Is Catholicism By The Rule Book The Only Spiritual Path For Catholic Colleges And Universities?

This is not the kind of Catholic spiritual path Cardinal Burke wants to see taught in Catholic colleges.

It's fun when two articles pop up on the same week end and have two seriously different views of Catholic culture.  The following high lights the main ideas of Cardinal Burke as to what a Catholic university should embody.  Burke gave these thoughts at St Thomas More College of Liberal Arts President's Council Dinner held in Boston. This link will take you to another view point about Catholic education written by Nicholas Lash for the Jesuit magazine America.

Authentic Catholic universities help resist ‘secular dictatorship,’ Cardinal Burke says
Boston, Mass., Dec 11, 2010 / 07:39 am (CNA).-

.....In a lengthy discussion of the nature of Catholic higher education, he said that a Catholic university faithful to its identity will help students give an account of their faith and help them resist “the secularist dictatorship which would exclude all religious discourse from the professions and from public life in general.”

He also declared Jesus Christ, the “fullness” of God’s revelation, as “the first and chief teacher at every institution of Catholic higher education.” (I don't think Burke really means this as Jesus taught something very different from rote memorization of a rule book.)

“A Catholic college or university at which Jesus Christ alive in His Church is not taught, encountered in the Sacred Liturgy and its extension through prayer and devotion, and followed in a life of virtue is not worthy of the name,” he told attendees.

Jesus’ presence is not something “extraneous” to the pursuit of truth because he alone inspires and guides professors and students to remain faithful in their pursuits and not “fall prey to the temptations which Satan cleverly offers to corrupt us.” (This temptation must be secularism since Burke uses the word constantly.)

Cardinal Burke lamented the fall of many American Catholic colleges and universities that have become “Catholic in name only.”

Citing Pope John Paul II’s ad limina address to the U.S. bishops of New York, he said that the service of Catholic universities “depends on the strength of their Catholic identity.” The Catholic university was born from “the heart of the Church” and has been “critical” to meeting the challenges of the time.

The Catholic university is needed more than ever in a society “marked by a virulent secularism which threatens the integrity of every aspect of human endeavor and service,” he said.

“How tragic that the very secularism which the Catholic university should be helping its students to battle and overcome has entered into several Catholic universities, leading to the grievous compromise of their high mission,” he commented. (I can't find where Burke actually defines what he means by 'secularism'.)

The American-born cardinal said that rather than exemplifying secularism, the Catholic university’s manner of study and research should “manifest the bankruptcy of the abuse of human life and human sexuality … and the bankruptcy of the violation of the inviolable dignity of human life, of the integrity of marriage, and of the right order of our relationship to one another and to the world.” (This paragraph seems to imply that Burke actually means 'sexularism' rather than secularism.)

...Cardinal Burke also described the kind of relationship that should exist between the local bishop and a Catholic university. The “noble mission” of the university, he said, can only be accomplished within the Church, and the local bishop should be able to depend upon the Catholic university as a partner in meeting the challenges of evangelization, in teaching the faith, and in celebrating the liturgy.

He criticized as “totally anomalous” the situation in which the Catholic university views the bishop as “a suspect or outright unwelcome partner in the mission of Catholic higher education.” (Ahem, this works the other way around as well, where the bishop views the college or university as an unwelcome partner.)

“Given the religious illiteracy which marks our time and in fidelity to the seriousness with which university studies should be undertaken, there is really no place for engaging in speculative theology and certainly no time to waste on superficial and tendentious theological writings of the time,” the cardinal contended. (This is as blatant a statement as one could want that Catholic colleges should confine their theology departments to the catechism in order to combat 'religious illiteracy'.)

He questioned why students should be engaged in discussions about the ordination of women as priests when they already have little knowledge of the “consistent teaching” of the Holy Scriptures and Catholic Tradition on the priesthood.

“My reflection is offered to assist us all in seeking always first the truth and love by which we serve others and our world well by serving God first,” he said.....

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When I participate in giving workshops in spirituality, one thing I find myself doing as I listen to stories, is asking myself what are the basic assumptions about reality the person is using to interpret their experience. Frequently I will hear someone say, 'I used to be a conservative Christian until I had this experience. Now I don't know what I am'.  Or I will hear something a long the lines that 'this was so far out of my understanding I thought I was delusional or going psychotic'.  It turns out what they really mean is there was no explanation for their experience with in their religious system or educational paradigm. Their experience transcended their enculturated explanations and beliefs about the nature of reality.

In Cardinal Burke's case his underlying assumptions are pretty straight forward.  Burke's idea of Catholic education is not spiritual education in any meaningful sense. It's religious governance.  It's what Nicholas Lash's article refers to as commanding as opposed to instructing, as governing as opposed to teaching:

I have long maintained that the heart of the crisis of contemporary Catholicism lies in just such subordination of education to governance, the effect of which has too often been to substitute for teaching proclamation construed as command. As Yves Congar said, it is impossible to make the function of teaching an integral element of jurisdiction because it is one thing to accept a teaching, quite another to obey an order: “Autre chose est agréer une doctrine, autre chose obéir à un ordre.”

Cardinal Burke is a true follower of John Paul II's ideas about Catholic education.  It was JPII who took the idea of Catholic education at the university level down to the level of Catechism 101.  He continued a trend started during the papacy of Pio No No (Pious IX) in which teaching becomes the province of the hierarchy and obedience the province of the laity.  Honest intellectual disagreement becomes purely selfish dissent, as Lash demonstrates with this quote:


John Paul II, addressing the American bishops in Los Angeles in 1987, said without qualification: “It is sometimes said that dissent from the magisterium is totally compatible with being a ‘good Catholic’ and poses no obstacle to the reception of the sacraments. This is a grave error that challenges the teaching office of the bishops in the United States and elsewhere.”

I have a real problem with any religious authority which commands obedience rather than teaches ideas. Jesus taught that we must die to our self.  For me this means we must overcome the enculturated ego which controls our inner dialogue and that we all too frequently mistake for the truth of who we are.  That enculturated ego is a product of memory and learning and is therefore very much a product of external authority.  In Burke's idea of a Catholic college, our best and brightest are to be further enculturated in a system which insists the adult ego stay dependent on the kind of external authority that defined the child ego.

Obviously this kind of education doesn't benefit the true spiritual seeker who is attempting to look with in and find independent validation or different understandings for one's experiences or beliefs.  Burke's idea is designed to keep the spiritual seeker from even attempting such a thing, going so far as to imply such a search is satanic in it's origin. And here I thought such a search was divinely inspired and actually required---silly me.

I personally was intrigued by how a college of 100 students could attract a Rome based Cardinal to speak at one of it's dinners. I suppose it should come as no surprise that said college is hugely connected with conservative Catholic political leaders and has the Cardinal Newman Society seal of approval ---or that the Rome based Cardinal is Burke.  Oh or that said college, like many of it's persuasion who were started by an individual Catholic crusader, has a provisional accreditation because of shaky financing.  Maybe Burke's presence at this dinner helped with that financial thing.

There's No Such Thing As Too Much Defense Spending In 'Christian' America

President Eisenhower was not a modern right wing Christian with a personal relationship with Jesus. Eisenhower wasn't enlightened enough to know how much Jesus approves of the vast American defense machine.

When ever I read something from the Christian right about the US being a Christian country I chuckle.  If a person really looks at US policy and spending priorities it's utterly laughable to think Jesus Christ would identify with the United States anymore than He did with Imperial Rome. Or that He would identify with the Christian right anymore than He did with Jewish pharisees.  The NCR published an editorial today on US defense spending.  Here's the meat of it:

.....To the degree federal spending is any indication of national values and priorities, we have lost our way. We are out of touch with our civic, human and Christian ideals.

Let’s take a look. The numbers today are so large they are incomprehensible. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Military Expenditure Database, U.S. military spending in 2009 came to $663 billion. Second on the list of military spenders was China, at $98 billion. If one were to add all 2009 military spending by the top 19 spending nations, other than the United States, the figure comes to $642 billion, or $21 billion less than the United States spent in that year. (This is under the Presidency of  Mr. "Change we can believe in.")

When the 2010 fiscal year budget was signed into law in October 2009, the final size of the Department of Defense’s budget was $680 billion, $16 billion more than President Obama had requested. An additional $37 billion supplemental bill to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was expected to pass Congress in the spring of 2010, but has been delayed by the House of Representatives after passing the Senate. Meanwhile, military-related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense constitute between $319 billion and $654 billion in additional spending, bringing the total for military-related spending in the 2010 fiscal year to between $1.01 trillion and $1.35 trillion, a new landmark.(A significant portion of that additional spending is for the Department of Homeland Security.)

Meanwhile, the Obama administration last May released a one-page unclassified summary of a classified report sent to lawmakers. It projects that spending on so-called modernization of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex over the decade will reach $85 billion. An additional $100 billion is also to be spent on strategic nuclear delivery systems such as bombers and land- and submarine-based intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Elements in this spending orgy are being played out by pro-military-spending senators, many of them Catholics, as chips in a poker game with Obama, who wants the Senate to ratify a new START treaty. Continued nuclear reductions, however tediously slow, depend on Senate passage of this treaty with Russia.

Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., speaking on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a Nov. 29 letter urged the Senate to approve the treaty during the lame-duck session in the final weeks of 2010.

Citing earlier statements by both Pope Benedict XVI and the bishops’ conference, Hubbard called ratification of the arms control accord critical “because it is a modest step toward a world with greater respect for human life.”......

......Our bishops are right to lobby for treaty ratification. We hope they press our Catholic senators, reminding them, as our bishops have taught for more than 20 years, that the U.S. nuclear deterrent system is only plausibly “moral” as long as we are moving toward total nuclear disarmament. (I am eagerly anticipating homilies from Cardinal Burke and Archbishop Chaput threatening to deny communion to these Catholic senators.)

Is there any way to comprehend what military spending is doing to us? How it is shaping our lives? Our souls? Can we ever fathom how a trillion dollars of military expenditures in a single year is viewed elsewhere in the world?

Beneath our daily commutes to work, our family life, our church life, beneath the civil laws that govern us, we have become a militarized nation. The influence of military spending silently shapes us as it shapes our national budget.

Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency is probably remembered less for what he did in office than for what he said while heading for the exit. In a nationally televised address Jan. 17, 1961, only four days before John F. Kennedy’s inaugural, Eisenhower warned of the dangers of “undue influence” exerted by the “military-industrial complex.” He cautioned that maintaining a large, permanent military establishment was new in the American experience, and suggested that an “engaged citizenry” offered the only effective defense against the “misplaced power” of the military-industrial lobby.

He warned: “The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”

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Somewhere up in this editorial the question is posed, "Can we ever fathom how a trillion dollars in military expenditures in a single year is viewed elsewhere in the world?"  I know I can't, because I have a difficult time comprehending a trillion dollars period.  Just like I have a difficult time understanding why the US needs to spend more money on defense than the next nineteen countries combined.  Maybe it's a new way to insure a form of universal health coverage if most of us work for the DOD or the DOHS, which last figures I saw, say twenty five percent of us do in some form or another.

I keep waiting for some representative of the Tea Party to speak to this form of VERY BIG GOVERNMENT, but they never do. I wonder why that is. 

I keep waiting for some right wing conservative to speak to this form of government generated SOCIAL CORPORATE WELFARE, but they never do.  I wonder why that is. 

I keep waiting for Archbishop Chaput or Cardinal George or Cardinal Burke or USCCB President Dolan to start giving homilies on the obscenity of this kind of ANTI LIFE spending, but they don't seem to see the need, and I wonder why that is.

So when all the above start babbling about the US being a Christian country I have to laugh, and wonder why they think that, when it's so obviously not. It makes me wonder if  I've just got the Jesus thing totally wrong.  Maybe Jesus really was some sort of secret corporate oligarch heavily invested in the Roman Military Industrial Complex and all His teachings about justice for the poor and marginalized were really just political spin to cover His real tracks. 

Except something else tells me it's really our modern corporate oligarchs that are the people hiding behind all that Jesus rhetoric spouted by all those pious Christian leaders---and what is really incomprehensible to me is that any American, Christian or not,  actually believes them.

An Anonymous David Sends An E Message To Goliath

Looks like WikiLeaks has some sophisticated supporters who are capable of sending some serious email.  The following is from Huffington Post.

Operation Payback: WikiLeaks Supporters' Cyberattacks Target Online 'Enemies'

An online group calling itself Anonymous is attacking sites around the web perceived to be "enemies" of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. This appears to be the group responsible for the shutdown of the Mastercard site earlier today, owing to Mastercard's refusal to process payments to the group. After the site went down, the group posted a statement that read in part:

We will fire at anything or anyone that tries to censor WikiLeaks, including multibillion-dollar companies such as PayPal. Twitter, you're next for censoring #WikiLeaks discussion. The major shitstorm has begun.

Other targets that have already been targeted, or threatened with attack, range from Sarah Palin to Sen. Joe Lieberman to PayPal, the last of which recently admitted to bowing to U.S. pressure to break ties with the site.

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Just who is this group Anonymous? Enquiring minds want to know.  From the Guardian UK:

.....A 22-year-old spokesman, who wished to be known only as "Coldblood", told the Guardian that the group – which is about a thousand strong – is "quite a loose band of people who share the same kind of ideals" and wish to be a force for "chaotic good".  (Chaotic good is my favorite classification for all my characters when I play any fantasy role playing game.  These folks are apparently playing for real.)


There is no real command structure in the group, the London-based spokesman said, while most of its members are teenagers who are "trying to make an impact on what happens with the limited knowledge they have". But others are parents, IT professionals and people who happen to have time – and resources – on their hands....

....Anonymous was born out of the influential internet messageboard 4chan, a forum popular with hackers and gamers, in 2003. The group's name is a tribute to 4chan's early days, when any posting to its forums where no name was given was ascribed to "Anonymous". But the ephemeral group, which picks up causes "whenever it feels like it", has now "gone beyond 4Chan into something bigger", its spokesman said.

The membership of Anonymous is impossible to pin down; it has been described as being like a flock of birds – the only way you can identify members is by what they're doing together. Essentially, once enough people on the 4chan message boards decide that an issue is worth pursuing in large enough numbers, it becomes an "Anonymous" cause.

The group counts the current campaign in support of WikiLeaks as "probably one of [its] most high profile yet". The group gained notoriety more recently for a number of sustained assaults against the sites of US music industry body RIAA, Kiss musician Gene Simmons, and solicitors' firms involved in lawsuits against people suspected of illegal filesharing. In early 2008, Anonymous launched a campaign against the Church of Scientology, bringing down related websites and promising to "expel" the religion from the internet.

"We're against corporations and government interfering on the internet," Coldblood added. "We believe it should be open and free for everyone. Governments shouldn't try to censor because they don't agree with it.

"Anonymous is supporting WikiLeaks not because we agree or disagree with the data that is being sent out, but we disagree with any from of censorship on the internet. If we let WikiLeaks fall without a fight then governments will think they can just take down any sites they wish or disagree with."....


...."There's no doubt in [Anonymous members'] mind that they are breaking [the] law," he said of the latest attacks. "But they feel that there's safety in numbers."

Anonymous refused to say whether it would target government-owned websites next, but warned: "anything goes."

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I'm sure most of the members of Anonymous are fully aware of the fact they are doing exactly what they don't want anyone else to do, but the cause apparently justifies the means.  This is pretty typical of chaotic good strategies and also just happens to be the kind of rationale used by religious terrorists.  The rules of the religious body in whose name they fight don't apply to them.  Once a person has crossed into that kind of thinking, they have pretty much given themselves license to engage in all kinds of behavior they may not have even considered previously.  Couple that with a global group of like thinkers and Master Card's computer network is in trouble.  If the current threats manifest, Master Card will shortly be followed by Twitter, Facebook, Paypal, and Amazon.com.

The existence and capabilities of WikiLeaks and Anonymous have to be increasing the sales of TUMS amongst the world's elite movers and shakers.  This is the sort of behavior that is not going to be easy to stop or check.  The Internet may indeed turn out to be a sort of great equalizer. The west may be legitimately afraid of the notion of North Korea and Iran as nuclear players, but they have to be equally afraid of thousands of anonymous gamers and hackers with 'no real leadership' capable of taking down major financial computer networks.  Chaotic good indeed.  More like a waking nightmare.

About six or seven years ago I had a kind of communication in which I was shown that transparency would be one issue around which the prevailing consensus reality--the one based in money, resource hegemony, secrecy and the cultural power they gave, would be a singular issue in the restructuring of this consensus reality.  Take away the secrecy and much of the power to confuse and befuddle the average man would be seriously lessened. 

I could really see this transparency thing operating in Roman Catholicism in the sexual abuse crisis, but WikiLeaks has taken it into the world of politics, finances, and government structure. It's really amazing to think a low level military member, a corporal in fact, can get access to this kind of information through a computer in the middle of no where, hit the send button, and open the Internet version of Pandora's email box.  I suspect governments will have more success with Iran's muscling into the nuclear world than they will stopping the WikiLeaks of the Internet world.

It would be delightfully ironic if the games players of the computer world put an end to games playing in the political and financial world. There's just something so right about teen age computer warriors ending the games of old men who routinely send teenagers to fight their contrived battles. Maybe Michael the Archangel has turned his big sword in for a lap top and a wifi card.


Here's the latest on Wiki and Anonymous from Yahoo news.  This might just be one of the biggest stories for 2010.

When It Comes To Benedict's Thoughts, Cardinal Wuerl Insists On Civil Discourse

Cardinal Wuerl suddenly feels compelled to ask for polite Christian discourse and truth spoken with charity.  I bet all his DC employees who lost spousal health coverage are somewhat skeptical.

The following paragraphs are taken from a letter written by Cardinal Wuerl for the Washington Archdiocese newspaper. Amazing how the articles about proper Christian discourse are finally being written. I imagine this has something to do with the fact the target of the righteous right is Pope Benedict.

Christian Discourse: Both Truth and Love
Cardinal Donald Wuerl - Person and Society Part II - My Catholic Standard, Archdiocese of Washington

........No community of human or divine origin, political or religious, can exist without trust. At the very core of all human relations is the confidence that members speak the truth to each other. The covenant between God and his people also obliges us to a relationship of truth. It is for this reason that God explicitly protected the bonds of community by prohibiting falsehood as a grave attack on the human spirit. "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" (Exodus 20:16). To tamper with the truth or, worse yet, to pervert it is to undermine the foundations of human community and to begin to cut the threads that weave us into a coherent human family. (This deception and erosion of trust usually begins by presenting a false front about yourself, or being ignorant about one's own motivation.)

Christians must not only speak the truth but must also do so in love (Ephesians 4:15). It is not enough that we know or believe something to be true. We must express that truth in charity, with respect for others so that the bonds between us can be strengthened in building up the Church of Christ.  (I've never believed building up the Church of Christ was even on the radar of folks like Bill Donohue or Father Z.  Making it more exclusive, reclusive, and righteous was certainly on their radar.)

Even while there may be disagreements within the ecclesial community on policies and procedures, there is a presupposition that we are all one in our faith. One of the reasons why we should find it easy as a Church to arrive at consensus is because it is Christ who calls us together in the first place. We are already one in what we believe, in our loyalty to the Church and in our commitment to live by God's commandments. (Unfortunately the stronger presupposition for some is that the other person is a sinner and by definition not worth listening too.).......


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"Whatever diminishes love diminishes the Church."  I wish Cardinal Wuerl would have given us his definition of love. The definition he actually acts on, not the one he intellectually believes in.  This whole notion of love is one of those starting assumptions which is fraught with possibilities for vociferous disagreement.  The kind of love a St Francis of Assisi might be acting from, is not the definition of love a teenager might be acting on.  One is all encompassing and non judgmental, the other is quite specific and actually quite selfish. 

Unfortunately, way too many Christians act from the two kinds of love experienced by the teenager.  These also happen to be the two kinds of love which precipitate the most teen age angst.  The first is the love precipitated by hormonal changes and involve sexual attraction.  The second is maturing past parental/cultural authority and learning to define and defend personal boundaries.  Both of these situations involve changes in neural functioning and maturation.  Changes I am not going to get into for purposes of this post, except to note that successfully navigating these tasks of the teenage years call for the healthy development of previous neural stages of development.

Another comment which Cardinal Wuerl makes without defining his starting assumption is this one:  " At the very core of all human relations is the confidence that members speak the truth to each other."  I can guarantee that my starting assumption about speaking truth is not Cardinal Wuerl's. My starting assumption about truth starts with me and my understanding about my truth. Cardinal Wuerl seems to be starting from an assumption of truth that reflects the Church's definition of truth as affirming it's long held tradition about truth.  This tradition by the way, ignores a lot of philosophy and science about how we experience reality and how idiosyncratic that can be and often is. 

Cardinal Wuerl's definition of truth leaves out self examination when relating to and with others. It substitutes externally given truth for hard won self truth. Our task as lay Catholics then becomes a process of finding external speakers who agree with the external teaching authority.  Catholic truth has nothing to do with going with in and discovering self truth.  Hence in this current time and place acting on one's conscience is only given lip service in official church teaching.  A good conscience is defined as being totally in concert with official church teaching and there by the whole notion of personal conscience is subsumed into unquestioned obedience.  There is no need for personal conscience at all.

Then along came Pope Benedict and his thoughts about condoms.  Oh my.  It appeared papa changed his mind and some of the children were being given a lighter yoke to carry.  How totally unfair of papa. 

Sometimes it's amazing how much truth Jesus taught in his parables. The prodigal son is ever so timeless and so hard for some people to understand. 

Neural development impacts our understanding of truth just as it does our ability to love. Failure to be truthful with ouselves about ourselves impacts our understanding of truth just as it severely impacts our ability to love. How we are raised, how many cultural experiences, and how much we've matured also impact our understanding of truth and our ability to love.  The truth is our personal understanding of both truth and love can indeed be very relative and subject to change.  Pretending this truth is false doesn't impact it's truth, it just helps make our own lives and the lives of others less than they could be.  It's also a lazy and cheap way to live one's spiritual life.  That too is the truth.



 

Reform Bush Tax Cuts? Obama Says "No, I Won't"---Again

Valid estimates indicate there are enough of these in private hands for every American currently alive. This might be one of the unstated reasons for Obama's constant "No we can't".

Writing in Huffington Post, Clarence B Jones, (Scholar in Residence, Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University) has sounded one of the first lamenting calls for a democratic challenger to President Barack Obama from a Black American perspective.  Frank Rich writing in the New York times, speculates Obama is a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.  Robert Kuttner, also writing in Huffpo, describes the coming disaster for the Democratic party and the US economy if Obama holds to his current course of circling with the Republican sharks. My hope is that Obama decides it's easier to get wealthy as a 'politician' by following the Sarah Palin route and like wise quits his elective office in mid stream. 

The following are the final paragraphs of Dr. Jones's article:

It is not easy to consider challenging the first African-American to be elected as President of the United States. But, regrettably, I believe that the time has come to do this.

It is time for Progressives to stop "whining" and arguing among themselves about whether President Obama will or will not do this or that. Obama is no different than any other President, nominated by his national party. He was elected with the hard work and 24/7 commitment of persons who believed and enlisted in his campaign for "Hope" and "Change."

You don't have to be a rocket scientist nor have a PhD in political science and sociology to see clearly that Obama has abandoned much of the base that elected him. He has done this because he no longer respects, fears or believes those persons who elected him have any alternative, but to accept what he does, whether they like it or not.   (The way Obama treats his base supporters is very similar to the way Rahm Emannuel treated dems in the House.)

It is time for those persons who constituted the "Movement" that enabled Senator Barack Obama to be elected to "break their silence"; to indicate that they no longer will sit on their hands, and only let off verbal steam and ineffective sound and fury, and "hope" for the best.

The answer is blowin' in the wind

The pursuit of the war in Afghanistan in support of a certifiably corrupt Afghan government and the apparent willingness to retreat from his campaign commitment of no further tax cuts for the rich, his equivocal and foot dragging leadership to end DADT, his TARP for Wall Street, but, equivocal insufficient attention to the unemployment and housing foreclosures of Main Street, suggest that the template of the 1968 challenge to the reelection of President Lyndon Johnson now must be thoughtfully considered for Obama in 2012.

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I just did a search of this blog to see how many times I've written about P.O. since his election.  In this current year it's been twice, and one of those was directed more at Rahm Emmanuel.  I haven't written much about P.O.  I suspect that's true because rather than being angry or disappointed, I actually feel contempt for him and his administration. I don't feel as if he betrayed me as a progressive because deep down I never really trusted he would follow through on any of his rhetoric. I hold him in contempt as the quintessential example of the inbuilt corporate corruption in American politics.  PO's administration has demonstrated this beyond any doubt.  The US does not have a two party system.  It has a one party system with two faces.

Two full years into PO's administration we still have virtually every single failed Bush/Cheney policy in place and now that will include extending the Bush tax cuts for the remainder of PO's term of office. The rich will get even richer and very little of it will trickle down to the estimated 18% of Americans who can't find full time work. The budget deficit will increase by another 80 billion strictly from the tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans. 

In the meantime the percentage of Americans qualifying for SNAP (food stamps)has increased significantly for every year since 2007.  Based on August numbers, this represents some 43 million Americans.  August alone showed a one month increase of over 500,000 participants from July.  The current total represents around 13% of the American population.  If nothing changes, by the end of PO's first term, 25% of the US population will be on food stamps--and that will include a significant portion of Tea Party members who will be unable to comprehend that trickle down economics does not and never has worked. It is, as Papa Bush truthfully described it:  "Voodoo economics".  PO knows this just as well as Papa Bush did.  So why is he continuing this debacle of a monetary/tax policy?

I might just as well ask why he is continuing with any number of Bush policies, but I won't get any other answer than the pathetic excuse of 'bi partisanship' when there is no bi partisanship to be had and there never was any to be had.

Right before PO was elected I had some serious doubts as whether he could be effective at all.  I kept thinking back to the 60's and 70's and the list of progressives who were the paramount movers and shakers at that time.  They all wound up dead or neutralized in some way.  In their places we got puppets of right wing economic interests--especially in politics and religion.  The last televised statement from John Paul I contained this strongly worded statement:

"Believe me, we who live in opulence, while so many are dying because they have nothing, will have to answer to Jesus as to why we have not carried out his instruction, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself'. We, the clergy of our church and our congregations, who substitute gold and pomp and ceremony in place of Christ's instruction, who judge our masquerade of singing his praises to be more precious than human life, will have the most to explain....

......"It is the inalienable right of man to own property. But it is the right of no man to accumulate wealth beyond the necessary while other men starve to death because they have nothing."


It sure does seem as if there are some messages which are so antithetical to some people that the message must be neutralized and the messengers silenced.  PO has been both neutralized and silenced.  I don't find that too surprising.  Strangely enough, I also find it hopeful.  Light is being shined on some very dark places and that is always a very good thing.

Vatican Notions Of Accountability Equate To 'Manning Up' Not Moving Down Or Out

The late Cardinal Michele Giordano meets with Naples prosecutors previous to his 2002 trial for loan sharking.

The following piece by John Allen about the recent death of Italian Cardinal Giordano piqued my curiosity because it's a piece of spin attempting to explain how the Vatican deals with curial officials who hold ecclesiastical rank when those men do things the rest of us consider criminal----criminal, not just immoral or sinful.  I've edited it for length.

Naples cardinal illustrated cultural gap on accountability

John Allen - NCR - 12/06/2010

In a thumbnail: In the late 1990s, Giordano was indicted for fraud and went through a full criminal trial (though he never set foot in court) in a case arising from a real estate scam orchestrated by his brother, causing massive embarrassment for the Italian church and the Vatican. (Italian authorities were also concerned about his brother's connections with the Mafia as the case also concerned loan sharking.)

The case generated church-state tensions when police insisted on examining confidential documents of the Naples archdiocese, in addition to financial records that Giordano provided. The Vatican also protested that Italian investigators had not informed them that Giordano was a target of investigation, a notice they should have given under the terms of the concordat between the Holy See and Italy.

At one stage, prosecutors revealed that they had tapped Giordano’s phone, which led the astonished cardinal to complain to the press: “I could have been talking to the pope!” (Probably not on that particular phone line--unless he meant another kind of pope.)

Although Giordano was acquitted in 2000, the outcome was not exactly a vindication. Essentially, the court bought Giordano’s defense that he was guilty of naiveté and sloppy administration, not criminal intent.
Giordano found himself in the dock once again in 2002, facing criminal charges in another real estate case. This time he was actually found guilty and sentenced to four months in prison and a fine, though that verdict was suspended and eventually overturned on appeal.......

The typical American take-away is that the Giordano saga illustrates a lack of accountability at senior levels of the church, since a cardinal who obviously made some dubious choices never lost his job.  (The Maciel case would suggest something different.  Accountability in the Vatican is a commodity one can purchase.)

In the Vatican, however, the perspective was different. I remember talking to senior officials in both the Congregation for Bishops and the Secretariat of State throughout the Giordano drama, and while some suspected Giordano might be the victim of an anti-clerical vendetta, even those who regarded him as guilty weren’t interested in coming to his rescue. The message was that he’s going to have to stay put and clean up his own mess. (A Mexican standoff seems more likely.  Giorodano undoubtedly had security codes to Archdiocesan accounts the Vatican couldn't afford to lose. Which is maybe why Giordano's successor, Cardinal Sepe, is also in the same exact kind of trouble.)

In other words, the Vatican version of accountability was to allow Giordano to stew in his own juices, rather than getting him off the hook by arranging a face-saving resignation.

Not only was that a tactical calculation to deny Giordano a soft landing, but it also reflects the official theology of the episcopal office. In theory, a bishop is not supposed to be like a CEO or a sports coach, who gets fired for poor performance. He’s more comparable to the father of a family, and policy-makers stepped in this “pater familias” view of the bishops’ role would say that the right course of action when times get tough is not to walk away, but to “man up” and make things right......

.......Nonetheless, the Giordano story illustrates a key insight into Vatican psychology, one that sometimes is obscured by differing cultural assumptions. When the Vatican refuses to sack a bishop, it’s not always about the absence of accountability, but rather a different view of what holding him accountable means.....


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I was all  a dither to learn how Giordano 'manned up' and made things right, but alas, John Allen doesn't tell us.  Now that Cardinal Sepe is in the same boat of having to 'man up' maybe I will learn how an Archbishop should 'man up' when the secular authorities think he is in bed with the manly Mafia--- another group which firmly believes in the notion of 'pater familias'.  I can't help but wonder which group of manly fathers actually runs the Archdiocese of Naples, the Vatican or the Mafia?  Maybe there isn't much of a difference or maybe the titular heads of Naples belong to both family groups.  Maybe it's just a family thing.

I personally am not moved by Allen's attempt to explain Vatican accountability.  In fact, I think I'm offended.  If staying in place and facing the secular music is the Vatican's idea of accountability, that means there is no ecclesiastical accountability.  Bishops only face accountability from secular legal proceedings or their own conscience. In the meantime they stay in place with full perks and full access to all the money laity donate as well as the funds these men generate elsewhere.  This is all tax free money with no one looking over their shoulders.  No wonder some of it tends to get shared with their biological families. It's a great gig if you can get it.  Best if all, once you get it , no matter what you do, you get to keep it. 

Allen calls this system 'pater familias' but it's really a form of divine monarchy.  Now a days, abusive criminal fathers are held accountable by their family members, at least to the extent they aren't accorded any meaningful authority over the rest of the family.  This is perhaps why a lot of American Catholics don't get the Vatican notion of accountability and don't get why Cardinal Law is in Rome free from harassment by secular legal authorities.  Plus there is that number of confessed bishop predators who still retain their rank and the perks that go with the rank.  This is a much better deal than a Mafia don, where rank is still retained while in prison, but the don still has to go to prison. Not so with Catholic cardinals and bishops.  Some of them even get better mansions.

I keep mulling over the question of priority when it comes to Church reform.  Should the first priority be the entrenched untouchable hierarchical structure or should it be the theology and tradition from which that structure was created.  The truth is there is no New Testament justification for either one and plenty of justification for condemning both.  It is very difficult for me to picture the itinerant Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth parading in St Peter's in full papal regalia. Constantine yes, Jesus no.  Maybe if our so called Apostolic Successors had to spend some time in prison cells like their ancient predecessors, they might come to some conclusions about their own place in the cosmic scheme of things.  That place is not as clerical versions of mafia dons.

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Short Update

I've had a very busy week and must apologize for not updating the blog.  I started a full time job, something I haven't engaged in for quite awhile, and that has been an adjustment.  I've also been working on another project which will culminate in a series of workshops, the first of which is this afternoon. All in all this week has been something of a shock to my system and usual mode of existence.  Hopefully I'll get adjusted and get back to a more consistent schedule.  I'm thinking that might take a few weeks until I get fully oriented with the job and have an assigned schedule.  This coming week's schedule will probably let me get back to more regular posting, and I hope to have something up tomorrow. 

Why Does Clerical Sexual Abuse Always Stay At The Clerical Level?

Pope Benedict's response to the sexual abuse crisis with his calls for conversion in the laity bring this sort of thing to mind. Especially since it's the laity that ultimately get to pay for the clerical abuse crisis.

The just released book on Pope Benedict, "Light of the World", contains a wealth of information concerning Benedict's views on many topics of current importance in Roman Catholicism.  For me personally three topics were of critical interest: condoms and HIV, the Legionaries of Christ, and the sexual abuse crisis. All three represent what John Carroll called the tendency towards inhumanity in Catholic doctrine and the fact sometimes this cruelty becomes sacrosanct. These three however, take the cruelty issue to another level.  They all represent the lengths the Church is willing to walk to sacrifice it's laity on the altar of clerical authority.

The following exerpt on Benedict's view of the sexual abuse crisis is taken from the translation offered by the Italian journalist Sandro Magister from his blog Chiesa Espresso.

The shock of the abuse

The facts did not take me entirely by surprise. At the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, I had worked on the American cases; I had also seen the situation escalate in Ireland. But the dimensions were still an enormous shock. Ever since my election to the see of Peter, I had repeatedly met with victims of sexual abuse. Three and a half years ago, in October of 2006, in a speech to the Irish bishops I had asked them to "establish the truth of what happened in the past, to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from occurring again, to ensure that the principles of justice are fully respected and, above all, to bring healing to the victims and to all those affected by these egregious crimes." To see the priesthood suddenly tarnished in this way, and with it the Catholic Church itself, was difficult to bear. At that moment, however, it was important not to look away from the fact that good exists in the Church, and not only these terrible things. (Benedict has been totally consistent in not placing a single bit of blame on the hierarchy. The longer he continues to pretend the hierarchy and the Vatican curia has no blame to share, the longer this crisis will fester.)

The media and abuseIt was evident that the action of the media was not guided solely by the pure search for the truth, but that there was also enjoyment in putting the Church in the pillory, and, if possible, in discrediting it. And nonetheless it was necessary that this be clear: as long as efforts are being made to bring the truth to light, we must be appreciative. Truth, united with love when understood correctly, is the number one value. And the media would not have been able to give those accounts if the evil had not been there in the Church itself. It is only because the evil was inside the Church that the others were able to hold it against her. (Again, Benedict fails to note a great deal of the 'hostility' in the press was the direct result of the idiotic statements of his own Vatican curia and the almost universal strategy of bishops not to cooperate with secular authorities when it came to compensation for victims or releasing files pertinent to legal proceedings. It is much cheaper to talk about spiritual healing than it is to pay for real life compensation.)
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The priesthood was not, as Benedict states, 'suddenly tarnished'.  Clerical abuse has been with the Church for millenia. It has been a topic of reformers like St John Damian since the 1100's.  What made the abuse crisis different this time around was the public exposure.  Finally, after all this time, Vatican secrecy was breached, and it's clerical machinations exposed for all to see.  It effected all levels of governance. The curtain had been pulled back on dioceses big and small, and on bishops both orthodox or progressive. The  things they all had in common were secrecy, manipulation, revictimization, and allegiance to the Vatican. 

Neither individual bishops nor the Vatican had any idea how to respond to this sudden 'nakedness'.  They did not have a history of having to respond to this kind of exposure in the present.  It's hard to reinvent history when the story is being written in real time. The strategy became the strategy of emotional children caught in lies--blame someone else, especially the messengers, while attempting to maintain innocence in the face of all the damning evidence.  In Benedict's case, he pretends to be above it all, surprised and shocked at the "enormous dimensions' even though he headed the CDF for eighteen years, the very Vatican congregation which had the most to do with the systemic cover up.  Sigh........

Of these three issues, the condom issue most easily lends itself to respinning and allowing our hierarchy to pretend they still hold the truth, that Benedict has changed nothing, and that this has always been church teaching---this notion that condoms can be considered a 'lesser evil' when used to prevent the harm of HIV.  "Lesser evil' are the magic operative words as condom use itself is still always and everywhere evil.  Humanae Vitae has not been breached. Ignorant immoral selfish people can use condoms as a first step to a more moral or less evil sexual life. The Church has always taught this, just not very loud.  The problem is this completely ignores the fact the Church has loudly taught just the opposite and that ecclesial bodies like the USCCB have used their influence to gut programs like PEPFAR to prevent government programs from distributing condoms or even teaching safe sex.   Ooops......... Ignore the men behind the curtain.

Constantly we are given to understand that the sexual abuse crisis, especially as it is symbolized in the Legion, has nothing to do with the heirarchy or the clerical system and everything to do with the failure of individual priests.  So Maciel is presented as a failed individual priest, not a contrived product of the family wealth of the Mexican/Spanish clerical culture--a culture which also provided Maciel with inside access to the Vatican from day one of his priesthood. For us simple laity, the issue isn't at all about this particular clerical sub culture and it's influence in the global church, it's about Maciel the unfortunate individual aberration.

Since I think the Vatican doth protest too loud, I do believe it's that very Spanish/Mexican clerical subculture that needs looking into.  The Legion debacle perfectly illustrates the nature of the clericalism that gave the Church Maciel and then protected him. The Legion is as clear a representation of the multiple forms of clerical abuse and doctrinal cruelty as we have to date.  In my thinking the Legion represents clerical abuse on steroids. To think this form of clericalism hasn't been inculcated in it's priestly formation or can be rooted out with a few tweaks is either purposefully myopic or just plain purposeful.

I understand that in the eyes of Pope Benedict, meaningfully dealing with clerical sexual abuse at it's roots would mean dealing with how authority is exercised in the Church and ultimately the entire theology surrounding the sacramental priesthood. It would mean dealing with belief structures that have framed an entire life and world view for Benedict and priests like him. In this sense he is in the same psychological space as any abuse victim whose lives and world views were also determined by these same belief structures. In the case of abuse victims their world views about their self worth and God and Catholicism were as concretely blown apart as Benedict's were concretely set. They are at opposite ends of the consequential spectrum of predatory clerical abuse.

Like it is for victims, it would be a monumental task for priests wedded to clericalism to overcome this enculturation even if they understand it on an intellectual basis. It's not the intellectual understanding that is the big bump in the road. It's the purposeful stunting of the emotional psyche at an immature stage of neural and psychological development. Richard Sipe et al, have been making this point for decades about the priesthood. The very men who move beyond this emotional immaturity are the ones who won't play the clerical game and never get promoted. The system is organized to self perpetuate and it's enforced by those at the top who benefit from how it works. Once a man gets to the level of a bishop he is never allowed to be wrong no matter how wrong he is because the whole ball of wax rests on the unquestioned authority of the bishop as a successor to the Apostles. Neither the Apostles nor their successors make mistakes, even when those original Apostles most certainly did and their successors most certainly have and most certainly still do.

How long Oh Lord will your faithful have to put up with this nonsense and the abuse it generates? Inquiring minds want to know.

On Maciel And The Legion, Pope Benedict Picks Money Over Vatican Accountability

Maciel with Pius XII and some of his original victims.  Maciel is the one wearing glasses off the Pope's right shoulder.  How does Benedict expect me to believe Maciel was active for over 50 years and the Vatican didn't know?

There was more in Pope Benedict's statements in "Light of the World", than his comments on condoms and HIV.  Some of those statements concerning the Legion of Christ are probably more indicative of his true mindset than his comments on condoms--as least as far as the supremacy and untouchable nature of the clerical system.  It's been remiss of me to let these statements go this long without comment. In my own relationship with Catholicism three issues have stood out as symbolic of the devastation protecting clerical power and authority have had on the laity.  The first was condoms and HIV.  The second was continual protection accorded Maciel and the Legion of Christ.  The third was the response to clerical abuse. Today I deal with the second and tomorrow I will address Benedict's comments on the abuse scandal.

Pope: Vatican acted slowly, late in Legion scandal

By ALEXANDRA OLSON Associated Press - 11/23/2010

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI lamented that the Vatican acted “slowly and late” in a scandal surrounding the Legionaries of Christ, and a Vatican official called Tuesday for an investigation into who covered up for the conservative order’s disgraced founder.

The pope insisted, however, that the order has done good and should not be dissolved despite the double life of the late Rev. Marciel Maciel, who was discovered to have abused seminarians and fathered at least three children. (And raped two of them.)

“Unfortunately we addressed these things very slowly and late,” Benedict said in a book released Tuesday. “Somehow they were concealed very well, and only around the year 2000 did we have any concrete clues.”........ (Maybe you should have looked through the blindfold provided by those who wear Cardinal red.  In any event the Vatican had been investigating Maciel for almost 50 years by 2000. This is a BS statement.)

.........Monsignor Rino Fisichella, who heads the Vatican’s evangelization office, said the Vatican would be wise to look at who covered up for Maciel inside the Legion — “those who took his appointments, those who kept his agenda, those who drove him around.”  (Those who held high posts in the Vatican and took bribes to look the other way.)

Fisichella was responding to questions at a news conference in Rome about the pope’s comment that Maciel’s crimes had been concealed, amid reports that the reverend had high-ranking supporters in the Vatican who protected him for decades.

Maciel is known to have been a favorite of Pope John Paul II because of his orthodoxy and his ability to recruit priests and raise money from wealthy patrons.

But Fisichella said the Vatican suggested looking inside the Legion. “We must be able to verify how well-covered up it was inside his congregation, not outside it,” he said. (Wrong.  You need to look inside the Vatican for those bribed to look the other way.  Or are you afraid to take such a step?)

Jim Fair, the Legion’s communications director, said “the Legion agrees with the pope’s comments in the new book.”
The order announced Tuesday that its powerful vicar general, the Rev. Luis Garza, was giving up some of his duties. Garza has insisted he knew nothing about Maciel’s crimes until recently.  (Amazing how you can name your own price when you have access to all the security codes to all the money.)

The Legion said in a statement that Cardinal Velasio De Paolis, the Vatican official whom Benedict appointed to profoundly reform the disgraced order, has also expanded the group’s governing general council and will appoint the two new members himself.

In the book, Benedict said the order deserves to continue its work.

“Maciel remains a mysterious figure. There is, on the one hand, a life that, as we now know, was out of moral bounds — an adventurous, wasted, twisted life. On the other hand, we see the dynamism and the strength with which he built up the congregation of Legionaries,” the pope said. “Naturally corrections must be made, but by and large the congregation is sound. In it there are many young men who enthusiastically want to serve the faith. This enthusiasm must not be destroyed. Many of them have been called by a false figure to what is, in the end, right after all.” (All those enthusiastic young men could serve in another order or in dioceses with priest shortages.  Maciel was not 'adventurous, he was Satanic.  All that 'dynamism' was all about the money.)

The revelations have thrown the Legion into chaos, with several prominent priests leaving the order over the past year, and dozens of consecrated members of the Legion’s lay branch, Regnum Christi, quitting.
In October, the order suffered one of the biggest blows with the resignation of the Rev. Santiago Oriol, who headed the Everest School in Madrid and was a member of a wealthy Spanish family that for decades helped the order raise money. (Kudos to Fr. Oriol.  Maybe he can now raise money for AIDS orphans.)

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I strongly suspect there is a great deal of fear in the Vatican when it comes to the Legion.  I'm not sure if that fear is about physical retribution or about who will be uncovered as complicit in Maciel's money making scheme inside the Vatican.  Maybe it's both.  Whatever, Benedict's babble about the Legion is pure double speak. He has to know how much corruption both internal and external surrounds this outfit. It's pampered sheltered existence should be another nail in the coffin of any canonization process for John Paul II. 

Archbishop Fisichella is not fooling anyone in his purposeful oversite concerning Maciel having Vatican insiders protecting his flanks. Fisichella didn't address direct questions about the information uncovered by Jason Berry as reported by the NCR.  He deflected those questions, instead referring to an  internal investigation of the Legion.  Berry uncovered a whole bunch of interesting stuff about Vatican personnel accepting 'favors' and 'pious contributions':

"Maciel wanted to buy power," said the priest who facilitated the Mexican family's opera carita to Dziwisz. He did not use the word bribery, but in explaining why he left the Legion, morality was at issue. "It got to a breaking point for me [over] a culture of lying [within the order]. The superiors know they're lying and they know that you know," he said. "They lie about money, where it comes from, where it goes, how it's given."

When Martínez Somalo, a Spaniard, became head of the congregation overseeing religious in 1994, Maciel dispatched this priest to Martínez Somalo's home. The young priest carried an envelope thick with cash. "I didn't bat an eye," he recalled. "I went up to his apartment, handed him the envelope, said goodbye. ... It was a way of making friends, insuring certain help if it were needed, oiling the cogs.

Martínez Somalo did not respond to NCR interview requests.

Glenn Favreau, a Legionary in Rome from 1990 to 1997, and today an attorney in Washington, D.C., recalled: "Martínez Somalo was talked about a lot in the Legion, always in the context of 'our superior' because he was our friend. Un amigo de Legion." Favreau, who knew nothing of the donation to Martínez Somalo, continued: "There were cardinals who weren't amigos. They wouldn't call them enemies, but everyone knew who they were. Pio Laghi did not like the Legion." Cardinal Laghi, former papal nuncio to the United States, was then prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education.

Martínez Somalo's office took a new name: Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. But the job description stayed the same. From 1994 to 2004, the Spanish cardinal's duties included investigating any complaints about religious orders or their leaders.

In the files of that congregation, according to several former Legionaries, sat letters that dated back many years, accusing Maciel of abusing seminarians. When the wrenching accounts of nine seminary-victims of Maciel made news in the 1997 Hartford Courant, Martínez Somalo did nothing. That was the reaction throughout the Roman curia.

I've felt for a long time the Legion is the perfect symbol of what is wrong with institutional hierarchical Catholicism.  It's not just Maciel's personal perversions, it's how he was able to continue for sixty years by preying on the greed of those Vatican personages who had supervisory power over him and his money collection scheme. That this protection went all the way to the top demonstrates just how internally corrupt the Vatican was under JPII. When the heart of an organization is riddled with this kind of cancer, the institution needs a heart transplant or it deserves to die. 

Benedict to his credit refused to take Legion bribes on his own behalf, but to his current discredit,  he seems  all too willing to continue accepting Legion money on behalf of the Church. I wish he would just bite the bullet and disband this order.  I wish he would have the moral fortitude to let Garza and his security codes sail off into the same sunset as Maciel.  

If the Legion and Regnum Christi members have true vocations, those vocations should be to Jesus Christ not 'Nuestro Padre'.  It shouldn't matter to them where the Church assigns their vowed service, or how it chooses to use their gifts. In fact, Benedict could go a long ways towards healing  if he assigned those gifts in a manner more befitting the people who gave those vows rather than defending the organization who betrayed those vows. But unfortunately the treatment of the Legion is not about honoring the honest members who have given so much to the Church in terms of human service, it's about protecting the organization and personalities through which the Vatican has received so much money.  As Catholic mythology would have it, Satan is still calling the shots when it comes to his Legions. 

The Prada Is On The Other Foot

 

For conservative Catholics, the cafeteria seems open.  I mean buffet, not cafeteria

 

While Archbishop Dolan may be shutting the door on inclusion, the door to the Catholic cafeteria has opened wide to welcome conservatives.  The following edited article is from Huffington Post.

Conservatives Reject Vatican Explanation On Condoms

Rachel Zoll - Huffington Post - 11/24/2010

NEW YORK — Faced with a changing outlook from Pope Benedict XVI on condoms and their role in preventing the spread of HIV, many prominent conservative Roman Catholics in the U.S. are rejecting the Vatican's own explanation of what the pope said. (And they are also shooting the messengers.)

Several orthodox Catholics said they would only accept a more formal papal pronouncement. Others insisted that journalists were purposely misrepresenting Benedict's comments. Some questioned whether the papal spokesman, the Rev. Frederico Lombardi, accurately quoted the pope. (Bang, bang, bang.)

Bishops and the experts who advise them were scrambling to make sense of the news.
"It's a mess," said John Haas, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, which advises church leaders, hospitals and Vatican offices. "I'm not ready to say that the pope said what Lombardi said.".... (Nothing like being your own pope, following your own selfish need to determine your own doctrine.  Hmmm, where have I heard that before?)

......Jenn Giroux, executive director of Human Life International America, which promotes Catholic teaching on contraception, abortion and other moral issues, said more clarification from the Vatican was needed.

"I am watching very carefully, as everyone is right now, before making a final pronouncement," said Giroux, a registered nurse and mother of nine. "We just got something from a spokesperson. As always, we look to church doctrine on statements like this." (You actually really might not want to go there. Your Pope is trying to tell you that.)

Germain Grisez, a prominent moral theologian who advises bishops, said that promoting condoms as protection against disease would be "pernicious" because it assumes a person does not have the capacity to make good, moral choices. He lamented that the pope's comments "can be – and are being – misused to sow doubt about Catholic teaching." (What's pernicious is pretending the majority of males will voluntarily keep their pecker in their pants as Church teaching dictates. They won't, they don't, they never have. They don't think it's natural.)

"Many of Jesus' own sayings were misused, and he no doubt foresaw that they would be misused. But he nevertheless said what he thought would lead to salvation those who were open to his teaching," Grisez wrote in an e-mail. "I assume that Pope Benedict's intention in speaking out as he does is similar to Jesus' intention. But Benedict's judgment about what to say may not be as sound as Jesus' judgment was."
(I thought the pope was Jesus's representative on earth. Has this changed?)

Haas, also a moral theologian, said he fielded calls all day Tuesday from bishops confused by what Lombardi had said. Benedict's comments come at a time when bishops in the United States are intensely focused on upholding Catholic orthodoxy on marriage and sexuality. (Wrong, they are intent on politicising Catholic orthodoxy.)

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not respond to requests Tuesday for comment.
Philip Lawler, editor of Catholic World News, demanded the resignation of the editor of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, after the daily printed the pope's quotes on condoms and other topics in a Saturday edition, despite an embargo on the much-anticipated book. (Bang)

Lawler and many other orthodox Catholics argued that the newspaper undermined the pope by quoting him without the proper context. Lawler stood by his criticism and call for the editor's resignation after Lombardi's news conference Tuesday. (boom.)

"I think the clarification was confusing and frustrating," Lawler said. (Actually, it was pretty black and white and pro life.)

Catholic teaching has never totally barred condom use for protection against HIV and the Vatican has no official, authoritative policy on the issue.

In 1987, the U.S. bishops' conference issued the statement, "The Many Face of AIDS," that stressed limiting sex to marriage as the best protection against the virus, but said public education "could include accurate information about prophylactic devices" to prevent transmission. The document was criticized at the time by conservatives and some Vatican officials. (This was back in '87, twenty three years ago, when the USCCB actually had some...well, courage.)

Years ago, Vatican officials reportedly began studying the topic, with the goal of writing a document on the morality of condom use as protection against AIDS, but no statement was issued.

The pope's comments in a book interview do not amount to an official teaching, a point conservative Catholics made repeatedly and vociferously Tuesday. They argued that the pope was only noting that by using a condom, a person with HIV is displaying some moral sense about the consequences of his behavior.

"I maintain that nothing new has happened, that the church's teaching hasn't changed," said the Rev. Joseph Fessio of Ignatius Press, the English publisher of the book, in a phone interview from Rome. (Benedict's point of reference certainly has and with it his pastoral thinking.)

Yet, the pope's remarks are still seen as significant and must be analyzed and explained by church leaders. U.S. bishops oversee AIDS care programs through local and national Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services. In a brief statement, Catholic Relief Services said, "Our current policy holds: we do not purchase, distribute or promote the use of condoms."

Very few U.S. bishops or church officials have commented since the pope's remarks were published last Saturday. (That's because the gang hasn't figured out how to protect it's political turf.)

"We're in for a long period of confusion," said Russell Shaw, a writer for the Catholic publication Our Sunday Visitor and former spokesman for the U.S. bishops' conference. "The bishops – and clergy especially – will have to go home now to their own dioceses and whether they like it or not start speaking very clearly about what just happened." (I'm sure Jesus will see to it that there is plenty of food in the cafeteria.

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I admit I've had great fun with the angst exhibited by the right.  All the big political guns have lined up against Lombardi, L'Osservatore Romano, the 'lame stream' media, and anyone else not named Benedict who had anything to do with what Benedict actually said. On the serious side, I am sadly disappointed that American Catholicism's loudest and most quoted voices, seem to think it's more faithful to Catholic teaching to inflict someone with a death sentence than use a condom. Truthfully, I'm not really sure I want that kind of belief structure in my Catholic cafeteria. Oh well, I didn't have any choice about who was in my grade school cafeteria either. I suppose I'll just have to adjust.

On another subject, today is Thanksgiving and I hope everyone has a safe Thanksgiving weekend. I also hope everyone has a safe Black Friday and doesn't get run over by a shopping cart or a frenzied shopper looking for their next big buy. Only in America would we be thankful for our blessings one day, and manic consumer zombies the next.  Peace, love, and joy to one and all.