Punditry

Yes it is time for another VOTF survey that as Seekeroftheway says we can skew.
And when it comes to VOTF I say skew you.
There are only a couple of questions (around five) and they are as biased as the questions in any survey from the Main Stream Media.

They start off

With regards to Fr. Thomas Reese’s resignation from America, do you feel

Cue Peter Frampton and Do you Feel like we do. Not think or believe, but the oh so typical feel

It was appropriate – as a Jesuit priest, he should only reinforce Vatican teaching.

Get it – yep "Vatican teaching" as if this is somehow different and separate from Catholic teaching. Is it that I converted to the Vatican faith and would that make me a convert to Vatholicism?

It was the right action on his part to maintain the magazine’s autonomy.

No right answer for that one. Maintain the magazine’s autonomy? This is like a planet leaving its orbit and wanting to still be considered part of the solar system. Autonomy from truth is slavery.

It was punishment because Fr. Reese challenged institutional Church’s authority.

For VOTF the word institutional is bandied about as a swear word – except of course when it comes to the institutional leadership of VOTF. Remember when you say institutional to grit your teeth a bit and get that certain look in your eyes and you too can be a leader in VOTF. This simplistic and silly view is that this is all just about a challenge to institutional Church’s authority. Like a father-son disagreement. Where the father must put the son in his place because he challenged his authority.

The following was my favorite question.

Is VOTF mainly made up of gray-haired heretics who are taking advantage of the priestly sex scandal to promote heterodox practices to try to Protestantize the Church?

Well maybe I only imagined the last question.

At View from the Pew Keli takes a look at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality a spirituality ministry of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, St. Paul Province. Much of the site is all too familiar if you have explored the web sites of progressive sisters before. They default links to the UN Earth Charter and Green Peace and the headquarters of most of these orders – the United Nations.

Q: On your website I noticed that about once/month there is a drum circle and sometimes drum making offered. Why do you celebrate a Native American tradition? Thank you, Samantha.

A: Dear Samantha,
It is interesting that you ask about drum making and the drumming circle we have each month. It is true that we associate this with the traditions of our Native People…However, you might be surprised to know that all cultures at one time created their sacred drums. So, when you make your own drum you are taking that which has died (the elk or deer and the maple tree) and using your energy to stretch and shape a new creation. When we beat our drums, we create new energy of healing and life. Prayer, meditation, Tai chi, reflective walking–these are all ways in which we connect with God, the Sacred, the Love that unfolds all creation. Drumming is another way to connect with and spread this Love.

Wow I wish I would have know that when I was a kid. When told to stop banging on some bongo drums I could have replied that I am using my energy to stretch and shape a new creation and not just making noise. The only problem with this stuff is that even when I do what should be obvious parodies on my Thoroughly Modern Mary progressive nun parody blog that too often people can’t differentiate parody from what is written on these sites.

And no the CJ is not Curt Jester, this is one of their rotating banners for the Sacred Circle Dance "All are welcome–no epxerience [sic] necessary!" Wow who would have thought that you didn’t require experience to walk around in a circle. ‘Are we done yet! No just a little farther we are almost at the end.’ I have heard of circular reasoning, but not circular meditations.

And of course what is a modern spiritual retreat center without a labyrinth. There they give you instructions on how to create your very own personal five foot square hand-painted floor labyrinths. I wonder if any of them manage to get lost in a five foot square labyrinth. If you have your own personal labyrinth maybe they can have Paul McCartney come and sing "Baby, I’m a maze."

Update: Roman Catholic Blog has a post on Where Have All The Sisters Gone?

When the internal report on the NYTs came out the other day one of the suggestions was to increase its religion coverage to reach out. You just know these attempts at reaching out will be as laughable as the mini-series Revelations reaching out to red state viewers. I just know the type of articles that will result will be very similar to the following one in Slate.

The Power of the Mustard Seed, Why strict churches are strong.

It isn’t easy to explain why some people submit enthusiastically to religious law, especially when you’re talking to people who have never had the slightest desire to do so. Why limit yourself to a "theology of the body," as the late Pope John Paul II called it, when birth control and stem-cell research promise relief from two of the most painful vicissitudes of bodily existence, unwanted pregnancy and degenerative disease? Why restrict yourself to kosher food, when kashrut relies on zoological classifications that went out of date thousands of years ago?

‘Are you pregnant? No I am having a painful vicissitudes of bodily existence’

…The example Iannacone gives for a church whose strictness may have backfired is the Catholic Church, which has been having a hard time holding on to followers in Europe and attracting men to the priesthood in America. Traditionalists blame the church’s difficulties on the reforms of Vatican II, when the Mass began to be said in the vernacular and priests and nuns shed their otherworldly clothes. Would-be reformers blame church officials’ refusal to yield to popular opinion on contraception, homosexuality, and priestly celibacy. Iannacone says both are right. "The Catholic church may have managed to arrive at a remarkable, ‘worst-of-both-worlds’ position," he writes, "discarding cherished distinctiveness in the areas of liturgy, theology, and lifestyle, while at the same time maintaining the very demands that its members and clergy are least willing to accept."

The article is mainly trying to advance the thesis that strictness and rigidity in itself is the reason for the continued growth of some churches compared to others. As if just being strict is sufficient. This really worked in the case of the Manicheas and I have not noticed any neighborhood Albigensian churches either. There is some truth in the claim though. People are more drawn to a church that believes the same thing from week to week. What they miss is that more liberal churches are just as dogmatic and rigid as those that teach a more traditional moral ethic. A very rigid set of beliefs regarding sexual morality and abortion is preached. Go into some mainline Protestant congregations believing that fornication and homosexuality are sinful and you will soon find out how welcoming they are (as long as you consider being called a Neanderthal welcoming). A more rigid lifestyle is demanded in regards to environmental concerns. SUVs and logging are the modern version of the anti-Christ. Non-free range chickens are to be abstained from everyday and not just Fridays in Lent. Miracles are to be accepted since you must believe that embryonic stem-cell research will result in curing everything. Constant acts of faith are required in that you must believe that socialism as a system can work despite the history of the world. The fact is that there is strictness in all churches it is just that what they are strict on is different. The writer just don’t understand that what is strict upon is important. Moral relativism has caused a similar blindness in many.

The article suggests that "liberal churches" must build their own rituals to use as theater to send the message they want. What is considered most important is presentation. In previous elections when Democrat lost they normally blame it that there message did not get out. Again the same excuse is basically being made here that some churches are not growing because they don’t have attractive rituals and a form of piety that makes them feel invested. Externals are seen as the problem and not that the message is what is wrong.

The Nassau County executive, Thomas R. Suozzi, proposed a plan yesterday to reduce abortions, delivering a speech that he called an attempt "to find some common ground" on a divisive issue.

Speaking before more than 100 invited guests at Adelphi University in Garden City, Mr. Suozzi said he hoped to bring together opposing sides in "this ever-escalating debate" in hopes of creating "a world with fewer abortions."

He has been torn over the issue, Mr. Suozzi said.

"As a Democrat," he said, "I do not often find it easy to talk with other Democrats about our need to affirm our commitment to the respect for life and how we need to emphasize our party’s firm belief in the worth of every human being." unless they are inconvenient

He continued, "As a Catholic, I do not often find it easy to talk with other Catholics about my feeling that abortion should and will remain safe and legal and that we should instead focus our efforts on creating a better world where there are fewer unplanned pregnancies."

The speech drew a standing ovation.

Of course if if anybody was standing and happened to be ovulating and a child was later conceived they are entitled to kill that child.

I almost enjoy the rhetoric about "safe abortions." This is like describing a robbery where the person being robbed was killed, but the robber walked safely away. Again why do we need a world with fewer abortions if there is nothing wrong with abortion? Would this approach have been acceptable for slavery where we instead concentrated on working to change economic reasons for the continuation of slavery? Where we conducted 5 year long surveys to find out what lead slave owners to procuring slaves. We must keep slavery safe, legal, and rare. The rightful answer is that slavery is a moral evil and even a reduced number of total slaves is unconscionable. As great an evil that slavery was and is, abortion is even worse. Children in the womb have no underground railroad to escape a decree of death by their "owner" and of course there are similar parallels in that again a person is treated as property and again the Supreme Court was involved in declaring a person a piece of property that can be disposed of by the owner.

All this talk on reaching a "common ground" on abortion is so surreal. That piece of common ground they refer to happens to be a patch of land inside the operating room of an abortion clinic. Reducing the number of abortions is commendable, but it should never be forgotten that the goal is the end to legal abortion since it is intrinsically evil.

…And later the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre, William Murphy, called it "important and, on the whole, very helpful." He said that Mr. Suozzi "deserves our gratitude for exercising this kind of political leadership." [Source]

From an article in The Boston Globe [Via Ten Reasons]

"It would be hard for any Catholic editor not to say, ‘Well, if this happened to America magazine, perhaps it could happen to others,’ ‘ said the Rev. Pat McCloskey, the editor of St. Anthony Messenger, a 311,000-circulation Franciscan monthly based in Cincinnati.

You know I really don’t believe the Catholic editors at Crisis, This Rock, Catholic World Report, etc are worrying that this will happen to them.

”I’m afraid that a move like this one will cause more and more Catholic thinkers to say that they want to write for publications that are not identified as Catholic and to teach at schools that are not identified as Catholic, because there is more freedom there.’"

So what exactly would be the change? Many modern theologians write for Catholic periodicals that really can’t be identified as Catholic or teach in Catholic schools that can’t really be identified as Catholic. And why if St. Anthony Messenger believes that they are printing a Catholic magazine that they are worried about something similar happening to them?. I think the lady doth protest too much. Obviously they realize that they are have been thinking outside of the box, or really outside of the dox as in orthodox. That is the frustrating part of many of these periodicals like this that I have read. They seem Catholic but it is a Catholicism slightly out of focus and makes your eyes water reading it. They also often have some very solid articles but others seem to dance around orthodoxy and try to both disparage and defend Catholic teaching at the same time. For example reading Sister Joan Chittister’s articles (folks don’t try this at home I am a professional pundit) since the election of Pope Benedict XVI have been really funny in what was not said. You can almost see the restraint waiting to break out in every sentence of what she really feels about it.

Publications such as Commonweal, an influential opinion journal produced by lay Catholics, are less vulnerable to pressure from the Vatican because they are independently incorporated and not controlled by a religious order or diocese. Nonetheless, the editor, Paul Baumann, arrived at work yesterday to find the threatening e-mail from a critic.

”It’s hard to imagine how any church authority can shut down the sorts of debates that thinking Catholics are engaged in," Baumann said. ”What’s most troublesome is that for the ordained, for those theologians who are priests, and for people working in Catholic universities, this will inhibit the honest exchange of views."

I have a soft spot for Commonweal since they previously took the time to attack my humor in their print magazine. Now I am partially open to means of humiliation and critiques, unfortunately getting zinged by Commonweal to me is more like an imprimatur. I have mixed feelings about these periodicals worrying about what they print. Part of me wants them to totally come out and print what they are thinking instead of the false fencing that often gets engaged in. To give them the proverbial rope to hang themselves. This is not a very charitable attitude and the other part of me struggles to pray for them that the full truth may be proclaimed.

I believe G.K. Chesterton compared the Church to a large playground and I think this is a very apt analogy. Just why so many want to dance on or beyond the fences is difficult for me to understand.

I have also been meaning to link to this very funny song parody at Thumos called Both Sides Then (as sung by Thomas Reese)

PITTSBURGH – It was a year ago that an outspoken Roman Catholic priest broke away from the church to form his own.

Now, the Rev. William Hausen’s Christ Hope Ecumenical Catholic Church has 300 members. The church is still meeting weekly at a hotel.

Hausen left the Roman Catholic church because he favors marriage for priests, the ordination of women and debate on birth control. He was excommunicated, and the Pittsburgh diocese said anyone following Hausen also would be excommunicated.

Anna Villella, a medical receptionist and mother of two, said she supported Hausen for being outspoken about the church sex-abuse scandal.

" I just decided to walk this journey with him," she told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "I do not feel that I am excommunicated, and still feel as if I am a Catholic." [Source]

Oh that is a sure sign when you feel you are not excommunicated. I just wonder how does it feel to be excommunicated? Does anybody ever ask their spouse how are they feeling and they reply "You know I am feeling a little excommunicated today" or "I feel just a bit schismatic."

You just know an article like this has to end with the following:

Jennifer Blewitt, a 19-year-old Duquesne University student, said she likes Hausen’s church because everyone is welcome there.

"It’s the way Jesus was," Blewitt said.

Sometimes I wonder If I happen to have a different Bible version than others. It is always mentioned that Jesus eat with tax collectors and other outcasts, but they never pair it with the fact that these people were also seeking the truth and were repenting of their sins. He was not very welcoming to those scribes and pharisees who wanted to brandish their own version of the truth. Last I knew "You brood of vipers" was not a very welcoming statement. Jesus was not very welcoming to the goats in the parable of the sheep and goats. Again "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" does not a first blush sound very welcoming to me. The truth is that Jesus is welcoming, but it is a conditional welcome in our exercise of free will working in grace through the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. “But nothing unclean shall enter it [Heaven].” The Gospel is not preached so that we might find a church that we are comfortable with and reflects what we want, but to help heal us as the sinners we are and to “Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”

Jesus also said "He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me." This is the problem with those in schism is that they become deaf to part of the truth that is in Christ’s Church. By rejecting the Church they have at least partially rejected the truth that Christ has given us through Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Tradition.

I had posted before about the Rev. Hausen when he originally went into schism. That post included the following:

It will be a church that will "act on our own informed conscience" and "profess no dogmas," Hausen said. The church will "reject absolute statements and decrees. Absolute utterances are the weakest form of argument," he said.

His first decree is that there are no decrees. The first dogma is that there are no dogmas. Absolute utterances are not allowed unless they are about a female priesthood.

Update: Classic comment by Catholic writer Jeff Childers in my comment box.

What a mess! Good thing I do don’t have to worry about it, though, cause I feeling canonized today.

David Morrision comments on an article that asks "Why Don’t Gay Activists Picket Mosques?" A commenter to the original article thought that it might be because of possible violence from Muslims in reaction to it. I think it goes a lot further than just that. When the Church issued via the CDF Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons there was a massive outcry in the media about homophobia. Yet when the Dalai Lama called homosexual activity "sexual misconduct" and also condemned oral and anal sex there was zero outcry. There is also no demand that the next Dalai Lama should be a women or outcries that Buddhist monks should be allowed to be married. There is I believe a back-handed compliment paid when Christianity, especially the Catholic Church, is attacked.

Headlines and blogs are full of the story about the Rev. Thomas J. Resse resigning as editor of the the Jesuit magazine America. I find it interesting that this story is getting the amount of national publicity that it is. That a magazine that the large amount of people have never even heard of is a headline on Drudge. It is obvious of course that the reason this is is that the story is really framed about the hidden hand of Pope Benedict XVI forcing him to resign. That the inquisition has started and that this is the first head to roll. This view is rather silly to infer that the Pope looked at the world and then saw the editor of a magazine with a circulation of 48,538 needed special attention. What actually appears to have happened is that some American Bishops had written complaints to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith over the tenor of many of the articles that had appeared in the magazine. Maybe the most surprising aspect of the story is that come bishops actually complained. This is always a fairly slow process and it might appear that in this case after many years that these complaints were sent to Jesuit superior general in Rome and that Fr. Reese was asked to resign. What actually happened is difficult to know since the reporting of this has been in the NYT and National Catholic Reporter – unreliable sources to say the least. We do know that the Church through the CDF has been very deliberate in its investigations allowing adequate time for responses by anybody being investigated for going outside Church’s teaching. Looking at the list provided by the National Catholic Reporter of then-Cardinal Ratzingers tenure at the CDF we see a very short list of Catholic theologian who had in fact been disciplined. You would think by the tone of the NYT article that the Pope has transferred his personal Iron Maiden and rack to the papal apartments.

The story is also framed that it is about the elimination of healthy intellectual debate and will have a chilling effect on "critical questions." The problem is actually that the editorials in America magazine did not confine themselves to unsettled theological questions, but also presented debates on settled questions in Catholic theology. Dissenters often want to cover themselves with the words, debate, dialogue, presenting both sides, etc. Though of course the articles never debated racism or caring for the poor. Rightly they would see that presenting both sides of racism as ridiculous and out of the range of true debate within Church teaching. Yet they do not understand this when it comes to settled questions such as women’s ordination, same-sex marriage, and stem-cell research that involves the destruction of embryos.

There are so many mysteries of the faith and we can never intellectually exhaust them Yet our human intellects can advance further into these deep mysteries and that should be the task of all of us and especially the Church’s theologians. To further map out the depth of mysteries instead of coming up with contrary opinions to Church teaching. There are many unsettled theological questions that need to further explored and to waste time being apologists for homosexual marriage is a waste of intellectual abilities.

I have often wondered why a Jesuit Magazine choose the name America? Their site only mentions that it was suggested by Thomas J. Gannon, S.J. in 1909. Whatever the initial rationale was it is now indicative of what the magazine became. That they narrowed the universatility of Catholic truth to a very regional understanding and AmChurch view of what the Catholic Church should teach.

Diogenes at CWN said:

The point is that America’s notion of what counts as a hot topic is selective and ideologically slanted against the Holy See. The true contrast is not between openness and dogma, but between rival systems of dogma: a public one (Catholic), versus a clandestine one (behind or beneath America). And remember that America is not a secular journal of ideas but is trading on the ecclesial prestige accorded its Jesuit sponsorship. That means, when it’s Catholic doctrine that’s under assault, it’s not really even-handed — as would be the case for The New Republic — to give space to a professor to attack the doctrine and equal space to a Vatican official to defend it. Simply by presenting the disputants as representatives of different opinions the doctrine is viewed as up for grabs, i.e., as something less than doctrine. The net result is almost always erosion of Catholic belief.

Amy Welborn also posts mentioning a variety of information on the coverage and also want to know what really happened.

The Anchoress also sees the faintly veiled attempt at the story being about the Pope forcing the editor out of the job.

But this story is trying very hard to suggest that the editor of America Magazine, Rev. Reese, is being forced out of his job by the new pope. They can’t quite pull it off, as they are bound to report that the impetus for his resignation has less to do with Rome and more to do with the fact that Bishops right here in America had expressed concerns about the content of the journal. And they are also bound to mention that Reese left Rome, after the election of the new pope, “with the idea that he would be resigning…”

The assistant editor Fr. Christiansen is going to take over as the editor of the magazine and as Patrick Madrid said:

Let’s pray for Fr. Christiansen. He has a big challenge handed to him. I hope he’s up to it.

Archbishop Chaput’s latest column The Crusades: The truth makes a difference:
Christians obligated to keep alive the real facts of real history is excellent as usual. [Via AMDG]

Since the new movie shows Christians as the aggressors against Muslims it reminds me about the controversy of The Passion of the Christ. Yet this time there will be no screaming by the liberal media about possibly provoking hatred of Christians. The USCCB will issue no pamphlets this explaining the history of the Crusades to correct the misinformation. Boston College will issue no viewer’s guides as they did for Mel Gibson’s movie. Instead what was originally a Protestant polemic and revision of history has been accepted a common history and only a very few Bishops like the Archbishop Chaput will see this "teaching moment" to correct this historical ignorance. I doubt that this movie will make radical Muslims more radical, but it could also probably be shown as part of the curriculum in a radicalized madrassa.

WASHINGTON — God does not side with the Republicans, Sen. John Kerry said in a fiery speech last week, accusing Republican leaders of politicizing religion to further their agenda.

This week, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy quoted Jesus from the Bible. It was a rebuttal, he said, of Republicans’ claims that Democrats are "against people of faith."

Rep. John W. Olver, an Amherst Democrat, said he’s considered buying an "anthology of good Biblical quotations" that he’d use to neutralize Republicans’ religious references.

Some observers and lawmakers say the Democrats’ use of religious language reflects an adjustment following their electoral losses last fall. President Bush, who ended a speech on Wednesday with "God bless you all," successfully mobilized the evangelical right in the November elections.

"I think there’s certainly been a sense in the Democratic Party that they’ve allowed the Republican Party to be perceived as the religious party," said Alan Wolfe, director of the Center for Religion and American Life at Boston College. "And that’s a mistake."

Although the parties generally attract different denominations, neither can be described as more or less religious, Wolfe said.

Still, to counter the perception, there’s been talk among Democrats about emphasizing values, morals and religion, some lawmakers said.

"Most of us do not think we are godless people, and there are many people of good faith," Olver said in an interview. "It may be that we have not carried that on (our) sleeve."

Olver, who lists his religion as "unspecified," admitted that his internal catalogue of biblical references is thin. That led to the anthology idea.

"What I hear every once in a while is a Republican making a righteous statement and citing the quotation, and thinking there’s a quotation that offers quite the opposite," he said.

Pretty funny someone saying they are not godless and then lists their religion as "unspecified" and has some nebulous belief that there must be some quotations somewhere in the Bible to counter with. Needing an anthology of scriptural quotations will really prove his case that religion is important. Important that is when you want to counter a political foe. But their needing help with scripture quotes is not surprising when their own party head’s favorite New Testament book is Job. True that they may not wear their religion on their sleeve, but Congressman John W. Olver has had no problem wearing abortion support on his sleeve, pantleg or any other article of clothing. They are just looking for those value voters whose values include abortion, homosexuality, destruction of marriage, radical secularism.