Word From WEORC

After priest refuses to stop ad libbing during the Mass, Belleville Diocese accepts his resignation

2012-02-09T09:13:00.000-08:00

After priest refuses to stop ad libbing during the Mass, Belleville Diocese accepts his resignation
BY GEORGE PAWLACZYKNews-Democrat

After 47 years as a priest, and at least two decades of straying from the Roman Catholic Missal by ad libbing parts of the Mass, the Rev. Bill Rowe of St. Mary Church has resigned under pressure from the bishop.

Why? Because he doesn't agree that a priest should be restricted to the exact words of the Missal, including new changes in the Mass that were intended to more closely interpret earlier Latin versions. The changes were ordered by the Vatican and took effect in late November.

Rowe, 72, said he was called to a meeting in October at the Belleville home of Bishop Edward Braxton. Rowe said that Braxton told him he could not change even small parts of what a Catholic priest is supposed to say during the portions of the Mass that are controlled by the Missal.

Rowe said Braxton told him to "think about it" for three days and then write him a letter. Rowe said he sent the letter on Oct. 12 stating he could not accept what Braxton wanted but did not want to resign or retire. He said he did not receive a response until a few days ago from Braxton, accepting his resignation.

Rowe will leave his parish in June after a successor has been installed.

The Rev. John Myler, diocese spokesman, said, "I have no comment at this time. If that changes, I will contact you."

Frank Flinn, an adjunct professor of religious studies at Washington University, said it is the first removal of a priest that he knows about in connection with a failure to follow the new version of the Roman Missal.

"I predicted that it would drive priests out and I was laughed at, at the time," said Flinn, "but here it is, the truth."

Monsignor Rick Hilgartner, director of the Department of Divine Worship of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C., said the changes were made to make the church stronger by making the Missal adhere as closely as possible to the early Latin among the many languages of Catholics around the world.

"The architectural style of a church and the music vary from culture to culture and from place to place. The language of expressing what's expressed in the Mass, our prayer and our worship, varies from place to place in the way the language is translated," he said, "but the essential truths are the same because we all start with the same text."

Rowe said that during the most recent Sunday Mass at St. Mary's, "That as best as I can remember," he said near the opening of the Mass, "We thank you God, for giving us Jesus who helped us to be healed in mind and heart and proclaim his love to others."

Rome's new Missal required him to instead say, "Lord our God that we may honor you with all our mind and love everyone in truth of heart."

Rowe said he routinely made small changes to make what he was saying "more understandable and more meaningful to parishioners."

In his reply to Braxton, Rowe wrote, "I realize that you can no longer allow me to celebrate the Eucharist as has been my custom. I therefore offer my resignation as pastor of St. Mary parish so that you may appoint someone who will follow the liturgical laws more closely."

In his Feb. 2 letter in response to Braxton's letter accepting his resignation, Rowe wrote, "My offer to resign seemed to be the best way to resolve the problem in a pastoral way."

Braxton in his letter also asked Rowe, "...to make every provision in the rectory to make it comfortable for your successor. Please make sure that all appropriate books for the celebration of the Eucharist in accord with the new translation of the Missale Romanum are in place. Please also make sure that all appropriate sanctuary furnishings are in place."

Alice Wirth, principal of St. Mary's School in Mount Carmel, described Rowe as "the backbone of our church. ...To make him resign over something he said in the Missal is senseless."
Wirth said that she regularly attends Mass where Rowe is the priest but never objected or even noticed the changes in the way he spoke portions of the Missal.

"What he did was for better understanding. Everything he did was for the benefit of the parishioners and the students," she said.

Rowe said he has been ad libbing small parts of the Missal since the 1980s and was once warned by former Belleville Bishop Wilton Gregory that he was "pushing the envelope." Gregory is now the archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of Atlanta.

"This is a turf fight. They are going to end up driving more good people out of the priesthood, said Flinn, the Washington University professor who wrote the "The Encyclopedia of Catholicism" that was published by Barnes & Noble in 2007.

"This is just nit-picking to divert attention from real problems that face the church like child sex abuse by priests," he said. "They brand you a heretic unless you follow the authorized translation. ...They're making a mountain out of a molehill."

Rowe, who has served for 17 years in Mount Carmel without accepting his priest's salary, relying, he said, on an Air Force pension and Social Security, said that he is unsure of what he may do when his career as head of a parish ends.

"Maybe I'll run a soup kitchen," he said.

Contact reporter George Pawlaczyk at gpawlaczyk@bnd.com or 239-2625.

Video link: http://videos.bnd.com/vmix_hosted_apps/p/media?id=131242621&item_index=

Article: http://www.bnd.com/2012/02/03/2043611/after-priest-refuses-to-accept.html?story_link=email_msg

Colbert and the "New" Mass...

2011-12-08T14:39:00.000-08:00

Stephen Colbert, the TV comedian/political wag has a reoccurring bit called “Yahweh or No Way”. It gives him a chance to pontificate about religious news events. His attention was recently drawn to the “new” English Missal translation, among other things. You can view his commentary at: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/403247/november-29-2011/yahweh-or-no-way---altered-catholic-mass--papal-seat-belt---offensive-vodka-ad

Follow Me

2011-10-14T10:51:00.001-07:00

Godspeed, Marty

2011-10-10T11:07:00.000-07:00

Marty Hegarty
October 7, 2011 RIP

Marty Hegarty “went home”, passing quietly on Friday evening, surrounded by his wife Carole and friends. Marty was ordained for Chicago in 1954 and left active ministry 15 years later and married. However, he retained his passion for faith, fairness and Notre Dame Football. He was instrumental in the creation of the organization WEORC, to help men and women transitioning out of priesthood or religious life to find support and employment in the secular world. Just one year ago WEORC celebrated 40 years of ministry.

Plans for Marty’s Celebration of Life are being planned for midweek. Contact WEORC (weorc@comcast.net) for fuller details. Marty has left this world a better place for his being here.

New Missal Propoganda

2011-07-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

The diocese has started it's promotion of the "wonderful" new missal. Someone else commented "don't give me crap sprinkled with sugar and try to convince me it's candy... it's not!" Other critiques also shows up in places such as Commonweal....

It Doesn’t Sing
The Trouble with the New Roman Missal
Rita Ferrone

Beginning in Advent of this year, the language of the Mass will be very different. A new translation of the Roman Missal—the book of prayers used in the Mass—will be put into use in all Catholic churches in the English-speaking world. Some who have read the new prayers are pleased with the changes. Others are gravely concerned.

Beginning in Advent of this year, the language of the Mass will be very different. A new translation of the Roman Missal—the book of prayers used in the Mass—will be put into use in all Catholic churches in the English-speaking world. Some who have read the new prayers are pleased with the changes. Others are gravely concerned.
In recent months, priests in Ireland, Australia, the United States, and elsewhere have voiced objections, saying this translation is not what the church needs—and that it will be divisive. What is it about the new translation that has caused such an uproar?

We come to you, Father,
with praise and thanksgiving,
through Jesus Christ your Son.
Through him we ask you to accept and bless +
these gifts we offer you in sacrifice.
We offer them for your holy catholic Church....

So begins the first Eucharistic Prayer of the Roman Missal as it has been prayed by English-speaking Catholics since 1973. When the new Missal goes into effect in November, Catholics throughout the English-speaking world will hear these words instead:

To you, therefore, most merciful Father,
we make humble prayer and petition
through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord:
That you accept
and bless + these gifts, these offerings,
these holy and unblemished sacrifices
which we offer you firstly
for your holy Catholic Church.

The current translation is simple and direct. It follows the speech patterns and rhythms of contemporary spoken English. It flows easily off the tongue. Its meaning is clear. The new translation, on the other hand, is mannered and complex. We arrive at the subject of the sentence only after we have heard the dative “to you”; the conjunction “therefore”; a superlative adjective “most merciful”; and a noun in apposition, “Father.” The new translation is wordy. In place of “these gifts,” we offer “these gifts, these offerings, these holy and unblemished sacrifices.”

Having offered these gifts, offerings, holy and unblemished sacrifices firstly for the church, you might be thinking there is a secondly coming along in a paragraph or two. If so, you would be wrong. There is no secondly. So what does firstly mean in this context? It’s not clear that it means anything at all.

Different words, same prayer? Both are translations of the same Latin text, yet the results are quite different. Change the words and you change the prayer.

The Problem of Clarity
Clarity and intelligibility were principles of liturgical renewal specifically named by the fathers of the Second Vatican Council in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Until 2001, those who translated liturgical texts into English placed a high priority on the council’s mandate for clarity and intelligibility. Those were essential guiding principles of liturgical reform, not secondary considerations.

Since the publication of the new Vatican instruction on translation Liturgiam authenticam in 2001, however, other principles are deemed more important. They include: the exact rendering of each word and expression of the Latin, the use of sacral vocabulary remote from ordinary speech, and reproduction of the syntax of the Latin original whenever possible. When a choice must be made, those principles trump the principles of clarity and intelligibility. The result has been, not surprisingly, a translation that is filled with expressions not easily understood by English speakers. It has resulted in prayers that are long-winded, pointlessly complex, hard to proclaim, and difficult to understand.

There are many places in the new translation where the words simply don’t make sense in English. On the First Sunday of Advent, we pray that we may “run forth with righteous deeds.”
What does that mean? Many expressions sound pompous: “profit our conversion,” “the sacrifice of conciliation,” “an oblation pleasing to your almighty power.”

Some prayer texts are simply bewildering, such as this one from Preface VIII for Sundays in Ordinary Time:

For when your children were scattered afar by sin,
through the Blood of your Son and the power of the Spirit,
you gathered them again to yourself,
that a people, formed as one by the unity of the Trinity,
made the Body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit,
might, to the praise of your manifold wisdom,
be manifest as the Church.

What is the main point? It is hard to tell. We are wandering in a dense forest of theological and biblical allusions here. There are traps for the unwary, too. If the speaker is not careful to separate the first line from the second and join the second with the third, separating them from the first, he ends up suggesting that the Blood of Christ and the power of the Spirit are instrumental in scattering God’s children. Even read well, this prayer will likely lose all but its best-educated and most highly attentive hearers.

The new translation includes sentence fragments, odd locutions, opaque expressions, and redundancies. There are also historical oddities preserved for no good reason. Here is an example from Eucharistic Prayer I: “For them and all who are dear to them / we offer you this sacrifice of praise / or they offer it for themselves / and all who are dear to them....” Enrico Mazza, in his magisterial work The Eucharistic Prayers of the Roman Rite, explains that this mid-eighth-century addition (“or they offer it for themselves...”) was originally a rubric, providing alternative wordings depending on whether those who requested the Mass were present or absent. The translators of the 1973 translation (and the 1998 version) spared us the useless puzzlement caused by such a text. The translators of the text we are about to receive did not. Why? Each word of the Latin had to be accounted for.

Not every passage Catholics will hear exhibits such strict adherence to the literal meaning of the Latin, however. In the second Eucharistic Prayer, the Latin text says quite clearly that we “stand in your presence.” The Latin word astare means to stand. It doesn’t mean anything else. The translation was changed by Vox Clara, the Vatican committee formed to advise the Holy See on the approval of liturgical texts. It was feared that use of the verb “to stand” would imply it is acceptable for the people to stand during the Eucharistic Prayer. (In fact, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal assumes that the common posture for the Eucharistic Prayer is standing, even though some individual bishops conferences have decreed otherwise.) The English now reads “be in your presence.”

Other changes introduced by Vox Clara lack evident rhyme or reason. For example, the Latin word profusis, which appears at the conclusion of every preface of the Easter Season, is translated as “overcome.” Profusis means “overflowing.” When the world is described as overflowing with paschal joys, as the 2008 translation had it, one imagines graceful scenes from Botticelli. When reference is made to being overcome, one imagines smelling salts. This is one of an estimated ten thousand changes Rome made in the Missal after the bishops approved the translation in 2008.

The Problem of Length
The current translation is not without problems. At times it is simple to the point of banality. The richness of imagery and the theological depth of the Latin original does not always come through. The first retranslation of the Missal, which was approved by all the conferences of English-speaking bishops in 1998, addressed most of these problems quite effectively. Yet the Vatican judged that it did not go far enough. Now, with the 2010 translation, we have swung to the opposite extreme. The new translation is mired in long-winded complexity.

Overall, the length of the sentences in the new translation is staggering. The longest sentence of the Eucharistic Prayers has 82 words, the second longest, 72. All but one of the sentences in Eucharistic Prayer I are more than 40 words long. The current translation of that prayer has 18 sentences before the consecration. The new translation has 8.

The average number of words per sentence in the new Eucharistic Prayers is 35.4, compared to 20.6 at present—an increase of 78 percent. Are spoken texts in liturgy generally so wordy? Pope Benedict is not averse to using long, complex sentences. Yet his Ash Wednesday homily averaged 23.2 words per sentence. Certainly Scripture offers long sentences, especially in the writings of St. Paul. Yet the beloved eighth chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans has an average sentence length of only 27.38. This final example provides the closest comparison, yet the new Missal far surpasses it.

In texts for oral proclamation, the length of sentences matters. When reading a text on paper, one can go back and examine it again. Not so for spoken prayers, especially those spoken on one particular day of the liturgical year, rather than those repeated throughout the year or liturgical season. A collect such as this one, which follows the Isaiah 54 reading in the Easter Vigil, offers a good example of what the new translation will bring us:

Almighty, ever-living God,
surpass for the honor of your name
what you pledged to the patriarchs by reason of their faith
and through sacred adoption increase the children of your promise
so that what the saints of old never doubted would come to pass
your Church may now see in great part fulfilled.

That 53-word sentence makes sense if one has the leisure to study it and perhaps to draw a diagram. But the person in the pew does not have that luxury. She or he will hear this prayer once a year at most. An individual word or phrase may ring a bell. But the essential meaning of the prayer will be lost. As an act of oral communication, a text such as this cannot but fail for the vast majority of Catholics. Like so many of the newly translated prayers, it will come across as theo-babble, holy nonsense.

There are already formidable challenges to oral comprehension built into the pastoral situations in which the liturgy is celebrated. International priests make up 22 percent of the active diocesan priesthood in the United States today. Accented English can make even our current translation difficult to understand. Many parish communities include a significant number of people whose first language is not English. They will be asked to digest sentences that even native English speakers will have a hard time comprehending. Children and youth and those who are less educated will also be placed at a great disadvantage.

Some Texts Heard at Every Mass
Several texts that are a regular part of every Mass are going to change. Not all the changes will be for the worse. For example, in the preface dialogue (which appears at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer), the people will answer “It is right and just” in place of the familiar “It is right to give him thanks and praise.” The phrase “It is right and just” comes from a Roman acclamation of public approval. It entered the liturgy at an early date. It is crisp, and easily understood in English. Furthermore, many of the prefaces that follow it begin “It is truly right and just....” The rhetorical force of this construction is blunted if one removes “It is right and just.” Its reintroduction also happily avoids the tangle over inclusive language, which has divided assemblies into some who say “right to give him thanks and praise” and others who say “right to give God thanks and praise.”

Despite such occasional bright spots, however, the overall picture is deeply discouraging. Here are a few examples.

And with your spirit

This response will replace the familiar “And also with you.” The new text will remove a common element from the ecumenical consensus regarding liturgical texts. English-speaking Catholics, Protestants, and Anglicans have collaborated over the years to produce common liturgical texts as a way forward on the path to Christian unity. The greeting “The Lord be with you / And also with you” is an example of one such shared liturgical text. Yet, our dialogue partners have been completely excluded from the making of this new translation. “And with your spirit” exemplifies Rome’s decision to “go it alone.”

For you and for many

No longer will the Mass proclaim that Christ’s sacrifice was offered “for all, so that sins may be forgiven.” Rather, we will hear that it was offered “for many.” Much attention has been paid to this change (see “All In?” by Toan Joseph Do, Commonweal, December 19, 2008); we do not need to rehearse all the arguments here. Suffice it to say that this little phrase is what one might call a “false friend”—an expression you’re sure you understand, until you find out it means the opposite of what you were sure it meant. In normal English, many does not mean all. It means many. In the Mass, however, in our new sacral language, we have to remember that many means all. We can’t say Christ died for all, because that’s not what it says in the Latin. But we have to mean all because that is our Catholic theology.

Enter under my roof

When I first learned that the words of the Centurion were going to appear in the new translation, my expectations were positive. I remembered from my childhood this lovely acclamation: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof. Speak but the word and my soul shall be healed.” I loved its poetry and rhythm. It sang.

Alas, the translation we are about to receive is clunky. “Enter under” doesn’t sing. It plods. It’s also not idiomatic English. One has to stop and puzzle over the idea that the Lord is entering something or someplace by means of passing under my roof. I’ve found that not a few Catholics have assumed that the word roof refers to “the roof of my mouth.”

He took the precious chalice in his holy and venerable hands

The new translation aims at creating a sacral language used only in church. The fact that a word is arcane or uncommon is no barrier to its usage. In fact, such words are sometimes preferred to those that have everyday usage. Thus the Latin word calix has been translated as “chalice,” rather than “cup.” The demand to translate every Latin word in the new translation has also resulted in the use of multiple adjectives. Yet English is especially effective when plain and unadorned. Multiple adjectives weaken a text rather than strengthen it. When adjectives pile up, the results seem stagy or false. English speakers are accustomed to hearing “When supper was ended, he took the cup.” Such spare language is forceful. The new translation, by comparison, is fussy.

An especially unfortunate effect is created in this instance because it transforms Jesus into a priest saying Mass in a church. A chalice is put into the hands of Jesus at the Last Supper. Of course chalice is a word never used in modern English except to describe our sacred vessel in the Mass. The holy hands of the priest at Mass, so much a staple of the mystique of ordination, provide the template for how to describe the hands of Jesus. This sort of language is jarringly anachronistic. It compromises Jesus’ historicity in order to exalt the clergy.

Because prayer engages the heart and the imagination, differences on the affective level are highly significant. The image of the assembly’s relationship to God and the emotional tone accompanying that relationship will not be the same come November. The old is marked by an attitude of reverence, joy, and trust. God is great and we are small, but the relationship is one of love. As a child might run to a parent with unaffected gladness, so we come into the presence of our God (“We come to you, Father...”).

Not anymore. Now we come before God as a suppliant might address a monarch, with flattery and self-abasement. Because we are sinners, it is necessary to ingratiate ourselves with him. We do this by courtly address (“We make humble prayer before you”). This change is underlined in the Confiteor in the Penitential Act that takes place at the beginning of Mass. This moment will become an occasion to beat our breast and say “Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.”

All these dispositions—joyful trust, fear of the Lord, consciousness of sin—are part of the Christian life. But the dominant note will change. Will this change be welcomed? Or will it be greeted with incomprehension and confusion? The presumption that God prefers courtly language in prayer, a settled presumption of the Latin text, has had more than forty years to recede from public consciousness. Will its sudden reintroduction invite the faithful into more authentic worship, or will it merely distance them from the God whom Scripture calls “my joy, my delight” (Ps. 43:4)?

Where is this new translation taking us? It is important to realize that negative responses to the new translation reflect both dismay at the wording of the text and disagreement with the principles that guided its production. Yet the conflict goes deeper than an argument over theories of translation. That the new translation of the Roman Missal should come to us replete with embarrassing gaffes, nonsensical passages, and a near-total lack of accountability is as clearly a symptom of the misuse of authority as it is the fault of the questionable set of translation principles enunciated in Liturgiam authenticam. Yet even the misuse of authority is not the root cause of the immense disquiet and even outrage that this translation has aroused.

Beneath the words of the new translation, one senses a drive to minimize the practical effects of Vatican II. The reforms of Vatican II prized clarity and intelligibility in the liturgy; they gave priority to the work of ecumenism and evangelization; they respected the local work of bishops conferences; they invited aggiornamento and engagement with the world. This vital heritage is being eclipsed by another agenda. We are seeing a wooden loyalty to the Latin text at the price of clarity and intelligibility. We are seeing a retreat from advances already made in ecumenism. We are seeing the proper role of local bishops and bishops conferences increasingly taken over by the authorities in Rome. We are seeing the liturgy reimagined as an event taking place in some sacral space outside of our world, rather than the beating heart of a world made new.

Yes, we can get used to the new translation of the Roman Missal. But we shouldn’t. The church can do better, and deserves better, than this.

Published on Commonweal magazine (http://commonwealmagazine.org)

ABOUT BRANDS

2011-07-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

It was a shock to learn that advertising researchers have predicted that Sears will soon disappear as a viable brand in America. Of course many familiar stores, products and brands disappear regularly without much fanfare. Over the years Weibolts, Goldblatts, Lyttons, Woolworths, and Polk Brothers have all slipped quietly into oblivion. However, Marshall Fields put up quite a struggle before being swallowed by Macy’s. Perhaps Sears also might not go easily into that dark night. Many of us have fond memories of those fat mail order catalogues that once displayed so many treasures, and those famous Sears house brands like Kenmore appliances, Craftsman tools and Allstate insurance, as well as their downtown headquarters in the famous Sears (now Willis) Tower.

What happened to Sears? It was once one of the stars of the Fortune 500. How did upstarts like Walmart, Target, JC Penny, Nordstroms, Macys and Costco elbow it aside? Did the rise of the Internet do them in? Did they become too stodgy, too old fashioned, too blue collar for younger generations of shoppers? Will they be missed?

Some business experts have said that, if the Catholic Church were traded on the stock market, its value would be in the dumpster. It might be the religious version of Sears. Unimaginative leadership, ineffective marketing strategies, tired product lines, inattention to its customer base. Of course, there is the important pledge of the founder that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. But we’d best not get too complacent. There are some alarming omens such as the recent CARA study which indicated an alarming decline in Catholic weddings in the last 40 years.

In 1972 the official Kennedy Directory reported 415,487 Catholic weddings. In 2010 that number had fallen to 168,400, a decline of almost 60%. Four decades ago there were 8.6 weddings per 1,000 Catholics. Today there are 2.6 weddings per 1,000. So what happened? For one thing it has become more acceptable for couples to live together without benefit of matrimony. Also many weddings are performed without benefit of clergy. An admired relative or friend can be “ordained” via Internet for a modest fee. Also in many states an unordained individual (female or male) can be designated as a one-time officiant.

Young Catholics from observant families report that the Church is not “user friendly” when it comes to matrimony. Some clergy are obviously over-worked and unwilling to invest much energy in what they see as one of the biggest days in their lives. Others seem to create a lot of legalistic hoops through which engaged couples must jump. In some dioceses, marriage preparation seems focused on natural family planning, liturgical regulations, and the evil of cohabitation rather than insightful help for building a successful relationship as a married couple. Negative experiences are spread by social media as well as word of mouth, and parents who have been disillusioned by the Church’s handling of the sex abuse crisis are now more likely to agree to a wedding outside the Church. In fact, some married priests perform more marriages than do their classmates who have remained in active ministry.

This is but one example, among many, of the way in which the Catholic Church has lost “market share” in recent years. One might say, “Watch out, Sears, here we come.”

Deacon Candidate Declines Ordination

2011-06-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

The sex scandals in the Church don’t happen any more, unless they do. Recently in Kansas City, Bishop Finn appears to mishandled a couple situations. Despite his public “apologies”, a Deacon candidate, Jim McConnell, decided to forgo ordination rather than kneel before Bishop Finn and promise his obedience and respect. The pastor of the parish that was sponsoring McConnell addressed the issue from the pulpit last week…

Kansas City pastor homily on clarifying thought
by Thomas C. Fox [1] on Jun. 07, 2011

The pastor of Holy Family parish in the Kansas City - St. Joseph diocese, Fr. Matthew Brumleve, spoke the following words last Sunday, Ascension Sunday, about Jim McConnell, a member of his parish who stepped away from the permanent diaconate program, saying he could not kneel before Bishop Robert Finn and offer his unqualified obedience. This is an excerpt from his homily:

Another way ... to clarify one’s thinking on what is valuable andimportant in life – is to make a difficult decision – as Jim McConnell had todo within the last week. Jim and his wife Cindy prayed about and struggledwith his ordination to the diaconate – in light of all that has come out aboutwhat Bishop Finn did, and failed to do, in the recent sexual abuse caseconcerning Father Shawn Ratigan.

Jim decided that he could not just go through the motions of the ordination rite in which he would have to kneel before the Bishop and promise to respect and obey a person he no longer had respect for. And I say better that this faith community has lost a deacon than to just have one more person lose their integrity. Someone better than I once said that evil exists in the world because good people stand idly by and say and do nothing. So I say to Jim, and I hope it is with the backing of this community, thanks, Jim, for leading the way in not standing idly by. Jim from the very beginning, and Cindy, almost from the very beginning, have been members of Holy Family.

And so it is with a bit of pride that I hope in some small way it is due to the fact that Sunday after Sunday they were nurtured and formed by the Word of God in this place and were constantly being comforted and challenged by us – and this is whatgave Jim the strength and conviction to do what he did. So standing among the poor, losing someone you love, and making a tough decision are all ways that we can tell if we stand for the things Jesus stood for: compassion, understanding, integrity, acceptance, forgiveness and mercy.

Every day, each of us has to be able to say and do the things that allow us to sleep peacefully at night. In preaching this homily, I will sleep peacefully tonight. In standing against the exploitation and harm of children, Jim will sleep peacefully tonight. I hope that all of us can have a peaceful sleep tonight because we have been effective witnesses of the risen and ascended Christ this day. That today, in large and small ways, we have stood for the things Jesus challenges and expects us to stand for. AMEN!

Detroit Archbishop in a Dither...

2011-06-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

The Detroit Archbishop is a dither about the “American Catholic Council” gathering on the 35th Anniversary of the original Call to Action. Vigner0n warns any Detroit clerics that they may be “reduced to the lay state” (besides going to hell?) if they participate. An NCR article gives more details.

Detroit archbishop warns clergy not to attend Catholic gathering

Jun. 07, 2011
Article Details
By Jerry Filteau

Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron warned his priests and deacons June 3 that they could be “dismissed from the clerical state” if they participate in a eucharistic liturgy June 12 closing an international American Catholic Council convention in Detroit.
The ACC, a coalition of liberal Catholic groups seeking changes in the church, said Vigneron’s warning brought a sharp spike in visits to its Web site [3], and in registrations for the convention.
“There are good reasons for believing forbidden concelebration will take place by the laity and with those not in full communion with the church” at the June 12 Mass,Vigneron said in his June 3 letter.
He did not explain why he thought lay people or clergy not in full communion with the church would be engaged in concelebration of the ACC’s closing Mass. The ACC Web site gave no such indications, and leaders of the convention said there was no such intention.

In an e-mail to NCR June 7, John Hushon, co-chairman of the ACC, said, “We stated categorically to Msgr. [Robert] McClory [Detroit archdiocesan moderator of the curia] that ‘There will be only one presider, an ordained priest in good standing.’ We could not have been any clearer.”

Under church law, a local bishop has full authority over all liturgical celebrations in his diocese, and Vigneron emphasized that he has given no authorization for the closing Mass at the convention of the American Catholic Council.

The June 11-12 gathering is to be held at Detroit’s Cobo Hall – a historic venue symbolically recalling the church’s famous American bicentennial Call to Action conference on social justice in 1976, hosted by then-Detroit Cardinal John Dearden.

That conference, featuring mainly social action personnel from dioceses across the country, spun out of hierarchical control and produced many resolutions in apparent conflict with traditional Catholic teaching. The bishops subsequently adopted some of its proposals but rejected many of them. An independent progressive Catholic organization based in Chicago, Call to Action, was later formed to advance many of the conference’s proposals and goals.

Among featured speakers on the ACC agenda is Sr. Joan Chittister, former prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pa., and an NCR columnist.

Swiss-born theologian Fr. Hans Kung, 83, long a leading ecumenist and professor at the University of Tubingen, Germany, is expected to address the group in a video recording if health prevents him from appearing personally. Kung’s 1971 critique of papal infallibility led to a 1979 Vatican order declaring he could no longer teach as a Catholic theologian.

In a news release June 4 ACC organizers said the convention will draw “several thousand center-left Catholics committed to the principles of Vatican II.”

One of the goals of the gathering is to endorse a “Catholic Bill of Rights [4]and Responsibilities” which stresses the primacy of conscience and the rights and responsibilities of lay Catholics, by reason of their baptism, to participate in the ministry and governance of the church and in working for social justice.

An archdiocesan announcement for parish bulletins sent out to Detroit Catholic parishes www.aodonline.org/bulletins [5] for the weekend of June 11-12 reiterated Vigneron’s warning against participation in the meeting or its June 12 liturgy. It said the archbishop has “serious concerns over the ACC’s distortion of church teachings and issues, and most notably the group’s expressed opposition to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.”

http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/detroit-archbishop-warns-clergy-not-attend-catholic-gathering

A way forward for Catholic Charities on adoption?

2011-06-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

Rockford was the first diocese to pull out of adoptive services after the law on civil unions went into effect. The executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois, Bob Gilligan, said other dioceses will decide on the fate of their programs within a week to 10 days after the new state law takes effect.

US Catholic blogger Bryan Cones looks for a way forward for Catholic Charities.

A way forward for Catholic Charities on adoption?

Thursday, June 2, 2011
By Bryan Cones

With civil unions taking effect today in Illinois, the $30 million in state-funded adoption money Catholic Charities in the state receives is on the line. The diocese of Rockford in northwest Illinois has already withdrawn from adoption and foster care services, forfeiting $7.5 million in state contracts, laying off 58 employees, and releasing 350 children into the state system. Catholic Charities in other dioceses, notably here in the archdiocese of Chicago, have yet to make a decision.

In my own opinion--and I am speaking only for myself--I think it is both possible and preferable that Catholic Charities continue to provide adoption and foster care placements, even though state law now requires them (as part of their state contract) to serve same-gender couples who wish to adopt or foster. Here's why:

1. The decision to place a chlid in foster care or an adoptive home has never been on the basis of religion. Catholic Charities serves people of any religion and no religion at all. Criteria for accepting someone as a foster or adoptive parent are based on psychological and economic evaluations, among others, and their fitness to serve in that capacity is determined by social workers, not priests. There is great evidence that same-gender couples quite successfully raise foster and adoptive children by those measures. Further, there is no evidence whatsoever that children placed with same-gender couples are in any way less successful than children placed in other homes. Further, there is great need for foster and adoptive parents, and great numbers of children to serve.

2. Catholic Charities is known and respected for the work that it does on behalf of all people, regardless of religion or sexual orientation or race or country of origin. It is not, or at least has not been, a sectarian enterprise, only a charitable enterprise supported by the local diocese. As many have put it: Catholic Charities serves people because it is a Catholic agency, not because the people it serves are Catholic--both the children and the adoptive and foster parents. I fear that reputation of universal service has already been tarnished. I would rather have Catholic Charities serve and place children in good homes, including those of same-gender couples, than to have them withdraw completely from this important work. Seriously, that would mean that Catholic Charities would stop caring for "orphans," one of the biblical categories of those in need that the Hebrew prophets are constantly calling us to serve.

3. Catholic Charities has a duty to its employees who work in this area. It isn't the employees' fault that the state legislature has determined that justice requires that same-gender couples should have access to legal recognition for their families. It seems to me an injustice that the Rockford diocese laid off 58 employees to make a point about church teaching.

Of course, Catholic Charities could withdraw from its state contracts because it will be required to serve same-gender couples, but I for one would see that as a diminishment of our charitable work as Catholics. I hope they can find another way.

A Credibility Problem for Bishops?

2011-05-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

At the same time bishops are attempting to bolster their authority over their “sheep”, Catholics are having a harder time finding their Shepherd’s words and actions credible.

In Phoenix, the Bishop Olmsted criticized a Catholic hospital’s efforts to save a mother’s life. He then excommunicated the hospital administrator, Sr. Margaret McBride, and declared St. Joseph hospital no longer “Catholic.” In a recent poll, 71% of Catholics in Phoenix felt the hospital was still Catholic, and most (79%) sided with the Nun and not the Bishop (16%) in the dispute. http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2011/05/07/20110507bishop-olmsted-catholic-poll.html

Reacting to some bishops complaints about a 2007 book by Fordham University Professor, Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine summarily condemned it as being erroneous and damaging to the faithful – without ever discussing the issue with Sr. Johnson. The condemnation was then questioned by the two main organizations of Catholic theologians, the Catholic Theological Society of American (CTSA) and the College Theology Society, as well as from Johnson’s own religious community, the Sisters of St. Joseph. Will Elizabeth Johnson's accusers please step forward?
http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/will-elizabeth-johnsons-accusers-please-step-forward

In Chicago, Cardinal George sent a message to controversial Fr. Mike Pfleger and the press simultaneously that Pfleger was being suspended. He then ducked out to the Vatican and then to a bishops meeting in Arizona, rather than be available for conversation with Pfleger or comment to the media. This controversy has ramifications not only for an individual priest, but for black Catholics in Chicago. A Good Week for the Church of JPII http://www.oakpark.com/News/Articles/05-03-2011/A_good_week_for_the_Church_of_JPII

Now the US bishops have released their own analysis of the Sex Abuse Scandal. It blames the sexy 1960s, and priest’s poor sex education, social isolation and stress at that time for the crisis. The abuse is seen as an aberration in the Church and since relegated to the dust bin of history. Bishops largely exonerated themselves from the mess by blaming others. (Ironically, seminaries are becoming more closed communities with less interaction with the “real world”, and priests are increasingly isolated and stressed by large one-man parishes.). Authors defend their report on sex abuse… http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2011/05/19/authors_defend_report_blaming_clergy_sex_abuse_on_culture_of_era

Bishop's firing makes pope's priorities clear

2011-05-11T12:53:00.000-07:00

The sacking last week of an Australian bishop in the wake of pastoral letter he wrote aimed at facing the growing priest shortage in his diocese adds new emphasis to Pope Benedict's priorities. Sadly it tells us that any bishop who expresses need for structural changes in the church is viewed as more threatening than is one who turns a blind eye on priests molesting children in his diocese. This NCR editorial explores the situation.

The Australian Catholic diocese of Toowoomba, encompassing more than 300,000 square miles, has just a relative handful of healthy priests to serve the church’s 35 parishes. So it came as no surprise to Toowoomba’s Catholics when the area’s bishop, William M. Morris, addressed the priest shortage in a candid but still cautious Advent 2006 pastoral letter.

“We do face an uncertain future with regard to the number of active priests in our diocese,” wrote Morris. “Other options,” he wrote, “may well” need be considered. These include:

1. “ordaining married, single or widowed men who are chosen and endorsed by their local parish community;
2. welcoming former priests, married or single, back to active ministry;
3. ordaining women, married or single;
4. recognizing Anglican, Lutheran and Uniting Church Orders.”

For these words, this week the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI has fired Morris.

Eighteen years as bishop ended with the stroke of a papal pen.

Some obvious but necessary points need making:
First, it turns out it’s really not that difficult for the pope to give a bishop a pink slip. In the course of the quarter-century clergy sexual abuse cover-up, there’s been considerable handwringing over just this question. Bishops don’t “work for” the pope, we have been told. Bishops are “fathers” to their flock – with all the unconditional love and commitment that entails – not employees subject to the whims, well-intentioned or otherwise, of the boss. Canonical procedures must be followed.

Apparently, that’s just so much hooey. If the pope and his advisers care deeply about an issue about which a bishop has publicly raised questions – such as women priests and optional celibacy – a way can be found to dismiss that bishop.

And – noteworthy because it goes to some underlying issues – a bishop who acts against church teaching and law related to sexually abusive priests apparently need fear no such reprisal.
Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali, for example, continues a life befitting a prince in splendorous surroundings, even as his flouting of church procedures (and perhaps civil law) resulted in nearly 30 diocesan priests facing administrative suspension and heat from local prosecutors.

And not to forget Cardinal Bernard Law, orchestrator of the Boston clergy abuse cover-up. His punishment? An extended Roman holiday and a healthy pension. Meanwhile, Morris gets the door.

The pope’s priorities are clear.

The pervasive intellectual chill in the church reaches beyond the towers of academia (note the recent chastisement of theologian St. Joseph Sr. Elizabeth Johnson) or to those who directly challenge the rules – Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois’ open support for women’s ordination a most recent case in point. (Bourgeois is facing excommunication for saying what he thinks on the subject.)

Now even those directly in the line of apostolic succession are forbidden to speak freely.
Note that Morris did not offer answers to the provocatively posed semi-questions on celibacy and ordination he raised that Advent. Instead, employing what one advocacy group terms the “progressive bishop’s style book,” he couched his concerns more obliquely. (No doubt to avoid Rome’s wrath. Lot of good that did him.)

Today, it seems, even such carefully couched queries are completely verboten; such so-called “open questions” (non-doctrinal in every sense of the word) such as the ordination of married men are grounds for dismissal. That the overwhelming majority of clergy (not to mention laypeople) think the failure to even consider options like married priests in the midst of a clergy shortage crisis goes beyond Dilbertesque mismanagement. It is, to employ the psychobabble of the era, completely dysfunctional.

As we prepare to celebrate the feast of the first pope next month, are we still permitted to remind church fathers that Peter was a married man? That this Holy Father was likely a human father? Or should Mrs. Peter and her progeny, like so many nettlesome Stalin-era apparatchiks, be airbrushed from history?

Because of Morris, we know that the dysfunction flows right from the top. Canon law may be more flexible than previously promoted, but a bishop’s dismissal cannot be shuffled to an underling, buried, as in Bourgeois’ case, in a bureaucratic chain of command. No, the canning of a bishop is a task only a pope can command.

And he has made his priorities quite clear.

While the reasons for Morris’ dismissal are relatively clear, the process remains an unholy mess, shrouded in secrecy.

Soon after Morris’ 2006 Advent pastoral was released, Benedict sent Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput to “investigate” the incident, which is a little like sending the fox to investigate the hens. Given his well-known views on the concerns raised by Morris (Chaput is more Catholic than the pope on these issues), we are skeptical that Toowoomba’s bishop got a fair hearing. There’s a relatively small number of right wing Catholics in the diocese (Morris and others call them the “Temple Police”) who have long been after the bishop. That Chaput gave them undue weight and deference seems more than plausible.

You know the type. In the U.S., they are the crowd that takes marching orders from The Wanderer, their time at Mass searching for a violation of a rubric rather than receiving whatever wisdom or grace might come their way. Then, having detected an “Alleluia” where an “Amen” was called for, they write letters to Vatican congregations, hoping for a sympathetic ear to their pathetic pleas.

Their Australian equivalents were, it appears, successful in transforming Morris’ molehill into a mountain.

But, we acknowledge, our skepticism is partly emotional, or perhaps ideological. We’re inclined to give Morris a break because we’re inclined to agree with him that the issues he raises require airing.

But, and here’s the point, we simply don’t know what Chaput found because no one’s talking. Not even Morris has received a copy of Chaput’s report (assuming something has been reduced to writing).

We presume, given the public nature of Morris’ offenses, that Chaput’s findings have something to do with the bishop brainstorming some remedies to the priest shortage in the face of the real crisis in his local church.

Did Chaput find something more dastardly, such as a bishop speaking like an adult to his church? Heaven forbid. We likely will never know. When NCR asked Chaput to respond to a series of questions regarding his apostolic visitation to Morris’ diocese, he declined to answer, explaining that “any apostolic visitation is governed by strict confidentiality. This is for the benefit of all parties involved.”

So are we to believe Morris has benefitted from being tossed out without ever having been allowed to defend himself against Chaput's findings, which were never shared with the Australian prelate? This is the kind of trial and judgement one more often associates with China or Iran. The Catholic church?

The real scandal to the faithful in this matter has nothing to do with the way Morris has conducted himself. It has everything to do with priorities and processes within our church today. It has much to do with the trampling of human rights and professed values of decency and charity by our church’s prelates, in this case including, sad to say, Benedict himself.
This is no way, shall we say, to set a Christian example – or manage the church.

In 2003, Fred Gluck, a former managing partner of McKinsey & Company who currently serves on the board of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management, wrote a memo to church leaders. It’s crafted in managementese, but disregard the jargon for the moment and pay attention to the message.Wrote Gluck:

· “Your organization [the church] has no effective central point of leadership that can energize the necessary program change.
· “Your leadership is aging and also largely committed to the status quo or even the status ante.
· “Your tradition of hierarchy dominates most of your thinking about management.”
· “Coming to grips with this formidable set of challenges in an organization as historically successful as yours will be a daunting challenge, and can only be accomplished by a comprehensive program of change with strong leadership from the top,” he concluded.
No one in a position of authority paid any discernable attention to Gluck eight years ago. Sadly, we don’t expect that to change.

The pope has made his priorities all too clear.

http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/bishops-firing-makes-popes-priorities-clear

Can the bishops ever be trusted?

2011-05-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

Anne M. Burke is a justice on the Illinois Supreme Court and former interim chairwoman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops National Review Board. This editorial was published in the Chicago Tribune April 29, 2011.

Can the bishops ever be trusted?
By Anne M. Burke
April 29, 2011

Just when it appeared that the fallout over the abuse scandal in the U.S. Catholic Church could not get any worse, another shoe dropped in Philadelphia.
On Feb. 10, 2011 three veteran priests of the archdiocese of Philadelphia were charged with rape and indecent assault, accused of the abuse of minors dating back to the 1990s. Monsignor William Lynn, who served as the archdiocese's point person for investigating reports of clerical sexual abuse from 1992 to 2004, was charged with child endangerment for allegedly covering up abuse by priests.

The archdiocese has placed another 21 priests on leave while accusations of child abuse are investigated. The district attorney's office in Philadelphia says there was "a pattern of the church looking the other way when it came to investigating these charges."
It appears that even after years of investigation of child abuse by priests, the cover-up of that abuse has been further institutionalized. Some of the alleged crimes in Philadelphia transpired while the National Review Board of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, on which I served, was trying to get to the truth of the scandal. The indicted monsignor is accused of turning a blind eye to things in his chancery office. Of course, to blame a clerical official, and not his archbishop, of such deviousness presents a mistaken analysis of how the church works.

The bishops say they responded to this scandal, and hold up as evidence the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which they put into motion back in 2002. I do not denigrate that historic step. It did a lot to make children safer in our Catholic institutions. It permitted the National Review Board the opportunity to examine the causes and effects of the scandal.

But the news that more than 24 active priests in Philadelphia face abuse accusations, and that some were allowed to remain in active ministry after accusations were made against them years ago, raises new fears.

For me, these are much more than institutional nightmares. This makes me wonder what kind of people we are dealing with when we engage the bishops. How is it that they say one thing and secretly intend something else? Are they ever to be trusted?

I remember the sometimes vicious response some members of the church hierarchy gave to the National Review Board when we were doing our work some years ago. Cardinal Edward Egan, the former archbishop of New York, actually wanted to ban us from his fiefdom, as if we were coming from some rival kingdom to challenge his rule.

All the events of our investigation and audit get colored with new meaning in light of the charges in Philadelphia. Little has changed.

Thomas Jefferson put it best: Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom. I'm curious: How do the cardinals of the United States view the behavior of Cardinal Justin Rigali in Philadelphia, and the behavior of his predecessor, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua?
I traveled on St. Patrick's feast day this year to Dublin for a law conference and was refreshed by the lyrical camaraderie that is such a part of Irish life. The journey was particularly energizing and fulfilling, but there also was an element of sadness to the visit.

It was easy to spot the first morning when I made my way to daily Mass. Since it was Lent, I expected to see an enlarged congregation. I found the opposite.

My hosts told me that the abuse scandal in the church in Ireland and the poor response from the Vatican seemed to have sealed the fate of Catholicism in Ireland for some time to come. A government investigation into the horror of Irish clerical abuse — both sexual and physical — brought everything to the surface. All the usual elements were there, thanks to the Irish bishops — cover-up, lying, bullying, threats, the hiding of evidence, the sealing of witness testimony, and most of all the willingness to let the guilty clergy get away with the crime.

During the most abject period of Irish history, when the English prohibited the practice of our faith, our Irish ancestors would walk for miles in the dark and rain to find a remote field in which a brave secret priest would celebrate Mass at the risk of his life for people desperate for the nourishment of the sacraments. The people risked all to celebrate the Eucharist in spite of every physical hazard imaginable.

The faithful have not been as absent from the celebration of sacraments as they are today since the Irish religious emancipation in 1826. What has changed? You don't have to look far. You see it in the distressed faces of the faithful. You hear it in the voices of the legal profession in Ireland who find what they have learned to be heartbreaking.

What is really sad is that the Vatican's understanding of what people really need is so totally off the mark. Perhaps if the pope had taken himself to O'Connell Street in Dublin or stood along the cobbles of old Dublin and wept with those who were passing by, he might have achieved a semblance of healing.

But he issued a papal letter, which, no matter how well-intentioned, is not the stuff that brings healing. People want their trust restored. No papal letter will do that. Certainly not for people whose ancestors risked their lives for the faith.

I believe that the virtue of truthfulness has been in trouble for a long time in the Catholic Church. Who could ever see this coming? Not me. I was an obedient Catholic schoolgirl, a true believer. It is not easy for us to unlearn being Catholic. I, for one, don't want to.

But I expect truthfulness at all costs from our leadership. If that cannot be supplied then we must go back to the drawing board. Do we not have the right to truthfulness? Perhaps a Council on Truthfulness might help to expand the importance of this critical virtue. Perhaps it could be a meeting of bishops and the faithful in which they share ideas and dreams for the church. Perhaps we could let the power of the virtue of truthfulness help redefine the proportions of holiness in the church. Liberal or conservative, truthfulness is a gift to all.

As Catholics we know that we must act with wisdom — we must forgive, but not forget. We must exercise good judgment and courage — both gifts of the Holy Spirit given at the time of confirmation. This means that we must be blunt with the Holy Father and the other men who continue by either business as usual, or misguided loyalty, to permit the unspeakable to occur.

I believe that when the truth flourishes we will see the return of those who have walked away from the church. We will see people choose holy orders as a way of life for the service of others.

We will have no dark places to which misguided princes can abandon reality. We will not have criminal charges brought against those who choose the commission of a felony over the mandate of the gospel to be people of truth.

The Hidden Exodus: Catholics becoming Protestants

2011-04-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

Now that the “Creasters” (Catholics who only attend Mass on Christmas and Easter) have disappeared until December, Church attendance will return to normal. Most places it means about 1/3 of Catholics will attend on Sundays. Creasters represent about another third. It’s the final third of baptized Catholics who have simply disappeared. Rev. Tom Reese considers this third in a recent article…

The hidden exodus: Catholics becoming Protestants
Apr. 18, 2011
Any other institution that lost one-third of its members would want to know why
By Thomas Reese

The number of people who have left the Catholic church is huge.
We all have heard stories about why people leave. Parents share stories about their children. Academics talk about their students. Everyone has a friend who has left.

While personal experience can be helpful, social science research forces us to look beyond our circle of acquaintances to see what is going on in the whole church.
The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life has put hard numbers on the anecdotal evidence: One out of every 10 Americans is an ex-Catholic. If they were a separate denomination, they would be the third-largest denomination in the United States, after Catholics and Baptists. One of three people who were raised Catholic no longer identifies as Catholic.

Any other institution that lost one-third of its members would want to know why. But the U.S. bishops have never devoted any time at their national meetings to discussing the exodus. Nor have they spent a dime trying to find out why it is happening.

Thankfully, although the U.S. bishops have not supported research on people who have left the church, the Pew Center has.

Pew’s data shows that those leaving the church are not homogenous. They can be divided into two major groups: those who become unaffiliated and those who become Protestant. Almost half of those leaving the church become unaffiliated and almost half become Protestant. Only about 10 percent of ex-Catholics join non-Christian religions. This article will focus on Catholics who have become Protestant. I am not saying that those who become unaffiliated are not important; I am leaving that discussion to another time.

Why do people leave the Catholic church to become Protestant? Liberal Catholics will tell you that Catholics are leaving because they disagree with the church’s teaching on birth control, women priests, divorce, the bishops’ interference in American politics, etc. Conservatives blame Vatican II, liberal priests and nuns, a permissive culture and the church’s social justice agenda.

One of the reasons there is such disagreement is that we tend to think that everyone leaves for the same reason our friends, relatives and acquaintances have left. We fail to recognize that different people leave for different reasons. People who leave to join Protestant churches do so for different reasons than those who become unaffiliated. People who become evangelicals are different from Catholics who become members of mainline churches.

Fr. Reese spends some time analyzing the data (For the full article go to http://ncronline.org/print/24022 ,) but his summation includes….

Lessons from the data

There are many lessons that we can learn from the Pew data, but I will focus on only three.
First, those who are leaving the church for Protestant churches are more interested in spiritual nourishment than doctrinal issues. Tinkering with the wording of the creed at Mass is not going to help. No one except the Vatican and the bishops cares whether Jesus is “one in being” with the Father or “consubstantial” with the Father. That the hierarchy thinks this is important shows how out of it they are.

While the hierarchy worries about literal translations of the Latin text, people are longing for liturgies that touch the heart and emotions. More creativity with the liturgy is needed, and that means more flexibility must be allowed. If you build it, they will come; if you do not, they will find it elsewhere. The changes that will go into effect this Advent will make matters worse, not better.

Second, thanks to Pope Pius XII, Catholic scripture scholars have had decades to produce the best thinking on scripture in the world. That Catholics are leaving to join evangelical churches because of the church teaching on the Bible is a disgrace. Too few homilists explain the scriptures to their people. Few Catholics read the Bible.

The church needs a massive Bible education program. The church needs to acknowledge that understanding the Bible is more important than memorizing the catechism. If we could get Catholics to read the Sunday scripture readings each week before they come to Mass, it would be revolutionary. If you do not read and pray the scriptures, you are not an adult Christian. Catholics who become evangelicals understand this.

Finally, the Pew data shows that two-thirds of Catholics who become Protestants do so before they reach the age of 24. The church must make a preferential option for teenagers and young adults or it will continue to bleed. Programs and liturgies that cater to their needs must take precedence over the complaints of fuddy-duddies and rubrical purists.

Current religious education programs and teen groups appear to have little effect on keeping these folks Catholic, according to the Pew data, although those who attend a Catholic high school do appear to stay at a higher rate. More research is needed to find out what works and what does not.

The Catholic church is hemorrhaging members. It needs to acknowledge this and do more to understand why. Only if we acknowledge the exodus and understand it will we be in a position to do something about it.

Holy Thursday: Who Sat at Table with Jesus?

2011-04-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

Holy Thursday recalls the creation of the sacrament of Eucharist with the last Supper. Were women present? Why not? Some parishes don’t let women wash feet or have their feet washed, less someone think women were present and participating in the Last Supper/ First Mass. We do know that there were many married men there who were charged by with the ministry of service and with breaking of the bread “in memory of me.” So editorialist, Tim Padgett, found this Holy Week an appropriate time to suggest a return to a married priesthood.

Sunday, Apr. 17, 2011
Palm Sunday Plea: Let Priests Marry
By Tim Padgett

One of the best Roman Catholic priests I've ever known, Father Berns, was a widower. He had a mind as broad as his faith was deep; he served a dry martini but never a dry homily. And I've always wondered how large a role the gloriously messy life experience of a wife and children played in making him such an unusually engaging, and engaged, Catholic cleric.
The answer, of course, is that there is no real answer, especially when I consider all the lifelong celibate priests whom I've admired as much as I did Father Berns. Still, he's on my mind right now because of the Catholic Church's latest sexual abuse scandal, playing out in Philadelphia. There, on Friday, April 15, three priests and a former Catholic school teacher pleaded not guilty to charges of raping and sexually assaulting minors. What makes this case different, however, is that for the first time in the U.S., a higher-ranking Catholic official, Monsignor William Lynn, former secretary of the clergy for the Philadelphia archdiocese, is being charged with trying to cover up the abuse. (Lynn too pleaded not guilty on Friday.)

It's that twist that has me thinking of Father Berns — and it has made me more convinced than ever that the Catholic Church has got to drop its celibacy requirement for priests. I say that not because I think letting priests marry would have prevented priestly abuse. Pedophiles prey regardless of marital status. I say it, especially after having interviewed abuse victims, because I think letting Catholic clergy have wives and families may well make the hierarchy, from guys like Lynn on up to bishops and the Vatican, more concerned about safeguarding youths than about protecting priests.

For U.S. Catholics, the arraignment of Lynn and the four other men was a lousy way to kick off Holy Week, which starts today, Palm Sunday, and ends next Sunday on Easter. Then again, what better time than the week that includes Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified, to wrestle with it. (And the conservative Catholic League's full-page ad last week in the New York Times — which, astonishingly, blamed much of the abuse crisis on "homosexuality" — is just another reminder why it's so important we keep wrestling with this.)

So since I'm a hack and not a theologian, I'd suggest Catholics could start that process this week by recalling another, more benign scandal that hit the church two springs ago. That was the case of the Rev. Albert Cutié, the Catholic priest and Spanish-language television talk-show star who left the church in 2009 after a tabloid printed photos of him and his covert girlfriend (now his wife) cuddling on a Miami beach. Cutié, aka "Padre Alberto," became an Episcopal priest and, this past December, the father of a baby girl. In the process he's refueled the Catholic debate about clerical celibacy, and the upcoming Philadelphia trial makes his story especially relevant.

That's because Cutié, despite the double life he once led, has forced Catholics to consider a key question: Why did his romantic relationship with a woman — a peccadillo most Catholics shrugged at when the scandal broke — seem to elicit as much if not more outrage from the church hierarchy as the priestly sexual abuse of minors has?

Cutié feels that the hierarchy's overreaction to his indiscretion reflects how celibacy has helped condition the church's lame reaction to the abuse horror. He's of course not suggesting that a man has to have a wife and kids to be sensitive to these issues. But the Catholic Church risks breeding insensitivity by segregating its diocesan priests and bishops from the world of wives, children and the loving sex that begets them. It risks sending the message that those human joys would somehow sully their vocations — that those things are inferior to the priesthood, and so protecting the holy fraternity is what matters most during a crisis like the sexual abuse plague.

If the Philadelphia ugliness isn't enough of a convincer, consider Belgium — where last week former Catholic Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who has admitted to sexually abusing two nephews, turned stomachs all over Europe by insisting his pedophilia was a harmless "little piece of intimacy." Civil authorities can't collar Vangheluwe because the crimes occurred too long ago. But so far neither the Vatican nor the head of the Belgian church has done a thing to punish him or any of the Belgian priests involved in a string of recent abuse accusations.

Celibacy was not a clerical requirement in the early church — in fact, many popes were married during Christianity's first few hundred years. But as Catholicism became more affixed to the Roman Empire, the church fathers fell increasingly under the influence of Stoicism and its demonization of sex, an attitude the medieval church codified.

Today the church would argue that celibacy isn't about demonizing sex but rather nobly sacrificing it as part of being alter Christus, or "another Christ."
I and most other Catholics can respect that — if it's a priest's choice. Unfortunately, we're also aware that mandatory celibacy has led to an unnecessary isolation of our clergy — and, in turn, to the harmful sense of clerical superiority we've seen so much of during the abuse crisis. All I know is, I saw a lot less of it in Father Berns.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2065776,00.html

In Plain Sight

2011-04-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

This lenten reflection comes from Justin Sengstock, a Catholic young adult blogger.

When I was at Mass for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, I was astonished at the dissent the Catholic Church was promoting within its ranks. At least, that was what I had to conclude from the Gospel (John 9). It was the story of the man born blind. Rehash: Jesus meets a man blind from birth. Jesus anoints the man with mud and tells him to wash it off, whereupon he sees. When the Pharisees and the Jewish leadership find out, they are horrified.

Yeah, sure, the guy can see, whatever; what’s really important is that Jesus is doing this stuff on the Sabbath. That means he worked, and you can’t work on the Sabbath. Therefore Jesus can’t possibly be from God. God wouldn’t act through somebody who didn’t do what Moses said. Jesus' mercy obliges the authorities to condemn him, not respect him.

But wait, says the former blind man. God wouldn’t fulfill sinful requests from sinners, right? Here, let him speak for himself: "It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything" (9:32-33). This logic is almost a problem for the leaders and the Pharisees…almost. But see, they get a loophole. That’s the thing with legalism in any religion: it’s full of loopholes for powerful opportunists who know how to use them.

Here’s the loophole this time: sin was believed to afflict sinners and their descendants with concrete misfortunes, physical and otherwise. The misfortunes could be a lot of things. Could be poverty, could be leprosy, could be blindness.

So the man born blind was born in sin. That’s his essential reality, his source. He and the Sabbath-flouter must be two peas in a pod, brothers in crime, pulling off some kind of stunt. As a group of petulant scribes had said elsewhere, “By the prince of demons [Jesus] drives out demons” (Mark 3:22). So why listen to this punk? "You were born totally in sin, and you are trying to teach us?" (John 9:34). And they throw him out.

I felt myself about to bust out in a chuckle. I had to fold my arms and look down, suppressing my reaction, filing away for future reference the rebellious little insight that went with it: namely, that this first-century Gospel sounded so much like the twenty-first-century Roman Catholic Church.

Don’t the Catholic hierarchy and the opponents of Jesus sound uncannily alike? Neither group readily accepts an insight that it doesn’t come up with by itself. Neither group likes the idea of God saying or doing something that hasn’t been said or done yet, never mind all that stuff about doing a new thing (Isaiah 43:19) and the new heavens and the new earth (Isaiah 65:17, Revelation 21:1).

God may only work through carefully approved channels, all of them under strict copyright. Grace through improper channels is null, void, a deception. And even when the efficacy of those improper channels is staring the authorities in the face, they will ignore it--or even just "throw the bums out"--if they have no other way to preserve business as usual.

The late Patty Crowley, a leader in the Christian Family Movement and a Call To Action member, was also a member of the papal birth control study commission in the 1960s. Marcelino Zalba, S.J., a priest who sat on the commission with her, argued that the prohibition on contraception had to remain intact no matter what the evidence. His reasoning: "What then with the millions we have sent to hell, if these norms were not valid?" Crowley quipped, “Father Zalba, do you really believe God has carried out all your orders?"

Do the scribes and Pharisees, both ancient and new, really believe God is carrying out all their orders? That, and not just the blind man's healing (or the spiritual enlightenment that resulted from it), is integral to John 9.

But "sight" is an awesome metaphor to consider here. Because somehow, some way, our resources for renewal (and for acting out) have always been right there, in plain sight, if you know what you're looking at. These resources may even be read aloud on weekends by priests who really have no idea that their voice is the match, that the red book on the ambo is the fuse, or that the people standing placidly in front of them are the bomb.

http://ivstinvs.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/in-plain-sight/

TV EVANGELIST, FR. CORAPI PLACED ON LEAVE

2011-04-07T10:49:00.000-07:00

Popular EWTN evangelist Father John Corapi, SOLT has been placed on administrative leave by his superior after recent allegations of misconduct. The allegations, which came to light in March with a three-page letter sent to several bishops, claimed the priest took part in sexual encounters with several women and engaged in habitual drug use. Corapi vehemently denied the allegations, blaming a disgruntled female former-employee. He stated, "I'll certainly cooperate with the process, but personally believe that it is seriously flawed, and is tantamount to treating the priest as guilty 'just in case,' then through the process determining if he is innocent."

Corapi is an outspoken and flamboyant preacher, with one of his favorite stories being his path of conversion from a successful businessman, to a drug addict living in the streets, to a “manly man” crusading priest.

The interesting thing is that even if Corapi is found innocent of the accusations, his life-style and financial dealings have attracted more scrutiny. He is currently a priest with SOLT (Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity), While many other Society members give all money earned back to the Society and live on a modest stipend, Corapi is not bound by a vow of poverty. In fact, Corapi is the president and CEO of his own “for-profit” company, Santa Cruz Media, Inc, that produces tapes, CDs, DVDs, books and promotional materials for “his” ministry. He lives independent of his order in his own home. Given his religious “rock-star” status, Corapi is a roman-collar who hardly answers to any religious authority.

For more information on this story go to:http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/fr.-corapis-order-places-him-on-leave-after-misconduct-accusation/,

THE GRASSROOTS ARE HEALTHY

2011-04-04T14:05:00.001-07:00

When he was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill proclaimed that, “All politics is local.” Recent events remind us that the same is true of the Catholic Church – “All religion is local.”

March 2011 was a tough month for the Church. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia was disgraced by the discovery that it had covered up sex abuse accusations concerning 37 of its priests. The Jesuits of the Oregon Province announced they would pay 133 million dollars to past victims of abuse at their schools for Native-American youngsters. Meanwhile, newly discovered documents revealed that the Jesuits of the Chicago Province had mishandled numerous complaints of repeated sexual abuse by their Father McGuire, who is now in prison. And Chicago’s Cardinal George, who has his own story of mishandling the abuse case of Father Dan Mc Cormack, decided to wield his Episcopal blunderbuss to wound one of his most creative priests (Father Mike Pfleger), one of the nation’s most vibrant African-American parishes (St. Sabina’s) and a legendary Chicago sportswriter (Dan McGrath) who had dedicated his retirement years to salvaging Leo High School on the Southside of the city. Also Church leaders continued their crusade against women priests, gays and lesbians, as well as Democratic politicians.

So that’s some of what was happening on the non-local scene.

Meanwhile, the local manifestation of the Church was doing quite fine on its own, thank you very much. For example, how did some Chicago parishes fill the gap created by their decision to cancel their annual St. Patrick’s Day parade down 103rd Street? It had grown to gargantuan proportions and had been bedeviled by a bevy of drunk and disorderly collegians. But nature abhors a vacuum, so they came up with a St. Baldrick’s Day celebration on March 17. It started with the seventh graders at St. Barnabas school. In seeking to support a classmate who had suffered from cancer since he was in second grade, they discovered St. Baldricks, an organization in California which seeks to fund research on childhood cancer by sponsoring communal head shavings. So the kids mobilized students, families and fellow parishioners who would pledge support for those willing to lose their locks for the cause. You can view the results on You Tube. It was wonderful.

The pastor went first, receiving a mighty cheer as his primal baldness was revealed. Then 120 others followed. Boys and their Dads were shaved. Girls and their Moms had their long tresses shorn. Neighboring parishes joined in with their own events. At the end of the day they had raised $47,000 for the cause. Everyone was so proud of the spirit of generosity and compassion which flowed out into the entire community. And just as we wince, when Church officials on the non-local level besmirch the word, “Catholic”, we can be proud together when we hear about the abundant goodness at the grassroots.

There is hope.

Fr. Michael Ryan Changes His Tune

2011-03-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

Over a year ago Seattle priest, Fr Michael Ryan, launched a project called, "What If We Just Said Wait?" The project, recommended a delay in use of the new translation of the missal because the word-for-word translation from Latin was "clumsy, awkward and alien to spoken English. Ryan’s web site, whatifwejustsaidwait.org , has gathered over 22,000 signatures to-date.

Enter the new bishop for Seattle, J. Peter Sartain (formerly of the Joliet diocese of Illinois). The rumor was that Sartain called Ryan on the carpet and told him there would be no dissension in the ranks, particularly from the rector of St. James Cathedral. Now Ryan has publicly stated that the implementation of the new texts was inevitable and that his parish would cooperate in their use despite his personal reservations. Hmmm….

http://www.ncronline.org/news/pastor-says-its-time-let-go-accept-new-missal-inevitable

What Would Jesus Not Do?

2011-03-17T11:17:00.001-07:00

Stalag 13

2011-03-08T09:23:00.000-08:00

Cardinal George has hit again on one of his recently favorite themes: the hierarchical authority to govern others. In his farewell address as Chairman of the USCCB, George said “bishops are more prepared to “take possession of their vocation,” not just as teachers and preachers, but as governors who exercise, however reluctantly, “the power to punish.”

Most recently, in breaking ground on a frat-house sized college seminary on the grounds of Loyola University he talked about priesthood as the authority to “govern” others.

The Archdiocesan paper, the “Catholic New World” provides a few highlights of the Cardinal’s speech. http://www.catholicnewworld.com/cnwonline/2011/0227/5.aspx

* The Archdiocese of Chicago is building a new facility to educate and form priests, men who are entrusted with the governance of the church, the cardinal said.

* The need for governance as Jesus would have governed is so important that it is one of two things the cardinal said he asks seminarians to particularly consider — in addition to celibacy — as they discern whether they are called to the priesthood.

* For a generation, the cardinal said, some church leaders have declined to govern, falsely interpreting “pastoral” to mean approving of things that are not in accordance with God’s law. To be a true pastor, a priest must “love his people in Christ’s name. If he doesn’t, his governance is illegitimate. But in that love, the priest is to act in such a way that the people become holy because they follow his instructions.”

The Cardinal’s insistence on bishops’ and priests’ (not deacons?) authority to dictate to the “Church above” is vaguely reminiscent of Colonel Wilhelm Klink’s and General Burkhalter’s authority at Stalag 13 in the old Hogan Heroes TV series. Confident in their own leadership, they are largely oblivious to a whole range of activities and agendas that are going on unnoticed and underground. A whole society is productively humming along, while letting the powers-that-be pretend to be in charge.

While there are several Sargent Schultzes out there, many parishes, pastors and parishioners play the game of nodding assent to the hierarchy’s grand schemes and pretenses of authority, all the while knowing that the real love and work of Jesus is in the base faith communities – the Church as the People of God. They are the humble “Church Below”.

I even think that Francis George looks a little like Werner Klemperer. What do you think?

The Chicago Seminaries – The Plan That Never Happened

2011-03-04T13:36:00.000-08:00

The Chicago Archdiocese once boasted two high-school seminaries. The consolidated Quigley Seminary closed its doors in 2007. The property is now Archdiocesean office space. The College seminary has shrunk into the size of a frat house at Loyola’s Lakeshore Campus. The major seminary, St. Mary of the Lake, is still in the “enchanted forest” in Mundelein.

According to a former seminary rector, some innovative plans were discussed for the seminaries decades ago, but were never implemented…

The years were in the late 1960’s. The college years had already been transferred to Niles. (John) Gorman, (Gene) Lyons, (John) O’Donnell, and (John) Fahey were rectors of our four seminaries. I think that it was Gorman who suggested a seminary study to Cody. The Cardinal assigned Bishop Tom Grady to head the study. A management consulting firm was hired. The study took two years, many joint committee meetings, with each seminary faculty providing members. I never saw a print-out of the final report that was given to Cody. I know that it proposed a Chicago seminary that would be “ urban, university-centered, and ecumenical.”

In the end, a group of Mundelein faculty disagreed with the draft consensus. I think that they found a way to inform the cardinal of their dissent. The cardinal called a formal meeting of his consultors. The results of the study (with whatever data had been gathered) were shelved.

The implementation of the recommendations would have been startling. The proposed seminary would have been unique in American Catholic education, more like Louvain than Catholic University. I think that other bishops would have shrunk away from the idea. The proposal was still-born. But who knows? If the study itself were re-examined, it might be more feasible now.

Priests threaten Mass exodus over changes to liturgy

2011-02-28T18:53:00.000-08:00

Bob McClory recently reflected that the New Mass revisions may be a tough sell http://www.chicagocatholicnews.com/2011/02/church-from-below-mass-revisions-could.html It seems that many local pastors are resigned that the new liturgy is “a done deal” and “you can’t fight city hall”. One Chicago “married priest” stated “For myself, I haven’t decided if I would boycott the “new” Mass,or if I will simply come out of “forced retirment” as a priest, find a location, and start saying Mass for others who are also repulsed by this change.” Yet in Ireland and Australia there seem to be many canonical priests who would rather fight than switch.

Priests threaten Mass exodus over changes to liturgy

by Leesha McKenny and Barney Zwartz

February 19, 2011

THE Catholic Church is facing open defiance over its new Mass, with at least a dozen Australian priests indicating they will refuse to use it when it comes into force later this year.

Hundreds more are angry about the lack of consultation for the new, more literal translation of the 400-year-old Latin text, which was heavily influenced by a Vatican advisory committee headed by the Sydney Archbishop, Cardinal George Pell.

What supporters say is a suitably elevated and poetic text more faithful to the original Latin is seen by detractors as an outdated, contrived and less inclusive version that ignores modern English and could further alienate Catholics from the church. It has become the latest battleground in the culture wars between progressive Catholics and traditionalists over the direction of reforms stemming from the 1960s Vatican Council, which allowed the faithful to celebrate the liturgy in their own language for the first time.

To be gradually introduced from June, the new Mass will be the compulsory version of the English mass by November.

But Father John Crothers, the parish priest of St Declan's parish in Penshurst, said he could not in good conscience use the text, which he believed to go against the 1960s Vatican Council's spirit of ''aggiornamento'', meaning ''up-to-date''.

''I've no problems with changing things - it's part of my philosophy that you've got to change and grow and develop. It's the fact that this is going backwards instead of going forwards,'' he said. ''I won't be saying the priest part. If the people wanted to do the responses in the new translation, it's up to them.''

In Ireland this month a group representing more than 400 priests publicly denounced the new translation as ''archaic, elitist and obscure'' and urged their bishops to delay the changes for at least five years until the clergy and laity were consulted.

The chairman of the National Council of Priests of Australia, Father Ian McGinnity, said hundreds of its 1600 members were ''pretty steamed up'' at the Vatican's lack of consultation but most had not yet decided how to respond. At least a dozen had indicated they would not use the new English translation, he said.

''We're also very concerned that the language, the idiom, might perhaps estrange more Catholics from participation in the Eucharist,'' he said.
Asked what sanctions a local bishop could apply to defiant priests, Father McGinnity said: "I really don't know. I suppose he could suspend a bloke. But given the [priest] shortage, it's unlikely."

Father Crothers said he had told Cardinal Pell his position at a clergy conference last year.

''I said at the conference, 'I won't be doing it, and where do I stand there?' And he's just said that he expected all the priests will do it.''

Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne, the vice-chairman of the international translation committee, said consultation had been extensive but there would have to be ''dialogue and encouragement'' with opponents. ''I think a lot of the criticism is really a fear of what we think the thing is, and when we get to the reality, it's not like that at all.''

The executive director of the National Liturgy Commission, Peter Williams, who has spent the past year travelling the country to explain the new Mass, said it had already been successfully introduced in New Zealand.

''I think that's what's going to happen here. Of course there will be some irritability, but in due course people will have made the change."

Phone Apps and Pink Smoke…

2011-02-23T08:17:00.000-08:00

In a NCR blog, Jamie L. Manson moves from the introduction of a “Confession” app for the iPhone to a reflection on the women-priests movement…..

Late last week, a new iPhone app designed to help Catholics prepare for the confessional made its debut. The app tailors its questions to a person’s gender and vocation. So if you punch in both “female” and “priest,” you immediately receive the message “sex and vocation are incompatible.”

The women and men featured in the new documentary Pink Smoke would beg to differ.

This weekend Pink Smoke had its debut as part of the Athena film festival hosted by Barnard College in New York. The film had been screened previously at the national Call to Action conference last November. The documentary chronicles the fight against the injustice of the ban on women’s ordination in the Roman Catholic Church.

The film’s title refers to the action taken by the Women’s Ordination Conference in the days leading to the elevation of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. Imitating the Vatican’s symbol of white smoke sent into the air after the election of a pope, the activists burned Pink Smoke to raise awareness of the critical lack of women in the papal election process.

Angela Bonavoglia, Jules Hart, Jean Marchant, and Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois speak on a panel about the documentary 'Pink Smoke' at Barnard College in New York Feb. 12 (NCR photo/ Jamie L. Manson)Attendees at the Barnard screening were treated not only to the film, but also to a panel discussion featuring filmmaker Jules Hart, Good Catholic Girls author Angela Bonovoglia, Roman Catholic Womenpriest (RCWP) Jean Marchant, and Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois, who received a letter from the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in 2008 warning him of excommunication for refusing to recant support for women’s ordination.

These latter three panelists are also featured in Hart’s film, along with a variety of players in the women’s ordination movement. Interestingly, Hart herself is not a Catholic.

For the full article go to http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/women-priests-demonstrate-profound-faithfulness-god

Drinking the "Kool Aid"....

2011-02-14T06:45:00.000-08:00

Come Advent 2011 pastors and parishes are being asked to “drink the Kool Aid” of the new translation of the Roman Missal. Despite the pleadings of some US bishops (most vigorously, Donald Trautman), liturgists, and theologians with Rome, Catholics are being asked to blindly accept the new translations without critical examination, because it will be “good” for us.

One priest/liturgist who had been called upon to take a lead on the PR campaign across the US for the new missal has backed out for reasons of conscience. He said putting the new missal in a positive light "would require me to say things I do not believe." Anthony Ruff published his open letter to the US bishops in America magazine: http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=12688&o=38064

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, With a heavy heart, I have recently made a difficult decision concerning the new English missal. I have decided to withdraw from all my upcoming speaking engagements on the Roman Missal in dioceses across the United States. After talking with my confessor and much prayer, I have concluded that I cannot promote the new missal translation with integrity. I’m sure bishops want a speaker who can put the new missal in a positive light, and that would require me to say things I do not believe.

I love the Church, I love the sacred liturgy, I love chant in Latin and English, and I treasure being involved with all these as a monk and priest. It has been an honor to serve until recently as chairman of the music committee of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) that prepared all the chants for the new missal. But my involvement in that process, as well as my observation of the Holy See’s handling of scandal, has gradually opened my eyes to the deep problems in the structures of authority of our church.

The forthcoming missal is but a part of a larger pattern of top-down impositions by a central authority that does not consider itself accountable to the larger church. When I think of how secretive the translation process was, how little consultation was done with priests or laity, how the Holy See allowed a small group to hijack the translation at the final stage, how unsatisfactory the final text is, how this text was imposed on national conferences of bishops in violation of their legitimate episcopal authority, how much deception and mischief have marked this process—and then when I think of Our Lord’s teachings on service and love and unity…I weep.

I see a good deal of disillusionment with the Catholic Church among my friends and acquaintances. Some leave the Catholic Church out of conviction, some gradually drift away, some join other denominations, some remain Catholic with difficulty. My response is to stay in this church for life and do my best to serve her. This I hope to do by stating the truth as I see it, with charity and respect. I would be ready to participate in future liturgical projects under more favorable conditions.

I am sorry for the difficulties I am causing others by withdrawing, but I know this is the right thing to do. I will be praying for you and all leaders in our church.

Pax in Christo,

Fr. Anthony Ruff, O.S.B.

Anthony Ruff, O.S.B., is a Benedictine monk of Saint John’s Abbey and a professor of liturgy and Gregorian chant. He was on the committee which drafted the 2007 document “Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship” for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is founder of the National Catholic Youth Choir and blogs at Pray Tell.

Lost Generation(s)?

2011-02-10T13:05:00.001-08:00

The recent pleading of a third of all Catholic theologians in Germany, Austria and Switzerland for honest discussion of “taboo” subjects in the Church has been dismissed as “rebellion in the nursing home.” This is inferring that “loyal” dissidents in the Catholic Church are a dying breed. Cardinal George also feels Catholic liberals are aging and are soon (albeit not-soon enough for his liking) going to be history.

So where are the all the young Catholics who will be the Church of the Future? Except for some who picked up the party-line theology and agenda, most seem to be “lost”. At least this was the premise studied at a forum at Fordham University - “Lost? Twenty-Somethings and the Church”.

In an NCR blog Jamie L. Manson reflected on the forum. (Link below) Jamie received her Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School where she studied Catholic theology and sexual ethics. In 2010 she won a Catholic Press Association award for Best Column/Regular Commentary. http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/twenty-something-catholics-lost-generation

JPII Beatification and Cheapening Sainthood???

2011-02-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

Following up on the previous post, here is another perspective.

Is the honor of being canonized cheapened by John Paul II’s fast-track to sainthood? Normally a person can’t even be considered for the sainthood process for at least five years after death. Nevertheless, Pope Benedict XVI waived this requirement for his immediate predecessor and mentor, despite some lingering questions. Though his strengths were many, one must ask why JP II continued to protect and laud Fr. Marciel despite credible sexual abuse allegations against him. It wasn’t until JP II’s death that it was disclosed Marciel not only abused seminarians, but he fathered illegitimate children and embezzled funds from the Legionnaires of Christ.

One wonders if there isn’t something self-serving about Popes canonizing other Popes. Pope Pius IX declared Popes infallible in 1870, and Pope John Paul II promoted Pope Pius’ sainthood, thereby strengthening his own claim to infallibility. Other accomplishments of Pope Pius IX included: excommunicating all Italian patriots who took away his temporal power; kidnapping a Jewish youngster (Edgardo Mortara) and raising him in the Vatican; condemning nationalism, populism and democracy in favor of the “Divine Right of Kings” with his encyclical Quanta Cura and its attached Syllabus of Errors

No pontiff in history canonized more saints than John Paul II. He ingratiated himself in almost every country he visited by declaring one or more local historic figures to be saints. These canonizations and beatifications carried political as well as theological clout. Often it takes a long time and lots of money to champion a candidate to sainthood, as many religious orders know who have campaigned for their founder’s canonization. Canonized saints have been almost exclusively popes, bishops, priests, religious, martyrs and virgins – implying saints should be untainted with normal human sexuality. JPII canonized 477 saints and beatified another 996 (more than the last four centuries of popes put together), yet only one was a married couple - Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi. They had 5 children (including 2 priests, a monk and a nun), and then after their fifth child was born, they lived celibately “as brother and sister” the rest of their days.

While we are should live good and holy lives, and want to “be in that number when the saints go marching in”… do you think the road to sainthood is a credible process anymore?

BEATIFICATION?

2011-01-28T13:14:00.000-08:00

Like all of us humans, the late John Paul II was like the moon. He had both a dark side and a bright side. Advocates of his impending beatification focus on the light in his life (and there certainly was a good deal of it) while critics emphasize the darkness. Some wonder if the so-called Devil’s Advocate might have been asleep in the process. Others ask if the whole business of beatification and canonization should be shelved along with the triple tiara and the gestatorial chair.

The bright side of JPII encompasses his courageous opposition to Communism, his efforts to heal the Church’s chronic anti-Semitism, his many trips around the globe, and his outreach to youth. Also his pursuit of personal holiness by such means as the rosary, meditation and self-flagellation (although this latter practice may seem somewhat bizarre in our day and age.)

And what of his shadow side? Fundamentally, his style of governance was that of a commissar. Ironically, he was a mirror image of the Soviet system which he opposed so strongly. It featured a party line, which was non-negotiable. The supreme leader was engulfed by a cult of personality. Apparatchiks were rewarded and promoted. Dissenters were banished to the ecclesial equivalent of Siberia. A pervasive spy system monitored and reported instances of non-compliance, which were promptly corrected or punished. The chain of command featured lesser commissars who echoed the behavior of the man on top of the pyramid. And it was all sanctioned by Almighty God himself.

Like the Soviet system, this style of governance had strengths and weaknesses. It was rigidly centralized, clear, pervasive, and well defined. It inspired great loyalty among many and, of course, deep consternation among others. It paid lip service to Vatican II while subverting many of its key reforms which appeared messy and inefficient. It caused an existential schizophrenia among many clergy and laity.

It created a climate for the great failure of John Paul II’s pontificate – the clergy sex abuse crisis. The Pope was blinded to the predations of people like Marciel Maciel, who as founder of the Legionnaires of Christ, was a fellow commissar and thus above suspicion. Cardinal Law of Boston was rewarded with a sumptuous exile because he too was a loyal apparatchik. That trumped his ineptitude as well as that of numerous other bishops. And Cardinal Ratzinger’s eventual efforts to deal with predator priests were rebuffed because they too, for all their flaws, were sacred persons and valued cogs in the system. Only those clerics who married or veered from the party line were exiled. As long as everyone – bishops, priests, theologians, nuns, laypeople, children – remained observant and subservient, all would be well.

Having a big shindig on May 1st, printing holy cards, erecting statues and naming parishes after St. John Paul seems inevitable. However, the true sadness is the fact that his commissar system seems to have pervaded so many dioceses and parishes with similar regrettable results. Recently, Cardinal George, the retiring head of the American bishop’s conference, gave a farewell address which urged his fellow hierarchs not to shrink from being “strong” in their duty of governance. In other words, to be efficient commissars. So, we can expect a continuing stream of condemnations, punishments, excommunications, public apologies and all the rest of the sad paraphernalia which comprised John Paul’s soviet style pontificate. One wonders if and when his iron curtain will crumble.

Marty Hegarty: 40th Anniversary of WEORC Celebration

2011-01-20T09:07:00.000-08:00

This is an testimonial to Marty Hegarty by John Horan at the recent WEORC Anniversary celebration. It is one of the articles on the event in our December newsletter. To receive a copy, just contact us at weorc@comcast.net.

Bill Keannelly, the finest Irish mystic, poet-priest, prophet and standup comedian the Archdiocese has ever produced once said that October is the month during which the membrane that separates the living and the dead is the thinnest and the most permeable.

Think about it. October’s membrane stretches between the bounty of summer and the barrenness of winter. All Souls Day, All Saints Day… the contingency of October makes us mindful of what happens on the dawn side of our last breath.

Membranes are holy places. They are the transition points when we pass from everything we have known to be true to a strange, new world with jarring truths, challenging rogue assumptions and undiscovered possibilities.

I left priesthood on the first Saturday morning in June, 1988 having just presided at my last Eucharist. I moved out of the rectory in a frantic headlong rage, dragging my belongings to a basement apartment on 35th and Seeley.

I’ll never forget grasping the doorknob of my underground residence and thinking, “What have I done to myself?” I had either been training to be a priest or was a priest for 20 of my 34 years. I was jobless, damn near penniless, my rolodex was wrecked (this being the time before Blackberry). I had one black suit that smelled like incense and not a clue about what to do with my life. I was a man up against a membrane.

So I did what everybody in my situation did. I went to see Marty Hegarty. He read me like the Sunday Trib - he knew all my sections; good priest, scared young adult, in love, consumed with guilt, rectory spoiled, clueless, but possessing a pulse.

And then Marty made my membrane thinner; he told me that he wouldn’t find a job for me but that he would help me find the confidence to find a job for myself.

He told me that my natural talents, my work ethic, my integrity, my spirituality - everything that helped me be a good priest; would help me be a terrific employee. He said I would stand out in any work setting but I would have to start at the bottom, and work my way up. He said that I would not get the perfect job right away, but I should start with something, with anything that would pay my bills, and take things from there.

He said that I should trust my ear for “vocare”, for the call of the spirit and that
God would be utterly faithful to me, always and everywhere, wherever and however I would go.

The conversation lasted maybe an hour. Never has someone been so right about so many things in so short a time. When I left Marty, I could see more. A barrier that I thought was impenetrable, was in fact a membrane I could manage through to something new, something equally of God, something essential.

How many thousands more of us has Marty done this for - many face to face, many through the extraordinary WEORC network that Marty and Jim have created and sustained these 40 years? I believe that God has very passionate opinions about how men and women transitioning out of ministry should be cared for, even though God’s church officials don’t necessarily agree and sometimes actually impede. WEORC is the incarnation of God’s loving care for those of us who have crossed through the membrane between our callings, and Marty and WEORC are the caretakers of that crossing.

Some five years later, Marty saved my life. I was fighting a losing battle with depression. Winston Churchill once called depression the black dogs that come at midnight - well, I was living in the kennel. It was a terrible time, a time during which I had to be hospitalized - what a house of horrors.

And when I was released from the hospital, strung together with spit and bailing wire, embarrassed, ashamed and scared as hell, who came to scoop me up and help me make that first unimaginably hard step to wellness, well it was Marty Hegarty - who else? Marty knows about the membrane between despair and hope, between being shattered and finding a way. And I think tonight, how many legions of the outcast, marginalized, broken, hopeless and wounded has Marty scooped up?

Marty has Jesus in his muscle memory. Marty cries easily. Like any Irishman he has bladders behind his eyeballs, but his tears are never trivial. He hungers for justice, he comforts the mourning, he rails against cruelty of stupid institutions. He bleeds daylight out of night.

Marty has Resurrection in his DNA. He knows that tombs are made to be opened and rocks to be rolled away. And he does this all the time. I believe he is in a three way tie with St. Francis and Mother Theresa for the all time leader in Corporal Works of Mercy. That’s our Marty. He knows the barrier between despair and hope is just a membrane to be managed.

And now Marty is engaged in perhaps his finest Opus Dei. He is trying to push through the membrane between our current confused and crumbling institutional Catholic Church and the new Church that is aborning. For Marty, leaving is no more an option than is settling for the current sorry state of affairs. As WEORC has helped men and women transition from ministry to employment, WEORC is now helping the Catholic Church transition to a richer expression of God’s kingdom come.

There are no easy answers. Too many of us are on the brink of calling it quits. But to listen to Marty talk Church these days is to be thrilled about the possibilities to come. He is a spiritual son of Bernanos* - he knows that grace is everywhere. He knows that the travails of today are a thin membrane, penetrable and manageable. Now, Marty always says that this all important transition has to be led by the young, but when Marty talks about the future of Church, there is no one younger in that room than he.

So everyone raise your glass to Marty Hegarty, our best bishop, our phoenix lifting us from our deepest holes, my spiritual dad with his Waterford crystal soul and irrepressible spirit.

Ad multos annos Marty – ad multos annos.

(*Georges Bernanos – author of Diary of a Country Priest)

John Horan was ordained for the Chicago Diocese in 1981 and is married. He was the chairperson of WEORC from 2001-2009. He is currently the president of a Chicago Charter school, North Lawndale College Prep http://www.nlcphs.org/

Saying bishops 'scared,' panelists urge laity to take lead

2011-01-14T10:20:00.000-08:00

We have heard discussions before about the “Church Above” - the male, celibate hierarchy with their theologies and agenda, versus the “Church Below” – local level parish interactions, laity, and simpler spirituality. This is played out again and again.

Most recently, on the one hand, Cardinal George seemed practically gleeful in an interview when he spoke about bishops feeling their authoritative oats, saying “ bishops are more prepared to “take possession of their vocation,” not just as teachers and preachers, but as governors who exercise, however reluctantly, “the power to punish.”

On the other hand, a recent Woodstock forum headlined the concept that the Church can only be saved by the Laity. Bishops are unable or unwilling to meet the spiritual needs of the Church. Bishops are scared to enter into dialogue with anyone but themselves because “they do not trust the laity.” The feeling is mutual.

Speaking about the number of cradle-Catholics who are leaving active participation the Church, Rev. Thomas Reese, SJ puts part of the blame on the bishops. He said that church leaders want to blame the exodus of Catholics from the church on sinfulness, dissent, lack of commitment, or other factors, but they are ignoring a major issue. “If this was a retail outlet, we’d say we’re blaming the customers -- and that’s not a way to make your bottom line,” he said. They’re not buying what the bishops are trying to sell.

Here is a link to a cogent report by Jerry Filteau on presentations made by Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ, Dolores Leckey, and Fr. Raymond Kemp at the Philadelphia forum. http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/saying-bishops-scared-panelists-urge-laity-take-lead

New Book by Fr. Alberto Cutie

2011-01-06T07:26:00.001-08:00

Rev. Alberto Cutie was not the first, nor the last priest to leave active ministry in the Catholic Church over celibacy. (Of course, anyone associated with WEORC is keenly aware of this). However, Cutie is one of the higher profile priests to recently marry and “swim the Thames” to become an Episcopal priest. He has just published a book on his dilemma and decision. Here is a brief review by Heidi Schlumpf…

Fr. Albert Cutie, the Miami priest who left the priesthood after the paparazzi caught him with his girlfriend on the beach, is in the news again. Now an Episcopal priest, husband (to said girlfriend) and actual father to a teen-aged stepson and infant daughter, Cutie has released a "tell-all" book this month.

Nothing in "Dilemma: A Priest's Struggle with Faith and Love" will surprise veteran church watchers and reformers:

A number of priests are involved in heterosexual and homosexual relationships, in part because celibacy makes them lonely and starved for intimacy.
Some bishops are hardly the pastoral shepherds they should be to their flocks, including their priests.
Many in the church hierarchy are only concerned with the church's image in the sex abuse scandal.

(Disclaimer: I have not yet read the entire book but am basing this summary and my opinions on news reports here and here.)

Cutie claims he didn't write the book to "settle scores" (it's likely his publisher asked him to) and that he was disillusioned with the church and struggling with some church teaching long before his breaking of his vow of celibacy was exposed.

Yet Cutie had quite the platform even before his scandal. Nicknamed "Father Oprah" because of his successful television ministry, he was likely the most influential Hispanic priest in America. His first book was a bestseller, perhaps in part because it featured on its cover his "Father What-a-Waste" face (as does his new book).

I wish Father Cutie all the happiness in new life. But I wish he had revealed the things he's saying now back when he was part of the Catholic Church. That would have had real impact. Now, it unfortunately sounds like sour grapes.

Heidi Schlumpf is an accomplished journalist and editor. She is currently on the faculty of Aurora Univesity, located outside of Chicago. This blog entry can be found at http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/fr-cutie-too-little-too-late

Rev. Cutie’s website is http://www.padrealberto.com/ .

On Their Way Out

2010-12-28T13:55:00.000-08:00

In an America magazine article “On Their Way Out”, William Byron, S.J picks up on a suggestion that their should be a exit-interview for Catholics leaving the Church behind. The rationale is that Church leaders should be concerned enough to learn why large numbers of “Cradle Catholics” no longer find a spiritual home in the Catholic Church. The irony is that bishops don’t care what people think. They think they are the sole founts on truth, and anyone who doesn’t think so can just “go to Hell.” You can find the article at http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=12642

I found the following reader’s response well written and worth sharing…

I am a 51 year old "Cradle Catholic," one of 5 kids raised in a family that went to church every Sunday with parents who made sure we received our sacraments growing up. I am the only one that still attends Mass regularly. I've been active in my church, in music ministry and teaching CCD. And yet I'm on the cusp of leaving as well, for a variety of reasons.

I find Church teaching on gays and women to be immoral, and do not want my son taught that a loving God considers only unmarried, straight men worthy of invoking His presence at Mass. I find the Church response to the pedophile scandal immoral as well - first moving, rather than removing priests, and later insisting that it is all a media-driven conspiracy to undermine Church authority.

In particular I find the politicization of the Church totally unacceptable. I never thought I would see the American bishops oppose providing health care for all - the most shameful homily I've ever heard a Catholic priest give came in the fall of 2009, when he incited parishioners to contact legislators urging them to vote "no" on health care. In opposing health care reform, the bishops have, in my view, forfeited their moral leadership.

Year after year I've listened to the local bishop and priests tell Catholics that abortion is the most important moral issue facing the country and that it must be the primary factor in deciding how to cast our votes in elections. Yet in the 13 years I attended Mass at the local Cathedral, there was not a single special collection devoted to crisis pregnancy centers - not a diaper or jar of baby food was collected. This supposed "priority" also merited no mention in the yearly pleas for contributions to the bishop's Lenten appeal. Moreover, when our bishop decided to undertake a special fundraising effort, it was not to support crisis pregnancy services, but to build himself a fancy mansion to live in next to the Cathedral. What was that moral priority again? These bishops will throw women out of the church for saving a mother's life (Bishop Olmstead), threaten to withhold communion from pro-choice politicians, and make a show of praying the rosary outside of abortion clinics, they will not lift a finger to help women and babies in need, even urging legislators to deny them access to health care. The hypocrisy is nauseating.

The growing emphasis on the Church as institution, rather than the Church as a teacher of Christ, is also a problem. I find that the Church is more closed and inward looking, teaching a faith that can exist only within the church walls, rather than in the wider world - Christ's message was to "go and make disciples of all nations," not, "build walls between yourself and the world."

I also find the growing emphasis on grandeur and finery among the Church hierarchy - ermine cloaks, crowns, lace vestments - a complete contradiction of the Christ who dressed in the simplicity of a Galilean peasant and who was only dressed in fine robes and a "crown" by his tormentors to mock him.

And, given all of the legitimate issues facing the Church in the world, Rome decides that monkeying with the English translation of the Mass is the most important thing it has to do. Is God any less present in the Mass as it is now? Will this new translation improve the "pipeline" to the Divine? Then why bother, if not simply to assert Roman authority? Latin was used in the early centuries of the Church not because it had any special divine significance, but because it was the spoken language of the believers in Rome (assuming they translated the scriptures correctly from the Greek and Hebrew to begin with). This insistence on strict translation of the Latin suggests that the Mass is little more than a magical incantation (see Harry Potter) - say it "correctly," and poof, Jesus appears; say it "incorrectly," and He withholds His presence.

My family and I do still attend Mass regularly, for now, but only because there is a nearby Jesuit parish that emphasizes the Gospel teachings of Christ, rather than the institutional Church. We will see what the future brings.

A reading from the book of WikiLeaks

2010-12-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

Even the Vatican didn't go unscathed in the recent WikiLeak revelations. Blogger Justin Sengstock offered up some well-written and insightful reflections on the subject...

A reading from the book of WikiLeaks

Posted by Justin Sengstock on December 16, 2010

When WikiLeaks made its great data-dump of secret diplomatic cables the other week, revealing just how raw the game of international politics can be behind its closed bathroom door, one particular sovereign state flew under the radar for a while. But the inevitable finally happened. Vatican City got WikiLeaked, too.

John L. Allen, Jr., senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, wrote on December 11: “Secret diplomatic cables revealed this morning as part of the WikiLeaks releases confirm that while the Vatican was appalled by revelations of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland in 2009 and 2010, it was also offended by demands that the papal ambassador participate in a government-sponsored probe, seeing it as an insult to the Vatican’s sovereign immunity under international law.”

Therefore the Vatican ruled that the probe be unctuously deferential: “any requests for information should come through proper diplomatic channels.” And this the Irish people resented, as U.S. diplomat Julieta Valls Noyes noted: “Much of the Irish public views the Vatican protests as pettily procedural and failing to confront the real issue of horrific abuse and cover-up by Church officials.”

So it goes. The Vatican would like to be caring. But the institution has become an end goal in itself, and the aura surrounding it must remain inviolate. It is a great power among the great powers. God and the statecraft of Otto von Bismarck are one.

We often criticize institutionalism on practical grounds, for it often hardens the arteries through which noble ideas and efforts might otherwise pass. But it poses a special risk whenever God is involved, as journalist and former divinity student Chris Hedges suggests in his meditation on the Ten Commandments, Losing Moses on the Freeway.

Hedges argues that when people or institutions “sanctify their own power,” promising us that the mystery of God “can not only be known but also manipulated,” they “lead us away from the worship of God into the corrosive idolatry of self-worship.” Our churches, although ostensibly preaching against idols, can become them. “We believe these idols will protect us, never realizing that idols are always willing to sacrifice their own, to ensure their own preservation.”
So the Irish victims discovered when the Vatican insisted on being “pettily procedural.” So victims of abuse everywhere discovered when the successors of the apostles summoned their lawyers, shut their doors, and lowered their shades. Behind those doors and shades they determined whom to sacrifice, to ensure their own preservation—unlike Jesus, who sacrificed himself for our preservation.

I acknowledge that a total indictment of the Church simply because it is an institution would be naïve and hypocritical. I was initiated into sacramental life by a parish in the Diocese of Joliet, Illinois, and I learned my faith at a high school run by Dominican sisters and the Archdiocese of Chicago. I acquired what radicalism I have, and any theory that backs it up, at a Jesuit university. When I speak as I do about the Church as institution, I inevitably draw on resources that the Church as institution has given me.

Yet, as a believer in synchronicity, I must read John Allen’s December 11 reportage alongside Matthew 21:23-27, the Gospel for the Monday of the Third Week of Advent (December 13 this year). Jesus is teaching the crowd when the chief priests and elders approach him, demanding to know by what authority he works. Jesus insists they answer him first: was John the Baptist’s ministry of divine or human origin?

So the officials begin to debate not the answer, but how whatever answer they give will affect them. If they admit John was sent by God, they will look faithless, but if they say John was not, there might be a riot. Thus the priests and elders say they just don’t know, and Jesus refuses to cite any authority.

Worried about their power and standing within institutional Judaism, the priests and elders were on a different planet from Jesus. He simply had to leave them there and move on, because the Gospel is unintelligible to those who cover their behinds.

I do not advocate throwing away Church structures, but I do advocate poking and pushing those who run them, making them constantly attentive to the possibility that Jesus will leave them there and move on. If WikiLeaks happens to help us poke and push this time, so be it.

http://youngadultcatholics-blog.com/2010/12/16/a-reading-from-the-book-of-wikileaks/

The Secret Lives of Priests

2010-12-09T06:34:00.000-08:00

Gene Kennedy recentlyoffered a tribute to the parish priest in a NCR column. Often caught between the conflicting expectations and agendas of the Bishops above and the Church below, parish priests generally show a grace under fire. We would like to share the op-ed piece.

BULLETINS FROM THE HUMAN SIDE: NOVEMBER 18, 2010
THE SECRET LIVES OF PRIESTS BY EUGENE CULLEN KENNEDY

After a decade of revelations about sexual and financial scandals among priests, you would think that there is nothing more to learn about these men who were once revered in the Catholic culture and respected in the culture at large.

While it is undeniable that we know more than we care to about the once hidden lives of some priests, there is a far larger and deeper territory that might as well be the cave next to Bin Laden’s even though it can be entered at any time in the rectory just down the street.

This is the largely unexplored setting of the secret lives of the good priests all around us. Sated with lurid reports about fallen priests few people and no reporters have much interest, much less curiosity, about how faithful priests are living, what they are doing, or how they are feeling.

Goodness never gets into the newspapers. Check the headlines on any day’s paper for the common denominator of a negative word – fraud, investigation, death, fire, failure – and we understand why priests who have kept their promises and stayed at their posts are literally too good for words.

Despite the withering fire of the sex abuse wars, they have not deserted and they don’t complain much either. The reason for that may be that their people have troubles enough of their own and they don’t want to hear any of Father’s. No matter what they have been through, we want our priests to be the same as they have always been, on duty, on time, and on the ball.

I experienced a revelation about their secret lives in a letter from one of the finest priests I know. He wrote that “My soul has turned into a cinder, hard dry and burned out. I’d been running on empty for quite awhile, and I prayed but there was no warmth or juice in the communication from the the Great Generous Comedian…. My job means I (work) with people whose jobs occur in a very intense arena of good vs. evil, life and death….I felt saturated with exposure to human evil, suffering and degradation. In two weeks I was exposed to human sex trafficking of children, a newborn infant thrown in the trash by the mother, an unclaimed body of a policeman who died in a nursing home estranged from his family, and ministering to 5 terminally ill people. I’m not complaining, I’m simply saying that I was running on fumes for a long time. The phone would ring and I’d get irritated instantly, ‘What do they want from me now?’

“I love my job, I love my people, and my work is meaningful to my soul but even though I pray I get worn out ….all the exposure to human degradation, accumulates and goes unresolved….I have not set limits to protect myself from absorbing the pain…we are taught just the opposite: Feel it, roll in it, absorb it…

“It’s an astonishing sea change among priests of my generation that we cannot wait to retire. We’re fed up with apologizing for the Church and trying to explain the profound unending nuttiness (e.g., a seminar on exorcism) that just never stops…. We agree that something of God is rumbling among the people of the Church, the Holy Spirit of God seems to be at work, and it will not stop or be defeated.”

The secret lives of our best priests are not dissimilar but it is hard to get to their stories, if they are printed at all, when the front page still streams with variations on clergy sex abuse from all corners of the world.

This priest’s letter made me think that we really don’t know much about the secret, that is, inner life of Jesus either. From what we read in the gospels, Jesus would understand from his own experience what today’s hardworking priests are enduring.

Jesus preached in an era of institutional religious hypocrisy and was followed by crowds of people who had been struck by His words. Each of them wanted something from him, a cleansing of their leprosy, a cure of their illness, the raising to life of a beloved daughter or friend. Like today’s priests, Jesus emptied himself in order to fill those around Him. He went into the desert, as good priests now do “to rest awhile,” but Jesus returned to the city of man, to respond less to sin than to human suffering. And, reflecting the way many priests now feel stranded, the Lord said that the Son of Man had no place to lay his head.

What did Jesus feel and was it really any different from what our best priests do? What did He mean by that mysterious phrase, “Power went out of me,” if not that, as the suffering touched His garments, He experienced the same drain on His energy that our priests feel every day when wounded people crowd around our priests seeking relief for their sorrows. Power goes out of them as the human price for emptying themselves for the sake of others. We discover the inner life of the Lord in the inner lives of our hardworking priests.

There is no secret about this. It is just, as with Jesus, we do not read between the lines of the scriptures to see that Jesus’s mission was to identify with our suffering more than to condemn our sins. That is the essence of the overlooked lives of our good priests, the ones who never get their names in the paper but who are emptying themselves on our behalf every day.

Ring Kissing....

2010-11-30T11:44:00.000-08:00

There used to be a time when you were only expected to kiss a bishop’s ring. Now, with renewed emphasis on “obedience” above and beyond all else, one wonders….

Several years back, in implementing Pope John Paul II’s document “Ex Corde”, many US bishops championed the idea of a “mandatum” for theology professors in Catholic Universities. It was seen as a chance for the local bishop to control the teachings, if not the thoughts, of theologians in Catholic institutions. Not all universities toed the line on this one, though apparently it has been accepted by most. This promise of fidelity starts with the Nicene Creed (traditional enough) and then is followed by three statements.

With firm faith I also believe everything contained in the word of God, whether written or handed down in Tradition, which the Church, either by a solemn judgment or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, sets forth to be believed as divinely revealed.

I also firmly accept and hold each and everything definitively proposed by the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals.

Moreover, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim these teachings by a definitive act.

Locally, Cardinal George has been a stickler about obedience from his clergy. Dick Westley, a Chicago area theologian, recently asked:

“Would it surprise you to know that currently in the Archdiocese of Chicago at the installation of new pastors, the new pastor recites the Creed at the proper place at the Mass, and then standing at the altar in front of the whole congregation is required to profess the final three paragraphs - and then sign the “Profession of Faith” right there at the altar?

In the past, such things were done in the privacy of the rectory before the installation.

Would it surprise you to know that in the Joliet Diocese ALL THE PASTORS were recently required to sign the Profession of Faith anew?

To be consistent, soon they will be requiring ALL THE PRIESTS (be they pastors or not) to profess anew. I suppose that eventually, on the Sunday each year when the laity renew their baptismal vow, they will be asked to employ the new ‘Profession of Faith’.”

Now you might ask, why stop there? Perhaps the promises of fealty will soon be required of Sunday school catechists, lectors, choir members, sacristans and altar servers… maybe even parishioners at large to prove they are worthy Catholics? Maybe they should oaths of obedience to their pastors?

To think that at one time we only had to kiss a bishop’s ring…..

WEORC Gala Dinner Re-Cap

2010-11-22T12:52:00.000-08:00

On October 17th, 165 guests, including well over 70 former priests and religious, together with their families, friends, and even a half-dozen canonical priests, celebrated at a gala banquet on the Northside of Chicago. The occasion was the 40th Anniversary of the founding of WEORC. The tone of the evening was festive… like a reunion of old friends, classmates and comrades who had not gotten together for too long a period of time.

WEORC essentially started as an out-placement group for priests and religious men and women. It currently maintains a network of some 2,200 members covering every state in the US and several countries around the world.

WEORC traces its roots to the 1960’s and 70’s when great numbers of men and women were leaving full-time ministry in the Catholic Church for a myriad of reasons – celibacy, authority, lack of change, too much change, etc. Transitioning to a new independence and secular life, meant that they needed basic help in writing resumes, preparing for interviews, and networking with potential employers. About 1970, Monsignor Jack Egan, then president of the Association of Chicago Priests, asked Marty Hegarty (Class of ‘54) to talk to the ACP board about how they could assist priests in transition. An initial workshop was followed by a “Career Day for Priests”. Eighty people paid to attend the conference. There was $225 left after the bills were paid. It became the seed money for the formal organization called WEORC (old English for “work”).

Marty and Jim Wilbur (‘56) became the backbone of the network that has endured to this day. Jim’s particular gift was an aptitude for lists, and he compiled long lists of resigned priests, sisters, and brothers. For those who were interested in participating, directories were published to assist in networking and mutual support. The final printed directory contained the names, addresses, and occupations of over 1,850 individuals. A free periodic newsletter, “The Word From WEORC”, kept members informed and in touch.

As the Hebrews were poised to cross the Jordan River into the land of Israel after 40 years in the wilderness, Moses passed the burden of leadership to Joshua and a new generation. Like Moses, Marty and Jim passed on the burden of leadership in 2001. In this case, Joshua’s name was John Horan (’81), and he pulled together a steering committee of “young” members. Then in the past year the point-person designation for the steering group went to Bob Motycka (’79).

In the program following the fabulous dinner, all four had a chance to speak to the history of WEORC, as well as to its present and future.

Currently not as many priests and religious are leaving ministry, though there is still a steady stream. This isn’t surprising since there aren’t that many young men going into the priesthood anymore. Also, the total number of priests in Chicago (for example) is down a third since 1980, and many of those who remain are now retired (about 27% of Chicago priests). While remaining true to its charter to help those in transition, WEORC continues to offer a forum for discussion and information for the hundreds that had made the transition years ago. Besides the traditional newsletter, WEORC maintains an online blog (http://www.weorc.blogspot.com/) as well as a Facebook page.

WEORC’s focus has grown to include support for brothers and sisters of integrity who remain in active ministry, and who face the burdens of the ongoing pedophilia scandal, the growing shortage of priests, the dismantling of the reforms initiated by Vatican II, and the culture wars within the institutional Church. We have sent some pastoral letters to all the clergy in the Chicago Archdiocese. While some resented our input, others have been truly appreciative. One wrote back – “Continue speaking the truth. We hear very little truth from the Diocese these days.”

WEORC continues our support for women religious who have been badly treated by the hierarchy, and to support them when they run into conflict with the powers that be. We support a more inclusive priesthood.

WEORC will continue to celebrate the many ways in which resigned priests and religious men and women have brought the spirit of the Gospels into their parishes, their workplaces, and into the quest for social justice both within the Church, and in the wider society.

Finally, WEORC continues to be deeply concerned about this Catholic Church, which we love despite its flaws and frustrations. Recently, a Vatican official was dismissive to the representative of an Irish group, saying “you are a nobody leading a bunch of nobodies.” We may also be “nobodies”, but we can connect with other groups of “nobodies” to create a climate in which the Holy Spirit might initiate a surprise for the Church. It happened when Nelson Mandela emerged from prison to end apartheid in South Africa. It happened in the old Soviet Union when Michail Gorbachev emerged to bring down the Iron Curtain. And it happened when John XXIII was elected Pope and threw open the windows of a moribund church. We hope that WEORC can be a small, but significant part of that effort to heal our dysfunctional church.

The evening concluded with awards of appreciation for Marty and Jim, and a rousing chorus of “Ad multos annos”.

You can check WEORC out on-line, or drop us an email at weorc@comcast.net .

Evangelization, or Catholic Jingoism???

2010-11-19T13:24:00.000-08:00

Jingoism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy". In practice, it refers to the advocation of the use of threats or actual force against others in order to safeguard what they perceive as their own country’s interests, and colloquially to excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others – an extreme type of nationalism. It is captured in phrases like “My country, right or wrong” and “Might makes right.”

Replace the political references with “Catholic”, and you virtually have the definition of the “new” Evangelization in the JPII worldview, or Catholic Jingoism. Fr. Pat Brennan recently wrote a reflection on a similar point….

This past spring, one of the books I used in teaching at the Institute of Pastoral Studies, was The Future Church: How Ten Trends Are Revolutionizing the Catholic Church by John Allen. John Allen mentions influences in the 21st century that are going to have an impact on the future of the Catholic Church… One trend that I was eager to read about was a chapter entitled Evangelical Catholicism.

Based on my background in evangelization work, I was enthused that Allen was seeing in the church a renewed interest in evangelization as called for by Paul VI in 1975. As I understand it, evangelization has to do with calling people to a personal and communal relationship with Jesus Christ, conversion, and a growing experience of life in the Reign of God.

I was disappointed when I read Allen's description of the church's renewed interest in evangelization. The new Catholic evangelization is one that is promoting the institution of the church, Catholic culture, Catholic norms, and Catholic expectations. It is more a restoration movement than it is refounding the church according to the mission and vision of Jesus. This new Catholic evangelization sets black and white standards of what it means to be Catholic. If you do not meet the standards, you are not needed or wanted. Some Catholic leaders have said perhaps we are in a purification process and that what we need are fewer Catholics who abide more rigorously to Catholic norms and expectations.

Purging the Priesthood II

2010-11-16T07:14:00.000-08:00

The Vatican’s “clarification” this summer that pedophilia and women desirous of becoming priests were “delicta graviora” amused some, angered others, was ignored by many more. However, it drew a response from the Pastor of Ascension Parish in Oak Park (near Chicago) and over 600 parishioners that signed a letter about the Church’s apparent callousness in dealing with women in general, and then making the incredulous comparison between the "sin" of women priests and pedophilia. The petition took aim at that notion, saying "we take great offense that good faith struggles for gender equality could be misunderstood as a sacrilege and placed on a par with the sexual abuse of children."

The Pastor, Rev. Larry McNally, brought the petition personally to Cardinal George while the Cardinal was preparing for another trip to Rome. The Cardinal graciously invited McNally into the Cardinal residence for lunch and said he would bring the petition to Rome. George only took McNally to task for his complaints about Cardinal Law getting off easy in the Abuse Scandal - being “punished” with a plum Vatican assignment.

Of course, a month or so after the dust-up, the other shoe has now fallen. Cardinal George, seeking to distance himself from the issue personally, delegated Auxiliary Bishop John Manz to crackdown on Father McNally. McNally was ordered to apologize to his congregation for causing “confusion” about Church doctrine and had to read sections of the Catholic Catechism to his congregation from the pulpit. The alternative was to resign.

More details are available at: http://www.chicagocatholicnews.com/2010/11/suburban-priest-muzzled-over-remarks-on.html and http://www.oakpark.com/News/Articles/11-02-2010/Ascension_walks_afoul_of_Catholic_establishment

Purging the Priesthood

2010-11-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago the Chicago Archdiocese announced that having asked inactive priests to seek laicization voluntarily last year, it is going ahead to start laicizing hundreds of inactive priests forcibly. This activity caught the attention of the secular press with an article in Today’s Tribune.

The article tries to make some sense of the nonsensical situation, and sometimes gets caught up in the confusion of talking about pedophiles and married priests (two distinct, unrelated issues) in almost the same breath. You would think that the institution is intentially trying to link unrelated issues – like elsewhere, the “delicta graviora” of pedophiles and (gasp) women priests.

Law laid down on lapsed clergy

Under new norms 'indirectly' triggered by sex abuse scandal, Chicago Archdiocese moves to defrock priests with inactive ministries

By Manya A. Brachear, Tribune reporterNovember 8, 2010

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has begun to implement new norms that for the first time allow the church to start permanently removing men from the priesthood without their consent in certain cases.

Church officials say they aren't sure they will use their new powers granted by the Vatican to permanently oust all of the men removed from public ministry for substantiated allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor. Doing so would mean removing the church's oversight of at least 11 of the men, freeing them to live on their own.

But without delay, church officials are seeking to permanently remove 240 men — priests and deacons — who have walked away from ministry in the last 40 years. In many situations, the men left to marry or pursue other careers but never sealed the deal with Rome. In others, the men have been absent for at least five years.

In still other cases, church officials say some men purport to be Catholic ministers, potentially misleading faithful couples who seek a priest to officiate at weddings, a sacrament that is not recognized by the church if conducted by a cleric no longer in active ministry.

"We see this as a matter of justice for everyone," said Dan Welter, a deacon charged with processing their termination papers.

Welter clarified that spiritually speaking, once a priest, always a priest. "Priesthood is … a sacrament that is there forever. What we're doing is regularizing their relationship with the church in terms of active ministry," he said.

Historically, the church has never forcibly laicized, or defrocked (as it's commonly called), priests or deacons. They have been expected to make the request for laicization themselves. The 240 cases represent men who never petitioned Rome. The pope must sign off on each case.

Welter said many men have not responded to the letters informing them of the involuntary laicization. Some have protested, saying they support a married priesthood."

Others feel a great sadness because it seems to be ending something they didn't necessarily want to end at that point in time," Welter said.

Bob Motycka said he never requested the formal process when he left in 1997 because it contradicted his dual calling to both vocations of marriage and priesthood.

"If you apply for the process, you have to say, 'I made a mistake and please forgive me,'" said Motycka, the former associate pastor of St. Michael Catholic Church in Orland Park, adding that his 1979 ordination was no mistake."

I think they could be putting efforts toward other things besides circling the wagons," Motycka said.

Welter said the new norms were triggered indirectly by the sex abuse scandal. They were crafted in order for the church to sever ties with former priests and ensure they don't commit crimes under the auspices of the church.

"We want to clarify their status within the church because all deacons and priests are assigned a bishop," he said. "There is a concern on the part of everyone out there about vicarious liability … the bishop maintains that responsibility until it ends."

Motycka said many men have remained under the radar to avoid the embarrassment and restrictions that often accompany laicization. Despite intense theological training, a laicized priest is forbidden to teach theology or to serve any role on a parish altar.

In the cases of the 13 priests linked to sexual misconduct who have not resigned but were removed from public ministry, a move to defrock would evict six from the Stritch Retreat House in Mundelein, where they are closely monitored. It also would remove the monitors assigned to three priests now living in private homes. Two of the 13 must await the conclusions of canonical trials.

In addition to room and board, health benefits aside from Medicare also would cease. Laicization would not affect pensions, church officials said.

In Milwaukee, Archbishop Jerome Listecki, originally from Chicago, has moved to laicize nine men removed from ministry, saving $90,000 a year. The Chicago Archdiocese declined to say how much it costs to support the men still under the church's watch

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/religion/ct-met-defrocking-priests-20101108,0,3536898,print.story

Being a Christian is like being a pumpkin.

2010-10-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

A little seasonal reflection...

Being a Christian is like being a pumpkin. God lifts you up, takes you in, and washes all the dirt off of you. He opens you up, touches you deep inside and scoops out all the yucky stuff-- including the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc. Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside you to shine for all the world to see. This was passed on to me from another pumpkin. Now, it is your turn to pass it to a pumpkin. I liked this enough to send it to all the pumpkins in my patch.

A Suggestion for the USCCB November Agenda

2010-10-27T08:51:00.000-07:00

The annual Fall General Assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) will be in Baltimore mid-November. In his inimitable style, Peter Steinfels suggests that they address (one of) the elephants in the living-room – the decline in Church membership over the past few decades. Peter cites the Pew Forum survey that reports that one in every three people raised Catholic have left the Church. Thomas Reese, SJ, former editor of America, recently described this loss of on-third “a disaster”. He added, “You wonder if the bishops have noticed.”

Peter continues that at the coming bishops conference many things will be covered, “but not these devastating losses.” These numbers are not just numbers. “They are our siblings, our cousins, nieces and nephews, our friends, neighbors, classmates, and students, our children and grandchildren, even in some cases, our parents.”

But rather than face the problems, bishops and their “official” media and diocesan newspapers become cheerleaders for some bright spots.

I doubt whether any diocese is without some energetic, sensitive, and creative initiatives to improve pastoral practice, liturgy, catechetics, preaching, faith formation, financial support, social witness, and all the other things that could reverse the current decline. I continue to hear of successful programs, learn of valuable research, meet inspiring individuals, and see ads for attractive guides and educational materials for clergy and lay leaders alike. Yet somehow all these initiatives seem too scattered, too underfunded, too dependent on an always limited number of exceptional talents to coalesce into a force equal to the forces of dissolution.

Do we expect the issue to be solved quickly and easily? No, but...

What matters is merely some kind of acknowledgement from the hierarchy, or even
leading individuals within the hierarchy, of the seriousness of the situation. What matters is a sign of determination to address these losses honestly and openly, to absorb the existing data, to gather more if necessary, and to entertain and evaluate a wide range of views about causes and remedies. Is it possible some bishop might mention this at their November meeting?

The full text of Steinfels’ Commonweal article can be found at http://commonwealmagazine.org/further-adrift

“A rigid, authoritarian body” does not represent Catholic thinking"

2010-10-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

The Editorial Group / New Catholic Times

Note: After 30 years of embodying the vision of an independent Canadian Catholic voice focused on the link between faith and social justice in both church and society, Catholic New Times will cease publication with the present issue.

The facts are that John Paul I lived only thirty-three days as Pope and that John Paul II, elected at the relatively young age of 58, served as Bishop of Rome for 26 ½ years. During that time, John Paul II pursued a conscious plan to transform the hierarchy into a rigid, authoritarian body, utterly dependent on the Vatican for rewards and punishments of every kind.

With few exceptions, that plan has succeeded.

So begins Richard McBrien's column in the latest National Catholic Reporter.

One must respect the analysis of the Crowley-O'Brien professor of theology at Notre Dame. For decades the much admired theologian, arguably the finest ecclesiologist in the Catholic firmament, has placed his abundant talents at the service of the faithful. For decades he has taught in summer schools and written weekly columns on the church. As those years have gone by and as the nature of the American hierarchy (and most others) changed, McBrien has seen many dioceses under the direction of these conservative bishops deep six his column. These institutional "leaders", imposed on dioceses with no input from the baptized and paling in theological expertese to theologians like McBrien, saw fit to protect the lay citizens of the Church from the latter's "wild" opinions.

As the decades of the John Paul ll pontificate went by theologians and indeed virtually most theological professional societies grew weary of the thinly disguised attempts to rewrite the Second Vatican Council. Theologian after theologian was turfed from Catholic theologates by John Paul ll and his enforcer Josef Ratzinger, the latter being particularly cruel as he wielded his ecclesial axe.

Both could have taken their cues from a much loved deceased Canadian bishop who allowed a thousand flowers to bloom in his diocese and said often that he had no right to impose his opinion on the Catholic people. He trusted the "sensus fidelium" and in the case of the last two pontificates, peer review could have admirably separated the authentic wheat from the ephemeral chaff.

As McBrien points out, quoting Charles Curran, moral theology in particular has paid a stiff price here. Creative Catholic moralists bailed from Catholic seminaries and plied their trade elsewhere resulting in a standstill in this field. The only lens acceptable for moralists was that of John Paul ll.

Now as McBrien suggests these bishops have been put in place as "a rigid authoritarian body". As the theologian has quipped elsewhere "they answer to a constituency of one: Rome."

One of the huge ironies here is the beatification recently of Cardinal Newman over which Pope Benedict presided---the same Newman who reminded us that the Spirit is given to the entire Church not a rump of celibate men in Rome or elsewhere. And the "rigid authoritarian bodies" are having a most difficult time getting their mitred heads around this fact. Few if any have any interest in listening to the wisdom of their baptized co-religionists. This is debilitating for the Church at large, its growth and evolution.

While McBrien is undoubtedly right in his observation, the salient fact is that this has not made the Church any more credible. The reality as Charles Curran says is "that many people have left the church not because of disagreements with basic areas of faith and Catholic eucharistic celebration, but often because of issues mentioned above (feminist and liberation theologies), as well as the pedophilia crisis."

Curran continues:

Our church today is in serious trouble, and not just in Europe and the United States, although the problems there are great and need to be recognized as such and addressed.

Indeed, the second largest religious denomination in the United States today consists of Catholics who are no longer active in the church. The sense of alienation from the church is especially acute among women.

In his encyclical Populorum Progressio Pope Paul Vl reminded us that "Evangelization must touch life."

That life it must be said is not in repeating dicta from Rome. It lies in the ignored but still burning embers of the Catholic faithful.

FAQs About the new English Missal.

2010-09-30T06:28:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago Cardinal George of Chicago and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), announced the Vatican’s approval of a new English-language translation of the Roman Missal. It is scheduled to begin use in U.S. dioceses on Nov. 27, 2011.

“From that date forward, no other edition of the Roman Missal may be used in the dioceses of the United States of America” he proclaimed.

He probably didn’t mean to ban other Missals in Latin, Spanish, French, etc. Nor is it clear that George has any real power outside his own diocese. Nonetheless, the official indoctrination of the new liturgy has begun with priests and liturgists across the country. To help the faithful laity (pray, pay and obey types), an anonymous author offered some Frequently Asked Questions about the new missal.

What principles lie behind the translation of the new missal?

Primarily, the principle of personalities triumphing over policies; secondarily, the principle of centralism triumphing over collegiality.

What, then, is the primary reason for accepting the new missal?

Obedience to authority apart from narrow considerations of competence or rationality.

What can one expect to gain by accepting the new missal?

The obedience proposed above is a rich source of grace. It is precisely in this sense that the new missal will contribute to the sanctification of clergy and lay ministers.

What role did concern for the People of God play in the creation of the new missal?

The who?

What role did the teachings of the Second Vatican Council play in the creation of the new missal?

The what?

How will the new missal serve to restore a sense of mystery to the sacred liturgy?

Complicated sentence structure will make it a mystery what a pronoun might refer to, or which noun might go with the verb.

Does the new translation faithfully follow the Roman instruction on translation Liturgiam authenticam?

Yes, except when it doesn’t.

Does the new translation faithfully translate the Latin of the Missale Romanum?

Yes, except when it doesn’t.

Does the inclusion in the new translation of elements of the current translation suggest inconsistency on the part of Roman authorities?

No; it suggests, rather, the passage from truth to greater truth.

Is there a discernible pattern to the inclusion of elements of the current translation in the new translation?

The pattern of inclusion of the current translation, like the triune nature of the Godhead, lies beyond the powers of human reason but is not contrary to human reason.

What is the Holy See offering to the English-speaking churches with this new translation?

A strong apologetic for the rejected 1997/1998 sacramentary.

What attitude on the part of clergy and lay ministers will be most helpful in the implementation of the new missal?

A desire to serve the People of God by making the best of things, no matter what.

Is that last answer intended ironically?

No; it is, rather, the most serious response here given.

From “Pray Tell” http://www.praytellblog.com/index.php/2010/08/22/faq-the-new-english-missal-translation/

Does the Pope dress funny…

2010-09-21T11:25:00.000-07:00

... or is he just a Fashionisto? As Vatican II thinking and theology takes a backseat in Rome, and by imposition, in dioceses throughout the world, fashions are also going retro. With a new raft of monsignors in Chicago, the demand for fancy cassocks is going up. Once again young clerics can treasure red-plumed birettas in their “hope chests”. Mothballed fiddleback vestments are again seeing the light of day with the revived Tridentine Masses which takes laity off the altar and puts them back in the pews.

To keep the laity informed of Papal sartorial trends, the Chicago Catholic New World recently did a lengthy article on the inside cover. It tried to explain the intricacies of papal couture. One must admit that B16 is a sharp dresser and makes a fashion statement wherever he goes.

Of course there are some critics (including Justice Ann Burke) who feel that rather than regal garb and Prada slippers, simpler papal clothing would show greater humility– but obviously those critics simply aren’t Catholic enough to understand. http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/07/31/sex-abuse-critic-to-pope-swap-white-cassock-for-black-lose-the/

AN ENDANGERED TREASURE?

2010-09-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

During the past half-century renewal weekends have been one of the church’s most effective tools for deepening and enriching the faith of thousands of adults and teens. Cursillos, CHRP (Christ Renews His Parish), Kairos, TEC (Teens Encounter Christ) and similar programs have powerfully impacted individuals, families and entire communities. So also have more specialized efforts such as Pre-Cana and Marriage Encounter. However, the growing shortage of priests, coupled with a rise in clericalism, threatens to diminish these activities.

In the old days, traditional religious retreats were conducted by a spiritual director, most often a priest, who gave a series of talks to devout Catholics who were expected to maintain silence, examine their consciences, make a good confession, and compile a list of resolutions for future improvement. It was all done with a minimum of interaction with the other retreatants. By contrast, renewal weekends were presented by a team of lay men or women who, with a priest, deacon, nun or pastoral associate, worked together to present a series of “witness talks” based on Scriptural themes illuminated by their own personal experiences of God in the ups and downs of daily life. Following each talk was a table discussion in which participants shared their reflections and experiences. Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation offered opportunities to integrate all of this in a sacramental context.

The weekend was only one part of the total experience. The presenting team met weekly for two months beforehand to prepare and test their talks, recruit participants, and work out practical details. At the end of the weekend, the newcomers were invited to volunteer to form a new team to present the next weekend. The old team often continued to meet periodically to continue their own spiritual development. In some cases, these groups have continued for decades. As a result of these experiences, many participants have become much more actively involved in other parish or civic activities.

Renewal weekends have had an especially powerful effect on teens, especially high school Seniors, for whom it has provided an opportunity to sort out their lives and values as they prepare to enter college. Many young people, who had been turned off by institutional religion, have rediscovered new dimensions of faith and spirituality. In some cases, there has been a strong impact on their fellow students, especially in public schools, and on their families. Some participants have even initiated renewal weekends at their colleges and universities. And, not surprisingly, a number of marriages resulted from contacts made on these weekends.

However, this treasure of the Post-Vatican II Church is vulnerable today. One wag observed that the title “Christ renews his parish” could be recast as “Christ destroys his priest” because all of this requires so much time and energy from the clergy or lay ministers. Even though the laity does most of the work, they need the cooperation and encouragement of a supportive pastor. Today’s clergy shortage compels even the most dedicated and creative priest to ration his time and energy. Likewise with other staff members. Moreover, the new clericalism of many so-called J.P.II priests focuses more on the hierarchical prerogatives of the ordained, and less on the value of the life experience of the laity. “Pray, pay and obey” appears to be the job description of lay folk in the current dispensation.

So, is there any way to save this wonderful treasure? Or is it destined to become a footnote in the history of the Catholic Church in the 21st century? As the old comedian Jimmy Durante was wont to say, “That would be a revoltin’ development, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!”

Taking on the Cardinal?

2010-09-07T10:36:00.001-07:00

Years ago the Association of Chicago Priests (ACP) banded together to face the heavy-handedness of Cardinal Cody. The ACP found much more in common with Cardinal Bernadin and lost the confrontational edge. Now, it seems to be more of a lapdog for George... but that doesn't mean some individual priests aren't still able to state some dissent when necessary. Here's a blog from http://www.chicagocatholicnews.com/

Cardinal facing increasing unrest in Chicago-area parishes -- from those in pews and pulpits

(POSTED: 9/6/10) In a sign of increasing tensions within the Catholic Church locally, a west suburban pastor recently used his parish bulletin to rip Cardinal Francis George's decision to pursue the honorary title of "monsignor" for a number of Chicago-area priests -- calling the move "silly" and "shameful."

The Rev. Thomas McQuaid, pastor of St. Leonard Church in Berwyn, wrote a scathing column in the Aug. 15 bulletin that indicated there were more important things to be focusing on -- including the Church's response to sex abuse by clergy."Recently, the Cardinal has announced that he has recommended [to Pope Benedict XVI] that 40 among us be named monsignors," McQuaid wrote. "You might see all this, as I do -- as rather silly in light of far more important matters which remain unaddressed like the failure of the Cardinal, [Auxiliary] Bishop [George] Rassas and Fr. Ed Grace to have protected children from the abuse of Fr. Dan [McCormack] and the inestimable damage done to these young people and their families and the millions of dollars paid by the Archdiocese in settlements.""

Months ago, I asked the Cardinal not to move forward with this plan, calling it shameful in light of the economic situation we find ourselves in these days. You ask: 'Why is this an economic issue?' It is 'expected' that a 'gift' be offered to the Vatican for each title conferred. In the past, I think the 'expected gift' was around $5,000 each. I suspect that now it is probably $8,000-$10,000 each -- of course, we will never know.Again, it's your money!"

In response to a question from ChicagoCatholicNews.com about this, the archdiocese indicated the figure was substantially lower: $150 for each "scroll," which was covered by the cardinal. But the media office did not answer a follow-up question about whether that constituted the total offering.Neither the cardinal nor Rassas returned phone calls. Grace, the former vicar for priests, declined to comment.

McCormack was convicted of abusing a number of boys while he was at a West Side parish. Archdiocesan officials -- including the cardinal -- have been criticized for not heeding warnings, investigating allegations fully and acting quickly enough to protect children.

George also has been under fire for petitioning the pope to bestow "papal honors" on a number of priests. The recently announced honors carry the "monsignor" title, which dates back centuries but fell out of favor starting in the 1960s with Vatican II reforms.

The cardinal consulted with a number of local priests, who told him resurrecting the title wasn't a good idea, because it would effectively create a new caste of priests. But George went ahead anyway, explaining in an archdiocesan publication:"

Some will not want to be honored because of their humility; but sometimes humility means accepting an honor that is not just for the individual but for everyone else as well. A few in the archdiocese might object to anyone receiving papal honors because they want to distance this local church from the Holy See. But alienation is not a virtue."Twenty priests just received the title, although others may have been approached about it.

Either way, that's not the only thorny issue in the local Church these days. There are signs of rebellion elsewhere, rooted in part in a recent Vatican pronouncement that puts female ordination on the same level as priestly sex abuse. (Only men may be priests in the Roman Catholic tradition.)

In Oak Park, members of St. Giles Church launched a massive petition drive to advocate for better treatment of women in the Church.

And the pastor of Ascension Parish in Oak Park, the Rev. Larry McNally, recently apologized from the pulpit to the women of the congregation for the way they have been treated by the Church leadership.His own spiritual director, who is a woman, recently stopped attending mass because she was so "totally disgusted" with the Church, McNally said.

Over in Glenview at the massive Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, the Rev. Tom Hickey touched on various themes in his Aug. 15 bulletin."Increasingly I don’t think the ordinary people of the Church should have the burden of trying to understand the machinations of what seems like an old boy’s club," Hickey wrote. "The way I see it, it is the institutional Church that needs to work harder at understanding us, the faithful."

He also wrote: "What can we do? Well for one, we need to speak our truth with love to our Church leaders, including parish priests like myself. Keeping silent is being complicit. We need to encourage one another, let each other know that we together are the Church. Each of us has a part to play. And we need to hang in; it is our Church too. Recently I visited Siena where St. Catherine, an unschooled woman, took on Popes and Bishops to reform the Church she loved. Can we do any less?"

By ChicagoCatholicNews.comContact: info@chicagocatholicnews.com

http://www.chicagocatholicnews.com/2010/09/cardinal-facing-increasing-unrest-in.html

A Fear-Based Church?

2010-08-31T13:55:00.000-07:00

Over the past several years the Vatican has been very busy… suppressing “dissident” theologians, investigating American nuns, excommunicating women priests, using the Eucharist as a political weapon, shoring up mandatory celibacy while wooing married Anglican priests, closing parishes without recourse, proposing retro-English and Latin liturgies, demeaning homosexuals, etc.

While there has been a lot of grumbling (or quiet voting with their feet) about various actions in the Vatican, there haven’t been many loud vocal objections or significant protests. Jim Martin, the Jesuit editor of America magazine, suggests it’s because of a cloud of fear than hangs over the faithful. He should be wary considering “they” came down on his predecessor for supposed deviation from the party line.

A Fear-Based Church?: Why So Many Catholics Are Afraid to Speak Out
Rev. James Martin, S.J.

On June 1, Bishop Kevin Dowling, an outspoken Catholic bishop in South Africa, gave a surprisingly frank talk to a group of prominent Catholics in Cape Town. The other day a friend sent me a link to his address, posted on Independent Catholic News, parts of which I posted on our magazine's blog. Many read it, and other sites picked it up.

Then, somewhat mysteriously -- or so it seemed -- his candid talk was removed from ICN. Then it was posted again a few hours later. (This was due to a glitch involving some incorrectly deleted words, the website's editor explained in an email.) Subsequently, the National Catholic Reporter reported that the bishop had intended the talk to be off the record. "Given the fact that it would be a select group with no media present," he said, "I decided I would be open and honest in my views to initiate debate and discussion."

Now, I've done some off-the-record speaking myself. But after I read his superb talk I wondered: Why wouldn't a bishop want such a carefully crafted, well-thought-out address, which would clearly be of great help to so many, disseminated more widely? Why not be "open and honest" with everyone?

Bear with me. For I've been thinking about his talk not so much to unravel the twisted skein of the on-again, off-again posting saga, but to meditate on what it might say about the Catholic church.

Bishop Dowling's blunt address was not only about what he called the "dismantling" of the Second Vatican Council, which reformed the church in the 1960s, but something else: the overwhelming "pressure to conform." Here's an irony: the one speaking out about speaking out apparently did not feel that he could speak out, at least not broadly, or at least not to everyone, or at least not publicly. His desire not to speak more publicly on the topic may have proved his point.

None of this is meant to be a slight against Bishop Dowling, whom I've greatly admired for some time. He is a terrific leader, a wonderful teacher and, in many ways, a real prophet. What a bishop should and could be.

But neither is this surprising. Today in the Catholic Church almost any disagreement to almost any degree with almost any church leader on almost any topic is seen as dissent. And I'm not speaking about the essentials of the faith -- those elements contained in the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed -- but about less essential topics. Even on those topics -- for example, the proper strategy for bishops to deal with Catholic politicians at odds with church teaching, the new translations of the Mass, the best way for priests to address complicated moral issues, and so on -- the slightest whiff of disagreement is confused with disloyalty.

Certainly disagreement with statements from Rome, even on non-dogmatic or non-doctrinal matters, is seen as close to heresy. As Bishop Dowling said:

What compounds this [frustration over the church's unwillingness to be critiqued], for me, is the mystique which has in increasing measure surrounded the person of the pope in the last 30 years, such that any hint of critique or questioning of his policies, his way of thinking, his exercise of authority etc. is equated with disloyalty. There is more than a perception, because of this mystique, that unquestioning obedience by the faithful to the pope is required and is a sign of the ethos and fidelity of a true Catholic. When the pope's authority is then intentionally extended to the Vatican curia, there exists a real possibility that unquestioning obedience to very human decisions about a whole range of issues by the curial departments and cardinals also becomes a mark of one's fidelity as a Catholic, and anything less is interpreted as being disloyal to the pope who is charged with steering the bark of Peter.

Even for bishops! Kevin Dowling is a bishop: Catholic theology considers him a successor to the apostles. For Christ's sake (and I mean that literally) he's not some lowly functionary. He's not simply a branch manager of the Vatican's main office. He is a teacher in his own right. And even he feels the "pressure to conform."

What does this engender? It engenders a fear-based church. It creates clergy and members of religious orders frightened of speaking out, terrified of reflecting on complicated questions, and nervous about proposing creative solutions to new problems. It leads to the laity, with boundless experience on almost every topic but who have a hard enough time getting their voice heard, giving up. It causes the diminution of a thoughtful theological community in Catholic colleges and universities. It muzzles what should be a vibrant, flourishing, provocative, innovative, challenging Catholic press. It empowers minuscule cadres of self-appointed watchdogs, whose malign voices are magnified by the blogosphere, and who, with little to no theological background, freely declare any sort of disagreement as tantamount to inciting schism -- and are listened to by those in authority. It creates fear.

Does this seem like what Jesus wanted to establish on earth? It doesn't to me. I thought he said "Fear not!" And I thought St. John said, "There is no fear in love." And "Perfect love casts out fear." But perfect fear casts out love.

Sometimes when I'm writing or speaking, even to small groups, I find myself thinking not "What would God want me to say?" but "Will this get me in trouble?" Again it's not surprising.
Occasionally, during talks I'll spy an unsmiling man or woman furiously taking notes. The other night it happened during a talk on a particularly controversial topic: joy. Ironically, I am probably one of the most theologically conservative Catholics you'll ever meet. Every Sunday, when I say the Creed during Mass, I believe every single word of it.

Bishop Dowling is right. There is a "pressure to conform." And it is intense, particularly within official church circles. Sadly, this is the last thing that the church needs right now. In the midst of perhaps one of the worst crises ever to face the Catholic Church -- the sexual abuse scandals -- what we need is not fear-bred silence, but a hope-filled willingness to listen to any and all voices. Because the Holy Spirit works through everyone.

What's the alternative? Well, for an answer I'd like to turn to Pope Benedict XVI. In preparation for some of my own writing, I've been rereading his book Jesus of Nazareth, which I'm enjoying very much. At the beginning of his book the pope says something quite surprising. Benedict writes that the book is "absolutely not" a work of doctrine, but the "expression of my own personal research." "Consequently," he writes, "everyone is free to contradict me. I only ask the readers that they read with sympathy, without which there will be no comprehension."
That seemed eminently sensible, completely humble and absolutely right. How much easier it is to listen to someone who invites, rather than commands.

How wonderful if everyone in the Catholic Church could be afforded that "sympathy." Then we could listen to the voices of all sorts of people who have much to offer the church, by way of their own "expressions" of their "personal research" -- that is, the experience of their lives as faith-filled Christians. The pope's approach in his book -- about Jesus, hardly an insignificant topic! -- is the way forward.

What is needed is sympathy to the experiences and voices of all in the church. Without this there will truly be, to quote the pope, "no comprehension."

James Martin, SJ, is culture editor of America magazine and author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything. This essay is adapted from a post on "In All Things."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-james-martin-sj/a-fear-based-church-why-a_b_640884.html

Does the Church Really Need More Monsignors?

2010-08-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

Just in time for Christmas... new "retro" , monsignor cassocks. Today's post comes from a reflection by Fr. Pat Brennan, a Chicago priest and the director of The National Center for Evangelization and Parish Renewal....

A reflection on the readings for August 29, 2010
Sir 3:17-18, 20, 28-29, Heb 12:18-19, 22-24a, Luke 14:1, 7-14

Does the Church Really Need More Monsignors?

The word on the street is that the Archdiocese of Chicago is about to announce a number of new monsignors among the priests of Chicago. The term monsignor is an honorary title that traditionally was given to priests because of some accomplishment in the Church or as a reward in the hierarchical system of the priesthood. Traditionally, there were two kinds of monsignors: Right Reverend Monsignors and Very Reverend Monsignors. I never quite understood the distinction, but it was apparent that the Very Reverend perhaps were not as reverend as the Right Reverend. Right Reverend wore red trim on their cassocks and were monsignors for a lifetime. Very Reverend wore purple trim on their cassocks and the title could be taken away at the end of a pontificate. Right Reverend Monsignors had roles like that of rectors of seminaries. The Very Reverend were involved in Archdiocesan offices or were pastors of cathedrals or basilicas. The custom of naming some priests monsignors fell to the wayside after the Second Vatican Council, but now it is making a comeback. The meaning of the word monsignor is "my lord".

In my first assignment as a deacon, I lived with two monsignors, the retired pastor and the pastor at the time. Sometimes the two monsignors would have too much to drink before dinner. The dinner could be an anxiety producing event for a twenty-five year old learning the ropes. The pastor of that parish liked being called monsignor. I, for one, called him monsignor; he was the boss. But there was an associate pastor there, a middle-aged priest, who one day said to the pastor, "Look, the title monsignor means 'my lord'. You are not my Lord. Jesus is my Lord. You are Don; and I will continue to call you Don." The priest calling monsignor "Don" made for some more nervous moments at dinner.

The Catholic hierarchical system is a curious entity. When Jesus preached the Reign of God, he called people to gentleness, mercy, service, self-sacrifice, justice, but early on in the church (especially when Constantine not only liberated the Christians from persecution, but made Christianity the state religion), the Church began to take on more and more trappings of Roman hierarchical power. The papacy, the role of bishops, monsignors, and in some cases priests, began to take on monarchical imagery. In fact, in terms of cardinals and archbishops, we actually began to speak of princes of the church. At liturgy, fine expensive vestments were worn that resembled the clothes of monarchs. "Shepherds", as bishops should be, walked around with staffs made of gold or which were gold-plated. They began to wear headgear that resembled crowns. The leaders of the Church began to dress and act in ways diametrically opposed to the lifestyle Jesus calls us to.

For full reflection, go to http://ncepr.com/2010/08/does-the-church-really-need-more-monsignors/

THE GOD OF THE MOUNTAIN

2010-08-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

In the Bible, one of the most ancient names for God is El Shaddai. It occurs five times in Genesis, and once each in Exodus and Ezekiel. The most likely translation is “God of the mountain.” Apparently, when one’s home valley encompassed the entirety of life, the looming mountain seemed to be the dwelling place of divinity.

Over the centuries, the realm of God has expanded together with our human experience. We grew from the God of our nation, our civilization, our planet, our solar system, our galaxy to the God of this immense, complicated universe. Today, we even talk of a possible multi-verse, a collection of universes. We are increasingly aware that we live in three realms. The macrocosm of stars, galaxies, black holes, dark matter, with dimensions and powers that boggle our minds. If creation is so vast, how vast is our creator, the ground of all being. We also live in the microcosm of the infinitely small, of molecules, sub-atomic particles, quarks, quanta, neutrinos, bosons and the like. We may tend to dismiss them as too esoteric, but these intricate forces power our computers, lasers and nanotechnology. And finally we live in the realm of human interaction. Relationships, family, ethnicity, race, politics, religion. It is here that we discover the wonderful reality that the God of the galaxies, and the God of the molecules, is also the God who is Love. Wherever we encounter authentic love, we find a pathway to God.

That leads us back to El Shaddai, the God of the mountain.

Some mystics have compared the spiritual life to climbing the mountain of God. Like those seeking to ascend Everest, we may start from base camps located in totally different nations many miles apart, but as we climb we draw closer not only to God, but to other climbers who may have started on different faces of the mountain. Our commonality gradually trumps our diversity. However, some of our colleagues remain focused on their base camps far below: Muslim clerics preaching a Jihad of violence; Hindu extremists enmeshed in xenophobia; Protestant fundamentalists fixated on culture wars; Jewish rabbis fighting about who is or is not authentically Jewish; and Catholic hierarchs trapped in morass of pedophilia pettiness and partisan politics. Religion can lead us away from God as well as closer to God. Our base camp can imprison us at the bottom of the mountain, or fortify us with qualities of magnanimity, compassion, humility, generosity and a thirst for justice, all of which open us to El Shaddai, the ancient and ever new God who dwells not only on the heights, or in the vastness of space, but also deep within our hearts and in those of all other seekers.

Excommunicate me, please

2010-08-10T08:44:00.000-07:00

The following is a Chicago Tribune editorial piece by Sheila O'Brien on August 4, 2010. She pours out her frustrations as contemporary conscientious Catholic…

Would someone in Rome formally excommunicate me, please? I want to be excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church because walking away will break my heart.

My grandparents left Ireland with nothing but their vibrant faith. They and my parents brought my siblings and me to a baptismal font and promised to guide us to Christ. And, they did that by word and deed. They taught us to love the Gospel and challenged us to live that Gospel at all costs. I love the Mass, Catholic social teaching, the scores of nuns who built the church around the world, the dedicated priests and people who love God with all their hearts and bring that love to the world. It is my life, the center of every experience, the filter for reality.

But, the headlines continue — more pedophilia, more stonewalling by the bishops, more "norms" from Rome protecting perpetrators. Now, it is a "crime" of the church to attempt to ordain people like Mother Teresa or St. Teresa of Avila — women. And, the hierarchy, who have arguably hidden crimes and criminals, who will not open the books so we can see where our money has gone and who always claim the moral high ground, have grouped ordaining women with pedophilia.

Our heads swirl. How can we stay in a church whose leaders protect pedophiles? Yet, how can we leave and relinquish our church to those very leaders?

We have a financial remedy — write "one time bequest" on your parish contribution check and all the money will stay in your parish; none will go downtown. Do it. That will stop the spigot of money to the hierarchy and may get their attention. But, it doesn't salve our consciences about how to live the Gospel in an institution off the rails.

We watch the bishops ignore recommendations from fellow Catholics who served on an abuse panel. We have waited for the civil authorities to empanel grand juries and bring indictments, but that has not happened. And, our long wait for a bishop or priest of courage, of conscience, to speak up and say "enough" has proven fruitless. The priests are scared of retribution from the bishops; they tell us so.

So, each person must decide: Stay and fight (cutting off the money but with little hope for change) or leave. Both options are spiritually and emotionally exhausting.

That's why, silly as it sounds, formal excommunication by the hierarchy would be a welcome relief. If they would just make the decision for me, give me a piece of paper that says, "you're out," it would free my conscience of all of this. Then someday, when I see the faces of my grandparents, I can assure them that I fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith that they gave me at that baptismal font long ago.

I just wish they were here to tell me what that means right now.

Come Holy Spirit.

Sheila O'Brien is a wife, mother, daughter, sister, a product of 22 years of Catholic education and active in her parish. She is a justice of the Illinois Appellate Court, Chicago.

THE POWER OF HUMOR

2010-08-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

Conversation at the backyard barbeque ranged from family stories, to politics, to sports and weather. Then came a spirited discussion of the Catholic hierarchy who, in recent weeks, had expelled two kindergarteners whose parents were lesbians, refused burial to a woman priest, raged at nuns who had publicly disagreed with the bishops about health care legislation, been held under house arrest in Belgium while authorities investigated an alleged cover-up of pedophilia, declared that the results of their investigation of American nuns would be kept secret, excommunicated a nun in Phoenix who had allowed the termination of a pregnancy which would have killed both mother and baby, and finally published guidelines, not regulations, for handling of child abuse cases throughout the church. For some unknown reason the Vatican also coupled the crime of pedophilia with the apparently equally heinous crime of women’s ordination, declaring automatic excommunication for any and all involved.

As the litany of cases continued, the temperature of the group soared, until humor took over. One person suggested that we develop bumper stickers declaring, “Honk if you’re into Excommunication.” Another suggested a companion piece, “Honk twice if you prefer burning people at the stake.” Another proposed t-shirts proclaiming, “If women priests can be excommunicated…” on the front and, on the back, “…shouldn’t some clueless Catholic prelates be Ex-term-inated?” This launched, to escalating peals of laughter, a rapid- fire series of alternative mottos and strategies. The threat of excommunication used to be a really big deal, but at the corner of our lives where hierarchical ineptitude has intersected with a crescendo of episcopal arrogance, something profound has happened. Our hierarchy has become an object of ridicule.

Something similar happened in South Africa shortly before the end of Apartheid. And it also preceded the destruction of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. There comes a moment when the governed withdraw their consent. That’s what seems to be happening, chuckle by chuckle, in thousands of Catholic backyards today.

Humor has power.

"New" English Missal?

2010-07-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

It was another sign of the undoing of Vatican II and collegiality. The International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) spent 15 years working on a new faithful and beautiful translation of the English missal. It was approved by all the English-speaking conferences of bishops by a very wide margin, only to be rejected by the Vatican in 2002.

The Vatican then decided that they would take it upon themselves to create a “suitably” orthodox English translation. Just this past year the USCCB rubber-stamped the Vatican version without much enthusiasm (and not without some objections). http://americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=5482 This imposed “new” version is being slated for implementation, and most critics of the "new" missal seem to have accepted it as a “fait compleat”.

However, one movement called “What If We Just Said Wait?” decided to tilt with windmills and try to push back. They started a signature campaign to reconsider the implementation. They recently offered the following "food for thought"...

Reporting for the highly-respected British Catholic weekly, The Tablet, Rome correspondent Robert Mickens wrote on June 12 this encouraging bit of news:

THE CONTROVERSIAL new English translation of the Roman Missal, which the Vatican officially approved in its entirety last April, is actually still a work in progress and will include more changes that were never endorsed by the world’s English-speaking bishops, The Tablet has learned. “This means that the beautifully-bound English Missal that Vox Clara gave Pope Benedict at that gala luncheon last spring, to mark the recognitio (approval), was not even the finished product,” said one of several sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

It’s evident that the new translation of the Roman Missal is in serious disarray. Not only are extensive changes being made to the texts our bishops voted on (many of them reluctantly), but some English-speaking conferences of bishops have not even voted on all of the texts yet!

A sign of hope? Recently, a new translation into German of the Order of Christian Funerals (prepared according to the norms established in Liturgiam Authenticam) was rejected by German-speaking priests and bishops for pastoral reasons. Amazingly, permission has now been granted to them by the Vatican to continue using the 1973 version they were accustomed to!

According to Anthony Ruff, OSB, this is the first time since the Second Vatican Council that “an officially approved book is being withdrawn because of objections to the translation, especially to the many changes Rome made in the submitted translation.” Is it too much to hope that the same thing could happen with regard to the new English-language Missal?

For more information and to sign a petition go to http://www.whatifwejustsaidwait.org/newsjuly15.htm

A Spark in the Darkness

2010-07-09T13:58:00.000-07:00

Just when you think there is nary a bishop in the world with the heart of Christ, who cries at the things that makes God cry, there is a spark of light in the darkness.

In this case it was Bishop Kevin Dowling of South Africa. Thinking he was speaking “off the record”, he spoke many of the truths that go unspoken about the direction of the Catholic Church. While many may hail his frankness, we can only hope he won’t be chastised by some curial court. The whole text of his talk can be found in the NCR…

http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/catholic-social-teaching-finds-church-leadership-lacking

CAN THE CHURCH LEARN FROM THE BLACKHAWKS?

2010-06-28T09:05:00.000-07:00

Five years ago experts ranked the 120 franchises of major leagues sports (baseball, football, basketball and hockey.) The Chicago Blackhawks came in dead last. Their team was dull and inept. The stadium was half-full. The games were seldom televised. The whole enterprise was in disarray. Then the owner died, and his son turned everything around. This year they won the Stanley cup, and the entire city erupted in joy. How did things change so rapidly? And what lessons, if any, can the Blackhawks teach our faltering Catholic Church which has been rocked by the ongoing sex abuse scandal, inept and obtuse leadership, a diminishing clergy, and disenchanted and disappearing membership?

The Blackhawks took five decisive steps.

First, they analyzed their situation with ruthless honesty. There were no sacred cows or denials or subterfuges. Based on that analysis, they established priorities, clear goals and a plan of action. And the Church? It is caught in a web where too many truths are unspoken, while too many distortions and evasions are embraced in the name of tradition. The Church needs some supremely competent historians, scripture scholars and theologians to sort out the wheat from the chaff in the story of how we got where we are today. What is founded on the solid rock of Jesus and the Gospels? What are the barnacles which need to be scraped away and discarded?

Second, the Blackhawks selected competent new leadership, and discarded those who had proven to be inept. Death took the former owner, who was stubborn, arrogant and closed minded. He was not a bad man. He simply had grown out of touch, and the world passed him by. The new leadership was not only in touch with contemporary realities, they could, like expert chess players, see six moves ahead. Thus, this year, having won the championship, they aren’t resting on their laurels, but are making new moves to improve their team. And what of the Church? Leadership is old, tired, entrenched, unimaginative, defensive and impervious to change. The Curia seems intent on protecting its own turf. New bishops are selected because they are clones of their elders. Priests are either capable and greatly overworked, or problematic. The Holy Spirit has provided a wealth of talent for the Church, but the best and the brightest may be either married or female or both.

Third, the Hawks opened things up, embraced transparency and good communication. They started to televise their games once again. The old owner had argued that, if fans could see the games for free on TV, they wouldn’t buy tickets and come to the stadium. However, the law of unintended consequences dictated just the opposite. Fans lost interest. Kids (the future fans) didn’t even know the Blackhawks existed, and the stadium attendance diminished drastically. His equation was self-defeating. And the Church? The hierarchy is backward looking, attempting to recreate a dead past and ignoring the signs of the times. Secrecy reigns. Initiative is stifled. Rigor mortis has set in.

Fourth, the Blackhawks welcomed home the exiles. The stars of the last Stanley cup team in 1961 had been shabbily treated in the past. Hall of Fame giants such as Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita were brought back into the fold as “ambassadors” for the team, and as exemplars for current players. Their enthusiasm was contagious. Grandparents who had been fans in those golden days not only returned to the stadium, but also shared their happy memories with their kids and grandchildren. It transformed a vicious circle of hurt and dismay into a tsunami of enthusiasm and success. And the Church? We have a treasure which has been locked up in a dusty closet for many years. It’s called Vatican II. It contains a ready made action plan which has been systematically sabotaged by our leaders who have declared a need to reform the reform. One wonders where the Church would be today, if Vatican II had been allowed to flourish.

Like the Blackhawks, the Catholic Church doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. It already has a template to follow. What would that look like? The dominant image would be the People of God on pilgrimage, not a hierarchical pyramid trying to keep all the reins under its control. It would embrace the ideal of subsidiarity with decentralized decisions which incorporated the input of all segments of the community. The Pope as bishop of Rome would lead the Church, but the Curia would serve the needs of the entire Church and not dictate to everyone else. Bishops’ conferences would have the kind of leadership exhibited in the famous U.S. peace pastoral on nuclear weapons, before it was squelched. And the quinquennial Episcopal Synods in Rome would be authoritative partners with the Pope instead of powerless rubber stamps. If this dynamic vision had been in place for all of these years, issues like pedophilia, secularism, birth control, the role of women, the priest shortage and so many other issues might have been handled in a much more effective way.

Finally, the Blackhawks invested in youth and created a new chemistry. By astute trades, draft choices and pursuit of free agents, they assembled a superb team in an amazingly short time. They scouted well, developed players wisely, and hired excellent coaches. But sometimes a franchise has a group of stars who don’t play well together. The whole is less than the sum of its parts. The Blackhawks found a chemistry which enabled the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts. And that’s what is so desperately needed in the Catholic Church today. The spirit is sour. There is enormous fragmentation. It does not look hopeful. But, of course, five years ago that worst franchise of that list of 120 looked hopeless. And look what happened.

We can’t just wait for a new Pope or a new Bishop to make this happen. In our own lives, our own families, our own parish communities, our own workplaces and neighborhoods, we can try to be the agents of change. Perhaps we can make the miracle of the 2010 Blackhawks happen locally, while we pray for the Holy Spirit to light a fire under the Church.

--Baltasar

Catholic News Agency Accused of Fabricating Report

2010-06-25T08:21:00.000-07:00

Now the Secretary of Communications for the USCCB, Helen Osman, denies published quotes from their meeting that Cardinal George complained about the Catholic Health Association (CHA). On the one hand, it may be Osman’s issue, on the other hand, it wouldn’t be the first time Cardinal George said something to one select group, not considering that it would quoted in other circles. One example would be his criticism to a conservative group last year of Obama giving a commencement address at Notre Dame, then having to spin his comments in another direction when they became public.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/helen-osman-accuses-cna-of-fabricating-report-on-cardinal-george-and-cha

George Blames CHA and Sr. Carol for Catholic disunity...

2010-06-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

... and Bishop Lynch to the rescue?

At a meeting in Florida Cardinal George is quoted saying, "Sister Carol and her colleagues are to blame." He said that it was the Catholic Health Association's endorsement of the bill that persuaded wavering congressmen to vote in favor of the Obama-backed Health Care legislation. "As such it has resulted in confusion and a wound to Catholic unity,"

Making his own voice heard, Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Florida and board member to the CHA, questioned whether George didn't have an over-inflated sense of authority.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10061710.html

“Independent Catholic News?

2010-06-10T09:43:00.000-07:00

Not if Cardinal George had his way about it. On several occasions, including a speech at the USCCB meeting this past year, George stated that “insistence on complete independence from the bishop renders a person or institution sectarian, less than fully Catholic.” He would argue the independent online “Chicago Catholic News” should call itself Catholic unless he controls it. (Bishop Dewane of Venice Florida goes so far as to insist every weekly parish bulletin be cleared by the chancery before it is published.)

In the meantime, Robert Hergurth, editor-in-chief of chicagocatholicnews.com, tries to maintain an indepent source of information, balancing progressive and traditional Catholic newsources for the millions of Catholics who live in the Chicagoland area. The referenced editorial is by Robert McClory, a former Chicago priest and journalism professor from Northwestern Univeristy. Draw your own conclusions about Chicago Catholic News….. http://www.chicagocatholicnews.com/2010/05/elder-hostile-judgment-on-those-who.html

MURDER ON THE DIS-ORIENTED EXPRESS:

2010-06-01T13:08:00.000-07:00

BULLETINS FROM THE HUMAN SIDE by EUGENE CULLEN KENNEDY
5/28/10. Eugene Kennedy is regular contributor to the National Catholic Reporter. His blogs there may be found at http://ncronline.org/blogs/bulletins-from-the-human-side

You need not be Hercule Poirot to understand that murder is about to be committed on the Disoriented Express. Having taken on coal at the mossy Vatican I station, it is now thundering toward its final destination at Trent, the Grand Central gathering place for “Reformers of the Reform.”

The assassins plan is to kill off Vatican II but they are really murdering religious Mystery itself, that defining core of religious experience that sings in the Church’s sacramental symbolism and in the mytho-poetic language of its scriptures and prayer life.

Ordinary believers are the innocent victims of the New Translation’s manslaughter of Mystery and of numerous terrorist attacks on the vision and theology of Vatican II. Like ancient crusaders, the present legions believe that as the true believers only they have a right to ransom the True Cross.

Like all terrorists, these campaigners believe that Heavenly mansions await them for the earthly damage they do in restoring religion to the slavery to obsessive masters from whom Jesus liberated it. Not for them the Church that respects conscience and other religions, that understands and waits for all us limping humans to catch up with it, that celebrates life and embraces and forgives sinners.

Vatican II makes faith too easy, in their judgment; they reject a faith that elevates people for spiritual growth and propose a regime that puts them down to keep them in their place. Espousing a “tough” religion doesn’t do much for anybody else but it certainly makes them feel good about themselves.

Everything, including the New Translation, squeezes the spirit out of familiar liturgical readings and replaces it with hot air. These efforts flow from the sweeping campaign initiated by Pope John Paul II (Calling him Pope John the Great is part of their program too) to restore the hierarchical Church.

The hierarchical Church’s outdated structure, whose origins were secular rather than sacred, was not a victim of Vatican II but of history itself and the best thing to do is stand clear as it settles into clouds of dust. With his combination of Teutonic rigor and a shopkeeper’s smile, Pope Benedict XVI now charges the bishops, as if they didn’t have enough trouble, with refurbishing the split-level palace that places the Pope alone on top, monsignors and assorted officials on the skybox level, and, like high school kids holding up a wobbling pyramid of their pals on their backs, lay men and women on the bottom.

The failure to understand that Vatican II restored the authentic tradition of collegiality to the Church has led to a record level of canonizations on the principle that the more saints the better to buttress the multi-level ecclesiastical dormitory. The little murders of these reformers of the reform of Vatican II include the comedy of telling priests who don’t know the language that they can say Mass in Latin and the tragedy of making nice with the LeFebvre heretics who are the Confederate money in the Church’s collection plate.

The New Translation is a big murder, however, because it represents an assault on the language that bears the Mystery of belief. The translation now in use reveals the purity of theologically based phrases. The New Translation now slays that graceful Mystery by throwing out the baby with the baptismal water.

For example, the familiar penitential phrase, “I have sinned through my own fault” is buried in the debris of the antiquated “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.” The Gloria has been touched up with so much 19th century gilt paint that it resembles an aging countess camouflaging herself for amours that will never be. When the priest says “The Lord be with you” the clean clear response, “And also with you” is replaced with the literal “And with your spirit.” The same Proustian longing for a vanished past is found at the Agnus Dei. Catholics must now replace “…but only say the word and I shall be healed” with ”I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”

This can only lead to further literalization and deadening of the Word of God that, as in the parables of Jesus, is metaphorical. In a metaphor, the connotation is the significant element, that cloud of witnesses to its fuller meaning that hovers around it that are scattered when somebody insists on using the denotation, that flat utilitarian meaning, such as STOP on a traffic sign.

Choosing denotation rather than connotation in religious language has led to bloody consequences. Those who accepted the literal meaning of Holy Land have been making war over its boundary lines for centuries. Jesus speaks directly to us in Holy Land as a metaphor for a spiritual place we can enter at any time.

As this Disoriented Express rocks along toward the rockslide of Trent, these zealots look mystified when Poirot asks them if they know who the murderer is. They look mystified because they don’t have a clue about the nature of religious Mystery and of how its supple metaphorical language must be respected and, indeed, guarded. Ordinary people do understand religious Mystery in their depths and that is why, without being able to explain it rationally, they are reluctant to drink of the cup of the New Translation that is now being forced on them.

Janine Denomme

2010-05-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

Janine died this week at the age of 45, a victim of cancer. She was an activist for Gay Rights and the ordination of women. She herself was ordained in a clandestine service, termed a "simulation" by the Catholic Church. Therefore she is being denied a Catholic funeral at her local parish.

In the good ol' days, Church authorities could arrest, torture and burn such dissenters at the stake. They can still excommunicate, ostracize, and deny the sacraments to the living and dead, and so they sometimes do. There are lots of "mortal sins", and many of then can get you excommunicated (most have to do with sex), but evidently the biggest sins are those of uppity women who think they can be called to priesthood like men. So even a "simulation" of ordination is a crime reserved to the Holy See.

Here is a link to both the news story and the video as carried on CBS in Chicago. One of the things I find remarkable about the coverage is the tenor of the report by Jay Levine. Usually Jay is very deferential to all things Catholic, even being invited on junkets by the Cardinal. Here he sounds angry. The Canon Lawyer apologist for the diocese only offered that the Church is discriminating against this woman because that's "our theology."

There are some WEORC members who belong to Janine's parish, and we hope to have their personal perspectives after the funeral being held in a Methodist church.

Article:http://cbs2chicago.com/local/janine.denomme.catholic.2.1704393.html

Video:http://cbs2chicago.com/video/?id=71237@wbbm.dayport.com

Stephen Colbert. Defender of the Faith.

2010-05-12T09:28:00.000-07:00

In this vintage segment, Colbert discusses with the proponent of the bill to put the 10 Commandments in the House of Representatives and the Senate .

http://www.funnyhub.com/videos/pages/ten-commandments.html

SMELLS, BELLS AND SEX ABUSE

2010-05-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

A prominent Vatican Cardinal has gone from the limelight to the dog house because of a letter he once sent, praising a bishop for shielding a pedophile priest from prosecution for his crime. Moreover, he claimed that the letter was endorsed by Pope John Paul and by the then Cardinal Ratzinger. The offending prelate, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, was scheduled to celebrate a super solemn high Tridentine Mass at Washington’s national shrine of the Immaculate Conception. However, after learning about the infamous letter, the event’s sponsors told the Cardinal to stay in Rome, and they’d find someone else.

Too bad. It would have been quite a thrill for His Eminence to enter a vast basilica, attired in red watered silk and ermine garments, wearing a scarlet biretta and golden pectoral cross encrusted with jewels, and trailing a 14 foot train. Sometimes participants in these exotic liturgies seem to be like people who spend their weekends re-enacting Civil War battles, dressing in period uniforms, bearing old rifles, shooting blanks which smoke, and shedding artificial blood. Traditionalist Catholics seem to have a similar need to recapture past glories. Perhaps some are also neo-monarchists seeking to revive the Bourbons, the Romanovs and the Council of Trent.

Sixty years ago, as high school seminarians, some of us were involved in the real thing when we were assigned to sing Gregorian chant at pontifical Masses at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral. A long procession led Cardinal Samuel Stritch down the main aisle to the strains of “Ecce Sacerdos Magnus” (behold the great high priest.) We weren’t sure if those words referred to Jesus or to the Cardinal, and that ambiguity has caused much mischief in the Church over the centuries. But that’s getting ahead of the story. Let’s talk about the grand entrance procession, which reflected the hierarchical pecking order of those times.

First came a cross-bearer and a phalanx of servers. Next, an array of laymen in intriguing costumes, sort of ersatz nobility. In descending order of importance were the assorted Knights -- of Malta, the Holy Sepulcher, Columbus and Peter Claver. This last group was composed of negro Catholics who, in former days, had been excluded from the Knights of Columbus. There were no women. Next came three varieties of priests – religious order men, diocesan priests and monsignors, who were subdivided into three categories: papal chamberlains, domestic prelates and proto-notaries apostolic. (I kid you not. That’s how it was in those days.) Finally, there were the bishops in ascending order of rank --auxiliaries, ordinaries, archbishops and cardinals. The cardinals also had their own subdivisions, but we won’t get into that.

When Cardinal Stritch finally reached the sanctuary area, he went not to the altar, but to his elaborate throne, where he spent another half hour changing clothes. Surrounded by scurrying servers, he removed his “street clothes” (the red robes, ermine, jewels and 14 foot long train) and was ceremoniously garbed in many layers of golden colored vestments for Mass. We seminarians were so bored by that time that we rolled our eyes and offered it up for the souls in Purgatory. Coordinating all of this was Monsignor Jim Hardiman with the aplomb of a master choreographer at the grand opera. He had a gleam in his eye, which seemed to say to us, “Boys, focus on the Eucharist. The rest of this is only frosting.” Indeed, eventually the Gospel was proclaimed (in Latin with abundant incense), a sermon delivered by a visiting prelate (with numerous oratorical flourishes), bread and wine consecrated (accompanied by bells, chimes and more incense) and Communion served (but only for those who had fasted since midnight.) Somehow, in all of this, God was praised and Jesus celebrated not as the humble carpenter of Nazareth, but as the king of endless glory.

These triumphalistic (Vatican II’s term) liturgies were replicated throughout the Church on a smaller scale whenever bishops administered Confirmation, monsignors presided at First Communions, and newly ordained priests celebrated their First Masses. Also when Knights were buried, or their daughters married. Generally, the people in the pews were merely faces in the crowd, virtually invisible. And that brings us to the connection with the Church’s current sex abuse crisis.

Although the molestation of children by clergy was first publicized only two decades ago in Louisiana, historians report that it’s been going on for centuries. The efficiency of modern media and aggressive lawyers has breached the ancient ecclesiastical wall of silence and secrecy. Unfortunately, the scandal will likely continue to surface throughout the world until the Church faces two of the many root causes – privilege and invisibility.

PRIVILEGE

Hierarchical theology places the ordained on a pedestal. Priests are privileged people. Bishops are even more privileged. Cardinals are the most privileged. And the Pope is, of course, off the charts. The Church is like a giant pyramid. The Holy Spirit speaks to the Pope who speaks to the bishops who speak to the pastors who speak to the people, whose task it is to listen and obey and not talk back. Vatican II challenged this scenario with its theology of the Church as the pilgrim people of God, but the Traditionalists roared back to, as they say, reform the reform. Hence, things such as grandiose Tridentine Masses, and a letter of praise from an arrogant Vatican Cardinal for the enabler of a pedophile priest..

Privilege explains a lot. Why was John Paul II blind to the predations of his friend, Fr. Marcial Maciel? Why did the Vatican “punish” Cardinal Law with a cushy position in Rome? Why did Cardinal George resist removing Fr. Dan McCormack from his post, thereby enabling him to molest even more children? Why did the American bishops elect Cardinal George president of their national conference even after that awful mistake? Why did that French bishop shield the pedophile priest? Why did Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos write his infamous letter? And why has the hierarchy stumbled so badly and so often in dealing with the sex abuse crisis?

Thankfully, there are some signs that the walls of secrecy, denial and privilege are starting to erode, like the fabled walls of Jericho, but there’s a lot more to be done. We have to keep blowing those trumpets and circling the ramparts.

INVISIBILITY

Initially, the abused children and their parents were invisible, an embarrassment to the Church, a cause of scandal, a problem to be dealt with. Then the families hired lawyers, who launched lawsuits. The bishops countered with their own teams of lawyers, instructing them to arrange out of court settlements with confidentiality clauses to maintain silence and invisibility to “protect the Church from scandal.” We all know how well that worked. The sense of privilege reasserted itself, and the bishops began to embroider the truth. This enraged some of the victims. The masks came off, and they began telling their stories in public, and organizing. They refuse to remain invisible.

However, the true conversion that’s needed to deal with the roots of the sex abuse crisis is not one in which the visibility of ordinary people ifs forced upon us against our will. It involves a fundamental change of attitude. We must move beyond the attitude of a suburban matron, who bemoaned the fact that people had dared to suggest that Cardinal George resign because of his mishandling of the McCormack case. She said, “Why are they harassing our poor Cardinal about some throw-away children in the inner-city?” Rather, we need to embrace the attitude of Jesus himself, who said, “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do it to me.”

--Baltasar

New Crack in the Walls of the Vatican Re-entrenchment?

2010-05-04T06:43:00.000-07:00

The recent wave of Polish priests and seminarians that are being used to alleviate the American and European clergy shortage may be beginning to ebb. Currently 1 in 5 priests in Europe are Polish born, and many American Dioceses have also turned to Poland for clerical help. Anecdotally, a third of the seminarians ordained for Chicago this past decade were “off the boat”, and many of the externs and recently incardinated have been as well.

The word from Poland is that the number of seminarians is down 30% from 10 years ago. Vocational recruitment for religious women is down 50% for the same period. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/7656716/Number-of-Poles-signing-up-for-priesthood-drops-by-30-per-cent.html

Celibacy is also being questioned. A survey of 800 priests last year showed that 53 per cent would like to have a wife, while 12 per cent admitted that they were involved in a relationship. A further 30 per cent said that they had had a sexual relationship with a woman. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/4788059/Majority-of-Polands-Catholic-priests-want-end-to-celibacy.html

BISHOP SLATTERY VISITS WASHINGTON

2010-05-03T12:39:00.000-07:00

This guest submission reviews the Pontifical High Mass of April 24th. The celebrant was a last minute pinch-hitter for Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos who was caught up in the sex abuse controversy.

I recorded the EWTN special on April 24 of Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa, OK, saying Mass in the Extraordinary Rite, a Pontifical High Mass at the National Basilica. It was quite a sight! I must confess, I'd never actually seen someone wearing a "Cappa Magna". There's enough watered silk there for six of us, at least, to get a new cassock! The rubrics were followed to the letter. The music was well done. Bishop Slattery gave a decent sermon. Yet, when it was over, I felt like singing, "Is that all there is?"

I like Latin; got generally good grades in it for four years at Quigley. I have enjoyed attending and even celebrating a Latin Mass on occasion (novus ordo or Tridentine). I prefer many Latin chants over more modern music, on occasion. But the Mass as offered April 24th left me cold. As I reflect on it, I believe it was the DISCONNECT that bothered me. The Choir sings as the Bishop is vested off at a side chapel. The ministers pray at the foot of the altar while the Choir sings a Kyrie. The bishop goes back to the throne while the Gloria is sung. He starts the Eucharistic Prayer (Canon) while the choir sings the "Holy Holy", carefully making sure the choir is done by the Consecration. It seemed like the Bishop is doing one thing while the Choir is doing something else, and somehow as long as everyone ends at the same time its okay!

At the risk of pushing a metaphor too far, that Mass seemed to represent the Church today. The Pope and many bishops are looking back at the 1950's, wishing they could take us back to the future in liturgy and church life. Clergy and laity who remember the excitement of Vatican II are past graying, and still hopeful that we can fashion a "city of God." Younger clergy and some of their contemporaries in lay life are calling for John Paul II to be canonized. Victims and many others in the Church are calling for genuine reform to prevent the crisis that has eaten at the heart of church life for almost a generation now. Others insist this is just "rabble rousing" on the part of the press and some unhappy (that is "non-practicing") Catholics. There is a lot of talking, but little conversation. Therein lies the DISCONNECT.

Vatican I was called the Pope's Council. Vatican II was the Bishops' Council. Perhaps it is time for Vatican III, the People's Council, where a sensus fidelium can be fashioned by all of us, ordained, religious, laity, regular and irregular, all have a seat at the table. We'll argue, as families do. But we may just break the "disconnect" that currently causes so many of us to say, "They just don't get it!"

Peter Ignotus

Papo Gets His Own Diocese

2010-04-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

The following is an op-ed piece presented for your review. It does not necessarily represent the "official" position of WEORC.

Papo Gets His Own Diocese

Is it good news for Springfield, or good news for Chicago?

We wish Tom Paprocki well in his first gig as the head bishop of a diocese. There is a human heart somewhere under those violet fringed robes, or at least there used to be. Years ago during his first priestly assignment, Tom received a civil law degree and opened up a law clinic for the underprivileged on Chicago’s Southside. Unfortunately that is being buried under a lot of Papal Bull.

Ambitious and self-promoting, Tom moved up the clerical pecking order with a Canon Law degree from Rome, Chancery positions, the Diocesan Chancellor role, and then on to Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago. Along the way he has been showboating his theological conservatism with traditionalist groups from here to the Vatican, who are bent on “reforming the reform” of Vatican II.

As John Paul II tried to reign in the use of the Communal Form of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, then Chancellor Paprocki embarrassed Cardinal Bernardin by dissing nearly all the priests of Chicago. As reported in the papers, Papo effectively said any priest who used this popular form of the sacrament was lazy or ignorant, or both.

Paprocki is also infamous for a sermon he gave during a 2007 “Red Mass” for lawyers. He blamed the alleged victims of sexual abuse, and the media giving them coverage, for trying to destroy the Church. He went on to say, "We must use our religious discernment to recognize that the principal force behind these attacks is none other than the devil."

When the USCCB was weighing the FOCA bill, which was trying to gain traction in the US Congress, Paprocki addressed perceived threats to Catholic health care. “It could mean discontinuing obstetrics in our hospitals, and we may need to consider taking the drastic step of closing our Catholic hospitals entirely… “It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions. That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil… I do not think I’m being alarmist in considering such drastic steps.”

When Papo isn’t admonishing sinners, slackards and secularists on political or Church issues, he courts media attention with his” regular-Joe" activities, such as running and hockey. He prides himself in the moniker of “Holy Goalie”. However college classmates remember him more as a “holey” goalie.

Hopefully, a fresh start in a new job in a new location will give Bishop Tom Paprocki a chance to grow in wisdom, grace and humility.

Lots of Apologizing Going on in Chicagoland

2010-04-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

Fresh from recieving a lifetime award for working for Justice by Cardinal George, Mike Pfleger is in trouble again. Biting his lip while offering Pfleger faint praise at the award ceremony, now George is asking Pfleger to apologize.

During the sermon last Sunday Pfleger mentioned that he felt there should be women priests, married priests, women bishops and cardinals. This is memorialized on you tube and rightist websites such as http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=13429&posts=4

Mike Pfleger mentions on Facebook that he was told to apologize, because he can't say things like that in a sermon. Parishioners posting on Facebook generally said he had nothing to apologize for. He was speaking the truth.

Recently, Sr. Anita Baird, Director of Racial Justice, had to apologize as well. She said Obama was pro-choice, not pro-abortion, meaning he wasn't advocating everyone have abortions, but under certain circumstances, he felt a woman has a right to choose. Sister was forcibly reminded that the two words mean the same thing for Catholics.

In recent memory, a Northwest Suburban pastor was also called on the carpet for a sermon he gave at his parish. For Penance he had to read selections of the Catholic Catechism to his congregation the following Sunday.

The only person not engaged in apologies lately seems to be Cardinal George.

Test Your Orthodoxy

2010-04-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

Though this "Orthodoxy Quiz" may seem simplistic, it reflects agendas and issues that conservative groups and churchmen are using to critique the loyalty and faithfulness of typical Catholics. Answer each of the following questions with true or false to test your orthodoxy.

1. All religions pray to the same God and they are just different paths to the same truth. T/F

2. Women should be allowed to be ordained priests. T/F

3. Maybe women should not be ordained priests, but there should be open dialogue and discussion on this issue. T/F

4. Since we are ordaining married Protestant ministers priests, it is time for a married priesthood. T/F

5. Birth control is only okay for committed, married couples who already have children. T/F

6. It would be wonderful if Mother Teresa of Calcutta could come back and give a homily at our parish church. T/F

7. If they attend a Catholic Mass, it is okay for Lutherans to receive communion. T/F

8. It is okay for Catholics to receive communion in a Protestant Church, if it is in their spouse's church. T/F

9. There is no penalty for a Catholic to marry a divorced person, as long as they are non-Catholic and had been married to a non-Catholic by a judge. T/F

10. If you ask God for forgiveness of sin, the Sacrament of Confession isn't necessary. T/F

11. If there are more than 100 people per priest at a Penance Service, general absolution is acceptable. T/F

12. The Pope is not infallible. T/F

13. Missing Mass on a Holy Day isn't a mortal sin. T/F

14. When in doubt, it is more important for a Catholic to ask what Jesus would do and follow their conscience, than to follow Church teaching. T/F

Take this quiz. Then check your nswers in first comment below.

Forced Laicization?

2010-03-16T07:06:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in the September WEORC newsletter, the Pope has given the Congregation of the Clergy the authority to start a “non-voluntary” laicization process for priests who leave active ministry and haven’t petitioned for laicization. The actual process hasn’t really been laid out clearly yet, but that hasn’t slowed down several bishops to at least use the threat of what some feel is a “forced” laicization.

For example, Cardinal George of Chicago has a few hundred resigned priest personnel files on his desk that he wants to tidy up. So he has instructed his people to locate “former” priests and inform them that if they don’t go willingly, they would be subject to the new “forced” laicization process. Several letters to this effect were mailed out. Not knowing how widespread this current undertaking extended, we did an informal survey of a few dozen Chicago non-canonical priests that we knew.

Of this sample group, 22% have already been laicized, and hadn’t received any letters from the diocese. The previous process called for priests to “voluntarily” seek laicization. Still a couple of these men entered into the process under some duress – i.e., in the hope to get or retain a job with a Catholic institution.

Under the current process of resigning ministry, a priest must sign a letter of resignation to the Cardinal and formally request laicization to be eligible for any kind of separation package. So rather than under duress, these new requests for laicization appear, as one responder suggested, more the results of a bribe.

Of the 78% of the inactive priests who have not been laicized in the sample, about 25% have received letters from the Diocese informing them of the impending canonical process. They tend to be amused that 10, 20, or 30 years after resigning their positions, they are still considered a “problem” that needs to be “dealt with”. The other 75% of the non-laicized who didn’t receive letters are happy to be under the radar of the Cardinal – at least for now.

While few are interested in laicization, we are not sensing a lot of energy will be spent on fighting any forced laicization process for several reasons.

1. Who cares?

The Cardinal has never showed any interest in resigned priests over the years, and probably doesn’t know where most of them are – so they will never hear from him. His only interest in them now is to create a greater distance from them.

While this “house cleaning” effort could seem purely punitive on the Cardinal’s part, it may also be a “liability reduction” activity. His cadre of lawyers wants to diminish any diocesan liability for the actions of “rogue” priests.

2. The rules will always be changed to suit the rule-maker.

Under John Paul II hundreds who sought laicization, did the paperwork, submitted testimonies, etc, were told they couldn’t be laicized since there was no evidence that they didn’t have a genuine vocation to the priesthood. Now the rules have been changed again, and these same men, and others who haven’t requested laicization, are being summarily dismissed. Obviously the rules can be changed to suit the rule-maker. The Pope opened the doors for married Anglican priests to become Catholic, knowing that celibacy is not essential to priesthood. At the same time he writes off his own Catholic priests who are married, and hasn’t seriously considered ordaining “viri probati”.

3. What difference does it make?

It is not clear what the benefit of laicization is to resigned priests. Does this mean that “former” priests can now become Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist, rather than Ordinary Ministers of the Eucharist? Do they retain any of the minor orders, and can be Lectors, and Acolytes – washing the sacred vessels after communion? Can they be catechists or teach theology? What about the provisions in Canon Law to provide emergency sacramental services such as anointing of the sick and hearing confessions? In what sense does laicization benefit the Church since the ontological character of the priest doesn’t change – “once a priest, forever a priest”? At the end of the day, what is the big difference?

4. Aren’t there more important issues in the Diocese than this right now?

Even bracketing sex and embezzlement scandals for a moment, there are certainly more pressing issues to be addressed? Schools and parishes still being consolidated and closed. Expenses are up millions, and donations are down millions. The “new” English liturgy is being crafted by those in Rome who don’t speak English. The Diocese felt the need to spend $1.3 million on ads inviting lapsed Catholics to come home. If they left because they were bored or unwelcome, has anything really changed for them to come home to? According to USCCB statistics, over 30% of married Catholics were not married “in the church”. If it weren’t for recruiting seminarians from overseas, there would be about one Chicago ordination annually for the past decade. There is little being done to address the health, immigration and justice issues.

Does the Cardinal seek to scapegoat some aging, resigned priests as the cause of these problems?

Bottom line, many of the “former” priests we spoke with feel that they have a vocation to priesthood and to marriage. They did not request laicization because that would be a false admonition that their ordination was a mistake. The Cardinal and the Congregation can have their day in their own Canonical Courts and pontificate as they wish, but these men remain priests and disciples of Jesus Christ.

Cardinal George is not alone in such an endeavor. Some other bishops are ardently hunting down their own inactive clergy. One priest ordained by the Diocese of Bismarck, currently a married minister for a Lutheran parish, received a similar letter. He was asked to abandon his wife and attempt at civil-marriage, then return home to Mother Church or face laicization. His story and response to Bishop Zipfel can be found in the current issue of CORPUS Reports.

A SERIES OF SURPRISES

2010-02-05T08:13:00.001-08:00

The initial surprise came when the Vatican announced that it would welcome dissident Anglican dioceses and parishes to enter the Catholic Church en masse. In the sensitive world of ecumenical relations this was like poaching in a neighbor’s field. Unhappy Anglicans and Catholics have frequently converted individually in both directions, but this corporate overture has opened up new territory.

Evidently the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, Cardinal Walter Kasper, was also surprised because he was out of town when the announcement was made and, apparently, out of the loop. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams is titular head of Anglicans worldwide. At a press conference after the event, he seemed dazed, like a man whose pocket had been picked by a friend.

One of the biggest surprises awaited the dissident Anglicans themselves. Rome’s original welcome included a generous provision that they could maintain their traditional forms of worship, governance and orders. However, the devil is often in the details. Weeks later the fine print included the proviso that pastors and bishops would be appointed by Rome henceforth rather than called or elected by those being served. Moreover, while the Vatican accepted married Anglican priests, they did not accept married bishops. Thus current Anglican bishops could continue wearing their scarlet garb and pectoral crosses, and they would be welcome guests at meetings of Catholic prelates, but they would no longer be considered real bishops, unless they chose to shed their spouses. Furthermore, future Anglican seminarians would have to remain celibate. Those preparing to swim the Tiber suddenly realized that the water was colder than they had thought.

Another surprise is the fact that Pope Benedict himself seemed surprised at the reactions to his overture. Having welcomed the schismatic Pius X Society, only to discover that one of their leaders was a loquacious Holocaust denier, and having alienated large swaths of Muslims and Jews in previous months, he might have been alert to the law of unintended consequences.

Moderate and progressive Catholics have ceased to be surprised that the hierarchy regularly dismiss their concerns. Serious issues like the shortage of priests, the need for substantive reforms in the wake of the pedophilia scandals, and the treatment of women in the church, especially in view of the Vatican’s investigation of American nuns, are routinely ignored. Dissident Anglicans are welcome because they pass the litmus test on women priests and gays. Dissident Catholics are discounted because “we need a purer Church.” So the final surprise is that so many of us stay. Perhaps there’s someone out there who will invite us to swim the Tiber en masse in the opposite direction. If so, be sure to read the fine print.

AMERICAN NUNS AND VATICAN INVESTIGATORS

2010-01-29T13:19:00.000-08:00

When women religious first arrived in America in the 1700s, they often lived in log cabins, crisscrossed vast territories in small groups by waterways, covered wagons, steam engines, horseback or by foot. They nursed on battlefields, assisted travelers on ships or in wagon trains, cared for victims of epidemics, founded schools for native Americans, welcomed people of all colors or backgrounds, and served soldiers, miners, pioneers, criminals, and women of “ill repute.” They rarely discriminated between Catholics or non-Catholics. Their life and ministry was deeply rooted in their faith, but not confined to Catholic institutions.

An example of that pioneer spirit was Sister Alfred Moles from Luxembourg who eventually arrived in Rochester, Minnesota to start a school for immigrant children. When the town was devastated by tornados, she and her companions converted their classrooms into a makeshift hospital to care for the wounded. She was aided by a local doctor, William Worrell Mayo, and his two physician sons, all Episcopalians. Eventually this effort blossomed into St. Mary’s Hospital and the world-famous Mayo Clinic.

The huge wave of Catholic immigrants in the mid 19th century alarmed many Americans, and, conversely, the heavily Protestantized public schools and other social institutions alarmed Catholic leaders. So the church launched an “alternative universe” composed of its own schools, hospitals, orphanages, settlement houses, and colleges which needed nuns to staff them. Hundreds of immigrant girls responded to that need, entering large convents, wearing distinctive religious garb, becoming nurses or teachers, and leading highly sequestered lives. Movies such as “Going My Way” or “The Bells of St. Mary’s” captured that era.

However, the experience of World War II, the election of President Kennedy, and the Second Vatican Council, all signaled the mainstreaming of American Catholicism. Many women religious recaptured the spirit of those pioneer nuns, emerging from the immigrant oriented institutions to serve the broader needs of society, living in smaller groups, and wearing contemporary clothing.

Sister Sandra Schneiders, a prominent theologian from the Jesuit School of Theology in California, chronicles all of this in five remarkable essays (published online from January 4 through 8 at ncronline.org/print/16465. ) as a commentary on the Vatican’s investigation of American nuns. She observes that, while some lay and clerical Catholic traditionalists may find it difficult to imagine “real Sisters” anywhere outside of Catholic institutions, contemporary American women religious are not only recapturing the spirit of their predecessors of the 18th century, but also the even more ancient prophetic, service-oriented ministry of the early Christian communities. Like Jesus himself, they reach out to the least of the brothers and sisters. And like the Lord, they are sometimes criticized by the more “respectable” people for keeping company with outcasts.

Sandra Schneiders recommends that the Vatican investigators, prior to launching their inquisition, take time to view the superb traveling museum exhibit entitled “Women and Spirit” which the Leadership Conference of Women Religious has launched to tell the story of four centuries of women religious here in America. Perhaps then the Vatican will replace the current cloud of suspicion with an outpouring of gratitude and appreciation which the nuns so richly deserve. In the meantime, each of us can express our personal admiration and support for these extraordinary women.

DECISIVE ACTION

2010-01-15T13:19:00.000-08:00

On Christmas day over Detroit, a Nigerian suicide bomber’s attempt to blow up a commercial jetliner was foiled because of his own ineptitude coupled with the decisive action of his fellow passengers. Whatever the challenges or foibles of the security officials on the ground, these ordinary travelers recognized the danger in the air and responded immediately and vigorously, thus saving their lives, as well as possible victims of falling debris.

Something similar seems to be happening in the Catholic church as some hyper-conservative bishops, priests and laity attempt to blow up Vatican II Catholicism by their attempts to “reform the reform” as they call it. However, many Catholics are no longer willing to act as compliant sheep being led to an ideological slaughter. The old idea that “Father, or Bishop, or Pope knows best” has been profoundly eroded by the hierarchy’s miserable performance in the clergy sex abuse scandals here in America and around the world, most recently in Ireland. Just as airline security is too serious to be left to authorities alone, so too one’s authentic relationship with God is too important to be left to the ebb and flow of ecclesiastical politics on all levels.

Last year the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported that 10% of Americans are now former Catholics, a figure which would be even larger were it not for the influx of new immigrants. Many Catholics struggle to find ways to continue to practice their faith despite the deficiencies of their official leaders. So, while we celebrate the decisive action of those passengers on Christmas day over Detroit, let us also recognize these examples of decisive action by ordinary Catholics in their parishes and local communities.

* After the pastor of a university parish was transferred before his time, a new priest arrived with instructions to straighten things out. Initially, the people tried to work with him, but after reaching an impasse, they deluged the diocese with complaints. He left, acknowledging that he was “a square peg in a round hole.” Fortunately, his successor is now doing a superb job, but who knows what might have happened if the authorities had not relented.

* When the well loved pastor of a suburban church retired, parish leaders met with his successor, whose priorities didn’t coincide with the mixture of excellent liturgy, music and social justice which had characterized their community. The people pushed back, and the new priest quickly opted to decline the assignment. The next appointee stayed a year, but eventually concluded that he’d be more comfortable elsewhere. The third try produced a priest who is on the same page as the parish, and all is well. (Similar scenarios have occurred in a number of other places during times of transition when new pastors have been assigned who disregarded the history and dynamics of vital and vigorous parishes. Sadly, the newcomer doesn’t always step aside.)

*An urban parish planned to produce a play written by a widely respected parishioner. It wrestled with the religious, political, personal and familial dimensions of abortion. Word got to the bishop who forbade the performance. Hearing about the controversy, a nearby Lutheran church offered its sanctuary as an alternative site. The resulting publicity insured both large audiences and insightful discussions after each performance. (Similar scenarios have occurred in other parts of the nation when bishops forbade certain speakers to use parish property. In those cases also the subsequent publicity resulted in much larger crowds at the alternative locations.)

*When a pastor surprised his flock with an announcement that he had decided to close the parish school, people began to look into his handling of church finances. After discovering many irregularities, they went to the bishop who was unresponsive. They then contacted civil authorities, who initiated a thorough investigation. As a result the priest was tried, convicted and incarcerated. A new pastor worked with the people to insure the continuation of the school. (Again, unfortunately, this is not a unique story in recent years.)

* Five years ago, proponents of women’s ordination would write letters to the hierarchy, hold meetings, or conduct silent protests at ordination ceremonies. Today, we see an increasing number of underground ordinations of women priests. Internationally, there is an online seminary system to prepare future candidates. Many women strive to follow the example of the early Christians described in Acts 2:46 who continued to meet in the Jerusalem temple, while also gathering for the breaking of the bread in their homes. They keep one foot in their old religious practices in their parishes, and another in their new feminine liturgies in homes and apartments. As one woman put it, “I’ll be dead a century or two before the hierarchy moves ahead on this, so I’d better do it myself. I’m sure our gracious God understands.”

* In Rochester, New York, a dying inner-city parish was invigorated by a dynamic young pastor who focused on liturgy, homilies, lay leadership, women in ministerial roles, and outreach to alienated people, especially gays and divorced Catholics. Prompted by the Vatican, the local bishop eventually replaced the pastor with a man who was supposed to shape things up. After a stormy period, the people invited their former pastor to return. The bishop resisted this, so the bulk of the parishioners voted to start an independent parish, which now meets in a large basilica owned by a music institute. It is thriving with additional outreach programs in third world countries. (Similar independent parishes have been founded in two Minnesota parishes where progressive pastors have retired, and were replaced by men who had no tolerance for the parish dynamics.)

* A missionary priest in Latin America makes a month-long circuit of the villages in his immense parish. Because he can’t celebrate Mass more often than once a month in most places, he has trained lay catechists and women religious to conduct Sunday Communion services in his stead. These are often very powerful spiritual experiences for the people. He knew they were effectively nourishing people’s hunger for God, when one old man told him, “I love it when you come to our village, Father, but I must confess that I enjoy Sister’s Mass even more than the ones you say.”

Stories such as these are likely to multiply in the future for a number of reasons. First, the Catholic faith is deeply imbedded in people, while the credibility of the hierarchy has seriously eroded. Second, the shortage of priests seems to be intensifying, while official strategies to deal with it seem to be ineffective. Third, while there are many wonderful young priests, there are also large numbers of the so-called JPII variety who are rigid, legalistic and judgmental. Fourth, the Pope has recently appointed Archbishop Raymond Burke, formerly of St. Louis and notable for declaring people unfit to receive Communion, as a new member of the Vatican Congregation which recommends new bishops. He joins Cardinal Law, formerly of Boston and pedophilia fame, and the very conservative Cardinal Stafford, formerly of Denver, as the American representatives. Thus, we can expect future bishops in their image and likeness.

The bottom line is that decisive action on the part of both passengers and parishioners is likely to be the “modus operandi” of the future. So be prepared.

DIAPERS AND DIVINITY – An Unusual Christmas Meditation

2009-12-22T12:30:00.000-08:00

One of my most memorable theological discussions was with a precocious Third Grader. It went like this:

Jesus was God, right?
Yes, we believe Jesus was the son of God.
And Jesus was a real baby, right?
Right, a baby just like you and me.
So did Jesus need to have his diapers changed?
Well, yes, He was a genuine baby, you know.
Then that must mean that God had to have his diapers changed. That’s amazing!

That interchange many years ago has prompted many thoughts about the Incarnation and about the heart of God. But it also brought thoughts about diapers and the meaning of love.

First, diapers and love. As the firstborn in our family, one of my early tasks was to take care of the soiled diapers of my siblings as they came on the scene. It was sort of a ritual. Mom or Dad changed the baby, rolled up the used diaper and handed it to me. I took it to the bathroom and dumped the contents into the toilet, and then soaked it in a big pail. (We had cloth diapers in those days. No Huggies or Pampers. Our fortunate neighbors had wealthy grandparents who gifted them with a year long diaper service.) Mom would wash the diapers, hang them on the line, fold them and put them on the pile in the baby’s room for further use. It was a lot of work, which represented a lot of love.

It also involved two aromas. The first was the awful smell of a dirty diaper. The second was the wonderful smell of the baby powder which my folks applied to the bottom of the newly changed baby. The whole enterprise alerted me to the fact that my parents had done all of that for me too. And also that Mary and Joseph did all of that for their child, Jesus. And that, in so many ways, God cleans up our unsavory messes again and again throughout our lives. That’s what real love is.

Parents always breath a huge sigh of relief when a child is finally potty trained. And kids are very proud of themselves when they cross that threshold. But one of the sad facts of life is the realization that some of us may have to endure the indignity of needing diapers ( Depends?) in our so-called Golden years. Someone – a spouse, a child, a friend, a stranger – will help us, we hope. And we also hope that we might have the God-like graciousness and humility to appreciate them and thank them.

Theologians have theorized about the way in which the divine and human knowledge of Jesus may have coexisted in the Incarnation. Did the Lord share not only the experience of the innocent child who needed its diapers changed, but also the awkwardness of the senior citizen who is aware of it?

Christmas is the season of beauty and color and music and parties and gifts. It seems impertinent to soil the season with thoughts about diapers, of all things. However, such thoughts remind us that human life is messy, untidy and earthy. God made us the way we are – rational animals, but animals nonetheless. And God, who is love, rejoices in the amazing love of millions of parents, unsung heroes, who change diapers. This Christmas we might offer a prayer of thanks to those, living or dead, who did it for us. And we might think of that old joke that, if the three Magi had been women, they wouldn’t have brought gold, frankincense and Myrrh to Bethlehem. They’d have brought a casserole and a pack of fresh diapers.

--Baltasar

THE NUN’S STORY – An Allegory

2009-11-16T12:55:00.001-08:00

The spiritual home of my childhood was a grim place. Fear and shame crouched in the dark corners. It was a great day when my jovial Grandpa John decided it was time to redecorate with bright colors, cheerfulness, lots of sunshine and fresh air. Dismal was transformed into delightful.

However, after Grandpa died, my father and my older brothers gradually repainted the rooms with somber hues, and they hung heavy drapes to diminish the sun. Fear crept back into the dark corners. My mother and her friends were banished to the kitchen and nursery. But we cherished the memory of what was possible.

Then one day, our cousin Bernie from Boston came to live with us. He had gotten into trouble for helping some people molest children. To make room, my bed was moved downstairs to a sun porch off the kitchen. At least it was bright. My father explained, “Bernie is family, and he’s our kind of people.”

Next came another cousin, from the St. Pius X Society. He denied that the Holocaust ever happened, but again my father said, “He’s family, and despite his flaws he too is our kind of people.” This time my bed was moved to the basement, near the furnace room. At least it was warm.

One day a group of cousins came to stay with us, the Anglican family. They don’t like uppity women and gays. This added considerable tension with my Mom, but my father said, “They are family, and they are my kind of people.” So my bed was moved again, this time to a loft in the garage. It might be pretty cool in winter, but at least there is more fresh air than in the basement.

Yesterday, we received a letter that some cousins from Rome are coming, the Inquisitors. They said that they’ve heard alarming rumors about my mother, and my sisters and me. They want to look into it. My father says, “They are family, and very much my kind of people.” Evidently my bed will be moved into a house across the street. My father explained, “Despite your flaws, you’re still family. But you’re not really my kind of people.”

I’ll still be invited to Sunday dinner. However, I won’t be allowed to eat.

Baltasar

Swimming the Tiber

2009-11-03T11:11:00.000-08:00

The Vatican made an overture to disaffected conservative Anglicans to come on over to the Catholic side en masse. They were offered their own rite to retain some traditional Anglican elements. Anglican priests can even keep their wives (if they want to). Only married bishops would lose their miters in the crossing (no married Bishops allowed).

The details are still being worked out, but it would be interesting to see how many Anglicans might actually take the offer. Up to this point, I know more Catholic priests than Anglicans (Episcopalians) who switched sides. Many switched to get married. Will they be welcomed back?

To get Stephen Colbert's take on the issue go to http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/252747/october-27-2009/holy-water-under-the-bridge---randall-balmer

Crazy Diocese

2009-10-31T11:37:00.000-07:00

St Mary of the Lake Seminary ordained an average of 36 priests a year for the first 60 years of its existence (1927-1987) -- all for Chicago. The last few years averaged 12, and almost none were born in the United States. Many of the parish priests in Chicago today are from Poland, Africa, Mexico, South and Central America (not a bad thing) but many are not fluent in English which makes for some problems of communication especially in homilies. What is crazy is that Chicago is letting some of its priests join the neighboring diocese of Joliet. One especially sad loss was a vibrant, charismatic priest who had led one of the most dynamic parishes in the diocese. He had been assigned to a retirement village as chaplain so he joined Joliet as a parish assistant.

Romeo Marty

NON ZERO-SUM RELIGION

2009-10-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

It was a miserable rainy day. The large man in the black suit and Roman collar was already running late for a wedding when he noticed his fuel gauge was on empty, so he pulled into a Shell station. A handwritten note taped to the pump declared, “Only pay inside today.” So after filling up, he headed inside to discover a lengthy line. When finally he plopped his credit card on the counter, the clerk said, “No credit card today. Only cash.” He had just $25.00 in his wallet. The clerk said, “Pay up or I call police.” An older man behind him said, “How much do you need?” The priest said, “Twenty more.” The stranger said, “I’ll give it to you.” The priest said, “I’ll mail you a check when I get home tonight.” He replied, “Not necessary,” but he finally agreed to give him a business card. It read Ira Goldman, Attorney at Law.

At the church, the priest began Mass with an apology for being late. He concluded his explanation by saying that he had been saved from jail by a good Jewish lawyer.

After Mass, a number of people came up to talk. One explained the he owned a string of Shell stations, and the problem was that their entire computer network had crashed that morning. Then a woman reminded him that it was Ramadan and the clerk was probably fasting. Low blood sugar coupled with extra stress probably explained his curtness. Finally, another woman commented that the Jewish lawyer was sincere in not wanting repayment because this incident had provided him with an opportunity to perform the “mitzvah” (commandment) of “tzedakah” (charity.) Indeed, he had been able to practice the 4th of the Talmud’s 8 levels of charity – giving before being asked. That proved to be true because when the priest sent his benefactor a check for the twenty, it was returned with a request to consider it a donation to the parish.

A miserable day had been transformed into something remarkable.

In his somewhat quirky best-seller “The Evolution of God” author Robert Wright describes a pattern in the evolution of Judaism, Christianity and Islam which, by fits and starts, has gradually moved them away from mutual belligerence and intolerance towards harmony, compassion and reconciliation. Using “game theory” from contemporary mathematics and economics, Wright sees a fundamental shift from zero sum dynamics (competition) to non-zero sum dynamics (cooperation). “Zero sum” describes a situation in which a participant’s gain or loss is exactly balanced by the loss or gain of the other participant(s). For example, a baseball game has only one winner no matter how many extra innings they have to play.

In contrast, “non-zero sum” describes a situation in which the interacting parties’ aggregate gains or losses is either less than or more than zero. For example, a barn raising. There are teams to hoist each of the four walls, but they aren’t in competition with each other to see who is fastest or strongest. Success is measured by how skillfully all four teams can raise the walls simultaneously

The contemporary religious scene has both kinds of people, but the gradual trend is towards cooperation, in Wright’s view. Zero sum practitioners range from the violence of jihads or crusades which seek to destroy or subjugate so-called infidels, to religious leaders who insist that their brand is essentially superior to the competition. One wit characterized some recent Papal pronouncements, for example, as saying, “God loves all of us human beings, but He loves us Catholics more.” By contrast, Non-zero sum folks have benefited from things like the Hubble space telescope, which reveals the immensity and complexity of creation. If we believe in a Creator, it (or she or he) must be even more astounding than we ever imagined, which introduces a profound modesty into our religious debates.

Also, the scriptural insight that “God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God in them” alerts us to any and all manifestations of authentic love in our increasingly globalized world. Here in the United States, we have countless opportunities to rub up against Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, other varieties of Christians, as well as sincere agnostics and atheists, whose goodness is deeply touching. Thus on that miserable day in the gas station, not only three individuals, but three traditions intersected in a wonderful way. Moreover, the comments after Mass alert us to the fact that there are others who are able to assist us in understanding deeper levels of our interactions with people of other faiths.

All of which is remarkable.

--Baltasar

IF ONE IS GOOD, WOULDN’T TWO BE BETTER?

2009-09-22T11:48:00.001-07:00

Have you ever visited the abortion monument at Mundelein Seminary near Chicago?

It stands just west of the bridge at the bottom of the hill atop which sits the Cardinal’s mansion. Actually it’s his country mansion, modeled after Mount Vernon. His city mansion with its 17 chimneys is located in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood near Lincoln Park. At any rate, the seminary’s granite monument to victims of abortion is in a peaceful setting under pine trees near rippling waters. It was paid for by the Knights of Columbus.

A visit prompts a host of thoughts and emotions. Deep sadness for the thousands of young lives lost to abortion. Compassion for the mothers, many of whom were themselves victims, facing desperate circumstances before terminating their pregnancies. Frustration about the fathers, a good number of whom walked away from their responsibilities for these women and children. Consternation about our nation’s polarization and inability to deal effectively with abortion, and its tangled web of causes and effects.

Standing at that spot brings thoughts of Cardinal Bernardin, who once dwelled in that big house up the hill. With his “seamless garment” approach he attempted to find common ground on a wide variety of respect-for-life issues, trying to bridge the toxic gap between the right and the left. Sadly, during his lifetime he was accused by his colleagues of equivocating on abortion by mingling it with a host of other contentious societal problems. After his death, that voice of moderation and reconciliation has been overwhelmed by armies of angry partisans. However, in his controversial visit to Notre Dame earlier this year, President Obama resurfaced the Cardinal’s name as one whose vision might help us find our way out of the so-called abortion wars and our current stalemate on this crucial issue.

But back to the victims. Why was this monument located in this isolated setting? How many people even know that it’s here? And what about those other victims – the children and teens who have been sexually abused by priests and teachers, relatives and neighbors, and other trusted adults? What about a monument to them? If one monument is good, wouldn’t two be better?

What might it look like? Perhaps it should depict Jesus, seated and surrounded by a group of girls and boys. Jesus as their protector and friend. Perhaps such a monument would include his words to the disciples who wanted to send away the children and parents who sought to see him after a long, laborious day. “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them.” Or perhaps, more ominously, it might include those words about the millstone which would be fastened around the necks of those who scandalized these little ones. Such a monument might be a fitting twin to the abortion monument.

And where would it be located? Here in this bucolic spot at the seminary? Or perhaps just as the Cardinal has a country mansion and a city mansion, there should be a country monument and a city monument to victimized children. Perhaps it should be in the courtyard of the cathedral, or on the corner of North Avenue and State Parkway on the Cardinal’s property across from Lincoln Park, or at the corner of Chestnut and Rush, where the old Quigley Seminary has been transformed into the new Archdiocesan Pastoral Center. In any of those locations, hundreds of passersby each day might be reminded of our communal responsibility to guard and protect vulnerable young lives at all stages. Perhaps this second monument could serve as a reminder of that seamless garment of compassion and concern which envelopes the precious gift of life.

--Baltasar

THE KENNEDY FUNERAL

2009-09-03T14:34:00.000-07:00

Teddy Kennedy’s funeral was different. It wasn’t your typical Roman Catholic celebrity liturgy. Ordinary priests had the starring roles of presider and homilist. There was an abundance of stories and much tenderness. The preacher spoke as one who had been a soul companion on Teddy’s final spiritual journey, rather than merely a clergyman. It was basically a “low Mass” with the ordinary parts spoken, not sung. Family was central despite the presence of exalted guests. The locale wasn’t a famous cathedral, but rather the working class church where Teddy had prayed most powerfully when his daughter was at death’s door, and where he himself encountered God during his final illness. There was open admission that the deceased had once led a wild life, which had been redeemed by God’s grace and the love of a good woman. There was talk of the spacious sea as well as the contours of politics and the urgency of social justice. The dominating figure was the widow, Vicki, who said not a word, but embraced and comforted all comers. Boston’s Cardinal stood on the sidelines until the very end, looking uneasy as if expecting a deluge of letters from his colleagues, many of whom would have denied Teddy Holy Communion if he had dared enter their precincts.

What was going on? Perhaps the Catholicism on display was more Celtic than Roman. History reminds us that ancient Celtic Christianity is not the same as the Irish Catholicism created under Cardinal Paul Cullen in the homeland back in the mid-nineteenth century with its legalism and Jansenistic rigidity, which accompanied the immigrants to our shores during the devastating potato famine. Centuries ago, Celtic Catholicism had gone underground after the Roman ways were imposed at the Synod of Whitby in 664.

The precipitating arguments at that time were about the date of Easter and tonsure and Baptism. But the issues beneath the surface focused on the fact that the leaders of the ancient Irish were not bishops and clerics, but abbots and abbesses in their monasteries, and holy men who lived in the forests. Moreover, the Irish form of Confession was ongoing spiritual direction rather than once-in-a-lifetime deathbed forgiveness. Also, women were powerful and honored church leaders. Rome was distant geographically and spiritually. When the Viking raiders arrived in the 9th century, many of the great abbeys were pillaged and destroyed. Still the faith persevered. And when Cromwell and his armies arrived in 1649, the ancient religion burrowed even deeper. Once again, in our own day, the pervasive sex abuse crisis is testing the faith of the Irish.

These ancient rivers run deep. They explain how the Catholic faith continues to hold our hearts despite clergy misconduct, hierarchical ineptitude, and the shortages of parish priests. They also explain how we can support Obama and Notre Dame and women religious and gays and other assorted outcasts. Teddy Kennedy’s funeral touched our hearts, and as he himself said, “The dream goes on.”

-- Baltasar

An Open Letter to Cardinal Hummes

2009-08-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

Eminence Claudio Cardinal Hummes, O.S.F.

Dear Cardinal Hummes:

Congratulations on the new responsibility you have just taken on. This past April, Pope Benedict XVI granted you the power to dismiss from the priesthood and release from the obligation of celibacy, priests who are living with women, who have abandoned their ministry for more than five years or who have engaged in seriously scandalous behavior. I am one of those you will be dismissing – not for the scandal part but for the woman part.

It is a big job you have taken on. World wide, there are many thousands of us and, to add to the challenge, most bishops have no idea who or where we are. We have been on the “pay no mind” list for such a long time that tracking us down will be quite a headache.

I have seen your picture on Wikepedia. You seem like a kind man and your vitae demonstrates that you have Doctor of the Church quality brains. You clearly have some iron in your soul as demonstrated by your advocacy for homeless, indigenous people and your stance against the dictatorship in Brazil. But you have been away from parish work for a long time and prolonged exposure to the curia can cause cataracts. I am appealing to your kindness, brains and iron.

First off, understand that this project is a matter of paperwork, a re-organizing of files in cabinets, a clearing of the priesthood balance sheet. It has nothing to do with protecting the good of the church, avoiding scandal or getting things right in the eyes of God. God knows the Catholic Church has a good deal of work in those areas, but releasing thousands of us from the obligation of celibacy should be about around 10,000th on the Vatican to do list.

Secondly, some historical context needs to be established. You may not realize it, but the Vatican has zig-zagged for years about laicizations. Under Paul VI when large numbers were leaving, there was a fairly straightforward, but slow process. John Paul II pursued a much harder line, apparently in the belief that he could stem the tide by making laicizations virtually impossible. It didn't work. The unintended consequence was to diminish the credibility of the process. In his later years, he switched to a strategy wherein a petitioner had to lie, and state that he never really had a vocation at all. Most of us could say that we had a genuine vocation to priesthood, but not to celibacy. Now, Pope Benedict has done a complete about face. Forgive us if we are a little confused but the Vatican has changed its strategies like most of us change socks.

I left the Vatican priesthood during the late 1980’s when the church was NOT granting formal dispensations from the obligation of celibacy. During my “exit interview” with Cardinal Bernardin he said that I could apply for a dispensation, but it would not be granted until I was much, much older. I remarked that the Vatican was playing hardball. He agreed, but his eyes told me that he had no stomach for such silly tactics. (By the way, what SHOULD be on the Vatican “To Do” list is to put Joe Bernardin on the canonization track.)

So, let’s be clear. In the 1980’s the Vatican would not grant that which was asked for and now, 20 years later, will take that which has not been offered. In light of this context, please be careful about tossing out phrases like “abandon our ministry.” This revisionist bit of history is a lie, pure and simple.

I am no ecclesiastical prognosticator, but I have to believe that you are on anyone’s short list for Pope. The Congregation for Clergy is a big job and this chance to clean up the sacerdotal balance sheet is litmus test of the first degree. But you should know that it is only important in Vatican circles and in diocesan offices. Everywhere else, Catholics find it funny and upon deeper reflection, really quite infuriating.

I’ll give you an example. My wife and I have been in a civil marriage for the last 19 years. We couldn’t get married in the Catholic Church because I didn’t have a dispensation the Vatican wouldn’t give. Our marriage has been full of consensual sex. When my wife found out that our sex, in the eyes of the Vatican, was causing serious scandal, she laughed right out loud. “Our lawn is a scandal”, she said. “Our consensual sex is a sacrament.”

I fear most women married to ex-priests will not, like my wife, find this particularly funny. They will instead fume and wonder out loud why the Holy See has such a hard time seeing real scandal and such an easy time manufacturing fake scandals.

This notion that our church will become “leaner and purer” are concepts best applied to cuts of meat and not the Church of Jesus. Cardinal Hummes – if your kindness, brains and iron could only understand how absurd this all is to all of us, if only you could muster up a real giggle about these forced dispensations, you would surely make a terrific Pope.

So, to make things easier for you, here is my address; 1528 West Glenlake, Chicago IL 60660. I would be happy to be dispensed from the Vatican’s notion of priesthood and released from the obligation of celibacy. I wonder, will you send us some sort of note? My wife and I would like to know when the deal is sealed. I wonder if you will let our home parish know? My home parish is St. Gertrude on the north side of Chicago. I think you would be surprised by their reaction. Talk about a scandal! I would love if there was a way you could send someone from the Archdiocesan staff to deliver the dispensation at my place of work. I have started two schools on Chicago’s West Side. Our students are wonderful and the place is full of beatitudes. You would be proud of the work we “non-dispensed” ex-priests do. I am sure you would never use the phrase “abandon our ministry” again.

Good luck! You have an uphill battle ahead of you. I think Melchizedek is right, but I will encourage other ex Vatican priests to ask for their dispensations and to send you a note expressing their views, all the same. It will make for some exciting reading.

Best Wishes,
John Horan
Ordained; May 13, 1981
Left the Vatican Priesthood; June 10, 1988
Was civilly married and began consensual sex; October 27, 1990

For those of you who would like to drop Cardinal Hummes a line, here is his contact information:His Eminence Claudio Cardinal Hummes, O.S.F.
Official Web Site:
Mailing Address: Palazzo delle Congregazioni, 00193 Roma, Piazza Pio XII, 3 Telephone: 06.69.88.41.51 Fax: 06.69.88.48.45
Click here for more information about this new responsibility for Cardinal Hummes.

"And with spirit your..."

2009-07-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

Not having the votes necessary at their San Antonio meeting, the US bishops have since ratified new(?) translations for various liturgical texts. These texts are a step back from ordinary English language in deference to more literal teanslations of traditional Latin texts.

John Allen reported that Bishop Trautman led a small group of bishops advocating a more contemporary style. “I say yes to translations faithful to the Latin,” Trautman said, “but I say no to incomplete sentences, no to thirteen lines in one sentence, no to archaic phrases and texts that aren’t proclaimable, intelligible, or pastorally sensitive to our people.”
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/bishops-liturgy-debate-ends-whimper-rather-bang

But many bishops (including those most recently named by the Pope) fell in line with approving the texts - because that's what Rome wants. I guess real English-speaking people aren't really given a consideration.

I wonder if American priests can keep using the current translations, even if they are suppressed? After all, as B16 stated in reviving the use of the Latin Mass, ""What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful."

Oh, and the post title is my most literal translation of "Et cum spiritu tuo."

Marty Learns to Blog

2009-07-13T12:55:00.000-07:00

I have normal intelligence but am a techie dunderhead. I got lost in Facebook but have made it out. Thanks to Bob Motycka I'm trying to learn to Blog. Don't look for any brilliant contributions until I learn how to get into this more easily.
Marty Hegarty

Ask Peter Ignotus

2009-07-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

Dear Peter Ignotus,
When I resigned as Pastor of a parish and started pursuing a secular career and life, I thought that my priesthood was over. Now a year later, a couple has sought me out and asked me to “do” their wedding. Now, I wonder, should I? Could I? What do you think?
Gone, But Not Forgotten.

Dear Gone, But Not Forgotten. Your vocation was a calling by God, recognized and celebrated by the people of God (the Church), and certified by the institutional Church. Resigning your commission as a deputy of the institution does not nullify the call of God or the Church - the people of God. You are still being called (literally, on the phone) to continue your ministry and this is a validation of your continued priesthood.

Should you? This couple has sought you out because they believe you are the best person available to bless their union. If you assume this role, give them your best to prepare them for the wedding – and marriage. Most regional Pre-Cana programs are still open to them. Also, you should discuss any possible future ramifications that may come from their marriage not being “officially recognized” by Church authorities. Most of all, make it a celebration of God’s love and presence.

Could you? Remember that the couple themselves are the ministers of the sacrament, and any priest is simply invited to be the state’s, God’s, and the community’s witness. That being said, you want to make sure that you would be a legal witness. Each state dictates the qualifications of the officiant. In some states anyone (literally) can officiate, other states have more stringent rules. So to ensure proper certification, some “resigned” or “non-canonical” priests have joined groups like Celibacy Is The Issue (CITI) http://www.rentapriest.com/ or the Federation of Christian Ministries (FCM) http://www.federationofchristianministries.org/ for support and certification.

Would such a wedding be uncommon? Not according to studies. One third of Catholics do not get married “in the Church”, and the reasons are varied (Cara Study, 2007), http://www.usccb.org/laity/marriage/marriage_report.pdf

Fewer priests, tighter Mass and Confession schedules and clergy language deficiencies (English, Spanish, etc.) shrink options for young couple even seeking a Church wedding. Some pastors will not accommodate Friday evening or Sunday afternoon weddings, some will deny the sacrament to cohabiting engaged couples (most are), even when they have children together, unless they retreat to exclusive domiciles for six months. Some parishes enforce parish membership rigidly. Outdoor ceremonies are verboten.

Many Catholics do divorce from even “Church” marriages, and most remarry without the benefit of an annulment. Even if an annulment process made sense, it is often deemed long, expensive, intrusive and arbitrary. The fact is, over 90% of annulment petitions are granted to those who endure the process anyway, so why not resolve the annulment question using an “internal forum” approach?

Some couples presenting themselves to me are spiritually naive, but others have lost their faith, not in God, but in the institution of Church which seems to treat them indifferently and without compassion. They see the hierarchy’s treatment of women, gays, dissenters, and reform advocates as demeaning.

Many of the weddings I do now are for the same kinds of people I would (reluctantly) chase out the rectory door in days past. I even have referrals from priests and deacons (sometimes their own children) who couldn’t or wouldn’t get married “in Church”, but wanted their marriage celebrated as a holy event and blessed in a meaningful ceremony. Often parents prefer having a married priest preside over their children’s wedding than to see them getting married by some accommodating Protestant minister or Justice of the Peace, lest they be lost to Catholicism altogether.

Hopefully this brief response has given you some things to think and pray about. Perhaps the sisters and brothers of WEORC can offer some of their wisdom and experience. Share your thoughts at weorc@comcast.net .

Peter

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