Monday, May 17, 2010

When Two Deaths Are Morally Better Than One

Sister Margaret McBride is now ex Catholic Margaret McBride. Funny how the hierarchy can work at light speed when it comes to women and women's issues, but at a snails pace when it comes to their issues.


An Irish nun, a Catholic hospital, a dying mother, an abortion, and...
Father Tim - IrishCentral.com - 5/16/2010


My friends,

It has not taken long for news of the excommunication of an Irish nun in the misbegotten state of Arizona to reach around the world, even to the far-off mission in which I am blessed to serve.

You can read the whole story here, but in brief: Sister Margaret McBride, a longtime and faithful worker at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix with some pioneering accomplishments helping the poor to her credit, has been excommunicated by local Bishop Thomas Olmsted. Sister Margaret was a member of the hospital's ethics committee, which faced a terrible decision. A patient with an 11-week-old fetus was dying in the hospital from a rare heart condition, in which the strains of pregnancy can tip the balance between life and death. (Because the mother was dying, the fetus was also dying. A major technicality that seems to have escaped Olmstead, but not the medical community.)

Founded in the then-"Wild West" by the Irish Sisters of Mercy, steeped in Catholic tradition and famous for its outreach programs to the impoverished and especially the large undocumented immigrant community, it was a wrenching choice. Doctors and medical experts were unanimous in their belief the mother would die unless her pregnancy was aborted.

Sister Margaret agreed with the hospital committee, and the abortion was performed.

Bishop Olmsted reacted even faster than the medical staff, which was facing an emergency life-and-death decision. Sister Margaret McBride is now Margaret McBride.

"An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means," the bishop declared. (Except the fetus dies either way, don't you get this? Is the mother then to forfeit her life for nothing?)

Olmsted added that if a Catholic "formally cooperates" in an abortion, he or she is automatically excommunicated.

"The Catholic Church will continue to defend life and proclaim the evil of abortion without compromise, and must act to correct even her own members if they fail in this duty," the bishop said. (Without sanity or compassion as well.)

Although I cannot disagree with the bishop's theology and support the Church's protection of the sacredness of all life, I suspect he needs "medical" treatment himself: a strong injection of reality.

Most important is a simple reality: If the mother of an 11-week-old fetus dies, the fetus will also die. It is too soon in life for the child to survive outside the womb no matter what the hospital might try. That means two deaths. Is there really a morally defensible reason for two innocents to die when one can live? It's a hackneyed phrase, but what would Jesus have done? (No, there is no justifiable moral defense for allowing two innocents to die when one can be saved. To maintain otherwise makes a mockery of any pro life stand because then the stance is not pro life, it is murderous propaganda.)

Over the years, the Church's solid wall guarding all life has allowed an exception or two. For example, while euthanasia and so-called "mercy killing" is condemned, the Church has made it clear that there is no need to use "extraordinary means" to preserve life when, in the best judgment of all and with prayerful reflection, there is no real hope for the patient's recovery. Of course, this does not mean a call to the murderous "Doctor" Kevorkian, but usually the withdrawal of life-support equipment that is filling the patient's lungs with air and his heart with blood in a way that is more mechanical than medical.

In this matter, the Church has taken good counsel from the world of science to make a just and merciful clarification in doctrine. But while there has been considerable debate within the Church about the kind of dilemma faced by St. Joseph's Hospital, no "exceptions to the rule" on abortion have been forthcoming. (If this particular situation pertained to men, you can bet there would be pastoral exceptions. See pedophile abuse scandal.)

It is long past the time to reconsider this. If all life deserves our protection and is sacred to our Creator, then a mother's life is just as worthy as her child's. How has this become lost in the battle over abortion? (My guess is a woman loses her equal innocence the minute she engages in sex and stops being a 'Holy Virgin'.)

Bishop Olmsted is an intelligent and compassionate man. Like most in the religious community, he has spoken out forcefully against Arizona's immoral new "law" that is nothing more than an attack on the humanity of those who have sought a home and a life in America. While all agree that immigration reform is badly needed, human attack dogs and "camps" are not part of the answer. "Illegal" or not, a sick immigrant is welcome at St. Joseph's Hospital, even if the Diocese must foot the entire bill. God's Mandate to love all as one means charity for all.

It also means forgiveness, in this case, for Margaret McBride. She has spent a long career doing God's Own Work on earth, and even if you believe that she has erred in this heartbreaking moment, I believe her Catholic Ministry should continue.

In a world in which many, if not most people walk past the poor and suffering without a second's thought, Margaret McBride heard God's Call to Love and made answering it her life's work. I pray that Bishop Olmsted will deeply reflect on all Margaret McBride has done in the Name of God and the Church, and reconsider his decision so that the poor may continue to feel the love of Sister Margaret McBride.


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Situations like this make me very very angry. It is precisely in this kind of case that pro life theology becomes murderous propaganda at the service of someone other than God.

Sister Margaret McBride may be excommunicated in the eyes of Bishop Olmstead. She is not in my eyes. Her decision and that of the hospital was the pro life decision. To state other wise is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that one is nothing more that an irrational ideologue perfectly willing to execute mothers for the sake of the ideology. In my book withholding life saving treatment for no reason most certainly qualifies as a form of active execution. In this case not treating this woman would have been murder and undoubtedly left the hospital and it's individual medical personnel open to all kinds of malpractice liability issues. I wonder if Olmstead would have opened his coffers to pay off those law suits. Somehow I doubt it.






Sunday, May 16, 2010

The Truth Is We Can't Trust Them

The spiritual energy of Benedict IX is still alive and well in recesses of the Vatican. The conveyances of mobility may have changed, but not much else. Even the cappa magnas are more than large enough to serve as convertible tops.


I think it's very important for Catholics to really understand what we are attempting to deal with in reforming the Vatican. Cardinal's like Sodano didn't hatch on their onesie or come to power in some sort of vacuum. When I write there is old old entrenched energy behind the current scandals the following illustrates what I mean.

Vatican Hall Of Shame
The Smartset - Tony Perrotett - 5/13/2010


“Lord, give me chastity and self-control — but not yet." — Prayer of the young Saint Augustine, c.380 A.D.

The scandals may be coming thick and strong from the Vatican at the moment, but the Church has always waged a losing battle with its own vice-ridden staff. (At this point in history we truly need to win this battle. For the first time in the history of the Church the laity is equipped to be an equal voice. The question is, do we choose to accept this challenge or will we believe a few ill defined statements concerning penance and conversion from Benedict will do the trick. The Church has been down this road before and it's never worked to trust that the power structure will experience 'conversion'. )

The problem was that transgressions from official policy often began at the top. Fellow priests put one of the first popes, Sixtus III (432-40), on trial for seducing a nun. He was acquitted after quoting from Christ in his defense: “Let you who are without sin cast the first stone.” In the centuries to follow, political skullduggery and a corrupt election process thrust one improbable candidate after another into the position as god-fearing believers looked on in impotent horror. In fact, so many Vicars of Christ have been denounced as the “Worst Pope Ever” that we have to settle for a Top Ten list. (If the laity look on in impotent horror this time, it's because we've chosen too.)

1. Sergius III (904-11), known by his cardinals as "the slave of every vice," came to power after murdering his predecessor. He had a son with his teenage mistress — the prostitute Marozia, 30 years his junior — and their illegitimate son grew up to become the next pope. With top Vatican jobs auctioned off like baubles, the papacy entered its “dark century.”

2. The 16-year-old John XII (955-64) was accused of sleeping with his two sisters and inventing a catalog of disgusting new sins. Described by a church historian as “the very dregs,” he was killed at age 27 when the husband of one of his mistresses burst into his bedroom, discovered him in flagrante, and battered his skull in with a hammer.

3. Benedict IX, (1032-48) continually shocked even his most hardened cardinals by debauching young boys in the Lateran Palace. Repenting of his sins, he actually abdicated to a monastery, only to change his mind and seize office again. He was “a wretch who feasted on immorality,” wrote Saint Peter Damian, “a demon from hell in the disguise of a priest.” (Kind of reminds one of Fr. Maciel--except for the repentance part.)

4. After massacring the entire population in the Italian town of Palestrina, Boniface VIII (1294-1303) indulged in ménages with a married woman and her daughter and became renowned through Rome as a shameless pedophile. He famously declared that having sex with young boys was no more a sin than rubbing one hand against the other — which should make him the patron saint of Boston priests today. The poet Dante reserved a place for him in the eighth circle of Hell.

5. All pretense at decorum was abandoned when the papacy moved to Avignon in southern France for 75 years. Bon vivant Clement VI (1342-52) was called “an ecclesiastical Dionysus” by the poet Petrarch for the number of mistresses and the severity of his gonorrhea. Upon his death, 50 priests offered Mass for the repose of his soul for nine consecutive days, but French wits agreed that this was nowhere near enough.

6. Decamping back to Rome, the papacy hit its true low point in the Renaissance. (Church historian Eamon Duffy compares Rome to Nixon’s Washington, “a city of expense-account whores and political graft.”) Sixtus IV (1471-84), who funded the Sistine Chapel, had six illegitimate sons — one with his sister. He collected a Church tax on prostitutes and charged priests for keeping mistresses, but critics argued that this merely increased the prevalence of clerical homosexuality. (Perhaps this explains why rape and incest don't mitigate abortion. This is however, classic Imperial Roman behavior.)

7. The rule of Innocent VIII (1484-92) is remembered as the Golden Age of Bastards: He acknowledged eight illegitimate sons and was known to have many more, although he found time between love affairs to start up the Inquisition. On his death bed, he ordered a comely wet nurse to supply him with milk fresh from the breast.

8. The vicious Rodrigo Borgia, who took the name Alexander VI (1492-1503), presided over more orgies than masses, wrote Edward Gibbon. A career highlight was the 1501 “Joust of the Whores,” when 50 dancers were invited to slowly strip around the pope’s table. Alexander and his family gleefully threw chestnuts on the floor, forcing the women to grovel around their feet like swine; they then offered prizes of fine clothes and jewelry for the man who could fornicate with the most women. Alexander’s other hobbies included watching horses copulate, which would make him “laugh fit to bust.”After his death — quite possibly poisoned by his pathological son, Cesar Borgia — this pope’s body was expelled from the basilica of Saint Peter as too evil to be buried in sacred soil. (Which begs the question as to why such evil ever gained access to the Sacred soil.)

9. Julius II (1503-13) is remembered for commissioning Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. He was also the first pope to contract “the French disease,” syphilis, from Rome’s male prostitutes. On Good Friday of 1508, he was unable to allow his foot to be kissed by the faithful as it was completely covered with syphilitic sores.

10. Incurable romantic Julius III (1550-55) fell in love with a handsome young beggar boy he spotted brawling with a vendor’s monkey in the streets. The pope went on to appoint this illiterate 17-year-old urchin a cardinal, inspiring an epic poem, “In Praise of Sodomy,” probably written by a disgruntled archbishop in his honor.


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One should not think just because the top ten in the Hall of Shame ends at the period of the Trenten Reformation, that anything really changed. It didn't change. The immorality went further into the closet as the Vatican became preoccupied in trying to maintain some semblance of secular power in the changing secular landscape of the Reformation and Enlightenment.

The Hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church is the only major Western institution which has not undergone radical transformation in how power is shared and exercised. It has maintained the same power structure for 1700 years, virtually untouched by any evolution in secular governance or notions of human potential. It has managed to maintain sole control of a vast amount of wealth with no transparency and no accountability. It has protected it's own interests far and away above the laity it supposedly exists to serve or the teachings of the God it professes to believe in.

Over and over Catholics have been given the excuse that all of the excesses happen because the institutional expression of Catholicism is still after all, composed of mere flawed men. The Church is a human institution (but it has a Divine insurance policy). Mistakes will be made. A true Christian neither condemns nor judges, but forgives seven times seventy---and oh by the way, your salvation depends on your forgiving us, and believing in our sacramental magic. One of the truths of our faith is that your personal salvation is not dependent on us changing anything. It's the exact opposite. Why if we changed something this might harm our ability to give you your salvation, the magic might not work and then you would surely go to hell. Trust us.

And so Catholics continue to trust them. We have pored all kinds of prayer and energy, money and deference, blind loyalty and uncritical obedience into an upside down funnel which eventually spills onto the hands of the Papacy and through them the Vatican bureaucracy.

Unfortunately there was usually no room for the Holy Spirit in that funnel and so the Spirit blew Her winds into Western secular society. It was secular institutions that became more transparent, more equal, more accountable, less discriminatory, and more committed to extending human rights to every human person. It was the official church who railed against this progress and supported the forces marshaled against these changes. We were told that although we couldn't always trust our leadership, we could trust ourselves even less. Trust us, we know what's better for your salvation than you do. A Pinochet is better than an Oscar Romero. Latin is better than English, but a Latinized English is better than no Latin. It is better for both the mother and child to die, than to purposely choose to save the life of the mother. It is against life to extend the theology of self defense to any issue involving women. It's better to receive your Lord from an unrepentant clerical pedophile than from a married priest, or God shudder, a honest gay priest. As for women, fuhgeddahaboutem. Trust us.

Not any more. Not this kid. I will not pore any more energy, prayer, money, or uncritical obedience into maintaining a Vatican culture which is rooted in the worst of human impulse and has never purified it's act. While it's true John Paul II was hardly Benedict the IX, he was still involved in the same energy every time he supported, promoted, or extolled the virtues of Maciel. To me this says he either knew about Maciel and chose to support him anyway, or he was incapable of seeing the kind of energy around Maciel. In either case the end result was the promotion of the ages old evil with in the Vatican itself. On a spiritual level there is no practical difference between enabling through naivete or enabling through purpose. Evil is served.

If even the best of our leadership can't see the evil they actively support through their naivete, it's time Catholics admitted: We can't trust them. It's past time we started poring our energy into changing this system once and for all.









Saturday, May 15, 2010

Seems to be a conspicuous lack of women anywhere near Benedict. I often wonder how men would feel if everything were reversed. Would it bother them that in their professed religious truth, no men would appear in this photo, at least none dressed in clerical clothing---and that these visuals would be repeated endlessly.


It's dialogue or death, pope says in Portugal
by John L Allen Jr on May. 14, 2010

In a strong missionary appeal coupled with a call for dialogue, Pope Benedict XVI today urged his flock to resist the lure of a sort of “ghetto Catholicism,” closed in on itself.

“We have to overcome the temptation to limit ourselves to what we already have, or think we have, that’s securely ours,” the pope said.

"That would be a slow death."

Benedict XVI made those comments during an open-air Mass in Porto, an urban area of roughly two million in northern Portugal.

Benedict seemed almost impatient to get things moving, saying that Christ’s comforting words about being with the church to the end of time “do not excuse us from going out to meet others.”
“How much time has been lost, how much work has been delayed, because of carelessness on this point!” he said.

As he has throughout his four-day trip, Benedict stressed the need for dialogue with those outside the Catholic fold.

“Today the church is called to face new challenges, and is ready to dialogue with different religions and cultures, seeking to construct the peaceful co-existence of peoples with every person of good will.” (Co-existence is a far cry from some of what Benedict has written in the past where his 'dialogue' was about conversion to the true faith and the deficiencies of other religions in terms of TRUTH.)

Benedict also suggested that the style of missionary effort called for can be expressed in the following phrase: “We impose nothing, but we always propose.” (Does this mean calling off all the political crusades? Or does proposing include political agitation?)

Offering Christ as the key to human life, the pope argued, represents Christianity’s primary contribution to the great social challenges of the 21st century. (Maybe we should start pointing to teachings of Christ as the key to the expansion of human consciousness and offer that this the goal of human life and Jesus's call to love.)

“Facing the enormous problems of development of peoples that almost drives us to despair and surrender,” he said, Christians know that the only firm basis upon which to build a better future is the promise of Christ. (Except Jesus said to look within and spoke frequently of the need for a conversion to a love based culture, rejecting a power based culture.)

Despite chilly and rainy weather this morning, an estimated 200,000 people flocked to Pope Benedict’s Mass in the Grand Piazza of Avenida dos Aliados of Porto. The tightly-packed crowd filled the square and flowed down adjacent streets. Assistance was offered by young volunteers clad in orange t-shirts reading “Papa Team.”........

* * *If one were to hand out a prize for the most visible Catholic movement throughout Pope Benedict’s four-day trip to Portugal, it would almost certainly go to the Neocatechumenal Way. Founded in Madrid in 1964 by Spanish laypersons Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez, the movement claims some 1 million followers around the world.

The Neocatechumenate has been embraced by many church leaders around the world for its ability to stir passion among converts to the faith, especially among the young, and for its effective pastoral work with Latino/a Catholics. It has also been a lightning rod, however, for its distinctive liturgical practices, and for the movement’s allegedly divisive impact on some of the parishes and dioceses where it’s present. (Three frequent charges against these lay movements, especially those founded by Spaniards or heavily influenced by a particular Spanish mindset, is their divisive impact in parishes, their penchant to present themselves as a sort of elite uber Catholic, and their cult like recruiting and ritual practices.)

Neocatechumenate banners have dotted the crowds at Benedict’s Masses, and it’s been hard to move around the margins of papal events without encountering small groups of Neocatechumenate members singing and celebrating.

That’s not because the Neocatechumenate is unusually prominent in Portugal, but rather because the movement is staging a massive “European Youth Vocational Meeting” in Fatima today, piggy-backing on the papal trip to attract Catholic youth from across the continent. The rally is being held in the piazza facing the main shrine in Fatima, the same space where Benedict XVI yesterday celebrated an open-air Mass. (C'mon John, Neo Cats always bus in loads of followers to any major Church gathering in Europe. They are a Tea Party organisers dream group.)

Though Neocatechumenate members were not on hand yesterday evening to hear Benedict XVI address the bishops of Portugal, his message would be of keen interest to them and to other “new movements” in the church.

In his address, the pope praised the flowering of new lay movements and religious orders, which he said have grown up precisely in a moment in which many refer to a “winter of the church.”

At the same time, Benedict insisted that new movements and communities have to accept the “common faith of the church,” work in collaboration with other Catholic groups and institutions, and accept the authority of their pastors and bishops.


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I wonder if this is another series of speeches in which Benedict is attempting to herd both ends into the middle. I'm having trouble trying to digest how he can do this when he has spent the past thirty years supporting the traditionalist end against the middle and silencing the progressive end.

In that process he and John Paul enabled the creation and fostered the spread of the excessive zeal and 'ghetto mentality' of the new groups he is now having to reign in. The Legion is just the most obvious example of one of these new groups that was allowed, if not fostered, to get out of control for the sake of spreading the Reform of the Reform. Now Benedict is in the unenviable position of attempting to reform the reform of the reformers. The trouble is all these new lay apostolates are in love with their status as Papal favorites, the 'purity' of their message, and their specific version of Catholic identity. The rest of us are at best 'wannabe's', Episcopalians lacking the courage to convert, or at worst, heretics. Kind of hard to dialogue when the other parties are convinced they hold all the high ground and have been copiously rewarded for their view for three decades.

There is one other place where Benedict is going to run into a brick wall and it's one that effects an enormous number of Catholic doctrines. When he states: "We know Jesus is the one we are all awaiting." he seems to be referencing a literal second coming in which Jesus appears and rights all wrongs. Catholics then place their hope for mankind in this literal second coming.

I happen to think Jesus literally meant it when He said the Kingdom is found with in you. It is in the process of delving the depths of ourselves for the truths to be found there that we transcend our notions of ego and our ideas about consciousness and three dimensional reality. We find Jesus there, in that timeless and space less reality with in us, pushing us to be all we can be, to go where few humans have gone before. All spiritual systems teach this to some degree or another. As long as Catholicism as a religion, is dependent on external expressions of relationship to the divinity, it will continue to miss the true spiritual message. Jesus is not found exclusively in the Temple, He is found powerfully and truthfully inside each and everyone of us. There in lies the true hope for mankind.





Friday, May 14, 2010

Gay Marriage? A Insidious Threat To The Common Good, Or A Real Threat To The Celibate Priesthood




I suppose the one liner Benedict tossed out about the indissolubility marriage and the insidious threat other forms of relationship pose to the common good, was a last ditch attempt to convince Portugal's President Anibal Silva to veto Portugal's gay marriage law. It's a standard staple line which we have all heard countless times before and as such comes across to me as a half hearted attempt to underscore the position of Portugal's bishops. Besides, compared to heterosexual adultery, gay marriage is a non threat--and Benedict certainly knows this. Consequently, I found the Times headline to be misdirected.


Pope Decries Gay Marriage in Portugal Visit
By RACHEL DONADIO - New York Times - May 13, 2010

FÁTIMA, Portugal — Pope Benedict XVI used a famous Portuguese shrine to the Virgin Mary on Thursday as a stage to denounce abortion and gay marriage, just days before Portugal is expected to join five European countries that have legalized same-sex weddings. (This is the operative word for this whole trip--purposely using Fatima to shore up his popularity and authority.)
Pope Benedict XVI greeted Portugal’s President Anibal Cavaco Silva, left, at the end of a mass at the Catholic shrine of Fatima in central Portugal on Thursday.

In a speech here to Catholic social service groups, Benedict called for initiatives aimed at protecting “the family based on the indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman, help to respond to some of today’s most insidious and dangerous threats to the common good.”

He also said he expressed his “deep appreciation for all those social and pastoral initiatives aimed at combating the socioeconomic and cultural mechanisms which lead to abortion, and are openly concerned to defend life and to promote the reconciliation and healing of those harmed by the tragedy of abortion.” (Could this possibly be an admission that pursuing legal options are not the only way to reduce abortions? The real life facts show that the per capita percentage of abortions are significantly lower in countries where it's legal.)

The audience in a chapel at the shrine gave the pope a standing ovation.

The pope’s remarks came on the third day of a four-day visit aimed at shoring up Christian belief in increasingly secular Europe, although it has been somewhat eclipsed by the sexual-abuse scandal confronting the Vatican in recent weeks. Benedict also has used the visit to signal a more forceful tone in confronting the abuse, which he has called a “sin inside the church.”

Although it is 90 percent Catholic, Portugal has seen a notable shift away from Catholic teaching in recent years. The country legalized abortion in 2008 and its Parliament recently approved a bill permitting same-sex marriage. President Aníbal Cavaco Silva is expected to sign the bill into law in the coming days. (He might just as well sign it, because the votes exist to over ride a veto.)

The church has opposed the measure, but Portuguese society appears to be largely supportive.
Portugal would be the sixth country in Europe to legalize same-sex marriage, after the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Norway and Sweden. France and Denmark recognize same-sex unions, which convey many but not all of the rights enjoyed by married couples.

Throughout his five-year-old papacy, Benedict has endeavored to shape a new identity for the church as a “creative minority” in an increasingly secular Europe. On Thursday, he denounced “the pressure exerted by the prevailing culture, which constantly holds up a lifestyle based on the law of the stronger, on easy and attractive gain.”

The pope also told the social service groups to find alternatives to state financing so they would not be subject to legislation at odds with Catholic teaching, urging them to “ensure that Christian charitable activity is granted autonomy and independence from politics and ideologies, even while cooperating with state agencies in the pursuit of common goals.”

Addressing bishops later on Thursday, Benedict called for “authentic witnesses to Jesus Christ” in “those human situations where the silence of the faith is most widely and deeply felt: among politicians, intellectuals, communications professionals who profess and who promote a monocultural ideal, with disdain for the religious and contemplative dimension of life.” (Shock and awe, these are precisely the targeted groups of Opus Dei and the Legion.)

He added that “in such circles are found some believers who are ashamed of their beliefs and who even give a helping hand to this type of secularism, which builds barriers before Christian inspiration.” (How in the world is one not to be ashamed of what has come to light about the priorities of our Catholic leadership when these priorities are an absolute betrayal of the Gospel?)


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One of the issues I feel that has been overlooked or underplayed, is the historical correlation of the timing between the vast exodus of priests--mostly straight--from the priesthood, and the sudden upsurge in anti gay rhetoric coming from the Vatican.

As Terrence Wheldon has pointed out today on his blog Queering the Church, this anti gay crusade is a recent historical phenomenon. I maintain one of the major reasons for Catholicism's sudden fixation on gays is not the sexual revolution. It is directly correlated to the slump in vocations and the massive increase in requests for laicization. I think it's related because gays are now the last best source of 'celibate' priests, and if the legal opposition and societal fear of homosexuality is not constantly reinforced, this source of vocations will become as dry a vine as the heterosexual source. I don't believe for one minute the supposed ban on gays in the priesthood exists in practice, except in the cases of overly 'effeminate' gay men.

If the ratio of gay to straight priests is really about 50/50, one of the major reasons is the exodus of straight men from the priesthood. The celibate priesthood is a dead idea amongst the vast majority of straight men, but in many countries it remains a path to acceptance and security for the gay male--especially in Latin America. Africa demonstrates the other path to maintaining the fantasy of the celibate priesthood by it's turning a blind eye to all the philandering and extra marital relationships of it's straight priests. Unfortunately, Africa's strategy is no longer really workable in Western society as it relies on the silent and complicit approval of the laity. The pedophile crisis has blown that kind of silent complicity off the table in the West.

It seems to me the message the Vatican is not hearing in the pedophile crisis is that their seminary program and theology of priesthood has drawn too many of the very people who do not belong in a leadership role in any spirituality---much less one dedicated to modeling the teachings and life of Jesus Christ. To be an effective model of His life and teachings calls for an unusual level of spiritual maturity, humility, courage, and service. None of these traits are dependent on sexual orientation (or gender), except in the sense that one's sexuality is oriented to the understanding that an equal relationship can not exist in the Roman Catholic priesthood when commitment to an honest open relationship is completely precluded. To orient otherwise is to orient to betrayal and hypocrisy, traits common to both gay and straight. Unfortunately, this preference for hypocrisy is the exact message given by the Vatican when it rapidly laicized thousands of priests who sought to take their relationships out of the shadows, and then dithered and dithered with laizing pedophile priests in order to keep their behavior in the shadows.

I understand that Catholicism's theology of sexuality and the priesthood is all wrapped up in notions of ritual sexual purity, but when that theology fosters so much corruption, deceit, misery, abuse, and hypocrisy maybe it's time to re evaluate the theology.

The problem in the West is not with sexual acts per se, as it is with committed relationships. This is why it's absurd to wage a campaign against gays who desire a formalized commitment for their relationships. If anything it is the gay marriage initiatives which are underlying the importance of committed relationships to the common good. This request truly runs as a counter witness to the prevailing acceptance of serial monogamy in heterosexual culture. After all it is this heterosexual trend which has statistically proven to be unhealthy for the common good.

It just seems to me that when looked at from an objective stance, gay marriage and gay acceptance is really a threat to the continued existence of the celibate priesthood, and that's the real motivation for the Vatican's sudden historical need to pound on the immorality of committed gay relationships and their 'threat' to the common good.


Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The Conservative Interpretation Of Cardinal Schonborn's Interview

Founder of Ignatius Press, Fr. Joseph Fessio shakes hands with his old time theology professor. This was a connection which impressed Tom Monaghan enough to fire Fessio twice from Ave Maria University.


Father Fessio explains Cardinal Schönborn’s remarks on homosexuality
Catholic World News - May 12, 2010

Father Joseph Fessio, the publisher of Ignatius Press, has written a column defending and clarifying remarks made by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn during a meeting with journalists.
The cardinal had been characterized as saying that an enduring same-sex union is preferable to a series of encounters, telling the journalists that “a stable relationship is certainly better than if someone simply indulges in promiscuity.” (Schonborn wasn't 'characterised' he was directly quoted, just like you have directly quoted him.)

Father Fessio commented:

The Church attempts to lead men to their ultimate happiness, which is the vision of God in his essence. Moral norms are meant to do that; they have that as their end or purpose. The norms themselves are unchanging. However, our approach to obeying them is gradual and our efforts are a mixture of success and failure. This means that while certain moral norms are absolute, that is, they hold in all circumstances without exception, our approach to obeying them may be halting and imperfect. This is commonly referred to as “the law of gradualism” and is opposed to “the gradualism of the law,” as if the law itself were somehow variable. This is the context for the cardinal’s saying: “We should give more consideration to the quality of homosexual relationships,” adding: “A stable relationship is certainly better than if someone chooses to be promiscuous.” (Fessio's use of the particular word happiness is in direct reference to Cardinal Schonborn: "Instead of a morality based on duty, we should work towards a morality based on happiness". Fessio is letting us know happiness is really found in doing one's moral duty, just like it always has been.)

This does not at all mean that the cardinal was advocating or even suggesting that the Church might change her teaching that homosexuality is a disorder and homosexual activity is always a grave evil. It is always grave, but there can be gradations of gravity—or, to call it by its true name, objective depravity. (Is this sort of like killing the innocent in an unjust war is less depraves than killing the innocent unborn?)

This is also the context of the Tablet’s statement: “The cardinal also said the Church needed to reconsider its view of re-married divorcees ‘as many people don’t even marry at all any longer’.” This “reconsideration” does not mean a change in the Church’s teaching that a valid marriage is indissoluble, and that someone who is validly married cannot remarry validly. It means that perhaps—but only perhaps, because this is an opinion that does not have the authority of a magisterial pronouncementthe Church should find new ways of leading the weak and confused to the difficult but liberating challenge of Christ’s demands. (If we're going to use a gradualism scale, I'd rather be thought of as one of the 'simple' laity, than one of the weak and confused laity--or one of the less depraved laity.)



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Fr. Fessio really should let Cardinal Sconborn explain himself. I somehow doubt Schonborn was thinking in terms of graduated depravity when discussing monogamous gay relationships. Although come to think of it, this is the same kind of logic Dr. Reker's tried to use about paying for purposely sexually stimulating massage. He was not engaging in any form of depraved gay sex. It was just massage.

In this type of mindset it seems secular relativism is bad but moral gradualism is nifty. This weak and confused and simple lay person doesn't really get the difference. Obviously my bad. My confusion is always my bad, and I am to understand it's never their teaching or their inability to act on their teaching.

Fr Fessio is a neo con Jesuit who has been involved in a number of different clashes with authority figures. These include the provincial leadership of the Jesuits in California over his connections with Campion College, and on the other end of the spectrum, Ave Maria University and it's owner/dictator Tom Monaghan--where he was let go twice.
Fessio was a grad student under Cardinal Ratzinger. Some speculate it was this association with Ratzinger that persuaded the administration of Ave Maria to hire and then rehire him. His theological connections with Ratzinger also gave him an acquaintanceship with Cardinal Sconborn. Schonborn was supportive of Fessio's involvement with Campion College as the Cardinal saw the orthodox aims of Campion as supportive of the theological bent of JPII's edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church of which Sconborn was the editor.

I'm not really surprised that conservative theologians are attempting to re interpret Cardinal Schonborn's remarks. Schonborn has long had credentials as a conservative icon, potential papabile, and all around JPII kind of guy. While his latest interview has given the progressive world a moment of guarded hope, it's had the opposite effect on the conservative world. Conservatives may practice a form of 'gradualist morality' when it comes to their personal behavior, but they have no such policy for community behavior and Schonborn reads like he is thinking thoughts outside the approved conservative box.
I've made the point before that conservative theology seems to place a higher value on correct thinking rather than correct acts. Fessio's need to reinterpret of Schonborg's thinking really underscores this point.

In the meantime Cardinal Sconborn has not seen fit to clarify his own remarks and Pope Benedict is making some interesting statements himself--statements which will undoubtedly necessitate interpretation by neo con priests for the sake of our collective duty bound happiness.








Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Some Really, Really Interesting Words From Benedict. Really

Workmen put finishing touches on stage from which Benedict gave the sermon John Allen quotes in this piece.


Pope’s antidote to secularism: saints, not structures
by John L Allen Jr May. 11, 2010
Christianity’s love-hate relationship with secularism is a core theme of Benedict XVI’s four-day trip to Portugal, and this evening he asked an especially evocative question: In a social context in which basic Christian belief can’t be taken for granted, is the church too worried about structures and power and not enough about the fundamentals of the faith? (It just might be that Cardinal Schonborn's interview was the first salvo concerning a change in Vatican direction.)

The pope raised that query, without quite supplying an answer, during an open-air Mass for an estimated 80,000 people in Lisbon’s Palace Square. It’s certainly an evocative spot to contemplate the demise of Europe’s once-intact Catholic cultures: It was here in 1908 that the penultimate Catholic monarch of Portugal, Charles I, was assassinated in 1908, with the erection of a secular republic not far behind.

Coming into his Portugal swing, many observers expected Benedict to challenge a gay marriage law recently passed by the Portuguese parliament and currently awaiting action by President Anibal Cavaco Silva. So far, however, the pope has resisted being drawn into specific political debates, focusing instead on the deeper question of how to keep the flame of the faith alive in a secular world. (It doesn't seem to help keep the flame alive to keep constantly harping on gay marriage and abortion, using them to fuel a war with secular politicians, which then gives the appearance of Catholicism being bought and paid for by socially regressive right wing political groups.)

In his homily this evening, Benedict seemed to propose a focus on the fundamentals: forming passionate Christians one-by-one, rather than trying to sustain huge bureaucracies or waging power struggles. In a sound-bite, the recipe offered by Benedict for life in a secular world turns on saints rather than structures.
“Often we are anxiously preoccupied with the social, cultural and political consequences of the faith, taking for granted that faith is present, which unfortunately is less and less realistic,” the pope said. (It could also be that people have few problems with Faith but many with religion.)

“Perhaps we have placed an excessive trust in ecclesial structures and programs, in the distribution of powers and functions,” he said. “But what will happen if salt loses its flavor?” (Benedict is definitely seeking some response to his questions. This is not the attitude of a man who still thinks he has all the answers.)

To prevent that, Benedict suggested a new vigor in proclaiming the death and resurrection of Christ – “the heart of Christianity, the fulcrum and mainstay of our faith, the firm lever of our certainties, the strong wind that sweeps away all fear and indecision, all doubt and human calculation.” (Proclaiming the death and resurrection would be a wise move, if this proclaiming stayed far away from all the "add ons".

From that bedrock, Benedict seemed to argue, the priority ought to be individual formation.
“This faith needs to come alive in each one of us,” he said. (It will come very alive, if it's not killed by attempts at thought control.)

“A vast effort at every level is required if every Christianity is to be transformed into a witness capable of rendering account … of the hope that inspires him,” he said. (I think Christianity is a typo and Benedict actually said Christian. Other wise this is another barn burner of a statement.)

Benedict pointed to the example of the saints to underscore the point, saying that today’s pastoral priority is “to make each Christian man and woman a radiant presence of the Gospel perspective in the midst of the world, in the family, in culture, in the economy, in politics.”
Ever the realist, Benedict nonetheless conceded that not everybody in the church exactly fits that description: “We know that she also has quarrelsome and even rebellious sons and daughters,” he said. (A description which happens to fit a lot of canonized saints.)

Benedict XVI also paid tribute to centuries of Catholic history in Portugal, saying that it has gained “a glorious place among the nations for the service rendered to the spreading of the faith: in all five continents there are local churches that owe their origin to Portuguese missionary activity.” (This is not all the Portugese brought, but I guess Benedict decided to leave out the slavery part.)


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My interest for the rest of Benedict's trip is really peaked. If he continues this line of thinking he is essentially dropping the whole political activism agenda in favor of Opus Dei's other strategy of sanctifying work in the world. While I agree with this sentiment--the work place could certainly use a far more ethical approach--if Benedict's thinking also includes a thoughtless emphasis on obedience, it isn't what I have in mind. A person isn't saintly when they obediently engage in every unethical thing they are told to do. This just happens to be one of the major lessons Benedict should be taking from his own time as JPII's loyal and obedient subject.

There's no question in my mind something is going on in the Vatican. If all of a sudden there are concrete actions which back up the statements of Cardinal Schonborn, Archbishop Martin, and now Benedict, it could very well be the winds of the Spirit are truly moving. Whether he does, or does not bring up Portugal's gay marriage law will be an indication of where things might be moving.
The Portugese bishops are betting that Benedict will most certainly bring up the gay marriage law, but it could also be that Benedict will refrain from moral cultural issues in a Portugal which is far more concerned with a potential economic collapse. Bringing hope might be the more Christian thing to do. Besides, Caritas en Veritate is the best thing Benedict has written as Pope (in my opinion) and it makes far more sense to emphasise the points in this document than harp on the 'same ole, same ole.


Of Mystics And Prophets In Fatima And Mystics And Prophets In Rome

An adults weird sun/cloud formation can be a childs very mystical experience.


Pope, Cardinal Rodé: no time for world's women religious leaders
by Thomas C. Fox - Rome, National Catholic Reporter - May. 10, 2010

The Holy Father today, (Monday, May 10), according to the Vatican Press Office, received in separate audiences: two prelates from the Episcopal Conference of Belgium, Bishop Lucas Van Looy of Ghent, and Msgr. Koen Vanhoutte, the diocesan administrator of Bruges. He also received Italian Bishop Valentino Di Cerbo of Alife-Caiazzo, accompanied by members of his family.

Nothing unusual – except for a mention of who he did not receive in audience.

Who the Holy Father did not receive in audience was any (or all) of the 800 general superiors of international women religious orders who are in Rome from all corners of the globe for a once in three-year general assembly. These women religious represent close to 1 million women religious worldwide. (This is not the LCWR we're talking about here. This is the LCWR and the leadership of every other women's religious congregation in the world.)

The women have been meeting here in Rome since last Friday.

For the record, the Vatican Press Office reports that the Holy Father last Friday (the day the meeting of the women began) received in separate audiences five prelates from the Episcopal Conference of Belgium. Again, for the record, they are Bishop Patrick Hoogmartens of Hasselt, Bishop Aloysius Jousten of Liege, Bishop Gur Harpigny of Tournai, Msgr Jean-Marie Huet, diocesan administrator of Namur, who was accompanied by Auxiliary Bishop Pierre Warin.
The Holy Father Friday also received Mikheil Saakashvili, president of Georgia.

According to the Vatican Press Office, that meeting “provided an opportunity to examine various bilateral questions, and other important matters concerning life in Georgia, restating the commitment of the parties in favor of intercultural exchange.”

The women’s meeting is being held at the Ergife Hotel, a few kilometers from the Vatican. They are examining the topics of Mysticism and Prophecy in order to reach deeper into their souls to pull out even more courage and commitment. (Maybe Benedict found the topic un'reason'able, but then he blew them off partly in favor of a trip to Fatima. I guess it can't be the topic.)

Courage? Commitment?

On Saturday, one women religious from the Congo, Sr. Liliane Sweko, in passing, in an address on prophecy, told a stunned assembly that many of her co-religious have been assassinated, 235 in the year 2003 alone. “By the end of last year,” she added, “the number of assassinated women religious greatly increased” (This is a staggering number of unacknowledged of female martyrs from just one country in one year.)

For many of the women religious who had come from African and parts of Asia and elsewhere, their trips to Rome for this plenary assembly of the International Union of Superior Generals is a once in a life time event.
And, yes, it would have been inspiring for many to see the Holy Father.

Three years ago, when the plans for this women's meeting were first underway, an audience was put on the conference agenda. It was to be on Tuesday, May 11. However, subsequent to the announcement of the plan, the Vatican announced the Holy Father would fly to Portugal May 11 for a four-day visit, including a visit to Fatima. So the audience with the 800 women religious had to be canceled.

What the women did receive was a telegram from the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertrone, Secretary of State, saying the Holy Father is “present in spirit” and that he sends his “cordial wishes." (A telegram from the Vatican's number two....That says a lot about how much Benedict is 'present in spirit'.)

You’d think the women would be disappointed. I suspect some were, but few dwelt on it. I spoke with one who shrugging it off, saying “when you work on the margins, you really don’t expect much recognition at the center. This is the choice I made.” (No kidding.)

Nevertheless, allow me: what a missed opportunity! It should be no secret to NCR readers that tension exists between women religious in various parts of the world and prelates in the Vatican.
Our church’s sacramental and liturgical life is built on symbols. We are very good at symbols. Know this expertise, one is left wondering. How could such a spectacular oversight ever occur? What were the pope’s handlers (or the Holy Father) thinking? (There's way more money and blind obedience to be had in the Fatima cults.)

At one point, I thought to myself that had the Holy Father decided at any time during the past four days to trot over to the Ergife hotel for even a ten minute visit he could have opened a flood gate of good will and offered incalculable inspiration to women who, frankly, can use it. They deserved to be recognized. Had the Holy Father greeted them many of the women would have gone home with an inspirational story that would energize countless more. (What's personal commitment and energy when it comes without much money? Service on the margins really doesn't pay like service to the marginal wealthy.)

But it was not to be.

PS… I need to add that Slovenian Cardinal Franc Rodé, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, the congregation that these women report to and canonically work through, also was unable to make it to the gathering as well.

Turns out he was out of town. For the entire meeting. Though the meeting has been planned for three years. (Apparently Rode had three years to find some excuse to be out of town.)

He sent an aide who offered the cardinal’s greetings, but I don’t recall right now any mention of “cordial wishes.” (Rode sent an aide. Well at least it wasn't a telegram from an aide.)

Webster defines “dialogue” as a conversation between two or more persons. Yes, it needs to be two ways to be dialogue.

Are any bishops listening?


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It is inconceivable to me that a similar global gathering of the leadership of men's religious congregations would be blown off the way the Vatican has blown off these women. In my book this is the perfect symbol of the place of women in the Church. In Benedict's Church religious women are worth a telegram sent through a subordinate office, even congregations who give 235 lives in one year for the Faith. Sigh.......

I'm sure apologists will say this was all unintentional. Benedict holds no ill will towards women's religious. Unintentional in this case also means "Failed to compute" and that too is an indication of where women religious fit in Benedict's scheme of the things. It's an excuse which proves the point. In Benedict's Church women don't merit equal consideration with men--especially powerful clerical or political men.

In the meantime, Benedict is on his way to Fatima on a spiritual pilgrimage to honor the only woman who seems to count in his scheme of things. He will also be honoring the mystical visions and prophecies of three children (one who became a consecrated nun) at the same time this conference on mysticism and prophecy is going on in Rome amongst other consecrated women religious. In this sense the timing is deliciously ironic.

As usual Benedict answered a few previously submitted questions on the flight over to Portugal.
I found his answer to this question most interesting:


What meaning do the apparitions of Fatima have for us today? When you presented the Third Secret of Fatima in a press conference at the Vatican Press Office in June 2000, you were asked if the message of the secret could be extended beyond the assassination attempt against John Paul II to other sufferings of the popes. Could it also be extended to put the suffering of the church today in the context of that vision, including the sins of the sexual abuse of minors? (The question is about the suffering of Popes and the Church. It does not seem to include the suffering of the victims. The spin about the poor suffering Church has worked it's own magic.)


First of all, I want to express my joy to go to Fatima, to pray before the Madonna of Fatima, and to experience the presence of the faith there, where from the little ones a new force of the faith was born. It’s not limited to the little ones, but has a message for the whole world and all epochs of history, it illuminates this history. As I said in the presentation, there is a supernatural impulse which doesn’t come simply from someone’s imagination but from the supernatural reality of the Virgin Mary. That impulse enters into a subject, and is expressed according to the possibilities of the subject, who is determined by his or her historic situation. The supernatural impulse is translated, so to speak, according to the subject’s possibilities for imagining it and expressing it. In this expression formed by the subject, there are always hidden possibilities to go beyond, to go deeper. Only with time can we see all the depth which was, so to speak, dressed in this vision, which was possible for the concrete person. (This is an excellent point, and although Benedict most likely made it to disarm the Fatima literalists, it is bang on. As my own mentors have put it, the clarity with which one is both given and interprets a vision is only as good as the Rolodex in the receivers mind. Little children do not have a very large Rolodex, (body of knowledge and experience), in which to either receive or relate a visionary experience. On the other hand, there is far less resistance to receiving the message as they have not concretized a view of reality which would preclude the possibility of such experiences. It's sort of a Catch 22.)
With regard to this great vision of the suffering of the popes, beyond the circumstances of John Paul II, other realities are indicated which over time will develop and become clear. Thus it’s true that beyond the moment indicated in the vision, one speaks about and sees the necessity of suffering by the church. It’s focused on the person of the pope, but the pope stands for the church, and therefore sufferings of the church are announced. The church will always be suffering in various ways, up to the end of the world. The important point is that the message of Fatima in its substance is not addressed to particular situations, but a fundamental response: permanent conversion, penance, prayer, and the three cardinal virtues: faith, hope and charity. One sees there the true, fundamental response the church must give, which each of us individually must give, in this situation. (Actually, like most Marian visions, Fatima was pretty specific about the corruption with in the clerical structure and called for a conversion with in those consecrated to her Son's teachings. Fatima contained a pretty specific call for clergy to experience conversion, do penance and prayer, and live as her son lived.)

In terms of what we today can discover in this message, attacks against the pope or the church don’t come just from outside the church. The suffering of the church also comes from within the church, because sin exists in the church. This too has always been known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way. The greatest persecution of the church doesn’t come from enemies on the outside, but is born in sin within the church. The church thus has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn on one hand forgiveness but also the necessity of justice. Forgiveness does not exclude justice. We have to re-learn the essentials: conversion, prayer, penance, and the theological virtues. That’s how we respond, and we can be realistic in expecting that evil will always launch attacks from within and from outside, but the forces of good are also always present, and finally the Lord is stronger than evil. The Madonna for us is the visible maternal guarantee that the will of God is always the last word in history. (Neither God nor Mary will violate the sanctity of personal choice. God will certainly have the last word in history, but mankind will have the last choice. There are no guarantees.)
In this last paragraph I wish I knew just what Benedict had in his mind when he says "Church" and 'we'--which card in his Rolodex he flipped. It makes a huge difference in understanding the point of his answer and what it may portend. Is he thinking specifically of the clerical church of which he is a huge part of the 'we'. Or is this a generic kind of statement about the whole church and includes the 'we' part he ignored back in Rome?
These paragraphs exemplify exactly why St. Paul speaks of the gift of discernment coupled with prophecy. Benedict himself might not actually understand which 'Church' and which 'we' he is referencing or prioritizing. It can all be so Freudian or Jungian or Adlerian or mystical. Which is precisely why St Paul linked the gift of discernment with the gift of prophecy. Two or more personal Rolodex are generally better than one.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Not exactly the idea of 'spinning' the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross has in mind.


Rome conference aims at improving media coverage of Catholic Church
Rome, Italy, May 9, 2010 / 06:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).-

The Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome announced an upcoming conference to help journalists around the globe improve their coverage of hot-button issues in the Church today, such as bioethics, ecumenism, Pope Pius XII and the recent controversy surrounding clerical sex abuse. (I don't suppose it will come as a shock to readers that the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross is an Opus Dei university and seminary. This conference was first held in 2008 and is slated to be repeated every two years.)


“The Church Up Close: Covering Catholicism in the Age of Benedict XVI,” will take place in Rome from September 6 to September 12. The seminar will be held in English and is open to all working journalists, though space is limited.

Listing the topics that will be addressed at the seminar, the university said that in addition to discussing the most pressing issues of today, conference leaders will also educate participants on the nature of the Church and how the Vatican functions. The seminar will also touch on the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI, now in his fifth year as the Holy Father, and will give insight into his thinking and leadership approach.

In addition to classroom sessions, the seminar will also provide on site visits and personal meetings with curial officials and veteran Vatican correspondents. Conference speakers include Vatican officials Cardinal Francis Stafford, Fr. Federico Lombardi, Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson, Msgr. Charles Brown, and Msgr. Patrick Burke, among others.

“Covering an institution as old and as large as the Catholic Church has always been a huge challenge, and in today’s shrinking world, it’s becoming ever more necessary to tell even local stories about the Church from a global perspective,” Rev. Prof. John Wauck, president of the organizing committee, said in a May 7 press release. (I really think this means to tell it from the Vatican/OD perspective.)

“The seminar should help reporters do that,” he added.“What’s more, Rome is an ideal setting for reflecting on religion and the media with journalists from around the world.”



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What's most frustrating to me about this particular seminar is that there is zero representation from academics or ecclesiastical representatives who might represent the other face of the Church, the one that actually works in the trenches and is the face of the Church to the vast majority of the globe. That face of the Church of which Michael Kristoff recently wrote.

I get it that Opus Dei isn't overly interested in that face of the Church or those people that face reaches. OD has assigned to itself the business of communications and publicity for the Vatican bureaucracy. They are interested in exactly the kinds of people that this seminar is designed to reach---media movers and shakers, the people who are instrumental in creating the public face of the institutional church. These are the media people whose columns and coverage reach the educated and wealthy in the developed West. That's why this conference is conducted in English, not Latin.

Leaving theology aside, the monopolization of Church communication by Opus Dei is a bad thing precisely because it results in biased communication, stressing the Vatican face of the Church over any other face of the Church. Believe me, I understand the importance of this imbalance to promulgating the theology of Opus Dei and it's vision of Catholicism. I understand why Benedict is perfectly willing to support such imbalance because it's his vision of the Church.

What bothers me is that this perpetuates the myth that somehow Catholicism transcends Christianity, not to mention secular society, and that because of it's long history the Vatican can not be judged by anyone elses standards but it's own. (It's own, not God's.)
At this point in time the Vatican is having to come to terms with the fact that while it's one thing to control the message, it's quite another to assume your spoon fed message will be eaten by the intended recipients. What the Vatican and it's communications people now have to deal with is that reporters from secular media outlets no longer accept what the Vatican puts on their spoon. This process has been accelerated by the sheer facts of the abuse crisis. The facts were bad enough without the penchant for certain Vatican voices to blame anything and everything as justification for their own actions. It was Vatican insiders themselves which have precipitated the media's closer scrutiny of the stuff on their spoons. Now it's OD to the rescue to remind reporters that the Vatican's traditions and longevity demand a different style of coverage, and oh by the way, pay no attention to all the modern media apparatus at our University.

What modern OD communications people do know is that an ability to control or invent seemingly official and credible media outlets--in order to shape a given message-- can still produce serious effects with in a culture. We've seen this process have great effect for the Tea Party movement in the US with all it's corporate generated seemingly credible grass roots media campaigns. Liberals can delude themselves that the Tea Partiers have only served to destroy the Republican party, but the truth is much more subtle. Tea Partiers will also have impacted the Democratic party as the official Dem structure decides to move even further right in order to pursuit the ubiquitous 'swing' vote with it's disenfranchised Republican bloc.

Opus Dei, coupled with the Legion, has been involved in this strategy of inventing 'credible' media sources for a long time. I frequently use articles from these sources because they are easily accessible on the Internet. (Not too mention fun to comment on). The Vatican press office may give the appearance of not knowing what they are doing, but that's more a product of Cardinals who can't stay silent in the face of criticism than it is the Press Office's inability to use modern media for it's own purposes.

Don't be surprised if Benedict's 'leaked' desire to create a Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization is heavily populated with academics from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. It's one of the things they do best--'evangelize'.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Some Thoughts On This Mother's Day

In Benedict's Holy Mother Church the Angels play Mozart and mom doesn't drive an SUV.


Today is Mother's Day. It's a day we celebrate the relationship we have with our mothers. Good, bad or indifferent, that maternal relationship is pretty critical in setting the course for the adult child and by extension that adults ability to create their own family and navigate in the world.

Catholics call the Church their spiritual mother, but right now there is a huge disconnect between the Institutional Church's concept of mothering and that of the more recent generations real life experience of mothering. Or to put it differently, I am nothing like Pope Benedict's mother. I can't be because the world I was born into is vastly different from the Bavarian world of the 1880's.
I am becoming more and more convinced that the old guard in the Vatican is patently incapable of acknowledging this very simple fact. They continue to defend a concept of mother which is totally out of step with Western current reality.

Jamie Manson hits on some of this in her latest article for the National Catholic Reporter. I like Jamie's work a great deal, and think she is a voice that needs to be heard. Her articles generally nudge my thinking and make me question some of my assumptions. The following is an excerpt from that article.

In his April 30 online column, “American Catholic Demographics and the Future of Ministry,” John Allen projects that the next generation of clergy and lay leadership in the Catholic church will emerge from an “inner core of practicing and faithful young Catholics.” Allen writes, “these younger Catholics are attracted to traditional spiritual practices such as Eucharistic adoration and Marian piety; they have a generally positive attitude towards authority, especially the papacy; and they’re less inclined to be critical of church teaching.” Their devotion to the Church, says Allen, is a response to their coming of age in a “secular, rootless world.” (They might be traditional practices for my generation, but the reality is they are novel practices for younger generations.)

I believe Allen’s assessment is on target. My concern is that this inner core of faithful young people will be a very small, insular group. The Catholic church in the West will begin to shrink into a sect of strictly observant believers.

That’s all well and good for them. But what happens to the other baptized Catholics whose faith isn’t nourished by centuries-old devotions, the Latin Mass, and absolute subservience to an all male, celibate hierarchy and clergy? (That seems to me to be their whole 'orientation'. First Catholicism has be be good for them personally, and secondarily only those who share the 'same orientation' are welcome. This is why the gay issue is so symbolically critical in underlining this emphasis on Catholic identity--which like official Catholic sexual morality is all about spiritual/ritual ACTS and not relationship.)

Where will they find their spiritual home? Where will they find community in a time when face-to-face socialization is quickly disappearing? Where will they find guidance that will help them make meaning during times of sorrow and loss? Where will their values and ethics be challenged and molded so that they can find resources to help them make their marriages work and raise their children? Will they, too, like the other 30 million baptized Catholics in this country who do not attend church, be relegated to the pop spirituality, wellness seminars, life coaching, and new age therapeutics touted on "Oprah"?

Unlike the generations of progressive Catholics who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, young Catholics are not willing to fight for the soul of the church. The church has lost its influence over the consciences of new generations. Our imaginations were not formed by its rituals and our morality was not created by its figures of authority. We were not raised by a church that held absolute authority over the state of our souls -- both in this life and the next. (Or to put it in different terms, Mother Church has lost any meaningful relationship with her children.)

As a result, many of the symbols of the Catholic church, most especially the priesthood, the parish, and the Mass, have lost their power for many young Catholics. Though these symbols are dying out, the need for the meaning, ethical guidance, and spiritual development embodied in the symbols is stronger than ever. (Gen X'rs demand a different kind of spiritual relationship. One which respects their independence and their individual path. That means they are seeking a relationship which emphasises mentoring, not parenting.)

One of my closest friends has been teaching a course in the theology of marriage for more than twenty years at a Jesuit university. From his conversations with students, it is very clear that the church no longer has influence over the consciences and spiritual lives of most of his students. However, the theology of marriage course continues to be among the most popular and sought out in the university. The reason is obvious. The students have few resources to turn to that will help them navigate through the treacherous land of intimate relationships and the increasingly murky world of life commitment.

If these young adults have children, perhaps they will see a need for church community, for a sense of meaning, for a system of values and beliefs with which to raise their children. But there is a good chance that they will not think to seek this from the Church, which has lost much of its moral authority with young Catholics.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think this is all bad. By being free of the trappings of the institutionalized church, younger generations have a real and unprecedented potential to realize the kind of church that Jesus’ earliest disciples brought to life.

New generations have an extraordinary commitment to social service and to creating a just society, whether through the field of social work, non-profit development, green jobs, or documentary filmmaking. In many ways, they are already doing the work of the church. But what is lacking is a real sense of how to build and sustain community, which is essential to their spiritual health and support. (Again this is a matter of establishing a meaningful relationship.)

This, I believe, is where older progressive Catholics can be an extraordinary resource. These reformers spend a lot of time and energy worrying, analyzing, writing about, and arguing with the institutional church. I believe they would do well to take some of the energy behind their righteous anger, and engage those who are struggling to find meaning and spiritual development in a rootless world. This might be a better -- and certainly more life-giving -- use of their time than simply fighting a self-destructive institution. (I think it's very important to do both. The witness of defending what you care about demonstrates there really is something important to care about.)

Together we need to explore the ways in which we are already church, and to enhance the opportunities to become more fully church. We need to discover what sacred experiences we are hungering for and what brings us the more abundant life that Jesus taught us to seek. The more the institutional church starves us, the greater the call should be for us to feed one another by breaking bread together -- literally and symbolically.

Younger generations need this support to help them find roots. Older generations need strength and new life from the roots that they planted decades ago. If we begin to think creatively outside of the institutional church and imagine smaller, more intimate ways of sharing community, we all might begin to realize the church as it was in its beginnings. (Smaller more intimate settings foster relationship and the communication meaningful relationship requires.)


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I wish a very happy Mother's day for all mothers who may be reading this blog and for all the mothers of children who may be reading this blog. Happy Mother's Day one and all.