Statistics And Damned Lies About The Statistics

I'm finally getting caught up with a lot of reading material.  I find it utterly amazing how much material I can miss when occupational responsibilities interrupt my preplanned schedule.  Or maybe it's just that the last week or so was unusually dense in Catholic stories.  A couple of stories currently running in the National Catholic Reporter deal with statistical analysis of the Catholic populations of Brazil and the US.  As far as our younger generations are concerned they tell the same story.  Youth are disconnecting at what should be perceived with alarm, but apparently isn't because somehow World Youth Day proves the opposite. At least WYD does for those who choose not see what's plain to anyone who actually attends a parish church.

The following is not the full article from John Allen.  I only used the first  part that deals with the Brazilian statistics.  One thing I noticed is that John actually defines 'secularism' in this piece.  In this particular Brazilian study it's used to reference people who have ditched their formal religious ties.

Secularism, a new papal contender and Catholic humor

by John L Allen Jr on Oct. 21, 2011
Two-thirds of the world's Catholic population today is in the southern hemisphere, a share that should reach three-quarters by mid-century. To discern where the church is headed, it's critical to keep an eye on what's bubbling down south, and two recent stories thus deserve to be on the global Catholic radar screen.
The first comes out of Brazil; the second, from the Philippines. Both are Catholic superpowers, among the top four Catholic countries in terms of population, and both are destined to be pace-setters in the church of the 21st century.  (This is assuming any leaders pass the Opus Dei test.  In that case there will be no pace setters.)

In Brazil, a respected national research institute, the Getulio Vargas Foundation, has published a new study suggesting that secularism -- defined, in this case, as throwing in the towel on religious faith and practice -- is making rapid inroads among Brazilian youth. Based on 200,000 interviews conducted for Brazil's 2010 census, the study concludes that the Catholic share of Brazil's population has dropped to 68 percent, its lowest level since census data began to be collected in 1872, in part because of the rising percentage of youth who disclaim any religious affiliation.

The key finding is this: The number of people under 20 who say they follow no religion is growing three times more quickly than among those over 50, with 9 percent of young Brazilians saying they belong to no religion.
Those results track with other data from Brazil. In 2007, Fr. Jose Oscar Beozzo, who directs the Center for Evangelizing Services and Popular Education in São Paulo, said that between 1980 and 2000, the percentage of the Brazilian population that identifies itself as Protestant, with most of that number being Pentecostal, rose from 12 percent to 17 percent. In the same period, the percentage with no religious affiliation went from 0.7 percent to 7.3 percent, a tenfold increase.

"This is the infinitely more important movement in the Brazilian religious situation," Beozzo said at the time.
In numeric terms, Brazil is the largest Catholic country in the world, with its 163 million Catholics representing 85 percent of the population. Those, however, are baptismal totals, while the new study reflects the share who actually identify as Catholic. Among other things, the difference between the two indicates that 17 percent of Brazilians today were born Catholic but have subsequently left the church. (That 17% is 27+ million people. This amounts to the entire Catholic populations of the UK, Australia, Ireland, and Canada.)
 
Competing explanations abound, with various commentators pointing to some version of at least four theories:

• Brazil's economic boom, which has convinced a share of today's youth that they simply don't need religion.
• Alleged remoteness and arrogance on the part of Catholic officialdom, combined with elements of church teaching that don't play well with progressive-minded young people, including the church's positions on abortion, contraception and homosexuality. (Not surprisingly, that's especially popular with the liberal wing of the Brazilian church.) (Notice how John does not use 'alleged' in the following bullet point.)
• An over-concentration on politics by the Brazilian church, especially what's left of the liberation theology movement, with the result that young people today are spiritually adrift. (That tends to be the favorite account on the Catholic right.)
• The raging priest shortage in Brazil, coupled with difficulties in mobilizing laity to compensate for it. (That's often what one hears from front-line pastoral workers in the country.) (and the one that holds the most truth.)

Whichever account one favors, the basic picture seems clear: A growing share of the younger generation in Brazil is being effectively secularized. (No, they are leaving institutional religions which is not necessarily the same as 'being effectively secularized.'---Unless one believes the sacred is the sole province of religion.)
 
This could have implications beyond the country's borders, because given Brazil's new economic and political muscle, trends there pack a broader regional and international punch.

Two thoughts about what this means:
First, the $64,000 question about religion in the southern hemisphere has long been whether economic and political progress necessarily goes hand-in-hand with secularization. There doesn't appear to be any ironclad law; China's economic growth in the last quarter-century, for instance, has been accompanied by a spiritual boom. (Which is not the same as a religious boom. Allen purposely mixes up these two concepts a lot and always to his advantage as he does here.)

 Yet it would seem to be the case in Brazil, which prompts the following thought: Latin America, in some ways, is closest to the historical patterns of Europe, in that the Catholic Church traditionally was a state-imposed monopoly. If secularism takes hold in Latin America more than other regions, might that be the final confirmation that relying on state power is, over the long run, always hazardous to the faith? (No, it could just as easily mean that Catholicism is failing not just as a religious system but also as a spiritual system.)

Second, the idée fixe of the church's leadership class in the West has become the defense of Catholic identity, as a means of protecting the church against being assimilated by secularism. In sociological terms, it's a "politics of identity," which is a classic defense mechanism for embattled subcultures. Developments in Brazil suggest that similar politics of identity could take shape in other parts of the Catholic world, giving that trend even more staying power. (And it will fail miserably because it's being used to hide the fact Catholicism is fast becoming a bankrupt spiritual system.)

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 It seems to me that John Allen, and he is not alone in doing this, consistently fails to distinguish just what he means by secularism, religion, and spirituality.  He was forced to define secularism in this article because the researchers for this study of Brazilian Catholics did it for him.  Their definition is that secularists are essentially unaffiliated with any religious denomination.  That is a pretty precise definition, at least for the parameters of this study.  The researchers apparently didn't offer the category 'spiritual but not religious' which is the fastest growing category in most Western countries.  My guess is that a significant portion of Brazilian youth would have accepted that self definition had it been offered.  

There is a very important message packed into that category and it's not a message that has much to do with secularization.  The message is that the 'spiritual but not religious' find mainstream religions spiritually bankrupt.  Religions are failing miserably at what they purport to exist for and that's nurture and fuel humanities spiritual quest for meaning and connection.  Religious identity will not substitute for this failure for very many people.  Maybe this is just a message that Catholics like Allen literally can not hear from the data, but you know what, if they don't start getting this message pretty soon, it won't matter if the white European clique that runs the Vatican ever gives way to the Southern brothers.  It will be too late to do any good. 

For those who haven't gotten enough statistics the Vatican released it's yearly mission statement on global Catholic demographics. Here's one paragraph that bears bad tidings if the front line pastoral workers in Brazil are correct about the raging priest shortage.  If you do venture over to read this study, North America is lumped in with South America so it's hard to tell what's really going on in either continent.  The European statistics are uniformly down--except for the number of laity per priest.

 The number of Catholics per priest in the world increased by 27 units, average 2,876. We have increases on every continent except Asia: Africa (+25); America (+32); Asia (-30); Europe (+16); Oceania (+25).
 

The Category Is Catholic Potpourri

 

One can imagine a conversation between Thomas Merton and Dalai Lama on the compatibility of resurrection and reincarnation.

There really is a slew of interesting Catholic stories this Monday.  Here are three of them.

As expected the Australian bishops have told us all that Rome was right and Bishop Morris was intransigent in his misguided understanding of the Catholic 'communion'. They will now commit themselves to fixing the disunity in Australian Catholicism so that no one can question whether Australian Catholics are in communion with Rome. Additionally they will offer their fraternal care to Bishop Morris:

"What was at stake was the church's unity in faith and the ecclesial communion between the pope and the other bishops in the College of Bishops," the statement said. "Eventually Bishop Morris was unable to agree to what this communion requires and at that point the pope acted as the successor of Peter, who has the task of deciding what constitutes unity and communion in the church."
The Australian bishops said they accept the pope's exercise of his ministry and they reaffirm their communion with him.
"We return to Australia determined to do whatever we can to heal any wounds of division, to extend our fraternal care to Bishop Morris and to strengthen the bonds of charity in the church in Australia," it said.

I suspect their attempts to heal the wounds of division have been thoroughly hamstrung by their obedient deference to Rome.  The healing most likely will consist of giving the dissenters the option of leaving their parishes so the Temple Police can have their pews unpolluted by those who are not in full communion with Rome.  Good Oh.

In other news, the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has released a document on the current global financial mess.  It calls for a global regulatory body which includes input from emerging countries. Fr Frederico Lombardi, papal spokesman, wanted us all to know this is not a document from Pope Benedict but from a Vatican agency and is there for not an authoritative expression of papal magisterium.  Which I guess is Benedict's way of telling those mega wealthy devout members of Legatus that they can ignore the mere 'authoritative note of a Vatican agency'.  Good Oh.

Finally, The National Catholic Reporter has an extensive series of articles based on the just released study of American Catholics under the direction of William V D'Antonio.  This is some fascinating reading and some of it is quite surprising.  The following is an excerpt from an article written by Michelle Dillon who was part of D'Antonio's research team.  Her topic is Catholics and spirituality:

.....Additionally, large numbers of Catholics say that they believe in various aspects of New Age spirituality. Forty-two percent believe that there is spiritual energy located in physical things such as mountains, trees or crystals; over one-third (37 percent) believes in reincarnation; and just less than a third (32 percent) believes in yoga, not just as exercise, but as a spiritual practice (see Figure 8). Not surprisingly, highly committed Catholics are less likely than less committed Catholics to believe in spiritual energy, reincarnation, and yoga. It is noteworthy, nonetheless, that between one-fifth and one-third of highly committed Catholics express such beliefs.

The more striking variation comes from ethnicity. Hispanic Catholics are significantly more likely than non-Hispanic Catholics to believe in reincarnation (53 percent versus 29 percent), the presence of spiritual energy in physical things (52 percent versus 38 percent), and in yoga as a spiritual practice (42 percent versus 27 percent). Moreover, among Hispanic Catholics, the highly committed are almost as likely as their least committed peers to believe in reincarnation (43 percent versus 47 percent) and spiritual energy (46 percent versus 52 percent), though they are comparatively less likely to believe in yoga as a spiritual practice (33 percent versus 46 percent). Among non-Hispanic Catholics, women are more likely than men to believe in spiritual energy (44 percent versus 31 percent), and in yoga as a spiritual practice (31 percent versus 23 percent).

These numbers make me wonder why Cardinal Rode went after the LCWR for their 'new ageism' when the real problem appears to be with Hispanic Catholics, both devout and not so devout.  No matter how one slices up these numbers, over half of Hispanic Catholics believe in reincarnation and spiritually energized physical things.  I can get why the latter belief, blessed rosaries and medals and such,  but the reincarnation thing is pretty amazing.  There is a great deal I would like to know about how Hispanic Catholics see reincarnation and how they fit it into a Catholic tradition which has no such belief.  I highly doubt it's all about some sort of vestigial pagan belief structure.  In any event, these are fascinating statistics, and probably will induce some more heartburn in the USCCB.  The New Evangelization it seems, will have more on it's plate than just selfish Western agnostic secularists.   Good Oh.





 

Benedict Honors The Cardinal Wizard of OZ:

Australian Bishops and Pope Benedict gather to hear from the Cardinal Wizard of OZ as he dedicates Domus Australia

New Mass translation can help Catholics pray better, pope says

 Cindy Wooden - Catholic News Service - 10-20-2011
VATICAN CITY -- The new English translation of the Mass is the result of a long process of international cooperation and is meant to help Catholics pray better, Pope Benedict XVI told Australia's bishops. (Not according to this member of ICEL.)

The new translation, which most Australian dioceses began introducing in parishes on Pentecost in June, "is intended to enrich and deepen the sacrifice of praise offered to God by his people," the pope said Oct. 20. (I'd just like to point out Jesus said He didn't want sacrifices.)
 
The morning after joining the bishops for the inauguration of the Domus Australia, a pilgrim center in Rome, the pope welcomed the bishops to the apostolic palace for the main talk of the "ad limina" visits, which bishops make to report on the church in their dioceses. (Actually it's a 30 million dollar bed and breakfast.)
 
Pope Benedict said the new liturgical translation was "the fruit of a remarkable cooperation of the Holy See, the bishops and experts from all over the world."
He asked the bishops to help their priests appreciate the new text and help catechists and musicians do their part to make the Mass "a moment of greater grace and beauty, worthy of the Lord and spiritually enriching for everyone."

Australian Cardinal George Pell of Sydney is the chairman of the Vox Clara Commission, an international body established by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, to assist in the evaluation of English liturgical translations. ( Pell and his compatriots totally overrode ICEL at the behest of the Vatican--hence Pope Benedict showed up to 'bless' Pell's $30 million dollar Roman bed and breakfast.)
 
The cardinal told Catholic News Service Oct. 19, "I think a goodly percentage of the people didn't notice the difference" when he began using the new text at the Sydney cathedral. "There are pockets of dissatisfaction, but overwhelmingly the priests and people are happy and they will get used to it. The prayers are immensely richer and there's much less banality." (Perhaps everyone in the Cathedral was deaf, or more likely Pell is being willfully blind.)

Some critics have said the new translation has archaic language, clumsy sentence structure and a lack of sensitivity to inclusive language.
Cardinal Pell said some of the vocabulary in the new translation is a bit challenging. For example, the new translation of the creed describes Jesus as being "consubstantial with the Father." The cardinal said, "One gentleman wrote to me and said he didn't understand 'consubstantial,' and I wrote back to him and suggested that he find out." (How swimmingly pastoral of Cardinal Pell.)

"One comparison I like to make is that -- although it's a mature, adult English -- (the translation) is a tiny bit like children's literature, because in good children's literature, every couple of pages there's probably a word the children don't understand, that expands their knowledge, and they have to either gather the meaning from the context or enquire about the meaning," the cardinal said. (Mr. Pastoral must be confusing himself with Mr Rogers, but my goodness, how utterly condescending.)

In his speech to the bishops, Pope Benedict also spoke about the hurt and damage caused by the clerical sex abuse crisis and other failures of church members.
"Yours is a pastoral burden which has been made heavier by the past sins and mistakes of others, most regrettably including some clergy and religious," the pope told the bishops. "The task now falls to you to continue to repair the errors of the past with honesty and openness, in order to build, with humility and resolve, a better future for all concerned." (Sighhhhh, it's never ever ever Rome's or a bishop's fault. It's always those 'other lesser beings' victimizing bishops and piling on the burdens.)

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I wonder if this visit of Australian bishops to Vatican City is beginning to feel like a sort of coronation for the Archduke of Sydney, otherwise known as Cardinal Pell.  I've been reading a number of stories this morning about Benedict's visit to Domus Australia mentioned in the above article.  Basically it really is a sort of bed and breakfast for Australian pilgrims in the heart of Rome.  This latest incarnation of a building bought from the Marist brothers back in 2008 is rumored to have cost somewhere between 30 and 85 million dollars.  Even at the lower figure, Australian Catholics are wondering just where the money came from for this venture of Pell's, but those kinds of questions must be too burdensome for the man because he hasn't answered any questions about cost or payment.  Kind of like Cardinal Maida of Detroit about the John Paul II Center in DC.  No, actually, exactly like Cardinal Maida.

I am beginning to develop a lot of respect for the reporting of Cindy Wooden of CNS.  Her writing is sort of the antithesis of John Allen's.  She has some seriously choice quotes from Cardinal Pell in the above article and the way she has all this put together, given Pell's position with Vox Clara,  is priceless.  Pell comes across as an elitist member of some sort of nobility and maybe that's because that's his true opinion of himself.  It's sad to think he represents a true blue member of the Vatican's ruling elite.

In other news, here's a quote from Cardinal Peter Turkson President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.  He made it in remarks about the coming ecumenical meeting in Assisi:
The 63-year-old Ghana native added that the search for truth is a condition to "defeat fanaticism and fundamentalism," which seeks to obtain peace by imposing "one's own convictions on others."  It seems to me Archbishop Neinstedt of Minneapolis could meditate on these words, since he is engaging the Catholic parishes of Minnesota in just such a campaign to impose his own fundamentalist convictions on others. 

Sometimes it's confusing to be a Catholic.  Maybe Cardinal Pell could suggest a good children's story for me to read.  For myself I would suggest Pell might try reading the Wizard of OZ.

The Mountain Roared And Mice Were Born

This is not a group photo of the Australian bishops no matter how closely it resembles their attitude in Rome.

Given all the news being generated in American Catholicism it's easy to overlook news from elsewhere.  One story that I have followed on this blog is from Australia concerning the forced retirement of Toowoomba's Bishop William Morris.  The Australian bishops are currently on their Ad Limina visit to Rome where one topic they promised their faithful they would bring up with Vatican officials was the Bishop Morris decision.  Since they were pretty much sandbagged by this decision, it only made sense for them to ask for clarification.  Read the following excerpt from Catholic News Service and weep.  Talk about sycophantic behavior.

......Archbishop Wilson said the Australian bishops fully recognize and accept Pope Benedict's ministry of authority over the whole church and they are not second-guessing his action, but they have an obligation to help Toowoomba Catholics move forward and to demonstrate their care for Bishop Morris.

"What we have to do is look at what the consequences have been, what we need to do now to bring healing and guidance to the Catholic people of Australia, do all we can to maintain a proper collegial relationship with Bishop Morris and find ways in which he can continue his ministry as a bishop in our midst, although he's no longer bishop of Toowoomba," the archbishop said.

While no conclusions have been reached, he said Oct. 17, by continuing the discussions in Rome, a whole new dimension has been added.

"We're all here together, we're in a very spiritual situation, we're right at the center of the life of the church, gathered around the tombs of the Apostles," he said. (Excuse me while I sick up.)

Bishop Michael Putney of Townsville said Cardinals Ouellet and Levada "were very generous with their time," and the Australian bishops continue to discuss the matter among themselves, "gaining greater understanding of why it happened and ideas to ensure it never happens again." (Just how much legitimate understanding can you all gain when Bishop Morris is not part of the discussion?)

Bishop Putney said he personally believes "as bishops we need to have intermediate steps in place. When we see a bishop acting in such a way that could lead to censure, we should have a process of mediation in place to intervene in a spirit of affective collegiality." (Except there is no such thing as collegiality.  If there were, Archbishop Chaput wouldn't have been sent in secretly to hang Bishop Morris.)

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Cardinal Pell must be real proud of his fellow Australian bishops.  They all do seem to marching in lock step, right over the body of Bishop Morris.  I love the last line from Bishop Putney about what to do when bishops see a fellow bishop acting in such a way that could lead to censure.  Apparently down in the land of OZ, acting realistically to see to the needs of a flock spread out over territory bigger than the State of Montana, with a whopping 18 priests, is enough to get you censured.  Bishop Putney oversees a similar size diocese with about the same number of priests if you include him.  These poor priests have to be putting hundreds of miles of wear and tear on themselves and their vehicles every single weekend.  


I seriously doubt the Vatican really understands these logistics, just as I seriously doubt Cardinals Levada or Oullete really understand these logistics having come from large Metropolitan Sees. It's no wonder that Bishop Morris allowed for liberal use of the third rite of penance because it saves time for priests who have miles to go and people to see before they sleep. It's no wonder Bishop Morris mused publicly about solutions to the priest shortage--if only Rome would consider them. How in conscience does a bishop keep asking his priests to spend this kind of time in travel every single week when he knows changing the rules for the priesthood would produce enough home grown celebrants to take care of his far flung parishes.

It seems to me that the Morris story illustrates how far out of touch Rome actually is with it's far flung global flock. Australia is not Rome.  There are not thousands of priests in cassocks swishing around the Outback like there are gracing the streets of Rome. I am at a loss as to why Australian bishops are acting in Rome as if Rome knows anything about the reality on the ground in Australia.  What Rome knows is nothing more than Australia's version of the Temple Police tell them.  If that's the kind of intelligence gathering Rome chooses to use in it's management decisions,  it's no wonder this Vatican is facing clerical and lay dissent in more and more countries. And all this dissent is not about dogma, it's about over worked priests and lack of access to the Sacramental treasure of Roman Catholicism.  Putting a monstrance on an altar in an otherwise priestless church is not going to be sufficient.  Something has got to give.  In this case, once again,   it's the Australian bishops and not Rome.  Well, at least the bishops got to kowtow gathered around the tombs of the Apostles.

 

Empowering Women Is Critical To Catholicism But Not Necessarily To The Priesthood

Here we have an example of Pope Benedict studiously ignoring that which is right in front of him.

The following is yesterday's post from Sr Joan Chittister at the National Catholic Reporter.  It has already generated three pages of comments.  I have reprinted it in full because it is an old story, and I too had to attempt to answer the same question from my own daughter at about the same age as the girl mentioned in Joan's post.  Just as my parents had to try and answer my own same question at about the same age.

Lack of women will irreversibly harm the church

Sister Joan Chittister - National Catholic Reporter - 10/17/2011
The story is an old one and I've told it before, but never has it felt so ominous as it does right now.
It happened this way:

About 15 or 20 years ago, I gave a series of conferences in a parish in Canada.
I like Canada a lot — its beauty, its pace, its seeming patience with conflict and its apparent calmer approach to otherwise disruptive subjects — subjects that lead to almost immediate choosing up of sides down here. Maybe it's the Brit in them. Or maybe, given their smaller population and more far-flung population centers, wildfire simply isn't as wild north the border as it is here. Whatever.

At any rate, what was already euphemistically called "The women's issue" here appeared at that time to be a great deal less of an issue to our neighbors to the north.

So I was surprised when the topic came up at lunch from the couple hosting my visit. More than that, I was surprised at what triggered it.


It wasn't the dearth of theology around the question of the ordination of women that piqued them. It wasn't the growing statistic on the coming decline in the priesthood that worried them. It wasn't the fear of merging parishes that troubled them.
On the contrary. They had a good parish, they said, a fine and loving parish priest, the kind of congregation that was family to them and the kind of faith to trust the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit among them.
What bothered them was their 4-year-old daughter. She was a quick-minded child. Precocious. Persistent. Confident. They knew, they told me, that some day, she would question the difference between what her brother could do in the church and what she could do. That would be years away, of course, but still — maybe more for themselves than for her — they were struggling, to no avail, to find a reason good enough to appease her, they said.

Then, suddenly, one Sunday morning after Mass as they sat at the family breakfast table, it happened.
"Mama," she said suddenly, "why don't we have any girl priests at our church?"
They looked at one another, dumbstruck, unprepared. Too late. There was nothing left to do now but be honest. (One is never prepared to attempt to defend the indefensible. Honestly is the only policy.)

"Because, darling," the mother said, "our church doesn't allow girl priests."
The little girl pursed her lips and frowned. "Then why do we go there?" she demanded.

With the retreat to Vatican I in full force, this question and its answer get closer and closer.
Feminine language is fast being cut from the very prayers of the church. The invisibility of women is official policy again. Women have been removed from various church boards stealthily but steadily.


All talk of the restoration of the diaconate has been suffocated.
"If the diaconate is restored for women," an official spokesperson is reported to have said, "they will assume they can then be ordained to the priesthood."

It has not occurred to the spokesman, it seems, that the restoration of the diaconate for married men did not launch an assault on the chancery doors to require a married priesthood. Either that, or the old "you know how irrational women are" argument is being dusted off again, too. (That fact is kind of interesting, but the allowance for a married Anglican Ordinariate clergy is starting just that assault.)


And now, in places even in this country, some dioceses are denying girls the opportunity to become altar servers, despite official church acceptance of female servers since 1983 and the long-established practice in churches everywhere.

The idea that women are to be "seen and not heard" is fast becoming "neither seen nor heard."
Here and there, little by little, the hoary head of chauvinism, of patriarchy, of sick and petty and adolescent sexism is making one last desperate attempt to make us a totally male church again.
Correction: To make us a serving female church, a parading male church again. And all of it, as usual, in the name of God. In defense of the faith. In imitation of the church of Christ.

It’s one thing for a city council in Topeka, Kan., can reduce wife beating from a felony to a misdemeanor so they can save money by not prosecuting this endemic and dangerous holdover from the days of women as chattel. The Constitution will eventually resolve that one in favor of "liberty and justice for all."
But when a church can simply erase the women in its midst, refuse to discuss the subject and attempt to go on calling itself church, Christian and holy, that is another matter entirely.


Which is when I find myself thinking about that little girl in Canada again.
That little girl in Canada is still out there somewhere. She's in her 20s now — still watching, still wondering what church it is that treats her like the full human being God means her to be. She's out there determining what church it is that really looks like the Christians they claim to be. And she is out there deciding what church it is that not only preaches the Gospel but lives it.


From where I stand, it is clear that the church already lost a good proportion of one generation of women in the last 25 years and is now willing to lose the next one to reassert its maleness. The question rises again with new and demanding urgency for many: Why do we go there? 

The answer to it will not only affect the women and their children for generations to come. It will affect the church in ways no number of male altar boys can begin to heal it.

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I maintain that women will not find their true place in the scheme of things until they stop confusing sacramental authority with spiritual authority.  Female mystics out number male mystics by a considerable margin.  We don't refer to male intuition. Jesus did not spend time trying to teach women about the Kingdom because He knew He didn't have to spend much time with women.  Women can connect with the spiritual realm stirring soup on a stove or sitting at His feet.  He was raised by a woman who talked face to face with the angelic realm, in the moment in real time, while his step father dreamed dreams.  The women in His family were very familiar with reality working beyond human perceptual limits.  The men in his family thought He was crazy.  He was surrounded by women who were willing to walk His talk because they instinctively got it.  No fear for them. They were at the foot of the Cross and at the dawn of His Resurrection.  Mary Magdalene was the Apostle to the Apostles.  St Micheal the Archangel is depicted as the general of Mary's celestial army.  St Joan of Arc was not St John of Arc for a reason.


Women may be the weaker physical sex, but that is balanced by having the stronger psychic/spiritual connections; by being the sex which nurtures life---all kinds of life.  Men can be taught these same connections but it's a much harder path for most men to achieve what women do naturally.  I have thought for a long time that the Church has maintained an all male sacramental priesthood to hide this truth behind a facade of ritual power, and to keep women blind to their real strength and thereby spiritually dis empowered. 


When my daughter asked me the same questions about an all male priesthood, I gave her a different answer about her own spiritual potential.  What Catholicism really needs is not women with sacramental authority, but women flexing their spiritual muscles, making real spiritual connections.  I strongly suspect the Vatican attack on the LCWR had a great deal to do with the fear that these religious women were coming to these very same conclusions.  It's not that these congregations were going beyond Christ, it's that they were moving beyond the static spirituality constrained by the sacramental priesthood.  Jesus did exactly the same thing by teaching a spiritual system unrestrained by the Temple priesthood.  He too paid a price for those teachings.

The lack of recognition for women's spiritual abilities has already irreparably harmed the Church.  What's worse is the fact where Catholicism intersected with cultures who did understand these attributes, the forced adoption of male spiritual supremacy has seriously impacted those cultures and manifested not just in patriarchal family structures, but in generational physical and sexual abuse. "By their fruits you shall know them." 


It's past time women Occupied Their Rightful Place in the spiritual scheme of things.  That's not necessarily behind altars so much as it is in standing as true bridges between realities.  That is a vocation worth pursuing and one this planet desperately needs.





 

Will Bishop Finn Exchange His Purple Clericals For An Orange Jump Suit?

It is entirely possible that the Holy Spirit is calling Bishop Finn to a less ostentatious prison ministry.

 

Finally a Roman Catholic Bishop is held accountable for hiding the truth.  The following editorial is from the Kansas City Star.

The Star’s editorial | Bishop Finn and KC-St. Joseph Diocese face disturbing charges

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/10/14/3208007/the-stars-editorial-bishop-finn.html#ixzz1axZOooSB

The grand jury indictment of Bishop Robert Finn on Friday sends the right message to the Catholic Church’s hierarchy: Authorities will target not only alleged perpetrators of child abuse, but those who reportedly fail in their legal obligation to protect children.

Finn faces a misdemeanor charge of failing to report suspected abuse of a child by a priest. He is the highest-ranking Catholic official to be criminally charged in a case involving child abuse.

The distressing picture that overshadows this case, as well as so many others across the nation and in Europe, is of a Catholic Church more interested in protecting priests than the young abuse victims who trusted them. That cannot be allowed to continue.

Also indicted was the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, charged with failure to report suspected child abuse. (Just goes to prove corporations are people too--and just as legally accountable.)


The indictments compound problems for the diocese’s reputation, wounded in 2008 when it reached a $10 million settlement with 47 plaintiffs who had alleged wrongdoing by a dozen priests or former priests. That payout should have resulted in a vigilant dedication to avoid more problems. (Which makes Finn's actions even more galling, since he signed off on this settlement.)

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker made the appropriate point Friday: “This is about protecting children.”

The misdemeanor charge against Finn should not be taken lightly, she said. Punishment of up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine are possible for Finn. The diocese faces up to a $1,000 fine, too. Finn and diocesan officials entered not guilty pleas.

The indictment alleges that Finn and the diocese had reasonable cause to suspect that a priest had been abusing children but did not report their suspicions to authorities as required by law.


Last December, diocese officials learned of pornographic images showing girls as young as 3 or 4 on a computer of Father Shawn Ratigan.


Ratigan — now facing state and federal child pornography charges — was sent to a mission house in Independence and ordered to have no contact with minors. According to a federal indictment, he disobeyed that order and allegedly tried to take pornographic pictures of a 12-year-old girl.

In a report last month, a diocese-commissioned investigation found that — in handling the Ratigan case — church officials failed to follow their own policies and procedures. Instead, they behaved in ways that “could have jeopardized” child safety. (Especially since part of that 'not following their own policies' involved keeping their own diocesan commission on sexual abuse out of the loop.)


This case has been a sorry comment on the church’s priorities and a challenge to its moral authority.
But the right message has been sent by the legal system. All are responsible to protect children.


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From the get go I felt this story of Bishop Finn and Fr Ratigan would result in charges against Finn and the Diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph.  First because there was too much evidence that Finn was protecting Ratigan, and secondly, because part of the ten million dollar abuse settlement reached in 2008, signed by Finn,  included pretty specific language about how future allegations would be handled by the Diocese.  It truly makes me wonder about the mind set of Bishop Finn.

Now the people of Finn's Diocese will get to pay for his and the Diocese's defense attorneys on top of all the other legal bills they have had to foot. Fortunately for them, Ratigan has a Public Defender, so all the tax payers of Kansas City get to pay for Ratigan's defense not just Roman Catholics.  Good thing too since Ratigan is facing both State and Federal charges for child porn distribution.

This morning I read the Federal charges against Ratigan in an attempt to get some feel for just what exactly he was photographing, in order to understand how Finn and company had trouble to determining whether any of it was pornographic.  It's hard to understand how Finn and company could have determined these photos weren't child pornography. It's one thing to give someone the benefit of doubt, and quite another to give someone a free pass.  Ratigan got a free pass, more than one actually, given the times and dates listed in his indictment.  

The question the keeps circling in my mind is how in the world could this happen in this country almost ten years after Boston and after all the other exposure globally on this issue?  How sick is this Catholic clerical system that it is in fact still protecting itself and it's prerogatives after a decade of the exposure of it's criminal activity?  Does Finn symbolize the clerical mindset that thinks it is in some real way ontologically superior to the rest of humanity and not accountable to anyone other than themselves?  I have come to the conclusion Finn and others like him, really do think they are in some way above the rest of us mere mortals, and that no matter how damaged a priest might be, the fact he is a priest completely changes the accountability parameters.  It's pretty apparent that when it comes to priests there are no lay peers qualified to pass judgement on their behavior--- no matter what secular legal systems might believe.  For Finn,  the belief he acted on was that those secular legal systems could freely be ignored.  The price for that kind of thinking could very well be his freedom and that would be a message heard round the clerical world.  Finally.

Oreo Cookies And The Future Of The Reform Of The Reform

Here Oreo cookies actually can describe one small part of twenty first century cosmology.

The following is an edited version of the latest Eugene Cullen Kennedy piece at NCR.  His ending paragraph is especially poignant because the truth is neither a person nor an institution can return to the past when the playing field of the present is so drastically altered.

You can't go Rome again

by Eugene Cullen Kennedy on Oct. 07, 2011Nobody would ever accuse the so-called Reform of the Reform of a lack of transparency. You can see right through its almost weekly moves to return Catholicism to the Eden of church life that they perceive on the far side of Vatican II.

Sometimes these moves, such as imposing a literal translation of the Latin on the Mass texts, not only aims to transport Catholics back to somewhere around 1925 but also to restore the "Attend a a Protestant Service/Support a False Religion" mentality that prevailed in that era. The Congregation of Divine Worship now makes clear, in the document Liturgiam Authenticam, that it wants to do just that. It prefers an awkward concrete rendering of Latin "to avoid a wording or a style that the Catholic faithful would confuse with the manner of speech of non-Catholic ecclesial communities or of other religions..." This, according to The Tablet's Robert Mickens, drives "a stake into the heart of ecumenical efforts at composing common texts.".....(Must avoid the scandal of syncretism.)

........Mickens also analyzes Benedict's curial appointments, concluding that, after the internationalization of leadership in the Church that followed Vatican II, he is restoring the Italian domination of key curial positions. What could move the Roman furniture more surely back to the 1925 style than placing the keyboard of the Vatican piano back into the hands of Italians who long ago mastered the intricate sonatas of survival?

Perhaps we should not expect a German Pope to be subtle but he was anything but that when, on his recent visit to Spain, he announced that "I will shortly declare St. John of Avila a Doctor of the Universal Church." Aside from writing Run through that again letters to St. Teresa of Avila ("What you say about God teaching the soul without the use of the imagination ... is safe, and I can find no fault in it.") he is celebrated for his role in the Counter-Reformation. In short, exactly the intellectual hero the Pope wants for the Reform of the Reform......

....Such playing at time travel would be relatively harmless and charming in the way that sunlit autumn leaves are if that is all there was to this massive effort to transport the Church back to the same era sought in the novel, when the notoriously autocratic Pope Pius XI expected Cardinals to remain kneeling when visiting his office on official business, the Mass was in Latin, and equal as mortal sins were murdering somebody, allowing a sexual thought to wait in the vestibule of your mind before you evicted it, or eating meat on Friday. Yes, those certainly were the good old days. (Even as a 7 year old I had real difficulty  understanding why missing Mass was equally egregious to murdering somebody.)
 
The Reform of the Reform may be better understood not as an exaggerated exercise in nostalgia as much as the debilitating side-effect on being unable to adjust to the Space/Information Age that has ended the division between the earth and the heavens that was the theoretical basis for hierarchical structures. By healing the centuries old presumed rift between earth and the heavens the Space/Information Age also healed the separation of the human person into antagonistic elements of body and soul, flesh and spirit. It is difficult for hierarchs to adjust to the Space/Information Age because they cannot get their bearings easily unless they sit atop an hierarchical array; they fear going into free fall in the universe in which there is no center, no up and no down, and so they want to reconstruct the times and places, the Time and Again of an age before Vatican II in which they feel that they will be comfortable again.

There is something poignant about these would-be time travelers who pull back from the future that is already enveloping them. They remind one of the travelers in the desert described by Freud in explaining the difficulty many people have in letting go of the past. When the sun goes down and the air turns bitter cold, such pilgrims long to return to the remembered warmth of campfires they had left behind them. They cannot return to them because they have cooled to ashes and the winds have mixed them with the billowing waves of sand. The Reform of the Reform is built on just such understandable but misplaced longing, is bound to disappoint those who invest their hearts in its success, may generate centrifugal pressures in the heart of the Church, and one day, long after it has failed, be judged not as an inviting oasis worth a long journey but a cruel and seductive illusion of the unforgiving sands of time.

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Eugene Kennedy has written an important piece, which for me at least, will generate a great deal of thought.  Thoughts about why Benedict has returned the curia to Italian hands when we already know there is great corruption on some of those Italian hands.  Thoughts like why would our Roman leadership insist on taking our sacramental vision back along the thought lines of the Oreo universe, where human reality is stuck like frosting between a static heaven and hell;  reduced to praying/begging that God will lift us off the bottom cookie so we mostly stick to the top.  As Kennedy points out, the Space/Information Age not only doesn't support such a cosmology, it negates it. It hasn't been very productive to present the static images of God generated by the Oreo universe to a population  raised with the cosmology of the Big Bang and the physics of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.  NASA has shown heaven is most definitely not up there or out there somewhere and Exon still hasn't hit hell---even with it's deepest wells.

Of course, Jesus never did tell us to look up or down for God. He told us to look within. God is within us.  God is found internally, not externally.  Just as the truth of who we are as functioning human consciousness is not located in our brains.  Science is still not sure where the seat of that sense we all have of being a discrete "I" comes from. We know a great deal of how our brains work, how memory functions and why it fails, but we know nothing about why people still sense themselves as a discrete whole when for all practical purposes the brain has stopped functioning in any biologically meaningful sense.  As consciousness, we are more than the grey matter stuck in our skulls. For instance, we don't know why in some cases, manifesting different personalities will change core physiological issues like blood pressure, diabetes, and allergies. This seems to suggest that some aspect of consciousness is capable of sending signals which the body responds to on an holistic level.  Another Catholic example of this ability is the stigmata phenomenon.  The only explanation for this offered by the spirituality based on the Oreo universe is God/Lucifer or saints and angels/demons stick their fingers into things--violating the laws of the Oreo universe--and often quite capriciously I might add.  

In my travels through the American West and in my work with Native medicine men and women, they seem to have a different understanding of consciousness/ensoulment.  In their spiritual universe, human consciousness is now, always was, and will be.    Personal soul consciousness is not a separate human state brought on or freed by death.  It is also active before biological birth. Soul consciousness is much greater than our physical experience of it.  Material reality limits it's expression, chiefly through the laws of physics which govern the material universe.  In other words, in this view we are agreeing to limit the expression of our own soul truth when we choose to incarnate. Jesus showed that in many respects the severity of these limits are self imposed through ignorance, cultural/family expectations, and poor spiritual formation.

But then, the universe itself is not just a product of the Newtonian physics governing time/space and matter.  It is also very much a product of quantum physics. The quantum universe can not sustain a spiritual cosmology based on an Oreo cookie. This is a universe which is both holistic and holographic, interconnected, knit by time but not necessarily defined by time, and shares the mind of God with other dimensional universes.  The universe not exclusively about humanity and humanities preferred state in God's eyes.  This universe is one piece of a much larger puzzle in which mankind is no more ontologically important than any other piece of the puzzle--except for one thing.  Once evolution produces the biological complexity necessary to hold a sentient form of consciousness, then those incarnated beings have choice and are free to act in concert with the Greater Scheme of things---or not. 

Once evolution has reached enough complexity to support sentient self aware life, then the free choice which comes with that conscious sentience carries great weight as to how evolution will continue to unfold. This does not describe a dependent disempowered humanity praying that when their personal Oreo is pulled apart that fate will see to it most of the frosting sticks to the top cookie. It describes a humanity fully empowered and willing to hear a great deal of what Jesus taught with open eyes and ears.  It's very very sad to me, that at a time when the collective consciousness of this planet is finally choosing to see that we are all inner connected and no culture can pretend to live in a hermetically sealed vacuum, the Vatican is attempting to recreate Catholicism's own hermetically sealed vacuum.  As Kennedy says, this is a cruel and seductive illusion of the long ago shifted sands of time.  It really is destined to fail.




 

  

No Wine In Madison

I don't see any wine at this commemorative Christmas feast, and neither will Catholics in Madison.

Before I get to the topic of this post, I just want to inform readers that my lack of posting this week was due to overtime at work, and feeling quite under the weather to boot.  I basically went to work, took cold medication, and went to bed. Today is a much needed day off, but will still include plenty of cold medication.  On to the topic at hand.

I can not say I was at all shocked when I read that Bishop Morlino of Madison, WI declared that his fellow cheese heads would no longer have wine at Mass. Once reactionary Bishop Olmstead declared such for Phoenix, I knew Morlino would not be far behind. I frequently thank God that Morlino is no longer in Helena, MT and also add prayers for Madison that his reign of incense and ego will end soon for them.  In the meantime Madison Catholics can look forward to no wine at Communion along with the introduction of the new Missal come Advent.  I bet they feel doubly graced.  

What I did find shocking is the apparent indult that Morlino and Olmstead seem to be referencing in justifying their action.  From the Dating God blogsite:

......The argument for this move, at least as it is presented in the Dioceses of Madison, WI, recently (here is the full text of the cathedral bulletin where this news was first published) and Phoenix, AZ, is that the expiration of a Vatican Indult in 2005 ostensibly concerning the distribution of Communion under both species. However, a record of this alleged Indult is not easily acquired. What can be found are a number of other Indults near the same time: The permission for extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist to purify sacred vessels (1975, which is said to ‘expire’ in 2005) and the person to give communion to the faithful in-the-hand (1969 universally, 1979 in the US particularly), for example.

It is this first matter, the purification of sacred vessels, that seems to be the real legal argument that the bishop of Madison, bishop of Phoenix and perhaps some others are using for their squashing of Communion under both kinds. That is the so-called expired Indult and the matter, as it was explained in a 2006 CNS article on the subject, that Cardinal Arinze of the Congregation for Divine Worship stressed when the vessel-purification Indult “ran out.” [For the full-text of the 2002 three-year extension of that Indult, accompanied by then USCCB President Archbishop Gregory's introduction, see here.]

Noting that the General Instruction of the Roman Missal “directs that the sacred vessels are to be purified by the priest, the deacon or an instituted acolyte,” the cardinal said in his Oct. 12 letter that “it does not seem feasible, therefore, for the congregation to grant the requested indult from this directive in the general law of the Latin Church.”
Although receiving Communion under both kinds is a “more complete” sign of the sacrament’s meaning, Cardinal Arinze said, “Christ is fully present under each of the species.”

How quickly the argument goes from a matter concerning which person can or cannot clean a chalice to the widespread denial of Communion under both kinds to thousands, or even millions, of the faithful.
It would appear that the Congregation for Divine Worship used this expiration as an opportunity to circumvent the directives of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), which in its 2002 revised form reads:

Holy Communion has a fuller form as a sign when it is distributed under both kinds. For in this form the sign of the eucharistic banquet is more clearly evident and clear expression is given to the divine will by which the new and eternal Covenant is ratified in the Blood of the Lord, as also the relationship between the Eucharistic banquet and the eschatological banquet in the Father’s Kingdom.

The GIRM also outlines what authority the local ordinary has in matters relating to Holy Communion under both kinds:

The Diocesan Bishop may establish norms for Communion under both kinds for his own diocese, which are also to be observed in churches of religious and at celebrations with small groups. The Diocesan Bishop is also given the faculty to permit Communion under both kinds whenever it may seem appropriate to the priest to whom, as its own shepherd, a community has been entrusted, provided that the faithful have been well instructed and there is no danger of profanation of the Sacrament or of the rite’s becoming difficult because of the large number of participants or some other reason.

Canon Law is notably silent on this matter as it directs pastors, clergy and the faithful to the liturgical laws of the Church (i.e., in this case, the GIRM!).

Holy communion is to be given under the form of bread alone or under both species according to the norm of the liturgical laws, or even under the form of wine alone in the case of necessity. (Can. 925, emphasis added)

This whole business is very curious.  (To say the least.)It seems absurd that bishops, including the Prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship in Rome, would be so myopic and concerned about this technicality ordering who is and who is not fit to clean the sacred vessels, objects which only contained the precious species, when the same faithful — extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist or otherwise — have already handled and consumed Holy Communion. In other words, they are fit to receive, handle and distribute Communion, but are not fit to purify a chalice (which, for those who don’t know, consists of consuming the remaining particles of the Eucharist — which any baptized person is permitted to do according to the law, pouring water into the empty vessel, consuming that poured water, and drying the vessel itself with a purificator).

That the bishops of Phoenix and Madison, and anyone who in the future tries to use a similar justification for curbing access to Holy Communion under both species, are using this purification-of-vessels matter as the rationalization for restricting or refusing the Eucharist is a scandal in itself. The faithful have a right (according to Can. 912: “Any baptized person not prohibited by law can and must be admitted to holy communion”) to receive Communion and this right, according to the liturgical law (GIRM, etc.) leans toward communion under both species as normative unless it becomes impossible due to circumstances such as large numbers of people or lack of access to wine. (Ah, but ideas of ritual purity are still hugely powerful--especially in some minds.)

Here we come to the title of this post: The Eucharist is Not a Weapon. It strikes me as nothing less-than an clerical overstepping and unnecessary demarcation of the clergy and laity. What are these pastors (by which I mean the Canonical notion of pastor) thinking? It seems, at least superficially, that it is an “in” and “out” club — who is and who is not permitted to receive from the cup. The only shred of juridical support is the technicality about who can and cannot clean the cups after Communion.....

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I'm not going to dispute the fact that Canon Law allows Olmstead and Morlino the authority to enact virtually any liturgical edict (abuse)  their little hearts desire.  But  the rationale for these decisions certainly appears to be hugely deceptive if Daniel Horan OFM, author of Dating God, has the right of it.  When an indult regarding washing dishes is used as the basis for removing a cherished right of the laity, and then it's misrepresented,  this is not about pastoring. This is about underscoring clerical power to control the liturgical life of laity.  Exactly as the current USCCB campaign against gay marriage and birth control is about controlling the intimate life of the laity.  Too bad the same vociferous and careful attention to these two areas are not exercised within their own ranks. 

There is another issue which might be at play in all of this exercising of clerical muscles.  It might be even more important to put the laity in their subservient place when it comes to things like diocesan finances and the various other committees in which laity are supposed to have some say.  Committees like the ones that oversee clerical abuse allegations for instance.  If laity washing the dishes used at Mass is anathema to bishops like these two, it's pretty easy to imagine having lay interference in the day to day operations of their fiefdoms is even worse.  The thinking must run a long the lines that if we can put them back in their places in the pews, they will certainly then know their places in diocesan committees--which is to say, silent and agreeable.

I would love to see the faithful in Madison just walk out of Mass in mass come Advent.  A sort of reverse Occupy Wall Street movement, as in Don't Occupy The Cathedral Pews movement.  Madison Catholics could always go home and do as the early Christians did in memory of Jesus, and they could enact that memory with actual wine.

The Military Freedom Foundation Drops A Bomb On The Air Force Academy

There is a serious reason this billboard was put up in the middle of downtown Colorado Springs, home of the US Air Force Academy.

I am a believer in a phenomenon called synchronicity.  So Saturday when I'm checking for comments which need moderation, I come across one for a posting I did back in 2009 on a nuclear submarine commander who stated on a national game show that he was an "undersea nuclear Christian warrior".  He was also a submarine commander.  I'm thinking to myself something was prompting me to review this post at this time, and that led me to check out the website Talk2Action.  T2A has a long history of exposing Christian supremacy advocates within the US military.  It is closely aligned with the group Military Religious Freedom Foundation.  Which brings me to the above billboard strategically dropped in downtown Colorado Springs, and the US Air Force Academy.

The billboard contains the entire memorandum issued by Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz on "Maintaining Government Neutrality Regarding Religion."  Readers can probably read the title in the photo of the billboard.  MRFF paid for the billboard.  They took this step because this memo was issued on September 1st to all Air Force commands and units, but the Air Force Academy did not release it to cadets and staff until two days after the billboard went up.  Hmmmm.  How synchronistic is that?  That's what the Academy is essentially claiming, that the presence of the billboard and the tardy issue of a command directive were coincidental.  For the record, I don't believe in that much synchronicity.


Why would the Chief of Staff of the Air Force feel the need to issue this directive, I wondered.  I found out why reading the above linked Chris Rodda article at T2A.  The following excerpts are from a July 27, 2011 article on Truth Wins Out:

UPDATE: Following the publication of this exclusive report, the Air Force suspended its war ethics training for nuclear missile officers. (Interesting update, given the body of the article.)

The United States Air Force has been training young missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons by citing passages from the New Testament and commentary from a former member of the Nazi Party, according to documents obtained exclusively by Truthout.

The mandatory Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare session, which includes a discussion on St. Augustine's "Christian Just War Theory," is led by Air Force chaplains and takes place during a missile officer's first week in training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

St. Augustine's "Qualifications for Just War," according to the way it is cited in a PowerPoint presentation, are: "to avenge or to avert evil; to protect the innocent and restore moral social order (just cause)" and "to restore moral order; not expand power, not for pride or revenge (just intent)."

The Air Force documents were released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and provided to Truthout by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a civil rights organization. MRFF President Mikey Weinstein said more than 30 Air Force officers, a majority of whom describe themselves as practicing Protestants and Roman Catholics, have contacted his group over the past week in hopes of enlisting him to work with the Air Force to have the Christian-themed teachings removed from the nuclear weapons ethics training session. [Full disclosure: Weinstein is a member of Truthout's Board of Advisers.]......

 ......One of the slides quotes Wernher Von Braun, a former member of the Nazi Party and SS officer. Von Braun, regarded as the father of the US space program, is not being cited as a scientific expert, rather he's specifically being referenced as a moral authority, which is remarkable considering that the Nazi scientist used Jews imprisoned in concentration camps and captured French anti-Nazi partisans and civilians to help build the V-2 rocket, a weapon responsible for the death of thousands of British civilians.

"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision [emphasis in document] more than anything else," Von Braun said upon surrendering to American forces in May 1945. "We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured." [emphasis in document] (The alternative for Von Braun and others was a scientific gulag in the Soviet Union, a most likely much bigger reason than working for 'those who are guided by the Bible'.)

Then we have this further along in the article:

 ....One Air Force officer currently on active duty, who spoke to Truthout on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media, said he was trained as a missile officer in 2001 and vividly recalls how the chaplain leading the training session on the ethics of launching nuclear weapons said, "the American Catholic Church and their leadership says it's ok in their eyes to launch nukes."....

No, that's not the American Catholic position, much less the Roman Catholic position, but what's a little exaggeration and confusion for the Evangelical Christian right?  Finally there is this quote:

....Former Air Force Capt. Damon Bosetti, 27, who attended missile officer training in 2006 and was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, said he and his colleagues used to call the religious section of the ethics training the "Jesus loves nukes speech."

"What I went through in 2006 didn't have that level of inappropriateness in it, but it was still strongly religious," he said of the PowerPoint presentation the Air Force now uses for training missile officers.

Bosetti, who is represented by MRFF, said he believes the intent of quoting Bible passages was to make officers feel "comfortable" about launching nuclear weapons and signing a legal document stating they had "no moral qualms" about "turning the key" if ordered to do so."

I have actually been down in one of the Malmstrom Command centers shepherded by young officers like Captain Bosetti.  I was in college at the time, but I remember vividly seeing the two good looking young officers with sidearms strapped to their waists.  As we were coming back up my mother commented on this seemingly weird fact. "Why would they need guns down here?"  I replied I thought it was to shoot each other if one failed to turn his key.  "Ohhhh, that's really sad." said my mother.  I have a very strong feeling the "Jesus loves nukes" speech has more than one justification in mind.

Now back to the Air Force Academy, whose commander did not see fit to release the directive on religious neutrality until September 21st.  The MRFF has had an ongoing battle with the Academy and it's overtly evangelical Christian religiosity for years.  One should never over look the fact that Colorado Springs is also the central clearing house for New Apostolic Reformation outlets and publishing houses.  The most prominent of the outlets is Focus On The Family.  Colorado Springs is frequently referred to as the Vatican of the NAR.

That this Christian supremacy movement has made strong and disturbing inroads into the academy is a very disturbing fact and that this is mirrored throughout our military should cause grave concern to all Americans.  It seems some of our military are being given a rational to shoot on any population and this is being fostered through the command structure--to the point the Commander of the Air Force Academy saw fit not to release this critical memorandum from his Supreme headquarters until he was forced to by a billboard.

My concern is not just with the corruption of our military, it is also for the well being of our own Catholic kids. Kids who are feeling seriously threatened.  I will end this with a quote from an email sent to Mikey Weinstien, head of the MRFF:

Mr. Weinstein, my cadet roommate (cadet name and rank withheld) told me last night that one of his friends and classmates was in a class yesterday afternoon in Fairchild when another cadet in the class by the name of (cadet name and rank withheld) was telling people in the class that the only reason that Military Religious Foundation put up the billboard was to attack Christianity at the Academy. Another cadet challenged that statement and the cadet who said it responded by saying that you only put the billboard up because "It's a Jewish thing, a money thing. He's just crucifying Christ again for the same 20 pieces of silver." I'm sorry to pass this on. I am not Jewish. I am Catholic and face the same pressure to convert to being a "complete Christian" all the time. All I can say is that none of us knew anything about General Schwartz's letter until sometime on Wednesday morning which is the day after you put the sign up in the Springs. Thanks for all you do for all of us here at the Academy. If you want to hear more my class schedule is very tough today and I have alot of GR's and some papers due but my cell number is (cadet's cell number withheld). What the leadership has done with General Schwartz's letter is real messed up. We see the lies. They hate you guys here. But many of us don't.

Thank God for Mikey Weinstein and the MRFF.

 

 

Forget The Tea Party, "Occupy Wall Street" Is The Real Deal.

While the USCCB is asking American Catholics to join them in protecting their religious freedom to influence the federal government against gay marriage and mandatory birth control coverage, another movement inspired by Catholic and Christian thinkers like Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, is taking place across the country.  This second movement is not a corporate financed diversion, like the Tea Party or the 'culture wars', it's a real deal.  "Occupy Wall Street" is getting to the heart of the matter of what really threatens not just western civilization, but all of civilization.  It's not gay marriage and it's not birth control.  It's corporate oligarchy.

Back this spring when the Arab revolt was in full swing, our mainstream media and politicians of both parties were careful to spin this movement as a cry for democracy.  The truth is it was a spontaneous uprising brought on by spiraling food costs and lack of hope for any meaningful employment for Arab youth.  It was about the unequal distribution of national resources.  It was about Arab leadership transferring national wealth to personal wealth, and with the direct involvement of Western banking and corporate interests. From Mubarak to Assad to Ghadaffi, they all have/had billions and billions of dollars of personal wealth,  most of it 'redistributed' to themselves from their people.  Here in the US though, our media made this uprising all about a subjugated people rallying for the freedom of democracy.  There might be some truth to that meme, but I think Maslow's hierarchy of needs had more to do with it.  In Maslow's scheme,  actions motivated by food, shelter, and housing come way before actions motivated by thoughts of democracy.  I have no doubt this message has not been lost on our American movers and shakers.


Chris Hedges has written a fabulous piece at Truth Dig about our American corporate oligarchy.  It's worthy of Thomas Paine.  OK it's a little over the top, but it's inspirational never the less.  Here's one small quote from it that I think needs more elaboration as to why this is so:


"The only word these corporations know is more. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close.

The reason they want that money themselves is because it's the last big pot of money they can access without being forced to produce a tangible commodity.  Most of our Western wealth is tied up in paper, not in production of tangible goods.  Corporations are sitting on all their money, not investing in consumer goods or services, because there aren't enough consumers to justify expansion.  When the consumer classes are shrinking by leaps and bounds, there isn't money to be made in serving their interests. 

It should not be the least bit surprising that these interests have turned to Social Security, Medicare,  or other services provided by the Government.  Especially Social Security, because all of us have a significant portion of the wealth we have generated over our working lives invested in Social Security--- not in real estate, consumer goods, the stock market, or other investments.  It makes perfect sense to try to convince the American people we don't want the government protecting (sitting on) those assets.  Social Security is a big chunk of the wealth generated in America.  It's the last real big chunk of wealth Wall Street can look towards given their own predatory policies have sucked other revenue streams dry.  It's much easier to grab that chunk of revenue than actually reinvent your corporation or figure out another way to survive.  It would be another huge transfer of wealth, and all of it on paper.  No corporation would have to bother with building plants or hiring people.  They would only have to spend money convincing Americans they would be a good investment for all that Social Security money.  They are already doing that through lobbying and influence pedaling with our politicians---and their funding of the Tea Party and I suspect, some of our Catholic leadership.

I'll go out on a prophetic limb:  "Occupy Wall Street" is the first step in completely diverting the 2012 political dialogue to something infinitely more meaningful than our corporate, political, and religious masters want.  Real serious questions will be faced.  Questions like how much force will the government use against it's own people in order to 'keep order'.  Those of us who remember the Viet Nam and Civil Rights protest era know exactly how much force that can be--lethal force. That was well before the Patriot Act,  and speaking of that particular act, there is now a bill in front of congress to give Homeland Security virtually blanket authority over all Federal lands in the West with in 100 miles of a national border.  Read this article and really contemplate what this could mean, and then ask yourself if plans haven't been made well in advance to deal with a major uprising in the US.