Homophobia go the way of slavery in matters of faith?

The measured tone of Spokane, Washington, Bishop Blase Cupich's letter on the same-sex marriage referendum attracted the attention of Bold Faith Type. He stood firm on church teachings but, to his considerable credit, also said:

Proponents of the redefinition of marriage are often motivated by compassion for those who have shown courage in refusing to live in the fear of being rejected for their sexual orientation. It is a compassion that is very personal, for those who have suffered and continue to suffer are close and beloved friends and family members. It is also a compassion forged in reaction to tragic national stories of violence against homosexuals, of verbal attacks that demean their human dignity, and of suicides by teens who have struggled with their sexual identity or have been bullied because of it.

...

I also want to be very clear that in stating our position the Catholic Church has no tolerance for the misuse of this moment to incite hostility towards homosexual persons or promote an agenda that is hateful and disrespectful of their human dignity.

At Spiritual Politics, Mark Silk gently suggests that the bishop take an additional step:

At the risk of seeming unappreciative, I would urge Cupich, sub specie rationis, to promise that if evidence for bad social consequences from SSM fails to materialize, he will cease urging his church's position on society at large. All that would be left at that point would be his religious convictions, and as I expect he would agree, these ought not be imposed on those outside his faith community.

After all, he writes, slavery was "a cornerstone of society" when the church was young. No more.

Indeed. The Southern Baptist Convention, originally formed in part around support of slavery, last week found itself chiding a Mississippi church which refused to host the wedding ceremony of a black couple. The church apologized and will presumably sin no more.

Roman Catholic Church's flawed team Ireland lineup

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston's appointment to head the apostolic visitation to deal with the Roman Catholic child abuse catastrophe in Dublin was for good reason not universally cheered:

BishopAccountability.org, a Waltham-based organization that tracks abuse cases, was also critical, saying, "O’Malley’s career ascent has been fueled by his ability to walk into dioceses wracked by horrible revelations of child molestation and enshroud them again in silence."

Lisa Wangsness of the Boston Globe wrote:

The assignment marks the fourth time that O’Malley, 65, has been asked to intervene in a diocese damaged by clergy sexual abuse. In 1992, he was named bishop of Fall River, a diocese roiled by the serial pedophilia of the Rev. James R. Porter; in 2002, he was named bishop of Palm Beach, where the two previous bishops had acknowledged sexually abusing minors; and in 2003 he was named archbishop of Boston, replacing Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who stepped aside over criticism of his failure to remove sexually abusive priests from ministry.

English Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, who has been appointed apostolic visitor to Ireland's Armagh archdiocese, was greeted with similar criticism by abuse victims for his mishandling of sexually predatory clerics in his own countries. Specifically, the Irish Independent wrote:

nstead of informing the police of allegations against "notorious paedophile" Fr Michael] Hill, [then Bishop of Arundel Murphy-O’Connor] moved the cleric to the chaplaincy at Gatwick Airport, where he believed the priest would no longer be a danger to children.

But in 1997, Hill was convicted of sex attacks against nine children. After serving three years, he was then given another sentence of five years for assaults on three more boys.

The then-Bishop Murphy O'Connor argued that at the time little was understood of the compulsive nature of paedophilia.

Dr. Margaret Kennedy, of the London-based Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors, observed:

Many in the UK survivor movement would wonder why a bishop with a record of mishandling his own cases could independently look at another bishop's handling of cases.

Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan, also one of the nine apostolic visitors to Ireland, has a history of resisting appeals for constructive reform in the U.S.

Their records are chacteristic of the most able reformers the Roman Catholic Church can muster to this task?

"Dozens of priests' mistresses" call for abolition of celibacy

How did dozens of priests' mistresses "happen to meet?" asked @ebertchicago [Roger Ebert].

Stefania Salomone, an Italian woman who signed the widely publicized open letter [English] [Italian] to Pope Benedict XVI calling for an end to the Roman Catholic Church's priestly celibacy, is part of a Web discussion for women who are in relationships with priests. Yet she remains the only public signatory to the letter, which she says has been endorsed by more than 40 women.

Although it is oxymoronic to give presumptive credence to an unverified number of anonymous women, Salomone's assertions apparently ring true to Cristina Odone. A Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, a former editor of the Catholic Herald and deputy editor of the New Statesman, she wrote:

But I think the women have a point when they speak out against the hypocrisy of the status quo. I came across, when editor of The Catholic Herald, hundreds of priests. Many of them had “housekeepers” who adored them and … well, who knows what goes on behind net curtains in the priest’s house? Tongues wagged, but only mildly: the priest looked happy, worked hard, and his parishioners looked away. This was so routine an arrangement, that for centuries canon law specified that the priest’s housekeeper should be past child-bearing age, so that the Church would not be embarrassed by the fruit of a carnal relationship.

. . .

For too many priests, loneliness is their lot. Once, they had parishioners vying with one another to see who could wine and dine him; now they are derided and worse. When this was a less secular society, priests always knew they held a certain status in our community; now they are in the habit of being treated like pariahs. One brilliant and witty priest I know is taking a year’s sabbatical. Free of his dog collar, he has found himself in many situations where strangers heap scorn upon the priesthood and talk of priests as synonymous with kiddie-fiddlers. “There is so much hostility out there,” he told me, sadly.

The British/Scottish group Sonflowers is an organization of who have affairs with Catholic priests. It was founded by Adrianna Alsworth. She has addressed the desire for anonymity and the need for mutual support:

I know of many older priests who have been in long-term relationships which are an open secret in their parishes.

Sadly, all the stress and responsibility is placed on the women and it’s a heavy burden to bear. If the relationship becomes public, it’s the woman, the Church’s silent mistresses, who get the blame.

She sees celibacy as doing harm to both the community and the priests. For example, she has observed:

Young men spend six years in a male environment at seminary then are thrust into parishes where they feel isolated. They are often sexually immature but have enormous power over people.

Salomone's letter further argues that celibacy is not only destructive but also unscriptural:

We are trying to reaffirm -- although many Christians already know it -- that this discipline has nothing to do either with the Scriptures in general, or with the Gospels in particular, or with Jesus, who never spoke about it.

Quite the contrary. As far as we know, He liked to surround Himself with disciples, almost all married, and women. You would say to us that Jesus also lived as a bachelor and the priest is simply matching Him with his choice. A choice is good. But a rule can never be a choice, if not forcing its meaning. If, moreover, it is defined as a charism, it can not therefore be imposed or required, much less by the Lord, who wants us to be free, because love is freedom, always.

Her goals are simple and realistic. She told CNN she has not heard from and does not expect to hear from the Vatican:

I don’t really care, to be honest. The important thing is to call attention to this problem.

Former Vatican Canon lawyer: '...it's all about power'

Father Tom Doyle, now 65, was a canon lawyer for the Vatican embassy in Washington when he was assigned to investigate a Lafayette, Louisiana, case of a pedophile priest who admitted molesting more than 30 children. Ruben Rosario of Pioneer Press discussed in an interview with Doyle how the priest's local archdiocese officials decided to hide the crimes and transfer the child predator from one parish to another, where he abused again.

Doyle, a fellow priest and a criminal defense attorney reacted in 1985 by assembling, on their own initiative, "a 100-page report warning church officials to come clean about the abuses and respond to the needs of victims rather than protect abusive priests from secular prosecution or protect — at all costs — the church's status and image. The report, sent to virtually every U.S. bishop, was largely ignored."

His initiative and prescient warning were followed by victim advocacy -- a path which led to demotion, the status of a pariah and ultimately cost him his job.

He told Rosario that the church can regain its reputation and restore lost confidence in it:

Doyle: To begin the process of restoration, I believe that the current pope needs to stand up and make a public apology. Not that those mistakes were made in the past — they always do in the past tense and there's a subtle message there that this is in the past and not now. The pope should say: "I'm sorry for what I did in my negligence to allow this to happen. I'm sorry that I did not fire bishops when I knew they were covering up."

But I don't believe that will ever happen in my lifetime.

Rosario: Why?

Doyle: Because to protect their own self-identity, they will cling to the premise that they are appointed by the Almighty and are the vicars of Christ and the essence of the church. They believe this will dissolve their power. It's all about control, and it's all about power.

Read the entire interview here.

Who once believed the clerical sexual abuse crisis was an anti-Catholic media campaign?

Before he became Pope Benedict XVI, there was a time when Ratzinger saw the sexual abuse crisis as an anti-Catholic media campaign. John L. Allen Jr. of the National Catholic Reporter wrote this week:

Ratzinger's attitude toward the crisis at the time can perhaps best be gauged from comments he made on November 30, 2002, during an appearance in Murcia, Spain, at a conference organized by the Catholic University of St. Anthony. During a Q&A session after his talk, Ratzinger was asked: "This past year has been difficult for Catholics, given the space dedicated by the media to scandals attributed to priests. There is talk of a campaign against the church. What do you think?

"This was Ratzinger's reply:

In the church, priests are also sinners. But I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offenses among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower. In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than one percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information or to the statistical objectivity of the facts. Therefore, one comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the church.

Making Ratzinger's defensive tone all the more striking, his comments came after a summit between Vatican officials and American cardinals, as well as officers of the bishops' conference, in April 2002 to discuss the American crisis, a meeting in which Ratzinger participated.

For the record, in claiming "less than one percent" of priests were guilty, Ratzinger was relying on an analysis by writer Philip Jenkins, published in the mid-1990s, of the Chicago archdiocese. In the end, the U.S. bishops' own study concluded that accusations have been lodged against 4.3 percent of diocesan priests over the last 50 years, and some critics regard even that total as under-reported.

Of course he changed his mind, Allen explains. Read the entire piece here.

N.C. Bishops' bad call on curricula

North Carolina's Catholic bishops are overwrought about proposed new language for a nonexistent civics and economics textbook, CNA reports.

Bishop of Raleigh Michael F. Burbidge and Bishop of Charlotte Peter J. Jugis sent a Feb. 11 letter to the state's Catholics referring to "draft text that is being proposed for a revised textbook on Civics and Economics," although they are actually taking issue with the language of curriculum standards for Social Studies, Civics and Economics [.pdf]. Not a textbook.

Even so, the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh reports in its News section:

The proposed text asserts that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that legalized abortion and struck down state and federal laws that regulated and limited access to abortion, is an example of how the Supreme Court has upheld rights against oppressive government. The implication of this proposed text is that opposition to Roe v. Wade is wrong.

The language over which they are hyperventilating, and over which North Carolina's right-wing Civitas Review waxed righteous before them, is in fact a well-accepted example of U.S. Supreme Court actions upholding individual rights and overruling oppressive government. That general language is so frequently used to define that topic in text books, law review articles, Constitutional Law coursework descriptions and the like that Google search on it returns 4,700,000 (four million, seven hundred thousand) hits.

Specifically, the version we searched on is:

Using three Supreme Court Cases (e.g., Brown v Board, Roe v Wade, Korematsu v US) as support explain how the US Supreme Court has upheld rights against oppressive government?

The bishops' letter also said comments are closed tomorrow (Feb. 15), and that is incorrect as well. The State Board of Education, Department of Public Instruction has announced via its Web site:

The deadline for feedback on 1.0 has been extended through March 2nd, 2010.

The bishops and Civitas are objecting to a curriculum standard which requires, as it should, honest and accurate student understanding of the law of the land, because they disagree with the law. Not because the curriculum actually errs.

Addendum

Last year, the pair attracted attention in part by calling together for a marriage protection amendment and by opposing the School Violence Prevention Act, an anti-bullying law which directs local school systems to guard against harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Terry pressures bishops

"The P.T. Barnum of the pro-life movement" is putting on his new "Deaf at the Cathedral" road show for a succession of U.S. Catholic bishops.

His goal is to persuade as many as possible to withhold communion from Catholic officeholders who insufficiently anti-abortion.

Randall Terry is a Catholic convert whom the American Papist called "a bit persona non grata" after Terry set up Archbishop Burke.

This time, the group dubbed Insurrecta Nex and founded by Terry will travel to 13 Cathedrals in 9 states to hold demonstrations asking Catholic Bishops:

Your Excellency, if any Catholic US Senator from your state, or member of the United States House of Representatives from your diocese votes to fund the murder of children by abortion in any 'health care reform' bill, will they be denied Communion?

He is making his usual aggressive case. He says:

Will Catholic Bishops truly defend babies -- not with mere lip service, but with true valor -- and hold pro-death Catholic Congressmen accountable? Or will they turn a deaf ear to the cries of innocent blood, the pleas of the faithful, and the canons of the Catholic Church that obligate them to withhold communion from Catholic politicians who promote the murder of babies by abortion?

Demonstrating against bishops in an attmpt to use the parishioners they serve to pressure them into actions they have either already taken (communion denial is typically private) or decided not to take. Bishops, who are well-known to take less than well to public pressure.

Maybe not the best idea Terry has ever had.

Kennedy/Tobin & Catholic muscle in the public square [Addendum]

It exploded into public view last week. Bishop Thomas Joseph Tobin of Providence, RI, because of the pro-choice political views expressed by Rep. Patrick Joseph Kennedy (D-RI), asked him in 2007 not to take communion.

Tobin was and is flexing church political muscle, as his letter to Kennedy made clear:

In light of the Church's clear teaching, and your consistent actions, therefore, I believe it is inappropriate for you to be receiving Holy Communion and I now ask respectfully that you refrain from doing so.

Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life director Mark Silk's painstaking review leaves no doubt about either the intended force of the letter or Tobin's willingness to follow up with additional force. The disappointed bishop said that had Kennedy ignored the request, "the next step might have been more direct."

Right-wing Catholics celebrate and defend the action, just as they call for similar actions against Department of Health and Human Services head Kathleen Sebelius and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both of whom are Roman Catholic. Indeed, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas has repeatedly said Sebelius should stop taking Communion until she changes her stance. Even so, Catholic priests are not somehow compelled to follow Tobin's model.

Monsignor John Brenkle of St. Helena Catholic Church, whose church Pelosi attends while at home in California, exemplifies an alternative to Tobin's strong-arm approach. Brenkle told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat:

There are people who would strongly forbid Nancy Pelosi from receiving communion, but I’m sorry, we don’t question people’s religious or political stance.

Bishops are not themselves in overarching agreement, as Catholic religion journalist David Gibson explained:

In reality, the Catholic hierarchy and the nearly 70 million-strong church itself are hardly so unified, even if their efforts on current health care reform and gay marriage have been impressive. Both within the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and throughout the pews, American Catholics are deeply split on a range of issues that affect matters internal to the church as well as policy in the public square. And contrary to another popular notion, the bishops can take as much flack from the right as they do from the left.

True and yet fatally incomplete, as Gibson reveals further along in his column when he explores the why the USCCB president, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, is pushing to reassert the authority of bishops:

According to church insiders, the irritation of George and some other bishops stems from frustration that lay Catholics did not seem to heed their warnings about voting for Barack Obama, (53 percent of Catholic voters went for the Democrat) and anger at Notre Dame's decision to invite Obama as its commencement speaker last May over the objections of the local bishop in Indiana, John D'Arcy. Cardinal George and dozens of other prelates joined D'Arcy in protesting the invitation.

It is clear then that even if journalists all become (and they should be) masters of basic canon law as is required to deal with the factual details, this will still be about the Roman Catholic Church exercising authority over U.S. domestic political policy, and yearning to exercise more. Is it too much to group some Bishops with the American Taliban? Remonstrance is to be expected. It is merited by events.

Addendum

Bishop Tobin's record of public political arm-twisting dates at least to his comparison of Rudy Giuliani to Pontius Pilate in May of 2007 (the same year that he penned his until recently private letter to Kennedy), reports Meredith Shiner of Politico.

That characterization was part of Tobin's answer, via an op-ed in the Rhode Island Catholic, to a Giuliani presidential campaign fundraiser invitation.

The column was political throat cutting of the most ordinary kind and defies his recent positioning of himself as the diligent, caring spiritual shepherd. For example, Tobin wrote:

Rudy’s public proclamations on abortion are pathetic and confusing. Even worse, they’re hypocritical.

Now this is what we get from Rudy as he attempted to explain his ambiguous position on abortion in a speech at Houston Baptist College earlier this month: “Here are the two strong beliefs that I have, here are the two pillars of my thinking . . . One is, I believe abortion is wrong. I think it is morally wrong . . . The second pillar that guides my thinking . . . where [people of good faith] come to different conclusions about this, about something so very, very personal, I believe you have to respect their viewpoint. You give them a level of choice here . . . I’ve always believed both of these things.”

What? This drivel from the man who received high marks, and properly so, for his clear vision and personal courage in healing New York City, and by extension, the nation, after the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11.

Chris Matthews interviews Tobin: Nov. 23

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

It is Catholic laity the Bishops fear

Susan Jacoby gets at something fundamental:

The real concern of the church hierarchy is dissent from lay Catholics, and that is why archbishops feathers' are more ruffled when the last name of a critic is Dowd or O'Malley rather than Goldstein or Horowitz. (My mother's maiden name is Broderick, by the way.) The groundbreaking reporting on the pedophile priest scandal was done by journalists for The National Catholic Reporter, as well as by The Boston Globe, which also employs a great many reporters with good old Irish names and Catholic backgrounds. The press is not criticizing "Catholics." As the hierarchy knows perfectly well, the majority of Catholics do not agree with their bishops' and pope's position on opposition to married priests, to women priests, to contraception, to divorce, and to legal abortion. The bishops can't persuade a majority of those raised in their own faith to support their positions, so they lash out at critics and try to intimidate the press with charges of anti-Catholicism.

Vatican demands that Holocaust-denier repudiate his positions [Updated]

Besieged by angry response to the un-excommunication of four right-wing bishops, the Vatican demanded today for the first time that the Holocaust-denier Bishop Richard Williamson repudiate his "previous statements in 'an absolutely, unequivocal and public manner.'”

The National Catholic Register reported:

In addition, said the statement from the Vatican Secretariat of State, Pope Benedict XVI did not know about the controversial statements by British-born Bishop Richard Williamson when he lifted the excommunication of him and three other traditionalist bishops ordained illicitly in 1988.

. . .

“The positions of Bishop Williamson on the Holocaust are absolutely unacceptable and are strongly rejected by the Holy Father,” the statement said.

U.S. Bishops and others are in effect getting the appropriately high standard for reconciliation that they have demanded.

Addendum

The Associated Press reported Wednesday afternoon that the requirement is not for Williamson alone:

In addition to its demand of Williamson, the Vatican said the society as a whole must fully recognize the teachings of Vatican II and all the popes who came during and after it in order to have a legitimate canonical function in the church.

Enforced, that should dispose of concerns that this reconciliation involves either acceptance of formerly rejected far-right ideologies into the church, or a sharp rightward shift by the church itself.

It was of overarching importance. "This was the sign the Jewish world has been waiting for," said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress.

Puzzled Cardinal Mahony gets 0 twitter love

"Mystified and puzzled" Cardinal Roger Mahony got no twitter love in his efforts to comprehend a federal grand jury investigation into the handling of alleged clergy child molestation cases by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

David Clohessy, director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he was stunned but gladdened by the report.

The LATimes said the prosecutors are applying an honest services legal theory in an apparently novel way” by trying to determine whether church officials’ actions constituted a fraud against parishioners. The applicable federal statute that bars conspiracies to deprive others of honest services, and in this case, the victims would be parishioners who entrusted the safety of their children to church leaders.

If the approach is "novel," it's an interesting novel. One wonders whether other denominations might yet find their own pages in it. Others whose conspiratorial silence contributes to the serial abuse of young parishioners.

One inventor of the pill 'confesses'

Carl Djerassi confessed regret in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. The 85-year-old chemist, one of three whose formulation of synthetic progestogen Norethisterone was a key step towards the first oral contraceptive, bemoaned the decline in average family size. According to the British newspaper Guardian:

Djerassi outlined the "horror scenario" that occurred because of the population imbalance, for which his invention was partly to blame. He said that in most of Europe there was now "no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction". He said: "This divide in Catholic Austria, a country which has on average 1.4 children per family, is now complete."

He described families who had decided against reproduction as "wanting to enjoy their schnitzels while leaving the rest of the world to get on with it".

The fall in the birth rate, he said, was an "epidemic" far worse - but given less attention - than obesity. Young Austrians, he said, were committing national suicide if they failed to procreate. And if it were not possible to reverse the population decline they would have to understand the necessity of an "intelligent immigration policy".

Roman Catholic leaders called the statement a "confession" and manufactured from it a bit of what gynaecologist and member of the New York Academy of Science, professor Gian Benedetto Melis, called science fiction.

Roman Catholic doctors alleged the pill had brought "devastating ecological effects" by releasing into the environment "tons of hormones" that somehow impaired male fertility.

Using pseudoscience in an attempt to justify the ways of religion to man tends to drive the rational from the sanctuary.