Punditry

Waukesha resident Kathy Sullivan Vandenberg faces excommunication for seeking the priesthood in an unsanctioned ordination ceremony, Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan said in a statement handed out at weekend Masses at Vandenberg’s home parish.

Dolan wrote to parishioners at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Waukesha that it was his duty to notify the Vatican of Vandenberg’s action. Dolan said her excommunication could come soon. The Roman Catholic Church prohibits women from becoming priests.

Vandenberg, 64, said Monday that she was "startled" by the letter and surprised that Dolan had "spent so much time and energy" on it when "other important things" might demand his attention.

In his letter to the parish, Dolan said he was "disappointed because Ms. Vandenberg and I had begun a fruitful dialogue on the matter last fall. At that time, . . . I had advised her that any attempted ordination would affect her relationship with the church.

"I believed her sincerity when she assured me that she was unaware of such a consequence, and did not want that to happen."

Vandenberg said Dolan requested the September 2005 meeting, and in a letter the month before it, he told her that "in the interim, you should not be exercising any liturgical or pastoral ministry in the Catholic church lest confusion or scandal arise among the people."

The next day, she said, she resigned her positions as a eucharistic minister and lector. "I cooperated with the archbishop," she said.

Vandenberg called her meeting with Dolan "very cordial . . . very respectful. . . . I told him about my call to ordination . . . and he was trying to give me some reasons to stay" in the church.

She was stung that Dolan made details of their talk public. "We both agreed that the meeting would be private," she said.

Dolan and Vandenberg disagree on what happened after the meeting.

"She promised she would confer with me about her next step," Dolan wrote to the parish. "In two subsequent letters, I have asked for her decision. Her regrettable participation in the protest gives me her unfortunate answer."

I didn’t realize the definition of startled included being warned ahead of time of an action and then that action occurring. I also find it strange that these groups of women who crave publicity for their actions get perturbed when a bishop "spends time and energy" over their actions. And if she realized that he was working with her for reasons to stay then it is obvious she was leaving the Church. Thankfully Archbishop Dolan is acting like a true shepherd in this case in his concern for both her and his flock.

Via SF Author John C. Wright.

In the general war between the culture of life and the culture of death, I should note that the laissez-faire sexuality wing of the battle line has joined with the child-hating reserves.

In particular, I read in this month’s LOCUS magazine that famed cartoonist Alan Moore has penned a work called LOST GIRLS, starring Dorothy Gale, Alice Fairchild, and Wendy Darling, where the beloved girl characters from our childhood tales are depicted in acts of pornography on every page, including group sex, homosexuality, bestiality, and pederasty.

His reasoning? Mr. Moore claims our culture does not think and publish enough about sex. We’re repressed. Showing the girl from ALICE IN WONDERLAND having anal intercourse with a rabbit or something will be good for our mental health and emotional wellbeing.

I kid you not. I am not making this up.

http://www.cinescape.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=0&this_cat=Comics&action=page&obj_id=50999

Note how the humorless Mr. Moore wraps himself in the flag of moral sanctity to excuse himself. He is bringing enlightenment and culture to the rubes; honesty consists of glorifying sick perversions with all the wit and craft his art can bring to bear. What a smug jackass.

To think, I used to admire this man. Somewhere, bound in ice in the lowest circle of hell, the devil pauses in his gnawing on traitors, his tears of ice are checked, and he smiles a grim, lingering smile, and orders his lesser angels to prepare a place for someone who betrays his muse.

Show me a culture that hates virginity, and I’ll show you one that is bent on demeaning, and, yes, desecrating every pure and happy memory of childhood.

I originally found John C. Wright’s blog via Mark Shea and his last line echoes Mark’s line about a culture that hates virginity.

I also recently read his Golden Age trilogy which is one of those books that reminds me why a love SF so much. Despite the fact that this trilogy is based on a future of artificial consciences and the ability to be able to backup your own consciousness his own views on the subject are quite interesting in his post How long til the Singularity?

Update: I found John C. Wright’s conversion story to Christianity in a comment to a review of one of his books (scroll down to a couple of comments). Like myself he is a convert from atheism and his short conversion post is quite interesting. The post ended with this:

On a pragmatic level, I am somewhat more useful to my fellow man than before, and certainly more charitable. If it is a daydream, why wake me up? My neighbors will not thank you if I stop believing in the mystical brotherhood of man.

Besides, the atheist non-god is not going to send me to non-hell for my lapse of non-faith if it should turn out that I am mistaken.

Brian Cahill, of San Francisco Catholic Charities CYO, couldn’t be more pleased now that his group has found a way to stay in the adoption business.

Earlier this year, the Vatican announced Catholic Charities could not longer pair children with adoptive same-sex parents.

"Fortunately though our new archbishop did not say shut it down," Cahill said. "He said find a way to continue to serve these children and at the same time not contravene church teaching."

So the solution approved by San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer was for Catholic Charities to team up with California Kids Connection, an Oakland-based adoption network.

Even though California Kids does work with same-sex couples, Catholic Charities feels it can help because that’s all it’s doing – helping – not actually finalizing the adoptions.

"We would see ourselves as educating, informing, linking, and then we’re going to try to recruit parents," Cahill said. "We simply will not be, for reasons that we mentioned, doing the direct work."

Jill Jacobs, California Kids Connection Executive Director, says the match will work: "We’re not being asked nor pushed to compromise any of our principles or values."

Next month, Catholic Charities will send three paid staff members to California Kids to work to match up families and foster children.

California Kids could use the help, according to Jacobs.

"Last year this program was responsible for 200 children finding permanent families and we hope the first year to double or triple that and we think after that it will be even greater," Jacobs said.

The solution seems to have been a way to keep all sides happy, including proponents of same-sex parents.

Something is quite backwards when it is the director of an adoption agency that works with same sex couples is the one to say "We’re not being asked nor pushed to compromise any of our principles or values" and the director of Catholic Charities in San Francisco is almost gleeful in finding a seeming loophole.

In contrast, San Francisco’s Catholic Charities will assign three staff members to work with California Kids Connection, a nonprofit statewide organization that compiles an Internet database of children available for adoption and assists with adoption referrals. The staff will help all prospective parents, including gays and lesbians, Cahill said. If that work ultimately leads to a match between a gay parent and a foster child, that is fine, he said.

“God loves them all," he said.

Not being a moral theologian I wonder what others might make of this statement?

When asked if the new plan still puts Catholic Charities in a position of assisting with gay adoptions, San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer said he thought it was a form of potential “remote" cooperation that does not conflict with Catholic moral teaching. He said he has consulted his predecessor, Cardinal William Levada , the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, on this plan.

I am sure the question of whether this comes into the category of remote material cooperation is debatable. The German bishops use to be involved in a government program where they would give counseling for women considering abortion. They were not promoting abortion, but were involved in a process where a women could get an abortion. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger was finally able to end this process which it seems the majority of the German bishops endorsed. This situation seems similar to this situation and that the material cooperation is not just remote.

There is also another component of cooperation and that is moral cooperation. The current and passed statements of the Director of Catholic Charities in San Francisco show that he morally supports this grave sin. Even if an act truly entail remote cooperation it is still sinful if the person morally cooperates with the end. Mr. Cahill should be removed from Catholic Charities immediately. Since this has not been done it is hard to take seriously a good faith attitude by the diocese. It appears more like seeking a loophole than an attempt at diligently defending the faith.

Russell Shaw on the blogosphere:

…Catholics bloggers are having an impact, though one admittedly not measurable by election results.

That’s not entirely good or entirely bad, but a mix of both. On the one hand, blogging is a potent tool for expressing the responsible public opinion in the Church that’s been endorsed at the highest levels from Pope Pius XII to Pope John Paul II.

If anyone thinks public opinion doesn’t belong in the Catholic Church, he or she will find the papal magisterium on the other side of the argument. As a matter of fact, in the last major document of his pontificate, Pope John Paul II echoed Pope Pius in declaring that if public opinion were absent from Catholic life, "something would be missing from the life of the Church."

On the other hand, no one even slightly familiar with the blogosphere can help being aware that it’s the kingdom of the gossips, the ideologues, the cranks and the no-holds-barred venters of spleen — a place in cyberspace where opinion, rumor, ad hominem nastiness and unfettered ego-tripping are par for the course.

Web logs are an extraordinary medium for the instantaneous exchange of views and information among activists. Their speed, outreach and unofficial character give them their influence. But the blogs lack the checks and balances of traditional journalism and manifest a kind of congenital unreliability. Like great spinners of yarns, bloggers tell fascinating tales that sometimes even turn out to be true. But the best rule of thumb when consulting a blog is: reader, beware.

My guess is that the longterm positive influence of blogs in the Catholic sector will be to hasten the breakdown of walls of bureaucratic concealment and encourage a significant opening-up in governance and administration — and communication — as a measure of enlightened accommodation to changing times.

If so, that will be consistent with something the Vatican said several years ago in a document on the Church and the Internet. It spoke of new media — now including blogs — as potentially effective means of "realizing in a concrete manner" the Church’s fundamental nature as a community of faith.

Not surprisingly blogs are just like people, being that they are written by people. Whatever faults we can find in people we can certainly find in the blogosphere.

Though I think the caveat of "reader beware" applies to all forms of communication. The vaunted checks and balances of the Main Stream Media are largely exaggerated. A biased editor is color blind when checking biased reporting that conforms to their own biases. Each week we are treated to major blunders in the press that if corrected appear not on the front page, but buried somewhere else. When stories are misreported I usually find out about them via the same blogs that reported them in the first place.

The major mistake most writers make when talking about the blogosphere is writing about it as if it was some cohesive whole. Just as in the print media there are vehicles such as the NYT, the Post, Village Voice, Gossip magazines, Tabloids, Community papers, etc. Blogs have added many other categories that sometimes adhere to other models such as straight journalism or other variants such as diarists and linkers. Great "spinners of yarns" that sometimes tell stories actually true is just as applicable to the MSM with its Jayson Blair’s or the MSM as a whole when it came to the deplorable coverage of Hurricane Katrina that largely turned out to be mythical.

A healthy skepticism is important when evaluating all sources. Blogs generally don’t have a normal editor, but I know from my own experience that I have plenty of editors also known as readers. Besides helping out my grammar and spelling there are plenty of unpaid fact checkers out there willing to give correction when I have written in error.

Now I am not dumping on Russell Shaw who I really do like as a writer. What he writes in this article contains good analysis of what types of effects the Catholic blogosphere has and can achieve. It just annoys me seeing once again a comparison of the blogosphere to traditional journalism and its supposed checks and balances.

On Dom’s site:

Via Kathy Shaidle comes a thoughtful article from Libertas, a forum for conservative thought on film, regarding Hollywood celebrities in light of Mel Gibson’s recent troubles.

Although Gibson clearly used the conservative media to promote a product of his, Gibson’s politics remain vague. Basically Gibson appears to be an idiosyncratically devout Catholic whose agenda crossed paths with religious conservatives when his film came out, and also when Gibson lobbied against stem-cell research. Otherwise, it isn’t clear to me how the mythology of Mel Gibson as political conservative began. In fact, these days I’m sensing the opposite may be true: Gibson may be a left-wing Catholic much like … Michael Moore.

… And this, perhaps is the most vital point I have to make to fellow conservatives: get over this guy. Stop treating Hollywood Celebrities as anything more than they are: Hollywood Celebrities. And what is a Hollywood Celebrity? For the most part they’re bizarre, indulged, completely self-absorbed people who do not live in the world the rest of us live in.

… The problem is that the allegiances of Hollywood Celebrities are determined by who is going to give them $20 million paychecks, and little else. More than liberalism or (in the very rare case) conservatism, the ideology of Hollywood Celebrities is: narcissism.

I’ve written about it before. I’m always amazed at how some orthodox and conservative Catholics go all weak in the knees whenever they think that some Hollywood celebrity might be a closet Catholic or a closet political conservative or agree with their point of view in some way. Who cares? Why must we get our validation from people whose job it is to prance about the stage and play at imagination. There’s nothing with that if it’s your profession, but that’s the point. It’s just a job, not membership in an American aristocracy that automatically makes the anointed celebrity an expert in everything he or she has an opinion about.

The cult of celebrity is just a further sign of sickness in our society. There has been wall to wall media coverage of Mad Mel’s anti-Semetic rant that is not proportional to other stories.

Naveed Afzal Haq who killed one Jewish woman and injured five others including a pregnant woman and yet Google News shows 1,110 stories for Haq and 4,830 for Mel Gibson. As despicable as Mel’s comments were they don’t rise up to the type of hatred that plans and then carries out actual shooting of Jewish people.

As far as Mel Gibson’s situation itself goes I will defer to what Mark Shea has written on the subject since he says it much better than I can.

PATRICK SWAYZE has blasted movies like THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST and THE DA VINCI CODE for giving religion a cynical slant. The DIRTY DANCING star, who has a keen interest in spirituality, fears controversial films will leave the world with no religion or faith to turn to. He says, "I believe in a higher power. I’ve studied Eastern philosophies, and I’ve studied the Koran. We’ve devalued everything worth believing in. Now we’re tearing into religion. "A line should be drawn. The Last Temptation of Christ. And The Da Vinci Code borders on that. "I was glued to the book, but afterwards I thought, ‘Oh my Lord. Now we’re tearing into God and our faith.’ Are we going to be turning into a reality show too? I certainly hope not."

Patrick was raised Catholic, but seems to be into the healing power of crystals and Buddhism, so unfortunately his saying "our faith" doesn’t have much of a dividing line.

Twelve women from throughout the United States lie prostate before the altar while participating in a ceremony Monday, July 31, 2006, in which eight will proclaim themselves priests and four deacons in Pittsburgh. The ceremony won’t be recognized by the Catholic church, which has a 2,000-year tradition of an all-male priesthood. Similar ceremonies conducted by the group Roman Catholic Womenpriests have been held before in other countries, and most of the participants have been excommunicated. It’s the first time the group is holding a ceremony in the U.S. The ceremony took place on a riverboat cruise of the three rivers in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Well the AP caption is dead on when they say they will "proclaim themselves priests", because that is exactly what happened. Let us pray for these women who have truly left the Bark of Peter for a false ordination on a boat that does dinner cruises. In fact Peter’s Bark is not worse and it’s right.

This sham was performed by three German women "bishops". Which I find rather ironic. True ordinations are done by three bishops so as to ensure there is no doubt in reference to Apostolic succession and that a valid ordination occurred. The Trinitarian sign of it of course is also a factor, which is of course why the want to move away from Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Again keep these women in your prayers so that they might see that obedience and love of the Church is the true path. That serving Christ is through humility and not seeking what you perceive as inequity of power. That they grow to understand that Christ choosing only men to be apostles is no more a slight than Jesus choosing only women to be mothers. That we all have are role in the Body of Christ and we can all call dibs on being the same part.

One note is that I think we should dispense with disparaging the physical appearance of these women who seek ordination. Let us rightly criticize their actions, their attitudes, and their disobedience. Let us hold high the truth with charity.

Update: A reader noticed that the AP story accidentally used prostate instead of prostrate. Pretty funny considering that only males have a prostate gland. I guess the next step if for these women to demand that they be given male organs also to ensure equity and inclusion.

I had heard about the following article which appeared in the Diocese of Spokane’s Inland Register previously when part of it was read on EWTN’s Open Line. I had searched for it before, but it wasn’t yet available. Via Free Republic I see it is now available.

I was recently watching a part of the daily televised liturgy on EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network). The liturgy there is an odd mix of English and Latin, while following the texts of the current Roman Missal. The priest and ministers of the liturgy look way too somber and serious. The ritual is performed with all the exaggerated exactness of the pre-Vatican II Latin liturgy. The Mass is overly formal and mechanical. Needless to say, there are no women allowed in the sanctuary area, there is no procession with the gifts, no Sign of Peace, and, of course, no Communion from the cup for the lay people who are present. The liturgy, in effect, is unlike anything that Catholics experience in the vast majority of Catholic parish churches.

Exactly true that the Mass on EWTN is unlike what most Catholics experience. A Mass with no liturgical abuses is rare indeed. A Mass that actually follows that intent and documents of Vatican II and have not banished Latin to the outer darkness. A Mass that is reverent and includes on experimentation is certainly unlike what most Catholic experience. Though my parish has both the Tridentine indult and on the first Sunday of the month has the new Mass like on EWTN.

I am certain that the planners of these liturgies would explain their differences from parish liturgies with the familiar refrain that the post Vatican II liturgical reforms have taken too much of the mystery away from the Holy Mass. Certainly, they say, allowing the congregation full, active and conscious participation in the ritual is what empties the rites of their mystery, so the further we keep the secular congregation away from the clerical activity and space, the better to preserve the liturgy’s mystery. Thus the need to eliminate any personal touch with the lay folks, and, by all means, do not allow them to communicate with each other, even to wish one’s neighbor the peace of the risen Christ. (One wonders what these people think of the pope as he hugs and kisses the children who present him with the gifts to be offered, giving each of them a small gift as a remembrance of the liturgy. Perhaps it is all right for the pope to be warm and personable during the liturgy, but inappropriate for lesser souls.)

"Certainly, they say, allowing the congregation full, active and conscious participation in the ritual is what empties the rites of their mystery." This is just total nonsense. Nobody make this claim. What is argued that active participation means active prayerful participation and not just things for the people in pew to do during Mass. It is also ridiculous to assert that EWTN sees the need to eliminate the personal touch with lay folk. Exactly who does he think is watching and contributing to the network? The homilies given are usually warm and personable and not some cold edict delivered from the pulpit.

I think the folks responsible for these stuffy liturgies are confusing mystery with mystification. Rites that express mystery will invite people into the unknown, into what lies beyond the action of the ritual. Liturgy done well this way will cause people to ask, “How does this ritual which I can see, and in which I am participating, lead me more deeply into the beyond, into life of the God of mystery whom I cannot see?” Mystification, on the other hand, leads one to ask, “What on earth does that mean, and why in God’s name is he doing that?”

So liturgy celebrated within the liturgical guidelines is now stuffy? Though he might be right about mystification. Some Masses I attend I am mystified and ask myself “What on earth does that mean, and why in God’s name is he doing that?” Though I don’t think my reaction to liturgical oddities is what he was driving at.

“We know that birettas and fiddle-back chasubles, mumbled (and often mangled) Latin, and truly execrable renditions of Gregorian chant were no more aesthetically than theologically impressive. Having lived through ‘speed-typing’ Masses guaranteed to last no more than twenty minutes, we can point to the greater seriousness, even greater solemnity, of parish worship today. Those who call contemporary worship insufficiently sacred literally do not know what they are talking about.

No doubt there was reform needed in the Church and that Masses said like somebody hit the fast-forward button did not lead to worship. The answer to poorly sung Gregorian Chant is not banishment of chant but better training. Though I would rather hear badly sung chant then the majority of modern hymns sung well.

“As for the growing similarity among the Eucharistic celebrations of Catholics and Protestants, we should rejoice that Catholics now feel at home at Lutheran, Methodist, and Episcopalian worship, and that our Protestant neighbors have gained much through our process of renewal and reform. The Catholic form of worship remains a strong motivation for conversion among adults. As we have known all along, God works powerfully through the words and gestures of the liturgy; the hard work of renewal has served to make God’s work plain and public each Sunday when we gather as ‘church.’”

Isn’t this paragraph a contradiction. First he says we should rejoice about the similarity of the Mass and Protestant worship and then says it remains a strong motivation for conversion among adults. Making God’s work plain doesn’t mean to make the Mass itself plain. I bet their are a lot of Masses in his own diocese that need critiquing compared to EWTN’s Mass.

Of course you won’t be surprised to read that Fr. Larson is liturgical consultant for the Archdiocese of Seattle.

Cardinal McCarrick responds to the Denver Catholic Register column by George Weigel. [Via Kevin Knight]

The cardinal says that Weigel is correct in his assertion that he often calls for "moderation and civility." However, McCarrick continues, "that doesn’t mean compromising our faith and our teachings."

McCarrick, who said that through his column that Weigel is guilty of, "deceptive journalism, if not worse," wrote in his letter to the readers of Commonweal that people should, "avoid name calling and personal attacks and be careful that what we say is always true both in its expression and its implication." "Sometimes…it truly is important to set the record straight in the face of half-truths," McCarrick said.

I would be curious to exactly where George Weigel resorted to name calling or personal attacks. Re-reading the article I could find no signs of such behavior and wouldn’t saying someone was guilty of "deceptive journalism" be a personal attack itself? The original article made no positive assertions against the Cardinal, but only wondered what he meant by moderation and whether it just meant being in the middle of issues. George Weigel also wondered what he meant by moderation when there were many issues he was not moderate on and was willing to lobby congress on.

The funniest part of the whole thing is that the Cardinal decided to make his reply via Commonweal a magazine not exactly noted for heterodoxy.

You have to love Bill Donahue.

“Contrary to some news reports, this is not the first time that this make-believe game has been played. In 2003, the Associated Press reported that Judith Heffernan had ‘performed baptisms, heard confessions, said Mass and participated in last rites as a Catholic priest” for the past 23 years. Even before Heffernan’s ‘ordination’ in 1980, a woman was proclaimed ‘Pope’ on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York; an anti-Catholic group, Catholics for a Free Choice, performed the ceremony in 1974. Similar things are done every day in the asylum, though the media show little interest in these stories.

“There is only one plausible reason why the media are covering this insane event: they have a vested ideological interest in promoting female ordination in the Catholic Church. In this instance, it’s not the reporting, per se, that evinces a bias—it’s the decision to cover the event that gives away their hand.”

I liked Small but disorgaznized take:

Today, July 30, 2006, I will attain my boyhood dream of becoming an astronaut. A former astronaut will pin his astronaut wings on my lapel and I will have become an astronaut. I will then be able to pilot shuttle missions and lead the next manned expeditions to the moon and to Mars.

In unrelated news:

A number of self-deluded women are right here in Pittsburgh today to attend a ritual that they believe will make them ordained Catholic priestesses. The sacraments of the Church are not magic that works regardless of context. If one goes to confession but is not sorry for the sins they confess then they are not forgiven, regardless of the fact that the priest has said the words, “I absolve you”. If you are married but you have never intended to be faithful or never intended to have children then it is likely that a marriage never actually occurred and the Church will likely declare it null when your spouse finds out.

The Pittsburgh Diocese issued a statement:

"This unfortunate ceremony will take place outside the Church and undermines the unity of the Church. Those attempting to confer Holy Orders have, by their own actions, removed themselves from the Church, as have those who present themselves for such an invalid ritual," according to the statement released by the Rev. Ronald Leng win, a spokesman for the diocese.

Joan Houk shows her "blessing cup."

Another article mentions her previous activities.

In July 2000, the Houks moved to Mt. Sterling, Ky., where Mrs. Houk served as pastoral director at St. Patrick while living in the church rectory with her husband. St. Patrick, founded in 1862, had always had a resident pastor, but Mrs. Houk assumed those duties.

"I did do funerals. I led Communion services when the priest couldn’t come. When a priest was not available, I led Sunday celebration, and I did preach," Mrs. Houk said.

Besides her service in Kentucky, she has worked on a marriage tribunal; taught catechism as well as the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults; and worked with her husband to prepare engaged couples for marriage.

So unfortunately nobody put a stop to her foolishness. The "blessing cup" is one she used while pastoral director which shows that she wasn’t doing Communion services but was already pretending to be a priest. I guess the point of the story of the Emperor’s new clothes would be lost on this parish.

Though it is quite funny that people who have abandoned Apostolic Tradition are quite fond of their own traditions.

This is the boat that this faux-ordinations will occur on is called the Majestic and when not performing phony ceremonies does lunch and dinner cruises. Maybe female ordinations will become. I wonder if they think that ordinations done on dry land are invalid? The side wheel on the boat is purely ornamental and is just as fake as the ordinations that will be performed on it.