Thoughts On Catholic Guilt, Cognitive Dissonance, and Secularism

Paul Tillich probably had more influence on my idea of God than his Catholic contemporary Pope Paul VI.

 A person's level of education has a huge impact on their attitude towards social and cultural issues.  It's long been known that raising the educational level of women is the best method of controlling exploding population growth.  However education also has a big impact on adherence to religious authority.  This was originally seen in Catholicism back in the mid 1800's when the education level of men in Europe began to rise across the socioeconomic spectrum and their exodus out the doors of Catholic churches began in earnest.  Here's a short article which gives some stats which strongly indicate if Catholicism wants to hang on to educated sectors of the population, it has to keep moving towards inclusion and not exclusion, and it has to seriously search for answers which transcend and incorporate secular advances rather than continue fighting a losing war with 'secularism'.


By Cathy Lynn Grossman
USA Today
(RNS) The old wisdom: The more educated you are, the less likely you will be religious. But a new study says education doesn't drive people away from God -- it gives them a more liberal attitude about who's going to heaven.

Each year of education ups the odds by 15 percent that people will say there's "truth in more than one religion," says University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor Philip Schwadel in an article for the Review of Religious Research. Schwadel, an associate professor of sociology, looked at 1,800 U.S. adults' reported religious beliefs and practices and their education.

People change their perspective because, as people move through high school and college, they acquire an ever-wider range of friendships, including people with different beliefs than their own, Schwadel says. "People don't want to say their friends are going to hell," he says. (It's probably a little more global than just "I don't want to say my friends are going to hell." It also has to do with dropping any ten year old notions of a score board toting vengeful God and moving towards a deeper understanding of Divinity)

For each additional year of education beyond seventh grade, Americans are:

• 15 percent more likely to have attended religious services in the past week.
• 14 percent more likely to say they believe in a "higher power" than in a personal God. "More than 90 percent believe in some sort of divinity," Schwadel says.
• 13 percent more likely to switch to a mainline Protestant denomination that is "less strict, less likely to impose rules of behavior on your daily life" than their childhood religion.
• 13 percent less likely to say the Bible is the "actual word of God." The educated, like most folks in general, tend to say the Bible is the "inspired word" of God, Schwadel says.

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Last night I was reading Eugene Cullen Kennedy's piece at the NCR about pre Vatican II notions of guilt and how those notions won't play in the future.  As usual his column was trolled by the more vicious of the Catholic right, which for me, makes reading the comment section a true exercise in developing emotional control and staying open to the Spirit. I freely admit I'm not very good with this task at this time in this context, and in fact am seriously considering not reading Kennedy's or Jamie Manson's comment sections because I quickly jet past my tolerance level.  

Last night though, I was glad I somehow found the fortitude to stick with the comments, because I came across a couple of comments which made me take a second look at those who are heavily vested in the 'reform of the reform'.  It dawned on me that they have never had to overcome the mental associations of guilt and sin connected to the old Latin Mass, weekly confessions, and other pious practices.  They can look at these rituals free of the lousy guilt based theology those of us in the older generations had to endure.  The reason they can do this is because they were not brought up in that Catholic miasma and ironically have the Eugene Cullen Kennedy's of the Catholic world to thank for that fact.  Someday I hope they understand enough to thank the theologians they now feel free to bash.  Previous to Vatican II,  and the work of these theologians, they would never ever have given themselves the freedom to bash any cleric or any theologian or any other professed religious for fear of going directly to hell without passing Go.  Additionally they would have been stuck in a world of cognitive dissonance which constantly pitted their religious understanding against their real world education.  It's precisely at this stage when it's very easy to throw the baby out with the bath water, which I suppose is why so many Catholics of my generation have taken decades to even consider returning to the Church.  Which brings me to the 'evils of secularism'.


Back in the day when I was seriously considering pursuing a career in theology, I took a class called Christian Secularity.  The class dealt specifically with questions raised by science and culture which impacted on traditional Church teaching and whether the two could be reconciled.  It was this class which introduced me to Thomas Merton, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Paul Tillich, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I can't imagine too many Catholic colleges would dare teach this as an undergraduate class in today's environment. It was a riveting class for those of us who took it because the only synthesis we could find that reconciled the two was the Christian notion of hope combined with the secular notion of social evolution.  It was the idea that man, through his capacity to connect with the Spirit, could find solutions to the massive problems man's intellect created.  I guess one could call this solution a form of reality based active mysticism.  Solutions would not be found in pious passive mysticism locked in cloistered convents and monasteries, but in real time active mysticism ordered towards discovering solutions, not praying away evil.  It was not a closed solution based on traditional answers to poorly formed questions, but an open ended and trust filled faith in the continued evolution towards manifesting the Kingdom on Earth.  God's Will would be done if we trusted our capacity to hear and execute the solutions.  For me it was an invigorating vision.

This is still what I am all about and it's becoming the shared goal of many mystics and spiritual people from all religious traditions.  It has the potential to synthesise knowledge and education with spiritual insight and human development.  Unfortunately it can't be contained in rigid doctrinal formulas--whether of science or religion--and it can't be entirely subject to religious authority.  It can only be fostered by religious authority and that in my humble opinion, is where the mission of Catholicism must go in the future.  It must foster it's mystics, and stop dictating their solutions. That takes real faith in the People of God.  It takes deep trust in the goodness of God.  It takes a true capacity to love enough to include as many people as possible because one never knows whose head the solutions reside in,  and love is the Ground of Being from which the solutions will be found.  Jesus said so.

 

Sex In The 21st Century Is Not About Biology, It's About The Spiritual Power Of Love

I can easily imagine God was a hard act to follow.

Over at his Wild Reed blog, Michael Bayley has a really important post regarding a paper written by Catholic moral theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether.  The following is the final three paragraphs Michael excerpted, and I reprint them here because they make some extremely important points.  I encourage readers to read the entire extract on Michael's blog.  In the initial paragraphs, RRR brilliantly explains the Augustinian tradition which has come down through the centuries and is the basis for what still passes for Catholic sexual morality.  I've written many time before that we need to develop a sexual morality based on right relationship, but this piece by RRR seems to state parts of my position far better than I have.

.....We should see sexuality as an integral part of our total psychosomatic being, not something that can be separated out and repressed without damage to our fullness of being. We should recognize that the love-relational purpose of sex has its own integrity and goodness as the creation and expression of bonding, affection, and commitment. It is not dependent on procreation for its justification, and indeed today out of many thousands of sexual acts in the lifetime of any person, only a small percentage can be intentionally reproductive. The defense of marriage between sterile people, sex after menopause, and the acceptance of birth control, including the so-called rhythm method – all tacitly accept the autonomous love-relational purpose of sex.

Once one has accepted any non-procreative sex to be moral for heterosexuals, one can no longer define homosexuality as immoral because it is non-procreative. One cannot even say that homosexuals avoid the responsibility to raise children, since celibates also do not raise children, while many homosexuals are raising natural or adopted children. Once one has accepted the understanding of humanity in which men and women are complex psychological wholes, not stereotypic opposites, and that the goodness of relationship lies in mutual support of the wholeness of each, not the mutual deficiency of masculine-feminine interdependence, then the difference between loving and bonding with someone of the same sex as yourself or someone of the other sex can no longer be rigidly distinguished. Both are relationships with another person, with all the complex problems of developing a healthy mutuality, rather than pathological dependency and exploitive misuse of each other. (Incomplete or immature sexual relationships almost always result in the perceived exploitative use of one person by the other.)

There has emerged among Catholic moral theologians in the last twenty years a comprehensive effort to revise the traditional Catholic view of sexuality, although these moral theologians are currently very much under fire from the Vatican, which recognizes that its system of social and ecclesiastical control rests on the older definition of sexual sin. The Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) report Human Sexuality, published in 1977 represents this alternative tradition of Catholic moral theology. The starting point of the moral system developed in this report is that sexual morality or immorality is an expression of moral or immoral human relationality. Relationships are moral when they are mutual, supportive of the full personal growth of each person, committed, and faithful. Relations are immoral when they are abusive, violent, exploitive, keep people in truncated stages of development, and lead to lying, deceit, and betrayal.

This norm of sexual morality, based on moral relationality, eliminates the neat boundaries between moral and immoral sex defined by heterosexual marriage and procreation. Such a norm makes for much stricter judgments about sexual morality in some cases. Much of the sexuality promoted in patriarchal marriage, which, for example, saw the husband as having a right to force his wife to have sex with him, would be regarded as immoral by such a standard. What is moral or immoral sexually becomes more a question of a scale of values than of clear boundaries. No one achieves perfectly mutual love, and perhaps few relationships are totally evil. Rather, such a norm promotes a developmental goal. We are to grow toward healthy, loving, mutual, and faithful relationships, away from abusive and dishonest ones. The morality of homosexual or heterosexual relations is judged by the same standard, rather than by different standards. (These concepts surrounding relational notions of moral sexuality are critical for the raising of healthy children.)

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 There is one line in these paragraphs which speak volumes about how difficult it is going to be to ever effect serious reform in the hierarchical structure of the Church.  I have it in red, in italics, and bold.  It is this line:
although these theologians are currently very much under fire from the Vatican, which recognizes that its system of social and ecclesiastical control rests on the older definition of sexual sin.

When an institution controls the bedroom, and they do it through a system of sin which places sex in a very much inferior position relative to their own supposed sexless selves, they have a great deal of power if their followers believe it.  This is why Archbishop Chaput can truthfully say that gay marriage is the single most important issue of his time.  Gay marriage is based on a relational concept of sexual morality and as such it undercuts the entire thinking that places sexless celibate males closer to heaven than the rutting laity. Gay marriage is a critical and actually nuclear issue for the Vatican.  They must fight it for the very survival of their entire claim to sole authority.  Their own complicity in covering up their own sexual abuse is very much tied to the notion that their virginal sexless being validates their sacerdotal power.  They are holy almost strictly because they do not engage in sex, not because of any other activity like actually doing what Jesus did, or living the Way as Jesus taught it.   It's much easier to refrain from sex, or pretend that's the case, than it is to actually live and do as Jesus did.

This will be a very long battle and we have only begun to fight it---and the Vatican is and will continue to fight back.  It won't be enough for 90% of the laity to reject Humanae Vitae or +60%  to accept gay marriage.  It will take a significant portion of our priests and bishops to stand up and affirm the relational qualities of sexuality and reject the authority they have over laity on the basis of their having rejected sex.  Spiritually healthy sex isn't about biological sex, it's about affirming a committed loving relationship.  Until we get that notion down, we won't ever be able to integrate our sexuality with our spirituality.  

CNA's Spanish Affiliate Is Running Another "Bishop Morris" Campaign

CNA has rallied the troops in Mexico to go after Bishop Raul Vera Lopez -seen in this photo with recently deceased human rights activist Bishop Samuel Ruiz.  Hmmmm why do I wonder if this crusade has zero to do with gay rights and everything to do with other human rights issues in Mexico?

The following article from CNA caught my eye this morning, not because it describes a bishop under Vatican investigation precipitated by fundamentalist Catholics---that's hardly novel.  What made this article eye catching was the reaction of Bishop Vera:

Mexican bishop confirms Vatican inquiry into his support for homosexual group

Lima, Peru, Jul 28, 2011 / 06:04 pm (CNA).- Bishop Raul Vera Lopez of Saltillo, Mexico has told a Mexican newspaper he has received “a series of questions” from the Vatican about his support for the San Elredo community, which holds positions on homosexuality that are contrary to Church teaching.

“There has been a call from the Vatican and I am ready to clear things up … I have to respond to a series of questions that Vatican City has sent me about my work with homosexuals,” Bishop Vera told the newspaper Zocalo.

He said the Vatican inquiry has come about “because a Catholic agency based in Peru, ACI Prensa, has made false claims that I promote homosexual relations.”
ACI Prensa is Catholic News Agency's Spanish-language sister publication.  (Oh my goodness, is Bishop Vera actually calling out a Chaput News Agency story?  This is novel.)

He accused ACI Prensa of distorting his work. “They allege that I am against the magisterium of the Church and unfortunately they are driven by prejudice and phobias against the homosexual community.”
The request for clarification from the Holy See, he insisted, “is because this Catholic news agency has said outrageous things.” (No...not CNA.)

Bishop Vera told the newspaper, “In the Diocese of Saltillo, we have very clear objectives. We work with (the gay community) to help them recover their human dignity, which is frequently attacked at home and in society, and they are treated like scum.”  (And quite frequently in Chaput News Agency publications.)

“I am not against the magisterium of the Church, nor do I promote dishonesty. It would go against my principles to promote depravity and immorality,” he said.
In response to the Vatican inquiry, the coordinator of the San Elredo community, Noe Ruiz, told Zocalo the group would be willing to leave the diocese in order to prevent the work of Bishop Vera from being hindered.
“If tomorrow they come tell Bishop Raul Vera, ‘You are endangering your work in Saltillo because of such a small community, a network of barely 600 people,’ it would not be worth the risk,” he said.

In March of this year, Bishop Vera published a statement on the diocesan website expressing support for the “sexual, family and religious diversity forum.” The event was aimed at “eradicating what some sectors of the Church believe about homosexuality” — especially the belief “that homosexual actions are contrary to God.”
Father Robert Coogan, the American priest who founded San Elredo, maintained that the group’s work is not contrary to the teachings of the Church.

He added: “How can a person with same-sex attraction have a fulfilling life? And the only answer the Catechism gives is to tell them to be celibate, and that is not enough."

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Good luck to Bishop Vera.  Since no prelate seems to stand higher in the Vatican's scheme of things than Archbishop Chaput, I suspect Vera will be very lucky to keep his diocese.  I certainly support his view on the veracity of the news coverage of CNA and it's Spanish affiliate.  CNA is a propaganda outlet under the cover of a Catholic news outlet.  I'm pretty sure Opus Dei probably has more than one finger in it, although not quite as overt as the Legion fingers all over Zenit.  At least Zenit is useful for publishing and translating the full texts of Papal speeches.  While I always read Zenit translations with caution, Zenit is a useful source of information.  I am not quite sure what CNA is good for except to get a feel for the radical right.  Here's a taste of their definition of inclusiveness.  It's a comment left after another CNA article about Bishop Vera.  (CNA has run three articles on this situation in the last two weeks.  Here's a link to the first one.)


"Mexico has enough problems, it does not need a pro-gay Bishop or his defenders.   He & they, should be removed immediately as an example to other spineless prelates !   Unity of the faithful is primary to the inclusiveness of the deviates !"

Nice comment that, expresses a profound understanding of Christian love.  But I'm wondering why CNA has seen fit to publish three articles about a situation in a smaller Mexican diocese.  Then I remembered this quote from Chaput in John Allen's extensive interview. 

Gay marriage?
This is the issue of our time....
   
WHAT!!!!  Gay marriage is the issue of our time?  Where is that true?  In the Church?  I would think abuse, corruption, fiscal malfeasance, and the incredible exodus of laity are the issues of our time.  In society?  I would think the iniquitous distribution of wealth, corporate exploitation, global warming, human poverty, war, and disease are vastly more important issues.  In the family?  No, that would be heterosexual divorce,  unwed parents and the aforementioned social ills relating to disease and poverty.  If gay marriage isn't the issue of our time in the church, society, or family then just where is it the issue of our time?  In the minds of those who do not want their followers to see any of those other issues.  Those very issues where they have failed mightily and in some cases purposefully enabled that failure for their own ends.  


So I am not surprised that CNA has chosen to run three articles about a gay ministry in a Mexican diocese at the exact time the rest of the Catholic world has been focused on Ireland and the fact the Irish government is taking on the Vatican.  I am not surprised CNA is running these articles when the rest of the Christian world is debating white European Christian terrorism.  I am not surprised CNA is running these articles when the US is debating the insanity of the manufactured debt ceiling crisis which has the potential to send the whole world back into another devastating recession.  I will grant this, gay marriage is the issue in our time for those who desperately need a scapegoat to divert chunks of the population from considering the real issues facing humanity in our time.  It stinks to high heaven and I can't imagine heaven enjoys the smell.


God Bless Bishop Vera and may He grant Bishop Vera success in his quest to free himself and his diocese from the tyranny of CNA and it's purposefully misled readership.

 

Fr Mychal Judge Nominated For The Congressional Gold Medal

I saw this live on TV and lost it.  This was a man for all seasons in our time.  He has more than merited  the secular honor, but the religious equivalent will not be his in this current Church climate.  God Bless Mychal Judge.

ACTION ALERT! Father Mychal Judge has been nominated for The Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of his heroic life and death. This is the nation's highest and oldest honor, first awarded to George Washington in 1776. Please contact members of Congress to urge them to support this award. See details here


Mychal's Prayer:
Lord, take me where You want me to go,
let me meet who You want me to meet,
tell me what You want me to say,
and keep me out of Your way.



In view of some things going on in my life at this moment, it's really interesting to me I caught this prayer of Mychal's today.  Just one more proof God is good and things are really moving in terms of an enlightened Catholic consciousness.

USCCB On The Debt Ceiling Crisis: A Return To A More Traditional Political Stance

This aspect of the Republican party platform does not have the USCCB seal of approval

Today the USCCB sent out a letter with their views on the current budget debate-- or budget war or political grandstanding or political death march or economic suicide or whatever it is that congress is engaged in.  Here's a small part of it, but it did my heart good to read it:


"A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons. It requires shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs fairly." (The bold emphasis is in the original text)

 The entire letter is worth reading if only because it's close to being progressive and it reflects actual Catholic teaching on social justice.  Plus it's Christian as well as Catholic.  (The two are not always the same.)  Unfortunately, unless the USCCB is joined by LCWR, Congress probably won't pay much attention.  It seems religious women have more of an impact in Congress than Catholic bishops.  Maybe that's because religious women tend to be in life's trenches with the laity far more than most Catholic bishops.

My own personal opinion of this idiocy is that Barak Obama would have made a very good Nixon like corporate Republican.  I always suspected he was going to be far more Bill Clinton that JFK, but the reality seems to indicate he's actually closer to Nixon than Clinton.  Which says what about how far right this country has swung.  It's so far to the right,  mainstream Republicans couldn't find their way back into their own home  with satellite navigation.

Which brought back memories of the USCCB in the 70's and 80's, when they really were progressive social justice Catholics who thought more like Jesus and less like Robert P George.  That was before St Ronald Reagan recognised their influence and then had his heart to wallet talk with Blessed JPII.  From then on things swung to the right faster than one could say Archbishop Chaput.


Anyway this got me thinking what it would take for progressives to get any kind of foothold and start swinging things back towards JFK and away from Ayn Rand.  Since God is good,  I came across these thoughts at the end of this article on the debt crisis by Robert Borosage:


 "Progressives need to learn not so much from the Tea Party as from their own history and build an independent movement to stand with working Americans. Unlike the Tea Party fringe, a progressive movement has the advantage of mobilizing Americans around values and the policy priorities that are supported by a broad majority. It can organize to hold legislators in both parties accountable, demanding that they stand up for the many, not the privileged few. Today, a range of groups are doing just that, calling on members to inundate Congress with demands that Medicare and Social Security be protected, and that the rich pay their fair share of any deal. The challenge for the movement is whether it can gear up to run its own challengers in Democratic primaries against incumbents who are more responsive to their contributors than their constituents. The American Dream Movement, championed by Van Jones, Moveon.org, the Center for Community Change, the Campaign for America's Future that I help direct and others, is beginning to build that uprising.

There is much talk about new centrist third parties, about the need for bipartisan compromise to get things done. But when the Democratic position is to embrace $2.7 trillion in cuts from discretionary spending, divorced from any demand for progressive tax reform or any growth strategy that will rebuild the middle class, the "center" has been wrenched so far to the right that it is at odds with the common sense of most Americans. We need a citizen's movement willing to challenge money politics, clean out the corrupt stables in Washington, and demand a politics that works for working people."

If the USCCB got on board with this idea it would only be in their best interests.  For starters, abortion numbers will go way up if the Tea Party gets it's way and millions more Americans will die from lack of lack of medical coverage, lack of any ability to access preventative medicine, lack of decent food and housing, stress from joblessness, suicide,  and any number of other ways life provides for those who can't fend for themselves.  Really, it would be the pro life thing to do.  They've at least made a start.

Breaking News: Vatican Recalls Apostolic Nuncio To Ireland

Irish Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe  Leanza is being 'recalled' to the Vatican to answer questions from some other inquiring minds.

The following announcement is taken from the Vatican Radio website, English version.  Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has been heard loud and clear in Vatican City.

Cloyne Report: recalling of Nuncio denotes seriousness of situation
On Monday the Vatican Press Office released a statement announcing that the Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, has been recalled to Rome for consultations.

The press release states : “Following the publication on 13 July, of the Irish government’s Commission of Inquiry Report into allegations of abuse of minors by clergy of the diocese of Cloyne, otherwise known as the ‘Cloyne Report’ and, in particular, the reactions that have followed, the Secretary of State has recalled the Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland, HE Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza for consultations”.

In response to journalists questions, Fr. Ciro Benedettini, vice director of the Vatican Press Office outlined the following points:
- The recalling of the Nuncio is intended primarily to allow the Secretary of State and other Dicasteries involved to consult with those working on the ground in order to prepare the official answer of the Holy See to the Irish Government following the Cloyne Report.

- The recalling of the Nuncio, a measure rarely used by the Holy See, denotes the seriousness of the situation, and the desire of the Holy See to deal with it objectivity and with determination, as well as a certain note of surprise and regret regarding some excessive reactions.

- The recalling of the Nuncio should be interpreted in line with the Holy See’s desire for a serious and effective cooperation.

 There is more background information on this decision an article in the UK Daily Mail.  I found these paragraphs most interesting:

The decision to recall Monsignor Leanza was taken by the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone after he had been informed of the attack by Mr Kenny during his holiday in the Alps.


A Vatican source said: 'His Eminence although on his summer break had asked to be kept informed of developments in Ireland and he like other senior Curia figures was surprised at the attack by the Irish prime minister.


'He consulted with them and with the Pope's private Secretary and it was decided that Monsignor Leanza should be called back so he could explain in first hand the report and the reaction.


'The Holy See does take the situation in Ireland very seriously and is keen to show it wants to rebuild relations with the faithful following the abuse cases.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2018551/Pope-recalls-ambassador-PM-Enda-Kenny-damns-Vatican-child-rape-cover-up.html#ixzz1T8WeHiVo

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To recall an ambassador is not the same as requesting they come back to head quarters for consultation.  Recall is a term generally used when an ambassador's government is making a strong statement of disapproval of a given direction taken by the host government.  Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone may say he was surprised at the tone of Enda Kenny's speech, but I imagine the truer words would be 'very angered by'.

If the Holy See is truly interested in rebuilding relations with the Irish faithful, they could start by 'recalling' a few other Irish bishops including one with a red hat, and stop the shunning of Archbishop Martin of Dublin.  

I doubt we will see that level of seriousness.

 

Repeat 10 Times Daily - " I Am Not The One Who Is Mad Here."

This is a series of five stained glass panels by Fr. Dan Hillen, entitled 'We Are Not Alone'.  They were donated by Dr and Mrs Leroy Byrd to Holy Family Hospital, Spokane WA.  Rest in peace Dan.

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has generated a great deal of discussion and debate from his speech to the Irish Dael, July 20.  When I originally read his speech, there were a couple of sections that really stood out for me, but one actually brought tears to my eyes.  It was this section:

"This Roman Clericalism must be devastating for good priests .... some of them old ... others struggling to keep their humanity .... even their sanity ........ as they work so hard ..... to be the keepers of the Church's light and goodness within their parishes ...... communities... the human heart."

I've been very close friends with priests who have lived the exact struggle described here by Kenny.  Some even went so far as to literally question their sanity as so many of the reasons they chose to become priests were shelved, dumped off the table, twisted to mean something far different than they thought.  It didn't help that my birthday, which was the day before Kenny gave his speech,  is also the same date my very close friend/priest died. I can state with certainty that he died in absolute turmoil about his priesthood, having gotten to the point where he questioned if there was any truth in it at all.  In any event, there was one comment to the NCR article from Tom Doyle on Kenny's speech that addresses the statement above.  It was written by a priest, but it really speaks for many of us.

written by Fr. Anthony

I read out Enda's speech at Mass at the weekend. The congregation applauded!
There were many tearful moments for me personally in that speech. When Enda stated that teenagers are still children, I wept. Bertone attempted to say that the vast majority of abuse victims were teenagers and tried to lump the blame on gay men. The US Bishops blamed "Woodstock." Liberals, secularists, the post Vatican II Church, the Media, - all got the blame from these clericalists.

Enda named the culprits and shamed them - all of those involved in the culture of CLERICALISM! The soutane wearers, the thurible wafters!! Those who have replaced the gospel of compassion with this obnoxious, anti-kingdom religious theatre. (I love this line.)

It didnt escape me that while all of this was going on in Ireland, last week, here on NCR, the two Chaput threads were filling with triumphalistic, nauseous remarks, glorifying yet another clericalist being prepared for a red hat in Philadelphia. Sad, sad short-sighted people.

I loved Enda's comments about decent clergy who must have been questioning their own sanity over the years. Yes, Enda, we did! We have watched the Gospel being replaced by dogma. We have watched good men and women being sacked and excommunicated while wickedness has been rewarded.

I watched them undermining Oscar Romero and Helder Camera while extolling the "virtues" of Opus Dei and Legionnaire's founders - the money men! I wondered if I was going insane. Enda got it spot on there!

I now watch them revising history, especially that of Vatican II Council, attempting to tell the world that what was said and written then, was not actually what was meant. That the call for collegiality - and the overwhelming votes FOR such things as Mass in the vernacular, increased participation for the laity, a renewed focus on the gospel - that the Council actually meant the OPPOSITE to all of these things. Yes, Enda, I thought I was going mad. (He was not the only priest who thought this.)

When the Synod of Bishops met in Rome to discuss how to get the Eucharist to the poorer areas of the world, - didnt speak about the role of women, nor the permanent diaconate, nor married clergy (unless you are an Anglican!!), voted for the status quo with the addendum that we might want to consider reopening Junior Seminaries (WHAT?????!!!!) - they should have been sacked for deleriction of duty. Instead, Benedict treated them all to a sumptious banquet declaring, "It was not unintended that Jesus chose the imagery of a banquet as presaging Heaven..." That was all I needed to know about these clerics. They showed utter contempt for the poor. Jesus would have walked through their fine dining room and wrecked it that day.

So, thank you, Enda Kenny. Thank you the 2500 priests, victims of clergy abuse and ordinary Catholics from around the world who have written to Enda since his speech to thank him. Vatican II will not go away, the Holy Spirit will not be defeated. Enda, ad multos annos!

As one writer stated on here, "Repeat ten times daily - I am not the one who is mad here!!"

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I could write reams and reams on this comment, but I choose instead to let it stand alone, because that is unfortunately the state of mind of far too many of our good priests.  They are not alone. 

What Does Sir Rupert Murdoch Tell Us About The Vatican's Relationship With Money?

It could be that today's nouveau riche won't be all that interested in the traditional honors scrambled after by yesterday's nouveau riche.

There's been interesting fall out from some international stories in the last couple of weeks.  Some of those stories have intersecting points of interest for the Church.  One such story is the scandal surrounding Rupert Murdoch's news empire.  Back in 1998, Murdoch was made a Knight Commander of St Gregory under the sponsorship of Cardinal Mahoney of LA.  At that time Murdoch's then wife Anna was a Catholic and she herself was made a Dame of the Order. These honorary papal knighthoods are interesting in and of themselves, at least as to who is in and who is out, but now some folks think there should be some accountability for membership--and I'm not talking accountability in the financial sense.  The following is from Britian's Catholic Herald:

Debate: Should Rupert Murdoch’s papal knighthood be rescinded?

In 1998 Rupert Murdoch was made a Knight Commander of St Gregory. He had apparently been recommended for the honour by Cardinal Roger Mahony, after giving money to a Church education fund. A year later he donated $10 million to help build Los Angeles Catholic cathedral.

Is it right that papal knighthoods should be awarded in this way? The honour is supposed to recognise a person’s service to the Church. Certainly, Murdoch’s money has helped the Church; but surely there are many, many faithful Catholics, whose tireless service to the Church goes unacknowledged, who deserve to be honoured much more.

And is Rupert Murdoch a person the Church should celebrate? He owns – or did own – a newspaper that lost its moral bearings; he ought to bear some responsibility for that.
On the other hand, rescinding his papal knighthood might be difficult to justify. Other papal knights may also have flaws. Where do you set the bar?
So, should Rupert Murdoch’s papal knighthood be rescinded? Or is it fair to honour someone who has helped the Church financially?

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First off I have no doubt Rupert Murdoch will retain his knightly status.  Back in 1831 when Pope Gregory  XVI initiated this entirely lay knightly order, he said this in the inaugural brief:    

"gentlemen of proven loyalty to the Holy See who, by reason of their nobility of birth and the renown of their deeds or the degree of their munificence, are deemed worthy to be honoured by a public expression of esteem on the part of the Holy See"

I wrote yesterday that the Holy See has been right on top the changing economic scene in Europe, and back in 1831 the handwriting was on the wall via old noble money and the burgeoning upstart nouveau riche.  Hence one could achieve Papal Knighthood through the age old notion of noble birth or by the new reality of donating loads of money.  For the Vatican, selling papal nobility kept them connected with the changing scene of wealth and power, and nothing has changed about that 'mission'.


There will be no real reform of Catholicism as a spiritual system until leadership changes it's relationship with money.  Catholicism has to stop rewarding billionaires for donating millions to build cathedrals.  They could start altering this relationship by taking the very tiny step of looking at how those billionaires made the money they donate.  Murdoch has done more to destroy the integrity of Western news media than any other single individual.  He has done more to lower the level of discourse in the West by promoting the soft porn of his tabloids right thru to the ideological venom which now passes for cable news in the US.  If his business practices are seriously being held up as some sort of Catholic notion of chivalrous behavior, it's a form of chivalry with zero basis in the Gospels.

If readers take the time to read some of the comments after the Herald article they might catch a glimmer of where common ground can be found in Catholicism.  It's this notion of how the Vatican relates to wealth.  I don't think we can even begin to address the other multiple expressions of abuse until we start seriously demanding accountabilty for how our leadership relates to the wealth of the world.  There is a spiritual way and a worldly way.  The vast majority of Catholic history has been thoroughly polluted by relating to wealth in the worldly way.  It's past time to try a different path.

Ireland Is Getting The Real Picture Behind The Vatican's Insistence On The 'Pastoral' Autonomy Of Catholic Bishops

Pictures like the make one wonder where the safety of kids stack up vs Vatican wealth.

 Tom Doyle has another hard hitting article in the NCR on the recent speech of Enda Kenny in the Irish Dael.  The following is the last part of Doyle's essay:

.....The Vatican and various elements of the hierarchy have flooded the Catholic world with countless words, all very carefully nuanced and wordsmithed, to express their regret and to their promise to change. Mr. Kenny no doubt was as fed up with the meaninglessness of words without relevant action as the people of Ireland and every other country plagued by clergy abuse. He by-passed the seemingly endless and often convoluted rhetoric of the Vatican by getting right to the heart of the matter, the culture of arrogant neglect of children and some of key underlying causes. One target is clericalism, the virus that continues to corrupt the church to the point that the People of God are buried in anachronistic monarchism.

This groundbreaking address buries the destructive myth that the institutional Catholic church with its monarchical governing structure is some sort of superior or exalted political entity with self-created rights to subvert the civic order of any society that calls it to accountability for the behavior of its privileged class.  (The bigger problem for the Church is that this crisis has pretty much put to bed the idea it's any kind of exalted spiritual entity--at least in it's supposedly Holy Spirit inspired ruling class.)

Charlie Flanagan, chairman of Fine Gael, the single largest party in Ireland and lead party in the ruling coalition, framed this in a stark and eye-opening way in his call for the expulsion of the Papal Nuncio: "If any foreign government conspired with Irish citizens to break the law here, their ambassadors would be expelled."
The Taoiseach repeated this sentiment by reminding the Irish lawmakers and indeed everyone that Ireland is not Rome. (This statement is not far fetched.  It is exactly what happened in Ireland and many other nations.)

"Nor is it an industrial-school or Magdalene Ireland where the swish of a soutane smothered conscience and humanity and the swing of a thurible ruled the Irish Catholic world. This is the Republic of Ireland 2011. A Republic of laws, of rights and responsibilities…of proper civic order…where the delinquency and arrogance of a particular version…of a particular kind of morality…will no longer be tolerated or ignored."

 

This is much more than a stirring address to the Irish parliament. It is the voice of a long awaited and sorely needed liberation from the chains of a clericalist control that sacrificed the very ones Jesus spoke out so passionately in defense of. This liberation is essential not only in Ireland but in any state or country where the Catholic church hopes to regain its relevance not as a gilded institution but as a Christian way of life. One can only hope that this momentous breakthrough and long-awaited challenge will be taken up in every other country where children have been violated by the Catholic clergy or religious.

The only fitting conclusion is with Mr. Kenny's own words:

"I am making absolutely clear, that when it comes to the protection of the children of this state, the standards of conduct which the church deems appropriate to itself, cannot and will not be applied to the workings of democracy and civil society in this republic. Not purely, or simply or otherwise. CHILDREN … FIRST.

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As Tom Doyle points out in his article, Enda Kenny has laid down a manifesto about how secular governments should approach Roman Catholicism.  Not as some higher authority accountable only to it's own internal rules and unique view of moraliy, but as just one more member of a shared society under the same rules and regulations which apply to any other member of that society.  It will be interesting to see if, in fact, the Papal Nuncio is expelled, because Charlie Flannagan is also right in his observation that no other foreign government would be allowed to conspire with citizens to circumvent internal laws.  The Holy See certainly doesn't silently tolerate the influence of other governments in what it sees as it's own internal prerogatives.

This Irish stance, although made in response to the abuse crisis, could potentially effect the Church in other ways, in other countries.  Here in the US, the hierarchical church seems addicted to conspiring with political and financial individuals and corporations to remake the US into an image more to it's liking.  And they are free from the taxes which constrain the amount of money the rest of us have available to present a different message.  I don't think for a minute this preferred message has much to do with what Jesus taught as His Way.  I happen to think it has more to do with protecting Church assets which are tied up with the financial and corporate interests of a completely different way.  The US Catholic Church has to have virtually a trillion dollars in collective assets as either hard property or hidden ownership stakes in US international corporations and banks.  

That's only in the US.  In Europe, it has to be more because the Church has had 1200 years of sitting in the driver's seat in European economic expansion and colonial imperialism.  I suspect the reason the Vatican is stressing the independence of dioceses has nothing to do with the sacrosanct authority of a bishop in his diocese, but to maintain the fiction that Rome is virtually bankrupt and to isolate financial losses.  I've thought this way for quite some time.  So I did not find it particularly shocking that Archbishop ChaputAccording to the AP:

"The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has fired its top financial officer as authorities investigate what happened to an unknown amount of missing church funds. (other articles say hundreds of thousands of dollars.)

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Anita Guzzardi was escorted from the church offices on July 14. Diocese spokeswoman Donna Farrell says that was a day after city prosecutors informed church officials about an investigation into the missing funds....

I almost feel sorry for AB Chaput, but I am seriously wondering how Cardinal Rigali managed to mismanage so many aspect of his patrimony.  I guess it's possible when you aren't accountable to anyone for your 'management'.  Philadelphia is the perfect storm of what happens when the Vatican demands uniformity in belief while simultaneously insisting on the legal decentralization of financial and diocesan governance issues.   It allows the Vatican to insist on personal loyalty through doctrinal obedience while avoiding any appearance of controlling the financial assets.  It gives the Vatican the appearance of non interference in the internal policies of a given country while exerting huge financial and political influence via 'independent' bishops.  It's a neat system.  Anyone who thinks 'mother church' can not change except in terms of centuries is naive.  "Mother Church" has accomplished much of this change in wealthier democracies in the last century.

Since Benedict's elevation to the Papacy I have appreciated much of what he has written, but paid for more attention to what he has done.  I have come to the conclusion he is using his writing to mask his actions.  He has no intention of giving up any of the behind the scenes power the Vatican really wields.  He will do nothing to change this neat little system where the seeming independence of bishops exists to protect Catholic material assets and has very little to do with shepherding it's human assets.  A situation Bishop Morris probably understands to well.....oh yea, and AB Chaput was involved in that little mess as well.  What a coincidence.

 

Golf And Gender Evolution

In the old days, actually not so long ago, those tee boxes at the bottom of the picture were gender specific. 

Over at Open Tabernacle there's a somewhat testy conversation going on as to whether gender is a biological fact or influenced by culture.  It's actually both. Culture works to put serious restrictions on both sexes and this usually has very little to do with biological reality.  I used to see this play out all the time on golf courses. In golf, ideas of gender appropriateness really effected men as much as women, but men didn't see it.  Of course.

When I started playing golf back in the late seventies, there weren't very many women playing the game relative to the numbers of men.  Most women who did play only took up the game as another way to socialize with their husbands.  The first teaching pro I ever worked with absolutely forbid me to play with women, except on women's day, because he thought it would ruin my progress in the sport.  I thought it was kind of strange there was such a thing as 'women's day'.  I learned very fast how much sexism there was in golf.  I can remember being asked to join a local country club only to find out there were days and times women were not even allowed on the course, including Saturday.  It didn't make a great deal of sense to me to pay through the nose to join a club which discriminated against me simply for being a woman, not how I could or could not play the game.

Anyway, I played a lot with men and the first thing I learned was the various ways one could make or lose money playing golf.  It was called betting and there were seemingly an unlimited number of ways to do it and that handicap was critical in determining a fair competition.  It always kind of amazed me how a person's betting handicap was frequently lower than their tournament handicap.  I learned that was due to something called 'sandbagging'.  

Any way, being a woman, I started play from the 'women's tees', until I hit my first drive and then the haggling would begin.  I was told to move back to the men's tees otherwise I had an unfair advantage.  I would suggest to my partners they move up to the red tees and try playing the course from the red tees. In my thirty some years of playing golf I only ran into two men who took up that challenge, and both of them were working towards their PGA cards.  They understood that playing the course from different tees changed one's strategic approach to the game, not the level of their testosterone.  For these guys tee boxes were just different starting points that called for different shots to get to the same end.  For every other male they seemed to be a hardwired definition of gender.  Men did not play from the red tees and some went so far as to force their young sons to play from the white or blue tees just because they were boys.  I have no idea how many young boys quit the game because they didn't  have the necessary striking power to play from the whites.  The whole thing drove me crazy.


But just around the time that Tiger Woods started to hit the scene, the USGA started pushing a novel concept.  The various color of tee boxes had nothing to do with gender.  They had everything to do with striking power and ability---and the more difficult courses started enforcing handicap rules with regards to tee boxes.  One did not play the back tees if one did not have a sub five handicap.  Tiger brought such a huge influx of new golfers, that this became mandatory to keep speed of play reasonable.  


The old language dies hard.  Too many golfers still refer to the various tees as women's and men's instead of front, middle, back and really way back--or red, white, blue, and black tees.  It is slowly changing, and it's sort of gratifying to me to actually see not only good women golfers playing the white and blue tees, but men playing the reds.  When I see men play the reds that's when I know 'we've come along way baby'.


One last thought, golf didn't fall apart and cease to be golf because women play white and blue tees, and men occasionally play the red tees.  I think there's a lesson in there somewhere for the Roman Catholic Church.