Robert suggested I send along a heads-up for CardinalRating.com for keeping abreast of the news about your favorite cardinals. (I remembered seeing it linked somewhere else before, but I can't recall where.) I also recommend Episcopal Spine Alert for inspiring (though infrequent) reports of U.S. bishops showing signs of orthodoxy. Recently I stumbled on The Pope Blog for the latest news reports featuring the Holy Father.
Swat3 EE CD-CodeI've got one more site about the Papacy I'd like to recommend, but I can't find the link right now. When I find it, I'll add it here, and on the blogroll to the left.
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
The Curt Jester got hold of the cover letter the Church's chief theologian attached to his instructions to the American bishops regarding Catholic politicians and communion.
What? Okay, so maybe you only find it mildly amusing, but to us this is ROTFL.
Meanwhile, what's not funny is being taught how to be a good Catholic by... the Anglicans?
The Catholic bishops had an opportunity to take an important and courageous political position, but instead they adopted a position of pragmatic cowardice. If the Catholic understanding of abortion truly expresses the divine will, then any Catholic who actively supports a public policy that supports abortion must be counted as a traitor to the faith of Christ. The Catholic bishops should have come clean on this years ago. The chickens of catechesis-failure are coming home to roost, and now the Catholic bishops are confronted with the sad spectacle of Catholic politicians who publicly advocate public policies that the Catholic Church deems as intrinsically evil. And the bishops are unsure how to respond. One thing for sure. The problem ain't going to go away. What are they going to do a year from now when President Kerry shows up for Mass!That's pretty sad.
(hat tips to Catholic[?] Kerry Watch, here and here)
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
A Los Angeles canon lawyer has filed suit against John Kerry for heresy in ecclesiastical court.
Mr. Balestrieri said he filed the heresy charge - plus an additional complaint charging "harm" to himself as a result of Mr. Kerry's pronouncements on abortion and related issues - because canon law entitles Catholics to "possession of the faith unharmed."You can view the complaint and join the suit at De Fide.
"By spreading heresy, he is endangering not just mine by every Catholic's possession of the faith," he said."I am inviting all baptized Catholics who feel injured by Kerry to join the suit as third parties" by reading the document on the Web site and then sending a certified letter of agreement to the Boston Archdiocese.
"People are saying you can be pro-choice and be a good Christian, that it is not contrary to the faith to support aborted murder," Mr. Balestrieri said. "This is a life-threatening heresy."
"Bishops have had 31 years [since the Supreme Court made abortion an individual right] to do something on this matter, but they've done nothing," he said.
(hat tip Mark Shea, good analysis by Fr. Rob Johansen)
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
Regardless of your personal faith, you really should read this funny post and its comments.
According to the film, over half a million priests and nuns have left the church since the early '60s, a loss known among Catholics as "the bleeding."If you're Catholic, you'll laugh. If you're not, you'll learn the one place you shouldn't get your information about Catholics: the mainstream press.
UPDATE: It just gets better. And in the comments:
What is next? The Bleeding 2: The Bloodening!
Posted by Chris at 02:02 AM
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
I guess you should put me into the third class of Catholics according to the Dallas Morning News' editorial excoriating the Church for the sex abuse scandal: I feel powerless. But here's a news flash for you: I always have. What else is new? That's part of being Catholic.
You may be asking, "The sex abuse scandal?" Yes, it's still alive.
In the Romanesque version of the Abu Ghraib story, the abuse goes on and the press is all too delighted to tell us about it. It smells like 1974 all over again... not content to come close to destroying the American Presidency, the press sets its sights on the papal throne.
Don't get me wrong, it's heinous what some priests have done, and it is compounded by the apparent complicity of certain bishops. But the press isn't in this for Truth alone. Nowhere in the editorial does it even suggest that some of these men might not be guilty - even though some of them haven't even had a trial yet. In the midst of a furor over wrongful prosecutions despite DNA evidence proving otherwise, you'd think some people carrying on a crusade for Truth might consider that at least some of the adults pointing the finger of blame for their screwed up lives might just happen to be lying about what happened five, ten and twenty years ago. And we're still talking about a disgraceful minority of the priests and bishops.
That said, many if not most of these cases are not in doubt, and many times bishops have shuttled priests from parish to parish despite knowing full well what they have done. The problems need to be rooted out and excised from Mother Church. But you're not going to get lay Catholics who remain active in the Church to foment a revolution from within. We're the ones who respect and adore the Church for taking hundreds of years to come to a conclusion about something, despite the pressure of a modern age that demands things get done yesterday.
The church will heal, but don't expect it on your timetable. You want "fast"... we'll give you fasting.
UPDATE: Robert Novak offers some (as usual) pessimistic words about freedom of speech in churches.
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
I'm tempted to move to St. Louis.
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
Just yesterday I confused Steve for an entire lunch by trying to describe the contradictions of Liberation Theology. I should have waited a day and sent him to the Wall Street Journal.
And yes Steve, I see that "Father Aristide" was a Silesian, not a Jesuit. How could I tell with the hammer and sickle over his vestment? For the record, Fr. Sirico, the author of the op-ed, is apparently a Franciscan.
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
Almost 1,000 years ago, the Christian Church (as it was a singular institution in those days) passed a requirement that all priests take a vow of celibacy prior to ordination. In the feudal structure of the society at the time, too many young men were left without anything to do, having been deprived of land and position by the strict inheritance laws. Many of them, seeing the potential for power, influence, and upward mobility, were becoming priests as their choice of career, with barely a thought to the spiritual component to the profession. The heirarchical clergy of the time decided the most efficient means to separate the devout from the social climbers was to deprive all priests of the pleasures of the flesh - at least officially. It was a brilliant political maneuver, conveniently supported by Scripture. ("Each one should lead the life the Lord has assigned him, continuing as he was when the Lord called him." 1 Cor 7, 17)
Some of the problems the Catholic Church has today are wholly man's problem, and this is one of them. The very passage that supports the celibacy of its priests makes no requirement beyond that of "continuing as he was". Paul goes on to say that it would be better if a man were unmarried, but admits all the other Apostles did not follow that path as he did, because "It is better to marry than to be on fire."
Oh, how prescient that statement is for us today - yet, the church leaders deny it. Why? They say it is just because we're not holy enough, that if more more Catholics were more devout, we just wouldn't have a problem.
'The problems in the church today are not caused by the teaching of Jesus and of his church, but by lack of fidelity to them,' Archbishop Dolan wrote. 'The recent sad scandal of clerical sexual abuse of minors, as the professionals have documented, has nothing to do with our celibate commitment.'So it would seem that the Church leaders believe we get what we deserve. If no one wants to live under the yoke they say Scripture imposes, we have no one to blame but ourselves for our lack of fidelity to the Word.
As the bishops reaffirmed a requirement that has been part of church practice for nearly 1,000 years, priests and laypeople added their voices to those in Milwaukee calling for change. According to the National Federation of Priests Councils, associations of priests in Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Charleston, and in the states of New York and Illinois, are all considering issuing manifestos like the one issued in Milwaukee.
Bishop Gregory and Archbishop Dolan both argued that the shortage of Catholic clergy has little to do with celibacy, and is a problem shared by many Christian denominations and even Jewish synagogues.
However, Dean R. Hoge, a sociologist at The Catholic University of America who has studied clergy in Catholic and Protestant churches for more than 30 years, said that the shortage of priests in the Catholic church is 'far more severe' than any other denomination in the United States. He said that for every 100 priests who die or leave ministry today, Catholic seminaries are now training only 30 or 40 to replace them.
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
Yet another public Catholic recites his woes, this time E.J. Dionne, who spends an entire column discussing the plight of the post-Keating Catholic lay review board.
But beyond the internal politics is a problem of spiritual leadership. "We're in month 18 of the most serious crisis in the history of the American Catholic Church," says Scott Appleby, a Notre Dame professor of religious history who addressed the bishops last year. "And we have yet to hear from leading figures in the church about how we should make moral, ethical, theological and spiritual sense of what happened."Why is it that after all we've been through, the bishops are waiting until next spring for a bunch of lay people (who they constantly insist are irrelevant) to tell them what to do? Is there no one among the ecclesiastics willing to stand up and - GASP! - preach the Gospel?
Lay Catholic leader Peggy Steinfels argues that much of the responsibility for doing this now falls on the lay board: "They have to write a final report that's not just numbers and statistics but also explains to people why this happened -- and tells the truth." The truth may not protect bishops from lawsuits, but, as the New Testament says, it could make them free.
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
Frank Keating has resigned as Chairman of the Catholic lay review board founded after last year's National Council of Bishops meeting. He wrote an op-ed in today's New York Times.
Sadly, a few church leaders, including some in large dioceses, chose to resist and obstruct the board. When we asked valid questions, they gave us few or no answers. Where information and cooperation was called for, we received delay or an outright refusal to help.Unfortunately, I don't share the Governor's hopefulness. The child abuse scandal was merely a very public manifestation of a community in serious trouble - a condition that will continue to hang over the Church until something drastic changes.
These few leaders turned to their lawyers when they should have looked into their hearts — and I expressed my disgust with them. I am a candid person, and that makes some people uncomfortable. So be it. Obstructing justice, excusing and concealing those who victimize innocent children: these are not the actions of holy men. They are sins — and they are crimes. God may hold them accountable in the next world, but we will certainly hold them accountable in this one.