Punditry

A reader sent me the following story

“Is the candidate worthy?” intoned Bishop Patricia Fresen ceremonially, as lifelong Catholic Juanita Cordero stood before her in a pure white gown, about to be ordained as a priest. The question was asked three times during the ordination ceremony on Sunday, July 22, as one female priest and two female deacons were invested with the power to perform sacraments?—?a function forbidden to women under canon law. They are part of a movement from within the Roman Catholic Church that has been ordaining female priests since 2002, though those involved say that the tradition of women priests and bishops dates as far back as Mary Magdalene, whom they consider an apostle of Jesus. The participants in this movement fervently hope to be embraced by the Vatican, as other splinter groups have been before them.

Sunday’s ordination, witnessed by more than 100 invited guests, took place at an interfaith center in Santa Barbara that reporters agreed not to name in exchange for an invitation to attend. (Reporters also agreed not to print the names or orders of the nuns in attendance.)

I always found this partial secretiveness on those supporting women’s ordination to be quite the opposite of what they say. No doubt you will get an ear full of how they are being prophetic, etc. Funny I don’t recall the prophets that were afraid to speak up and face the consequences of their actions. If they truly believe they are following the will of the Holy Spirit then for these supporters to want to hide their affirmation of the Holy Spirit’s will to reporters is rather odd. From their perspective wouldn’t this be like the actions of Peter in the courtyard? "Women’s ordination is the will of Christ, but don’t quote me on that or indicate my name or anything about me."

…The women ordained Sunday join 18 others in North America who belong to an international organization called Roman Catholic Women Priests, which counts among its number approximately 50 female priests and deacons worldwide, including a few whose identities remain undisclosed in an effort to protect their jobs within the church. Also secret are the identities of the male bishops who ordained Bishop Fresen. Film and documentary evidence of that ceremony is being kept by a notary public, not to be released until the deaths of the male bishops.

Oh the bravery! It reminds you of the martyrs who gave their life rather than to go deny any aspect of Church teaching. Oh I forgot, the new martyrs are celebrated for denying any aspect of Church teaching.

At least two additional Santa Barbara women are studying to be ordained, perhaps as early as next year. Besides their gender deviating from the Catholic priest norm, neither of the two deacons ordained Sunday — who are scheduled for re-ordination as priests on July 28— is celibate. Norma Coon, of San Diego, has been married for 40 years. Toni Tortorilla, of Portland, lives with her lesbian partner. Cordero, a newly anointed priest who lives in San Luis Obispo, is a former nun who has been married for 30 years to a former Jesuit priest.

What you mean besides women’s ordination they have other issues with Church teaching? This of course is always the way it is. They are never totally orthodox with women’s ordination being the one and oly exception. It is always a slew of things and it is up to them to help push back the gates of Hell that must have opened and prevailed against the Church until they came along.

The ceremony, which took place on the feast day of Mary Magdalene, also differed from the standard Catholic ordination in the names the presiding clergy used for God, who is ordinarily referred to as “the Father.” The female priests instead referred to “Mother and Father” and to “God/de.” (The latter is pronounced like “God,” with the silent, extra letters hinting at a goddess that those in the ceremony declined to refer to explicitly.) Jesus Christ retained his masculine identity, however.

I thought it was pronounced "gaudy" and in the stoles they weary. Poor Mary Magdalene she suffers so much abuse now of days.

The reason that the women are determined to remain Roman Catholics, instead of forming their own church or joining another—such as the Episcopal Church, which ordains female clergy—is that they consider the Roman Catholic Church to be their family, albeit a dysfunctional one, and they have no intention of abandoning it.

Now if only they would realize that they are thr dysfunctional part of the family. This is rather interesting since Mark Shea wrote on Monday the philosophical divide between some converts and some cradle Catholics as seeing the Church as family.

There is another aspect of women’s ordination that is just so un-Catholic. If as a Catholic you really believe that the Church is in error on something than you would act as the reformer saints did. Foremost it would be prayer by these advocates for the Church. There is just no history of reform by disobedience in the Church. Saint reformers were often persecuted for calling their religious orders back to their charisms and the Gospel. Yet when their superiors and bishops had them disciplined or gave them orders they were obedient to them, even when it was unfair. It was their heroic sanctity and obedience to the Church that would lead to true reforms. Just as lack of humility and disobedience is the easiest way to sort out false seers, the same criteria can be easily applied to the false reformers.

“The meaningfulness of the Catholic tradition to me is the long history of mysticism in the church,” said priest Victoria Rue, who also teaches theology and theater at San Jose State University. She finds particular inspiration in the women mystics of the Middle Ages. “Priesthood,” added Rue, “is about leadership within the community.” There are many types of ministries to which people are called, she said, concluding, “I feel called to the ministry of the liturgy,” which she described as communal worship.

Well Victoria Rue is much better at theater than theology and theater is exactly right for the playacting of these pseudo ordinations. This is the world where "I feel called" is suppose to trump the Church. Not even all men who feel called to the priesthood are, and it is the bishop who makes the final decisions as to who become seminarians and ultimately who he accepts as having a vocation to the priesthood. Strangely vocation is one of those words I never see in these articles.

This article also doesn’t even pretend to have a shred of journalistic integrity. It is totally one sided on the question of women’s ordination with not even the feigned balance some articles on women’s ordination have.

They added that excommunication, contrary to popular belief, does not remove one from the church; it only means that one cannot receive the sacraments. “Nothing can put you out of the church once you have been baptized,” said Fresen. However, after the first seven women priests ordained on the Danube in 2002 were promptly excommunicated, none of the other ordained females has been excommunicated.

That the groups of women trying to simulate a sacrament since 2002 have not been formally excommunicated seems to be true. Canonist Ed Peters Excommunication Blotter doesn’t list any excommunication due to women’s ordination since 2002, though this is based on information in the public record. Considering that Cardinal Mahony is their Bishop I would be skeptical as to it happening in their case. The only people he seeks to discipline are nuns that criticize him on TV. I would love to be wrong here.

Diogenes posts on this story:

Viewed as a magic act, the present paradigm-shattering stunt is a disappointment. It’s one thing to watch a conjurer pull a rabbit out of a hat, another to watch him pull a hat-lining out of a hat. So here we see three perfectly conventional Unitarians kneel down, the secret formula is intoned over their heads, and — presto! — when they get to their feet we find three perfectly conventional Unitarians. None of the parties starts off close enough to Catholic churchmanship to make the ceremony a plausible counterfeit, whence it’s hard to see why they bother in the first place.

From Fr. Tran at St. Mary’s by the Sea in the Diocese of Orange:

Regarding the Tridentine Mass
at our parish, I
would like to make some clarifications, following the
directives of Bishop Brown in 3 points:

1) “The availability of a priest, in good standing, who
can demonstrate a minimum rubrical and linguistic
Your servant/brother in Christ,
ability to celebrate the extraordinary form”.

For this point we do not have any problems:
Fr. Mackin and I can learn hard to celebrate the
Tridentine Mass with the help of other priests.

2) “The ‘group’ of the faithful (that) exists ‘stably’
needs to be of sufficient number to warrant the
public use of the forma extraordinaria.
Individuals who are not geographically or
intentionally part of a particular parish
community should have recourse to their
proper parish with their request or to the
existing public celebrations that presently are
offered in the Diocese of Orange at Mission
Juan Capistrano and Pope John Paul II Center”.

For this point: I believe that we have a
sufficient number of parishioners to warrant the
public use of the Tridentine Mass. Furthermore,
the directive of the Bishop is very clear: for
those who are not parishioners of St. Mary’s by
the Sea: either geographically not from our parish (visitors are OK),
registered/willing being part of St. Mary’s by the Sea: either geographically not from our
parish (visitors are OK), or intentionally not registered/willing being part of St. Mary’s by
the Sea (but just coming for the Tridentine
Mass), they should go back to their home
parishes to request the Tridentine Mass or they
can go to Mission San Juan Capistrano or Pope
John Paul II Center to attend the Tridentine
Mass celebrated there.

Many will remember the previous problems at St. Mary by the Sea and Fr. Tran where parishioners complaining about not kneeling after the Agnus Dei were told "with the approval of the Bishop, I (very sadly) officially invite you To leave the parish St. Mary’s by the Sea and the diocese of Orange." Fr. Tran has even said that it was a "mortal sin" to kneel after the Agnus Dei. Something that was clarified later by the diocese. The parish at one time held the indult Mass and this stopped, I believe, after the arrival of Fr. Tran causing much friction in the parish.

First off I would like to applaud Fr. Tran for responding to those in his parish who would like the extraordinary form of Mass and his commitment to learn to celebrate it. With all of the bad blood in the parish it would have been so easy to finds reasons not to do so.

I do though wonder about the Bishop’s directives and Fr. Trans’ interpretation. Surely as the Bishop states parishioners should go to their home parish to let them know of their desire for the older form of Mass. But I don’t think the either/or directive meets muster. Under the current code of Canon Law the faithful are not restricted to mainly attend Mass at their own parish. I just don’t see how someone could be restricted from attending their Tridentine Mass. Plus how could such a restriction be carried out in the first place? Will parishioners have to prove parish registry to attend the Mass if they are not visitors? Will there be a secret knock or a password required? (Which would be Swordfish for Marx brother’s fans) Ushers trained to identify non-registered Catholics stationed at the door. Wanted: Ushers with previous training as bouncers with skills to detect non St. Mary’s by the Sea parishioners. Maybe registered parishioners will get their hand inked with some permanent stamp like at some amusement park.

Wouldn’t anybody attending who is not registered technically a visitor anyway? Plus the whole system of parish registry is not something mandated from Canon Law and is really just a tool parishes use.

Kudos to Fr. Tran for making available the Tridentine Mass, but there is a problem with either inviting people to leave or requesting people not to come in the first place.

[Via Roman Catholic Blog]

Karen Hall posts:

In the middle of the L.A. Times article, one happens upon this staggering statistic:

In Los Angeles, some 75% of the archdiocese’s 288 parishes were served at some time by a cleric accused of molesting, according to a Times study. As the scandal’s details slowly emerged, it became clear that the church hierarchy knew about complaints against some priests and that at least a dozen were allowed to continue working in ministry after their conduct with children was questioned. (emphasis mine)

Now, just for fun, name another industry or organization wherein the boss could have overseen operations that led to the above quote in the L.A. times and a $600,000,000 loss for the company/organization without any consequences?

People are also bound to wonder about the obvious difference in treatment between Cardinal Mahoney and Cardinal Law. The difference between the L.A. Times and the Boston Globe’s coverage of their respective cardinals is striking. The L.A. Times has had some highly critical pieces on Cardinal Mahony in relation to priestly abuse, but not very many of them.

One difference that comes to mind is the cases that came to trial in L.A. are, as Diogenes previously noted, 44 representive cases the Archdiocese agreed could be litigated in court range from 1958 to 1984. All of them prior to Mahony times Archbishop. So there is no direct linkage to the Cardinal and the details of the cases prosecuted and post 1985 abuse cases will likely be settled out of court. So we just are not going to hear about the cases where he might have been involved in covering up abuse when he was still a priest and those cases he was obviously involved in as a Cardinal.

Though even the case cherry-picking does not account for the disparage in coverage. There have been some moves in the Archdiocese handling of priestly abuse under Cardinal Mahony that have been breath taking in their arrogance. The legal maneuvering to hide records of what the Archdiocese knew such as invoking confidentially of correspondence and putting any meetings between the Cardinal and a suspect as being spiritual guidance and protected. In the case of abuser Father Nicolas Aguilar Rivera the Archdiocese prevented further interviews under the guise of fear of an immigration crackdown. All of these legal tactics should have demanded spectacular headlines form the L.A. Times and other papers, but while there was coverage it certainly wasn’t amped up as the Globe’s was.

The differences in coverage seem to be due to the fact that the L.A. Times is quite sympathetic to Cardinal Mahony and the issues the Cardinal has fought for over the years. Cardinal Law despite his quite obvious flaws and complicity in the abuse cover ups was quite orthodox in his theology and heavily involved in the pro-life movement and of course this made him a prime target. Cardinal Mahony in contrast makes some noises in a pro-life direction, but is hardly active in the movement and has no problem holding events for ardently pro-abortion politicians. The L.A. Times can easily see him as one of their own and while they are troubled about the abuse problems under his watch, well between friends can’t we overlook some flaws? The media is certainly not going to shame Cardinal Mahony into resigning barring some yet unknown circumstances. The Cardinal is safe just as long as he doesn’t become too pro-life or actually start showing signs of orthodoxy.

If you wanted to know the real reason why the CDF released the latest document, a commentator for CNN says:

Just chalk it up to an old man trying to get a little attention.

My favorite part of this ex-Catholic’s idiotic commentary is:

It doesn’t matter what Pope Benedict XVI has to say, or for that matter, any other religious leader. A Christian believes in Jesus Christ and what He had to say, not what a man of God has to say. This is not an attempt to completely dismiss religious leaders, but is further evidence of what happens when ego is more important than the work of Christ.

And then of course doesn’t see the problem with quoting the Bible in the next paragraph since now we are to listen to what this man of God has to say.

Oh and remember that Catholics are not encouraged to read the scriptures even though scripture reading is indulgenced or that Catholics hear more scripture at Mass then the average Protestant Church.

Jimmy Akin is up in arms and wants to write a response to this.

Speaking of new age nuns, a reader sent me the following story.

When Sister Teresina Grasso performs a laying on of hands, she draws on the Japanese healing practice called Reiki. Reiki is rooted in the idea that, through touch, a practitioner can unblock the body’s energy to help a person relax, relieve pain and promote healing.

In a dimly lit room in St. Celestine Parish, Sister Grasso made wide, sweeping motions over a fellow sister lying on a cot.

Sister Teresina Grasso feels for the chakras, or energy fields, over Sister Regina Gallo, during a Reiki massage demonstration June 26 at St. Celestine Parish.

She explained that she must "test the aura" or the energy around a person before a treatment.

"This is probably the most hokey-pokey part of the treatment," she joked to the dozen people watching the Reiki treatment demonstration.

The alternative healing technique might raise some eyebrows, but Sister Grasso assured, "It’s not magic. We’re not expecting miracle cures."

Reiki is not an alternative to Western medicine, she said, but this technique is effective in conjunction with mainstream medical practices.

…Sister Grasso also runs a regular Reiki clinic at the parish, where more Reiki practitioners are on-hand to perform treatments.

Reiki comes from "Rei" – universal and Ki – "Life force" and is a form of pantheism. Or as I have said before when it comes to nuns doing this it is a form of "pantsuitheism."

Besides being spiritually dangerous Reiki has also been discredited scientifically. Practices will often refer to a study done that shows it effectiveness, but this study was thoroughly debunked and discredited for the methods used. This type of spiritually dangerous crap needs to be thoroughly routed out of out retreat centers, Catholics hospitals, and parishes. The who underpinning of Reiki is not not consonant with Catholic spirituality and attempts to Christianize this "life force"as the Holy Spirit is totally mistaken. Another misleading factor is the use of the laying on of hands as if you were performing a quasi-sacrament.

How many received Reiki instead of the Anointing of the Sick? What we have here is spiritual malpractice where Eastern mysticism is substituted for the truths of the faith and users are deprived of grace via the sacraments.

Fr. Pacwa who has become an expert on the "New Age" was instrumental in the writing of the document put out by the Vatican called Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian reflection
on the “New Age” and this document discusses Reiki like "psychic healing" and other prevalent practices.

"

A reader sent me a link to the story about Islamochristian Ann Holmes Redding I posted about previously.

The Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, a local Episcopal priest who announced she is both Muslim and Christian, will not be able to serve as a priest for a year, according to her bishop.

During that year, Redding is expected to "reflect on the doctrines of the Christian faith, her vocation as a priest, and what I see as the conflicts inherent in professing both Christianity and Islam," the Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf, bishop of the Diocese of Rhode Island, wrote in an e-mail to Episcopal Church leaders….

During the next year, Redding "is not to exercise any of the responsibilities and privileges of an Episcopal priest or deacon," Wolf wrote in her e-mail. Wolf could not be reached for immediate comment….

Redding’s bishop in Seattle, the Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner of the Diocese of Olympia, who accepts Redding as an Episcopal priest and a Muslim, said Wolf’s decision is a good compromise.

"It’s a good way to have a timeout and provide an opportunity for Ann to continue to teach … and at the same time take a look at her relationship both with the Episcopal Church and the Christian faith and Islam," Warner said.

Redding is scheduled to start teaching part time as a visiting assistant professor at Jesuit-run Seattle University this fall.

Sometimes it seems Episcopalians exist to help Catholics feel better about the nuttiness in their own ranks. A prime example of Reductio ad absurdum. Though considering the religious orders that seem to have embraced eco-spirituality or other forms of new age ideas we don’t have too much to be smug about.

The Catholic Bishop of Christchurch, Barry Jones, is opposing a visit by a controversial feminist nun from the United States.

He has written to priests saying that next week’s visit by Benedictine nun Sister Joan Chittister is unauthorised.

Permission for the event had not been sought or given, and Jones did not want it promoted through Catholic churches.

"The point is that silence generates the misunderstanding that this is all approved, when it’s not. I have made my position clear to the priests," he said.

Chittister, from Eire, Pennsylvania, has clashed with church authorities internationally over her strong stance on issues such as women’s ordination and contraception.

She attended the first Women’s Ordination Worldwide Conference in 2000, defying an order by the Vatican.

An independent group of Catholic lay people, the Adult Education Trust, has invited Chittister to Christchurch.

She will speak about spirituality, culture, justice and "God, women and the world".

Jones opposed the visit because he said Chittister did not agree with the Catholic Church’s teachings.

"I don’t see how I, as a bishop, can advance the teachings of the Catholic Church by appearing to condone other views," he said.

High-profile Sister Pauline O’Regan, of the Sisters of Mercy, backs Chittister’s visit and was surprised by Jones’s stance.

It is rather heartening that we are getting more and more stories like this.

"It sort of sounds like censorship, doesn’t it?" O’Regan said. "I think she has a very loving attitude towards challenging the church in matters where it needs to look at itself. She should not be feared. She’s a very, very spiritual woman."

Let’s see, a Bishop makes his view known and Chittister is still going to be speaking, so exactly how is that censorship? I guess a shepard crying out against wolves coming to devour their flock is also censorship. So I guess what she wanted was the bishop to shut up about this, and of course that wouldn’t be censorship.

"Sure, she challenges various things within the church, but then so do a great number of other people. Jesus challenged the leaders of his religious era," said O’Regan.

Yes when you can’t defend something that goes against the authority of Church teaching you say something like that. Jesus challenged those who diluted the scriptures and taught doctrines of men. Women’s ordination and contraception are settled teaching. When Jesus told the Apostles "He who hears you hears me" and gave Peter the power to bind and loose he meant this also for Sr. Chittister and those like her who consider disobedience to the Church a virtue.

	Jester Hat Tip:	Te Deum

BEIJING (AFP) – China’s state-controlled Catholic church on Monday praised a letter from Pope Benedict XVI and voiced hope that the Vatican and Beijing would soon be able to establish formal relations.

"The pope, through his papal letter has expressed his love and concern for China’s believers…. This is different from earlier papal letters," Liu Bainian, deputy head of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, told AFP.

"Earlier papal letters were opposed to communism and the socialist system. They wanted to (punish) members of China’s patriotic church. Now the situation is not the same. The pope wants to better understand China’s Church."

Meanwhile:

Beijing, Jul 2, 2007 (CNA).- Several Catholic websites that are housed in mainland China were forced by the government to remove the Pope’s letter to the Catholics in China from their website, reports UCA News.

As of today, some sites still have the full 19,763 Chinese character text, but these are mostly all run by Catholics that are “underground.”

At 6:00 p.m. Beijing time on the day that the letter was issued, several mainland Catholic websites had already been forced to substitute a simplified version of the letter for the full length one they had published only hours earlier.

A priest in charge of such a website registered with the government told UCA News on July 2 he felt helpless because he strongly believes that "China church websites should publish the pope’s letter."

The priest, who asked not to be named, said some government officials came to his office on June 29 and asked about the letter but did not explicitly say he could not carry it. The next evening, he uploaded the letter to his site, but was told on July 1 morning he was not allowed to upload the text.

Other popular Catholic websites in China were warned to remove or not upload the letter. Some sites even informed their readers on June 29 that the long-awaited papal letter would be released the next evening, and urged their readers to watch for it and related reports. But since then, the same sites have only carried Vatican news since the government has refused to let the letter or any news about it be published.

Well I guess this is one way to help ensure this letter will be read by many Catholics in China. Banning it should certainly help to get the unabridged version out.

"The pope wants to better understand China’s Church." Well actually it is the Church in China and not the other way around. But of course that is exactly the problem with the so-called patriotic churches in the first place. Though members of these Churches who are in union with the Pope and Church teaching refer to them as "Open" vice "Patriotic." There is always a problem when Catholics associate their churches so close with the country. Here in the U.S. so many dissident Catholic magazines and websites use the name of the country in their title or at specifically in their url. The ironic connection is that what the "Patriotic" churches are not allowed to teach is very close to what dissident Catholic sites would like to see happen to the whole Church. Union with Rome, contraception, abortion, are topics not allowed in the government allowed churches, sounds like a utopia for dissidents.

It is interesting as Sandro Magister has noted that "There are about 12-15 million Catholics living throughout China, 4 million of whom are members of the Patriotic Church."

The newly appointed head of the Vatican office that specializes in relations with Muslims pledged Wednesday to back the moderate forces within Islam to improve dialogue and help defeat extremist groups that encourage terrorism.

"We must help our Muslim friends rediscover the roots of their religion and therefore favor these moderate Muslims achieve a dialogue that will bring a civil and harmonious cohabitation," Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran said.

I would think though that it is the Islamists that have discovered the roots of their religion and are imitating Mohamed in his use of violence and political deceit to gain power. If only members of a Mohamed Seminar could live long enough to do the same sort of damage to Islamists that the Jesus Seminar did to the faith of many Christians. Instead of a priori assumption that there are no miracles they could have one that Mohamed did no violence and thus disentangle the moderate Mohamed of faith from the historical Mohamed.

"This Islam is the most extremist one, which encourages terrorism, and which, to say the truth, is not the real Islam," he said.

No the real Islam did not use terrorism as we know it today. Mohamed was involved in some 27 raids and battles so I guess to get back to the real Islam they must become involved in direct warfare against cities they want to take over.

Question: What is the definition of a moderate Muslim?

Answer: One that is not trying to kill you.

Now of course that is totally simplistic, but isn’t that how we seem to be defining what a moderate Muslim is? I of course think it is a very good idea to maintain interreligious dialogue with those elements of Islam that are truly amenable to that, but for us to say they must return to their roots is misguided.

I think there will soon be a straw shortage because Fr. McBrien in his latest column erects so many straw men that surely it will have an effect on the market.

There were always Protestants attracted to the Catholic Church in the pre-Vatican II era for biblical, theological or historical reasons, all of which were carefully laid out in Father John O’Brien’s writings. With the Second Vatican Council, however, and with the ecumenical movement which the council and the popes had endorsed, it became practically impossible to present the Catholic Church any longer as "the one, true Church" and all other denominations as awash in error and falsehoods.

Enter straw man 1.

And so the traditional apologetical tactics — "demonstrating" that Catholicism alone is right, while Protestantism is completely wrong — were generally abandoned. If Protestants became Catholics in the late 1960s or in the ’70s and early ’80s, it was mainly for family reasons, or because they intended to marry a Catholic, or because they had grown familiar and spiritually comfortable with Catholic worship.

And his evidence for this is what? Surely people entering the Church because of marriage is not exactly a new phenomenon that has some stark Vatican II divide. I am pretty sure that out of my own RCIA of of about 20 people just one of them was there primarily for this reason and the rest because they believed the Catholic faith to be true. Regardless though I don’t know of any actual studies on this.

In the past two-and-half decades, however, we have seen something of a reversion to the pre-Vatican II approach. Many seeking entrance into the Catholic Church today do so as an act of rejecting their Protestant past and of embracing "the truth" found only in Catholicism.

I have read plenty of conversion stories and books and most episodes of The Journey Home, yet I have not heard one ex-Protestant disparage their previous faith. In fact they praised all that they had learned and while they now believe the Catholic Church is the fullness of the faith they don’t see their previous life as void of truth. Though I guess only Fr. McBrian can put "the truth" in scare quotes when talking about the Church.

More recently, however, high-profile Protestants and even a few Jews with strongly conservative opinions about religion, politics and social values have found their way to a Rome that one would have thought no longer exists. It is an authoritarian, triumphant, polemical, anti-Protestant Rome (non-Christians weren’t even considered) that flourished during the first half of the 20th century, but which experienced a thorough updating under Pope John XXIII. He convened the council in 1962 to open the windows and to let some "fresh air" into the Catholic Church.

Bishop Sheen is no longer with us, and there is no Catholic comparable to him who functions in the same capacity. But a priest in Washington, D.C., who runs the Catholic Information Center there and is a member of Opus Dei, has been doing an impressive job of drawing fellow conservatives into the Church.

Now while Fr. McBrien never mentions who he talking about it is of course Father McCloskey. Before liberals go to bed them make sure that Father McCloskey is not under the bed or in the closet since he is there version of the Boogeyman since Cardinal Ratzinger retired from the role. The thing is that Father McCloskey is no longer even the Director of the Catholic Information Center anyway, Rev. William H. Stetson J.C.D. is.

His main celebrity converts are Robert Novak, the columnist who was at the center of the controversy over the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity as a covert CIA agent; Larry Kudlow, an on-air financial adviser; and Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, currently a candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States.

Senator Brownback had been raised a Methodist but later joined a non-denominational evangelical church. He became a Catholic in 2002.

Conservative Protestants and Jews who convert to Catholicism, especially of the Opus Dei kind, rarely shed the religious, social and political biases they had in their pre-Catholic life. It is true of Mr. Novak and Mr. Kudlow, and it is equally true of Senator Brownback.

I would certainly like to know how someone becomes a convert in the first place without shedding some biases? I guess since they didn’t immediately adapt the watered down tribal Catholicism of Fr. McBrien that somehow this is a bad thing. Sony really got their money’s worth when they hired Fr. McBrien as a consultant to The Da Vinci Code since his view of Opus Dei fall right in line with Dan Brown.

More about him next week.

Oh I can hardly wait and in the meantime dump your straw stock immediately.

	Jester Hat Tip:	L.A. Catholic

Update: Carl Olson weighs in on the article.