ShareThisIf you want to cause trouble for American bishops, stick them in a vise between Rome and the armies of dissenters employed on Catholic campuses.But the bishops had to vote on Ex Corde Ecclesiae ("From the Heart of the Church"). After all, they had been arguing about this papal document throughout the 1990s, trying to square the doctrinal vision of Pope John Paul II with their American reality. Rome said their first response was too weak, when it came to insisting that Catholic schools remain openly Catholic. Finally, the bishops approved a tougher document on a 223-to-31 vote.Soon after that 1999 showdown, someone "with a good reason for wanting to know" emailed a simple question to Russell Shaw of the United States Catholic Conference. Who voted against the statement?"There was no way to know. In fact, the Vatican doesn't know -- for sure -- who those 31 bishops where," said Shaw, discussing one of the many mysteries in his book, "Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication and Communion in the Catholic Church."The secret ballots were destroyed," he noted. "These days the voting process is even more secret, since the bishops just push a button and they've voted. Even if you wanted to know how your bishop voted, or you wanted the Vatican to know how your bishop voted, there's no way to do that."Professionals have learned to read between the lines of debates held in the open sessions that the U.S. bishops choose to schedule. Outside those doors, insiders talk and spread rumors. Some bishops spin the press and others, usually those sending messages to Rome, hold press conferences, publish editorials or preach sermons. But many of the crucial facts remain cloaked in secrecy.Of course, noted Shaw, few leaders of powerful institutions enjoy discussing their crucial decisions -- let alone corporate or personal sins -- in public. When Catholic insiders complain about "clericalism" they are confronting a problem that affects all hierarchies, from government to academia, from the Pentagon to Wall Street."It's a kind of elitism, a way of thinking and behaving that assigns to the managerial class a superior status," he said. "They are chiefs and everyone else is an Indian. They set the agenda. They always make the final decisions. They get to tell everyone else what to do."Of course, there's truth in the old image that puts the pope at the top of an ecclesiastical pyramid, with ranks of clergy cascading down to the pews.Catholicism is not a democracy and there are times when leaders must keep secrets. That's "a truth," said Shaw, but it is "not the only truth," since the whole church is meant to be knit together in a Communion built on a "radical equality of dignity and rights."Part of what is happening, he explained, is that some bishops are protecting a "facade of unity" that hides their doctrinal disagreements with the Vatican. While Shaw believes the bishops are more united with Rome now than they where were about 25 years ago, some bishops may be pushing for more and more closed "executive" sessions as a subconscious way to protect themselves.Take, for example, the brutal waves of scandal caused by the sexual abuse of children and teens by clergy. For several decades, argued Shaw, the bishops have been afraid to openly discuss "the causes of the dreadful mess -- nasty things like homosexuality among priests, theological rationalizing on the subject of sex and the entrenched self-protectiveness of the old clericalist culture."That's the kind of scandal that creates global headlines. But, for most Catholics, more commonplace forms of secrecy shape their lives at the local level, said Shaw.Consider another story reported in Shaw's book, about a woman who quietly confronted a priest after a Mass in which he omitted the creed. When he failed to acknowledge the error, she said, "Father, you teach your people to be disobedient when you disobey the Church."The offended priest was silent. Then he leaned forward and whispered, "You know what honey? You're full of it." The priest walked away, giving the woman and her husband what appeared to be "the single-digit salute."Truth is, said Shaw, "clericalism is often alive and well at the local level. That's the kind of secrecy and dishonesty that really cuts the heart of many local parishes, destroying any hope for real Communion there."(Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. Contact him at tmattingly(at)cccu.org or www.tmatt.net)
Mattingly: U.S. Catholic bishops in a vise
Submitted by SHNS on Wed, 11/12/2008 - 18:33
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Response to U.S. Bishop Vise article
Clericalism, huh. Where's George Carlin when you need him to remind folk of how we make things sound almost innocent with "soft" terminology.
I studied to be a priest, wouldn't go along with such smiley-face treachery, was asked to leave. I asked my bishop then what he was going to do with his unordained priests. That was 1976.
If ever there was a killer sin, a mortal sin, this almost benign sounding clericalism is it.
Catholic Bishops in a vise
For most of my young life I witnessed the homosexual priests stalking young boys like myself. All of us were Catholic and my home was close to a large, very large Catholic village which contained a school for the deaf, gym(s), teaching facilities, priest dormitories, nun dormitories, conferance centers, athletic fields etc, etc.
It was the only place for us kids to play and the so called priests/preditors knew it. In those days their was little you could do except run fast and or stay alert. So to any of you out there who feel symphathy for the church......my message to you is: The church is head and shoulders above and beyond the Mafia and the Mafia's deeds.
Christianity, from the time
Christianity, from the time of Jesus until about 325 AD, was a very splintered and fragmented cluster of similar religious traditions which developed after the the death of Jesus. Roman Emperor Constantine I, the Archbishop of Alexandria, and the First Council of Nicea created and enforced the FIRST standarized definition of Christian theology. Over the last 2000 years there have been numerous schisms ( Arian Controversy,
Luther, Eastern Orthodox, Church of England, etc. ) challenging the veracity of the Roman Curia. It is no wonder that Bishops are more concerned with their geopolitical power than saving souls, creating peace, and relieving poverty.
CATHOLIC CHURCH STILL SQUANDERING ITS MORAL AUTHORITY
From the Baltimore Examiner 11/12/08:
CATHOLIC CHURCH STILL SQUANDERING ITS MORAL AUTHORITY
By Maureen Paul Turlish
Can the Vatican’s latest order for seminaries to do a more thorough job preventing homosexuals from entering the priesthood be seen as anything other than more smoke and mirrors?
Again the Holy See appears intent on a search and destroy mission to weed out candidates for the priesthood when what it should be doing is weeding out the sexually abusive and perverted clergymen who violate the innocence of thousands of children, not to mention young women, men and vulnerable adults.
Skim some of the pages of the few grand jury reports and the other investigations made public on these horrific crimes.
If the Holy See wanted to prevent many of these incidents it could have done so simply by following its own canon law and the criminal and civil laws of most countries. It could have prevented such tragedies by following the mandates of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child to which it has not submitted even one of the periodic compliance reports as required since becoming a signatory to that declaration.
What the Vatican needs to do is stop kicking members of the hierarchy who aided and abetted predator priests upstairs as was the case with Boston’s Bernard Law, who now holds a plum position as the archpriest of the Patriarchal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome. What the Vatican needs to do is to defrock, laicize or excommunicate some of the living and credibly accused sexual predators among the 19 of their fellow bishops in the United States alone.
This would give some substance to Pope Benedict XVI’s words, “to do everything possible so that this does not happen again.”
Yes, the institutional Roman Catholic Church has made mistakes in accepting deviant and sexually maladjusted individuals, no matter their orientation. But to scapegoat homosexuals is blatantly homophobic and unconscionable and only serves to further undermine the institutional church’s credibility.
Read some of the current stories from newspapers across the country and around the world, including the most recent one close to home.
The Rev. Fernando Cristancho, who formerly served in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, is being tried in Maryland for abusing two of his triplets. He had been removed from ministry, but not according to the Archdiocese of Baltimore, for having a woman bear his children through in vitro fertilization in his native Colombia. Even earlier, Cristancho was credibly accused of the sexual abuse of another woman leading to his initial removal from ministry in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
But for the current lawsuit and news stories on Cristancho, all this would probably have been written off as totally bizarre and highly improbable. The continuing sexual abuse problems plaguing the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, however, made that impossible.
This is not a chapter gleaned from some 21st century edition of the TV miniseries, “The Thorn Birds,” or even episodes from Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales.”
Quite to the contrary, cases like Cristancho’s are tragic and outrageous examples of maladjusted individuals who believed their positions as spiritual leaders somehow gave them license to indulge their perversions.
They are examples of a church hierarchy’s failure to adequately screen potential seminarians, both heterosexual and homosexual, using thorough psychological and spiritual evaluative criteria in seminaries around the world.
One wonders if the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has any processes in place to vet priests coming to the United States to serve.
Since the bishops have announced that their discussion on abortion has been removed from their November meetings’ agenda, perhaps it would it be possible to discuss vetting guidelines for such priests instead?
One could also say that such examples are telling of women’s place in the patriarchal scheme of things, not to mention the revelatory reports on the sexual abuse of nuns by clergy around the world made public in the 1990s.
Lay experts contradict what church spokesmen Monsignor Jean-Louis Brugues said publicly about sexual offenders. With the data to support their conclusions, experts like Richard Sipe, himself a former Benedictine monk, conclude that while homosexuals are no more likely than heterosexuals to molest children, the molestation and rape of post-pubescent girls and vulnerable adult women is not committed by homosexual men.
To once again attempt to scapegoat those with a homosexual orientation when the abuse, molestation, rape or sodomy of a child, young girl or boy, vulnerable woman or man is a crime of power, position and control, is unworthy of any religious institution or denomination.
As Daniel Maguire, professor of theology at Marquette University said in a 1994 Cairo speech, “I believe that the Vatican has squandered its moral authority on issues about which it has no privileged expertise.”
_____________________________________________
Sister Turlish is a victims’ advocate, an educator and a member of the Delaware nonsectarian coalition Child Victims Voice. She is a member of the National Representative Council of Voice of the Faithful and on the Board of Directors of the Delaware Association of Children of Alcoholics.
She can be reached at:
maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com
pedophiles in high places
Dear Sister in Christ Jesus,
I suppose I am naive, but how does one such as yourself condone and unless I misread your comment, applaud homosexuals in your faith's clergy in the first place?
Yes, they are human - God's creation, and of course, they like others, need and desire love as well as anyone, but that does not make them clergy material.
If indeed Christ our savior comes first, and if indeed we are to believe His word as it is documented in Scripture, then we as lay persons who love the Lord do not wish to go against what He has said - otherwise why call yourself (and the church as well) Christians at all? Why not just be like the Boys and Girls Club, or the Sierra Club?
Jesus said one man should take one wife. John wrote what was revealed to him on Patmos: Outside are the dogs and idolators. I am not judging - I am a sinner to the nth degree myself.
I am only saying why subvert further the pure wonderful Grace of God, and pervert it with abomination? Scripture teaches us that a man's love for a man is immoral and unnatural, among other harsh but very clear terms.
It isn't whatever feels good do it.
Thank you for your ear.
Nanette Ward
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