep their society 'smaller and purer'.  Tea Party America seems to mean 'America the land of some free and the home of a monster prison system'.

Indiana's problems are a warning about what Americans can expect about the cost of a smaller and purer government.  This has been playing out in Catholicism for a long time.  In this business of True Catholics shunning the Catholic version of the spiritually disabled,  the Episcopalian Church has become sort of synonymous with a homeless shelter. It shouldn't be all that surprising that the same bishops which have fostered the Catholic version of 'smaller and purer' are front and center in the political version.  Maybe they will condescend to take some of the KofC money used in their anti gay marriage campaign and put it to increasing prison ministry.