After Much Talk

It Really is Time to Act!

Mike Davis who teaches at the University of California, Riverside, is the author of “Planet of Slums”, among many other works. He’s currently writing a book about employment, global warming, and urban reconstruction for Metropolitan Books. Today I am posting his TEN COMMANDMENTS for activists, because they apply to church reformers as well!

First, the categorical imperative is to organize or rather to facilitate other peoples’ self-organization. Catalyst is good, but organization is better.

Second, leadership must be temporary and subject to recall. The job of a good organizer, as it was often said in the civil rights movement, is to organize herself out of a job, not to become indispensable.

Third, protesters must subvert the media’s constant tendency toward metonymy — the designation of the whole by a part, the group by an individual. (Consider how bizarre it is, for instance, that we have “Martin Luther King Day” rather than “Civil Rights Movement Day.”) Spokespeople should regularly be rotated and when necessary, shot.

Fourth, the same warning applies to the relationship between a movement and individuals who participate as an organized bloc. I very much believe in the necessity of an organic revolutionary left, but groups can only claim authenticity if they give priority to building the struggle and keep no secret agenda from other participants.

Fifth, as we learned the hard way in the 1960s, consensual democracy is not identical to participatory democracy. For affinity groups and communes, consensus decision-making may work admirably, but for any large or long-term protest, some form of representative democracy is essential to allow the broadest and most equal participation. The devil, as always, is in the details: ensuring that any delegate can be recalled, formalizing rights of political minorities, guaranteeing affirmative representation, and so on.

Sixth, an “organizing strategy” is not only a plan for enlarging participation in protest but also a concept for aligning protest with the constituencies that bear the brunt of exploitation and oppression. For example, one of the most brilliant strategic moves of the Black liberation movement in the late 1960s was to take the struggle inside the auto plants in Detroit to form the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.

Seventh, building movements that are genuinely inclusive of unemployed and poor people requires infrastructures to provide for basic survival needs like food, shelter, and healthcare. To enable lives of struggle we must create sharing collectives and redistribute our own resources toward young frontline fighters.

Eighth, the future of the Occupy movement will be determined less by the numbers in Liberty Park (although its survival is a sine qua non of the future) than by the boots on the ground in Dayton, Cheyenne, Omaha, and El Paso. The geographical spread of the protests in many cases equals a diversifying involvement of people of color and trade unionists.

Ninth, the increasing participation of unions in Occupy protests — including the dramatic mobilization that forced the NYPD to temporarily back down from its attempt to evict OWC — is mutually transformative and raises the hope that the uprising can become a genuine class struggle. Yet at the same time, we should remember that union leaderships, in their majority, remain hopelessly committed to a disastrous marriage with the Democratic Party, as well as to unprincipled inter-union wars that have squandered much of the promise of a new beginning for labor.

Tenth, one of the simplest but most abiding lessons from dissident generations past is the need to speak in the vernacular. The moral urgency of change acquires its greatest grandeur when expressed in a shared language. Indeed the greatest radical voices — Tom Paine, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas, Gene Debs, Upton Sinclair, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Mario Savio — have always known how to appeal to Americans in the powerful, familiar words of their major traditions of conscience.

Banned in Boston

Party Boy in Rome

VATICAN CITY — (As reported in the Boston Herald on 5 November 2011) Cardinal Bernard Law was treated to a lavish birthday party, the company of high ranking clerics and even the music of a mariachi band in a four-star Italian hotel. Bernard Law’s guests rolled up in Vatican Mercedes sedans and left singing the praises of the fallen prelate, promoted to his Vatican post after decades of covering up clergy sex abuse back home in Boston….

With a pair of guards in colorful threads standing sentry at the gate, Cardinal Law and his old boys’ club wined and dined at the Al Chiostro restaurant in the four-star Palazzo Rospigliosi hotel facing the Basilica of St. Mary Major, where Law serves as a humble archpriest.

Beyond the gate, a cobblestone path led to the airy courtyard, where two banquet tables offered dozens of bottles of vino and meat-stuffed pastry d’oeuvres. Inside, a mariachi band played and sang the well-known ranchero refrain, “Cielito Lindo,” as guests devoured a main course of lasagna and snacked on cheese, tomatoes, vegetables and fine prosciutto, piled in a pyramid and placed on a pedestal. The party drew high clergy and laymen alike; guests sat six to a table. Not exactly a re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party.

Nor of the Last Supper……

“The meal was spectacular,” said Cardinal Camillo Ruini, vicar general emeritus of the Archdiocese of Rome. He twirled his hand in the air, a common Italian gesture for satisfaction. He said Law appeared to enjoy the feast as well…. The resplendent reception that marked Cardinal Law’s 80th birthday sent shock waves an ocean away in Boston, where the mere mention of his name still sparks seething anger in clergy abuse victims whose attackers he protected during his years as archbishop.

Meanwhile back in the United States….

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a retired auxiliary bishop of Detroit, has revealed for the first time yesterday details about his removal as a parish pastor in 2007. When he challenged his fellow bishops about their  handling of sexual abuse, he was quickly removed as pastor of his parish by the Vatican. The Vatican told Gumbleton he had broken the “communio episcoporum”: the communion of bishops. In layperson’s terms: he dared to break free from the old boys’ club party line. “We’re all supposed to be together, think together, talk together, you know, one voice,” said Sumbleton. “You know, how can that be? You’re a church of human beings; you can’t be.”

Gumbleton knows first-hand what sexual abuse is about and how bishops have coverd it up for years. He was also a victim of sexual abuse.

The Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC, founded 1980)

will present its 2011 Hans Küng Rights of Catholics in the Church Award to Bishop Thomas Gumbleton

at the BWI Best Western, Friday, November 11, 2011, at 7:30 P.M.

Best Western Hotel

6755 Dorsey Road, Elkridge Maryland

Register TODAY to attend the Bishop Gumbleton Award event in Baltimore.

http://arcc-catholic-rights.net/gumbleton/index.html

If you would like to receive the ARCC electronic newsletter, please go here:

http://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=001ilHvYJhSOXg_QRaTRz8fHQ%3D%3D

It started as a small issue. It soon became a thorough-going heated exchange. In conversation with a young Catholic priest I objected to the growing separation between the clergy and the people in our small parish church. The post-Vatican II altar has been pushed ever closer to the wall. And we the people have been informed that “our place” in church is not in the ever-expanding sanctuary. I objected.

 

 

I told the young man, all snug and arrogant in his new cassock, that I have just as much a right to be in the sanctuary and close to the altar as he. “You don’t!” He shot back. “You stand close to the altar if I give you the privilege to do it!” I replied that all baptized members of the community have the right to gather around the table of the Lord and celebrate
Eucharist. “You do not have rights in the Church!” He shot back.

When I got back home I sent him information about ARCC: The Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church.

ARCC is an older association that is experiencing a wonderful rebirth…and the time is ripe for such a rebirth. Please sign up for the new ARCC electronic newsletter. Sample below…..

 

 

Some of the things we’ve been reading

Exodus as pope’s Legion reform lags 

By NICOLE WINFIELD – Associated Press 

VATICAN CITY (AP) – When Pope Benedict XVI took over the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order last year, expectations were high that heads would roll over one of the greatest scandals of the 20th century Roman Catholic Church.

One year later, none of the Legion’s superiors has been held to account for facilitating the crimes of late founder Rev. Marciel Maciel, a drug addict who sexually abused his seminarians, fathered three children and created a cult-like movement within the church that damaged some of its members spiritually and emotionally.

An Associated Press tally shows that disillusioned members are leaving the movement in droves as they lose faith that the Vaticanwill push through the changes needed. The collapse of the order, once one of the most influential in the church, has broader implications for Catholicism, which is shedding members in some places
because the hierarchy covered up widespread sexual abuse by priests.

Read more

Vatican document calls for global authority to regulate markets

John Thavis      Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A Vatican document called for the gradual creation of a world political authority with broad powers to regulate financial markets and rein in
the “inequalities and distortions of capitalist development.”

The document said the current global financial crisis has revealed “selfishness, collective greed and the hoarding of goods on a great scale.” A supranational
authority, it said, is needed to place the common good at the center of international economic activity.

Read more

Full Text:   Towards Reforming the International Financial And
Monetary Systems in the Context Of Global Public Authority

Charges a clear message to church, lawyers say 

Joshua J. McElwee

In charging Bishop Robert W. Finn and the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese each with failure to report suspected child abuse, Jackson County, Mo., prosecutor Jean
Peters Baker sent a clear message to the Catholic church, and to any organization that has an obligation to protect children, say local lawyers.

Read more

Accountability in Missouri 

New York Times Editorial

 It has been seven years since the Roman Catholic Church’s investigative board of laity warned that, beyond the 700 priests dismissed for sexually abusing children, “there must be consequences” for the diocesan leaders who recycled criminal priests through unsuspecting parishes. American church authorities have done nothing to heed this caution. 

Read more

Aussie Bishops Meet Vatican on Fired Colleague

Cindy Wooden  CNS

VATICAN CITY   Australian bishops had a special meeting with top Vatican officials in mid-October to discuss the case of a bishop Pope Benedict XVI removed from
office after years of tension with a variety of Vatican offices. Cardinals Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, and William J. Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, met the Australian bishops to discuss the aftermath of the removal in May of Bishop William Morris of Toowoomba.

Read more

This is just a sample from a recent electronic newsletter.

Reporting is contemporary and accurate.

No Roman style old time religion here!

Association for the Rights of Catholics in the  Church  877-700-ARCC   arcc-catholic-rights.net

Contact ARCC     SHOP or SEARCH and SUPPORT ARCC

Last week after reading yet more news item about Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his alledged sexcapades and yet more updates about ongoing sexual abuse and episcopal coverups in the Church, I began to reflect on Jesus of Nazareth and Gospel teaching about sex.

From the Gospels it seems clear to me that sex becomes a problem when power becomes a problem.

The Gospels deal very little with sexual concerns. The Gospels are much more concerned with power issues.

In the Church — practice and teaching — sex becomes a central theme when authority and power escalate in importance.

Clearly Jesus of Nazareth resisted power as a defining characteristic of his life. 

Unlike the Church that evolved after him, sex was not of utmost significance in the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus rejected power for himself in the religious and secular categories of his day.

                     Jesus did not want to be king.

                     He did not take up the sword to defend himself.

                     Jesus told Pontius Pilate he had no interest in the political power of this world.

                    Jesus, as a faith-filled Jewish man, kept a distance from priesthood, wealth, and institutional religious power.

If the Reign of God is deep within us, institutional and ecclesiastical power are not needed. When love is the sign of discipleship, hierarchy slips to marginal importance. And if we are judged by how we treat one another, compassion becomes our lifestyle not dominance.

Jesus understood this in the matter of divorce. In his day, Jewish law and custom defined a married woman as property. Divorce, in Jesus’ day, was an exclusively male prerogative of power over a woman who was juridically the man’s possession.

Matthew and Paul understood the main point Jesus was making. They wrote exceptions into the earlier absolute prohibition of divorce found in Mark.

Adultery in Jesus’ perspective was less a sexual and more a property and power issue.

Today’s Church sees divorce — and marriage! –as an essentially sexual issue. Marriage is not permanent until the couple have sexual relations. A second marriage after divorce is permitted provided there is no rexual relationship in the second marrage!

Perhaps our Church will never  come to grips with its ongoing 

SEX problem until it confronts its

POWER problem.

It is not surprising that the papacy — modeled on the Roman emperor model — tends to use power absolutely and narrowly….and therefore it gives the Church such enept sexual teaching.  And bishops — modeled on little papal emperors — are so inept at dealing with sexual issues.

Maybe we need our own WALL Street type demonstrators…………

On the first Sunday of Advent we begin a new liturgical year. Ordinarily a new year means we move forward with new hopes, new expectations, new visions, new projects, etc.

This year we already know our Church leaders are rushing backwards not forward. They are pushing us back into a 1950s style Catholic Church. When people want living bread, they are being force-fed rough-edged old stones.

In today’s Catholic Church, it is 1950s Catholic re-runs.

In mid-September the Diocese of Phoenix  announced that it will issue new norms specifying the conditions under which Holy Communion may be distributed under both species. What this means is: “it may be offered to a Catholic couple at their wedding Mass, to first communicants and their family members, confirmation candidates and their sponsors, as well as deacons, non-concelebrating priests, servers and seminarians at any Mass….” And what this means of course is that Communion under both forms for non-ordained Catholics was a temporary experiment. The experiment is over.

In August Bishop Olmsted had also mandated that there be no altar girls in his cathedral. He hopes the practice of only male altar servers will spread across the diocese.

The Church after all — it appears —  is not the People of God, nor a community of men and women. It is a clergy run male dominant institution.

And now we learn that Bishop Robert Morlino up in Madison is following the example set by his episcopal colleague Bishop Thomas Olmsted in Phoenix.

Bishop Morlino stressing a “need for reverence,” has asked priests to move in the direction of giving Communion “only in the form of the Host and not the Precious Blood.” Lay people you see are not reverent because they are not reverends. The cup is for the reverends.

Morlino also warns against the “excessive use” of laypeople distributing Eucharist “because it could obscure the role of the priest or deacon.” Bingo! Laypeople obscure a clergy-dominated church.

What a way to get into the new liturgical year! And don’t forget the new “translation” for Eucharistic liturgies. Hardly a translation. It is Latinized gobbledygook. More rough edged stones when people are starving for bread.

Funny…….Jesus had no problems with women. St. Paul said in the Church we are one body and “neither male nor female.”

What I find most surprising however is the way the Most Reverends Olmstead and Morlino have forgotten what Jesus said at the Last Supper.

Jesus said, remember, “Take and eat….Take and drink…..Do this in memory of me.”

+++++

Coming soon to a church near you…..

1950s Catholic Re-Runs

What if Steve Jobs had been an archbishop? 

My thoughts this week are neither eulogy nor a canonization of  Steve Jobs.

Rather a meditation about contemporary leadership styles.

A few days before the death of  “Mr. Apple,” New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan, the  “American Pope,” sent a letter to President Obama. That letter which I see as more a Dolan diatribe than an invititation to genuine dialogue, warned the President about the dire consequences of his domestic leadership, perceived by Dolan as anti-religious, anti-family, and anti-marriage……. (More about that in a future post.)

 

 

Dolan’s letter reminded me that the New York Archbishop is firm about certain Catholic “non negotiables.” Some things he has often said can never change: opposition to birth control, opposition to abortion, opposition to same-sex marriage, opposition to women priests.

Then we all learned, of course, about the death of Steve Jobs. I picked up my iPad and started reading bits and pieces of Jobs biography and testimony’s by friends and colleagues.

Then it hit me:

What if our bishops had the same kind of leadership skills as Steve Jobs?

What if they were open-minded contemporary thinkers like Mr. Jobs?

What if they could dream about tomorrow like Steve Jobs, rather than dream about yesterday like the Pope?

Then I came across this Steve Jobs quotation:

 “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Steven Paul Jobs (1955 – 2011)

Steve Jobs was a demanding perfectionist. He continually aspired to position his business and his products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends. He summed up that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007, by quoting ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky:

“There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love:  ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’

And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple.”  

Next time I see Tim Dolan I will encourage him to meditate on Jobs and  Gretzky — along with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John…….