What kind of Obama rhetoric will our Catholic bishops use in the next presidential  campaign?

Will they be critical of the Christian Right or stand and watch?

For some time now US right wing Christian websites have been advertising a variety of “Pray for Obama” items:  t-shirts, bumper stickers, hats, etc.

They all have the phrase:   “Pray for Obama” followed by this biblical reference “Psalm 109:8.”

Psalm 109 is an ancient imprecatory prayer.  It implores God to invoke evil, misfortune, or physical harm upon someone. The words of Psalm 109:8 are:

“Let his days be few and let another take his office.”

The next line is:

“Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”

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In a free democracy, like our United States, no one is compelled to agree with everything the president says or does.

But no one who dislikes or disagrees with him has the license to incite and encourage people to murder him.

When Christians strand by silently and observe  projects like “Pray for Obama,” they support a deadly abomination…….

NEXT WEEK……a detailed reflection on:

THE CLOSING OF THE ORDAINED CATHOLIC MIND

EQUALLY BLESSED CELEBRATES CATHOLIC MAJORITY

IN LANDMARK MARRIAGE POLL

Coalition asks bishops to realize they can learn from LGBT Christians

March 18, 2011-Earlier this week, two Catholic bishops dismissed a booklet on marriage equality by a member of the Equally Blessed coalition, saying that its author was not authorized to “speak on behalf of the Catholic Church.”

Today, faithful U.S. Catholics spoke for themselves, supporting the legalization of same-gender marriage by a 60-38 margin in a new poll commissioned by ABC News and The Washington Post.

The survey, conducted last week by Langer Research Associates, found that for the first time, a majority of Americans (53 percent) now support marriage equality, and that this change in public opinion has happened with remarkable rapidity. Fewer than one third of respondents favored same-gender marriage when the same survey was conducted in 2004.

“The poll makes clear what we have long known,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a member of the Equally Blessed coalition. “Catholics driven by a desire for justice are at the forefront of efforts to make our country’s marriage laws more equitable, and to extend the legal benefits of civil marriage to same-gender couples and their children.”

DeBernardo is the author of the booklet Marriage Equality: A Positive Catholic Approach, which raised the ire of Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington D. C., and Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of Oakland, earlier this week. New Ways Ministry, they wrote, was not authorized to “identify itself as a Catholic organization.”

“The bishops’ approach to this issue is alienating the faithful,” said Mary Ellen Lopata, co-founder of Fortunate Families, another member of the Equally Blessed coalition. “We continue to hope that they will realize they have something to learn from the lived experience of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians, their families and their friends, and come to understand that one can be true to one’s God-given identity, even as one is true to the teachings of Christ.”

Forty percent of Catholics in the survey said they “strongly supported” the legalization of same-gender marriage, while 27 percent said they strongly opposed it.

“I am especially proud of my Church today,” said Nicole Sotelo, communications director for Call To Action, another member of the Equally Blessed coalition. “Catholics who take the social justice teachings of the church seriously know that the issue of same-gender civil marriage is simply one of honoring the dignity of all of God’s children, and treating them fairly as we treat all people.

Are Bishops Now Speaking out of Both Sides of their Mouths?

USCCB: NO WAY for NEW WAYS

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has reaffirmed that New Ways Ministry

dissents from Catholic teaching on homosexuality and is not a Catholic organization.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Bishop Salvatore Cordileone said in a statement:

In view of the recent booklet Marriage Equality: A Positive Catholic Approach, by Francis DeBernardo (published by New Ways Ministry), we, as the respective chairmen of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine and the Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, wish to reaffirm Francis Cardinal George’s statement of February 12, 2010 and assure Catholics that in no manner is the position proposed by New Ways Ministry in conformity with Catholic teaching and in no manner is this organization authorized to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church or to identify itself as a Catholic organization.

Really it becomes curiouser and curiouser……..

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, retired bishop in the Archdiocese of Detroit, has consistently been a supporter of New Ways Ministry and has encouraged homosexual priests and bishops to “come out” and be truthful to themselves and others.

Conservative estimates suggest that about 33% of today’s Roman Catholic priests and bishops are gay.

Fr. Donald B. Cozens, author of The Changing Face of the Priesthood, wrote that with more than half of today’s priests and seminarians being gay, the priesthood is becoming a gay profession. Many who know the interior of the Catholic Church would argue that the priesthood has for centuries been a gay profession.

“If they were to eliminate all those who were homosexually oriented, the number would be so staggering that it would be like an atomic bomb; it would do damage to the church’s operation,” says A.W. Richard Sipe, a former priest and psychotherapist who has been studying the sexuality of priests for decades. Sipe also points out that to do away with gay priests “would mean the resignation of at least a third of the bishops of the world. And it’s very much against the tradition of the church; many saints have gay orientation and many popes had gay orientations.”

The existence of homosexual bishops in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and other traditions is a matter of historical record. As far back as the eleventh century, Ralph, Archbishop of Tours had his lover installed as Bishop of Orléans, yet neither Pope Urban II, nor his successor Paschal II took action to depose either man.

Francis Spellman, the Cardinal Archbishop of New York (died 1967) was rumored during his lifetime to have been gay. Spellman’s biographer, John Cooney, reported that many interviewees took his homosexuality for granted. A book published in 1998 claims that during World War II, Spellman allegedly was carrying on a relationship with a chorus boy in the Broadway revue One Touch of Venus. Ironically,  Spellman defended Senator Joseph McCarthy’s 1953 investigations of subversives and homosexuals in the US federal government.

Eugene Kennedy, a specialist on sexuality and the priesthood and a former priest, wrote in his book, The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality, that the Catholic Church….

“…had always had gay priests, and they have often been models of what priests should be. To say that these men should be kept from the priesthood is in itself a challenge to the grace of God and an insult to them and the people they serve.”

I agree with Tom Gumbleton…

It is time for bishops to “come out” and be truthful to themselves and others.

Hierarchical Governance : Hierarchical Smokescreens

Cardinal Rigali Incenses

On Ash Wednesday, March 9^th 2011, Michael Sean Winters wrote in NCR:

The announcement yesterday that 21 priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia were being placed on administrative leave demonstrates conclusively that the Dallas norms have failed….Last Sunday, those 21 priests presided at Mass in their parishes. Last Sunday, those 21 priests were in active ministry. The charges against them had been examined before and…what? They were either wrongly exonerated or diocesan officials decided to look the other way….And this is no ordinary diocese. It is led by a cardinal, indeed, by one of the most powerful cardinals in America given his active responsibilities as a member of the Congregation for Bishops. Over the past few years, the fastest way to become a bishop was to be a successful monsignor in Philadelphia….But we now know the man at the helm was not only derelict in his duties, he completely misunderstood the nature and import of the promises made to the faithful at Dallas….To be clear, the entire reputation of the entire American hierarchy, and that of the officials in the Vatican, is being weighed in the balance. There is nothing that has been done or said by SNAP, or by victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson, or by any of the Church’s critics that comes even close to the damage to the Church’s reputation inflicted by Cardinal Justin Rigali.

The New Evangelization? Forget about it. Pro-life activities? Not a chance. Advocacy for the poor? It rings hollow. If the leaders of the Church cannot be trusted to keep their most solemn pledge to protect children, they cannot be trusted at all. If they fail to see this, their moral sensibility is not merely skewed, it is dead. It is not only that they cannot be trusted, it is that they should not be trusted.

Michael Sean sees reality as it is. Frankly I wonder why it has taken him so long!

And then today (the second day of Lent 2011) we read that Pope Benedict has released another book about Jesus (convenient…just in time for Lent and all that…) and he rejects the idea that Jesus was a political revolutionary (e. g. a slap in the face for any remaining liberation theology people) and insists that violent uprisings must never be carried out in God’s name.

Maybe Pope Benedict is growing restless within his own authoritarian regime?

Vatican II (It is starting to seem so very long ago!) filled many of us with hopeful excitement about the future of the church. We seemed to be moving AWAY from an authoritarian and hierarchical church into communities of faith characterized by the radical freedom of Jesus and the Christian Gospels.

Thanks to Benedict-Ratzinger and John Paul-Wojtyla, almost all the Roman Catholic structural gains of the Second Vatican Council are being slowly but surely undermined and reversed.

For people who understand what the church is REALLY about, the Ratzinger/Wojtyla reform of the reform is a formula for demoralization and despair.

Nevertheless…..Christians don’t despair. Events in the Near East are more a stimulus than a warning.

Pope Benedict can publish as many books as he likes. The old gentleman just doesn’t get it: In our postmodern world people are looking for authenticity rather than authority.

Jesus exemplified the values people are seeking today: the values of sharing, solidarity, justice, dignity and service.

On this second day of Lent 2011, we should all set aside Pope Benedict’s new book and turn instead to the Gospel According to Mark:

 “You know that among the pagans their so-called rulers lord it over them, and their great men make their authority felt. This is not to happen among you! No! Anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant……..”

Thoughts that make me restless in the middle of the night

The highly Latinized new missal, that will soon be imposed on the English-speaking world, is clearly a major step backwards toward a broader use of Latin in parish liturgies.

In a parish near the place where I grew up in Michigan, most week end liturgies are now in Latin. When a close relative (president of the parish council) complained about the imposition of the Latin liturgy by the new young Legionnaires of Christ pastor, he was asked, by the pastor, to resign and leave the parish. That’s what he did. No solution, really.

Major seminaries are already training future priests to preside at Latin masses.

Coming soon from Rome, and from Rome-focused bishops, will be more liturgical directives that will stress: the “traditional piety” behind communion on the tongue, a re-clericalization of Eucharist as a “priestly act,” and to help people “better focus on God” we can expect more masses at which the presider stands with his back to the congregation (so that people do not distort his contemplation of God).

New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan is already laying foundations for a new anti-Obama campaign — getting ready for the next presidential campaign. The theme this time will be that Obama is anti-marriage and pro gay.

We can expect to see Rome’s best dressed cardinal, Raymond Burke, putting on his own anti-Obama boxing gloves, once again, with new assertions that Obama is anti-life and a baby-killer.

Philadelphia’s Cardinal Justin Rigali is having his own sleepless nights these days. He continues to assert no sexual abuse cover-ups and no recent re-assigning of pedophile priests in his archdiocese. The cardinal’s credibility is pretty low.  Can we expect a major pedophile explosion in Philadelphia…just as we saw a few years ago in Boston? Is the Vatican already preparing a safe and comfortable refuge for Rigali in Rome? Just as it did to punish Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law?

Roman Catholics in the United States are leaving the church in an historic and major exodus. Ten percent of today’s adult Americans are former Catholics.

Trying to Avoid the TRUTH in Philadelphia

Just Won’t Work Anymore

On 21 January 21 the Philadelphia Grand Jury issued a Report on sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests. According to Clerical abuse campaigner Richard Sipe, it the clearest and most complete account of the pattern and practice of the Catholic Church in dealing with priests who abuse minors and their victims.

The noose is getting closer to episcopal necks as investigations get more objective and the pattern of abuse in the system is laid out. Children are still endangered precisely because cardinals know exactly what their vicars do and vicars do exactly what their boss wants.

The Philadelphia Grand Jury released what has been termed a “sordid”  report on clergy sex abuse, some examples:

         Fr. Charles Engelhardt, 64, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales, is accused of orally sodomizing and molesting a 10-year-old altar boy in 1998 in the sacristy at St. Jerome Parish in Northeast Philadelphia.

         Fr. Edward Avery, 68, an Archdiocesan priest who was defrocked in 2006, is charged with the same offenses against the same boy. And this boy’s sixth-grade teacher at St. Jerome School, 48-year-old Bernard Shero, is accused of orally and anally sodomizing the then-11-year-old in the back of the teacher’s car.

         Fr. James Brennan, 47, an Archdiocesan priest, is accused of forcing his penis into the buttocks of a 14-year-old former parishioner when he was in the priest’s bed. At the time, the summer of 1996, Father Brennan was on leave from Cardinal O’Hara High School. In 1997, he was returned to active ministry and assigned to St. Jerome Parish.

         Importantly, Monsignor William Lynn, former Vicar for clergy is charged with endangering the welfare of children by allowing priests to continue to work.

Bishops and cardinals use an elaborate system of denial to cover their tracks.

Chancery offices are filled with people who will take the “fall” for their boss.

Boss Rigali

There have been priests accused and convicted of child rape before, but what is very significant for the entire church in the U.S. is that the supervising priest in Philadelphia, Msgr. William Lynn, is indicted for the endangerment of children.

Monsignor Lynn’s boss, Cardinal Rigali was on the defense immediately once the report became public and he claimed, “there are no archdiocesan priests in ministry today who have an admitted or established allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against them.” This of course is very strange.

The Philadelphia Grand Jury Report traces 37 credibly accused offenders who are

STILL in ministry.

It’s not just the Liberty Bell that’s ringing in Philadelphia….

This weekend we have a bit of a flashback to an earlier posting about Cardinal Raymond Burke. One of my readers, a good friend in London, suggested that I re-post an earlier piece about the former Archbishop of Saint Louis and  recently-removed Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.

Cardinal Burke has become a strong critic of theologians, like Cardinal Walter Kasper, who would would argue that change has been and must be an important part of Catholic belief and practice. Burke is in fact a strong defender of what I would call “flashback Catholicism”……..more anchored in the late medieval past than the third millennium.

Flashback Catholicism is at the heart of the storm, now blowing through the Vatican — and certain foreign outposts with flashback archbishops like Philadelphia — as “progressives” battle “conservatives;” and people like Cardinal Raymond Burke accuse the Pope Francis of fostering confusion about church teaching.

Catholic chaos? A Catholic crisis? Or just maybe Catholicism at an historic crossroad? The challenges are there and they are very real. Writing in the New York Times this week, James Carroll phrased it this way: “The joyful new pope has quickened the affection even of the disaffected, including me, but, oddly, I sense the coming of a strange reversal in the Francis effect. The more universal the appeal of his spacious witness, the more cramped and afraid most of his colleagues in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church have come to seem.”

Carroll’s solution is, I suspect, the only real solution for the growing Catholic dilemma: “…(a) Such retrieval of the centrality of Jesus can restore a long-lost simplicity of faith, which makes Catholic identity — or the faith of any other church — only a means to a larger communion not just with fellow Jesus people, but with humans everywhere. All dogmas, ordinances and accretions of tradition must be measured against the example of the man who, acting wholly as a son of Israel, eschewed power, exuded kindness, pointed to one whom he called Father, and invited those bent over in the shadowy back to come forward to his table.”

But now…….another kind of Burkean flashback:

Looking Sharp for Jesus

Best Dressed Cardinal in Rome for 2011

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke

February is World Fashion Month. It is with feelings of great emotion that I announce that Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke — born and raised in Wisconsin, USA — has won the 2011 “Look Sharp for Jesus Award.” The judges found him one of the best dressed members of the Roman Pontifical Court. There is of course no cash connected with this award because — well — we just don’t think he needs it after what his threads cost all of us in the church.

Raymond Leo Burke — “Ray” to most of us — was born June 30, 1948. Heck,  John Greenleaf was already riding his tricycle when little Ray was in diapers…… Ray is the current Cardinal Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. That’s a big job for a big man.  Ray previously served as Archbishop of St. Louis (2003–2008) and Bishop of La Crosse (1994–2003).

Aside from his judicial expertise and his great fondness for the medieval liturgy of the Council of Trent, Ray is quite the party boy in Rome. Wherever he goes, people stand in awe at his expertly crafted and tailored episcopal dress.

Various young ecclesiastics around the world — and no small number of seminarians at the Pontifical North American College in Rome — are saving their pennies to “dress like Ray when I become a bishop.”

Here is a  quick consumers guide:

You need a big hat — called a mitre. Ray has quite a collection.

This colorful head cover is one of Ray’s favorites. “THE hat” for special occasions, like going out with the Pope. It cost Ray only $8,340.

On less formal, but certainly still very  important occasions, the Cardinal Prefect prefers his simple gold bonnet. This one below was a great buy at $1,042.

But a mitre does not make a bishop…or a cardinal…..Pontifical GLOVES do the real trick.

These beauties — great in a suddenly unexpected  Roman snow storm or for shoveling snow back in Wisconsin — were a great buy at $1,390.

Forget the Rome-Based Theological Monologue

Invite Your Colleagues to IMAGINE THE FUTURE,  by

Listening to the Voice of the People on the Street

*****

A Five step program for listening to the people on the street

and formulating a contemporary pastoral theology:*

1. Let theological knowledge emerge from the study of what is nontheological.

Reflection on other kinds of experiences in daily life, in politics, in sports, in the arts, etc. and other forms of knowledge (including the sciences, philosophy and literature) are crucial to the formation of our theological imagination. They connect us to CONTEMPORARY REALITY.

2. Let the nontheological understanding of religions and cultures inform theology.

By focusing on questions of human meaning, identity and purpose in other disciplines,  we can better understand the contexts in which faith arises: philosophy, history, literature, sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics and the arts. No single discipline has a corner on the truth….just as no single institution knows it all.

3. Let theological insights be gleaned through inter-religious dialogue.

An understanding of Christian faith through a study of the texts, rituals, ethics and doctrines of others can lead to a deeper understanding of our own tradition.

4. Let the lived experience of  impoverished and marginalized men, women and children be our touchstone for theological learning.

Firsthand learning from exposure to the worlds of poor and marginalized people (e.g. battered women, orphaned children, persons who suffer from stigmatizing diseases, and the like) can lead to a transformation of hearts and an opening of minds. This transformation of hearts and opening of minds opens our eyes to the Sacred.

5. Let the God-mystery stand as the horizon for all learning

God is disclosed in the human even when the human cannot find or refuses to find God.  God as mystery stands as the finality of all activity, even the most “godless.”

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* Thanks go to Paul G. Crowley, S.J., a theology professor,

and chair of the religious studies department at Santa Clara University.

He wrote an excellent article in AMERICA MAGAZINE (7 February 2011) titled  “Tomorrow’s Theologians.”

US Catholic (the magazine) has applauded Father Anthony Ruff, OSB

for his speaking out about the liturgical translation

US Catholic deserves congratulations as well!

Now let’s get this ball really rolling……

(See lead paragraph below.)

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Bravo, Father Anthony Ruff, OSB

Friday, February 4, 201

By Bryan Cones

Finally a national-level liturgist has refused to any longer be a part of the translation fiasco. Father Anthony Ruff, OSB of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota has long provided on his PrayTell blog a forum for people to discuss the coming translations and had been scheduled to deliver several talks on the new Missal’s implementation in
preparation for its Advent 2011 debut. He has withdrawn from those engagements in an open letter to the U.S. bishops. (More coverage from America magazine here.)