There Are Reasons For The Slide In Mainstream Religious Participation And The Failure To Communicate To The Modern World

Secular Jesus has all the answers for the angst in modern spiritual seekers.

The following is an excerpt of an article Rob Dreher wrote for the American Conservative in response to a NY Times opinion piece written by Russ Douthat, entitled 'The End of a Catholic Moment'.  Douthat's article is a lament for the loss of influence of Roman Catholic thinking in both US political parties.  It's an interesting read in it's own right, but I found Dreher's response much more fruitful.  Hence I have taken some paragraphs from the last half of his post because I think he makes a very important observation.  This is an especially important observation for all mainstream religions, but maybe particularly for Catholicism.

Leaving Benedict’s resignation aside, who will argue with O’Neill that our culture is hostile to the idea of vocation — and, more broadly, with the idea of sacrificing individual desire to higher truths, or causes? Our entire culture is built around the apotheosis of the Self, of the self’s will, the self’s desires, the self’s autonomy. This has required a progressive liberation of the Self from rules, mores, institutions, and customs that bind the Self. We are well within a cultural era in which truth is believed — whether or not people recognize it — to be determined by emotion far more than reason. (I would rephrase these sentences.  The self has been liberated from external norms which had previously been taught and enforced by external authority. In many cases the self's freely given acceptance of norms is not only based in 'emotion' but from an intellectual pursuit of rationality not based in an ill defined 'faith'.

I don’t entirely condemn this, because in some cases, it has resulted in a more humane condition, and in any case I am as personally formed by and implicated in this condition as anybody else. (Me too.) The point here is neither to condemn nor to praise, but simply to recognize it for what it is. This is not something temporary or sudden, but rather the culmination of centuries of social development in the West. Philosopher Charles Taylor, in A Secular Age, writes of the rise of “expressive individualism” as central to our collective understanding of the moral order now embedded in our culture. Taylor observes that the emergence of expressive individualism — that is, the emancipation of the Self — has been a gradual process in the West since the Enlightenment, but really took off after World War II, and, with the Sexual Revolution, became general in society. “This is obviously a profound shift,” he writes. He describes the religious manifestation of this shift thus: (It's not just a profound shift, but indicative of an evolution in how man sees himself in relation to virtually everything heretofor taken for granted as it was passed on from the culture to the child.)

The religious life or practice that I become part of must not only be my choice, but it must speak to me, it must make sense in terms of my spiritual development as I understand this. This takes us farther. The choice of denomination was understood to take place within a fixed cadre, say that of the apostles’ creed, the faith of the broader “church”. Within this framework of belief, I choose the church in which I feel most comfortable. But if the focus is going now to be on my spiritual path, thus on what insights come to me in the subtler languages that I find meaningful, then maintaining this or any other framework becomes increasingly difficult.

The end result of this process has been the severing of what was widely considered to be the necessary connection between faith and civilizational order. Taylor says religious conservatives still assume this connection, and much of their (our) political anxiety is a reaction to this cultural revolution. (This most certainly seems to be true for Pope Benedict who consistently preached civilization will fail without recognizing it's foundation in religion--specifically Catholicism for European civilization.)

This is why, on same-sex marriage, both sides talk past each other. We religious conservatives believe that the secular order must be dictated by the sacred order, however attenuated. Many others — most others, I would say — believe that there is no such thing as a sacred order, at least not one knowable to and share-able by all. The desiring Self is the sacred thing — something I say not as a criticism, but as an observation. In this worldview — which I believe is thoroughly mainstream — to deny the legitimacy of the Self’s desires is felt as a denial of personhood, and of rights. The moral order, then, must be built around the ongoing expansion of individual rights, especially when it comes to sex and sexuality, because Truth emerges from the individual’s heart, not from an external source of authority, such as the Catholic Church. We can’t have a meaningful conversation because we cannot agree on the source of moral order. (I'm not sure 'self desire' is how I would phrase this process.  I think for many people the better expression would 'self discernment'.)

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 I appreciate Dreher's piece for a number of reasons, one of which is he gets to a real problem in communication between religious conservatives and progressives.  We really do talk at cross purposes because we are starting from different places.  If Dreher is right about conservatives needing to place a sacred order on civilization and progressives needing to put the rights and dignity of the self as foundational for civilation, then we need to really define the terms 'sacred' and 'self'.  It may not be that these two terms are oppositional and necessarily lead the spiritual seeker to completely different end points.  Another question one might ask is why has the evolution of human thinking led to prioritizing the rights and responsiblities of the 'self' over and above traditional ideas of the 'sacred'?  Or in my lexicon, why is self discernment replacing externally derived truths?

I think it's because we are beginning to intuit some of the right questions about ourselves as self aware conscious beings.  One of the teachings of Jesus that has always intrigued me is why He boiled down the 10 commandments to two and these two commandments are recorded almost verbatim in all three Synoptic Gospels.  The following is Mathew 22: 37-40.

37 He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  38 This is the greatest and the first commandment. 39 The second is like it:^* You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” 

What I find interesting is Jesus does not reference anything about our physicality. He is expressing his greatest commandments in context of our self aware conscious attributes--mind, heart, and soul.  He does not teach from the perspective of humanity as essentially physical beings.  He teaches from the perspective of humanity as spiritual beings.  The original 10 commandments however, have their basis in humanity as physical beings and deal with how humanity should correctly order that physical expression in a material reality. It is in the ten commandments that we find restrictions in acting out our physical existence and it's not surprising two of them deal with the utmost tangible expression of our physicality--sex--and how that needs to be ordered for the good of civilization.

Jesus' two great commandments place the spiritual reality of the self and it's ability to express love as the transcendent commandments which encompass and fulfills all the rest. His starting point is the eternal spiritual nature of humanity and not it's physical expression.  We may be experiencing a physical existence, but we need to bring our truth, that we are eternal spiritual beings, into this reality and make it a sacred place based in love--to bring the Kingdom to earth, as it is in heaven.  Spiritual consciousness communicates in and through love and that does not change because spiritual beings become physical--unless we choose to let the unique problems of physical existence triumph over love.  And we have for eons because physical reality presents it's own unique set of circumstances.

I also think Jesus went to some lengths to place His teachings in context of living a coherent Way.  This Way was intended to minimize the 'unique set of circumstances' that make physical reality so challenging for inherently spiritual beings, and whose biggest challenge is how that self awareness necessarily develops in a biological reality.  It's not so much about a mythical original sin as it is being born in the real truth of original ignorance, totally dependent on others for both physical and social survival.

I think the loss of influence for mainstream religions will continue as long as they persist in teaching a paradigm that humanity itself is moving beyond.  They need to stop defining humanity as finite expressions of a corrupt physical existence and start teaching from the truth.  We are eternal spiritual beings who happen to find ourselves living in a material reality.  Jesus most certainly showed the Way to deal with this and it's our choice as to whether we ever find the truth in what He taught.  It would make things easier in this discernment if our religious leadership understood most of us don't need reams of rules on how to negotiate this reality when only two would do the trick.  What we need is more leaders who understand those two and actually live them.

 

Why I Doubt The Next Pope Will Come From Africa

Ghana's Cardinal Peter Turkson most likely won't be the next Pope and not just because he's made some serious blunders--like seemingly campaigning for the office.

Although I am perfectly aware that Africa is where it's at in terms of Catholic numbers and vibrancy and that the First World is where Catholic numbers and vibrancy are quickly filling the trash bin of history, I doubt very much the next pope will come from Africa.  I think that for a number of reasons, but the main reason is that while the Church is dieing in the pews in the First World, the Vatican Curia is swamped with first world cardinals.  It is still their church complete with their pope retiring with in their walls.  Africa represents a number of problems for the current Pope Benedict influenced curia.

The first of those problems is the concept of celibacy.  It's a concept that doesn't fly in Africa and is too closely linked with homosexuality.  The 'house keeper' phenomenon has already taken out more than one African bishop and is rumored to be rampant and a major problem in priestly discipline at all levels. Africa is a highly patriarchal continent in which producing male heirs is still a number one priority for males.  Celibacy is also an issue when dealing with Islamic expansion as celibacy is not an issue at all in Islam and so an Imam's male virility is never in question.

The second problem involves indigenous shamanic practices and the attendant spiritual cosmology which lends itself to accusations of witchcraft, possession, and strange healing strategies, such as the one that AIDS in men could be cured by intercourse with a female virgin. Even though Catholic Masses have been allowed a cultural latitude no longer allowed in the West, the inroads of Evangelical Churches continue unabated precisely because the theology lines up more closely with Indigenous practices.  A Vatican curia which prides itself on it's European cultural sophistication is unlikely to entertain notions of 'Catholic shamanism'. I should add here that shamanism is distinct in practice and paradigm from Catholic mysticism.

A third problem is the that Catholic social activism is in some senses substituting for workable governments in some areas.  This is ably articulated by Nigerian Bishop, Matthew Kukah in an article from UK's Guardian:

....But not everyone agrees that the ever-higher profile of the church in Africa is a good thing. Some critics, even within the Catholic church, fear that the church is exceeding its proper role and attempting to act as a substitute for functioning institutions of state.

 

"The problem in our situation is that religion has become an excuse for the total collapse of the architecture of state," says Matthew Kukah, Bishop of Sokoto in Nigeria.

"In Nigeria the judiciary, the law enforcement agencies, the entire ruling elite is corrupt. The opening of the political space at the end of military rule has been accompanied by the insatiable expression of greed by political elite, who have turned out far more corrupt than the military ever were. And people like me are being called upon to help rebuild the society. I am not an elected official, this is not my role.
"There were times when religion responded to the social situation such as we found in South Africa under apartheid. But overthrowing apartheid is not the same as ridding the countries of corruption. Those are not things religion has the capacity to do."

What Bishop Kukah doesn't say is that replacing secular governments with Christian or Islamic theocracies is the agenda of more than one fantical religious movement and this is a situation which does not bode well for the continent.  Africa seems caught between government by corrupt corporate oligarchy or government by non elected religious authority. Given the already extensive influence of the Church in African development, it may be counterproductive for African Catholicism for an African pope at this particular time.

Two of the three listed reasons would be enough for conservatives to look elsewhere for the next pope.  Conservative prelates do not seem the least bit interested in changing priestly discipline regarding marriage, and the idea of fighting off Evangelical poaching by making Catholicism more 'populist' does not seem to be in the cards at all, not when the last two papacies have moved in the exact opposite direction.  As for the third issue, that might actually appeal to a certain Catholic mindset and certain secretive Catholic organizations.

To conclude, I think the time is not quite ripe for an African Pope.  That does not mean I think a Pope from the South is impossible.  I think we could very easily have a pope from Latin America or perhaps even Cardinal Tagle from the Philippines.  What we do not need is a pope from inside the Curia.  We just had that and he proved completely inept at dealing with the Curia precisely because he relied on his Curial connections, even though as time went on their incompetence became a major issue for his papacy. It was their loyalty that mattered, and that is understandable in a corrupt and competitive beauracracy, and precisely the reason we don't need another pope from the Curia.  It can not fix itself.

I find it quite easy to believe that the real tipping point for Benedict's resignation was the report generated by the three non voting elderly cardinals he assigned to investigate Vatileaks.  Blaming the lay butler and the lay IT tech might have relieved some clerical minds, but it also points out how truly untouchable Vatican Cardinals are in fact.  One of the tasks the new Pope must take on is why Curial Cardinals are so teflon coated.  He may not like the answer, and I'm pretty sure if he asks, the safely retired Benedict will give it to him.



 

The Power Of Human Consciousness

There might be more to this than coincidence

Human consciousness is a force, and it's real, and it sometimes manifests in 'striking' ways.  Yesterday the world's consciousness was focused on the Vatican and lo and behold it's struck by lightening.  Pope Benedict's resignation was a bolt out of the blue itself.  There was a time in my life I would have passed this event off as coincidence but not anymore.  Here's a story and it's about one of my eye opening experiences in the real time effects of the spiritual reality.

Just about a decade ago I attended my first Sun Dance on the Pine Ridge reservation.  I was a complete novice having never been to a Sun Dance and having only anecdotal stories from which to understand the event.  The first evening was spent around a campfire with one of the Dance Intercessors discussing how atypical antipsychotics interfered with spiritual ability.  Joe obviously knew a whole lot about atypical antipsychotics and their effects.  He went on at some length about how western psychiatry didn't know what they were on about and couldn't tell spiritual phenomenon from a load of hay.  Or words to that effect. The last thing I expected was to be sitting around a campfire with a Native elder who was critiquing western psychiatry in psychiatric lingo and talking about quantum singularities, collective consciousness, and quantum entanglement.  

When I asked him why he was bothering with us when we weren't dancing, were basically spectators, and he had fifty dancers to worry about he said "There are orbs all around your group. You were singled out. I had to satisfy myself as to who you were." 

That brought us up short because we had been taking orb photographs for months.  So we asked him if he could actually see orbs, and he laughed and laughed.  He then said, "It's not surprising to me that whites need some kind of technology for them to 'see' what we 'see' naturally. It's how you are all programmed to think and view the world. You can't do anything without technology. Yes I see what you call orbs. It's how we know who should dance and who needs more preparation or who the ancestors are pointing out."  I was stunned. But it got more interesting.

On the second morning the intercessors started watching the sky and talking about the need for 'purification' of the dance grounds.  Apparently there had been some alcohol brought in the previous evening or some bickering amongst the dancers, or arguments amongst the kitchen staff or all of the above.  Anyway things were 'out of balance' and needed purifying and that usually meant a rain storm.  A gentle one if things were close to balanced, a more vigorous one if things were really out of balance. 

I am not believing what I'm hearing.  The implication is the weather will respond to the needs of the Sun Dance. Not going there.  I sort of laughed the notion off, but the Intercessors were dead serious and eventually pinned the kitchen staff as the real problem. A kitchen staff fighting amongst themselves while preparing the food put their bad energy in everything they cooked. This was not so bad for the dancers, since they didn't eat for four days, but it was very bad for the drummers.  We would have to have a big storm.  

My friend and I take off for Chadron, NE on a mercy run about noon.  We were kind of laughing about how disappointed the Intercessors would be when a storm didn't show up because there was not one cloud in the sky and it was 95 degrees. We were gone for about an hour and a half.  On our way back we are about ten miles from the camp ground when we drive around a corner in the road and see a huge rainbow that seems to be settled right over the camp ground.  It's lit up against a background of very dark clouds.  It seems a localized storm of some sort had rolled in from the East.  We however, are struck with the magnificence of the rainbow and not really thinking about the mornings' talk about 'purification'.  

I had to turn onto a sort of 'road' that went through a plowed wheat field in order to get down to the camp ground.  The 'road' was a sea of red clay, obviously having been hit be a ton of rain. It wound up being some of the slickest driving I had ever done in my life, and that was in four wheel drive and in four low. We crept/slopt up to the edge of the precipice we had to drive down and got our first look at the camp ground below us.  It had literally been hit by what looked to have been a tornado. The only two tents left standing were ours, every other tent was blown half a county away. The kitchen tent, which was a very large, very heavy military affair, was obliterated. It took a direct hit with wind gusts estimated to be over 85 miles an hour.  The storm dropped over an inch of rain and lasted about five minutes.  There was not a dry thing in the camp including our sleeping bags.  Our tents survived the wind but were still filled with three to four inches of rain.  It looked like a war zone.

A halt was called in the Dance and the dancers were allowed out of the compound to help relatives get some semblance of order back to the camp.  The kitchen tent was beyond repair and one of the cooks, the not so nice one, had been transported to the hospital with a broken leg and would not be back.  It was quite a scene.  I became a true believer in the power of directed consciousness.   The next two and a half days were pleasant and uneventful with a number of impressive healings occurring the next day.  Very pure grounds helped.  

The Intercessors saw the storm as a product of their tradition, in that these kinds of storms always come when needed, coupled with the power of the "Four Directions and Other Side Camp" who work closely with the medicine people for the good of the tribe, and finally, the collective conscious need of the people.  In Catholic terminology it would be the impact of traditional sacramental practice, the Communion of Saints and Angels, and the earthly participants--the pew potatoes-- all working together to bring what's needed.  Not necessarily what is wanted, but what is needed.  Purification is critical because otherwise things get chaotic and out of balance.

So I see last night's demonstration at the Vatican as a very good sign.  St Peter's was purified and the Communion of Saints and Angels gave notice that they are paying attention.  They should, it's their Church too.  Now the collective consciousness of the earth bound church just needs to focus on electing the pope that's needed, not necessarily the one that's wanted.

Here's my little bit of advice for whoever is elected.  Native elders have a saying:  "The people know what's wrong and the people know how to fix it."  What they mean by this is when left to their own devices, the people will identify and fix what needs fixing.  They may not know how they know what's wrong or where the solution comes from, but they will know it and the solutions will come. I hope the next Pope takes this little concept into consideration because it honors the People of God and will take a huge load of his shoulders.  He just needs to trust in the collective consciousness of the People of God and the answers to the problems will be found. Otherwise, the purifications will keep on coming and they may not be so gentle.

   
 

A Photo Of Interest

Lightening striking St Peter's the evening of Pope Benedict's resignation.  Reality mirrors Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.  God must approve Benedict's decision. 
(pic ANSA) http://pic.twitter.com/09KGgZNl

A Truly Historic Announcement

"Well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of St Peter ...
"As from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours (1900 GMT) the See of Rome, the See of St. Peter will be vacant and a conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is." 


Whatever one makes of the resignation of Pope Benedict, one has to admit this is historic. For the first time in forever I slept in this morning and when I turned on my computer and saw the headline on Yahoo I was stunned, and yet not that surprised, not really. When I look at the past year, there were signs this was coming. Pope Benedict reacted slowly and with confusion to the Vatileaks affair.  He called a consistory on very short notice which elevated some of his favorite sons to the College of Cardinals.  He promoted Georg Ganswein to Archbishop and I am sure will appoint him to Regensburg before February 28th. He forgave his butler.  He released a series of motu proprios.  He appointed another German in his image and likeness to head the CDF.  He seemed to be sweeping his desk clean, finishing his bucket list.  He had stated a number of years ago that he would consider resignation if the office got too difficult.  He is being true to his own vision of the papacy.

A number of comments on various blogs speculate that Benedict will meddle in the election of his successor.  I don't think he will because he's already appointed his successor to the one office he truly cared about, and that's the head of the CDF.  If the last fifty or so years have shown anything, it's that the real power behind the throne is the CDF.  It began with the meddling of Cardinal Ottaviani in the documents of Vatican II and continued through 28 years of Cardinal Ratzinger, then Cardinal Levada,  and now the strong arm tactics of Gerhard Mueller. Benedict has the man in place to protect the theological path of the Church--which has always been Benedict's first concern--and that was closely followed by how that theology played out in the liturgy.  On these two tasks of asserting his conservative theology and having that theology play out in the liturgy, his work is done.  He can retire to write his own legacy. 

Part of that legacy, whether he intended this or not, is that he has made the point in spades that the office of Pope is just that, an office.  It's not an ascension to a semi divine all knowing ontologically different human state.  The Pope is not Jesus Christ with a private hotline to the Holy Spirit.  The Pope is just another man who can get old and tired and admit the office is too much.  It maybe this one act which will cement Benedict's legacy.  It maybe this one act for which the Holy Spirit had anything at all to do with his election to the Papacy.

The next Pope will have to deal with the mess in the curia.  Benedict's legacy will also include little things like a Vatican Bank without leadership, ATM's that have been shutdown because of the Vatican Bank, the demoralization in diplomatic corps, the overweaning influence of parallel churches like Opus Dei and the Neo Cats, the prevalence of corruption in high office, the Italian influence on how the curia does it's business and on and on and on.  But the first thing the new pope will have to deal with is Benedict's legacy of clerical abuse.

Benedict did not deal particularly well with clerical abuse as Pope, and did a dismal job as head of the CDF.  I always thought it was karmic that his papacy was so tainted by his own job performance as head of the CDF. If Benedict thinks retirement will protect him from the lawyers at the Hague, he may be mistaken.  In any event it is imperative the next pope have clean hands when it comes to clerical abuse.  That leaves out almost all American Cardinals.  Thank God.

This has been a stunning and historic day.  It seems I have had the privilege of living through a lot of stunning and historic days for Roman Catholicism.  As Benedict stated in his retirement announcement "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith" is changing faster than anyone man can hope to keep up with, and in the end that may be his last and final message for his successor.  Collegiality was a good idea after all.  It's all just too much for one man.

 

For Some Archbishops The Most Useful Catholic Is A Dead Catholic

For some Archbishops the most useful Catholics in the world are here.  Or else this is a self portrait.

 

Is it better to take from the dead to give to the abused, or is it better to give to the dead to keep from the abused?  Given that the Vatican had to sign off on both approaches, there is no direction on this thorny moral pastoral problem from the Vatican.  The first story from the LA Times deals with Cardinal Mahony's approach which was to take from the dead to give to the abused.  The second story from Huffington Post deals with Cardinal Dolan's approach which was just the opposite.  Dolan's approach may have been given the Vatican's approval, but didn't meet with the approval of a Federal bankruptcy judge.

 

Cardinal Mahony used cemetery money to pay sex abuse settlement

By Harriet Ryan, Los Angeles Times  - 2/9/2013

Pressed to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to settle clergy sex abuse lawsuits, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony turned to one group of Catholics whose faith could not be shaken: the dead.

Under his leadership in 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles quietly appropriated $115 million from a cemetery maintenance fund and used it to help pay a landmark settlement with molestation victims.
The church did not inform relatives of the deceased that it had taken the money, which amounted to 88% of the fund. Families of those buried in church-owned cemeteries and interred in its mausoleums have contributed to a dedicated account for the perpetual care of graves, crypts and grounds since the 1890s.
Mahony and other church officials also did not mention the cemetery fund in numerous public statements about how the archdiocese planned to cover the $660-million abuse settlement. In detailed presentations to parish groups, the cardinal and his aides said they had cashed in substantial investments to pay the settlement, but they did not disclose that the main asset liquidated was cemetery money.

In response to questions from The Times, the archdiocese acknowledged using the maintenance account to help settle abuse claims. It said in a statement that the appropriation had "no effect" on cemetery upkeep and enabled the archdiocese "to protect the assets of our parishes, schools and essential ministries."

Day-to-day upkeep at the archdiocese's 11 cemeteries and its cathedral mausoleum is financed by cemetery sales revenue separate from the 15% deposited into the fund, spokeswoman Carolina Guevara said. Based on actuarial predictions, it would be at least 187 years before cemeteries are fully occupied and the church started to draw on the maintenance account, she said.

"We estimate that Perpetual Care funds will not be needed until after the year 2200," Guevara wrote in an email.
The church's use of fund money appears to be legal. State law prohibits private cemeteries from touching the principal of their perpetual care funds and bars them from using the interest on those funds for anything other than maintenance. Those laws, however, do not apply to cemeteries run by religious organizations.....

There is more to the above story, mostly dealing with how LA Archdiocesan officials were not precisely forthcoming about this transfer of 115 million dollars.  It did however, keep the Archdiocese from declaring bankruptcy, which is precisely what Milwaukee Archdiocesan officials have done and also the precise reason why they transferred 55 million dollars into their cemetery account:


Cardinal Dolan and the Dead Lose One to the Living

Michael D'Antonio - Huffington Post - 1/17/2013
Who is more deserving: victims of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests, or dead people moldering their graves?

When he was Archbishop of Milwaukee, Timothy Dolan chose the dead people, placing $55 million into cemetery trust funds and out of the reach of local abuse victims suing the Church. (They want compensation for the suffering caused by childhood sexual trauma.) Dolan left Milwaukee to take the most visible post in Catholic America -- cardinal of New York City - but he could not escape his choice. The victims asked a federal bankruptcy judge to reverse him, and on Friday she did. For now the $55 million is available to settle hundreds of well-documented cases in which priests raped and sexually molested children and adolescents.
 
Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley discussed her decision in court on Friday, explaining that neither First Amendment protections for religion nor federal law protect the archdiocese from her authority. She sided with creditors in the bankruptcy proceedings, who said the main purpose of the 2008 transfer was to place it out of their reach. In fact the archdiocese had managed the task of mowing the grass and otherwise maintaining cemeteries for generations without a $55 million trust generating income for that purpose.

Although lawyers for the Church will challenge Kelley, she stands on solid legal ground and the federal district court judges that consider such issues rarely overrule their colleagues in bankruptcy courts. Also, Kelley's track record in this controversial and complicated case would defy any argument that she has favored the creditors. Indeed, last month she refused an attempt by them to claw-back $35 million that Dolan had distributed to local parishes. "Arguably there was something 'fishy' about the transfer," noted Kelley at the time. But in that instance the funds had originated in local parishes and one could reasonably argue they were simply getting the money back. This time the fishy smell was stronger, and Kelley put hundreds of other cases on hold to resolve the question in favor of the creditors.

For victims in Milwaukee, among them men who were raped by the head of a boarding school for the deaf, Kelley's decision keeps alive their hope for compensation and, perhaps, the release of documents and depositions that will reveal the truth about how Church leaders deflected complaints and allowed abusive priests to evade justice. For Dolan, it is another contradiction to the jolly, caring persona he has presented to the people of New York. (Previously Dolan denied and then admitted he had authorized payments to induce priests charged with abuse to leave the priesthood.)


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Cardinal Dolan, from his perch in NY City has denied a number of decisions he made in Milwaukee only to wind up with egg Benedict on his face.  Here is his denial from February 2011 about the transfers of money in the above article as reported by Catholic News Agency:

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York criticized as “malarkey” and “ridiculous and groundless gossip” a lawyer’s claim that while he was the head of the Milwaukee archdiocese, he hid $130 million in archdiocesan funds so that victims of sexual abuse could not sue for it.
He said the charges were “terribly irresponsible” and he invited law enforcement to speak with him about his time as Archbishop of Milwaukee.
“I have nothing to hide,” he said after Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the New York Daily News reports.
“Unfortunately, this man got the attention he wanted and has come to expect from the news, tarnishing the good name of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, and of me,” Archbishop Dolan said on his blog.
“Lord knows I’ve made mistakes, but ‘hiding’ $130 million is hardly one of them!”

Just as an aside, what I find interesting about the above quote is that Cardinal Dolan never explicitly denies the charges.  He calls them irresponsible, but he doesn't call them untrue.  And his last sentence admits to making mistakes and that this wasn't one of them, which is probably true given the Vatican approved of his financial transactions and then rewarded him with New York and an elevation to Cardinal.  So I can see where he doesn't think hiding $130 million is one of his mistakes.

I guess if I look just at the facts, I would have to answer my original question by looking at the consequences. Cardinal Mahony finally does something semi right in that releasing $115 million of cemetery trust funds for payment to abuse survivors seems more pastoral than hiding $55 million specifically to avoid pay outs for abuse survivors.  Even though Mahony was less than forthcoming about this fact, almost deceitful in fact, he did at least see to it that resources were spent on the living.  However, he has not been protected by the Vatican for his part in the LA cover ups and has in fact been publicly dressed down by his successor.  Dolan on the other hand, was promoted by the Vatican and given the most visible Archdiocesan See in the US. His deceit was involved protecting the funds rather than settle with abuse victims. Unfortunately for him, the Vatican only appoints Archbishops, not Federal judges.

It seems obvious then that as far as the Vatican is concerned the correct pastoral solution was to slide more money over to cemetery trusts to take care of the dead than use these funds to pastor to the abused living. Can one say 'whited sepulchers'?

 

Magdalene Laundries, Vatican II and Treating People As If They Were Their Sins

The Magdalene Laundry story exemplifies the historic attitude of the Church and the society Church influence created as it applied to poor women.  If some high placed men in the Church have their way, history will repeat itself.

I spent part of this weekend reading the recently released report on the Magdalen Laundries in Ireland.  The first thing that stands out in my mind is that past residents are almost unanimous that they experienced no real physical abuse, as opposed to their experiences in Irish State residential schools.  The abuse was psychological and emotional, and it was consistent between various laundries.  That may seem to make the laundries more humane, but the singular psychological abuse employed was keeping the girls and women completely in the dark about why they were there and when, or if, they could ever leave.  Physical abuse ends, this form of psychological abuse is endless precisely because it has no defined end.  There is no light at the end of the tunnel.  Professional interrogators have learned that applied psychological and emotional abuse of this type is more effective than physical abuse or even physical torture in manipulating behavior.

In some respects it seems the congregations that ran these laundries transferred their enclosed rules for religious life as a sort of day by day operations manual for the laundries. The girls became perpetual novices whose institutionalized lifestyle was assumed by it's religious nature to have the capacity to reform them.  Given this, I didn't find it particularly surprising that the nuns who over saw their lives would see anything particularly abusive in how that management was done on a day to day basis.  Of course this totally overlooks the fact novices who undergo this kind of regimen voluntary choose it because they believe they have a vocation. The Magdalene's, for the most part, had no idea why they were even there, and simply endured a life style where their inexpensive maintenance and forced labor benefited the economic situation of their employers. In too many cases, the 'conversion' was to a dependency on the institution, and not to living a reformed life on the outside.  Not so different from many nuns who left enclosed convents and had a hugely difficult time adjusting the 'world outside'.

The other intriguing, and I think very important observation, is that the entire approach used by nuns dramatically changed for the better after Vatican II.  This point is made by the survivors, the nuns themselves, clinical professionals, and lay support staff.  Vatican II had a very positive effect on the reality within the laundries, if not so much on how a girl found themselves in the laundries.  It would take Irish society quite awhile longer to move past the reasoning which necessitated the creation of Magdalene Laundries in the first place.

I think one of the most influential changes wrought in Catholicism by Vatican II was it's emphasis on seeing people as people, and not as sinners in need of correction.  It's really hard to relate compassionately to someone who you 'see' as a sinner first and person second.  Unfortunately, Catholicism seems to be returning to this conceptualization.  The 'reform of the reform' with it's emphasis on sexual morality, is taking us right back to the mindset that created the Magdalene Laundries.  People are once again becoming their sins, and being related to as the embodiment of a given sin.  This is really becoming evident in the argumentation of conservative Catholics on too many Catholic blog sights, but it also seems to underlie the argumentation of the USCCB with it's tendency to define women as 'selfish consumers of birth control' or selfish murderers of their unborn fetuses---or gays as something more than selfish promiscuous purveyors of intrinsically evil sex.  Should Catholicism get re entrenched on this path of relating to people as various classes of sin, and not as legitimate people with dignity beyond their 'sin', Vatican II will surely have been aborted.

I suppose the ironic thing about this transformation after Vatican II, is that in the case of bishops, it's a different story.  For too many Catholics of all persuasions, 'bishop' has become a definition for a particular sin, and bishops themselves are being treated as a sin and not as a person with dignity in their own right. I can't say that most of them haven't earned it, either by commission or ommission.  They have been so consistent in their behavior that it's understandable why this has occurred. What I wish they might do this Lent is meditate on this phenomenon of  'bishop as another name for sin', and not spend so much time calling for the conversion of the laity.  The real conversion that will make a real difference for laity is their own conversion.  Maybe then all the People of God acting together would have a chance at reforming the unexamined abuses built with in the Catholic system that have led to all kinds of these other abuses.  Perhaps as a start, all our bishops could do their own laundry as a Lenten penance.

A Papal Theologian Explains Why Women Have An Easier Time Relating To Christ And Why That Means They Can't Be Ordained......Or Something Like That

I wish seriously that Catholicism would just drop this 'bride of Christ' imagery as it leads to all kinds of mental gender bending.

When I read an article like the one I have excerpted below, I really wonder if priests like Dominican Fr Giertych expect any thinking lay person to take him seriously.  What makes this treatise more disturbing is that Fr Geirtych is the official theologian of the Papal household.  The following is the last half of the article dealing with women's ordination. The original article was posted on Catholic News Service. It was written by Francis X Rocca.

 Why not women priests? The papal theologian explains

Francis X Rocca - Catholic News Service - 1/31/2013
.......Reflecting on differences between the sexes, Father Giertych suggested other reasons that men are especially suited to the priesthood.

Men are more likely to think of God in terms of philosophical definitions and logical syllogisms, he said, a quality valuable for fulfilling a priest's duty to transmit church teaching.

Although the social and administrative aspects of church life are hardly off-limits to women, Father Giertych said priests love the church in a characteristically "male way" when they show concern "about structures, about the buildings of the church, about the roof of the church which is leaking, about the bishops' conference, about the concordat between the church and the state."

Father Giertych acknowledged that a Catholic woman might sincerely believe she is called to the priesthood, but said such a "subjective" belief does not indicate the objective existence of a vocation. (Hmm, she might 'feel' she was called, rather than 'think' she was called in a manly philosophical way.)

None of which means that women hold an inferior place in the church, he said. (but never the less a marginal place in teaching and governance. Can't have feelings and subjective stuff interfering with the manly logical and philosophical ponderings about leaky roofs and concordats with right wing dictators.)

"Every baptized person, both male and female, participates in the priesthood of Christ through the sacrament of baptism, drawing the fruits of the paschal mystery to one's own soul," he said. "And maybe in some sense we could say that, in this, women are more apt to draw from the mystery of Christ, by the quality of their prayer life, by the quality of their faith."


Women are better able than men to perceive the "proximity of God" and enter into a relationship with him, Father Giertych said, pointing to the privileged role played by women in the New Testament.

"Women have a special access to the heart of Jesus," he said, "in a very vivid way of approaching him, of touching him, of praying with him, of pouring ointment on his head, of kissing his feet."

"The mission of the woman in the church is to convince the male that power is not most important in the church, not even sacramental power," he said. "What is most important is the encounter with the living God through faith and charity." (Is he saying women are supposed to push men to get out of their heads and into their subjective hearts? To feel and experience God?)

"So women don't need the priesthood," he said, "because their mission is so beautiful in the church anyway." (Which includes having male babies and manipulating some of them into being priests.)

This special relationship, the theologian said, is essentially related to Jesus' maleness. (Guess where this thought is going....)

"I remember once a contemplative nun told me, 'oh, wouldn't it be horrible if Jesus were a woman?' And it dawned on me that, for a woman, the access to Jesus in prayer is easier than for us men, because he's male," Father Giertych said. "The relationship of love, of attachment, the spousal relationship to Christ is easier for the woman." (And of course by this reasoning, also for gay men, but in the end is actually a reason for women's ordination.)


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Well, I am edified if somewhat confused.  If women have an easier time relating to Jesus in a spousal role why wouldn't that be an asset for ordination in representing the entire Church as the Bride of Christ?  It would certainly seem to be an asset for a gay priest.  Hmmmmm is that why we have so many gay priests? Given this kind of theology, and the fact the Holy Spirit is precluded from calling women priests, is this why He calls forth so many gay priests?  Is that why the Roman Catholic Church frequently comes across as homoerotic because we are all trying to squeeze ourselves into some sort of erotic relationship with Jesus? What's wrong with Buddy Jesus? 

I can't seriously imagine that Fr Giertych actually believes this stuff.  Unless he really is so naive he can't see the logical end conclusion of his thinking, and this would by definition imply he is cogitating in an unmanly illogical way. Perhaps he should stick to pondering the maintenance issues in the papal household and stay out of theological issues.  Or maybe we need to throw out all this 'spousal thinking' when it comes to the theology of the priesthood.

I do however agree that women do tend to be far better at the spiritual stuff than men.  Why that isn't seen as a positive trait for sacramental leadership is beyond me.  The logic of banning women from the priesthood while admitting they have a better grasp of the spiritual is apparently beyond this poor female brain to figure out. 



 

 

Head Of The CDF Launches Attack On First World Catholicism

Pope Benedict and Archbishop Gerhard Muller are having issues with the German Church.  Seems the idea of obedience to authority isn't quite as strong as it used to be in Germany.

Vatican Insider has a sad article about Archbishop Muller the current head of the CDF and his issues with the German Catholic Church. Actually he extends his observations to the Church in all of Europe and the United States.  Apparently Catholics in the first world are out to get the Church.  This kind of thinking is sometimes referred to as paranoid ideation.  Someone should remind the Archbishop there would be no bad press in the first world if bishops like himself didn't attempt to snow first world Catholics about the clerical abuse of their children and the mismanagement of their donated monies. Accountability doesn't seem to be the word for the day in the lala land of Vatican city.

Müller compares mood toward Catholic Church to anti-Jewish pogroms

The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith launches an attack from the columns of German daily “Die Welt”: North America and Europe are involved in a "concerted campaign" to discredit the Catholic Church

Alessandro Alviani - Vatican Insider - 2/2/2013 Berlin - The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mgr. Gerhard Ludwig Müller, has launched a biting attack of the mood toward the Catholic Church in the U.S. and Europe, comparing it to an anti-Jewish “pogrom” in German weekly Die Welt. “The campaigns which are specifically targeted at discrediting the Catholic Church in the U.S. and Europe have led to clerics in some sectors being publicly insulted in a vulgar way,” the former bishop of Regensburg said. “An artificially instigated anger is building, occasionally echoing the sentiment of the pogroms against Jews in Europe,” he added. Attacks against the Church are launched on many blogs and on television. The instruments adopted in these attacks “recall the struggles of totalitarian ideologies against Christianity.” (These are the remarks of a man who does not live in the real world. That he runs the CDF is frightening.)
 
In his interview with Die Welt, the cardinal also criticises the process of dialogue that is currently underway between bishops and lay people in dioceses across Germany. The fact that there is dialogue is a positive thing but essential questions must be dealt with instead of “dredging up the same problems every time.” The problems Müller was referring to are for example, the requests by the laity for the priesthood to be opened up to women: this “is not possible,” not because women are worth less than men, but because “it is in the nature of the Sacrament of Order for Christ to be represented within it as husband in relation to wife.” (This is just bizarre logic and has nothing to do with Jesus' request that his leadership be servant leaders.  For that to happen the priesthood would have to represent the wife in this equation.)
 
The rejection of same-sex unions is just as clear-cut: “It is impossible for the Catholic Church to accept a relationship between people of the same sex, as such relations cannot in any way be considered equivalent to marriage,” Müller stated. He also shut the door on the potential abolition of celibacy: “Priestly celibacy corresponds to the example and word of Jesus and has found unique expression through the spiritual experience of the Latin Church.” There is no sign, he added, of the Church wanting to change this, starting with certain mistaken ideas, as if practicing one’ sexuality in or outside marriage were a natural necessity.” (Classic confusion of sexual activity with a loving relationship. Until this changes there is no hope for any sanity in the CDF.)
 
The real stagnation in reforms within the Church, Müller said, regards “essential issues that are not being dealt with, such as participation in the sacraments and knowledge of the Catholic faith.” The word “reform” should be used to hinder real renewal through Christ. (Maybe he never heard the expression 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink'.)
 
Müller then said one cannot speak of the “German Church” but rather of the Catholic Church in Germany. He went on to deny the existence of “Roman centralism”, saying that unfortunately there is not enough unity in the Church and that is not centralism that is causing the Church to suffer, but other centrifugal forces which are too strong. (Yep, it's too bad the Vatican no longer has the clout to stop the advance of science.  It only has the clout to stop advancement in Catholic theology and practice.)
 
Finally, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith sent a clear message to the Lefebvrians: we presented them with a proposed doctrinal preamble but “we have received no response so far and we will not wait forever.” 

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I'm beginning to think the men in the Vatican are seriously losing their grip on reality.  I am at a loss to understand how Muller can begin to compare the media coverage the clergy of the Church most certainly brought on themselves with pogroms instituted against Jews.  The anger with Roman Catholic leadership has not been 'artificially instigated'.  It has been justifiably earned.  Talk about living in denial.

I find this article pretty ominous actually.  No question the German Pope and the German head of the CDF have real problems with the Catholic Church in Germany and many of those problems are directly related to the centralism that is apparently not causing the Church to suffer. I don't think jamming catechesis down the throats of people who have already rejected the rational for that catechesis is going to work very well. Especially when those rationales for the all male priesthood include such drivel as 'representing Jesus as groom to the church as His bride'. I know this is taken from a New Testament verse, but marriage in those days was a property contract, not necessarily a relationship between two equals.  So no, I don't think this metaphor implies equality between men and women, nor does it imply equality between the ordained and the lay.  It implies exactly what we have, religious relationships based in dominance and submission and the continual relegation of women to the margins.

Perhaps the real problem the Vatican has with the Catholic Church in the US and Europe is that the laity and some of the priesthood have come to the conclusion that spiritual relationships based in dominance and submission are not conducive to spiritual growth. In fact, such relationships have produced an enormous amount of infantilization of the laity and the outright sexual abuse of our children, which in turn has produced all the lousy media coverage Archbishop Muller resents.  Throwing a tantrum is not going to shut anyone up.  If he was a real husband to a real wife, he might have figured this one out on his own.  Unfortunately he's become another example of another cleric living in a fantasy world where all his logic makes internal sense but doesn't translate well at all in the external world with it's own set of realities.  Which is why I find this article ominous.  If this truly gives a picture of where Muller is coming from, the Church in the first world is in for a very bad time and men like Fr Flannery might just as well find other employment.     

An NCR Editorial Speaks Truth About The LA Archdiocesan Leadership--Or Lack There OF

Seriously, Cardinal Mahony swears he wasn't taught anything about child sexual abuse in his MSW course work, which leaves me wondering what the heck they taught about evil in his seminary course work.

The National Catholic Reporter has just posted a hard hitting editorial on the situation in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Although I give Archbishop Gomez some credit for an attempt at accountability, the truth is Cardinal Mahony has lost very little of his input in Roman Catholicism.  He retains all of his perks as a Cardinal, including the right to vote in a conclave, and his priesthood has not been effected.  It is at best a slap on the wrist, typical of Pope Benedict's papacy when it comes to those bishops who covered for abusive priests. I have a very strong suspicion that AB Gomez would never have taken any such action against Cardinal Mahony if the Archdiocese had won the court battle over these released files.  This is not the action of a man of integrity.  It is the action of a man who lost in court and is now trying to both deflect all the blame to his predecessor and stem the current bleeding of Church credibility.

Editorial: In Los Angeles, a victory for truth

Editorial - National Catholic Reporter - 2/2/2013

To those familiar with the protocols of the Catholic hierarchy, the news was stunning. The archbishop of Los Angeles publicly rebuked his predecessor, a cardinal, for his failures in dealing with the priest sex abuse scandal.
The action by Archbishop Jose Gomez, relieving Cardinal Roger Mahony of “any administrative or public duties,” was remarkable on two levels.

First, it broke with the unspoken but nearly ironclad rule of the culture of Catholic hierarchy that bishops do not publicly criticize other bishops. That courtesy extended even to the most egregious examples of ecclesial malfeasance – the deliberate and persistent hiding of criminal activities by priests. No one to this point had uttered a word against a predecessor, not in New York or Connecticut, not in Philadelphia or Milwaukee, not in Seattle or Santa Fe. There were “mistakes made,” they would say, and offer vacuous apologies. For whatever reasons yet unknown, Gomez broke the code. (This isn't precisely true.  AB Martin of Dublin did have some very strong words for his fellow bishops including urging some of them to resign.)

Second, the language Gomez used was blunt and unqualified. The behavior he found in the files, he said, was “evil.” The acts themselves and the handling of these matters, as the files revealed, showed more than mistakes made, they showed a “terrible failure.”
“I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed,” Gomez wrote, who also referred to Mahony’s sorrow “for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care.” (Except that AB Gomez was signing checks for the attorneys trying to keep these files out of the public domain and that makes it hard for me to believe in his sincerety.)

Gomez’s words are a direct contradiction of the weak defense that Mahony has advanced for years, all the while spending untold sums in attempts to keep the truth hidden. It is the same list of explanations that he repeated in a lengthy and testy response to Gomez’s statement. “Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem,” wrote Mahony. In studying for his master’s degree in social work, he said, no lecture or textbook ever referred to the sexual abuse of children. (This is a pathetic defense, but the MSW Mahony would have received in the early 60's would have been quite different than the same degree today with it's emphasis in counseling/therapy rather than social work.)

There is, of course, some truth to the “we didn’t know” defense. Few knew, years ago, the seriousness of the disease borne by those who molest children. Much of it remains a mystery today.
But the “we didn’t know” defense quickly wears thin against the details contained in the 12,000 pages of documents that were just released by the court in Los Angeles, just as it wore thin against the truth revealed when documents were released in other places like Philadelphia and Boston.

That’s why Mahony spent so much time and money over nearly a decade attempting to keep the documents sealed. It’s why, even after agreeing to release documents as part of a 2007 settlement with 508 victims costing $660 million, he continued to fight tooth and nail to keep the documents secret. It is why he and the diocese’s lawyers tried a last ditch and ultimately failed attempt to get the courts to redact the names of church officials from the documents so that it would be difficult to tell who did what. The documents put the lie to the “we didn’t know” defense.

What they demonstrate – and we have yet to read through all the thousands of pages -- is that diocesan officials, while they may not have understood the intricacies of the sex abuser’s mind and motivation, did know that laws were being broken, children were being raped and otherwise abused. They knew they had to take extraordinary lengths -- sending priests to counselors who were also lawyers so they could claim their conversations were privileged, sending some priests out of the country and others from parish to parish and diocese to diocese -- to avoid detection by the law and by the very Catholic community the officials were charged to serve. They knew enough to understand they had to hide the crimes and the behavior if they didn’t want to besmirch the good name of the clergy culture. Consideration of what was happening to the abused children and their families was incidental, at best. (No, the documents show the children were only considered in the context of being adversaries to the agenda of protecting the clerical culture.)

What Mahony and others  --  Cardinals Bernard Law, Justin Rigali, Edward Egan, Anthony Bevilacqua, and a host of archbishops and bishops  --  really didn’t understand was the degree to which their moral compasses had been distorted by the strong magnetic pull of the clergy culture. In their fierce allegiance to that exclusive club at all costs, in their willingness to preserve the façade of holiness and the faithful’s high notion of ordination, they lost sight of simple human decency and the most fundamental demands of the gospel.

It doesn’t take a master’s or a doctorate to understand that the first obligation of adults is to protect the children. When the first instinct became protection of the clergy and the institution, our leaders became disfigured at some deep and essential level. The Catholic community is still waiting for them to deal honestly with that reality, with what happens to them when their robes turn to purple.

Meanwhile, there are no heroes in any of this. Gomez may have broken with normal behaviors, but as many have already pointed out, he had access to the documents for two years and said nothing. And it is reasonable to expect that if Mahony and the lawyers had succeeded in keeping the documents sealed, nothing would have been said. The “evil” would have remained festering on some chancery shelf.
If Archbishop Gomez really wants to do a service to the people of God in Los Angeles, he will reveal how much of the archdiocese’s treasury was spent during the last decade on trying to hide that truth. By its own admission the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., diocese spent $1.39 million in a failed 18-month attempt to defend Bishop Robert Finn from charges of failing to report a child pornographer, and the Milwaukee archdiocese has spent $9 million in a two-year-long, far-from-settled bankruptcy case precipitated by sex abuse law suits. The amount of money the Los Angeles archdiocese has spent hiding these documents must be mind-boggling. That is evil, as well. (An evil AB Gomez has himself participated in.)

There are no heroes among the many other chancery officials and public relations advisors and lawyers who knew, some for many years, what crimes and sins had been committed against children.

There are no heroes in the Vatican structures, on up to the pope, among those who years ago could have demanded a review of the documents, come to the same conclusions as Gomez and removed Mahony long ago. It would have saved the church of Los Angeles years of suspense and enormous amounts of money. We say we believe that the truth will set us free. In too many dioceses today, the truth remains hidden and the church remains in chains fashioned by its bishops.

Endless speculation will swirl now about why Gomez did what he did and what precisely it means. None of that really matters. What matters is the truth that will outlast reporters, commentators, perpetrators, cardinals, bishops, victims and the rest. The revelation and preservation of that truth in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles just received a boost with the release of the documents.

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When Bishop Finn wrote his attack piece on the NCR, the cynical conspiracy theorizing part of my mind suspected that the Opus Dei Finn was providing cover for the Opus Dei Archbishop Gomez to come up with some response for the sick situation exposed in LA.  So here it is, a take down of Cardinal Mahony.  It's a good strategy in that Cardinal Mahony earned this takedown, (as ineffective as it is since Mahony hasn't lost much of anything except participating in confirmations in the Archdiocese) and it seemingly paints Gomez as  courageous for breaking ranks with the long purple line. But if one takes the time to actually read some of these documents, what AB Gomez has done amounts to nothing more than blowing smoke.  

 

Nothing is going to change until there is a completely different authority structure in the Church and a different concept of the priesthood, and that is never going to happen under the AB Gomez' of Roman Catholicism.  Much easier to rattle his crozier at Roger the not so artful Dodger than really and truly do something about the conditions that gave Mahony the sense of clerical entitlement that was the real motivation for Mahony and hundreds of other bishops to enact strategies that were both criminal and self protecting.  

 

I never ever forget that what this behavior really defines is the sad fact that when our leadership thinks of 'the Church' those thoughts do not include those who foot the bills--or their children.