The Bus Stopped Here

Some of my parishioners got caught on camera as the religious sisters’ summer road trip commenced. I was sorry to miss it. Monday mornings I’m usually on the road with church errands. Plus my wife sent me to pick up cat food and I dropped off my bike at the repair shop since both those stops were on that end of town.

I see the RNS is calling CDF vs NCWR a standoff. (Amazing how much is communicated in ten capital letters and a link, eh?) This is not going down particularly well for the hierarchy. It seems that a pattern has been established: an event puts the women/men issue into the news. A bishop usually pounces in pretty early on the publicity front. The women usually wait a bit, meet up, talk it over. Maybe discern. And their statement usually makes more sense.

Case in point, Cardinal Levada channelling his inner pharisee:

Too many people crossing the LCWR screen who are supposedly representing the Catholic church aren’t representing the church with any reasonable sense of product identity.

Didn’t we cover this already?

And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him.When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mark 2:15-16)

Others have commented on his curious phrase, “dialogue of the deaf.” That presumes both sides are deaf to what the other is saying. Or maybe his long years in the States have rendered Cardinal Levada rather inclusive in his outlook. It’s rather shocking for a Vatican bureaucrat to even accidentally concede his side doesn’t always listen. And if one is not prepared to hear, how can one discern?

Really, I don’t see the issue with the LCWR closing up shop, and the sisters deciding to hold an annual conference, or start a group blog, or what-not. And just jettison the official association with the institution on that level.

 

Mystery Or Not

Are you satisfied with the pope’s message to Irish Catholics?

How are we to explain the fact that people who regularly received the Lord’s body and confessed their sins in the sacrament of Penance have offended in this way? It remains a mystery.

Religious mysteries are matters beyond mortal comprehension. To me, that brings to mind the Trinity, Real Presence, and what happens after death.

Sex offenders were able, like many addicts, to compartmentalize their lives. It’s a matter less of a rational analysis or even of religious behavior, and more one of psychology. The intellect can fail us. Or more accurately, the intellect can create its own delusions: the behavior can take over and the religious addict survives by splitting her or his life into two or more parts. It doesn’t make any logical sense to the outsider, but people in 12-Step recovery have realized this for decades.

A person has to be open to God’s grace. That means setting aside, sometimes, the old ways of doing things. God invited many saints to great rupture in their lives: Abram called in old age, Joseph sold into slavery, Ruth accompanying her mother-in-law to a new land. Career fishermen became apostles.

In many ways continuity is the friend of addiction. It minimizes upset. It permits secrecy and hiding. Addicts need not confront their wrongdoing. Continuity ensures their employment, their circles of allies, their friendly cover. Which came first, the ordination or the addiction? It wouldn’t surprise me that many addicts are drawn to a lifestyle in which one can avoid intimacy, achieve a certain level of comfort, and be insulated from the suspicions of others. Some addicts in the clergy have been able to live very fine lives indeed. When one’s focus is on sex and domination, the trappings of the sacraments are little more than regular dues paid, like a writer may have a nine-to-five job to pay the bills so as to create novels or poetry. Or a parent cleans and orders a household in order to care for a family.

I disagree with Pope Benedict on this one. It’s no mystery. It may be beyond his personal experience, but there’s nothing surprising about it.

 

Planted In Two Worlds

I’ve been reading Brian Clegg’s book, Gravity: How the Weakest Force in the Universe Shaped Our Lives. This isn’t a review of the book, which I’m not quite halfway through. I’d like to look at his treatment of aristotelianism as viewed by our more rational age. I’d like to expand on a few things that struck me, and apply them to how the Catholic Church approaches theology.

My thesis here is that Catholic theology struggles mightily with one foot in the rational world and one in the medieval recovery of Aristotle. It’s a sort of philosophical schizophrenia. For those serious about the realm of the mind it produces moments of grave disconnect, where time-honored traditions do not fare well under modern analysis. And in the pastoral realm, we are left with seemingly heartless decisions rendered in ways that foster alienation rather than union with God. And for those who control the intellectual output of the Church, it provides a convenient cover. We can be rational when it suits us. Or we can appeal to “tradition” as it has surfaced in the intellectual tradition.

For the ancient Greeks, what we accept today as science was a matter of the mind. Thinkers reflected upon the world around them. They sought understanding and meaning from reflection and acted, taught, and lived according to those principles. They did not always trust the senses. What one saw, heard, or felt could deceive. In other words, the human thinker came first, and the world was ordered in ways in which the human brain understood it.

According to Clegg, the whole notion of experimentation was alien to Aristotle and to those of his intellectual heritage. Men and women had different numbers of teeth in their mouths–this is one of the more interesting of the bits of knowledge attributed to Aristotle. It went largely unchallenged, and if you think it would be easy enough to just count the teeth in people’s mouths to contradict it, well, then you are a modernist as seen from the aristotelian camp. The concept that observation and analysis could be done to verify a thesis was totally foreign to them. Of course, if one’s eyes or ears could deceive, it would seem the human mind could do likewise. But that didn’t seem to place in the aristotelian tradition.

Galileo, of course, comes into the book as a person who disputes some of the basic scientific principles of the day. Heavy things fall faster than light things–this was a fact of aristotelian insistence. And our experience might bear this out, for there is a difference between a boulder being dropped on our foot and a pebble. The former might cause broken bones. The latter is brushed off, barely felt. More force is applied by a more massive object, but the modern view is that is caused not by greater speed on impact, but by more mass applied to our tender foot.

Astronaut David Scott demonstrated the principle on the moon in 1971. A falcon feather and a geological hammer fell to the lunar dust at the same speed. Of course, science had long reconciled the floating feather on Earth as being more due to air resistance than its relative lightness. The experiment attributed to Galileo is that two balls of different weights

Aristotle was recovered for the West by medieval theologians, rehabilitated, as it were by Thomas Aquinas and utilized to sharpen the Church’s expression of theology. Unfortunately, the angelic doctor also brought some of the philosophical fuzziness into theology. Even the great hymn Adoro Te Devote suggests:

Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur,
Sed auditu solo tuto creditur.
Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius;
Nil hoc verbo veritátis verius.

In plain English:

Sight, touch, taste are all deceived
In their judgment of you,
But hearing suffices firmly to believe.
I believe all that the Son of God has spoken;
There is nothing truer than this word of truth.

I don’t know why one sense suffices, and others do not. Or why one might think that a powerful intellect could not be self-deceived. But I have the modern perspective and experience of the biggest mind game: addiction. The compulsion to indulge in substances and behaviors can overcome our most sincere intention or expression of intelligence. Saint Paul knew it well:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. (Romans 7:15)

Modern rationalism has its own traps, but the idea of testing is not foreign to the Bible:

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God (1 John 4:1a)

I’m not suggesting that any single approach is optimal. But there are some principles the Church misses, especially in the upper reaches of the hierarchy. I think the intellect can be deceived as easily as the senses. Our brains and everything that connects to them are fallible organs. So what hope do we have? The reality that we belong to a Body. A community is the best check on individuals who may be in danger of going astray. The widest possible input helps–something more easily possible today–if only we dare to leave out ideological ghettoes.

The Catholic hierarchy seems to inhabit neither worldview with any gusto. The approach to many moral issues seems to be based on the intellect, rather than on testing, analysis, and discernment. The approach to war, just or not, comes to mind. Wars may or may not be considered just, but many of the same evils emerge from all of them. Is there any urge to use one’s eyes, ears, and other senses to assess and test a theory which has stood for centuries, and does not appear to be contributing much, if anything, to alleviate human suffering or repairing the church’s moral leadership in the world. A more favored issue these days would involve gays and lesbians. If people are born and made homosexual, then perhaps there is something to be said for setting aside the possibly untrustworthy realm of the mind and balance discernment with what one can hear from the testimony of LGBT people and see in the value of their lives.

I do have hope that someday the Church will finish the procession over the bridge from pagan and medieval philosophy and use the full range of tools at its disposal. If sight can deceive, so can aristotelianism, or any other philosophy. We’re Catholics. We need it all. And we can use it.

 

Lessons In Freedom

Have you caught Joseph Sorrentino’s Commonweal piece on Padre Alejandro Solalinde? From the priest who ministers to migrants from Central America through Mexico, and sometimes to the States:

I see them as sheep without a pastor. Nobody helps them, they’re assaulted, many things are done to them and no one is concerned about them. I said I have to concern myself about them. If other priests are dedicated to religious service, then at least I have to dedicate myself to helping them.

Apparently Padre Solalinde does enough to threaten the powers that be:

 We are always receiving threats. Not just me. There are more than fifty shelters for migrants…. We are like a collective and are damaging the interests of drug dealers, corrupt politicians, and corrupt corporations.

I was going to comment on dotCommonweal till I saw Bill Mazzella’s:

This is the disconnect. A fortnight for freedom for well heeled monarchs who have people serving their every need while the true captives have no advocates.

Indeed. Cardinal George muses about his successors dying in prison or at the hands of a mob. He doesn’t need to travel in time to find the Church persecuted; he only needs to hop one international border. There was a time when the red of a cardinal’s robes meant something.

 

Bishop Blair on LCWR

At the Bench, Greg linked this column from Toledo bishop Leonard Blair on the doctrinal investigation of the LCWR.

 (I)t is a great cross sometimes to know firsthand the actual facts of a situation and then have to listen to all the distortions and misrepresentation of the facts that are made in the public domain.

And yet it is undeniable that the CDF and the bishops made this a “public domain” issue by breaking the news of it. The secular world doesn’t understand the Church. Some people within and outside of the Church are deeply skeptical of the bishops and their moral conduct. Cardinal Rodé’s investigation was very poorly handled from the start and seemed to curl up quietly and die. One of the strongest objections to the CDF investigation is how the news was presented. It’s been a frequent CDF problem for decades now. The cross, in this instance, is a self-selected one.

Bishop Blair cites the four usual “causes for concern” we’ve seen elsewhere. I tend to skepticism when quotes are taken out of context. Dr Sandra Schneiders said

It can no longer be taken for granted that the members [of a given congregation] share the same faith.

That’s not good news, but it certainly may be true. I’m not deep enough into religious life to know for sure. I also don’t know if Dr Schneiders was speaking of people who have faith in someone other than Christ. Or if she was speaking about non-Catholic lay associates. Or if she was suggesting that people who share membership might have different styles of faith. If the CDF is concerned about people who have lost faith, then Dr Schneiders’ bearing when delivering this unwelcome news would be important: straight-faced lament, fist-pumping, or something else.

Another example:

The LCWR’s Systems Thinking Handbook describes a hypothetical case in which sisters differ over whether the Eucharist should be at the center of a special community celebration.  The problem is that some of the sisters object to “priest-led liturgies.” The scenario, it seems, is not simply fictitious, for some LCWR speakers also mention the difficulty of finding ways to worship together as a faith community.  According to the Systems Thinking Handbook this difficulty is rooted in differences at the level of belief, but also different mental models—the “Western mind” and the “Organic mental model.”  These, rather than Church doctrine, are offered as tools for the resolution of the case.

Given the context, I’m not sure I see the problem here. I had a friend in religious life a number of years ago who lived in a community in which a chaplain assigned to preside at Mass occasionally showed up inebriated or late. Women’s communities do not always have the access to priests who will collaborate on liturgy, as is often the case in parishes. In mission locations, there may be no clergy available. Lacking the ordination of women or married persons, there is no rejection of the Eucharist on the part of communities. The institution itself cannot provide for the sacramental needs of the faithful. Coming from a women’s ordination advocate, that might seem like a loaded criticism. But aren’t the words themselves true?

Four single speakers in fifteen years–I’m not sure I have a problem with these contrary examples. Maybe I’d have more of a concern if workshop attendees just swallowed everything they heard as gospel. The women religious I know have no problem sharing criticisms of convention speakers when we’ve gone to conferences.

Bishop Blair’s conclusion:

This situation is now a source of controversy and misunderstanding, as well as misrepresentation. I am confident, however, that if the serious concerns of the CDF are accurately represented and discussed among all the sisters of our country, there will indeed be an opening to a new and positive relationship between women religious and the Church’s pastors in doctrinal matters, as there already is in so many other areas where mutual respect and cooperation abound.

Mutual respect and cooperation indeed. We sure need more of that. I’m not attacking the LCWR for saying these are good words. Not at all.

 

Thank You, CDF

In the second Christian millennium, a CDF condemnation would get you the rack. Today, it allows you to rack up sales.

I read where the Franciscans have offered a public statement of support for the LCWR. Rome becomes the agent of a selective unity. We need good theology, well discussed and discerned. We need unity. In the name of defending the faith, the CDF may well be endangering it.

 

 

 

Leave Your Gift, Bishop Fellay

SSPX: We can be Cafeteria Catholics too!

If they were talking about admitting divorced and remarried believers, I bet this unification would be nipped in its bud.

Bishop Fellay:

So the attitude of the official church is what changed; we did not. We were not the ones who asked for an agreement; the pope is the one who wants to recognize us.

I suspect the Holy Father was having a Matthew 5:23 moment. The person who is sought out in reconciliation is, according the Gospel, the one who has committed the wrong.

 

 

Around the Episcopacy

Cleveland’s Bishop Richard Lennon is reaching out to his priests.

I have become aware of a growing disconnect between many of the priests who serve faithfully in this diocese and myself. It saddens me to hear reports that a number of our priests feel anxious and uncomfortable in my presence and that rather than being co-workers with me, a number of priests feel left out of consultation.

Awareness, especially self-awareness is absolutely vital in ministry. Knowing one’s weaknesses involves the basic examination of conscience and subsequent confession. But it’s more than cataloguing the number of impure thoughts, white lies, and missed opportunities of charity. Not knowing Bishop Lennon at all, to appearances, this could be a sincere reaching out. The man supposedly invited a fellow bishop to assess his leadership last year. He has said he would not contest the reopening of parishes. Should his clergy take him at his word? A seemingly heartfelt statement:

Know I am entering this process willingly and open to change. Please join me in this sincere effort to improve the spirit, communication and trust in our relationship.

Charity and the relationship in ministry obligates. But this would be a last chance type of effort. If this outreach–and I mean what takes place beyond and behind the group meetings–fails, then the familial schism will likely not be healed. On the other hand, no Catholic can reject the opportunity for redemption.

On the other hand, Cardinal Dolan seems to have landed himself hip-deep in something that’s not yet a scandal and not quite a difference of opinion. Mark Silk seems to have the measure of the situation. Is the bishop who most thought was a can’t-miss jovial face for American Catholicism finding it hard to tread treacherous waters? Giving money to a sex offender priest: many sensibilities are offended. What is the boundary line between charity and a pay-off?

Many of those outraged at episcopal mismanagement might want clergy offenders paraded through life in an orange jumpsuit. Or wearing a scarlet S for all to see. A ten- or twenty-thousand dollar check is pretty nice, however you define it.

If I were paying closer attention to the New York prelate, I’d listen for tone of voice and watch body language. Does he exude a sense of peace and calm about how he has conducted himself as a personnel manager making tough decisions? Or does he come off as shrill and defensive? I’d want to have more than just what I read in the blogs. Here, too, I respect a man who makes an effort at reform and renewal. He’s been public about losing weight. I can totally understand that struggle. But the believer can also become bloated with lies, falsehoods, and words that lead others away from the truth. How does one shed that sort of excess weight?

Many correspondents suggested I check out Max Lindenman’s latest post on bishops and paranoia. As the token liberal at the Patheos Catholic Channel, I often wish his input there would match the relentless tone amassed by many conservatives there. When I read his words on paranoia, I was thinking more of the bishops as products of a culture of narcissism. The secular culture they were raised in as Americans is undeniably self-focused. Two, there’s the Catholic sense of entitlement. Then you throw in seminary training. And the way people seem to get appointed to sees, not to mention the George Jefferson methodology for upward mobility … It might be a minor miracle these guys aren’t worse than they are. Cardinal George, long/once thought to be the intellectual fulcrum for the USCCB is quoted:

I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.

Right. If this prophecy comes to pass, it will be because successor number one will have been convicted of child endangerment. Or that successor number two will get mugged by his own clergy and/or laity.

And lastly, when I think about the Philadelphia trial of Msgr Lynn, one commentator nailed it as a lose-lose for the archdiocese. What a choice: Cardinal Bevilacqua was a heartless dictator, or the clergy screening bad behavior were giving the brothers a friendly pass. It looks bad for the episcopacy any way you slice it.

Is there a bright side to any of this? Any hint of metanoia could be, must be the grace of the Holy Spirit.

 

Losing Ground

I used to harp a lot about Rome deep-sixing Jesuit plans to evangelize China. Post-Tridentine Catholicism managed what is today (arguably) the most religious nation in the world (highest percentage of committed believers who have always been religious). And I think we have East Timor, too, right?

China seemed ripe for Christianity in the 16th-17th century. Just think: eighty percent of China Catholic instead of a state and an underground Church shouldering one another in a nation of godless state-run corruption. But who needs one-sixth of the world when you can concentrate on a devastating internecine conflict that envelops much of a continent.

Mark Silk suggests American Catholicism has punted away much of Gen-X. Is he right? Actually, he cites a research paper in his commentary. Speaking of those born in 1965-1972:

(T)here has never been a more Catholic generational cohort. In 1990, when they were 18-25 years old, fully 33 percent identified as Catholics (as opposed to the one-quarter of the American population that had been Catholic since the late 19th century). But by 2008, one in five of those 1990 Catholic adults had dropped away.

I know a lot of Catholic conservatives cackle at the mainline Prots, but they haven’t lost any ground in the last two decades. Their Gen-X cohort came back to the church to get married and have kids:

What makes these numbers so noteworthy is that 18-25-year-olds are normally the least religiously identified cohort in American society. It’s later, as they get married and have children, that they tend to re-establish (or establish) their religious identities and affiliations. That Gen-X as a whole moved in the opposite direction–with the proportion of those claiming no religion increasing by two-thirds–is due largely to the disaffection of the Catholics. By contrast, the number of Mainline Protestants, who have generally been considered America’s weakest religious link, remained nearly constant.

Silk’s conclusion:

 (I)t is more than likely that the increasingly conservative winds that began to blow out of Rome during the papacy of John Paul II blew a lot of Gen-X away from the church. Many on the Catholic right–including in the hierarchy–have been happy to say good-bye and good riddance to what they’ve dismissed as its cafeteria Catholicism. But you’ve got to figure that, as the percentage of Catholics in America drifts towards the teens, those in charge will live to regret blowing the opportunity to capture and hold one-third of the U.S. population.

Are the SCGS* advocates building on a sandy substrate, do you think? Demographically, we’re falling behind those marginalized accommodators, the main street Protestant church. Not to mention our evangelical peeps. I’ve chummed with my ministry colleagues in P&W Christianity. I’ll tell you that when it comes to sharing faith, playing some contemporary Christian tunes, or doing something other than putting a public face on Jesus for the press, pastors in other churches look at my faith with deep skepticism. I remember one instance in a matter where I thought Christian ministers in a small town were standing together. I assumed the Assembly of God pastor had my back in what I thought was a mutual recognition of our commitment to Christ. When it came time for him to speak for me, he looked down at his shoes and said nothing.

I find it deeply discouraging that today’s Catholic hierarchy seems to treat liberal Catholics in the same mode. Antigospel Christianity triumphant.

Huh.

On that note, I’m getting into the student center early this morning. If the bishops and Rome aren’t going to stand up for young adults, somebody had better pick up the slack.

* Small church, getting smaller

 

Seeing Water Flow

World News Australia reports more Vatican leaks, even though the butler is detained. Maybe he’s masterminding the whole thing from his police holding cell.

Who else is named in webs of deceit? Cardinal Bertone. Monsignor Georg Gänswein, the pope’s personal secretary.

Cardinal Burke is mentioned, but not as a leaker. More as a complainer. About those Neo-Cat liturgies. Like that’s his department.

David Gibson suggests this is not so much a leak, but a pour.

I was thinking of the acclamation for the Sprinkling Rite:

I saw water flowing from the right side of the temple, alleluia …

Monsignor Gänswein has been very close to the pope for his whole papacy. People close to B16 are obvious targets. As obvious as planting evidence in the Vatican apartment of a personal assistant. It’s hard not to get the idea that the pope himself is the target of this campaign. I saw one or two rumbles over the weekend that he might make an example of himself and resign. If so, someone has spent a lot of energy and wielded a lot of power to make it happen. Not sure I want those people in charge of the Church.

 

Catholic Discouragement, And Where To Swim From Here

Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish. (Psalm 146:3-4, NRSV)

My more careful readers know that I put little trust in princes, be they ecclesiastical or political. I know, I know: hand-wringing that I’ve lost the virtue of obedience. Forget about faith, hope, and love; I’m a heretic.

Oh well, I don’t worry about that. I have a wife, a daughter, a pastor, professional colleagues, and parishioners. I have plenty of people in my life to whom I willingly give my obedience. My commitment of responsibility (the larger sense of obedience), if you will. If the purpose of obedience is to allow the believer to experience sacrifice, a loss of will, a state of humility, a movement away from narcissism, then I’d say my life, and the lives of many lay people are quite satisfactorily covered, even before we get to the bishops and Rome. This is likely true in religious life. Obedience to a rule is not the extent of a religiously committed life. There is also the spirit of adhering to a community charism. There is also the freely offered love and devotion given to one’s brothers and/or sisters. Obeying commands: that’s easy, and easy to get around. Living day-to-day when people are bitter, sick, troubled, discouraged, mentally ill, or dying: that’s when it gets bed pan-tough, when you want to strangle the person. But you have to feed them dinner instead, then clean their dishes. Wash their feet, too.

I recognize that sentiment may well be self-serving, but that’s for me and my spiritual director, and my best spiritual friend (my wife) to determine. not another blogger. Not a bishop. It’s not that obedience ends with the people I directly know. It’s just that the bishops and the pope, in their ordinary pronouncements, have nothing to add to the spiritual value of obedience for the faithful. And in these days of scandal and pastoral apathy, many of them are chasing away many believers.

That exodus is what I’ve termed the antigospel. And I don’t think it’s an exaggeration that many otherwise fine churchmen have been leading proponents of the antigospel in the past decade or more. The recent bitterness toward liberal and progressive Catholics also has a self-serving element. It’s fine enough for others to suggest we should find other shores. But I don’t agree with that bit of antigospel either. The believer’s mission is evangelization, not usurping the Lord’s role in the Last Judgment.

Let me repeat that, a little louder:

A good Catholic has no business telling or hinting that it would be better for a person to be outside of the Church.

That brings me to the title topic of discouragement.

For myself, I’d probably would have left already for another church.

Deb’s comment stung, not because I felt personally indicted, but because I’m always sad when people I’ve grown accustomed to seeing every Sunday stop coming to Mass.

I think it’s very difficult to be a Catholic these days. But I’m also a proponent of the sardine theory of religion: safety in numbers. Or strength in numbers. A secular, materialist, rational person would say that a smaller, more uniform Church is stronger, better, and purer. But that’s not how God works. One only need reflect on the lives of the saints, especially the Scriptures, to note how God confounds expectations and turns everything on its ear. Death becomes life. Sacrifice becomes glory. Losing one’s life means saving it. Ninety-nine are left behind to save the one. The poor and the lowly outshine the princes on thrones. The woman doesn’t run from the snake; she crushes its head. God doesn’t remain in heaven; he comes to Earth in human form. And he doesn’t institute worldwide rule; instead he dies, rises, ascends into heaven, and leaves fishermen, tax collectors, and women to change the world.

I was raised in a post-conciliar Church where lay people were responsible for their own spiritual lives, and could exercise significant self-determination. We associate more with religious orders instead of joining them because we don’t need to live a religious commitment in the world in a traditional order. If an apostolic order is satisfied to fade because others have shouldered the apostolate, what is that to Rome? Or if another order is satisfied with a smaller number of vowed members and many more associates, why is that a concern to anyone else?

I’m shocked by the CDF crackdown on the LCWR, but I’m never surprised at adolescent behavior. Boys will be boys; shrug, and move on.

Rome labels leak journalism immoral, and does it darn quick. But they waver on cardinals covering up sex crimes. I’m shocked, but I’m not surprised.

It would be enough for me to state I’m a Catholic, and I’m not leaving, and nobody outside the Trinity can make me leave. But I’m also going to stay because other discouraged Catholics need to know that another lay person who is close and deep enough to see a lot of discouraging adolescent $%&# isn’t going to get bumped out. If anybody out there wants to stay Catholic, but the way seems too dark, I’m glad if you want to hang around with me. The ocean may be dark, and it’s hard to see, but there’s a lot of us swimming around out here.

I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s time for me to offer a little more encouragement to the discouraged. It’s easy enough for me and others to pound away on the bad news. I’m not going to deny it’s out there. At the risk of being a spiritual pollyanna, I have to tell you there’s unbounded opportunity in the current situation. Even though it seems dark, cold, oceanic, and the sharks are lurking.

I think we can recall the witness of saints to show us the way–why I and others will focus on something other than politics during the so-called Fortnight of Freedom. I think we can band together and buck the current. And I don’t think we need virtuous bishops, or holy shepherds in the Vatican. Sure, they would help a lot. But there are plenty of witnesses, and much guidance to be found elsewhere. If prelates want to swim with the currents of narcissism and chum with the powers of the world, all I can say is that when they change their minds, the Church is waiting for them and their leadership.

And that’s all I’ve got for tonight. Light blogging the next few days, probably. No new initiatives. Otherwise, keep the faith, people. Keep in mind the conclusion of Psalm 146:

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed;
who gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the strangers;
he upholds the orphan and the widow,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
The Lord will reign forever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord!

 

Hold Your Breath: A Good Word For The Episcopacy

A few of my readers take me to task for never hardly ever having a good thing to say about bishops. In my defense, I might say that Christus Dominus was one of the very first Vatican II documents studied on this site. And judging by the light commentary on the series, I can point out that my conservative brothers and sisters in the blogosphere didn’t have a lot of good things to say about them either.

Lately, though, I see the American episcopacy has, in some corners, developed a spine when it comes to assessing GOP talking points. Like on the House proposal for a federal budget. Or even immigration. Unlike their bosses in the Temple Police (who seem all aflutter about Sec Sebelius, but adopting a deer-in-headlights mode when it comes to torture apologists). For these people, prudence is a convenient political weapon thirty-nine-cent word. Or a 60′s song-n-dance routine.

The Temple Police hound me, of course, about my neutrality on Sec Sebelius. To sort of buff their bona fides, they throw out the Nazi-what-if speaker at a Catholic commencement. I have to admit that I think it’s okay for John Brennan to speak at Fordham. But then again, I also think it’s okay for his appearance to be protested, criticized, lampooned, and even wolf-whistled if necessary. Maybe it’s up to the bishop, the university prez, or even the student speaker to call out a guest speaker for moral missteps in the public sphere. Easy for me to say, I guess, as I inhabit Catholic bloggerdom, where we tell the truth all the time, of course, and where I’ve made a rep for swimming against the current for so long.

Yes indeedy: invite me to speak at a graduation. I’ll show you action on two or more fronts–which is a lot more than the Newman Society or the Republicans will handle successfully.

So let’s give the CNS a C for partisanship and an F for Catholicism. Outside the courtroom, the bishops are definitely higher, grading on a curve. Universities are coming out a bit higher than the bishops.

…

What did you expect? I’m not putting them at the top of the class. Not just yet.

 

More Trouble for the Legion

The AP released the news, hopped on by just about every Catholic outlet in the world over the past twenty-four hours, that the curia is pondering a small stack of dossiers in its possession:

(T)he Legion (of Christ) confirmed it had referred seven cases of alleged abuse to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that investigates sex crimes. All but one involves alleged abuse dating from decades ago; one case involves recent events.

More from the Legion’s statement:

While the priests are under investigation, their access to children has been restricted.

I wonder how strict the restriction is. I hope orthodoxically strict, as in a far sight better than Bishop Finn’s solution.

As bad as the crimes of individual predators may be, the seemingly-inevitable cover-up is far worse:

The scandal of Maciel and the Legion ranks as one of the worst of the 20th-century Catholic Church, since he was held up as a model for the faithful by Pope John Paul II. The orthodox order, which has about 900 priests around the world, was praised for attracting both money and vocations to the priesthood.

Documentation from Vatican archives, however, has shown that as early as the 1950s, the Vatican had evidence that he was a drug addict and pedophile.

Only in 2006 did the Vatican sanction Maciel to a lifetime of penance and prayer for his crimes. He died in 2008 and a year later the Legion admitted he had fathered three children with two different women and had abused his seminarians.

The Vatican took over the Legion in 2010 and is pushing through a process of reform.

Even conservative Catholics in the blogosphere are suggesting words like “suppression” in connection with the Legion. Of course, they’re also swimming in dozens of vocations to cloistered life, so they also say the same thing about the LCWR. On the former suppression, I’m a skeptic, and here ‘s why:

Maybe it lets the Legion off too easily. There’s probably little hope of imposing a new charism on the community. But suppose its ministries were re-ordered to focus on advocacy for victims, and rooting out scandal within the Church. Suppose its fundraising prowess and stockpiles of resources were placed at the service of victims and their legal counsel. And dioceses that were found to offend and might find other ministries devalued through no fault of their own. Suppose the founder were held up as an example of don’t-do-this. From John Paul II’s 2001 address:

In a secularized world such as our own, built in large part on neglect of transcendent truths and values, the faith of many of our brothers and sisters is sorely tried. Because of this, there is a need today more than ever for a confident proclamation of the Gospel which, casting aside all crippling fears, announces with intellectual depth and with courage the truth about God, about (people), about the world.

Let’s be clear that a sign of neglect of these values is in the cronyism, materialism, and secrecy that often accompanies the cover-up of predation in the Church. Preaching the truth, speaking the truth: these are charism the Church needs. Why not let the LC continue if they would re-order their efforts at this? Otherwise, perhaps the whole thing should be erased.

 

A Tale of Two Testimonies

I’ve been dropping in daily at the blog covering the Philadelphia cover-up trial. Yesterday’s post included coverage of a sister’s testimony. Speaking of Msgr William Lynn when pressed by defense counsel to admit the priest had no power to influence clergy assignments, the rape victim testified:

He [Lynn] had the power to suggest it.

(Instead of going along with the power structure), you can also say, I cannot do this.

Blogger Ralph Cipriano:

It was a simple, but powerful declaration coming from a nun who herself was an administrator down at archdiocese HQ, and also as a young woman, a victim of sex abuse from a pervert priest.

More from the witness:

I would think that his [Lynn's] recommendation would be heard. (And if it wasn’t, Lynn could have told the cardinal,) “I cannot go on; if it isn’t done that way, I can quit.”

In contrast, a spoonful of sugar from Bishop Robert Lynch is mentioned by CNS, but the original thoughts are here on his blog.

More from Mr Cipriano:

The nun’s firm but understated conviction about the need to simply do the right thing sent a ripple of excitement through courtroom spectators, which included victims of sex abuse, and activists hoping for the impossible, reform in the Roman Catholic Church. It also raised an age-old question, namely why do the women in the Catholic church usually have more balls than the men?

I’d say it’s a tendency, not a hard fact. Some women are indeed weaker than men. But among church leadership, I’d say the majority of comparisons do not come out well for the bishops. I think there are some reasons for this.

One-hundred percent of the sisters of the LCWR are in religious life. A minority of clergy are. There’s a different quality in one’s faith life when you are responsible to a community, and when you are responsible to a chain of command. In a community, or even a family, one is responsible for and to a number of others. There’s a mutuality that forms an adult in a different way of life. To their detriment, most diocesan clergy live a life of a hermit. The best priests turn that to their advantage. Others wallow in isolation. What community is left but to play the games of careerism?

A lay person in a family or a sister in a community is involved in a give-and-take that generally involves more mutuality. We know the meaning of sacrifice. The kind of sacrifice involved in the burial of secrets is to one’s soul. The anonymous sister on the witness stand understands this a bit better than a well-placed cleric in a chancery.

This is likely why many of us lay people find ourselves outraged at the turn of events with the LCWR and the bishops. I actually feel more sorry for the bishops than I feel angry at them. The Gospel: they don’t get it.

 

 

Cardinal Red, Hot

Irish theologian and Joseph Ratzinger protege Vincent Twomey thinks the Primate of All Ireland should resign.

Ireland’s Deputy PM too.

Is it safe for Cardinal Brady to get kicked up into Rome? The Law seat is no longer open. But they’ve already investigated Irish seminaries. That pretty much leaves the Irish women religious. The long knives of Cardinal Law could reach across an ocean. Do you suppose Sean Brady is as vindictive?

Let’s be very clear in this continuing discussion on Catholic identity, especially as it’s framed by the Catholic Right. Every theologian might not have a mandate. And some Catholic institutions are the targets of petition drives. But notice the complainers in these instances are solid believers. They are far from truly scandalized. the real points of scandal are those who are literally obstacles to belief and faith. Few enough people on the fringes of faith and the Church were edged out by a theologian without a permission slip or by a political speaker at a Catholic university. The same cannot be said for the bishops who have disgraced their office by harboring predators, blaming lawyers and psychologists, and insisting they did nothing wrong.

The College of Cardinals is on the hot seat. They might not feel it yet. And the Right seems distracted by other things. But it’s there.