The Growth of the U.S. Catholic Right

Christian Nationalism in America?

After liturgy on Sunday, a friend and I had several cups of coffee and a long conversation about the growth of the Catholic Right in the United States. He asked if I knew of some resources to help understand why the shift has occurred. The very best book I have seen so far is The Neo-Catholics by Betty Clermont.

The book examines how neo-conservatives linked-up with powerful right wing Catholics in a way that could change the face of institutional American Catholicism, the structuring of social policy in the United States, and the American agenda in the world. As I reminded my friend over our third cup of coffee, it is no coinicidence that the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican is a conservative American Cardinal and the head of the Vatican’s supreme court is another far to the right American Conservative (soon to be cardinal) whose battle cry is that President Obama is anti-life and anti-family. Levada and Burke are key players in a well-orchestrated power-shift that has Pope Benedict dancing in his red slippers.The book is highly recommended as well by two of our greatest observers of the American Catholic scene: Robert Blair Kaiser and Jason Berry.

“Betty Clermont helps us recall, in excruciating detail, a history of the U.S. Catholic right and its tremendous influence in the U.S. government since Ronald Reagan began forging ties with the Vatican. In vivid scene after scene, Ms. Clermont lets the documented facts tell the story, of how the American bishops diverted our money  (not theirs) away from programs promoting social justice into political action that could only make Republicans smile. A darn well written study in the abuse of power by lordly bishops who rest assured because they rest assured.”  ROBERT BLAIR KAISER covered Vatican II for Time magazine. He is the author of Cardinal Mahony: A Novel.

“Betty Clermont’s The Neo Catholics tracks the links of Republican politics, big money and Catholic ideologues with a muckraker’s zeal. Even those who do not share Clermont’s every position will be pulled along by her relentless scrutiny of how the pro-life agenda turned into a hothouse for war-mongering and the endless money-hunt.”  JASON BERRY, Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II and Lead Us Not into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the  Sexual Abuse of Children

New Men Welcomed at the Vatican

On Thursday, 7 October 2010,  Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Cardinal Claudio Hummes from the post of Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy; and appointed Italian Archbishop Mauro Piacenza to succeed Cardinal Hummes to the position.

Archbishop Piacenza is a “siriano,” i.e., one of the “Siri Boys” educated and formed in the highly conservative tradition (read Latin liturgy and Council of Trent-style liturgy) of the late and far to the Right conservative Cardinal Giuseppe Siri (1906-1989). Another “Siri Boy” now serving Pope Benedict is Monsignor Guido Marini, the Papal Master of Ceremonies.

Piacenza at Tridentine Mass

Ultra-traditionalists, the “Siri Boys” are key players in the reform of the reform. They are actively collaborating in the implementation of:

(1)   Latin in the liturgy

(2)   Liturgy ad orientem – that is with the presider’s derriere facing the People of God

(3)   Communion on the tongue ONLY

(4)   Nineteenth century clerical dress.

Benedict’s decision to tap Piacenza to take over the Congregation for Clergy is widely seen as a reward for his efforts in organizing the recently-concluded “Year of Priests.”

Piacenza could be in line to be named cardinal in a consistory Benedict XVI is expected to call for late November. Announcement of the names of new cardinals is expected one month before, probably after the conclusion of the October 10-24 Synod of Bishops for the Middle East.

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Speaking of the Synod of Bishops, one of the “experts” appointed by Pope Benedict to Synod of Bishops’ Special Assembly for the Middle East is Don Nicola Bux.

Bux is a professor of sacramental theology at the Theological Faculty in Bari (Italy). During a  recent pilgrimage for priests, he celebrated Eucharist in the “usus antiquior” (i.e. the pre-Vatican II old-style liturgy) and gave a lecture in which he encouraged young priests to be faithful to the thought and liturgical teaching of Pope Benedict XVI and “be able to appreciate the treasure of the usus antiquior and reflect on the reform of the liturgical reform undertaken after the Second Vatican Council.”

Since pictures often speak louder than words, a couple photos of Don Nicola Bux:

And now we better understand how the Vatican will solve

both the shortage of ordained ministers problem and the problem of clerical sexual abuse….

The Second Vatican Council Opened Forty-Eight Years Ago Today: On 11 October 1962

Joseph Ratzinger-become-pope wants to forget Vatican II.

His Rome wants to reform the reform and pretend Vatican II never existed.

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We will not forget Vatican II and the message of its life-giving theology:

The Church is the People of God — a community of men and women united in faith. The male-dominated clerical superstructre is simply an administrative body. It exists to be of service to the People of God and not to dominate and control through intimidation, denigration, and condemnation.

Humanity and the human condition progress through time. Cultural understandings and the ways in which we think and express ourselves change. The signs of the times deserve in depth reflection and concrete action rooted in that reflection. Yesterday’s understanding of the human condition is not necessarily today’s and will probabaly not be tomorrow’s.

Church teaching, like all theology, is time-bound. Yesterday’s expressions are not necessarily best suited to today’s understandings and language. Healthy theology dares to ask questions and dares to formulate answers that echo the tradition and resonate with the experiences of contemporary believers.

Today’s ecclesiastical leadership has willfully imprisoned itself in a nineteenth century time warp. Pope John XXIII smiled at the world and opened the windows. Pope Benedict turns up his nose, slams the windows shut and nails them closed with ornate medieval nails.

Nevertheless, the theological challenge  remains:

How do we speak today about our experiences of the Divine? Who is God for contemporary believers?

Two thousand years after he walked the earth, who is Jesus of Nazareth, raised from the dead, whom we  proclaim Lord and Christ?

And what does it mean to be a human person? And how do we develop and live a system of values that respects that humanity in all its cultural, historic, religious, ethnic, sexual and gender varieties.

PS………..How did the Pope celebrate the anniversary of Vatican II?

He brought back the papal tiara and re-worked his papal coat of arms………This past Sunday a new banner appeared in front of Pope Benedict’s study window for the noonday recitation of the Angelus.  Gone is the bishop’s mitre — originally part of his papal coat arms.  The papal tiara has been returned…

A Meditation : Church-Speak

Orwell would have more than a few cynical remarks about today’s institutional church.

In 1946 George Orwell wrote “Politics and the English Language” — a perceptive essay about the institutional use of language. In this essay he lamented the quality of the English of his day, citing examples of the pretentious rhetoric of institutional leaders and the use of absolutely meaningless words: all of which contribute to fuzzy ideas, a lack of logical thinking, and making falsehood appear as truth.

I thought about this October 7^th when Pope Benedict XVI addressed an International Congress for the Catholic Press sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. As one of my Rome-based friends observed: “Not only was his address exclusively in Italian, but neither the Holy See Press Office nor any other Vatican office saw the purpose of issuing a full translation in any other language, such as English, French or Spanish.”

This is the same pope of course who is implementing a liturgical “reform of the reform.” What terrific Church-speak!

It is of course no reform at all. It is rather a slowly-moving regression back to a 1950’s Catholic ethos of clerical-centered triumphalist ritual which turns its back on the congregation, glorifies obfuscating language, and denigrates the non-ordained.

Next stage after the Church-speak proclamation of Jesus Christ  as “consubstantial with the Father” will be more liturgical Latin-Latin and more liturgical Latinized-English (as in the “new and improved” English liturgy arriving officially in Advent 2011).

Vatican liturgists are already preparing for reintroduction (more “reform of the reform”) of communion on tongues because hands are sinful. They forget that Jesus said one should not worry about eating with dirty hands because what defiles a person is what comes out of the mouth. And the tongue, though a little member, defiles the whole body with evil and corrupt communication.

Two expert Catholic theologians, well-anchored in the theological tradition of the church, have written an excellent book on human sexuality. The USCCB Committee on Doctrine, headed by Archbishop (no doubt soon to be crowned with a red hat) Donald Wuerl of Washington, has condemned the Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler book  The Sexual Person as an “inauthentic expression of Catholic theology” and “harmful to one’s moral and spiritual life.”

Church-speak: Making falsehood appear as truth. Loyalty to institutional ideology versus ministry to people.

I am reminded of Archbishop Raymond Burke’s continued condemnations of President Obama for “aggressively advancing an anti-life and anti-family agenda.”

Burke has great praise of course for former Presidnet George W. Bush and remains closed-lipped about Bush’s immoral and illegal war in Iraq, his continued support for capital punishment, and his taxation policies making the rich ever richer, eliminating the middle class, and making ever-more America poor (now about 45 million) even poorer.

In Orwell’s 1946 article he reminded his readers: “When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

Now I have to think again. Was that phrase “consubstantial” or “Constantinople with the Father”……………..or does it make any difference?

 

 

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a statement denouncing as “harmful to one’s moral and spiritual life” a 2008 book by two theologians at Creighton University, a Roman Catholic institution. The book, The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology, by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler, was published by Georgetown University Press, and the press website features much praise for the work.

It really is time to protest the patent ignorance of our bishops.

(1) I encourage all readers of Another Voice to buy and promote this excellent book.

(2) I also encourage people to send letters of support:

Professor Todd Salzman

Creighton University • 2500 California Plaza • Omaha NE • 68178

“Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler’s new book…is among the most important works in Catholic sexual ethics to emerge in the last two decades…Their book will be noticed because of its controversial positions on contraception, same-sex relationships, cohabitation and artificial means of reproduction. However, its contribution is its clear articulation of a person-centered natural-law ethic that offers Catholics an authentic way to think about sex in relation to their faith.”—National Catholic Reporter

Some are demanding that Pope Benedict and other bishops resign immediately.

That may be a good idea in fact, but…

What we need AT EVERY LEVEL in the church is a new leadership style.

The openness for new wisdom, emerging in the here-and-now Roman Catholic Church, is so absent from our church leadership because the official  leadership model is based on individual authoritarian leaders — cut off from all genuine dialogue. 

Genuine dialogue happens when the authoritarian leader dares to lose grip on his (or her) ideas and allows new ideas and wisdom to emerge within an open and non-judgmental conversation.

Life-giving leadership is about enabling people, groups and organizations to create their own future, to acknowledge the need for change, and to collaborate in the processes of questioning, theorizing and changing. 

This is what we mean by theology: faith, in every age and culture, seeking understanding.

Leadership, based just on the individual perspective of the person in charge, blocks the co-creative process of dialogue and ignores the wisdom that is present in every person engaged in conversation in the community of faith.

 

Yes I do think the pope and other bishops guilty of sexual abuse cover-ups should resign.

And resign at once: pack their bags and move out.

BUT….we will not begin to solve the church’s problems until we shift from an authoritarian leadership model to a dialogical communitarian model….and this at all levels of the church: all the way from the young tyrant parish council president to the old tyrant bishop in Rome.

John Greenleaf is on R&R for a bit of research, writing and travel……

Back shortly after Labor Day!

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 The US Senate did not pass climate-change legislation.

We who work for climate change in the church can learn from that failure.

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Climate-change legislation did not get through the US Senate. We can thank those politicians who surrendered to apathy and sold their souls to conformist thought and the lies and scapegoating of big energy self-protective rhetoric.

Those celebrating the defeat of climate-change legislation point to the failed “scare tactics” of doomsday alarmists and global-warming heretics.

The big energy companies, particularly coal and oil industries, can now celebrate, with summer drinks and barbecues, the wisdom of environmental inaction. And they can compliment themselves on the success of their disinformation campaigns and anti-environmental organizations. (But it will be a temporary success……..)

Reform-minded Catholics can learn from the short-term failures of the climate-change people.

(1) Apathy about church reform  and renewal is a constant problem.

(2) Courage needs the support and stimulation of courageous friends and colleagues.

(3) Spreading false information and scapegoating are techniques used by all self-protective and threatened organizations.

(4) There is no virtue in ignorance; and the truth always comes out: often with a big bang.

(5) I can understand– as I hear from friends and associates —  that Catholics are getting tired of hearing about abuse in the church. A lot of very bad news has come our way. More will come for sure. It is tiring and depressing…..but  it has to come out.

(6) Honesty and tranparency must replace institutional avoidance, cover-ups and secrecy.

But there is also a time for stepping back and reflecting about the days and work ahead.

The Pope has gone to Castel Gandolfo for a bit of R&R. The Curia will not swing back into action again until mid-September. Chanceries are growing quiet.

We too should take advantage of the remaining days of summer to reflect and re-energize ourselves for the struggles that lie ahead.

John Greenleaf is doing that as well: going offline until after Labor Day.

In the next few weeks I will be working on a book and doing research and travel in Eastern Europe. I am intrigued by the resurgence of a triumphalist Church after years of Communist oppression. And I want to listen to young people.

ANOTHER VOICE will be back in September: with a voice that is clear and stronger than  ever!

A very sincere thank you to all who have taken time to read and share their thoughts.

John W. Greenleaf