Punditry

Remember the media storm over Bishop Vasa requesting teachers sign an agreement affirming that “modern errors” regarding “matters that gravely offend human dignity.”? Well I think this story will not get the same attention.

Christian colleges and universities have every right to maintain their denominational heritages. I teach at Houston Baptist University, and I am pleased that our school explicitly holds to its Christian mission:

Many universities call themselves Christian, but cannot bring themselves to talk about the central narrative of the Christian faith – the Incarnation, the Cross, and the Resurrection. Yet as Father Richard John Neuhaus has written, “If what Christians say about Good Friday is true, then it is, quite simply, the truth about everything.” The implications of such truths are worth studying and knowing to the fullest – truths we all must confront to have a life worthy of our Creator’s purpose.

Therefore, it is right and good for Christian institutions to ask their faculty to teach in accordance with central tenets of the Christian faith. Recently, however, a couple of Baptist colleges have dismissed theology faculty because they hold to Baptist principles. (source)

Kind of a reverse mandatum.

I wonder how often this also happens in Catholic schools and we just don’t hear about it? I certainly know students who are faithful to the Church can have a hard time of it from their professors. For example Emmy Cecilia at Journey of a Catholic Nerd Writer.

Note: A couple of years ago there was the case of Dr. Kenneth Howell who was fired by the University of Illinois for setting forth Catholic doctrine on homosexuality in a class. Although this was a secular school, but he as hired to teach a class on Catholicism. He was later rehired after the Alliance Defense Fund got involved.

I was wondering when the media honeymoon with Pope Francis would be over.

Pope Francis reaffirms crackdown on U.S. nuns

The L.A. Times uses a picture of smiling nuns/sisters wearing habits with the caption. “Nuns greet Pope Francis as he arrives in St. Peter’s Square for his inauguration Mass at the Vatican last month. The pope has reaffirmed a crackdown by his predecessor, Benedict XVI, on American nuns.”

Well I guess one man’s “reform” is another man’s “crackdown,”

Vatican City, 15 April 2013 (VIS) – “Today, the Superiors of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith met with the Presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) of the United States of America. Archbishop James Peter Sartain, archbishop of Seattle, Washington, USA, and the Holy See’s Delegate for the Doctrinal Assessment of the LCWR, also participated in the meeting,” informs a communique from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“As this was his first opportunity to meet with the Presidency of the LCWR, the Prefect of the Congregation, Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Muller, expressed his gratitude for the great contribution of women Religious to the Church in the United States as seen particularly in the many schools, hospitals, and institutions of support for the poor which have been founded and staffed by Religious over the years.”

“The Prefect then highlighted the teaching of the Second Vatican Council regarding the important mission of Religious to promote a vision of ecclesial communion founded on faith in Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Church as faithfully taught through the ages under the guidance of the Magisterium. He also emphasized that a Conference of Major Superiors, such as the LCWR, exists in order to promote common efforts among its member Institutes as well as cooperation with the local Conference of Bishops and with individual Bishops. For this reason, such Conferences are constituted by and remain under the direction of the Holy See.”

“Finally, Archbishop Muller informed the Presidency that he had recently discussed the Doctrinal Assessment with Pope Francis, who reaffirmed the findings of the Assessment and the program of reform for this Conference of Major Superiors.” (source)

The LCWR apologists are of course out in force trying to spin this.

Sister Simone Campbell says “The censure (of the LCWR) has always been about politics.” When you see everything via a political lens instead of the eyes of faith then of course this is how you frame it.

What has always annoyed me about the LCWR apologists is how disingenuous they are. First off they tried to redirect any criticism of the LCWR as an attack on all religious and even an attack on religious in the past. They totally got the media to buy into this lie and they cooperated with that lie by repeating it. They made it so that to critique any problematic aspect of the LCWR was to disrespect any good American religious have ever done. The fact that they never acknowledge just one problematic action regarding the LCWR makes me not trust a word they say. When a group comes under a doctrinal assessment and the group decides to have a Barbara Marx Hubbard as the keynote speaker there are serious problems. That a group of Catholic religious would sit and listen to the just-plain-whacky meanderings that refer to Jesus as a “post-human universal person” and the same person previously said that she channeled “Christ.” The LCWR apologists at America Magazine and elsewhere had nothing to say about Barbara Marx Hubbard and her Pelagian consciousness evolution.

No the LCWR apologists pretend to be the great defenders of Catholic religious life in the United States while having nothing to say about it’s decline in numbers. We constantly get stories regarding the problems with priestly religious vocations mainly as a drumbeat for women’s ordination and married priests. Yet there seems to be no concern that the very religious orders they champion are dying out.

Fr. James Martin SJ, a prominent LCWR apologist had this bit of spin regarding that fact.

“One of the most striking findings regarding new entrants is that almost equal numbers of women have been attracted to institutes in both conferences of women religious in the U.S. in recent years. As of 2009, L.C.W.R. institutes reported 73 candidates/postulants, 117 novices and 317 sisters in temporary vows/commitment. C.M.S.W.R. institutes reported 73 candidates/postulants, 158 novices and 304 sisters in temporary vows/commitment. (There are 150 nuns in formation in U.S. monasteries.)”

Wow you would think that the two institutes are roughly equal. Funny that he did not mention the 4-to–1 ratio of LCWR to CMSWR respondents and that the LCWR is a much larger group. Joanne McPortland did a good job of calling out the phoniness of this comparison. Besides what was the last new foundation any of these orders made?

The simple fact is that the leadership of the LCWR needs to be reformed and that mostly goes for the orders they represent. I realize that there are certainly members in these orders that are not happy with the LCWR or the direction religious life has taken. But the LCWR apologists are not helping since by spinning the actual problems they contribute to them. I would not be surprised to see the LCWR lose its canonically approved status rather than to cooperate with a reform. Still I have read enough history of the Church to see this as nothing new as there has always been an ebb and flow in religious orders and periods of laxity and reform.

No the pill of orthodoxy is very bitter when contrasted to the sweet itchings of the ear of heterodoxy. 2 Timothy 4:3

Draw Me and win a $29 Commercial Liturgical Art Course.

Do you have what it takes to enter the challenging field of Catholic Church Bulletin clipart?

What would you give to be able to draw professionally? Do you long for the ability to make splendid religious themed clipart, such as you see weekly in you parish bulletin or newsletters? Would you love to learn to draw at home in your spare time and make big bucks as a result?

Now you might think you have some of the qualities required to be a bulletin clipart creator, but we will polish your skills and show you amazing techniques like the industry standard “looks like it was run through a mimeograph a hundred time” look. With our correspondence course you will learn in no time how to market your skills as a true clipart artist and soon parishes will be clamoring to get your black and white religious-themed clipart. Even if you have poor drawing skills our course will help you to in no time to produce clipart just as good as any seen in a parish bulletin now!

Perhaps religious-themed clipart is just not where your skills lie. Maybe you have dabbled in water colors and abstract forms of art. If so you just might be ready for the fast paced world of hymnal art. Our correspondence course will teach you all the skills required for Catholic hymnal art. It is not easy to produce art that kinda looks religious from a certain angle depending on the light. In just 8 weeks we can have you producing hymnal art that compares with anything out there on the market now. Imagine sitting in a parish and seeing a hymnal with your art on it! You too can confuse the heck out of the pewsitter as they try to figure out just what it is the cover is suppose to represent.

So order now from the Institute of Felt Banners and Other Fine Art and get your correspondence course so that you will be well on your way to the amazing world of Catholic bulletin and/or hymnal art. Don’t delay!

Looking over a collection of links to stories I had collated over the last week I saw that the majority of them dealt with the collision between the Church’s teaching on homosexual acts/same-sex marriage and the culture. This collision is occurring more and more as the culture becomes more accepting of this and more bigoted towards Catholics. I guess closets also abhor a vacuum and as those who suffer from same-sex attraction come out of the closet, Catholics are being forced into it.

First off a story from today:

“Nicholas Coppola’s faith means everything to him. His Long Island home is full of religious books, pictures of cardinal timothy Dolan even the word, faith.

“Father Nick said I have to remove you from any public ministry, he said I have no choice,” said Coppola.
Coppola was teaching religious instruction, he was a Eucharistic minister and also a lector then in January, he got word from his church in oceanside he couldn’t do any of it anymore. He never thought marrying the love of his life a man would cost him that.

“What was pointed out, you made a very public statement getting married, I think the question was asked why, I said I got married like any other loving couple,” said Coppola.

The pastor of Saint Anthony’s Church in Oceanside told us “He’s always welcome to come to the church and receive the sacraments as far as I’m concerned.”

Pastor Nicholas Lombardi says the decision came from the Diocese of Rockville Center.
The Diocese received an anonymous letter complaining of Coppola’s marital status and sent a letter the parish. He showed us copies.

The Diocese of Rockville Center told us in a statement:

“Gay married people cannot be on staff in the position that he held, however the church is welcoming of all persuasions.”

Coppola just wants to get back to doing what he loved so much. (Via A Long Island Catholic)

I have several reactions to this story. The first being Mr. Coppola’s total obliviousness to the consequences of his actions. Although the parish preist seemingly contributed to this atmosphere. I am also quite annoyed by the statement from the Diocese. For one I wish Catholics would totally stop using the word “gay” as an identifier. Plus using the term “Gay married people” gives too much away to cultural usage. There are people of the same sex who attempt marriage, but there are no “Gay married people.” The language we use is important and should be much more precise even in a general statement.

As for Father Lombardi, S.J. if what he said was correctly quoted that is another serious matter that I hope the Diocese does not just sweep over. Now I try not to jump to conclusions just because someone is a Jesuit, but since he is also associate director of online services for Fordham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies I would not be surprised if he was accurately quoted. A center named after a dissenting Jesuit who was barred from teaching theology by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith does not exactly give me confidence regarding orthodoxy. Note 1

It is bad enough that we are constantly being attacked from outside the Church. Unfortunately the same is true within the Church including the priesthood. Another recently story involved surprisingly another Jesuit, Father Edward F. Salmon who is allowing two men to attend McQuaid Jesuit High School 2013 prom as a couple. His reasoning is the typical mush to describe as love what is actually indifference to sin. He is doing these two men a great disservice that is certainly not love, the willing the good of the other. Edwards Peters has Some thoughts on Fr. Salmon’s letter re the McQuaid High prom

There are of course those priests who do defend Church teaching and a story today concerns Father Greg Shaffer a chaplain for the Newman Center at Georgetown University.

Two gay seniors who said they felt alienated by the Newman Center’s controversial priest will launch a campaign this week to force him off campus.

At least a dozen students, including seniors Damian Legacy and Blake Bergen, say they have left the Newman Center in the last several years because Father Greg Shaffer’s strong anti-gay and anti-abortion views are too polarizing. Shaffer, a Roman Catholic priest, has spent five years preaching to GW students.

Truth is polarizing as Jesus said in Luke 12:53. We have passed the stage of general acceptance of homosexuality to where it’s acceptance is forced. The attacks on religious freedom will only get worse and in this specific case one of the men involved is a priest in the “North American Old Catholic Church”.  (Thanks to Dawn Eden for the heads up)

The students lambasted Shaffer’s counseling sessions, in which he said he advises students who are attracted to members of the same sex to remain celibate for the rest of their lives.

Imagine that a confessor helping someone to avoid sin. Obviously we can’t have that. In our culture the general idea is that the best way to avoid sin is to not call something a sin at all.

“The fundamental flaw in modern thinking about human sexuality, the “Ur” (root) problem, is the (sinful) declaration that there is “no necessary connection” between human sexual activity and procreation”

The above is from Msgr. Chrles Pope’s excellent column this week Reaping the Whirlwind: A reflection on the deepening darkness that celebrates homosexual unions and activity. There is a straight line from the acceptance of contraception, divorce, and abortion to the acceptance of homosexual acts. Catholics can once again say “I told you so”, but of course nobody is listening. It is easier to call someone a homophobe and a bigot than to engage their argument.

Now if only we could evangelize as efficiently as homosexual activists and their supporters have been able to do. They have been effective in moving the culture and we haven’t. Saturating the media with their message and their using Hollywood to spread the message has worked for them quite well. Remember how Vice President Biden described how the television show “Will and Grace” helped him to “evolve”. Funny how people mocked Vice President Dan Quayle for actually critiquing (correctly) a television show plot and yet further abandoning your faith based on one is just fine.

We have our work cut out for us, but that has always been true. Evangelization like conversion is a daily thing.

To leave off, Msgr. Charles Pope responds to comments on his previous article with What does the Catholic Church offer to the Homosexual Person?. An excellent response, but again could do without using the term “gay”.

Note 1: In 1993 then-Cardinal Ratzinger said about Fr. Curran “With his theory of dissent Father Curran moved beyond individual questions to challenge the Church’s teaching office as such. He wanted to accord dissent itself an official teaching role.”

..When we eventually arrived at the Sistine Chapel on March 12, I was still pondering two or three candidates. However, when the first blank ballot was given to us, and when it was time to write down a name, something powerful–and strange–happened.

I picked up my pen to write, and I began. However, my hand was being moved by some greater spiritual force. The name on the ballot just happened. I had not yet narrowed my thinking down to one name; but it was done for me..

If something kept him from writing his own name down, it just could be a miracle.

Over the weekend Cardinal Mahony had a series of tweets regarding the new Pope while basically disparagingly the liturgical style of Pope Benedict XVI. It is also odd hearing the Cardinal speaking in praise of humulity and how the Church should be poor.

Now the inner snarker in me would say that Cardinal Mahony certainly did a lot to help his diocese to be poorer in regards to settlements and of course the so-called “Taj Mahony” Cathedral. Poor also in the number of vocations.

What facinates me the most though is the contrast of his apprarent persona which seems to bleed pride and his attraction to humility. What is so offputting about his tweets is he does not seem to get the fact that he comes off as prideful. How often though are we totally blind to our faults? Still we can be attracted to virtues that we don’t have and maybe it might even be the virtue that is the remedy to a dominant fault.

In related news Canonist Ed Peters has Some thoughts on conclave leaks and specifically in regards to Cardinals Kasper and Mahony.

One of the narratives I keep hearing repeated regarding Pope Francis’ papacy is the reform of the Curia. This keeps getting repeated like this is the highest priority and of the upmost importance.

Now of course I realize the Curia needs reform. We all are in need of reform daily and this can be said of any bureaucracy. The Curia has no dispensation from original sin and is filled with all forms of human stupidity. The Curia has generated many unforced errors especially in regard to communication with the media and lacking simple due diligence in research (sometimes even a simple Google search could have saved heartburn).

So surely the Curia needs reform and possibly even an outsider to the Curia might be able to further advance such reform. I am not sure if that statement is true or not in this case, but an outsider can be more immune to “This is the way we have always done it.”

Regardless, what if the Curia was perfectly reformed and actually became a well functioning bureaucracy (if that is not a contradiction in term)? What would it really give us? Sure it would be nice to prevent unnecessary headlines and actually have a more unitive message among the Secretary of State and various congregations and tribunals.

Still when I look at the problems the Catholic Church faces, the Roman Curia is not at the top of the list of what needs to be addressed. The problems of secularism and the fact that many believers act in their daily lives as if God did not exist is of much more concern. There has never been a perfect time in Church history when all the believers actually acted as if their faith was true. Maybe it was always a mistake to divide territories and to describe some as mission territories. Evangelization never ends with the conversion. This is the point Catholic soteriology makes in that salvation is a process. Conversion that is not continuous is no conversion at all.

This emphasis can come under the heading of the New Evangelization which can be simply described by:

“It is an old story that, while we may need somebody like Dominic to convert the heathen to Christianity, we are in even greater need of somebody like Francis, to convert the Christians to Christianity.” –G.K. Chesterton “The Dumb Ox”

Maybe one of the reasons for so much focus on the Pope and the Curia is that in many ways we have become dependent on structures. Instead of going out and evangelizing ourselves we hope for a higher organization to fix those problems for us. Just as in politics increased Federalization to solve problems is akin to this attitude. If only we had such and such dicastery with such and such prefect in charge of it everything would be better. We want a charismatic Pope to evangelize for us, so we don’t have to do it ourselves.

Now as a great believer in both/and I don’t mean to throw things into opposition. It is not a case of either the Pope doing something or ourselves. It is also not the case of whether we evangelize or instead reform some aspects of the Curia. Really I am quite thankful for the great catechists and evangelizers I have been lucky to have as popes during my lifetime (even when I didn’t appreciate it). I am just ranting at the idea of an idealized Curia and the transferring of what are also our personal responsibilities to others. Most of all I have to rant at myself for falling into this same trap.

Media coverage of the Catholic Church can drive can drive faithful Catholics batty. Conclave coverage from the media kicks up the typical stupidity up a notch to 11 (using the Spinal Tap measurement scale.)

Yet really why should their coverage annoy us so? The media, for the most part, is highly secular and filled with people with little connection to any faith. Should we really expect them to have other than an highly secular understanding of the Church? For them the Church is just another human institution and so suggesting what direction the Church should go in and what doctrines should be up for grabs is totally consistent from their viewpoint. Of course their advice is to make the Church more like them and what they believe.

That the Catholic Church was founded by Christ has no impact since the secular messiah is government. As far as they think about Jesus it is certainly not as the Messiah and the Son of God, at most a kind of nice social worker who got divinized by his later followers. This type of understanding of Jesus and his Church of course leads to exactly the type of ignorant coverage we get.

You might wonder at the arrogance of them saying what is best for the Catholic Church, but from their viewpoint it is not really arrogance. For example I might make suggestions for the Democratic Party even though I am no longer one of their members or one who believes in their prudential applications of politics. It would not make me arrogant to do so since this is a human institution and thus one anybody could make suggestions for. The fact that my suggestions would be strikingly different than the current leadership of the Democratic Party would not necessarily make them wrong. The media and others just see the Church in this light.

Still much of what they say is also intellectually dishonest even within this viewpoint. For them to go on and on about women’s ordination is rather silly since they don’t believe in the priesthood in the first place. The Church is just a kind of social club for them and so within that framework it makes sense for them to demand equality for just another job position. Theological arguments can be disregarded because there are no theological arguments.

We also should not be surprised for a similar attitude among even those of the Christian faith. The rending of Christendom has worked towards moving Christian beliefs to a smaller and smaller subset. If what was believed in the past can be dropped and the opposite embraced, then why is that also not true for the Catholic Church? They see the consistency of Catholic beliefs not as the protection of the Holy Spirit, but as a historical oddity and pure pigheadedness to not roll with the times. Protestantism has always had these tensions in it to both reject what came before and to at the same time a desire to return to the practice of an imagined early church. Christianity becomes a constantly moving target always redefining itself. The scandal of the fracturing of the Church into thousands of different bodies makes it harder to discern the truth and to believe there is one true Church. The dictatorship of relativsim is not only embraced by the secularists.

So really we should expect such unhelpful advice from these areas. Father forgive them for them do not know what they are talking about. That we get this same type of “advice” from within the Church is annoying and also to be expected. The nature of the Church is lost on the critics and those inside the Church whose vision of the Church can not be differentiated from the secularists.

The fact is during the coming weeks everybody with some agenda is going to have some advice for the Church. This is true even for faithful Catholics. We all have our hobby horses of what we want to have addressed. Some of these ideas might actually intersect with the mission of the Church to go out into the whole world and spread the good news.

In related news Elizabeth Lev writing for Zenit has some great suggestions for reporting that will be ignored.

From The Ten Commandments of Reporting on the Vatican:

1) Thou shalt leave your personal prejudices at the door. I have often seen Al Qaeda treated with more respect than Pope Benedict and the Roman Catholic Church. While you may disagree with the Church’s teaching on any number of things, there is no excuse to let your personal agenda define your coverage. In reporting on other world events, it is unthinkable to insert one’s personal ideas, so why is it acceptable when reporting on the Church? If all you can focus on is birth control, gay marriage and abortion and how the papacy should change its teaching, you should probably just go home. Whether you agree or disagree isn’t really the question. Your job is to understand and to report, to give background and help viewers and readers to get a sense of the bigger picture. Pope Benedict XVI has led the 1.2 billion members of the Catholic Church for 8 years, drawn crowds of millions in gatherings worldwide and brought a message of hope and love to the farthest reaches of the earth. The Pope’s CV is impressive to say the least, and he deserves respect.

Photo credit: Ms. Tina via photopin cc