by Eric Hodgens, Melbourne, December, 2010
We are the Gaudium et Spes priests. We went into the seminary at the highest rate in living memory. We were ordained between 1955 and 1975 – in double the numbers our parishes required. Most of us were from the Silent Generation with a few years of Baby Boomers at the end. We took Vatican II to heart. We changed from being priests called and consecrated by God to being presbyters called and ordained by the Church – the People of God.
Ecumenism became a normal way of thinking for us. Prepared for the challenge by Cardijn’s apostolate of like to like, we were successful at educating a newly vital and active laity. We worked with the people rather than for them. We realised that clericalism was an evil, not a good, and discarded it with its style and culture. We ran highly successful and active parishes. Though ageing now, many of us are still on the job. Our presbyteral and pastoral lives have been a source of that unusual experience – joy.
But not without grief. We have experienced the awakening 60s, the exciting 70s, the suspicious 80s, the depressing 90s and the imploding 00s. During the 1980s we became aware that a lot was going wrong. Ordinations suddenly dropped after 1975. We started to lose parishioners – first from Mass then from affiliation. Both of these changes had mixed social causes.
Worse! Discordant decisions were coming down from the pope. Priestly celibacy, despite being highly contentious, was reasserted by Paul VI in 1967 without discussion. In 1968 Humanae Vitae was a shocking disappointment. Most of us never accepted it. Paul VI began appointing bishops opposed to the council’s ethos. This was most notable in Holland which had become a trailblazer in implementing the council. Paul killed that initiative and we are all the worse off for that. The whole trend was demoralizing.
Then came John Paul II. Charismatic in front of the TV camera; brilliant at languages; but – out of touch in scripture and limited in theology, a bad listener and rock solid is his self-assessment as God’s chosen man of destiny. His whole life had been spent in the persecuted church of Poland with its fortress church mentality frozen in time.
The open dialogue of the Church with the new ideas and values arising out of new knowledge in scriptural criticism, theology, psychology, sociology, anthropology stopped. New scientific discoveries in genetics were treated with suspicion and their application usually condemned. Sexual mores were promoted to the top shelf of his panorama of sin – a bit of an obsession with him.
Power corrupts. The history of the papacy shows this pre-eminently. Unchecked potentates believe their own propaganda. Taken to the extreme, they claim infallibility. Pius IX bullied Vatican I into institutionalizing such a claim. Since then creeping infallibility has resulted in the pope and his theologically limited curia stealing the term “magisterium” from its real owners – the college of professional theologians. How can you conscientiously give assent of mind and heart to policies formed without theological debate, consultation, transparency or accountability? In contemporary government and business this would be judged unethical.
John Paul’s lust for power showed very early and was taken to monumental proportions. Accountable to nobody, John Paul moved against any opinion other than his own and removed many exponents of alternative opinions from teaching and publishing. His most powerful enforcer was the Ratzinger-led Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Other Roman dicasteries joined the campaign.
The CDF is the current euphemism for the Inquisition. True to its mediaeval roots, it assumes the pope to be entitled to enforce his views. It conducts its delations and proceedings in secret. In today’s secular world this is a violation of human rights.
Theological censorship justifies itself as the quest for the truth and poses as truth’s champion. In fact it is the enemy of the discovery of truth because discussion is forestalled. The contemporary secular world understands this and wisely enshrines freedom of speech and debate as a central value. The Church no less than any other enterprise is at least the poorer and at worst prone to error when it rejects this value.
All of us are abused by this process. The priest at the coal face is not consulted, yet is contemptuously expected to defend policies he and his people do not believe.
John Paul II also enforced much of his own devotional life on the church at large. Despite Vatican II he effectively stopped the third rite of Penance, reversed a burgeoning dynamic theology of Eucharist by reverting to and re-emphasising devotion to the static Real Presence, reinforced a distorted devotion to Mary based on fundamentalist theology and introduced peculiar devotions such as Sr. Faustina’s Divine Mercy Devotion which undercuts Easter – the climax of our liturgical year.
A more grievous abuse of power by John Paul II was his appointment of bishops. Appointees were to be clerical, compliant and in total agreement with his personal opinions. This has emasculated the leadership of the Church. The episcopal ranks are now low on creativity, leadership, education and even intelligence. Many are from the ranks of Opus Dei – reactionary, authoritarian and decidedly not creative. Many, often at the top of the hierarchical tree, are embarrassingly ignorant of any recent learning in scripture, theology and scientific disciplines. Many are classic company boys. Some of the more intelligent and better educated seem to have sold their souls for advancement. Can they really believe the line they channel? Ecclesiastical politics have trumped integrity. And when these men are appointed as the leaders of priests without any consultation they become a standing act of contempt.
Worse still, this happened over a period when the priesthood held its biggest proportion of intelligent, educated and competent leaders. It was those very qualities which blackballed them for appointment under the blinkered but powerful regime. Our best chance has been missed. Today the ranks of the priesthood are depleted due to low recruitment over the last forty years. The pool from which future bishops must be chosen is very shallow.
A newly critical laity questions policy but receives no answers. Why can’t women be leaders in the Church? Why do priests have to be celibate? What is wrong with contraception? Why alienate remarried divorcees? Why this salacious preoccupation with sexual mores? Why are scientific advances always suspected of being bad? Why can’t we recognise the reality of homosexual orientation – and the social consequences of that recognition? Have we learnt nothing from the Galileo case – or the treatment of Teilhard de Chardin? Can’t we escape the Syllabus of Errors mentality?
Benedict XVI has continued the reversal of Vatican II. He is imposing a new English translation of the Sacramentary on a resisting English speaking constituency. This may very well backfire because many priests are not going to implement it. Benedict has received back bishops from the schismatic Society of St Pius X. He has encouraged the Tridentine Mass in Latin. He has reintroduced kneeling for communion on the tongue at his public Masses – all deliberate key pointers to regression from the spirit of Vatican II. To the priests who embraced Vatican II they are iconic insults.
Then he has the nerve to decree a Year for Priests in 2009 with St John Vianney as patron. Like Fr. Donald Cozzens, many felt they were being played. The celebration of the importance of priests in the church is belied by the contempt with which they are treated. How can Rome call priests to repentance when it is so recalcitrant; so slow to admit any failing of its own? How can they be serious in stressing the importance of the priest as confessor when it is clear that confession has all but vanished from the life of the Church? How can they urge Holy Hours and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament when most priests have moved on from that static theology of Eucharist to a dynamic one – with Vatican II leading the way? How can they urge priests to more intense prayer when they show no evidence of a change of heart or attitude – the genuine indicator that prayer is working?
We took as normal the world and the church into which we were ordained. In reality, the religious affiliation of the period was abnormally high. Mass and sacramental participation and priestly vocations were at a high water mark. The reversal which began in the late 60s was always going to happen. But with Vatican II we had the tools to handle the new situation. A large group of the priests were ready to meet the challenge. They did not get the chance. The orders from above were to withdraw to the fortress and sing the old song. Instead of embracing the new they lost the opportunity and left us high and dry – and disappointed.
In the western world priests still always rate highly in job satisfaction surveys. They generally enjoy their job and do it well. That is because they are happy in their own patch. But they feel betrayed by the pope and the bishops. If you ask them what they think about the powers up top and where the official show is going you get a very different answer.
Fr Eric Hodgens studied at Corpus Christi College from 1953 to 1960. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1960. He graduated M.A. from Melbourne University Criminology Department in 1973. Since then he has documented the statistics of seminaries and clergy in Australia. For seven years he was Director of Pastoral Formation of Clergy for the Archdiocese of Melbourne. He was a member of the initial committee which set up Melbourne's Catholic Research Office for Pastoral Planning and the inaugural Chairman of the National Organization for the Continuing Education of the Roman Catholic Clergy. He has been chairman of the Priests' Remuneration Fund and the Priests' Retirement Foundation. The latter role has called for extensive demographic research to project future retirement requirements for priests. He has been a Parish Priest in the Melbourne Archdiocese since 1974. He was the founding Parish Priest of Holy Saviour Parish, Glen Waverley North. After 19 years there he moved to St Bede's Parish, North Balwyn where he spent 14 years. He has recently retired from active parish duties and is now writing and lecturing.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
US at War Since 1950: A New Year's Meditation
by: Michael True, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed, January 1, 2011
"The same war continues," Denise Levertov wrote in her poem, "Life at War." Her lament is even more appropriate for 2011 than it was when she wrote the poem forty-five years ago.
Columnists and academics, including international relations professor Andrew Bacevich of Boston University, are finally acknowledging facts familiar to anyone "awake" regarding failed US policies, wasted lives and wasted resources during this period. Willfully ignoring such facts, as Bacevich wrote, "is to become complicit in the destruction of what most Americans profess to hold dear."
At the beginning of the new year, consequences of "life at war" stare us in the face: the victimization of military and civilian populations and a huge national debt, including an annual military budget that is larger than all military budgets in the world combined and includes $5 billion that remains unaccounted for in Iraq, as well as aid to Pakistan that has wound up in the hands of the Taliban.
These truths haunt any citizen who has lost loved ones in prolonged wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan since 1950, or in disastrous interventions in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, Granada, Panama, Honduras, and so on.
Any responsible citizen acknowledges this painful history in the hope of redirecting US foreign policy in the future. The purpose of reclaiming it is not to open old wounds, but to encourage legislative and direct action committed to peacemaking. It is a call to critique the policies and competence of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security apparatus responsible for these disasters.
Ironically, the deficit-reduction commission appointed by President Obama intimates that social security, rather than a trillion-dollar war on Iraq and uncapped military spending in Afghanistan, is to blame for the deficit. And Congress has succeeded in extending Bush's tax cuts for the super-rich, which will increase the deficit.
Once the envy of the world community, the US now lags behind many nations in education and health care while it squanders its huge resources on military misadventures - including both overt and covert intervention - with some 1,000 military bases around the world.
Americans who voted for President Obama are justifiably disappointed that he has continued the worst practices of the Bush administration, particularly in foreign policy. In domestic policy, Obama's administration can point to some achievements, particularly in education and health care.
Tea Party advocates rightfully call attention to a faltering economy but offer no functional alternatives to present policy. Meanwhile, naysaying Republicans and cautious Democrats, as well as an irresponsible Supreme Court, enable rich corporations to dominate political debate. The Pentagon, including General Petraeus, lobbied for and initiated increased military action in Afghanistan. The result: more serious casualties among US and its European allies, not to mention embarrassment and confusion in efforts to end that war.
Is it any wonder that many people remain hopeless amid predictions that the country's 9.7 percent unemployment rate will continue through the new year?
So what must be done to alter this discouraging scenario and help the US regain the confidence of its own people and the world community?
1 Cut the US military budget in half for 2011.
2 Increase taxes on the filthy rich, the 1 percent of the population that owns at least 23 percent of America's wealth.
3 Rebuild roads, bridges and other infrastructure that remains in a state of disrepair.
4 Encourage policies that put people to work addressing the dangers of global warming.
5 Strengthen our education system at every level, providing skills for meaningful work for all citizens.
Some people may regard these remedies as utopian, though the consequences are, in essence, practical and essential.
Although many Americans continue to enjoy the benefit from this wealthy and beautiful country, the potentialities of democratic governance remain unfulfilled for many others.
In her poem, Levertov wrote that "we have breathed the grits of war in, all
our lives. Our lungs are pocked with it," she continues, "the mucous membrane of our dreams/coated with it, the imagination/filmed over with the gray filth of it."
For decades, Americans have convinced ourselves - or have been convinced - that more or less continual war is the essential task of the US, and that that enterprise is justified by our knowing what is best for the world community. During the 1940s, we built military weapons to defeat Germany and Japan; now, we initiate wars in order to experiment with, and provide profit from, more sophisticated military weapons.
When will the American public, victimized by a war economy, come to the conclusion that a permanent war policy benefits only arms manufacturers, Pentagon contractors and their Congressional allies? Nor does it lessen our fear, increase our security or promote peace among nations.
There has to be a better way. My hope is that some of the remedies provided here offer a way out - and hope for a happier 2011.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Michael True is emeritus literature professor at Assumption College. His books include People Poer: Fifty Peacemakers and Their Communities ( Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2007, available from info@isbs.com or 800-944-6190 or amazon.com and An Energy Field More Intense Than War: The Nonviolent tradition and American Literature ((Syracuse University Press, 1995, available from alibris.com, amazon.com, and publisher).
"The same war continues," Denise Levertov wrote in her poem, "Life at War." Her lament is even more appropriate for 2011 than it was when she wrote the poem forty-five years ago.
Columnists and academics, including international relations professor Andrew Bacevich of Boston University, are finally acknowledging facts familiar to anyone "awake" regarding failed US policies, wasted lives and wasted resources during this period. Willfully ignoring such facts, as Bacevich wrote, "is to become complicit in the destruction of what most Americans profess to hold dear."
At the beginning of the new year, consequences of "life at war" stare us in the face: the victimization of military and civilian populations and a huge national debt, including an annual military budget that is larger than all military budgets in the world combined and includes $5 billion that remains unaccounted for in Iraq, as well as aid to Pakistan that has wound up in the hands of the Taliban.
These truths haunt any citizen who has lost loved ones in prolonged wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan since 1950, or in disastrous interventions in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, Granada, Panama, Honduras, and so on.
Any responsible citizen acknowledges this painful history in the hope of redirecting US foreign policy in the future. The purpose of reclaiming it is not to open old wounds, but to encourage legislative and direct action committed to peacemaking. It is a call to critique the policies and competence of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security apparatus responsible for these disasters.
Ironically, the deficit-reduction commission appointed by President Obama intimates that social security, rather than a trillion-dollar war on Iraq and uncapped military spending in Afghanistan, is to blame for the deficit. And Congress has succeeded in extending Bush's tax cuts for the super-rich, which will increase the deficit.
Once the envy of the world community, the US now lags behind many nations in education and health care while it squanders its huge resources on military misadventures - including both overt and covert intervention - with some 1,000 military bases around the world.
Americans who voted for President Obama are justifiably disappointed that he has continued the worst practices of the Bush administration, particularly in foreign policy. In domestic policy, Obama's administration can point to some achievements, particularly in education and health care.
Tea Party advocates rightfully call attention to a faltering economy but offer no functional alternatives to present policy. Meanwhile, naysaying Republicans and cautious Democrats, as well as an irresponsible Supreme Court, enable rich corporations to dominate political debate. The Pentagon, including General Petraeus, lobbied for and initiated increased military action in Afghanistan. The result: more serious casualties among US and its European allies, not to mention embarrassment and confusion in efforts to end that war.
Is it any wonder that many people remain hopeless amid predictions that the country's 9.7 percent unemployment rate will continue through the new year?
So what must be done to alter this discouraging scenario and help the US regain the confidence of its own people and the world community?
1 Cut the US military budget in half for 2011.
2 Increase taxes on the filthy rich, the 1 percent of the population that owns at least 23 percent of America's wealth.
3 Rebuild roads, bridges and other infrastructure that remains in a state of disrepair.
4 Encourage policies that put people to work addressing the dangers of global warming.
5 Strengthen our education system at every level, providing skills for meaningful work for all citizens.
Some people may regard these remedies as utopian, though the consequences are, in essence, practical and essential.
Although many Americans continue to enjoy the benefit from this wealthy and beautiful country, the potentialities of democratic governance remain unfulfilled for many others.
In her poem, Levertov wrote that "we have breathed the grits of war in, all
our lives. Our lungs are pocked with it," she continues, "the mucous membrane of our dreams/coated with it, the imagination/filmed over with the gray filth of it."
For decades, Americans have convinced ourselves - or have been convinced - that more or less continual war is the essential task of the US, and that that enterprise is justified by our knowing what is best for the world community. During the 1940s, we built military weapons to defeat Germany and Japan; now, we initiate wars in order to experiment with, and provide profit from, more sophisticated military weapons.
When will the American public, victimized by a war economy, come to the conclusion that a permanent war policy benefits only arms manufacturers, Pentagon contractors and their Congressional allies? Nor does it lessen our fear, increase our security or promote peace among nations.
There has to be a better way. My hope is that some of the remedies provided here offer a way out - and hope for a happier 2011.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Michael True is emeritus literature professor at Assumption College. His books include People Poer: Fifty Peacemakers and Their Communities ( Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2007, available from info@isbs.com or 800-944-6190 or amazon.com and An Energy Field More Intense Than War: The Nonviolent tradition and American Literature ((Syracuse University Press, 1995, available from alibris.com, amazon.com, and publisher).
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
USCCB Elections Signal More Vatican Influence in U.S. Politics
November 17, 2010
WASHINGTON - Catholics for Equality is concerned about the anti-equality direction of the U.S. Catholic bishops in their election of Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York as the new president, and Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville as vice-president, of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). This election broke the long-standing tradition of elevating the current vice-president.
Catholics for Equality Board member Rev. Tony Adams said, "following their tradition would have meant electing a noted social justice champion, Bishop Kicanas of Tucson, to lead the Catholic Church in America. Instead, the bishops chose two outspoken opponents of pro-equality civil rights measures." Both men are leaders against civil rights equality in their states and across the country.
Board member and political strategist Aniello Alioto said, "this election broadens the gap between the people of the Catholic Church in America and the increasingly uncharitable demands of the Pope in Rome. It also threatens the broad American consensus that began with the election of President John F. Kennedy, allowing American Catholics to contribute more fully to the common good as both Americans and as Catholics. We are concerned that this election will result in a shift from the pastoral nature of American Catholicism to efforts to politicize in America the will of Rome."
Concern is amplified by the election of Archbishop Kurtz as the new USCCB Vice President. Archbishop Kurtz, as head the Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, has led the Catholic hierarchy's national campaign to deny marriage and family rights to gay and lesbian citizens. That campaign has been financially assisted by the national office of the Knights of Columbus, most recently through the production of videos that demean and discredit gay and lesbian relationships, as well as single parent and extended family households. Adams said, "American Catholics are alarmed when tax-exempt church resources are diverted from charity, education and parish work into political campaigns and veiled candidate endorsements."
"In his report from the ad-hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, Archbishop Kurtz makes it clear that our bishops are waging a new political campaign to change the laws in our country" Alioto said. The Committee's report compares court challenges to Proposition 8 in California and the federal Defense of Marriage Act to Roe v. Wade and the battle over reproductive rights. This results in a new "pro-family, pro-life" messaging strategy that harms all non-traditional as well as LGBT families. It contributes to the climate that permits bullying and harassment of youth from such families who become at higher risk for depression and suicide.
Catholics for Equality calls upon our bishops to pledge full transparency in all efforts to shift funding from our national charitable, pastoral and educational efforts into the Pope's interference to deny freedom and fairness in American politics. It calls on all Catholics of good conscience to monitor and challenge the priorities of our bishops.
WASHINGTON - Catholics for Equality is concerned about the anti-equality direction of the U.S. Catholic bishops in their election of Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York as the new president, and Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville as vice-president, of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). This election broke the long-standing tradition of elevating the current vice-president.
Catholics for Equality Board member Rev. Tony Adams said, "following their tradition would have meant electing a noted social justice champion, Bishop Kicanas of Tucson, to lead the Catholic Church in America. Instead, the bishops chose two outspoken opponents of pro-equality civil rights measures." Both men are leaders against civil rights equality in their states and across the country.
Board member and political strategist Aniello Alioto said, "this election broadens the gap between the people of the Catholic Church in America and the increasingly uncharitable demands of the Pope in Rome. It also threatens the broad American consensus that began with the election of President John F. Kennedy, allowing American Catholics to contribute more fully to the common good as both Americans and as Catholics. We are concerned that this election will result in a shift from the pastoral nature of American Catholicism to efforts to politicize in America the will of Rome."
Concern is amplified by the election of Archbishop Kurtz as the new USCCB Vice President. Archbishop Kurtz, as head the Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, has led the Catholic hierarchy's national campaign to deny marriage and family rights to gay and lesbian citizens. That campaign has been financially assisted by the national office of the Knights of Columbus, most recently through the production of videos that demean and discredit gay and lesbian relationships, as well as single parent and extended family households. Adams said, "American Catholics are alarmed when tax-exempt church resources are diverted from charity, education and parish work into political campaigns and veiled candidate endorsements."
"In his report from the ad-hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, Archbishop Kurtz makes it clear that our bishops are waging a new political campaign to change the laws in our country" Alioto said. The Committee's report compares court challenges to Proposition 8 in California and the federal Defense of Marriage Act to Roe v. Wade and the battle over reproductive rights. This results in a new "pro-family, pro-life" messaging strategy that harms all non-traditional as well as LGBT families. It contributes to the climate that permits bullying and harassment of youth from such families who become at higher risk for depression and suicide.
Catholics for Equality calls upon our bishops to pledge full transparency in all efforts to shift funding from our national charitable, pastoral and educational efforts into the Pope's interference to deny freedom and fairness in American politics. It calls on all Catholics of good conscience to monitor and challenge the priorities of our bishops.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Pope, cardinals don’t need prayer; they need to listen
Nov. 11, 2010
By Thomas P. Doyle
Recently I finished reading Xavier Rynne's monumental volume on the Second Vatican Council. I didn't read it when it was first published because I was struggling through theology, just trying to get a grip on the dogmatic and canonical mysteries of the Catholic church I was born into and into which I had thought I'd soon be ordained.
Reading the book now was more soul-jarring than had I read it then. What's so shocking?
At the council there were a significant number of bishops, archbishops and cardinals who actually had a handle on the real world and on the reasons the Church Triumphant left by Pius XII was so out of touch. This is shocking in light of the fact that these men were raised in a radically different church, steeped in clericalism, power and control.
Some of the men I read about had a much better grip on reality than most of the gilded hierarchs that have been inflicted on God's people over the past two decades. Pope John XXIII and his cohorts may not have liked everything they saw when they opened the windows of the clerical bunker, but at least they realized that before they condemned what they didn't know it might be smart to check it out.
Today's collection of bishops is radically different. Many of them, at least the ones who are regularly holding forth on what is wrong with everything around them, sound and act as if they are living in a hermetically sealedalternate reality. They are convinced that the world "out there" is wrong about most moral and ethical issues. They of course, being the divinely appointed teachers of the human race, are always right. They act and sound as if the only acceptable way for the world to exist is according to whatever norms, models and structures these satin and silk-enshrouded anachronisms hand down. They firmly believe the outside world, steeped as they claim, in secularism and relativism, must change to the extent that it
clearly reflects their myopic view of existence.
The pope keeps agonizing over these encroaching threats of "secularism" and "relativism." Many of the bishops, wanting of course to gain favor in the pontifical eyes, parrot the papal pronouncements in their own attempts to communicate to their "faithful." I have struggled to figure out just what the pope means. I am losing the struggle because I have only a smog covered clue … what he's afraid of is that people out there in the real world … the
abode of the vast majority who aren't Catholic clerics, don't think the way they're supposed to think and that means they don't think like he does.
The Vatican announced Nov. 8 that the pope would hold a meeting Nov. 19 of the world's cardinals, of which there are 183 according to the 2010 Annuario Pontificio, the topic of which will be the world-wide clergy sex abuse scandal. He's also inviting the latest batch of appointees although technically speaking they won't be real
cardinals until the following day when they get to put on their scarlet raiment for the first time.
The meeting, according to Vatican press dispatches, is supposed to include "prayer and reflection." If nothing else, the proposed gathering shows that the worldwide nightmare of clergy sex abuse, which the popes, cardinals and bishops have been desperately trying to shut down by every means imaginable, has finally gotten the pope's attention. If it has the pope's attention and he took the unprecedented step of calling this kind of meeting, you can be
sure a lot of the Vatican luminaries who surround the pope and "advise" him have finally realized that the problem isn't going away.
The trouble is that this will end up being another meaningless disappointment. The worldwide sex abuse nightmare doesn't need "prayer" and "reflection" now and it never needed it because these pious sound-bites are really ineffectual attempts to shift the attention from the gravity of the real problem. If prayer and reflection worked, the problem would have been gone long ago. What the pope and the cardinals really need is an unvarnished
assessment of just how horrendous the world-wide scourge really is and an unvarnished admission that the pope and the collected cardinals and bishops are not just part of the problem. They are the problem.
Pope John Paul II summoned the U.S. cardinals to Rome in April 2002 and told them sex abuse of a child is a crime and a sin. Duh!!!! After this meeting several of the cardinals continued to confirm their abrasive and uninformed attitudes by mouthing off to the effect that it's all a media exaggeration and that priests and bishops cannot be held accountable to civil authorities.
Nothing happened and nothing could have happened just as nothing can possibly happen in the upcoming extravaganza.
If the pope wants to get a real picture of the sex abuse phenomenon, presuming his emotions and intellect can handle it, he needs to talk to the right people. When he and these people get together all he needs to do is say is "Hello! Have some nice esperesso." Then he needs to sit quietly and listen, no matter how long it takes.
He needs to listen to the victims, not just for two minutes apiece as he has done with the dozen or so he's met, but for as long as it takes for him to get a slight glimpse of the horrific nature of this worldwide pandemic. From all he has said so far it's clear that he's a long way from "getting it." He needs to absorb their fears, their anger, their disappointments and he needs to hear their demands.
He needs to forget about defending the perverse actions of the bishops, archbishops and cardinals because there is no honest defense.
He needs to listen to the men and women survivors who have arisen from their prisons of fear and shame and have pulled other survivors together in world-wide support groups. He especially needs to listen to these people because they are the ones in the driver's seat of this whole debacle, not the churchmen who thought they had control of it throughout the decades and even centuries. The popes and the bishops never had control. If they did they would not have had to lie so much.
He needs to listen to some of the attorneys from the United States, Canada, Ireland and England, especially the ones the Exalted Lord Bishops have vilified because these same attorneys forced them to look at the damage they had caused. Many of these attorneys have done what the bishops and priests were either unable to do or afraid to do … they listened, they believed and they provided support.
He needs to listen to the psychologists and psychiatrists who have struggled to help so many victims find peace.
He needs to listen to the same mental health professionals who have tried in vain to wake the episcopal aristocracy up to the harsh reality that most Catholic priests are very immature and some deeply troubled. Unless something radical is done, the sex abuse debacle we have been living through will hardly be the last one.
He needs to listen to those who have been telling him that mandatory celibacy doesn't work.
He needs to listen to those very few priests and even fewer bishops who have stood with the victims and survivors, always at great cost to their own careers. He needs to listen well as they describe what it's like to try to help people whose souls have been shredded and who can't possibly believe in the same God the holds out.
Above all, the pope needs to sit and listen to the devout, faithful, generous and loyal mothers and fathers of the victims. He needs to hear from these men and women the anguish they felt when they learned their little boy or little girl had been raped and molested. He needs to see and hear the abject horror they experienced when that terrible blow was followed by one
much worse .. that the man who did this was a priest!
The pope and the cardinals are wasting their time and a lot of the people's money … money the donors naively thought would go towards helping those in need instead of supporting an anachronistic and hedonistic lifestyle. They are setting themselves up to deliver yet another elaborate public relations "happening" to the world. The Vatican spokesman keeps telling us the pope is deeply concerned about the clergy abuse "crisis," There is little doubt that he is, but not because of the massive harm done to countless victims and their families and to the disappointed faithful who are tired of waiting for the "church" to do something meaningful.
He and the cardinals are deeply concerned, but they're concerned for the wrong reasons. They see their credibility, their power and their relevance eroding at an ever increasing rate. They see a rapidly growing number of Catholics who refuse to be treated as children by the bishops and who pose a very serious threat to the crumbling myth that the pope and the bishops know what's best for all. They see the growing chasm between the moral code the
hierarchy is trying to persuade everyone, even non-Catholics, to accept and the reality of what is really happening out there in the world they are so afraid of.
This meeting will come and go as will the elaborate ceremony the next day when the pope will formally invest the 31 new members of the "Sacred" College. In the long run the most concrete effect of it all will be the added business for the Roman robe makers. The pope, the Vatican and the rest of the world's hierarchy will not bring about the needed change because they
are unable and not simply unwilling to do so. Their personal interests are far too deeply ingrained to allow then to make the sacrifices needed to step down from their thrones and be for the suffering and marginalized rather than for themselves.
The pope and the cardinals have betrayed the real church. They have perpetrated the sexual and spiritual violence just as much as the priests who physically violated the victims. They need to be willing to say "I hurt you" and not hide behind Vatican mumbo jumbo and double-speak.
They need to acknowledge that the formalities and legalities they have relied on to protect their own interests have been secondary and equally vicious acts of violence against the victims.
They need to admit that restitution is essential and deserved by the men and women abused by the immediate perpetrators but also by the church.
They need to acknowledge that they have intentionally tried to shift the responsibility for this worldwide debacle to other persons, to societal forces and even to the victims themselves and they need to admit without qualification that they, the hierarchs of the church, are solely responsible for the horrific damage to the victims and to the Body of Christ.
It is beyond hope that anything but more useless words will come out of this meeting. The fallout will be even more evidence that the institutional church is completely incapable of initiating a change in its self-destructive course.
Editor's Note: Read Eugene Kennedy's take on the pope's meeting with the
world's cardinals: Sex abuse doesn't
top cardinals' agenda -- literally.
[Tom Doyle is a priest, canon lawyer, addictions therapist and long-time
supporter of justice and compassion for clergy sex abuse victims.]
By Thomas P. Doyle
Recently I finished reading Xavier Rynne's monumental volume on the Second Vatican Council. I didn't read it when it was first published because I was struggling through theology, just trying to get a grip on the dogmatic and canonical mysteries of the Catholic church I was born into and into which I had thought I'd soon be ordained.
Reading the book now was more soul-jarring than had I read it then. What's so shocking?
At the council there were a significant number of bishops, archbishops and cardinals who actually had a handle on the real world and on the reasons the Church Triumphant left by Pius XII was so out of touch. This is shocking in light of the fact that these men were raised in a radically different church, steeped in clericalism, power and control.
Some of the men I read about had a much better grip on reality than most of the gilded hierarchs that have been inflicted on God's people over the past two decades. Pope John XXIII and his cohorts may not have liked everything they saw when they opened the windows of the clerical bunker, but at least they realized that before they condemned what they didn't know it might be smart to check it out.
Today's collection of bishops is radically different. Many of them, at least the ones who are regularly holding forth on what is wrong with everything around them, sound and act as if they are living in a hermetically sealedalternate reality. They are convinced that the world "out there" is wrong about most moral and ethical issues. They of course, being the divinely appointed teachers of the human race, are always right. They act and sound as if the only acceptable way for the world to exist is according to whatever norms, models and structures these satin and silk-enshrouded anachronisms hand down. They firmly believe the outside world, steeped as they claim, in secularism and relativism, must change to the extent that it
clearly reflects their myopic view of existence.
The pope keeps agonizing over these encroaching threats of "secularism" and "relativism." Many of the bishops, wanting of course to gain favor in the pontifical eyes, parrot the papal pronouncements in their own attempts to communicate to their "faithful." I have struggled to figure out just what the pope means. I am losing the struggle because I have only a smog covered clue … what he's afraid of is that people out there in the real world … the
abode of the vast majority who aren't Catholic clerics, don't think the way they're supposed to think and that means they don't think like he does.
The Vatican announced Nov. 8
cardinals until the following day when they get to put on their scarlet raiment for the first time.
The meeting, according to Vatican press dispatches, is supposed to include "prayer and reflection." If nothing else, the proposed gathering shows that the worldwide nightmare of clergy sex abuse, which the popes, cardinals and bishops have been desperately trying to shut down by every means imaginable, has finally gotten the pope's attention. If it has the pope's attention and he took the unprecedented step of calling this kind of meeting, you can be
sure a lot of the Vatican luminaries who surround the pope and "advise" him have finally realized that the problem isn't going away.
The trouble is that this will end up being another meaningless disappointment. The worldwide sex abuse nightmare doesn't need "prayer" and "reflection" now and it never needed it because these pious sound-bites are really ineffectual attempts to shift the attention from the gravity of the real problem. If prayer and reflection worked, the problem would have been gone long ago. What the pope and the cardinals really need is an unvarnished
assessment of just how horrendous the world-wide scourge really is and an unvarnished admission that the pope and the collected cardinals and bishops are not just part of the problem. They are the problem.
Pope John Paul II summoned the U.S. cardinals to Rome in April 2002 and told them sex abuse of a child is a crime and a sin. Duh!!!! After this meeting several of the cardinals continued to confirm their abrasive and uninformed attitudes by mouthing off to the effect that it's all a media exaggeration and that priests and bishops cannot be held accountable to civil authorities.
Nothing happened and nothing could have happened just as nothing can possibly happen in the upcoming extravaganza.
If the pope wants to get a real picture of the sex abuse phenomenon, presuming his emotions and intellect can handle it, he needs to talk to the right people. When he and these people get together all he needs to do is say is "Hello! Have some nice esperesso." Then he needs to sit quietly and listen, no matter how long it takes.
He needs to listen to the victims, not just for two minutes apiece as he has done with the dozen or so he's met, but for as long as it takes for him to get a slight glimpse of the horrific nature of this worldwide pandemic. From all he has said so far it's clear that he's a long way from "getting it." He needs to absorb their fears, their anger, their disappointments and he needs to hear their demands.
He needs to forget about defending the perverse actions of the bishops, archbishops and cardinals because there is no honest defense.
He needs to listen to the men and women survivors who have arisen from their prisons of fear and shame and have pulled other survivors together in world-wide support groups. He especially needs to listen to these people because they are the ones in the driver's seat of this whole debacle, not the churchmen who thought they had control of it throughout the decades and even centuries. The popes and the bishops never had control. If they did they would not have had to lie so much.
He needs to listen to some of the attorneys from the United States, Canada, Ireland and England, especially the ones the Exalted Lord Bishops have vilified because these same attorneys forced them to look at the damage they had caused. Many of these attorneys have done what the bishops and priests were either unable to do or afraid to do … they listened, they believed and they provided support.
He needs to listen to the psychologists and psychiatrists who have struggled to help so many victims find peace.
He needs to listen to the same mental health professionals who have tried in vain to wake the episcopal aristocracy up to the harsh reality that most Catholic priests are very immature and some deeply troubled. Unless something radical is done, the sex abuse debacle we have been living through will hardly be the last one.
He needs to listen to those who have been telling him that mandatory celibacy doesn't work.
He needs to listen to those very few priests and even fewer bishops who have stood with the victims and survivors, always at great cost to their own careers. He needs to listen well as they describe what it's like to try to help people whose souls have been shredded and who can't possibly believe in the same God the holds out.
Above all, the pope needs to sit and listen to the devout, faithful, generous and loyal mothers and fathers of the victims. He needs to hear from these men and women the anguish they felt when they learned their little boy or little girl had been raped and molested. He needs to see and hear the abject horror they experienced when that terrible blow was followed by one
much worse .. that the man who did this was a priest!
The pope and the cardinals are wasting their time and a lot of the people's money … money the donors naively thought would go towards helping those in need instead of supporting an anachronistic and hedonistic lifestyle. They are setting themselves up to deliver yet another elaborate public relations "happening" to the world. The Vatican spokesman keeps telling us the pope is deeply concerned about the clergy abuse "crisis," There is little doubt that he is, but not because of the massive harm done to countless victims and their families and to the disappointed faithful who are tired of waiting for the "church" to do something meaningful.
He and the cardinals are deeply concerned, but they're concerned for the wrong reasons. They see their credibility, their power and their relevance eroding at an ever increasing rate. They see a rapidly growing number of Catholics who refuse to be treated as children by the bishops and who pose a very serious threat to the crumbling myth that the pope and the bishops know what's best for all. They see the growing chasm between the moral code the
hierarchy is trying to persuade everyone, even non-Catholics, to accept and the reality of what is really happening out there in the world they are so afraid of.
This meeting will come and go as will the elaborate ceremony the next day when the pope will formally invest the 31 new members of the "Sacred" College. In the long run the most concrete effect of it all will be the added business for the Roman robe makers. The pope, the Vatican and the rest of the world's hierarchy will not bring about the needed change because they
are unable and not simply unwilling to do so. Their personal interests are far too deeply ingrained to allow then to make the sacrifices needed to step down from their thrones and be for the suffering and marginalized rather than for themselves.
The pope and the cardinals have betrayed the real church. They have perpetrated the sexual and spiritual violence just as much as the priests who physically violated the victims. They need to be willing to say "I hurt you" and not hide behind Vatican mumbo jumbo and double-speak.
They need to acknowledge that the formalities and legalities they have relied on to protect their own interests have been secondary and equally vicious acts of violence against the victims.
They need to admit that restitution is essential and deserved by the men and women abused by the immediate perpetrators but also by the church.
They need to acknowledge that they have intentionally tried to shift the responsibility for this worldwide debacle to other persons, to societal forces and even to the victims themselves and they need to admit without qualification that they, the hierarchs of the church, are solely responsible for the horrific damage to the victims and to the Body of Christ.
It is beyond hope that anything but more useless words will come out of this meeting. The fallout will be even more evidence that the institutional church is completely incapable of initiating a change in its self-destructive course.
Editor's Note: Read Eugene Kennedy's take on the pope's meeting with the
world's cardinals: Sex abuse
top cardinals' agenda -- literally.
[Tom Doyle is a priest, canon lawyer, addictions therapist and long-time
supporter of justice and compassion for clergy sex abuse victims.]
Saturday, November 6, 2010
"IF WE WAIT, RENTAPRIEST.COM WILL GO AWAY"
“If we wait, Rentapriest.com will go away”
In the late 1960s when it was expected that the Second Vatican Council would vote to end mandatory celibacy in the Catholic Church, priests were poised to get married. Then Pope John 23rd died and Pope Paul VI was in charge. Mandatory celibacy and birth control went out the same window that John 23rd had opened for this new fresh air to come from the Holy Spirit.
Shocked by the results of Vatican II, the climate in the Catholic priesthood changed and a mass exodus began that lasted for almost twenty-five years. Over 25,000 priests in the U.S. left their clerical ministry and nine out of ten did so to get married, many of them marrying nuns, according to a sociological study done in 1985 and reported in “Full Pews and Empty Altars” (Schoenherr and Young, 1990).
Priests got jobs, started families and became part of the mainstream—some may even be your neighbors or co-workers today. When they left, however, resentment set in by the hierarchy, as one archbishop admitted; some were blackballed in their communities and couldn’t get decent work, and they were told by their bishops that under no circumstances were they allowed to function as priests—in fact, “don’t even think of celebrating Mass” and “don’t tell anyone you’re a priest.” Some were forced to move as much as 500 miles away because of “scandal,” as the church put it.
Through the efforts of one married priest Canon Lawyer, Delmar Smolinski of Michigan, research was conducted in the Code of Canon Law to find church laws that validate the priests’ ordination, and “what about those canons that apply to ministry?” Twenty-one canons were in fact found, beginning with, “…after it has been validly received, sacred ordination never becomes invalid,” (290). More importantly, in the laity section of the Code of Canon Laws lies power to invite a married priest to any sacrament for “any just cause” (1335) and that he “may not deny the Sacraments to those who opportunely ask for them” (843).
While Canon Laws may not be the reason hundreds of thousands of people have contacted rentapriest.com over the last 15 years, it has helped many priests realize that what the bishops told them upon leaving about their priesthood and ministry was not true. It may also explain the reason there has been no cease and desist from the Catholic institution. What CITI Ministries is doing in promoting their availability falls within these Canon Laws—we are valid. The people may not care, but CITI protects married priests in its defiance of the hierarchy, but not its laws.
A few facts:
1. In 1996, Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) based at Georgetown University, conducted a study of Catholics who no longer attended Catholic Church. The results, reported in Maine’s Church World in Feb. 1996 indicated that 73.3% of American Catholics (48 million) had stopped attending Catholic Church. Clergy sexual abuse revelations since 2002 only added to that figure so the publicly held FIGURE OF 30 million is grossly incorrect.
2. When CITI MINISTRIES INC first went into “business” in 1992, it was with the notion that married priests would be invited by bishops and the parishioners to fill in where there were shortages in the church buildings. However, no one called.
3. Much to our surprise after some national publicity due to the name Rent A Priest (received by the Holy Spirit's inspiration in a dream), calls came from the unchurched. While mostly for marriage and remarriage because of denials by their pastor, many calls to rentapriest were also surprisingly received from those whose babies were refused baptism because the parents no longer attended Sunday Mass and “put money in the collection plate."
But, people get complacent and priests get even more complacent. Without the availability of married priests, many important life cycle events may not have the Catholic traditions we grew up with. Married priests may forget what was afforded to them by CITI Ministries by making this service available was out of their lives, in some cases for as much as 20 or 25 years.
Now, CITI is struggling to stay afloat. Is this the end of our mission? Maybe it’s the end of the commercial aspect of our mission and the referrals for marriages are taking care of themselves. Is this all married priests were looking for? A marriage business?
If it's the end of our mission, why are Home Churches popping up? A few of the laity are beginning to notice the value of CITI/Rentapriest because of its association with Roman Catholic married priests. In the past three years, 75 lay people have become support members of CITI. In addition, a clergy sexual abuse survivor and his wife who were responsible for starting a Home Church with married priests are now members of the CITI Board.
While these numbers may not seem like a lot, we are remindful that in 1994 with all its efforts at Corpus/FCM/CTA and other church reform meetings, CITI had only signed up six married priests for its referral service because the others were skeptical. Home Churches are a new phenomenon with Catholics, especially the ones on the fringe, and they too are skeptical. It will take time, but CITI’s laity support member base grew by 23% in 2010 over 2009. Something is going on!
Please help support this effort to the end. We’re crossing a new threshold and really becoming the lay organization that we have been promoting, and we really need your help to continue. There is nothing better that the institution would like at this point than to see us disappear. That is their mantra. Will we succumb to their “If we wait, Rentapriest will go away?” or will we continue to support an organization that has (maybe too quietly) been using our ministry as our protest or our advocacy -- we don't picket -- no time because people need us for spiritual assistance. Close to a half million folks have contacted CITI/rentapriest for a free married priest referral in the past 15 years or so.
How can you help? If you’re a married priest certified member, continue your certification with an added donation. If you’re a sacramental recipient, become a support member at $50 per year for the couple. If you are a Home Church member, do likewise; maybe set up a special collection once a month to benefit CITI's work. If you are none of these things but believe in our ministry, please send a donation so it can continue--so we can continue to recruit married priests and so we can continue to supply referrals. CITI is a 501.c3 non profit and all donations are tax deductible. You can donate online at www.rentapriest.com or send a donation to CITI Ministries, Inc. 14 Middle Street, Brunswick, ME 04011.
Thank you and God bless you.
In behalf of all of us,
Sincerely,
Louise Haggett, Founder/President
CITI Ministries, Inc.
In the late 1960s when it was expected that the Second Vatican Council would vote to end mandatory celibacy in the Catholic Church, priests were poised to get married. Then Pope John 23rd died and Pope Paul VI was in charge. Mandatory celibacy and birth control went out the same window that John 23rd had opened for this new fresh air to come from the Holy Spirit.
Shocked by the results of Vatican II, the climate in the Catholic priesthood changed and a mass exodus began that lasted for almost twenty-five years. Over 25,000 priests in the U.S. left their clerical ministry and nine out of ten did so to get married, many of them marrying nuns, according to a sociological study done in 1985 and reported in “Full Pews and Empty Altars” (Schoenherr and Young, 1990).
Priests got jobs, started families and became part of the mainstream—some may even be your neighbors or co-workers today. When they left, however, resentment set in by the hierarchy, as one archbishop admitted; some were blackballed in their communities and couldn’t get decent work, and they were told by their bishops that under no circumstances were they allowed to function as priests—in fact, “don’t even think of celebrating Mass” and “don’t tell anyone you’re a priest.” Some were forced to move as much as 500 miles away because of “scandal,” as the church put it.
Through the efforts of one married priest Canon Lawyer, Delmar Smolinski of Michigan, research was conducted in the Code of Canon Law to find church laws that validate the priests’ ordination, and “what about those canons that apply to ministry?” Twenty-one canons were in fact found, beginning with, “…after it has been validly received, sacred ordination never becomes invalid,” (290). More importantly, in the laity section of the Code of Canon Laws lies power to invite a married priest to any sacrament for “any just cause” (1335) and that he “may not deny the Sacraments to those who opportunely ask for them” (843).
While Canon Laws may not be the reason hundreds of thousands of people have contacted rentapriest.com over the last 15 years, it has helped many priests realize that what the bishops told them upon leaving about their priesthood and ministry was not true. It may also explain the reason there has been no cease and desist from the Catholic institution. What CITI Ministries is doing in promoting their availability falls within these Canon Laws—we are valid. The people may not care, but CITI protects married priests in its defiance of the hierarchy, but not its laws.
A few facts:
1. In 1996, Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) based at Georgetown University, conducted a study of Catholics who no longer attended Catholic Church. The results, reported in Maine’s Church World in Feb. 1996 indicated that 73.3% of American Catholics (48 million) had stopped attending Catholic Church. Clergy sexual abuse revelations since 2002 only added to that figure so the publicly held FIGURE OF 30 million is grossly incorrect.
2. When CITI MINISTRIES INC first went into “business” in 1992, it was with the notion that married priests would be invited by bishops and the parishioners to fill in where there were shortages in the church buildings. However, no one called.
3. Much to our surprise after some national publicity due to the name Rent A Priest (received by the Holy Spirit's inspiration in a dream), calls came from the unchurched. While mostly for marriage and remarriage because of denials by their pastor, many calls to rentapriest were also surprisingly received from those whose babies were refused baptism because the parents no longer attended Sunday Mass and “put money in the collection plate."
But, people get complacent and priests get even more complacent. Without the availability of married priests, many important life cycle events may not have the Catholic traditions we grew up with. Married priests may forget what was afforded to them by CITI Ministries by making this service available was out of their lives, in some cases for as much as 20 or 25 years.
Now, CITI is struggling to stay afloat. Is this the end of our mission? Maybe it’s the end of the commercial aspect of our mission and the referrals for marriages are taking care of themselves. Is this all married priests were looking for? A marriage business?
If it's the end of our mission, why are Home Churches popping up? A few of the laity are beginning to notice the value of CITI/Rentapriest because of its association with Roman Catholic married priests. In the past three years, 75 lay people have become support members of CITI. In addition, a clergy sexual abuse survivor and his wife who were responsible for starting a Home Church with married priests are now members of the CITI Board.
While these numbers may not seem like a lot, we are remindful that in 1994 with all its efforts at Corpus/FCM/CTA and other church reform meetings, CITI had only signed up six married priests for its referral service because the others were skeptical. Home Churches are a new phenomenon with Catholics, especially the ones on the fringe, and they too are skeptical. It will take time, but CITI’s laity support member base grew by 23% in 2010 over 2009. Something is going on!
Please help support this effort to the end. We’re crossing a new threshold and really becoming the lay organization that we have been promoting, and we really need your help to continue. There is nothing better that the institution would like at this point than to see us disappear. That is their mantra. Will we succumb to their “If we wait, Rentapriest will go away?” or will we continue to support an organization that has (maybe too quietly) been using our ministry as our protest or our advocacy -- we don't picket -- no time because people need us for spiritual assistance. Close to a half million folks have contacted CITI/rentapriest for a free married priest referral in the past 15 years or so.
How can you help? If you’re a married priest certified member, continue your certification with an added donation. If you’re a sacramental recipient, become a support member at $50 per year for the couple. If you are a Home Church member, do likewise; maybe set up a special collection once a month to benefit CITI's work. If you are none of these things but believe in our ministry, please send a donation so it can continue--so we can continue to recruit married priests and so we can continue to supply referrals. CITI is a 501.c3 non profit and all donations are tax deductible. You can donate online at www.rentapriest.com or send a donation to CITI Ministries, Inc. 14 Middle Street, Brunswick, ME 04011.
Thank you and God bless you.
In behalf of all of us,
Sincerely,
Louise Haggett, Founder/President
CITI Ministries, Inc.
Friday, October 22, 2010
John Paul II: The real reason for church polarization
by Richard McBrien
http://ncronline.org/blogs/essays-theology/john-paul-ii-real-reason-church-polarization
In mid-August a group of young theologians, all under the age of 40, teaching at Catholic colleges, universities, and seminaries met at Fordham University in New York City to discover ways to overcome the polarization they find in today’s Catholic Church.
Although the group did not draft a mission statement as such, it formulated a paragraph as a kind of self-description of their work on behalf of the Church:
“We are young Catholic theologians at colleges, universities or seminaries, who desire to shape our careers in ways that reduce polarization in the American Catholic church. Each of us came of age at some distance from the ideological debates of Vatican II and the immediate postconciliar era, and we believe that our Catholic generation has new opportunities to heal divisions in the body of Christ. We proceed with profound humility toward the previous generation’s tilling of common ground, even as we hope to plant new seeds of faith and charity in our church. As Christians committed to the unity of the Holy Spirit, we approach our task with intellectual solidarity toward one another.”
What does the Fordham group mean by the “ideological” character of the debates at Vatican II? Did those debates represent differences in theological and pastoral emphases, or were they reflective of radically different understandings of the nature, mission, and structural operations of the Church?
Were the debates, however characterized, carried on by two more or less evenly divided groups, or were we dealing instead with an overwhelming majority of bishops and theologians on the one hand and a relatively tiny minority of bishops and their theological allies on the other?
One of the organizers of the Fordham group is a former student of mine at the University of Notre Dame, Charles Camosy. He is now an assistant professor of moral theology at Fordham. Camosy wrote that the controversy at last year’s graduation ceremony at Notre Dame “helped spur the group’s commitment to moving past the polarization that often afflicts internal Catholic discussions.”
But how exactly were the disagreements about President Obama’s invitation to address the graduates of Notre Dame examples of polarization in the Church? And how did these disagree-ments “spur the [Fordham] group’s commitment to [move] past the polarization?” Camosy doesn’t say.
Camosy did suggest, however, that the divisions within the Church were “widened and deep-ened” as a result of the controversy. Again, he doesn’t say how.
He expressed admiration for graduating seniors who cheered President Obama, as well as for those who staged a separate ceremony in protest.
The impression may have been left, however, that both sides were about equal in size. Such was not the case.
The overwhelming majority of graduates were in the Joyce Athletic and Convocation Center. As soon as a few adults who had received entry tickets from anti-Obama students began to shout epithets at the President, the assembled student body -- spontaneously and without any prompt-ing -- began chanting “We are ND!” and continued doing so until the disrupters were removed from the building.
To be sure, the alternative ceremony held elsewhere on campus was conducted peacefully and with dignity, but it never consisted of more than a tiny minority of graduates and their supporters from outside the university.
If the Fordham group of young Catholic theologians were guilty of anything -- beyond their evident good will -- it may have been naivete.
They implied that an older generation of Catholic theologians may have been somehow responsible for the polarization in the Catholic Church by fomenting the so-called culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s “through which much of the council and its aftermath were read.”
But the Fordham group’s sense of history seems truncated. Have they forgotten that after Pope Paul VI, the man elected to the papacy was John Paul I -- the Patriarch of Venice -- and that he died after only 33 days in office?
Had John Paul I not died prematurely, we would never have had John Paul II, who came into office with a clearly conceived plan to re-make the face of the hierarchy -- a plan that involved the dismantling of much of what Paul VI tried to create, particularly a cadre of pastoral bishops committed to carrying out the reforms and renewal launched, under Paul VI’s direction, by Vatican II.
Thus, if there is any single reason why polarization exists in the Catholic Church today it is because of the type of bishops whom John Paul II appointed and promoted within the hierarchy over the course of his 26 and a half years in office.
Any other explanation of the polarization that now afflicts the Church is simply naive.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/essays-theology/john-paul-ii-real-reason-church-polarization
In mid-August a group of young theologians, all under the age of 40, teaching at Catholic colleges, universities, and seminaries met at Fordham University in New York City to discover ways to overcome the polarization they find in today’s Catholic Church.
Although the group did not draft a mission statement as such, it formulated a paragraph as a kind of self-description of their work on behalf of the Church:
“We are young Catholic theologians at colleges, universities or seminaries, who desire to shape our careers in ways that reduce polarization in the American Catholic church. Each of us came of age at some distance from the ideological debates of Vatican II and the immediate postconciliar era, and we believe that our Catholic generation has new opportunities to heal divisions in the body of Christ. We proceed with profound humility toward the previous generation’s tilling of common ground, even as we hope to plant new seeds of faith and charity in our church. As Christians committed to the unity of the Holy Spirit, we approach our task with intellectual solidarity toward one another.”
What does the Fordham group mean by the “ideological” character of the debates at Vatican II? Did those debates represent differences in theological and pastoral emphases, or were they reflective of radically different understandings of the nature, mission, and structural operations of the Church?
Were the debates, however characterized, carried on by two more or less evenly divided groups, or were we dealing instead with an overwhelming majority of bishops and theologians on the one hand and a relatively tiny minority of bishops and their theological allies on the other?
One of the organizers of the Fordham group is a former student of mine at the University of Notre Dame, Charles Camosy. He is now an assistant professor of moral theology at Fordham. Camosy wrote that the controversy at last year’s graduation ceremony at Notre Dame “helped spur the group’s commitment to moving past the polarization that often afflicts internal Catholic discussions.”
But how exactly were the disagreements about President Obama’s invitation to address the graduates of Notre Dame examples of polarization in the Church? And how did these disagree-ments “spur the [Fordham] group’s commitment to [move] past the polarization?” Camosy doesn’t say.
Camosy did suggest, however, that the divisions within the Church were “widened and deep-ened” as a result of the controversy. Again, he doesn’t say how.
He expressed admiration for graduating seniors who cheered President Obama, as well as for those who staged a separate ceremony in protest.
The impression may have been left, however, that both sides were about equal in size. Such was not the case.
The overwhelming majority of graduates were in the Joyce Athletic and Convocation Center. As soon as a few adults who had received entry tickets from anti-Obama students began to shout epithets at the President, the assembled student body -- spontaneously and without any prompt-ing -- began chanting “We are ND!” and continued doing so until the disrupters were removed from the building.
To be sure, the alternative ceremony held elsewhere on campus was conducted peacefully and with dignity, but it never consisted of more than a tiny minority of graduates and their supporters from outside the university.
If the Fordham group of young Catholic theologians were guilty of anything -- beyond their evident good will -- it may have been naivete.
They implied that an older generation of Catholic theologians may have been somehow responsible for the polarization in the Catholic Church by fomenting the so-called culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s “through which much of the council and its aftermath were read.”
But the Fordham group’s sense of history seems truncated. Have they forgotten that after Pope Paul VI, the man elected to the papacy was John Paul I -- the Patriarch of Venice -- and that he died after only 33 days in office?
Had John Paul I not died prematurely, we would never have had John Paul II, who came into office with a clearly conceived plan to re-make the face of the hierarchy -- a plan that involved the dismantling of much of what Paul VI tried to create, particularly a cadre of pastoral bishops committed to carrying out the reforms and renewal launched, under Paul VI’s direction, by Vatican II.
Thus, if there is any single reason why polarization exists in the Catholic Church today it is because of the type of bishops whom John Paul II appointed and promoted within the hierarchy over the course of his 26 and a half years in office.
Any other explanation of the polarization that now afflicts the Church is simply naive.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Open Letter to the Bishop of Fresno
October 14, 2010
Dear Bishop Steinbock
Because I count myself among the people of God, I thank you for writing to me about the fact that a judge has ruled that denying civil marriage to LGBT people is unjust. Your 10 point letter shows that his decision worries you greatly. While I am not sure what you fear will happen once this injustice has been rectified, I have some guesses that puzzle me. I think you deserve a response that may give you some peace of mind. I'd like to address your 10 points with the hope that you will stop your campaign against marriage equality and rejoice in the unencumbered love of God for all the people to whom you wrote. My responses are in italics.
Bishop John T. Steinbock
Homosexual Marriage in California
My dear people of God,
How is one to react to a single judge declaring that homosexuals have a right to be married, overturning the clear will of the majority of the people as expressed in proposition 8? Here are ten brief thoughts:
1. The judge, who is homosexual himself, ethically should have recused himself as he is in the position to benefit financially from a possible homosexual marriage for himself, with tax benefits, etc. His impartiality can certainly be questioned.
I was startled to read your words questioning the impartiality of the judge. Judges come in a variety of colors and predispositions. The best ones deliver sound decisions and rise through the ranks gaining respect for their knowledge of law and their ability to wield it. If the shoe had been on the other foot, the heterosexual one, would you have denigrated that judge's ability to be impartial? Also, I think it is inaccurate and dismissive to label a person as "homosexual" because we no longer know what that word denotes. Does he live with a man? Does he just have sex with strangers? Does he have a set of fetishes not shared by the majority of the LGBT community? Are you acquainted with the private sexual practice of that judge? Have you discussed with him his sexual desires and practices? Have you observed him having sex? Unless you have, you should be hesitant about labeling him as anything but a well respected judge. Gay sex, like straight sex, has a broad bandwidth of possibility. The people of God to whom you have written know well that the sex one married couple practices in the privacy of the domestic bedroom may be nothing like the sex their neighbors have.
So, my response to your first point is twofold: judges can retain their individuality while making wise decisions, and broadly labeling a person's sexuality unless you have had sex with him/her is a dangerous venture. For all we know, that judge may have had sex with more women than have you or I....
2. The judge redefined "marriage," actually making it the same as "a committed relationship or friendship" between any two persons, with no relationship essentially to children or family.
As a consecrated bishop, you yourself regularly redefine civil marriage. You do not see it as valid in the eyes of God. That is why you perform sacramental marriages. You yourself really do not hold civil marriage in high regard. You certainly do not consider it the equivalent of Catholic sacramental marriage. If you did, your sacrament of marriage would be little more than gilding the lily. Civil marriage - gay or straight - retains an essential relationship to the possibility of children and family. When an LGBT couple with children comes forward to be married they are doing so to make solid a foundation of health, safety and happiness for themselves and their children in a world of temporary and uncommitted relationships that are little more than emotional driftwood. How can we but rejoice in this for the sake of our own spiritual well being and for the good of the children involved? I hope that someday you will spend an afternoon with some children raised by LGBT couples - just you and them. I strongly believe that experience might change your perspective.
Also, I suspect this second point of your letter will sting the many Catholic couples who are childless by dint of plumbing or old age. Are their marriages inferior because they don't have children? Do those couples not constitute a family? I think you are skating on some thin ice when you make this distinction.
3. The ruling by its very arguments is imposing the homosexual agenda on the rest of society, and is a form of social engineering according to the judge's ideology.
I do not think there is a "gay agenda". I am gay, but I have no agenda, and my marriage to my partner of 26 years came with absolutely no desire to impose anything on the rest of society. I simply wanted the benefits and rights owed me as a taxpaying citizen of the USA. An agenda is a list of things the accomplishment for which one intends to work. LGBT activists with agendae are an extremely small group. Like the minutemen of Lexington and Concord, they fight so that we can simply stay home and live our little lives in peace and without menace. The overwhelming majority of LGBT people do not wish to change society. They simply wish to be free of oppression and persecution. I suspect you will empathize with that sentiment and I am guessing that ordinarily you do not see this issue from that perspective.
4. It is incredible that the judge literally accuses the millions who voted for proposition 8 of having ill will and discriminatory intent in their vote. How prejudiced and condemnatory can a judge be who is accusing others of prejudice? This is insulting to every one who believes that marriage is a divine institution.
Again, the judge was really not talking about the divine institution of sacramental marriage. That is your province. He and we are talking about civil marriage which is largely a contract governing the disposition of assets. The judge protected the rights of individuals, just as previous judges protected the rights of blacks and all the minorities who comprise this many splendored country. That is why we have laws and judges. To rectify ourselves when we need it. To accomplish good when we can't get there as a crowd.
5. The judge is finding a right in our Constitution that is not present in any way.
I don't quite know how to address this rather astounding statement other than to say that most grade schoolers learning the Constitution for the first time could probably cite the sections that invoke this judge's decision.
6. Human law at many times can be at variance with divine law. This is just one example. Another example in our country would be the so called "right" to have an abortion; another example would be the so called "right" now in some states to euthanasia. Let us never mistake human law as the law of God.
Yes, Your Excellency, let us never mistake human law for the law of God. Just as we have managed to survive and prosper in a country in which abortion and artificial birth control and euthanasia and booze and gambling and prostitution and medical marijuana, corn oil and a slew of other shocking temptations are ours for the having in any number of states, equality in marriage will not cause the walls of Catholicism in America to tumble. Once marriage equality is the law of the land, the sun will shine as it always does, you and I may argue about the merits of various other laws, children will be born and will make lives for themselves by the sweat of their brow, and folks will still die questioning the meaning of it all and hoping that they have done the right thing in this world. What's to fear? I've always wondered why men like you expend so much energy trying to control stuff like this. Why not simply trust the grace of God and that powerful wind that is the Holy Spirit? A wind that blows where it will and can never be contained by the likes of you or me.
7. We must emphasize all the more the true nature of marriage as designed by God, both to ourselves and to our children. Lord only knows what will now be taught in our public schools regarding marriage because of this ruling. It will certainly not be the traditional definition and understanding of "marriage."
I agree with you 100% about this point. I would like to remind you that those very same children already have friends and relatives who are in committed same-sex relationships. The fact of LGBT coupling and marriage will not be news to them. Things that shock and astound you and me barely induce a yawn in the mouths of kids. Gay marriage has already been assimilated in our culture, and surveys show that kids are OK with the concept. (Check out the recent surveys on "Catholics for Equality" to understand the fact that your youngest Catholics have already resolved this issue.) This is the next generation of Catholic kids who will comprise your future flock, not something that will happen long after we are gone. They already see "gay" as a non-issue. Their message to us is "Get over it." Also, don't you have any Catholic schools in the diocese of Fresno? Why not worry about how you will teach marriage to the students in your own schools rather than in public schools?
8. A "true" marriage is a unique relationship between one man and one woman and it is designed to procreate life and form a family, for the good of the children and of society. This is of divine origin and not of human origin.
Whenever someone restates a conclusion as a premise for reaching that conclusion, chances are that that someone has reached a point of exasperation that has short-circuited his ability to argue a position. I am guessing that is what happened to you here. Your 8th statement simply and flatly restates your conclusion without adding any rationale for it. Also, Americans are very hesitant to accept a teaching when the teacher says "This is true because it is of divine origin". In other words "This is what God wants, and I know, because he told me." I'm guessing you may have finished your list and found that you had nine things to say. You then added this one to make it an even ten. We've all done that from time to time, so I'm giving you a pass on this one.
9. We are seeing the result of society separating the gift of sex from bringing forth life, which can infect all of us. More and more people in our society now justify not simply homosexual relationships, but living together without marriage, fornication, sex before marriage, sex outside of marriage, prostitution, contraception, quick and easy divorce. All of these lead us to seeing children as secondary, and self-love becoming more important than self-giving love, which leads to a narcissistic society, with people never really growing up.
You are absolutely right about this, Your Excellency. And the American Roman Catholic clergy (whose patron saint is Peter Pan) are the perfect illustration of your point. If only they had children of their own, they would be less inclined to, as you say, separate the gift of sex from the bringing forth of life. May I assume that you are implying that we ought to have a married clergy?
10. The good old Baltimore Catechism tells us: "The effects of the Sacrament of Matrimony are: 1st, to sanctify the love of husband and wife; 2nd, to give them grace to bear with each other's weaknesses; 3rd, to enable them to bring up their children in the fear and love of God." (BC#1 285)
I still have the Baltimore catechism that I used as a child. Your citations from it are beautiful and any LGBT couple seeking marriage will want those effects. Again, the catechism is talking about the Sacrament of Matrimony, not civil marriage. I hope that once marriage equality becomes the law of the land, you will retain the right to deny my husband and me your Sacrament of Matrimony since that is what you seem energetically to desire and because, as I have stated, I have no agenda. I won't be protesting outside the doors of your church. In fact, I doubt many will disturb the dust on the steps up to those doors as you valiantly protect the exclusivity of your Sacrament of Matrimony.
Let us pray for this judge, for our children, for our society. Lord knows we all need it.
In conclusion, Your Excellency, my thanks for your letter which gave me the opportunity to clarify my thoughts about marriage equality. Your letter also reminded me of the huge gulf between you and me. You are a good servant of the Catholic Church. I have never felt called by God to be a servant. I don't think God desires servitude. Servants have daily agendae which they discharge for compensation. Their employment is conditional upon performance. I am more strongly banking on a story Jesus himself told about the prodigal son. When the father sees his son in the distance as he returns to his father's house after leading a picaresque life, he runs forth to greet him. He doesn't ask the wayward son what he's been up to. He doesn't care about that. He doesn't demand groveling or payback. He calls for a celebration and he overwhelms his son with love, like the rush of a tsunami.
In this world, I've known many priests, bishops and cardinals. The best ones were those who simply did not stand in the way of the grace of God. The fact that some of them were promiscuous or alcoholic or mavericks didn't matter. They gave consolation to the broken and direction to the lost. They had no agendae. They had no rules. They had no fears. They didn't need them because they knew God and they trusted God. You and I should do the same so that when we approach our father's house and find out that he wasn't keeping a list of our tasks and accomplishments after all, we won't be disappointed and we'll be seated not like servants, but at his right hand, life family, like children, like lovers.
Yours among the people of God,
Tony Adams
Dear Bishop Steinbock
Because I count myself among the people of God, I thank you for writing to me about the fact that a judge has ruled that denying civil marriage to LGBT people is unjust. Your 10 point letter shows that his decision worries you greatly. While I am not sure what you fear will happen once this injustice has been rectified, I have some guesses that puzzle me. I think you deserve a response that may give you some peace of mind. I'd like to address your 10 points with the hope that you will stop your campaign against marriage equality and rejoice in the unencumbered love of God for all the people to whom you wrote. My responses are in italics.
Bishop John T. Steinbock
Homosexual Marriage in California
My dear people of God,
How is one to react to a single judge declaring that homosexuals have a right to be married, overturning the clear will of the majority of the people as expressed in proposition 8? Here are ten brief thoughts:
1. The judge, who is homosexual himself, ethically should have recused himself as he is in the position to benefit financially from a possible homosexual marriage for himself, with tax benefits, etc. His impartiality can certainly be questioned.
I was startled to read your words questioning the impartiality of the judge. Judges come in a variety of colors and predispositions. The best ones deliver sound decisions and rise through the ranks gaining respect for their knowledge of law and their ability to wield it. If the shoe had been on the other foot, the heterosexual one, would you have denigrated that judge's ability to be impartial? Also, I think it is inaccurate and dismissive to label a person as "homosexual" because we no longer know what that word denotes. Does he live with a man? Does he just have sex with strangers? Does he have a set of fetishes not shared by the majority of the LGBT community? Are you acquainted with the private sexual practice of that judge? Have you discussed with him his sexual desires and practices? Have you observed him having sex? Unless you have, you should be hesitant about labeling him as anything but a well respected judge. Gay sex, like straight sex, has a broad bandwidth of possibility. The people of God to whom you have written know well that the sex one married couple practices in the privacy of the domestic bedroom may be nothing like the sex their neighbors have.
So, my response to your first point is twofold: judges can retain their individuality while making wise decisions, and broadly labeling a person's sexuality unless you have had sex with him/her is a dangerous venture. For all we know, that judge may have had sex with more women than have you or I....
2. The judge redefined "marriage," actually making it the same as "a committed relationship or friendship" between any two persons, with no relationship essentially to children or family.
As a consecrated bishop, you yourself regularly redefine civil marriage. You do not see it as valid in the eyes of God. That is why you perform sacramental marriages. You yourself really do not hold civil marriage in high regard. You certainly do not consider it the equivalent of Catholic sacramental marriage. If you did, your sacrament of marriage would be little more than gilding the lily. Civil marriage - gay or straight - retains an essential relationship to the possibility of children and family. When an LGBT couple with children comes forward to be married they are doing so to make solid a foundation of health, safety and happiness for themselves and their children in a world of temporary and uncommitted relationships that are little more than emotional driftwood. How can we but rejoice in this for the sake of our own spiritual well being and for the good of the children involved? I hope that someday you will spend an afternoon with some children raised by LGBT couples - just you and them. I strongly believe that experience might change your perspective.
Also, I suspect this second point of your letter will sting the many Catholic couples who are childless by dint of plumbing or old age. Are their marriages inferior because they don't have children? Do those couples not constitute a family? I think you are skating on some thin ice when you make this distinction.
3. The ruling by its very arguments is imposing the homosexual agenda on the rest of society, and is a form of social engineering according to the judge's ideology.
I do not think there is a "gay agenda". I am gay, but I have no agenda, and my marriage to my partner of 26 years came with absolutely no desire to impose anything on the rest of society. I simply wanted the benefits and rights owed me as a taxpaying citizen of the USA. An agenda is a list of things the accomplishment for which one intends to work. LGBT activists with agendae are an extremely small group. Like the minutemen of Lexington and Concord, they fight so that we can simply stay home and live our little lives in peace and without menace. The overwhelming majority of LGBT people do not wish to change society. They simply wish to be free of oppression and persecution. I suspect you will empathize with that sentiment and I am guessing that ordinarily you do not see this issue from that perspective.
4. It is incredible that the judge literally accuses the millions who voted for proposition 8 of having ill will and discriminatory intent in their vote. How prejudiced and condemnatory can a judge be who is accusing others of prejudice? This is insulting to every one who believes that marriage is a divine institution.
Again, the judge was really not talking about the divine institution of sacramental marriage. That is your province. He and we are talking about civil marriage which is largely a contract governing the disposition of assets. The judge protected the rights of individuals, just as previous judges protected the rights of blacks and all the minorities who comprise this many splendored country. That is why we have laws and judges. To rectify ourselves when we need it. To accomplish good when we can't get there as a crowd.
5. The judge is finding a right in our Constitution that is not present in any way.
I don't quite know how to address this rather astounding statement other than to say that most grade schoolers learning the Constitution for the first time could probably cite the sections that invoke this judge's decision.
6. Human law at many times can be at variance with divine law. This is just one example. Another example in our country would be the so called "right" to have an abortion; another example would be the so called "right" now in some states to euthanasia. Let us never mistake human law as the law of God.
Yes, Your Excellency, let us never mistake human law for the law of God. Just as we have managed to survive and prosper in a country in which abortion and artificial birth control and euthanasia and booze and gambling and prostitution and medical marijuana, corn oil and a slew of other shocking temptations are ours for the having in any number of states, equality in marriage will not cause the walls of Catholicism in America to tumble. Once marriage equality is the law of the land, the sun will shine as it always does, you and I may argue about the merits of various other laws, children will be born and will make lives for themselves by the sweat of their brow, and folks will still die questioning the meaning of it all and hoping that they have done the right thing in this world. What's to fear? I've always wondered why men like you expend so much energy trying to control stuff like this. Why not simply trust the grace of God and that powerful wind that is the Holy Spirit? A wind that blows where it will and can never be contained by the likes of you or me.
7. We must emphasize all the more the true nature of marriage as designed by God, both to ourselves and to our children. Lord only knows what will now be taught in our public schools regarding marriage because of this ruling. It will certainly not be the traditional definition and understanding of "marriage."
I agree with you 100% about this point. I would like to remind you that those very same children already have friends and relatives who are in committed same-sex relationships. The fact of LGBT coupling and marriage will not be news to them. Things that shock and astound you and me barely induce a yawn in the mouths of kids. Gay marriage has already been assimilated in our culture, and surveys show that kids are OK with the concept. (Check out the recent surveys on "Catholics for Equality" to understand the fact that your youngest Catholics have already resolved this issue.) This is the next generation of Catholic kids who will comprise your future flock, not something that will happen long after we are gone. They already see "gay" as a non-issue. Their message to us is "Get over it." Also, don't you have any Catholic schools in the diocese of Fresno? Why not worry about how you will teach marriage to the students in your own schools rather than in public schools?
8. A "true" marriage is a unique relationship between one man and one woman and it is designed to procreate life and form a family, for the good of the children and of society. This is of divine origin and not of human origin.
Whenever someone restates a conclusion as a premise for reaching that conclusion, chances are that that someone has reached a point of exasperation that has short-circuited his ability to argue a position. I am guessing that is what happened to you here. Your 8th statement simply and flatly restates your conclusion without adding any rationale for it. Also, Americans are very hesitant to accept a teaching when the teacher says "This is true because it is of divine origin". In other words "This is what God wants, and I know, because he told me." I'm guessing you may have finished your list and found that you had nine things to say. You then added this one to make it an even ten. We've all done that from time to time, so I'm giving you a pass on this one.
9. We are seeing the result of society separating the gift of sex from bringing forth life, which can infect all of us. More and more people in our society now justify not simply homosexual relationships, but living together without marriage, fornication, sex before marriage, sex outside of marriage, prostitution, contraception, quick and easy divorce. All of these lead us to seeing children as secondary, and self-love becoming more important than self-giving love, which leads to a narcissistic society, with people never really growing up.
You are absolutely right about this, Your Excellency. And the American Roman Catholic clergy (whose patron saint is Peter Pan) are the perfect illustration of your point. If only they had children of their own, they would be less inclined to, as you say, separate the gift of sex from the bringing forth of life. May I assume that you are implying that we ought to have a married clergy?
10. The good old Baltimore Catechism tells us: "The effects of the Sacrament of Matrimony are: 1st, to sanctify the love of husband and wife; 2nd, to give them grace to bear with each other's weaknesses; 3rd, to enable them to bring up their children in the fear and love of God." (BC#1 285)
I still have the Baltimore catechism that I used as a child. Your citations from it are beautiful and any LGBT couple seeking marriage will want those effects. Again, the catechism is talking about the Sacrament of Matrimony, not civil marriage. I hope that once marriage equality becomes the law of the land, you will retain the right to deny my husband and me your Sacrament of Matrimony since that is what you seem energetically to desire and because, as I have stated, I have no agenda. I won't be protesting outside the doors of your church. In fact, I doubt many will disturb the dust on the steps up to those doors as you valiantly protect the exclusivity of your Sacrament of Matrimony.
Let us pray for this judge, for our children, for our society. Lord knows we all need it.
In conclusion, Your Excellency, my thanks for your letter which gave me the opportunity to clarify my thoughts about marriage equality. Your letter also reminded me of the huge gulf between you and me. You are a good servant of the Catholic Church. I have never felt called by God to be a servant. I don't think God desires servitude. Servants have daily agendae which they discharge for compensation. Their employment is conditional upon performance. I am more strongly banking on a story Jesus himself told about the prodigal son. When the father sees his son in the distance as he returns to his father's house after leading a picaresque life, he runs forth to greet him. He doesn't ask the wayward son what he's been up to. He doesn't care about that. He doesn't demand groveling or payback. He calls for a celebration and he overwhelms his son with love, like the rush of a tsunami.
In this world, I've known many priests, bishops and cardinals. The best ones were those who simply did not stand in the way of the grace of God. The fact that some of them were promiscuous or alcoholic or mavericks didn't matter. They gave consolation to the broken and direction to the lost. They had no agendae. They had no rules. They had no fears. They didn't need them because they knew God and they trusted God. You and I should do the same so that when we approach our father's house and find out that he wasn't keeping a list of our tasks and accomplishments after all, we won't be disappointed and we'll be seated not like servants, but at his right hand, life family, like children, like lovers.
Yours among the people of God,
Tony Adams
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