Melinda Gates speaking in Germany last week on her birth control initiative.  This link will take you to the presentation she gave for  TEDxChange.

The following article from CNN describes the campaign the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is starting in order to provide birth control to regions of the globe which are under served.  In a rational world this initiative would not be very controversial, but Melinda Gates is a practicing Catholic educated by Ursulines. These facts bring in the irrational world of Catholic sexual morality.  For some reason the USCCB has chosen to remain silent on Melinda and her initiative.  At least to this point.  Wonder what that's about?

Melinda Gates responds to contraception program controversy

(CNN) -- Responding to simmering controversy among Catholic bloggers about her new birth control program, Melinda Gates -- a practicing Catholic -- said she will not shrink from her role as an advocate for poor women.

"Part of what I do with the (Gates) Foundation comes from that incredible social justice I had growing up and belief that all lives, all lives are of equal value," said Gates during a recent interview with CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

About the flak over her Catholicism she said: "We're not going to agree about everything, but that's OK."

Gates is promoting an ambitious family planning program -- which includes raising billions of dollars to provide contraceptives to 120 million women worldwide -- at the London Summit on Family Planning July 11.

While most Catholics, in the United States, at least, according to polls, seem to agree with Gates that contraception for women is not controversial, some Catholic bloggers are taking issue with the plan.

One blog in particular, LifeSiteNews.com, has frequently published diatribes against Gates, calling into question her faith, and calling her plan a "blatant attack on Catholic sexual morality." (And yet LifeSiteNews is being strangely quiet about Mr Romney's past financial connection to Stericycle,  a company directly making profits off the abortion industry.)

As far as the broader Catholic church stance on the Gates program, CNN requested a comment from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, but did not get a response.

For her part, Gates is trying to deflect the controversy, and concentrate on what she describes as a real need for contraception to empower women.

"I think we made birth control and contraceptives way too political in the United States," said Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "I think if people understood that 200 million women want this around the world they would start to say, 'OK that makes sense.' ... We shouldn't make it such a political issue."  (Maybe it's become a political issue because it failed big time as a religious moral issue.)

According to the Gates Foundation website, the focus of the family planning initiative will be on urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, areas where maternal and infant mortality rates are high and contraception use is low.

"Africa's the one place really in the world, for the most part, that contraceptives haven't been available and it's really been a crime," said Gates. "If you see what's happened in other countries that have had contraceptives, they use them first of all and the birth rates go down. ... The question is could it have come down even more quickly?"

Gates frequently cites research from a decades-long study in Bangladesh as a rationale for family planning. Given the ability to space out their children using birth control, women can begin what Gates calls a "virtuous economic cycle."

The study, started in the 1970s in Matlab, compared a group with access to contraception and birth-control education to a similar group that did not have access to those things.

"(In) the community that had access to contraceptives, the women chose to use them, the families grew up wealthier, fewer women died in childbirth," said Gates. "And what we're seeing happening with that is that it's playing out again all over the world. These small scale things you have in terms of giving a family the access leads to huge economic changes. "

To effect that cascade of economic change worldwide will take $4 billion, according to Gates. The London summit kicks off the Foundation's official campaign for support and funding for that effort.

No doubt, the family planning initiative will roll out despite Catholic protestations, and Gates says this is the issue for which she hopes to be remembered.

"I work on a broad set of foundation issues," said Gates. "But this one for me has really grasped my heart and my mind.

She added: "This will be my lifetime's work at the foundation."

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One of the things I've been doing the last week or so is some research on Vatican II, concentrating on people who were actually in Rome during the deliberations.  I  found that Humanae Vitae was an almost larger memory for these folks because it represented the first and largest step in under cutting the ecclesiology envisioned by the Council Fathers. Their vision was about the Church as the People of God, not the Church as hierarchy.  Their vision was about collegiality and the participation of all segments of the Church in making the kinds of decisions like the one on artificial birth control.  Pope Paul's birth control commission was seen to be this idea in actual reality.  There were even five lay women on the commission. Five out of seventy five members wasn't much, but it was an astounding first.

Pope Paul VI dithered over the birth control issue for three years desperately seeking an answer to one question.  The question had nothing to do with the morality of the pill.  It had everything to do with finding a way to pretend that changing the teaching on birth control didn't undermine the perceived infallibility of his predecessors--that it didn't undermine the ecclesiastical foundation on which the hierarchy's teaching authority was based.  I can only imagine the pressure from the conservative curia for Paul not to sanction the recommendations of this upstart commission on birth control.  This was not how things were 'traditionally' done.  It was however, exactly the way Vatican II envisioned things like this would be done going forward.  And Paul wasn't really dithering over the Traditional teaching on the infallibility of the pope so much as he was the tradition as it had developed in the previous 90 years since Pius IX, X, XI, and XII.  He was most concerned with not appearing to invalidate Pius XI's encyclical Casti Connubii, in which all forms of birth control had been condemned, including the Rhythm method.  Popes could not be seen to err.

When it was pointed out to him that Pius XII had already modified and completely undercut the major rationale of Casti Connubii by allowing for the Rhythm method, Paul couldn't seem to grasp that fact. Of course Paul himself had already undercut this encyclical by allowing for the use of birth control pills by missionary nuns in Africa. Somehow he expected his theologians to ignore this act because in reality he was conceding procreation was not the desired end result of heterosexual rape and that could effect the absolute ban on abortion.  The simple laity might see this as the start of a slippery slope or God forbid, moral relativism.  In any event, he published Humanae Vitae and the rest is history.  He lost the blind loyalty of most laity in the West and made the Church remotely complicit in the deaths of  many women and children from childbirth or from famine and disease in the Southern hemisphere.  This is why Melinda Gates, fifty years later, is shrugging her shoulders when LifeSiteNews and it's retro followers target her initiative.  Birth control has done more to free women to be a significant and leading part of positive economic change in the poorest parts of the globe.  It has freed women and their children to pursuit education and education is the key to economic prosperity. That's a good thing.

For If The People Will Lead, Eventually The Leaders Will Follow

It's sort of a shame Sr Joan can never wear one of the pointy hats, carry a crozier, and wear lots of lace.

There are graduation speeches and then there are graduation speeches.  The following is the speech given to the 2012 graduates of Stanford University by Sr Joan Chittister.  I would have loved to have heard her give it in person, and yet I was inspired just reading it.  Here it is in it's entirety as posted on Sojourners:

Sister Joan Chittister's Stanford Baccalaureate Address

Bertolt Brecht, German dramatist and poet wrote: "There are many elements to a campaign. Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two."

And Walter Lippmann said: "The final test of a leader is someone who leaves behind themselves – in others – the conviction and the will to carry on."

But how do we know what it means to really be a leader and how do we know who should do it?

There are some clues to those answers in folk literature, I think. The first story is about two boats that meet head on in a shipping channel at night.

As boats are wont to do in the dark, boat number 1 flashed boat number 2: "We are on a collision course. Turn your boat 10 degrees north."

Boat 2 signaled back: "Yes, we are on a collision course. Turn your boat 10 degrees south."

Boat 1 signaled again: "I am an admiral in her majesty's navy; I am telling you to turn your boat 10 degrees north."

Boat 2 flashed back immediately: "And I am a seaman 2nd class. And I am telling you to turn your boat 10 degrees south."

By this time, the admiral was furious. He flashed back: "I repeat! I am an admiral in her majesty's navy and I am commanding you to turn your boat 10 degrees north. I am in a battleship!"

And the second boat returned a signal that said: "And I am commanding you to turn your boat 10 degrees south. I am in a lighthouse."

Point: Rank, titles and positions are no substitute for leadership.

You are all graduating from this great university this weekend because someone has seen leadership potential in you at a time of grinding poverty and gross inequality. At a time when we have never needed leadership more, someone saw in you the possibility to be a powerful presence in the public arenas of our own time. The question is, then, what will you inspire in this world now?

The motto under which you have been educated here – the "the wind of freedom blows" – is exactly what a world struggling between the challenges of the present and the ideals of the past requires.

It requires the freedom to question and the freedom to rethink absolutes.

It requires the freedom to confront what does not work and to rebel against rigidities that mask as unassailable traditions.

It requires you to re-energize the kind of courageous initiative that opened the frontier in one century and reached the moon in the next.

It requires the vision that freed slaves and empowered women, that preserved the spiritual but honored the secular, as well.

What the world needs now are those who will commit themselves to free that kind of energy everywhere and lead others to do the same.

First, though, you must realize that the world did not send you here simply to get itself another engineer or business manager or computer science programmer. No, your world sent you here to be its leaders.

But note well: The world you have been given to lead is both glorious and grim. One right step and the whole world can become new again. One more wrong step and the globe itself is in irreversible danger.

Indeed, we need a new direction; we need another point of view. We need a more complete human agenda. And it is yours now to lead.

No, the world does not really need the skills you learned here. Today's skills will all change in the next five years and change your life with them.

The world does not need answers either. Answers are easy to come by: You Google them.

No, what the world really needs from you now is the courage to ask the right questions without apology, without fear, and without end.

It needs those who will lead from the vantage point of new questions, not old answers. From the point of view of enduring values, not denominational politics; from the perspective of global needs, not parochial interests.

Two-thirds of the hungry of the world are women. Two-thirds of the illiterate of the world are women. Two-thirds of the poor of the world are women.

That can't be an accident; that has to be a policy.

Where are the leaders who will change these things?

The ozone layer, the placenta of the earth, has been ruptured. The polar ice cap is melting and raising the water levels of the world. And, at the same time, the lands of the poor are turning to dust and stone while the industrialized world goes on choosing short-term profits over long-term global warming treaties.

Nuclear weaponry threatens the very existence of the planet and they have the effrontery to call it "defense."

The question is, then, how shall you lead this next generation, so that the errors of this present generation do not simply become even more death dealing in the future than they are now?

If you really want to be a leader who leads your city, your country, your world down a different path, there are three stories you should know, I think. They may say more about the kind of leadership needed for our time than anything any MBA leadership manual can begin to explain to you:

The first is from the western fabulist Hans Christian Andersen, which you may have learned as a child but which is, in fact, about a very adult problem.

In the first story, a village is preparing for a visit from its king. He will come regally dressed, his courtiers tell them. Never, they say, has a king been so finely outfitted as ours.

So, on the day of the king's arrival people cheer and cheer as the king strides by. "You, O King, are the finest king of all." Except for one small child. "No," the child shouts. "No! He is not splendid. He is not honest," he says. "In fact, the king has no clothes on at all." Then the crowd went silent. Then the farce was over. Then everyone snuck away ashamed of what they had allowed to go unchallenged. Only then did the dishonest emperor resign the throne.

Point: If you want to really be a leader, you must be a truth-teller.

If you want to save the age, the Irish poet Brendan Kennelly writes, "Betray it. Expose its conceits, its foibles, its phony moral certitudes."

Remember, there will be those among the powerful who try to make you say what you know is clearly not true because if everyone agrees to believe the lie, the lie can go on forever.

The lie that there is nothing we can do about discrimination, nothing we can do about world poverty, nothing we can do about fair trade, nothing we can do to end war, nothing we can do to provide education and health care, housing and food, maternity care and just wages for everyone in the world. Nothing we can do about women raped, beaten, trafficked, silenced yet, still, now, everywhere.

If you want to be a leader, you, too, must refuse to tell the old lies.

You must learn to say that those emperors have no clothes. You must see what you are looking at and say what you see.

The second story is about the Buddhist monk Tetsugen, who determined to translate the Buddhist scriptures into Japanese.

He spent years begging for the money it would take to have them printed. But just as he was about to begin the first printing, a great flood came and left thousands homeless. So Tetsugen took the money he'd raised to publish the scriptures and built houses for the homeless.

Then he began again to beg the money he needed to publish the scriptures. This time, years later, just as he finished collecting the funds he needed for the task, a great famine came. This time, Tetsugen took the money for the translation work and fed the starving thousands instead.

Then, when the hungry had been fed, he began another decade's work of collecting the money for the third time.

When the scriptures were finally printed in Japanese, they were enshrined for all to see. But they tell you to this day in Japan that when parents take their children to view the books, they tell them that the first two editions of those scriptures – the new houses and healthy people – were even more beautiful than the printed edition of the third.

The second lesson of leadership, then, is that no personal passion, no private agenda, no religious ritual must ever be allowed to come between you and the people you serve.

The third lesson of leadership comes from the Sufi master who taught disciples one thing only: "If you want to smell sweet, stay close to the seller of perfumes."

The heroes you make for yourselves, the people you idolize, will be the measure of your own character, your own ideals, your own legacy.

If you want to lead the world to compassion, you must surround yourself with the compassionate, rather than the uncaring.

If you want to lead the world to wholeness, you must follow the peacemakers, not the warmongers.

If you want to lead the world to the freedom you learned here, equality for everyone must mean more to you than domination by anyone.

Justice must mean more to you than money. People must mean more to you than fame. Ideals must mean more to you than power or politics or public approval.

If you really want to inspire those you leave behind with the conviction and the will to go on doing good, doing justice, doing right, like the child in the village, like the wise old monk Tetsugen, like the Sufi saint of perfume sellers, choose reality over image, choose people over personal profits and projects, choose your heroes wisely.

Speak up loud and clear to the powers of this world that use their power for themselves alone.

The great leaders of history are always those who refuse to bend to naked kings: Mahatma Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Nelson Mandela, Rigoberta Menchu, Aung San Suu Kyi, Dorothy Day, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman.

The great leaders of history have always been those who refused to barter their ideal for the sake of their personal interests and who rebelled against the lies of their times.

If you want to be a real leader, if you want to give a new kind of leadership, you cannot live to get the approval of a system, you must live to save the soul of it.

"As long as the world shall last, there will be wrongs," Clarence Darrow warned us. "And if no leaders object, and no leaders rebel, those wrongs will last forever."

If you really want to lead, you must rebel against forces of death that obstruct us from being fully human together.

"The purpose of life," the essayist Rosten writes, "is not to be happy. The purpose of life is to matter, to have it make a difference that you lived at all."

To save this age, use your education, use your freedom, to make a difference.

Inspire in those who follow you the conviction and the will to denounce the lies, to reject the greed, to resist the heretics of inhumanity who peddle inequality, injustice and the torturers' instruments of oppression and social violence.

To be a real leader, by all means make a difference!

Rebel, rebel, rebel – for all our sakes, rebel!

For if the people will lead, eventually the leaders will follow.


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One of my favorite lines in this speech, and there were quite a few, was this line: 
If you want to be a real leader, if you want to give a new kind of leadership, you cannot live to get the approval of a system, you must live to save the soul of it.

While our Bishops are attempting to enshrine the 'conscience' of the Catholic system in secular law, they are selling it's soul.  A Catholic religious system with out a soul is just another competing secular system dressed up in different uniforms and saluting different ranks.  Sr Joan's message is relevant to all Catholics of any age or education.  It's time to stop attempting to get the approval of Church leadership and past time to start living to save the soul of the Church.  Eventually the leaders will follow.

Me In My Youth

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This video has 3 million plus hits.  This was me all through junior high, high school and college doing the exact same chores.  Except for one thing, we didn't get the big roll baler until I had given up this particular career.  We had huge 2600-3000 bale hay stacks of 75 pound bales which is why at almost 60 years old I can still, ya know, impress a few folks with my workout regimen.

For me this was a real trip down memory lane because there isn't much to do in these big tractors going all of 3 miles an hour except to calculate how many people your farm or ranch feeds in a given year.  I figured for wheat and beef ours was around 1500.  JPII actually came out to Montana right before he was elected Pope and could not believe the size of Montana farms and ranches or the equipment it took to work this volume of produce.  These were not the Polish farms he was used to and he left with a healthy respect for American farmers and ranchers.  I personally did not meet him because I chose to stay at Carroll College and do my other job as a Resident Assistant.  My mother was so not pleased.  Oh well, the decision may have given me the distance I needed to maintain my marginal status as a Vatican II Catholic.  In any event, this is a great video and the guys remind me alot of the people I went to High School and college with--OK and yea, I see a lot of myself in this video.  And no, none of us, even back in my day, wore cowboy hats.  We all wore caps advertising some weed, tractor, or fetilizer company.

Catholic Evangelization In India Is Not About Theology

The Catholic Community in India may be predisposed by virtue of culture to get the healing message of Jesus.

Here's an interesting article from India which describes a different kind of 'evangelization'.  Taken from Vatican Insider it describes a truly vibrant form of Catholicism which puts the original charism of the early Church back in the forefront--and this very point is recognized by the Bishop of the diocese in which this is all happening.

Unexpected cases of healing are being witnessed in the Diocese of Itangar. Meanwhile, Catholic presence has increased by 40%

Marco Tosatti - Vatican Insider - Rome Strange things are going on in the Indian diocese of Itangar and Mgr. John Kattrukudiyl spoke about them during a visit to Germany for the periodic meeting organised by Aid to the Church in Need, the international organisation that deals with churches and Christians in countries where they face the greatest difficulties.
 
According to the prelate, the numerous unexplained healings which preceded and resulted from prayer, are the main reason for this extraordinary increase in Catholics  - 40% over 35 years - in this remote corner of India. The bishop is informed of things like this on a regular basis; and the stories “baffle me. I have a theological mindset and it is easy to become sceptical about this kind of thing. But the interested parties are absolutely convinced that what happened to them was real.”(That's because it was real.)

The prelate mentioned the case of a man who stopped persecuting the Catholic Church after he married a Catholic girl. “After converting to Catholicism he was asked to pray for a paralytic. He did it even though he did not want to; the next day, the paralytic rose and walked towards the church.”  The newly converted man was so shocked by this miraculous experience that he started attending mass and “is now a very active member of the parish.”
 
Mgr. Kattrukudiyl is well aware of the skepticism with which most of these miracles are met; when he describes miracles that have taken place people in Europe sometimes say: “Hey, bishop, you’re telling tales.” But despite the incredulity “I am told about many cases of healing which we cannot ignore.”
 
One possible historical- theological explanation is the relative freshness of the local church. “It is the experience of a very young Church that feels the grace of the Catholic Church in the times of the apostles,” when healing miracles were frequent, as the Scriptures tell us.

According to the prelate, the faithful of his diocese witnessed these miraculous healings after gathering in the home of a sick person whom they had been praying for. “People who had been sick for a very long time were healed. These people got a real experience of the primitive Church.” During the early Church period “healing with God’s prayer attracted many people to the Church. Belonging to the Church they felt a kind of spiritual peace.” The bishop revealed that the number of Catholic faithful has grown by 40% over the past 35 years. The situation in the Church has improved a great deal; now, not only is it tolerated, but it is praised for its philanthropic work. “Politicians never miss an opportunity to praise the Church for its humanitarian work.”

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I love the line from Bishop Kattrukudiyl about having a 'theological' mind and being baffled by all the healing incidents.  I can surely sympathize.  When things start happening which are completely outside your consensus reality the usual choices are denial, skepticism, or bafflement--or fear.  Any yet, I also like his recognition that these incidents almost always come with a sense of 'spiritual peace'. As my life has progressed, I have had driven home to me--always with a sense of spiritual peace--that our commonly held consensus reality is very limited in it's understanding of how reality really works, and because of that, even more limited in it's understanding of humanity.  

The Good News Jesus brought holds a metaphorical description of a reality He knew intimately,  but He also knew He couldn't explain it in concrete cookbook terms because to do so changes the nature of the reality.  In a sense such a description would invalidate it's operating principles.  So, Jesus taught that the Spirit of the law was more important than the letter of the Law.  He taught us to pray for our daily bread, because projecting into the future works against manifesting what one actually needs in the now.  He taught a lot of things that were based in His understanding of a different world view that in it's core operates on laws that transcend our sense perceptual understanding of reality.  He may have cured blind and deaf people, but He taught about living from the heart.  He taught about the necessity of claiming one's own spiritual power by negating the power of material reality over the self aware ego.  It isn't the least bit surprising to me the Apostles just didn't get what He was trying to teach.  They were by nature and occupation too literal, too vested in their sense perceptual world view for their very survival. 

 Every time I read one of the Gospel stories where Jesus tells these professional fisherman, professional fisherman who have caught exactly nothing, to cast their nets over the side of the boat and they will find fish they missed,  I have to laugh. They always found they had full nets. They had to have experienced some serious frustration in doing so.  What was it this man was doing that made a literal mockery of their own hard won skill?  If Jesus did this kind of thing on a daily basis he could put them out of business!  Not Good News at all.  Lucky for them, the reality Jesus describes doesn't work particularly well using it to fuel your own ego.  It works best from a point of love for everything and no ego.  It works best when you know this reality is designed to provide for your daily needs as long as you let it.  That's really really counterintuitive.


Another point that Bishop Kattrukudiyl understands is the prevalence of healing miracles is precisely why the Good News spread in it's infancy.  Healing prayer worked, and it worked frequently enough that it was noticeable.  Christianity spread like it did precisely because it's practitioners had things happen around them that other religious believers didn't seem to be able to do.  These seemingly miraculous events didn't happen because of rituals or spells.  They happened because of attitude, because of a mind set, because of a belief system, because of a conversion to a whole other way of perceiving the world.  Even the best magicians of the time, like Simon Magus, couldn't best Peter when Peter was in the right mind set.  Whatever these followers of this Jesus person were in 'real' life, they certainly seemed to be connected to something that transcended 'real' life.  And it was Good and others could undergo a similar conversion and Good things happened.


This is evangelization.  This is what Roman Catholicism needs to recapture, and it won't recapture this mind set by insisting on it's traditional reliance on ritual and ordained priesthood as TRUTH.  It's not.  It's compensatory behavior for losing the core of the message. It's a charade.  The Apostolic Age of Miracles was pretty much over the instant Christianity moved from small communities with acclaimed leadership to ranks and sub ranks of 'ordained' clergy.  Jesus did warn the Apostles about this kind of leadership.  He instructed them to call no man father, and that leadership in his understanding of kingdom was to be servant leadership.  It was to be egoless.  It was not to announce itself by clothing or manner.  It was to be leadership for the sake of the Kingdom and it would cost one everything one held dear in this 'reality'.

Except when one begins to get the message, it doesn't cost anything because all those things no longer matter.  That's freedom and that's the real truth.  That's the Good News.

Big News Day At Vatican, But The Message Is More Of The Same

Archbishop Gerhard Mueller may be a friend of Gustavo Gutierrez, but he ruled his Diocese exactly like Bishop Finn.

Today the Vatican announced that Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller of Regensburg will replace Cardinal Levada as head of the CDF.  The following excerpt is taken from Nicole Winfield's AP article which goes into more detail and less spin than John Allen's article at the NCR.  In some respects this is a paradoxical appointment.  Mueller has a longstanding relationship with Gustavo Gutierrez, considered the father of Liberation Theology, having studied under him and made yearly retreats to Peru to keep up to date with Gutierrez' thinking.  On the other hand, Mueller is considered an almost reactionary figure in German Catholic circles for his intolerance of dissent and advocacy of the celibate male priesthood.  I've begun the excerpt about half way through the article:

....Mueller is a longtime friend of Benedict's and in 2008 founded a diocesan institute, the "Pope Benedict XVI Institute" to publish a 16-volume compilation of the "Collected Writings of Joseph Ratzinger."
Ratzinger attended Mueller's 2002 consecration when he was named bishop of Regensburg, and Mueller hosted the pope during his now-infamous 2006 visit to Regensburg, where Benedict delivered a speech in which riled Muslims around the globe. In it, Benedict quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor connecting Islam with violence.

At the congregation, Mueller will find a host of unfinished business: In addition to talks with the breakaway traditionalists, he inherits the clerical sex abuse portfolio, which grew exponentially in 2010 with the explosion of cases in Europe, including his native Germany.

The main U.S. victims group, Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, faulted Mueller for having reinstated a priest who had been convicted for child sex crimes; Mueller has apologized for his handling of the case of the Rev. Peter Kramer, who was convicted in 2000 yet was reinstated in parish work after undergoing therapy.

Mueller also must deal with the congregation's crackdown on the largest group of American nuns, the Leadership Conference for Women Religious, whom the congregation under Levada had accused of straying too far from church doctrine.
Levada, who was brought into the ex-Holy Office in 2005 after Benedict became pope, launched the investigation in 2009 and its findings have embittered many American Catholics against what they perceive as heavy-handed tactics by Rome against U.S. sisters who provide critical health care, education and other services for the poor.

In a statement Monday, the head of the German Bishops Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, said bishops in the pope's homeland were proud that Mueller would be performing "this important task."
"He is one of the most distinguished theologians of the present time," Zollitsch said, adding that he has led the conference's ecumenical commission for several years "with success and great sensitivity."

We Are Church, a movement that calls for reforms in the church, said Mueller had high-class academic qualifications but that a key question would be whether he has the "necessary intellectual and spiritual caliber" for new thinking - and whether his friendship with Gutierrez might lead to a reevaluation of liberation theology.

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I had Google translate the statement from We Are Church so I could get some idea of what their news release said, and that's about all I got, some idea and a lot of garbled sentence structure.  I can now see why some folks think the Vatican used Google translator for the new English translation of the Mass.  In any event, it seems that Archbishop Mueller ran his Archdiocese the way Pope Benedict runs the Church.  Mueller went to great lengths emphasizing ecclesiastical authority and current Church doctrine while personally engaging in speculative and academic theology. 

SNAP issued a press release which goes into more detail about the reinstatement of Fr Peter Kramer but for my inquisitive mind it wasn't enough detail.  So I once again resorted to Google and found a fascinating case study done by Leon Podles.  I strongly suspect this is not just a case study of the mishandling of this pedophile by the Regensburg Diocese, but a case study of the management practices Catholics can expect from Archbishop Mueller.  The following is Podles' assessment of the Archbishop's mistakes in the handling of Fr Kramer.  I emboldened the problems that relate to Gerhard Mueller as opposed to Manfred Mueller.  When reading the following, please remember that Bishop Finn in the US is facing criminal charges for engaging in the same kind of mindless behavior.

Bishop Manfred Müller, Bishop Gerhard Müller, and the diocesan officials
all failed:

• Bishop Manfred Müller should not have let Kramer work with children in the parish of Riekhofen, because this violated his conditions of probation.
• Bishop Gerhard Müller should have followed the 2002 guidelines of the German bishops and not appointed a convicted abuser to a position working with children.
• If he chose not to follow the guidelines, Müller should have announced that decision to the diocese, so that everyone would be aware there might be convicted abusers in parishes.
• He let Kramer work in this parish even before it received the report from his therapist.
• The diocese should have informed the deans who supervised the parish of Riekhofen about Kramer’s conviction and trained them about how to spot danger signs.
• The diocese should have let a responsible person in Riekhofen, such as the mayor, know about Kramer, and trained him on how to spot danger signs.
• The diocese should have asked the judge to convey in writing the opinions she expressed in the 2004 telephone conversation.
• The diocese should have asked for a second opinion about Kramer from someone who was independent and an expert in pedophilia.
• Diocesan officials should read their files and tell the truth about what is in them, before the police seize the files. Cover-ups rarely work, and, as St. Augustine said, God does not need our lies.
• Having made a disastrous decision with catastrophic consequences, Bishop Müller should have learned that the infallibility of the Church does not extend to the administrative decisions of bishops. He should have solicited advice from as many people as possible, including those with whom he disagreed. Humility is a virtue, even in bishops.
• For Müller to make such a fuss about his suffering under a “Diffamierungskampagne” is unbecoming. Müller is the victim of his own errors and carelessness. Somehow in Müller’s mind the chief point is how much he is suffering by being criticized. However, the boys, their families, and the parishes must suffer the long-term consequences of sexual abuse. The consequences are always painful, and are sometimes death through suicide.

Pope Benedict failed:

• Müller’s failure did not hurt his standing with the pope. Benedict appointed him to a position of great trust at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Benedict should at least have reprimanded him publicly as a warning to other bishops not to take chances with children’s souls. But Benedict has been silent. If anyone should know, a German should know the truth of the maxim that was on a protestor’s placard outside of the courtroom where Kramer was on trial: “Auch wer wegschaut macht sich schuldig,” – “The one who looks away makes himself guilty.”  (And now Benedict has rewarded his friend with promotion to the very Congregation that has ultimate responsibility for clerical abusers and their bishops.)

Also today the Vatican announced the 'firing' of Archbishop Róbert Bezák of Trnava, Slovakia.  From John Allen's article it seems Archbishop Bezak ran afoul of the Vatican for his critique of the financial mismanagement of his predecessor and being a pastoral 'moderate'.  Bezak's predecessor was Archbishop Ján Sokol who gained a certain amount of notoriety for an interview he gave in 2007 in which he glowingly described life during WWII under the Hitler puppet Roman Catholic priest Joseph Tiso.  It wasn't quite as glowing a time for Jews and Roma.  Tiso's government deported some 70,000 Jews and Roma to Germany and paid the Germans for this service to Slovakia.  Sokol is also believed to have been a collaborator with the communist secret service the STB.


This Vatican is getting to be one long endless nightmare of clerical incompetence, and if this isn't enough for one day, Vatican Insider has an article which maintains Vati Leaks is a battle between the forces of Cardinal Bertone with Benedict's personal secretary 'Gorgeous Georg Ganswein' and the German coterie around Benedict.  It seems Benedict has added another German bishop to this particular chess board.  No wonder the reputation of Catholicism is circling the drain.  It's leadership functions like competing groups of junior high male cliques.  And we all know how spiritual and uplifting that mentality is for mature adults.  Not.
 

Fortnight For Freedom: A Tempest In The Tea Party Tea Pot

I take some real hope in that more and more Catholics are beginning to see the truth of the above banner.

One frequent commeter on the National Catholic Reporter I really really appreciate is AileenUSA.  I have taken the liberty of posting her entire response to the NCR article on the speech Archbishop Chaput gave at the recently concluded meeting of the Catholic Press Association.  Aileen simply nails my own thinking about the Fortnight for Freedom nonsense:

Submitted by AileenUSA (not verified) on Jun. 21, 2012.
This RCC teaparty tempest is so disingenuous.     Chaput makes a mockery of those who really have experienced religious persecution around the world — those who have had their homes,   churches,   synagogues and mosques bombed — those who have been imprisoned or executed along with their families.     No one is bothering Catholics in the U.S. or their individual private practice of their religion.     But Catholics are NOT allowed to establish their religious beliefs as some sort of gold standard for everyone else.     Chaput's prelate 'id' is showing big time.
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1)   The Catholic Church receives billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for its various businesses   (hospitals,   universities,   charities)   without which they could not afford to keep their doors open,   but the Church doesn't want to play by the same rules that apply to everyone else at the government trough.     Playing by the same rules is not persecution.     It's fair.     You take Caesar's money,   you play by Caesar's rules.     The RCC yearly haul of government funds has been greater under Obama than under Bush!
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2)   It's astonishing that Archbishop 'free market' Chaput wants to quibble over how contracts are awarded.     Really?     Exactly why should the RCC get special treatment to do as it pleases in making up its own rules for contract awards?     You want the contract,   then you comply with the rules of the entity awarding the contract.     If you want to make up your own special rules,   then cough up your own cash.     Chaput's definition of RC freedom is actually RC exceptionalism. (Bingo!)
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3)   The First Amendment guarantees an individual's freedom to practice their own religion in their own lives   (if they believe contraception or sterilization are wrong,   then don't use that insurance benefit in your own life — that's your freedom).     But it prohibits any establishment of a particular religion that impinges on another individual's freedom of religion   (RC freedom doesn't extend to financial coercion of employee compensation or insurance restriction of someone else's religious freedom of choice whether or not to use contraception or sterilization).     One person's freedom of religion stops where another person's freedom of religion begins.     The RCC has used its government subsidized businesses to establish its own brand of religion and capital-T truth in the lives of anyone it employs or with whom it does business — its massive regional footprint of hospitals being 'exhibit A'.     Those who live within those massive regional healthcare systems (little Vatican colonies) are being forced to live in a healthcare theocracy under the control of a Catholic bishop.     If anything,   the RCC has been given way too much latitude in this venue,   and should have its theocratic endeavors and monopolies curtailed.
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It was Chaput himself who dismissed JFK's speech on separation of church and state.     He believes that the RCC should be controlling government officials and government itself.     His pleas of religious freedom and this entire Fortnight/insurrection nonsense is partisan and theocratic to its core.     It's as bizarre as Santorum recently complaining that Egyptians had elected a Muslim version of himself.
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/haroonmoghul/6091/santorum_......
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Also see:   Most of Obama's "Controversial" Birth Control Rule Was Law During Bush Years
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/controversial-obama-birth-cont... 

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The one good thing about this Fortnight for Freedom is it seems to be nothing more than a little tempest in the Tea Party tea pot.  If all the opening ceremonies could draw was 2000 people, with a significant percentage of those falling in the category of 'mandatory attendees',  then I'm not sure the weeks of pulpit and media pounding provided the desired results.  Which is, at least as far as I'm concerned, a somewhat hopeful result.
It may mean that rank and file Catholics are not following in lockstep without using their own God given brains, or that for once, a squeaky wheel is not being listened to, but allowed to go flat on it's own grating rhetoric.

What the USCCB really needs to be careful of is that their chutzpa is going to backfire on them and more and more people, both Catholics and non Catholics,  will start asking questions like Aileen points out in the above. Questions such as why Catholic hospitals are allowed to function as health care theocracies under the control of a bishop.  Or questions about why employees are expected to sign their rights away as employees just because they draw a paycheck from a Catholic institution--and in most cases Catholic institutions which take government money. Or why some dioceses are getting away with demanding loyalty oaths of all their employees such as is the case in Bishop Vasa's Diocese of Santa Rosa, CA.  America Magazine has a thought provoking essay by John Coleman SJ about this whole concept of loyalty oaths.  In Vasa's case his oath is truly remarkable in it's language and the totality of what it covers.  Here is a snippet on abortion:

 "I do not recognize the legitimacy of anyone's  claim to a moral right to form their own conscience on this matter. I am not pro-choice. I further attest that I am not affiliated with, nor supportive of any organization which supports, encourages, provides or otherwise endorses abortion or euthanasia."


That language is...is...well, it's over the top.  Who takes an oath that denies another person's legitimate right to form their own conscience on the matter of abortion or euthanasia?  This sentence is obviously intended to undercut the position of any pro choice politician and enhance Vasa's campaign to deny them communion. It also asks Catholics swear to deny a core teaching of Vatican II on the supremacy of personal conscience.  And then who knows for sure whether or not they are affiliated with an organization which supports, encourages, provides or otherwise endorses abortion or euthanasia?  Even the USCCB would have failed this one and according that failed USCCB,  even the Girl Scouts don't pass muster. 

Bishop Vasa is a very good example of what the forces who actually control the Vatican intend for US Catholics.  He is demanding Catholics exchange a form of Catholic fascism for their rights as American citizens.  The USCCB is pursuing the same path with their Fortnight for Freedom by defining themselves and their institutional conscience as somehow transcendant over, or the exception to, commonly accepted lines of demarcation between Church and State in the US.  It's really just unimaginable hubris and utterly demeaning to the faith of many Catholics.  

Unfortunately it's also a clear and present danger to American democracy for in reality the Vasa's of the Catholic bishops and the Carl Anderson's of the moneyed Catholic world are asking American Catholics to put Vatican prerogatives ahead of their duties as American citizens.   I don't really believe this has anything to do with religious freedom or abortion or contraception or sterilization.  I think it's just another avenue being used by really wealthy people to make sure they stay really wealthy people.  If it means keeping some of our Catholic bishops living really wealthy life styles than that's a small price to pay for their purported influence with 65 million American voters. I don't think 2000 faithful adherents is what these bishop backers had in mind.  In fact I think the real effect of the Fortnight for Freedom is swinging the other way, and that's a good thing for our democracy, if a not so good thing for a Catholic theocracy.

Perhaps shortly the Vatican can contract with a Japanese robotics company and solve their 'priest' problems.

 After spending seven years studying the issue, the Vatican has acknowledged a vocations crisis in the priesthood, and has prepared guidelines for fostering vocations.  The following was posted on Huffington Post.

Vatican Blames Lack Of Priests On Secularism, Abuse, Parents

Religion News Service - 6/26/20121
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The sexual abuse scandal has tarnished the image of the priest and contributed to a crisis of priestly vocations in the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican said Monday (June 25), while also faulting a widespread "secularized mentality" and parents' ambition for their children, which leaves "little space to the possibility of a call to a special vocation."

The "Pastoral Guidelines for Fostering Vocations to Priestly Ministry" were prepared over the last seven years by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education.

The document says candidates to the priesthood shouldn't be accepted if they show "signs of being profoundly fragile personalities," and says future priests should learn the "importance" of their future commitments, "in particular with regard to celibacy." (Why does my mind go to Cardinal Raymond Burke?)

The guidelines acknowledge that "in many places the choice of celibacy is questioned" and say that such "erroneous opinions within the church" are responsible for a "lack of appreciation" for those who make the choice to remain celibate. (Even amongst Bishops celibacy is questioned and questionable.)

In fact, Western culture, with its "indifference to the Christian faith," is "unable to understand the value of vocations to a special consecration."  ("Call no man father, for you have but one Father".....Jesus Christ.)

Data presented by the congregation's undersecretary, the Rev. Angelo Vincenzo Zani, show that priestly vocations over the last 10 years fell sharply in Europe. They remained stable in North and South America and rose significantly in Asia and Africa, though still not enough to offset the rapid growth in Catholics' numbers worldwide.

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It never ceases to amaze me that when institutions have recruitment problems the last place they look for reasons is themselves and their own policies.  Here we have a perfect example.  Celibacy itself is not the reason, it's secularism which doesn't understand the value of celibacy and parents who are greedy for their sons futures.  Oh, and maybe a few child abusers that the media used to attack the credibility of the Church.  So,  it seems that in the mind of Pope Benedict's Vatican, it makes more sense to attempt to change culture than it does to change one rule of discipline involving the priesthood.  I'm also not buying the statistics on priests from Africa and Asia, because while the priesthood is growing, it is far from celibate.  This is one of the reasons Vatican watchers think there are so few African prelates appointed to Rome.  Their families become a major issue and the Vatican doesn't want another Archbishop Milingo disaster.

It's hard for me to dismiss the thought that this refusal to consider any change in the priesthood is because the Vatican is currently being run by a group of entrenched 80 something year old clerics who function on the spiritual and emotional level of self absorbed teen age boys.  It's their priesthood, their little clique and by God to join it, a man has to play by their rules. After all, they played by these rules their entire lives.  To change now would be to cheapen and disavow the sacrifice they and their predecessors made.  In short, it's all about them and to hell with the People of God who are enduring an unchosen sacramental fast for the sake of the priesthood of Benedict XVI. 

The reform of the reform will not result in a blossoming of vocations to this current priesthood nor a rebirth of the Church in the West.  It is not designed to do any such thing.  It is designed to force out of the Western Church any Catholics whose belief structures include notions of the primacy of individual conscience, anglo style democratic governance and judiciary, and enlightenment notions of human dignity, equality, and civil rights for all men and WOMEN.  In this mindset the all male celibate clerical priesthood is the single most visible symbol of Benedict's view of the Church.  Everything, including the entire rationale for current Roman Catholic sexual morality hinges on the perceived sanctity, ontological superiority, and sexual purity of this ritual priesthood.  The fact that such a priesthood is by definition ripe for exploitation and leads to grown men acting like terrified children,  as classically shown in the abuse scandal, is of no moment.  Pope Benedict and his predecessor John Paul II have bet the future of the Church on maintaining this version of priesthood for an infantilized and immature laity willing to put selfish notions of magically 'saving their soul' in place of Jesus' very difficult command to love others.   

What parent, with any kind of spiritual maturity, would want a son to sacrifice their life to this impoverished idea of spiritual service?  Apparently not very many and maybe we should thank God for that bit of parental wisdom.

"Persons With An Inclination To Abuse"

Bishop Cordileone is in that group of Bishops who can be defined as carrying the cross of  'persons with an inclination to abuse'.

Oakland California's Bishop Salvatore Cordileone has upped the stakes in the Catholic identity movement.  He is demanding the Board of Directors of the gay and lesbian pastoral outreach group CALGM take an 'oath of personal integrity' to Catholic teaching--his version anyway.  This is hubris beyond belief given the USCCB has once again refused to have their own integrity to the Dallas Charter policed by anyone other than their own individual conscience. No 'oath of personal integrity' for them,  Cardinal Archbishops like Timmy Dolan can continue to bribe predator priests to leave the priesthood while simultaneously inventing any dubious strategy under the sun to avoid paying victims.  On the other hand CALGM has to start referring to their intended pastoral group as "persons with a homosexual inclination" rather than as gay and lesbian. Oh, and take a loyalty oath to their fuhrer with a crozier.  Does it get anymore insulting or absurd?

The following is an excerpt from the NCR coverage:

Gay ministry group refuses to sign oath

 By Brian Roewe - NCR - 6/25/2012
Following a more than yearlong investigation into the group's "adherence to the fullness of Catholic teaching," the future of a national association of ministries to gay and lesbian Catholics is uncertain because its board members refused to sign an "oath of personal integrity" to Catholic teaching given to them by the local bishop.

Declining the oath could result in Bishop Salvatore Cordileone of Oakland, Calif., declaring the Catholic Association for Lesbian and Gay Ministry, or CALGM, as "not authentically Catholic," a letter to its members from the association president warns.

"In good faith, we have done most everything required of us to maintain a legitimate space within the boundaries of the institutional Church," president Sheila Nelson wrote to members April 5. "Yet, this has not seemed to be adequate or satisfactory to the office of the bishop. We have repeatedly, abundantly and humbly submitted that our work is pastoral in nature and not political or primarily doctrinal."

The Oakland bishop declined NCR's request for comment. Mike Brown, the diocese's director of communications, issued a statement saying, "If the Bishop decides to make a public statement about the CALGM organization, he will then decide the best time and communication method to do so."

Cordileone's list of concerns with the association have included the omission of specific church documents on its website and publications; its use of the terms gay and lesbian; members' statements deemed critical of the church; and the backgrounds, affiliations and public statements of both conference speakers and board members.

In an April 12 letter to the association's board, Cordileone stated he would "take public action to clarify the status of CALGM with regard to authentic Catholic ministry" should they refuse to take an oath that requested that each member "strive to clearly present Catholic doctrine on homosexuality in its fullness" and "profess personally to hold and believe, and practice all that the holy Catholic church teaches, believes and proclaims to be true, whether from the natural moral law or by way revelation from God through Scripture and tradition.".......

But wait, it gets better, here's some of the contents of the 'personal oath of integrity'.

......The board declined the request for resignations in a Feb. 10 letter, and offered to submit and sign an oath written by the board. In his response letter March 5, Cordileone supplied his oath, which began by having each board member affirm the church's commitment to the pastoral concerns and support of gay Catholics and their families, and included a series of "I affirm and believe" statements regarding the definitions of marriage, purgatory and hell; the belief that Communion is available only under a state of grace; and church positions on chastity and cloning, among others.

Cordileone indicated that the purpose of the oath was not for the board to begin teaching church doctrine immediately in its outreach, which he acknowledged would be counteractive to their ministry, but rather to give assurance to the pastoral effectiveness of their ministry by way of each board member affirming the truths he outlined. 

If readers take in the whole article it becomes apparent that Bishop Cordileone keeps moving the goal posts in this 'dialogue' with CALGM, until it is not about the mission of CALGM and whether it conforms to Church teaching, but ends with the demand the Board sign away their individual consciences in obedience to his.  More classic abuse dynamics.  Not surprising then that Sheila Nelson, the Board President of CALGM finally responded this way:

Nelson, in a March 29 letter, informed the Oakland bishop the board would not take his oath: "In the course of our conversations with you over the last year, we have endeavored to engage and respond to each of the concerns that you have raised about our pastoral ministry."

She continued: "Sadly, there always seems to be something that you say 'confirms [your] doubts' about us and our work. ... We have tried to gain your trust ... We have tried to assure you that we are faithful disciples in parishes and dioceses doing the pastoral work of the Church ..."

"We hope you can understand, then, our confusion at the 'Oath of Personal Integrity in Belief and Practice Regarding the Teachings of the Catholic Church.' Suddenly, the terms of our long conversation have migrated from the work of the Association to the personal lives of the Board members," she said.

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First off a personal note.  I have been off line for a week or so due to a move to a different residence much closer to work.  This should give me an extra hour a day to ponder wise things, or as my daughter said: "Waste".  Unfortunately I had a bit of a hiccup getting internet service, (I'm just so thrilled with Verizon), but now I am up and running and spouting all the wise things I've been pondering about.

This blast from Bishop Cordileone is not wise, it is a blatant power grab, engaged in just because he can.   I am thrilled to see that the Board of CALGM will not come crawling on their knees to kiss his a.. ergh...ring.  If they did it would be tantamount to them agreeing their personal salvation is dependent on kicking those 'persons with a homosexual inclination' to the curb.   

I have to admit, I did not know, that as a Catholic I must now believe the official Catholic definition of gays and lesbians is 'persons with a homosexual inclination' and that I must no longer refer to 'persons with a homosexual inclination' as gay or lesbian.  My own 'personal inclination' is to burst out laughing at the stupidity of this mindset, but I can't help but remember it's this mindset that is in charge of our Catholic church and they seem to be 'persons with an inclination to abuse'.  Which is why from now on I am strongly tempted to refer to Roman Catholic Bishops by that definition: "persons with an inclination to abuse'.  It seems somehow, more truthful than calling these men shepherds.

Catholic Dialogue: A Long And Winding Road

Some of those crazy Franciscans who support the LCWR.  In spite of the religious apparel, I'm not sure these men are Bill Donohue's kind of Catholic.

An Op Ed piece in the NY Times by Bill Keller has been generating a lot of commentary today.  In this piece Keller basically agrees with Wild Bill Donohue that it's time progressive and centrist Catholics abandon ship.  The battle over the soul of the Church has been won by the righteous right and these winners will not tolerate the presence of the losers.  Wild Bill will gladly hold the door open for us as we exit.

In my own mind I actually see this split differently.  It is really a tussle between those who have a need to be validated and motivated by an external authority structure and those who have fought through that and operate from an internalized structure. The two don't necessarily wind up in different places as far as behaviors, but they most certainly present an entirely different attitude towards others and towards ones self.  One is based in absolute truths defined by an accepted authority, and one is based in process dynamics in which one moves towards the ideal and is motivated internally because they have validated the 'rightness' of a particular behavior in their own experience. 

This, it seems to me, is what Cardinal Levada may mean when he describes the dust up between the CDF and the LCWR as a potential 'dialogue with the deaf'.  Most members of the LCWR don't operate from a need for external validation concerning their faith and therefore don't have much need for the CDF.  The CDF, on the other hand, owes it's existence as the source of Catholic authority precisely for those who need external validation---unfortunately this includes most of it's own members.  The seeming indifference of the LCWR becomes a real threat precisely because it eats at the core reason for the CDF's existence.  

But more than that, if members of the LCWR, who are all women, have internalized their value system and Faith expression, this very trait undercuts the Vatican's teachings on sexual complimentarity, which in it's core language implies women need to account for themselves to eternal male authority.  I think it's this recognition on the part of the CDF which necessitated accusing the LCWR of 'radical feminism' amongst a list of other sexual disciplinary issues---because according to the theory of  gender complementarity,  it IS a form of radical feminism if women are answering to themselves or their own leadership rather than their male superiors.  In this sense, it is the very existence of the LCWR as a leadership conference and the independent thinking it represents, that is the real issue.  It undercuts so much of what Pope Benedict teaches about gender and sexuality.  Hence Cardinal Levada and Archbishop Sartain are going to great lengths to separate their criticism of the leadership organization from the vast majority of sisters it represents.  They seem to be saying it's the idea of independent female leadership that's at issue, not individual women who don't hold leadership positions.  The CMSWR is not at fault because their leadership is content to be a funnel for the words of wisdom cascading down from male leadership and they are quite willing to subordinate their leadership role to men.  

I suspect Cardinal Levada is correct, and this will be a dialogue of the deaf if the CDF and LCWR don't admit to the real issues and road blocks between them.  The male leadership of the Roman Catholic Church is demanding a true Catholic is one whose behavior is determined and whose salvation is procured by obeying and being rewarded by external authority--especially for Catholic women.  I call this the 'merit badge or military school' form of spirituality.  Uniforms and titles, ranked clerical dress, religious habits etc. are big issues for this mindset.  It's all external and has a lot of visual validation.  It's pretty far from the LCWR or Vatican II mindset which was all about internalizing Catholicism and living it reflexively because it was who you were--and it was not dependent on one's gender.  It was not something you had to think about much less wear like some merit badge which separated you from the sinful masses.

In the long run I don't think it will make much difference in the mission of LCWR congregations if the CDF decides to follow through on Cardinal Levada's veiled threats.  People will know the LCWR women exactly as Jesus told his followers they would be known, not by their uniforms or subservient female obedience, but by their love. 

Is Fortnight For Freedom Just A Clever Strategy To Replace Individual Rights With Institutional Rule?

Tradition, Family and Property is another of those right wing Catholic groups who freely mix monarchical political philosophy with traditional Catholicism.

The most important reason I personally have trouble with the USCCB Fortnight for Freedom is the strategy the bishops are using to promote this campaign.  It seems to me that they are attempting to twist guarantees for individual human rights and freedoms away from the individual towards an understanding that places the institutional rights above the individual.  I don't find this all that surprising since the exact same strategy is mirrored when corporations or political Super Pacs argue for their own collective rights on similar reasoning.  This is one reason I find the US Supreme Court decision in the Citizen's United case abhorrent.  Institutions, religious or not, and corporations are not individuals and do not have 'consciences'.  It is frightening that they are in some cases arguing successfully that they are individuals, and that the USCCB is taking this further and insisting they do have consciences.  Individual rights are getting steam rolled in this process.

Religion Dispatches has an article about the just recently held World Congress of Families in Madrid, Spain. Written by Gillian Kane, this article expands on my own thinking, drawing similar conclusions.  This clever campaign is purposely designed to decrease individual rights in favor of institutional rights when it comes to the issues of sex and gender.  This is seen in the novel, but powerful idea, that 'traditional rights' supersede 'new' individual rights centered in sexual reproduction for women and children:

One concern undergirding the varied topics covered by the speakers was that the protection of individual rights (youth rights, gay rights, reproductive rights) was taking place at the expense of “fundamental” religious, cultural, and parental rights. The idea of Christian persecution, or Christianophobia, was echoed throughout and the human rights framework was frequently misappropriated to serve the needs of a given speaker. Human rights were oppressive when they protected reproductive and gender rights (or “new” rights), whereas, when it came to protecting “traditional” rights to freedom of religion and speech, they were suddenly fundamental. New rights, they argued, cannot supersede traditional human rights. When they do, these rights violations must be redressed. (These 'traditional' rights are not human rights, they are patriarchal rights.)
 
This very argument is being used in the debate over the Obama health care reform law, one of the main objections to which is access to reproductive health care. Lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the mandate, however, do not directly confront abortion and contraception, but are based on the purported violation of the First Amendment. Stand Up For Religious Freedom, one of the lead networks agitating against health care reform, explicitly states that: “the American ideal of religious liberty is at stake. This isn’t really about contraception—it’s about the First Amendment.”

If readers take the time to read the linked article, they will find familiar names pop up on the Catholic side of this issue.  The Ave Maria Law School created by Tom Monoghan features prominently. Another familiar legal group is the Alliance Defense Fund, whose creators were the big evangelical names of the moral majority, but whose major contributors include Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation--(Eric Prince ring any bells?), An allied legal group is the Thomas More Law Center, and finally,  the Tradition, Family, and Property group whose members seem to think society could use a good dose of rule by a benevolent Catholic elite who can own as much of the world as they want.


It would be easy to dismiss all of this as far right agitation from groups who are totally disconnected from modern reality, but that is a mistake.  These groups feel disenfranchised from modern reality more so than disconnected, and they are backed by some of the world's most powerful political and religious organizations, and funded by very wealthy individuals.  This is far from a joke.  It's a very well organized attempt to dominate global politics by using secular argumentation against itself and providing specific targets for the generalized fear permeating global societies.  We should all be taking this very very seriously if we care about individual rights and representative democracy.  Religious Freedom can not become an excuse to exterminate individual rights because that path leads to precisely what we have in the Roman Catholic hierarchy,  a closed leadership structure which considers itself above any meaningful accountability to any outside authority.  That would not be good.