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…….

With over 50 million Americans living in poverty

A Reflection on What it Costs to Dress a Bishop

THE BASIC OUTFIT:

Start with the miter, a pointy hat the bishop wears whenever he does rituals.  He should have two kinds for a pontifical high mass: a precious and plain gold.

Under the miter he wears a zucchetto, a little purple beanie.

Moving on we start with the bottom layer….a purple cassock with a matching sash.  Although bishops get to wear black cassocks with purple trim, the proper one for saying Mass is the purple one.

Around his neck he wears a pectoral cross with a special braided cord.

Over the cassock for mass he starts with an amice, a rectangular  piece of linen, a remnant of a hood.  Then comes the alb, the long white robe.  The bishops gets to wear ones trimmed with lace at the cuffs and at the bottom half.  The cincture is a braided rope worn around the waist, sort of like a belt. 

The stole is worn around the neck and extends down below the waist.  It matches the outer vestment in color and material.  On the right arm he wears a maniple, a narrow strip of the same material as the stole.  It looks like the napkin a waiter has over his arm.

Next comes the tunic, the outer vestment proper to the subdeacon.  Over that he wears a dalmatic which is identical in basic style and cut but which has a distinguishing bar that differentiates it from the tunic .  This is the outer vestment proper to the deacon.  The bishop wears both because he has the “fullness of the holy orders.”

Finally the top garment is the chasuble, the vestment proper to the celebrant of the Mass.

A sampling of prices for the basic outfit:

This lovely hat is a bargain at $20,000

But then in cost-conscious days it might be better to buy this one for only $10,000.  I made the picture larger to encourage buying this one…..

For the penny-pinching bishop you can get a zuchetto for about $30. This one costs $60.

      This zuchetto is my favorite. Colorful, light-weight, and you can wash and spin-dry.

Another good buy is this smart-looking cassock for just over $800. (tax and shipping not included).

Under the cassock of course you should have episcopal socks and episcopal slippers……I guess bishops wear normal underwear.

These socks which every bishop must have are only $320. If you buy more than one pair, you get a discount.

They go nicely with these slippers…….guaranteed to make no embarrassing noise in processions. These are a steal at $1500 and they last just about forever…..They do need to be aired-out after long services.

If you are a cardinal, you should have a simple cardinal’s hat for colorful walks outside…a delightful view in autumn visits to the forest. 

This one — I would love to have one if I were a cardinal — comes to $800. But again, if you don’t wear it in the rain it will last for years!

ACCESSORIES:

Well you do  have to have a ring. This humble-looking one is about $300 in cheap silver and $1800 in episcopal gold.

Then you must have a pectoral cross. Here there is a great range of prices. My favorite is this one. In sterling it is just under $1000 but heck if you made it to bishop why not go gold all the way. This one in gold is now just $5000.

I will not wear you out with more clothes and accessories. BUT….you have to have a cozier!

Here you can get a simple-looking cheap one for about $600. But they look VERY CHEAP.

When it comes to croziers — traditionalist that I am — I prefer the neo-con look. This one is about $3000.

Well friends, this is enough for this week. I have my catalog and adding machine next to me

and just realized that when Cardinal Raymond Burke (nothing unkind meant here)  dresses-up for a Pontifical High Mass

it costs about $30,000 to outfit him……… But on the other hand, plain old bishops are much less expensive…….

Next week back to the serious stuff…………

“Don’t ask, Don’t tell” (DADT) was the official United States policy on same-sex oriented people serving in the US military from December 21, 1993 to September 20, 2011.

“Don’t ask, Don’t tell” has been the official Roman Catholic policy

for priests and bishops for hundreds of years.

It is time to repeal Roman Catholic DADT.

(For today’s spiritual reflection I offer this  interview — sent by a good friend — that appeared in  SPIEGEL.)

Interview With Gay Theologian David Berger

“A Large Proportion of Catholic Clerics and Trainee Priests Are Homosexual”

David Berger, a gay theologian who has written a book about his experiences as a senior theologian in the Catholic Church, speaks to SPIEGEL about homophobia and the church’s shift to the right.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Berger, you describe the Catholic Church as a homophobic organization. Why did it take you, a homosexual theologian, so long to resign from your offices in the church?

Berger: Because such an exit isn’t a question of days. Even as a child I wanted to be a priest, but by the time I had finished high school it was clear to me that I would not be able to live a life of celibacy.

SPIEGEL: And you became a theologian anyway?

Berger: Yes, because the church never lost its attraction for me. The Tridentine Mass was like a gateway drug for me. When I was 17, I was with the Pius Brothers in Lower Bavaria. What I saw there was a fascinatingly aesthetic baroque dream of leaf gold and Brussels Bobbin lace. I couldn’t get away from it. It only became clear to me later what I had got involved in, and the dream turned more and more into a nightmare.

SPIEGEL: Why?

Berger: Because my own life, my life with a partner, increasingly contradicted what was said and demanded in my church environment. Through my enthusiasm for the traditional mass and for conservative theology, I became increasingly involved with conservative Catholic networks of young aristocrats, industrialists and reputable academics. They utterly condemned homosexuality.

SPIEGEL: How did that manifest itself?

Berger: I kept having to listen to inhuman views. For example, Hitler was praised for having interned and murdered homosexuals in concentration camps. The point came when I couldn’t remain silent any longer …

SPIEGEL: … after you and your career had profited for a long time from contact with these right-wing circles.

Berger: Ever since Pope Benedict XVI, at the latest, you have to be anti-modern to have a career in the Catholic Church. I criticized the relatively progressive theology and left-wing church policy of Karl Rahner. That is how people noticed me. Because I was an expert on the medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas, I was invited by almost all right-wing conservative groups to give lectures. I was in touch with the Sedevacantists, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, the Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, Una Voce, Opus Dei and the Servants of Jesus and Mary.

SPIEGEL: What went on at the meetings?

Berger: These groups are very careful about who they invite. They meet in very high-class venues, sometimes in former aristocratic residences or in luxury hotels. Old men smoke fat cigars, drink expensive red wine and eat well. It is a parallel world whose inhabitants seek to defy the modern world.

SPIEGEL: And what do they discuss?

Berger: They talk about a supposed Jewish global conspiracy or about how to keep emancipators, freemasons and gays out of the church. For many years, there were
“gentlemen’s evenings” in Düsseldorf that were organized by a tax consultant. They increasingly became a focal point for a right-wing Catholic network. At one of the meetings, which were regularly visited by senior clerics, the man sitting next to me, a retired university professor, was railing against the gay parades on Christopher Street Day (in Germany):
“Instead of standing in a corner, being ashamed of themselves and just shutting up, they behave like pigs gone wild.”

SPIEGEL: Why didn’t you turn your back on the church at that point?

Berger: Many gays are attracted by the clear hierarchies of the male world of Catholic rituals. Among clerics I discovered extremely effeminate behavior of the sort I knew well from certain gay scenes. People give each other women’s names and attach very high importance to clerical robes in all colors. Just think of the nicknames Bishop Walter Mixa (who recently stepped down amid accusations of violence and financial irregularities) and his housemaster friend gave each other: “Hasi,” or “bunny,” and “Monsi,” short for
monsignore.

SPIEGEL: Did you get the impression that your homosexuality may even have helped your career?

Berger: In clerical circles I kept getting shown through unmistakeable looks, hugs, stroking of my upper arms and excessively long handshakes that one didn’t just appreciate my work a lot. The fact that many prelates had homosexual tendencies is certain to have made them more ready to help me get positions.

SPIEGEL: And these gentlemen weren’t homophobic?

Berger: The contradiction between evident homosexual inclinations and homophobic statements is one way in which people in the church deal with their own, usually
suppressed inclination.

SPIEGEL: You must explain that to us.

Berger: Evidently those who succumb to their desires are rejected particularly vehemently by those who painfully suppress such leanings in themselves. In the course of my
own close cooperation with clerics, something I had long disavowed suddenly became clear to me: The fiercest homophobia in the Catholic Church comes from homophile clerics who desperately suppress their own sexuality.

‘I Hope that the Church Will at Last Confront the Issue of Homophobia’

SPIEGEL: Did you feel this pressure yourself?

Berger: I published the magazine Theological Issues and was summoned by the sponsors every time a faintly liberal view was espoused. Opus Dei people were always there to observe. They said I wasn’t allowed to write “life partner;” it should instead be referred to as “fornication partner.” “Homosexuality” was too neutral, they said. One had to refer to it as “unnatural fornication.”

SPIEGEL: What finally triggered your departure?

Berger: The appearance of the bishop of Essen, Franz-Josef Overbeck, on Anne Will (a prominent Sunday night political talk show broadcast on German public television station ARD), when he described homosexuality as unnatural and a sin during a debate about sexual abuse.

SPIEGEL: Did that make clear to you that you’d been part of the church too long?

Berger: Instead of standing up for my rights and those of my partner I supported anti-democratic and anti-liberal groups that fight against these rights and in which some people dream of a fundamentalist Catholic religious state or seriously call for a Catholic jihad. I joined in this playing with fire and was then naively appalled when the whole house was ablaze. I regret that.

SPIEGEL: It sounds as if your book is a confession. But your former colleagues are not prepared to grant you absolution.

Berger: A reputable theologian loyal to the pope put it clearly: He said I was given the opportunity to discreetly distance myself from the “scene.” I was offered the chance to continue this hypocrisy and go on climbing up the career ladder. Because I didn’t want to take part in this ecclesiastic “crisis management,” I was accused of “shamelessly seeking the public spotlight.”

SPIEGEL: What impact do you hope your book will have?

Berger: I hope that the church will at last confront the issue of homophobia. It must recognize that a large proportion of the Catholic clerics and trainee priests in Europe and the United States are homosexual.

SPIEGEL: Can one really apply your experiences with peripheral right-wing groups to the whole church?

Berger: Ever since the rehabilitation of the Pius Brothers with a Holocaust denier among its leaders, it has become evident how much influence extreme conservative circles
have won in just a few years. The views that used to be exchanged discreetly at gentlemen’s evenings or in the editorial conferences of newspapers and magazines have now been declared part of the official doctrine of the Catholic Church by leading clerics.

SPIEGEL: Where do you think this development will end?

Berger: The fear of the world, of a spoiled, godless civil society, from which the Catholic Church wants to seal itself off in a bastion, will lead into isolation. There is no longer much sign of the open spirit, the sense of renewal that emanated from the Second Vatican Council. In order to defend itself, the Vatican is instead relying increasingly on reactionary troops. It is closing ranks with evangelists, bible fundamentals and extremely reactionary forces. But a fundamentalist parallel world will turn the people’s church into a sect.

Interview conducted by Anna Loll
and Peter Wensierski

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,730520,00.html

Note to my readers: I have not forgotten the Autumn hierarchical fashion show…It will still come…..JW GREENLEAF

September 17, 2011

As a dispute escalates between the Roman Catholic Church and the government of Ireland, it’s clear that the Vatican still has yet to fully digest the lessons it might have drawn from the sex-abuse scandal in the United States. This summer, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny delivered a thorough condemnation of the Catholic Church’s handling of abuse allegations. The Vatican, not to be outdone, recalled its ambassador. Then, Justice Minister Alan Shatter suggested passing a law that would require priests to report suspicions of child abuse, even if learned by confessions.

The dispute, which surely could have been avoided, is all the more remarkable in light of the traditional closeness between the church and Ireland’s elected leaders. Ireland’s aggressive stance was prompted by release of an official report on allegations of rampant abuse in the diocese of Cloyne between 1996 and 2009. The government maintains that church officials were less than helpful, and that a 1997 letter had at least the effect of discouraging cooperation with authorities.

Kenny, for one, directed much of his ire at what he termed the “dysfunction, the disconnection, the elitism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.’’ His attack was scathing enough that some people began to speculate that he was trying to protect Irish bishops by redirecting blame toward church leaders in Rome. Yet the government’s statements also capture a broader public anger, and the church’s defensive and, to some eyes, legalistic responses have not quieted the controversy.

Contrast that with efforts by Cardinal Sean O’Malley to repair the damage that the scandal has caused in the Boston archdiocese. His recent decision to releasen the names of priests accused of abuse acknowledged the public’s desire for displays of contrition that are genuine and substantive, rather than grudging.

The continued demand for further information and greater accountability in Boston underscores how much further church leaders must go to restore trust.

The diplomatic dispute with Ireland suggests that the Vatican is still focusing too much on its own institutional concerns and not enough on mending broken spirits.

NEXT WEEK………………a bit of humor looking toward Halloween ……as we take a more detailed  look at ecclesiastical fashions for Autumn.

For the record I have consistently and conscientiously not resonated with

Sarah Palin’s politics, rhetoric, or gun-toting lifestyle.

Last weekend ata Tea Party event in Indianola, Iowa, however, Sarah Palin made three observations that
go to the heart of our contemporary Roman Catholic leadership problem….from Rome to NewYork.

First of all she stressed that the United States is now governed by a permanent political class, drawn from both parties, that is cut off from the concerns of regular people. Hmmm I thought….just like our bishops.

Secondly Ms Palin  said both major political parties have allied themselves with big business to their own advantage in an arrangement of “corporate crony capitalism.”

Thirdly, and here especially her observations reflect the current Church scenario. Palin stressed that the real political divide in the United States is no longer between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private).

YES INDEED ………….Vast, remote, and unaccountable institutions…………..

They listen best to their own voices.

Where are the voices of American priests?

According to Tom Heneghan reporting today for Reuters, “dissident Austrian priests” defying their archbishop with calls for married clergy, women priests, and other reforms are gaining increased support among Austrian Catholics.

Three-quarters of the people polled have backed an Austrian priests’  “Call to Disobedience,” a manifesto that Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn compares to a football team refusing to play by the rules.

The Call to Disobedience, openly supported now by about 400 priests, threatens a split in the Austrian Church weeks before Pope Benedict’s September 22 to 25 visit to neighboring Germany. Pope Benedict, 84, grew up in Bavarian villages close to the Austrian border.

Rather than simply appealing for reforms, the Austrian priests declared they will bypass Church rules by giving communion to Protestants and remarried divorced Catholics; and they will allow lay people to preach and head parishes..

Schoenborn — who many believe could succeed Pope Benedict —  has hinted they would be disciplined if they do not back down in the coming weeks. “This cannot go on,” he told the Vienna daily Der Standard. “If someone has decided to go down the path of dissent, that has consequences.”

Call to Disobedience leader Fr. Helmut Schueller, who as Vienna vicar general was Cardinal Schoenborn’s deputy from 1995 to 1999 and who once led the Austrian chapter of the international Catholic charity Caritas, has said he has no intention of giving up. Schueller says many priests are already quietly breaking the rules anyway, often with the knowledge of their bishops, and his campaign aims to force the hierarchy to agree to change. About eight per cent of Austrian priests have supported his movement.

Reformist Austrian Catholics have repeatedly challenged the conservative policies of Pope Benedict and his predecessor Pope John Paul, creating grassroots protest movements and advocating changes the Vatican refuses to make.

A survey published this week by the Oekonsult polling group showed 76 per cent of ,Austrians queried supported Schueller and his colleagues. Some 85 per cent said the Church should not do anything to drive away its reform-minded members. Schueller is now a parish priest and university chaplain in Vienna. If he is dismissed, 97 per cent of those polled said, a “very large wave” of people leaving the Church would follow.

A record 87,000 Austrians left the Church in 2010, many in reaction to sexual abuse scandals there.

+++++

This side of the Atlantic, The Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC) has issued its strong support for the Austrain reform movement. 

ARCC  president Patrick Edgar has issued the following statement:

The Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC) stands in solidarity with the right of the priests of Austria to strongly voice what they believe are the needs of the people of the church regarding married clergy, women priests, Eucharistic hospitality, and other reforms.

These priests are prepared to face the consequences of the decisions they have made in conscience. The needs they express are echoed around the world. Rather than strict penalties being imposed, a response of open discussion and loving action is called for.

We encourage all faithful Catholics to think deeply on these matters, and to call their pastors and bishops to a responsive action which goes to the heart of true need.

For more information, contact

Patrick Edgar, DPA, President

Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC)

3150 Newgate Drive   —   Florissant, MO 63033

Phone: 1-877-700-ARCC (2722)

Fax: 1-877-700-2722

Email: arcc@arccsites.org

How to become a GOOD CATHOLIC

Essential Changes in Catholic Behavior

 One of my more cantankerous Catholic friends sent me an angry email. One those emails that screeches across cyber space and slams into your laptop. You run to see if your modem is smoking. TELL ME he screamed JUST WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY CHURCH REFORM!

It is all rather easily described. Doing is the difficult part.

I want to see a dramatic change in Catholic lifestyle…..for everyone from brother Ben in Rome to Pete and Marylou down the street.

I want to see some major behavior changes. I want to see people shift toward a better way of life.

ESSENTIAL CHANGES :

(1) From living in the past (the current Roman fad and fashion) to engaging with the present and thinking creatively about tomorrow.

(2) From practicing religion to living the Faith

(3) From rigid ritual to consciously-incarnational life

(4) From boxed-in religious ideology to open-ended theology

(5) From self-protective bureaucratic hierarchies to courageous apostolic networks

(6) From religious arrogance to cross-cultural, cross-religion collaboration

(7) From having the all the truth to continually searching  for the truth

(8) From being protective temple-builders to being traveling pilgrims pitching their tents along journey

(9) From schooling professionals to mentoring leaders

(10) From seeing the world as our enemy to appreciating the world as the real place where we live and encounter the Divine

(11) From parishes that are impersonal large congregations to parishes that are intimate small size communities

(12) From following church celebrities to encountering real saints