Forget Theological/Liturgical Wars, Catholics Need To Battle Internal Narcissism

It sure seems that sometimes only a desert is big enough to tame some egos, and some of those egos will take more than forty days.

I'm finding the John Corapi story fascinating to follow for any number of reasons.  The first reason is that this story is playing out in real time with the instantaneous communication technology of the twenty first century. If SOLT thought they had found their very own Maciel who was going to lead them to the promised land, they were fifty years too late.  There are no more deep and timeless closets in which Catholicism can hide the truth of their narcissistic charismatic money makers.   

Second, I have sadly watched what I knew would happen,  that Corapi's followers would engage in a serious feeding frenzy on each other.  I saw the same thing happen with the Legion of Christ, just as it's happened with numerous conservative televangelists.  Eddie Long comes to mind.  Third, I was curious to see how Corapi would dance around the accusations leveled at him by SOLT.  Since the man is convinced of his own brilliance, SOLT's response to him was like throwing a bone to a pack of blacksheepdogs.  I figured Corapi would be unable to restrain himself.  I was right.  It is a wonderful example of disingenuous self justifying babble.  Here it is in it's entirety:


I am going to answer in a simple, straight forward way what seem to me the main elements of the action taken against me by the Diocese of Corpus Christi and the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity. (Corapi starts out telling his readers he will answer only those things which seem to him to be the main elements. We should not be surprised he omits answering half the allegations in SOLT's letter.)

Regarding my personal financial situation—From the earliest days (more than twenty years ago) the Founder of the Society of Our Lady, Fr. James Flanagan, encouraged me to support myself and the Church as well. He said they could not afford to support my ministry and me personally because of the unique nature of the mission. At every step of the way, through the entire past twenty years, the Society of Our Lady’s leadership knew of my financial independence.  As Fr. Flanagan encouraged, I have supported SOLT and myself from ‘day-one.‘  I have never relied on the Society for shelter, clothing, transportation, medical care, or legal counsel and instead, using my history of success in business, set up my mission as any savvy business man would, meanwhile continuing to support the Society and many other Catholic Charities.
(SOLT has a great deal to answer for in their giving Corapi this much freedom. They are as responsible for Corapi's abuse of his priesthood as Corapi is. Corapi is quite correct in pointing this out, even if it is for totally self justifying reasons.)


Regarding the charge of sexual impropriety—This song of greed has been sung many times before.  I have never had any promiscuous or even inappropriate relations with her.  Never. (Except the SOLT response alleges far more than just one person.  Additionally, I would have to know how Corapi is defining promiscuous or inappropriate.  There is a canonical definition, a legal definition, and a contractual definition of what might or might not be appropriate.  In almost all of his dealings Corapi has taken the legal and/or contractual approach.  In this approach, paying a sex worker for sexual services could be considered appropriate---even if, ahemm, she might have been 'greedy'.)

Regarding the investigation—As standard practice, my legal counsel advised me not to cooperate with the investigation until I was able to determine that the Commission’s process was fair and I had adequate rights to defend myself.  Questions that certainly qualify the validity of any legal case have never been answered by the so called “fact finding team.”  They refuse to reveal, and therefore utilize, any of the so-called evidence perhaps because if ‘the bad guy’ were truly revealed it may be revealed that he is really not that bad.  Clearly, as my legal counsel has portrayed, the evidence supplied by the accused (of which my counsel is not permitted access to) must not have any substance. (Here Corapi admits he will not credence the canonical process and instead chooses the legal/contractual process. Apparently he's only a priest at his own convenience and in his own mind 'he is really not that bad.'  Neither was Maciel in his own mind.)

Regarding ‘hush money’—I never paid anybody off to remain silent. On two occasions there were standard severance agreements executed with former employees and independent contractors. These agreements contained very common non-disclosure provisions. Any attorney who would not include such provisions in such agreements would rightly be guilty of negligent and actionable conduct. (Except Corapi more or less did pay people to sign them, and according to his law suit against his accuser, these non disclosure agreements went far beyond intellectual property rights.

Regarding my resignation—I resigned because the process used by the Church is grossly unjust, and, hence, immoral. I resigned because I had no chance from the beginning of a fair and just hearing.  As I have indicated from the beginning of all this, I am not extinguished!  If I were to commit to the suggestion of the Society, then I would essentially crawl under a rock and wait to die.  However, I can not deny this desire to share aspects of Truth and Hope with all those willing to hear.  This is what I shall continue to fight for!  Many are not going to appreciate this decision, and I respect that.  For those who can accept it, onward!
("I am not extinguished.", I will not "essentially crawl under a rock and wait to die" , "I can not deny this desire" ---to share my wonderful self with all who will are willing to worship my wonderfullness. These are all statements indicative of a certain personality, but it is not a definition of a humble one.)

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Off hand I can't remember which blog I read this on, but one commenter suggested that Catholicism would be far better off dropping it's war against secular relativism and engaging in a war against narcissism.  The Church could actually fight that war by making it's very first battle one to wipe out narcissism in it's clerical ranks.  If a religious figure willingly runs to the spotlight, that's a pretty good sign they should be sent immediately to the desert where they can bask in the wonderful light of their own perfect company without destroying the faith of others.  Nuff said.

The Two Tobins Should Not Be Confused

How can this message have any credibility when our infantile Bishops maintain God will wipe us out over gay marriage?

 

 

I read the civil union views of Rhode Island's Bishop Tobin over the weekend.  I was sorely tempted to post on it, but thought I would wait for Bill Lyndsey's thoughts.  Good thing I did.  Bill can be very much on target with out my tendency to go all sarcastic:

"Responding to Rhode Island's new law permitting civil unions for same-sex couples, Bishop Thomas Tobin forbids Catholics to support or participate in any way in these unions.  "To do so is a very grave violation of the moral law and, thus, seriously sinful," Tobin maintains.

Not only that: Tobin brings out the big religious-right rhetorical guns and says that civil unions for same-sex couples will bring God's wrath down on Rhode Island: 

Can there be any doubt that Almighty God will, in his own time and way, pass judgment upon our state, its leaders and citizens, for abandoning his commands and embracing public immorality? 

So think about it for a moment: Catholics (and Catholic bishops) have long since tacitly accepted the reality of divorce for Western societies in general, and even for Catholics themselves.  The bishops do not try to shame and frighten their flocks with threats of divine wrath if Catholics love, support, assist someone who divorces.

Nor do they spend lavish sums trying to outlaw either divorce or artificial contraception as they do with gay marriage or gay unions, though a far larger percentage of lay Catholics practice contraception than the percentage of Catholics we can expect to contract same-sex civil unions.  But nary peep about God blasting the earth with fire due to Catholic collusion with contraception.

This kind of ugly rhetoric is reserved solely and exclusively for the gays. And it shows to what a shameful extent the U.S. Catholic bishops have sold their souls to the puppet-masters of the religious and political right.  This is the kind of mean, uneducated, spiteful, bible-thumping rhetoric we expect to fall out of the mouth of a Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, or Fred Phelps. (OK, maybe Bill got a little sarcastic at the end of this paragraph.)

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Bishop Thomas Tobin should not be confused with Archbishop Joseph Tobin who is the secretary for the Vatican's Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. Archbishop Tobin would never be quoted  as advocating for a God who punishes an entire State because he's irritated with it's legislature.  But then Archbishop Tobin is fully aware that he is not dealing with a pack of naive pouting twelve year old children reacting to some 'ick' factor.  He is dealing with well educated and dedicated religious congregations who are well beyond the magical thinking and emotional 'ick' factor of pre pubescent children.  Someone should tell the other Tobin that Rhode Island citizens do not share his same emotional and spiritual maturity level.  Neither do most Catholics.


The sad thing for me about American bishops in the mold of Rhode Islands' Tobin is they undercut the arguments of other Catholic leaders who are addressing other far more serious moral questions.  This would include  Archbishop Francis Assisi Chullikatt, Apostolic Nuncio to the United Nations who made a speech in the Kansas City-St Joseph Diocese intelligently asking for a phase out of all nuclear weapons.  Chullikatt was not talking about God wiping us out because God was going to act like a cosmic bully.  He was talking about an immature human capacity to act like bullies and doing such a thing to ourselves.  

That this speech took place in the Diocese of Robert Finn, did not go unnoticed by me.  Finn, for all his other questionable stances, has been consistent about the immorality of the upgraded nuclear weapons facility in his diocese.  Unfortunately for him, some of his other infantile decisions have not done much to further this particular moral cause.  Finn comes across as not having enough 'gravitas' to be taken seriously in some quarters, and as too much of a hypocrite in other quarters, a situation pretty much true for the entire USCCB.
Which brings me back to the other Tobin--the Rhode Island one.

I'm sorry, but it is beyond me to think for a nano second that gay marriage represents a bigger threat to civilization than the nuclear weapons plant in Kansas City.  The only way they become equivalent 'grave moral dangers' is if I concede that blowing up millions of people is the same as my gay friends getting married and living their lives exactly as they always have which hasn't effected me one little bit.  In my professional endeavors we would see that type of belief structure as indicative of an immature if not down right delusional, pattern of thinking.  Adult thinking does not equate personal sexual choices with the capacity to wipe out life on the planet.  Operative words in the preceding sentence is 'adult thinking'. 

The Rhode Island Tobin is not the kind of religious leader whose thinking encourages the development of healthy adult believers.  It does foster the kind of thinking engaged in by psychologically unhealthy people.  These are the kind who catastrophize the small event in to a grand scale event.  This is the kind of mental universe that needs a cosmic bully kind of God equally capable of the same kind of over reaction.  Obviously this kind of thing does not describe the God of Love as Jesus taught in the gospels.  That God lets the sun shine and the rain fall on the just and unjust, not because God didn't care, but because God respected free will and gave everyone equal dignity as His sons and daughters.  The Cosmic Bully God has no sons and daughters, just victims and victims of victims----which come to think of it, kind of describes the operative philosophy of too many American bishops.










 

Independent Catholic Thoughts On Independence Day

Fireworks on the Detroit River were part of a two nation celebration in my family.

Happy Canada Day and Fourth of July to all my Canadian and American readers.  Growing up in the Detroit area with Windsor just across the bridge, both Canada Day and the Fourth of July seemed to be become one big long fun weekend. My family often spent the weekend boating on Lake St Claire on the Canadian side of the bridge so in some respects the Canadian celebration was more immediate than the American celebration.  That is until we all crowded in the boat and puttered down to the Detroit river to watch the fireworks display for the American part of the weekend.  That was pretty cool too---even the year Dad almost capsized the boat by mindlessly drifting too close to a freighter wake.  Come to think of it, that might have been the last year we did that trip down to the Detroit river thing.  

On to the independent thoughts.  Jayden Cameron has a series of reflections over on his blog about his recent trip to Medugorje coupled with his reading of Mathew Fox's book "The Pope's War".  Jayden's lastest post is about trying to reconcile these apparent disparate views of the Church--Fox's view of the manipulative corrupt hierarchy vs the pious Marian view of things.  On the surface, this does seem to be a difficult, if not insurmountable task.  Over at Catholica Au, there is a discussion about how one reconciles the somewhat competing views of the 'intellectual' church and who actually qualifies as a member of the 'intellectual' church.  This discussion dovetails nicely with Bill Lyndsey's take on the professional centrists of the American intellectual church.  It all makes one wonder how many different churches we are all talking about and if any of our collective thoughts will coalesce into any kind of meaningfully Christian institution.


The following excerpt is a paragraph from the Catholica.Au link.  It's from a letter to the editor written by Australian Paul Collins.  For those who don't know who Collins is, he like Mathew Fox, is a priest/theologian who ran afoul of Ratzinger's CDF and is now an ex priest:


"..... Personally I think that the real 'Catholic intellectual' engages in the kind of dialogue recommended by Paul VI which is about mutual respect and an openness to other points of view, an essential prerequisite in a pluralist society like Australia. I also think Craven (Greg Craven is the president of the Oz equivalent of Catholic University) defines Catholicism far too narrowly when he refers to defending 'Catholic values and teaching'. Catholicism is much, much more than 'values and teaching'. Catholicism has, as Henri de Lubac argues in his great book Catholicism, a unitive power, a capacity to transcend, to bring opposites together and to reach out and reconcile. To be genuinely 'Catholic' is to fulfil this kind of challenge rather than to go into battle with enemies and defeat them – preferably totally! It is this kind of 'bigger' Catholicism that we need in Australia today and it is this that the 'Catholic intellectual' is called on to defend rather than just 'values and teaching'."

It seems to me that it is the mystical end of the Church which has the 'capacity to transcend, to bring opposites together and to reach out and reconcile'---not the professional intellectual side of which Benedict is a card carrying member.  Interestingly enough, that is the core message of the seers of Medugorje.  It has also been the core message of my own mystical travels of the last thirty years.  This is not a message about right ritual or right moral rules or right definitions of God.  It is a message about living life in empathy with others, about the power of love to change lives, about the necessity for a radical personal conversion.  This conversion is not about converting to a 'true' faith, but about converting one's entire orientation about what is important in real scheme of things.  Ultimately those really important things are about our relationships to ourselves, others, and God's creation. It's about understanding all things are connected.  We are all intimately connected to each other, and we all do have impact on how others are able to live their lives and on the most fundamental and intimate level all things are part of a much greater whole. 

It's hard to maintain judgmental righteous stances against 'others' when you begin to fathom the truth of all things beings intimately connected in relationship to each other.  There's a reason mystics from all the world's spiritual traditions come to this same fundamental understanding, and it doesn't matter if those mystics are from Medugorje or Dharamshala or Machu Picchu or even Los Alamos.  In the final analysis we are all one, and we are all one with God, no matter how we might have been encultured to define that God.  The task is to find the language which makes that truth real for more people.  I think because this is primarily a language of the heart, the most effective expression is through one's acts. But then, I'm pretty sure all of this is nothing more than what Jesus Himself said and taught. 

Unfortunately, it's still much easier to think about and discuss these teachings than it is to convert to them and act on them.  In a video that Jayden has up on his latest Medugorge blog, one of the visionaries talks about Mary's instructions about the difference between preaching to someone and being an example for them.  It's the difference between talking about love and being that love in another's life.  When you get that, you also receive an incredible amount of peace in your own life.  I think that's the kind of peace Jesus said He came to bring.  

So on a day when it sounds like WWII outside my windows, and the three cats are totally freaked, I will be meditating on peace.

 

A Bad Metaphor Stretched Too Far Leaves Me Wordless

My ghast has been flabbered too, but not over anything quite this cute.

I am still trying to get my head around the implications in the following excerpt from Eugene Kennedy's latest post in the National Catholic Reporter.  These recorded thoughts of a new JPII priest seem to be taking the marriage metaphor between Jesus and the Church a step too far.  I'm not convinced this is the appropriate kind of imagery for the reception of communion.  In fact, I'm convinced it's not at all appropriate.  The excerpt takes up in the middle of Kennedy's post:

....I made notes as a quintessential set-decorator rambled through a Corpus Christi sermon, haranguing the parishioners about something they knew to be untrue: "You do not fulfill your Sunday obligation if you arrive after the Gospel or leave before the priest gives his last blessing. Remember what happened to the one who left the Last Supper early."


He then launched an attack as amazing as it was revealing, "We've been through an era where anything is good enough for Jesus so I want to remind you of some things. In the Eucharist Jesus is the bridegroom and you are members of the bride so that receiving the Eucharist is that moment at which the bridegroom and the bride complete their union. As members of the bride, how do you prepare? How do you dress? Do you arrive on time? Do you keep the fast? Do you chew gum? Do you take mints? Avoid these as penance for your sins." (Uhmmm, I can't say I've ever ever thought about the Eucharist as a sexual act. I was like, he couldn't have said this--could he?)

"Reverence over Preference every time ..."
"I want to remind you," he continued, "that it is a moral evil for non-Catholics to receive Communion. Don't violate their consciences by inviting them. Who can go to Communion? Baptized Catholics who have made their First Communion and who are in a state of grace. And the preferred way to receive Communion is on the tongue. Studies show that this is not only theologically correct but the most efficient way to receive. Receiving Communion in the hand is permitted only by a papal indult that the Holy Father could change at any time.


"You should bow when the person ahead of you bows. That is the fastest, most efficient way to do it. Bowing at the right time and receiving Communion on the tongue follows the principle of 'Reverence over Preference every time.'" He added more remarkable Mass etiquette, "You should only give the kiss of peace to the person next to you, not to anybody else and no moving around the church to give it to others."

He returned breathily to his extraordinary metaphor of the marital bed for receiving the Eucharist, "Communion defines who you are as spouses. The bridegroom has given himself to the bride. The priest receives first as the bridegroom in fulfillment of the wedding promises. So the bridegroom is within you. The priest then blesses the bride in the name of the Holy Trinity." 

Parishioners gazed around uneasily, does he really mean that, does he know what he's saying? Yes to the first, No to the second, but he had already shifted subjects. "You should not hold hands," he commanded, "during the Our Father because the priest has his hands separated at the time and because the Our Father isn't about us." He gazed down dismissively, "You can hold hands any time outside church."


The parishioners handled all this as healthy experienced Catholics always do, letting the rant run its course and, when the moment arrived, passing the kiss of peace to everybody within reach.......

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In the interests of keeping my occasionally snarky self from getting out of control, I will refrain from any comment on the mind blowing images that are racing through my mind.  All I will say is this is definitely taking the bride/bridegroom image to heights it was hopefully never meant to go. 

Perhaps this is a good a place as any to drop the whole subject, but I encourage readers of this blog to check out Kennedy's entire post.  It's well worth the read, and unlike me, Kennedy did not muzzle his snarky side.

Thirty Years Of Silencing Theologians Has Only Fueled Secular Relativism

Funny how attempts to control thoughts have a nasty tendency to create more of what they intend to control.

One of the things I find really fascinating and frustrating about Benedict's crusade against secularism and relativism is his apparent blindness to how much the JPII/Ratzinger Church has been responsible for the upsurge in this trend--especially in the west.  I can remember when the Vatican started in on liberation theology I was utterly confused as to why a theology which gave a preferential option for the poor should be so summarily crushed.  In my mind the only way one could confuse liberation theology with Marxist communism was to do so purposefully, and for some other agenda.  That period of recent Church history certainly fueled my own tendency to look at the Vatican with an eye towards global politics and not Christian spirituality.  In truth, it was the beginning of the end of my mindless thoughtless orthodox obedience.  In many respects I am the kind of spiritual Catholic I am because the JPII/Ratzinger papacy was the reactionary political papacy it was.

The following is a part of a review of Mathew Fox's book "The Pope's War" from Amazon.com.  Although much of it is not actually a review of Fox's book, it does give valuable insight about how the JPII papacy and Ratzinger CDF reign impacted both non Catholics and fueled American corporatism.  The review was written by Theodore Richards, a non Catholic who is the director of the Chicago Wisdom Project--which explains the Fr Pfleger references, and in the interests of full disclosure, he has worked with Fox in California.  I have excerpted the final paragraphs of his review.


.......Ratzinger's influence goes back to the previous Papacy, when he was in charge of tracking down dissident clergy and silencing them. He was able to do so with alarming silence from the mainstream media. Seduced by the flawless public image of John Paul II and American cold war propaganda that equated Liberation Theology with the USSR, the media said little as Liberation Theology in Latin America was crushed. One by one, theologians and priests who had stood by the poor against often-violent oppression--with US complicity--were silenced. Even more than Pfleger, these people were putting themselves at risk by bravely opposing oppressive regimes. Imagine if Dr. King had been similarly "silenced" during the American Civil Rights Movement. The result, years later, has been two-fold: The work the Catholic church had been doing to seek a more just society has been curtailed, leading leftists and intellectuals to abandon religion altogether; second, fundamentalist sects--and it is no coincidence that these have been supported by the same Right Wing North Americans who fought Liberation Theology--have gained a strong foothold in Latin America as people seek more vibrant forms of worship.

Moreover, it has become clear that Ratzinger would rather go after a feminist than a child-rapist. It turns out that Sinead O'Connor had a point when she protested child abuse in the Church back in the early nineties. Then, few defended her. Now that the scope of the abuse, and the degree to which Church leadership ignored it, have come to light, her simple and poignant protest seems mild.

So why should those of us not in the Church care? It is easy to see why a silenced theologian, or the parishioner at St. Sabina in Chicago (Pfleger's Church) would care, but what about non-Catholics? What about the ever-growing group of Catholics who have left the Church? What about Jews, or Protestants, or Hindus?

First, Ratzinger and his ilk promote a total rejection--again, regressing to the pre-Vatican II days--of other faiths. He has rehabilitated open Holocaust deniers and openly criticized Islam. Such an approach makes interfaith dialogue difficult, for one--one would think that a man who lived in Germany during the Holocaust would understand the need for interfaith understanding--but even more importantly, it makes interfaith spirituality impossible. The Catholic tradition--for all its baggage--has much to teach the world. Unfortunately, a pathological emphasis on orthodoxy, a false unity that, as Fox points out, lacks the diversity that authentic unity requires, has resulted in much of its truth being obscured.

Second, Ratzinger's "crusade" is political as well as theological. He has supported groups with open Right Wing agendas. The impact of his policies in the Catholic world is felt by all, Catholic and non-Catholic. Neighborhoods and nations in which priests are silenced have been transformed to adhere to Ratzinger's vision of the world in which the poor, and women, and the Global South, and homosexuals find themselves at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Third, the lack of rigor in our media when it comes to the Pope--even in today's anti-intellectual climate, it is shocking--allows people like John Paul II to become heroes. This is how his ideas can affect not only the Church, but also other institutions run by those who, seduced by the anti-intellectualism of Ratzinger's Church, are lacking a critical consciousness. Fox points to several institutions, for example, dominated by Opus Dei members.

Finally, Ratzinger's theology has left the Catholic Church on the sidelines of the pursuit of what Fox calls a post-modern spirituality, a spirituality than can give birth to a worldview capable of dealing with myriad problems humanity faces. How can a body-denying, Earth-despising, sexually repressed spirituality deal with such issues as climate change? How can a spirituality that won't speak of justice and sentimentalizes the poor deal with global poverty?..............

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The other thing Ratzinger has accomplished in thirty years of silencing other theologians is to pretty much insure his theology is the only theology anyone hears from our pulpits and JPII's notions of global politics the only political strategy we hear.  The culture war issues of abortion and gay marriage are perfect issues to fog up the real agenda of keeping white male European/corporate culture transcendent.  Truth is sex sells and nothing sells like 'perverted' sex, especially when one can be on the righteous side of the perversion equation. But God is a just God, and that same 'selling' point has kept the clerical abuse crisis front and center in the Catholic imagination and Benedict and company are definitely not on the 'righteous' side of that equation.  That has given many of us the intellectual latitude to see it is not in the global world's best interests to maintain white male European/corporate culture as transcendent.  We have to find a better way, a more inclusive way, a more just way.  

In spite of thirty plus years of silencing the voices in the wilderness who attempted to articulate those better ways, those voices are still being heard.  One of the best things about the post modern world is that even though a pope can silence a theologians voice, a pope can not stop the spread of the silenced theologians words. The pen is still mightier than the sword.  True thoughts still more potent than empty power driven edicts.  If that weren't true, Christianity would have died in it's infancy.  It won't die now, in spite of the baggage that has accrued to it over the last two thousand years because in it's core concepts it's still true.  Love is the force that makes the universe go round.  Or as my favorite bumper sticker says, "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."  Only when Catholicism recaptures that spiritual understanding will it be a true force for peace.  Until then it's just another mindless power broker lost in it's own delusions.

John Allen Declares The Progressive vs Conservative Wars Are Over---Guess Who Lost?

As the gay marriage vote comes in, Archbishop Dolan hides his unhappy face and prays it isn't so.

Readers may notice the side of the blog is now a little different.  I had intended to add a couple of more blog feeds to the side.  I was talking with my daughter at the same time and mindlessly managed to delete that whole section.  I remember distinctly a time when I was good at multi tasking, but back then I used to be able to put names with faces as well.  So much for all those quantum physicists who maintain that time is an illusion.

The reason I was even fiddling with the side of the blog was to add a feed for Vatican Insider.  VI is an Italian effort and it's pretty slick. I encourage readers to check it out.  It's like a hall of fame publication for global papal correspondents which means John Allen is on the roster.  He has an article which posted on 6/21 about Archbishop Dolan and Dolan's powerful status as the voice of American Catholicism. Given the gay marriage vote that happened in Dolan's Archdiocese on 6/24 maybe Allen should have waited a bit before he posted his article.   But being things are as they are I found this following part very interesting:

Beyond his charm and media savvy, what makes Dolan truly interesting for Catholics all over the world is that he’s the apotheosis of one option for the future of the Church: “Affirmative Orthodoxy.”

If generals are always fighting the last war, journalists are forever handicapping the last election. For the past fifty years, the conventional journalistic way of sizing up Catholicism has been in terms of a struggle between left and right. After more than thirty years of bishops’ appointments by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, however, that contest is largely over at the leadership level.  (I would agree with this.  It's doubly true since hardly anyone is following anymore.)

Instead, the real battle for the future runs between different currents in the broad conservative camp – between cultural warriors who see the outside world primarily as a threat, and evangelists who see it as missionary terrain. The first instinct is a prescription for pulling back, the other for meeting the world halfway.

In that tug-of-war, Dolan embodies the open, positive version of Catholic conservatism that I’ve called “Affirmative Orthodoxy”. Both parts of the formula are important. It’s “orthodox,” meaning a tenacious defense of Catholic thought, speech and practice. It’s also “affirmative,” in the sense of presenting Catholic identity in a positive key. The emphasis is on what Catholicism embraces and affirms, what it says “yes” to, rather than what it opposes and condemns. (If Dolan's version is open and positive, I'd really hate to see the closed negative version.)

Dolan is Affirmative Orthodoxy on steroids. No one can question his commitment to Catholic teaching, and most regard him intellectually and politically as a neo-conservative. He’s equally legendary, however, for a deep conviction that most of life’s problems can be solved by sitting down over a couple of beers and talking things out. If faced with a choice between reconciliation and recrimination, Dolan will invariably prefer the former.(And when things aren't reconciled to his point of view, he will do the recrimination thing--or as with the case of Bishop DiMarzio, appoint someone make the strong arm attempt at 'reconciliation'.)


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So John Allen has decreed the war between progressives and conservatives is over and that the conservatives have won, and that now it's just a matter of which conservative point of view will take the ascendancy. Hmmm.  I beg to differ.  Oh I don't disagree that the battles for Roman Catholicism will be fought amongst the conservatives.  Allen at least has the part about all the bishops which have been appointed by the last two papacies correct.  They were hand picked precisely because they are conservatives.  Allen seems to say the choice we have now is between happy face lock step authoritarian conservatives and sour face lock step authoritarian conservatives.  Some choice.  I happen to think Mathew Fox is much closer to the truth.  The current curial church  is actually schismatic.  Vatican II expressly called for collegiality and consultation between the Vatican curia and national bishops conferences and much more lay involvement.  We don't have anything close to that intent, and since Councils are supposed to trump popes, this Vatican is in schism.  But back to Dolan.

I think Dolan knows his stock took a hit with the gay marriage vote in New York.  That victory, orchestrated as it was by lay Catholics--his lay Catholics, is indicative of sea change in American Catholicism.  Lay Catholics are not paying attention to their bishops.  Not the happy faced ones, and not the sour faced ones.  The cafeteria is not just open, it's spawning numerous franchises. In spite of John Allens positive PR,  Dolan is not the face of a resurgent positive orthodoxy, he is the posterior of a positive disintegration. 

Religious Dispatches has an interview with Mathew Fox about his new book "The Pope's War".  It's mostly a rehash of what he's said before, but his answer to the last question sort of sums up my own thoughts as they pertain to the recent vote in Dolan's Archdiocese:

Polls here in America have shown that a majority of laypeople in the pews of the Catholic Church are supportive of marriage equality for gay and lesbian people. Nearly three-quarters, in fact, favor either marriage or civil unions for gays and lesbians. Will the Vatican ever catch up with its flock?

I think the Vatican in its present state is beyond redemption. I think it is a very closed boy’s club. I have a section in the book on bullying. Ratzinger is a bully. I know him. He was in a 12-year battle with me before he won, I guess, and expelled me. Part of bullying, according to the studies that I’ve found, is that the bully likes a wolf pack. That wolf pack is the Curia (the central governing body of the Roman Catholic Church). It’s interesting that he appointed 24 cardinals in December and ten of them are in the Curia. They have lots of power and it’s a very tight circle, which is of course why they don’t want women in the club, it’s a boy’s club.
The point I make in the book is that the laypeople have to take over the church, period. It’s not going to be reformed from the inside, or from the top down, at all. It’s rancid, and so, these people have to assert themselves and that’s the next step, for laypeople to realize it’s their church. They should only hire ministers who are willing to serve and not to be served, and that means starting over.

Archbishop Dolan and the USCCB are maybe beginning to get the picture that they can no longer deliver the votes and that the vast majority of their flock is not listening to their moral advice on all things sexual.  That should send them a very big message because it's a short step from ignoring them politically on sexual morality to ignoring them completely.  Catholics are being forced to make choices about how they personally relate to the Church and how they want their faith to be expressed, both privately and publicly.  In the future we will see more and more Catholics opting out of Roman Catholicism and into some form of lay driven catholicism.  That small c catholicism may not have the buildings and assets of the big C Catholicism, but it will have the most spiritually driven and openly inclusive people--- and that could turn out to be a very amazing thing indeed.

A Welcoming Relationship Is No Easy Task When Rules Define The Relationship

I can laugh at this only because a relationship with another kind of priest forced me to deal with all the traditional Catholic character builders.

The following is an edited article written by Michael O'Loughlin which makes a really important point about the power of relationship with in Roman Catholicism.  I know in my own spiritual path, in the final analysis it's not the theology or sacramentality that keeps me keepin' on.  It's the people and relationships I have made a long the way. They were the kind of relationships that brought the Gospel message alive for me and challenged me to really think about the difficulty in living the The Way. As time went on, I realized relationship in all it's facets was a critical concept to understand.  It's a conceptual understanding Roman Catholicism needs to put back into it's spiritual equation.

Relationships and the Church: How to Create a Welcoming Catholicism

Michael O'Loughlin - Huffington Post - 6/21/2011

A friend once remarked that every view of the church, whether colored with praise, criticism, admiration or disdain, is the articulation of a personal relationship with the person or persons who have come to represent church in an individual's life. He said that during his career as a Catholic priest, he spoke with countless numbers of people who trace back their love of the church to caring nuns or priests. Sadly, he also heard from those who spend years and lifetimes holding on to anger and resentment because of the unkind words or actions of others who represent the church to them.

Now consider for a moment the words and actions of two of America's most notable Catholic figures: New York's Archbishop Timothy Dolan used increasingly incendiary language to fight the legalization of same-sex marriage, and Boston's Archbishop Sean O'Malley directed his officials to postpone a Mass celebrating a theme of "All Are Welcome" at a parish that is home to many gay and lesbian Catholics....

......An archbishop's preaching easily personifies "church" to many people, and Dolan employed language that left some feeling abandoned, isolated, and hurt. When asked to comment on parishioners who walked out during the service, Dolan coolly responded, "We're used to that. People have been walking away from God's law. They even walked away from Jesus so we're kind of used to that." (Dolan's principle use of relationship is to the law.  Jesus is second.)

In Boston, St. Cecilia's parish planned a Mass of welcome, set to coincide with the city's gay pride celebrations. When local right-wing bloggers found out, they launched a mean-spirited campaign to cancel the Mass. The chancery then directed the parish to postpone it. Parishioners, with the encouragement of their pastor, held a prayer service on the sidewalk in front of the church, reminding participants that all are welcome in Christ's church. O'Malley, who has tried valiantly though ineffectively to promote respect for gay and lesbian people while calling their actions sinful, used his office literally to shut a marginalized group of faithful Catholics out of the church and relegate them to the sidewalk.

Why are the words and actions of these two archbishops so troubling? If my friend is correct that personal relationships have an abundance of power in shaping one's views about the church, then there is trouble ahead for the Catholic church. Americans today have siblings, parents, friends and co-workers who are openly gay and lesbian. Christians are increasingly willing to live their lives fully and wholly, rather than hide their orientation to fit in at their churches.

Rightly or wrongly, Dolan and O'Malley, and others in positions of authority in any denomination, most easily personify church to the faithful.......

..........What is the antidote to this institutional downward spiral, where the church is viewed not as the defender of the weak and vulnerable, but as the enforcer of an antiquated morality? The hope lies in the truth that relationships hold unparalleled power in helping individuals find self-acceptance through God's radically unconditional love.......

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For too many of our religious leaders, insisting our relationship to religious dogma and doctrine supersedes our relationship with people is the lazy way out.  This  is true even when this notion of doctrinely defined type of relating is aimed at our relationship with God.  If God truly meant that we were to place relating to an intellectual defined construct of Him over our need to learn to love through relationship with each other, He would never have bothered to incarnate in the much more immediate human form of Jesus.
When God chose to become human and to relate to us as human, God chose to put his human creation on the more difficult relational path.

The real message in Archbishop Dolan and Cardinal O'Malley's actions is that our relationship to Catholic law is more important than our relationship to fellow members of the Body of Christ.  This is precisely the opposite of what Jesus actually taught.  What makes this attitude more unwelcoming for gays is that the Church's relationship towards them becomes defined by sin.  Gays the are related to as sin, and because this is so, it doesn't matter to the official relationship if gays don't commit any of the sins by which the Church chooses to define them.  Hate the sin, love the sinner  is an impossible thing to do when sin defines both sides of this equation.  Even in this constantly used facile statement, by definition we are relating to the sin because we are told to love the sinner.  If we were going to be more generous this should state 'hate the sin, love the person'.  No other class of Catholic is defined this way.  No wonder gays have a tough time finding a healthy way to relate to the Church.

But gays are only one class of person the Church relates to in a legalistic rather than personal way.  Women are another class.  Women are 'ruled out' out of things far more than they are 'ruled into' things. The latest example being the Vatican decree that altar girls are not to serve at the Extraordinary form of the Mass.  By any reasonable standard of relationship, the legal structure of the Church relates to women as 'less than' men.
It's no wonder our younger generations, who have grown up being taught to relate to people as people, are rejecting institutional Catholicism which still insists on relating to it's flock through rules and regulations.  

The exact same process of relating via rules explains the hierarchy's usual method of dealing with abuse victims. The rules say priests are more important than laity, especially children, and so the Church has used every legal strategy imaginable to protect the more important 'class' of Catholic over the least important 'class' of Catholic. A truly authoritarian structure based in hierarchical definitions of importance never places much value on the 'least' of it's defined classes.  Human dignity is parceled out according to the given food chain.  It is never an intrinsic identity.  It is an earned identity.  This style of relationship is absolutely contradictory to the message and teachings of Jesus.  He flipped the criteria on which we are to relate to each other.  Even the very least of us, at least by worldly definition, are worthy of full human dignity, are worthy of being related to as full children of God, are fully human before we are anything else, and in fact come first in Jesus' relational scheme of things. As such no one belongs on the side walk looking in.  We belong around the altar sharing in this truth.  It may not be what most of us want to believe, but it's exactly what Jesus demands of us.  For some of us this whole notion seems to be a cross to heavy to carry, and that is really sad.







 

Bishop DiMarzio Throws A Hissy Fit Over The Gay Marriage Vote In New York

It sounds like Bishop DiMarzio never learned to deal with not getting his own way.  Perhaps he should have a random tantrum fruit cup and call it a day.  Well, maybe not a fruit cup, maybe the cranky pants french toast. But I suspect there's more to his tantrum than just losing a political battle.  Perhaps it's how the USCCB lost this particular battle.  But first DiMarzio's tantrum.

Today, Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature have deconstructed the single most important institution in human history. Republicans and Democrats alike succumbed to powerful political elites and have passed legislation that will undermine our families and as a consequence, our society. (I kind of thought war did that, but what do I know?

With this vote, Governor Cuomo has opened a new front in the culture wars that are tearing at the fabric of our nation. At a time when so many New Yorkers are struggling to stay in their homes and find jobs, we should be working together to solve these problems. However, the politicians have curried favor with wealthy donors who are proponents of a divisive agenda in order to advance their own careers and futures.  (Well, maybe NOM should change it's name to National Organization for Jobs.)

What is needed in our state is leadership and not political gamesmanship. (What if your political gamesmanship had won, would you still call this political gamesmanship?)

In light of these disturbing developments and in protest for this decision, I have asked all Catholic schools to refuse any distinction or honors bestowed upon them this year by the governor or any member of the legislature who voted to support this legislation. Furthermore, I have asked all pastors and principals to not invite any state legislator to speak or be present at any parish or school celebration. (The ole 'take you ball and run home' response.)

The above request is intended as a protest of the corrupt political process in New York State. More than half of all New Yorkers oppose this legislation. Yet, the governor and the state legislature have demonized people of faith, whether they be Muslims, Jews, or Christians, and identified them as bigots and prejudiced, and voted in favor of same-sex “marriage.” It is mystifying that this bill would be passed on the last day of an extended session under the cover of darkness. (Only because your side held up the vote for ever and ever and ever.)

This issue has been framed as upholding marriage equality. This is not the case since one of the principal purposes of marriage is to bring new life into the world. This cannot happen in same-sex marriage. It is not a civil rights issue, but rather a human rights issue upholding the age-old understanding of marriage. Our political leaders do not believe their own rhetoric. If they did, how in good conscience could they carve out any exemption for institutions that would be proponents of bigotry and prejudice?  (Yes it can.  Lesbians do it all the time, but then your real issues aren't with lesbians, are they?  And you and your fellow bishops were the ones who insisted legislators carve out exemptions the make you the proponents of bigotry and prejudice.)

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It seems I keep writing that in this incoming new understanding of human consciousness that the traditionalists will get sillier and sillier as they get more and more desperate.  DiMarzio must be pretty desperate because this tantrum is pretty silly.  Especially the last line of his diatribe.  It could be that I am totally misunderstanding his point, but I've read this a number of times and keep coming up with the same understanding.  It's their own insistence on these religious exemptions that make them look like bigots and maybe that's because they are bigots. The USCCB could have just trusted that the State of New York had enough sense to make the legal separation of sacramental marriage vs civil marriage two distinct concepts.  It is after all, federal as well as state law.  Traditionally, these two views of marriage were separate, and in fact the state recognized marriage as a contract long before the Church recognized it as a sacrament.  But then what do laity know?

I would like to give DiMarzio credit for enforcing his blanket ban on Republican and Democratic politicians on church property, but I suspect certain politicians who voted 'right' will be allowed to give and accept awards.  My guess is these will be for pro life kinds of things.  DiMarzio wouldn't want to look too hypocritical.  I also suspect his fellow members in the USCCB are not too happy with his single sided broadside blast.  It makes them all look like proponents of bigotry and prejudice.  Maybe they are---at least the ones who aren't retired.


And one last little correction.  DiMarzio states in this tantrum "more than half of all New Yorkers oppose this legislation." That's not true.  Here's the headline from an article in the January 27, 2011 New York Daily News:

Gay marriage supported by record number of New York voters: 56% according to new poll  ----This is the NY Daily News, not the NY Times.

But there was something else I wondered about. Why was DiMarzio so insistent that big money paved the way. I took this to mean bigger money than the Roman Catholic Church had brought in for the support of Republican legislators. Turns out this was true. Big, usually Republican money, did, in fact play a very big part. And Democratic Governor Cuomo was the real leader in this effort. The following is from Boston.com

....Would the donors win over the deciding Senate Republicans? It sounded improbable: top Republican moneymen helping a Democratic rival with one of his biggest legislative goals.

But the donors in the room — the billionaire Paul Singer, whose son is gay, joined by the hedge fund managers Cliff Asness and Dan Loeb — had the influence and the money to insulate nervous senators from conservative backlash if they supported the marriage measure. And they were inclined to see the issue as one of personal freedom, consistent with their more libertarian views.

Within days, the wealthy Republicans sent back word: They were on board. Each of them cut six-figure checks to the lobbying campaign that eventually totaled more than $1 million.

I also think the Boston.com article hits on the real reason for DiMarzio's tantrum as the article goes on to say this:

The story of how same-sex marriage became legal in New York is about shifting public sentiment and individual lawmakers moved by emotional appeals from gay couples.

But, behind the scenes, it was really about a Republican Party reckoning with a profoundly changing power dynamic, where Wall Street donors and gay-rights advocates demonstrated more might and muscle than a Roman Catholic hierarchy and an ineffective opposition.

The days of Roman Catholic Bishops having a huge say in how the United States of America politically operates is over. The game has changed and they are not the players they once were--even in the Republican party. This is all probably indicative of how the abuse crisis has affected their moral voice, but more than that, I think it's indicative of how far out of touch they are with where society is moving. It isn't about sexual acts. Married heterosexual couples engage in contraception and the same kinds of sexual acts as gay couples. Maybe, finally, it's about validating love. That's a good thing. That's a Jesus thing. 

 

Another Day, Another Country, Another Story Of The Heart Break Of Clerical Pedophelia

This 'technicolor eccentric' was also a sadistic pedophile.

There's a truly sad story making the rounds in Britain and Ireland involving the missionary religious order the Rosminians.  The story is about Fr Kit Cunningham who had spent ten years in Tanzania and reportedly sexually abused a number of the boys he was supposed to supervise.  He subsequently became pastor of an influential parish in London and presented an entirely different face.  The following article from the Guardian UK written by Peter Stanford eloquently describes the confusion Cunningham's truth wreaked on his flock, friends, and admirers.  This aspect of the abuse crisis is rarely discussed, which is unfortunate, because this damage is very real.

He was my priest and my friend. Then I found out he was a paedophile

Peter Sanford,  The Observer - 6/20/2011  Guardian.co.uk

All journalists like seeing their articles discussed on television, even when they're being challenged, but the sight of John Poppleton holding a copy of an obituary I wrote earlier this year for the Guardian made me feel profoundly ashamed.

The subject was Father Kit Cunningham, the Catholic priest who had married us, baptised my son (who shares his Christian name) and was a family friend for 20 years. "A Technicolor eccentric, and widely loved as a consequence," the obituary read.

"I find this," Poppleton said, brandishing the newspaper cutting to camera as if it were contaminated, "offensive. This priest was a monster."

Poppleton had been repeatedly sexually abused as a young boy by Fr Kit, an experience that he says "broke me down and broke my spirit". The abuse took place at St Michael's, Soni, in the 1960s, in what was then Tanganyika, now Tanzania. Four of the priests who taught there, all members of the Rosminian order, and including Fr Kit, perpetrated physical and sexual abuse that made this boarding school, according to Poppleton, "a loveless, violent and sad hellhole"
.
He is not alone in his trauma. In Abused: Breaking the Silence, a documentary to be shown on BBC1 on Tuesday, reporter Olenka Frenkiel hears from other former pupils at Soni about how they were subjected to a regime of sexual abuse from which they were powerless to escape. Some of them, grown men, break down in tears on camera as they recall being photographed naked, hauled out of bed at night to have their genitals fondled, and worse.

I say worse because I struggle to repeat what I heard, and to reconcile the Fr Kit that Poppleton describes with the amiable, kindly, dedicated parish priest I knew for the years, long after Soni, when he was rector of St Etheldreda's, the oldest Catholic church in London.

In my obituary of him in January, I wrote as I found. A week after publication I received an email. "It is good that he is remembered for his good," my correspondent began, "but there are many who will remember the other side of Kit… a sexual, physical and mental abuser. It would be good if you just let him rest in peace, but I finally reacted as there was too much praise going on for this deviated creep."

Deviated creep? In almost three decades of writing about the church, and a lifetime as part of it, I thought I knew how to read a priest. Since the 1990s, when the scandal of paedophile priests first emerged in the public domain, a question mark has been hanging over almost every cleric as a result of the church's cover-up. Almost every priest, but not, for me, foolishly imagining myself a seasoned observer, over Fr Kit. His vices appeared pretty obvious – drink, obsessive attention to restoring his church, and what looked like an overly close friendship with the (female) parish secretary, who shared his love of wine. But here was a letter telling me Fr Kit was a paedophile.

My first (shameful) instinct was to wonder if my correspondent might be mistaken, but he had included in his note a means of testing his claim. "Suffice it to say," he wrote of Fr Kit, "he returned his MBE to the Queen last year when his past demons came to haunt him." That was something I could check easily. It was true.

A correspondence developed. I am not going to name the other party because he made clear he didn't want that. He is not part of the group of 22 ex-pupils of Soni pursuing a legal case for compensation against the Rosminians. But he was abused there, as was his brother, or so he believes. The two have never discussed it.

As part of that correspondence, I saw the letters of apology written by Fr Kit before his death, and by the other accused (all of whom are still alive, and living in a comfortable retirement home run by the Rosminians in the home counties). They are also shown in the documentary. All are general in tone and claim not to remember specifics or individuals. Perhaps they have blotted them out, or perhaps they have been told by a lawyer not to incriminate themselves. "Poor", "vague", "not from the heart" are the onscreen reactions to these mea culpas from their victims. "I'd like to hear a lot more," one comments.

In one sense the story of Soni is another appalling example of a by now sadly familiar tale. I say that not to play down the suffering of the victims, but rather to acknowledge that the torment of Poppleton and his fellow pupils at St Michael's mirrors the experience of many others, widely reported, at the hands of abusive paedophile priests.

There have also been repeated public expressions of regret by the Catholic authorities as these scandals have emerged all round the globe, revealing this as an endemic problem in the church rather than, as Pope John Paul II originally suggested in 2002, a case of a few bad apples.

Bishops and cardinals have pledged to confront past wrongs, to work with victims to address their pain and to set up procedures to make sure nothing of this kind ever happens again. However, Frenkiel points out in her film that on the day that Pope Benedict XVI, during his visit to Britain last September, was in Westminster Cathedral expressing his "deep sorrow to innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes", the Rosminian order was writing to refuse to pay any compensation for what it has openly acknowledged are the crimes of four of its own priests.

There is a running debate that takes place at the gates of my children's Catholic primary school. "What are we doing?" parents ask each other, "sending our children to a school run by the Catholic church when we are reading about the abuse in its schools elsewhere that it has covered up?" (Parents are asking this same question in Kansas City-St Joseph too.)

The ready answer – and I have been as ready as anyone else to utter it – is that most allegations concern episodes several decades ago, our school is a warm, loving, nurturing place, governed by extremely strict rules of conduct (I am the safeguarding governor) and that, more broadly, Catholicism in Britain has set up a system to ensure no abuser will ever again use the church to prey on children.

Then I found out about Father Kit and it has shaken me out of my complacency and shaken my faith – shaken it because here is a religious order still reluctant to own up to the damage its members have done. The Rosminians appear, to this Catholic at least, to be placing defending the institution – ie their order, its good name and its properties – above a heartfelt acceptance of the catalogue of depression, broken marriages and suicide attempts recounted by victims in the documentary. Yes, I know that compensation money doesn't wipe the slate clean, but it is the most common way our society has of shouldering the blame.

And shaken it too because I felt that Fr Kit was a priest I could trust. If he kept his "dark side" so well hidden, if the church authorities allowed him to keep it so well hidden that even the Queen awarded him an MBE, what of all the other priests I admire for their work with the poor and marginalised? Who can I trust now when my children go into the sacristy to be altar-servers? And if I am struggling to trust priests, what on earth am I doing in the church at all? (Coming face to face with the certain knowledge the clerical system must be reformed or expunged from the Church.)

Such questions might nag away slightly less insistently if I thought the Catholic authorities were genuinely trying to understand the root causes of this scandal. But this month the quasi-official Catholic Truth Society published a booklet on clerical sex-abuse that blames it on the "permissive society" of the 1960s. So while everyone else took sexual liberation to mean you didn't have to wait until you were married, priests took it as licence to abuse children?

When I think about Fr Kit today, as well as a powerful feeling of betrayal, happy memories of time in his company continue to crowd in, making me feel as if I am part of that culture of cover-up and denial of abuse. It is probably a process that everyone goes through who discovers, out of the blue, that a trusted family friend is an abuser. How to reconcile my image, there in our wedding pictures, of genial Fr Kit with the younger, slimmer version photographed at Soni in old home-movie footage, unmistakable in his TV-screen specs, but soon to abuse another helpless boy? So far, it has proved impossible.

The church would urge greater understanding of human frailty and forgiveness. On a broader canvas, that distinctive demand for forgiveness in a secular society that is ever more punitive keeps me going to mass every Sunday. But for forgiveness, there must also be genuine acknowledgement of the damage done. Privately returning your MBE when on your deathbed, without explanation, doesn't quite count. Neither does refusing compensation, or holding a memorial service for Fr Kit where not a word of this scandal was breathed.
As an institution, despite claiming to have turned over a new leaf, the church – still, falteringly and often uncomfortably my church – emerges from this particular story as failing distressingly to practise what it preaches.

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And so another parish in another part of the world tries to come to grips with a charismatic pedophile priest and a Church body that refuses to acknowledge it's complicity in said priest's activities, refuses to offer justice to victims, refuses to deal in any remotely pastoral actions, and leaves even more victims in it's wake.  In the meantime the Vatican organizes more dog and pony shows in preparation for the Pope's visit to Germany.  Germany, of course, is another country dealing with the aftermath of it's own clerical abuse scandals.  I'm sure the Vatican is working over time attempting to grease wheels for this particular dog and pony show.


 Eventually, I hope enough lay Catholics and priests of integrity can understand there will be no real healing for anyone until there is reform in the clerical system.  Until then, the abuses, the cover ups, the corruption, the denials, the blaming of everyone else, and the apologies given in the place of real justice will continue.  Until the laity take the priesthood off the pedestal and really look at priests as human beings and not the mini gods who grace our family tables and baptize our children, well meaning Catholic laity will continue to be duped by the anti social narcissists who get through to ordination. And at that point these 'priests' will be free to plunder as they see fit because no one who should hold them accountable, will hold them accountable.  That just has to stop.

Latin To The Rescue In A Divided Kansas City-St Joseph Diocese

According to the Kansas City-St Joseph worship committee, this activity will bring unity to a very divided diocese.  I'm not kidding.

I am finally at a loss for words.  In the interests of unity and prayers for Bishop Finn's intentions and to shine light in all the darkness, the Diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph is inviting one and all to a.......Latin Mass.  The following is the full text of an email sent out by the Diocesan Worship Office.

The Holy Mass is being celebrated principally to give much glory to God through the ancient and sacred liturgy that is the Extraordinary Form, with all beauty and reverence. But it is also purposed to promote unity, which is borne of a common history or tradition - hence why we have opted for a Solemn High (Traditional) Mass.


So whether one identifies as a "charismatic" or a "traditionalist" or something in between, we can all appreciate that which has been celebrated by the Catholic Church for hundreds of years. How glorious will it be to see those of your fold theretofore unacquainted, alas even divided by the aforesaid labels, kneeling next to one another in the pews! Amidst all the discord and disunity during this present darkness, let there be light!

Toward this end, we have quite intentionally arranged for three priests of somewhat disparate callings to unite in the celebration of this Holy Mass. Specifically, Canon William Avis of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest will celebrate the Mass, assisted by Fr. John Fongemie of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (deacon) and Fr. Evan Harkins of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph (subdeacon). Deacon Wehner, Director of Sacred Liturgy for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, will serve as Master of Ceremonies. Seeing these priests come together for a common end - namely, the greater glory of God - will do more for unification of the flock than a myriad private prayers.

I really hope you can help me in publicizing this event. Because this Mass is being offered for the intentions of Bishop Finn and for unity among his flock, and because footage of the Mass is potentially to be acquired by EWTN, we are really hoping for a full house.

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The next time I read some traditionalist spouting off about how the left uses the sexual abuse crisis for their own 'agenda', I will point them to this article.  Forget about any abuse victims or irritated parents, if enough 'unifiers' show up, EWTN might even televise it.  Imagine that.

This reminds me of the school of thinking which believes if you throw a big enough show, the masses will be distracted and over look administrative malfeasance.  This is actually kind of apropos since that was ancient Rome's favorite trick and the current Kansas City Catholic emperor is doing his best to return things to ancient imperial Rome and all for the glory of God.  I did notice though, that Finn himself is not celebrating this Solemn High Mass, which means he's giving up a chance to actually wear his cappa magna.  But this is the line that got me laughing hysterically:
   
"Seeing these priests come together for a common end - namely, the greater glory of God - will do more for unification of the flock than a myriad private prayers."

Nice to know that four priests mumbling Latin is worth more than a 'myriad' of private prayers, and that just 'seeing' these priests come together, is all the laity need do.  Don't have to pray or anything, just come and see and oh yea, kneel on cue--EWTN cameras don't need to catch pew potatoes fumbling through the kneeling parts.

In the meantime there are hurting and angry parents in the Diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph.  Parents whose children were exploited for the sexual pleasure of one priest.  There could be victims of something other than Ratigan's prurient photography that no one knows anything about, and yet Finn's diocese engages in Latin spectacle as a healing strategy.  I keep thinking this has got to be a joke, but the fact it's not is almost incomprehensible.

It's beginning to look more and more like conservative Catholic bishops are indeed waging a war against their own laity.  I say keep it up because the time is getting closer and closer when laity who have sat in the pews hoping for sanity will eventually realize they are not going to get any sanity.  They are only going to get deeper levels of insanity--

And speaking of insanity,  there is another situation I've recently blogged about that also has it's insane moments.  Check out this link from some other pastoral puppies following in the Black Sheep Dogs' paw prints.  Warning, be prepared to howl.