Punditry

The National Catholic Register reports on “comments and objections raised by several bishops” at the USCCB meeting in Atlanta that “challenged the specificity of some heavily publicized statements”, such as Bishop Blair’s criticisms in April of Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget:

“There have been some concerns raised by lay Catholics, especially some Catholic economists, about what was perceived as a partisan action against Congressman Ryan and the budget he had proposed,” said Bishop Boyea. That statement “didn’t really further dialogue in our deeply divided country.”

In his view, statements that endorsed specific economic policies revealed a lack of “humility.” He told the assembly, “We need to learn far more than we need to teach in this area. We need to listen more than we need to speak. We already have an excellent, fine Compendium [of the Social Doctrine of the Church].”

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kan., agreed that the committee was “at times perceived as partisan” and neglected the principle of subsidiarity, which calls for solutions that can be provided close to people in need.

Archbishop Naumann suggested that drafters of the statement needed to rethink a tendency to advocate for government assistance, and he said that the conference’s proposals should not ignore the ballooning national deficit.

“Sometimes we’re perceived as just encouraging the government to spend more money, with no realistic way of how we’re going to afford to do this,” he observed.

A third statement, by Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit, echoed Archbishop Naumann’s suggestion that the proposed document focus more on the family as the central social institution and spoke of how the “disintegration of the family” had fueled the demand for government assistance.

Carl E. Olson is referencing this piece in the National Catholic Register and goes on to quote on subsidiarily from the Catechism. He goes on to conclude:

The irony, I suppose, is that when the bishops and the USCCB weigh in on policy details and areas demanding expertise beyond what they possess as pastors and shepherds, they themselves violate the principle of subsidiarity.

In many ways the USCCB in action violates subsidiarity. Often it seems to me that things that should be done by individual bishops is kicked upstairs to let the USCCB as a whole make tough decisions. But of course committees seldom make such decisions and usually just end up making cover or they get hijacked from some segment’s hobby horse.

I like Bishop’s Boyea statement on learning about the area of economics and really when it gets down to prudential appliance of Catholic social teaching in this area this is not exactly an area of competence for the Bishops. Though too often it is not an area of competence for much of the laity either. As for Archbishop Naumann’s statement in regards to the “disintegration of the family” fueling the demand for government assistance, this also is a major factor related to poverty.

One thing about the Federal Government that provides such a temptation is it supplies a central point of focus and seems to make things much easier. It is easier to lobby the House than to have to lobby so many communities, cities and states. Subsidiarity is quickly forgotten with this large lobbying target. The temptation to be able to fix everything if only you could get the Federal legislation you want to work these wonders. Tip O’Neils phrase “All politics is local” is only partly true in that unfortunately all local politics seem to be heard towards the Federal level and the promise of extracting Federal dollars. In subsidiarily all politics should mostly be local and that each level has its area of competence.

Two altar girls (19 and 20 years old) break into a punch-up fight about who would carry the censer. It is now going to court.

I guess they were incensed against each other and their behavior should be “censered”.

Via cathcon

The news broke Friday that Sr. Carol Keehan of the Catholic Healthcare Association (CHA) has broken with the Obama administration’s plan to force abortion drugs and contraception on religious institutions such as Catholic hospitals and universities that offer medical insurance.

The dramatic move was announced in a 5-page letter (PDF here) signed by Keehan and two CHA board members.
The move is momentous because Keehan famously broke with the U.S. bishops to endorse the original passage of the administration’s Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) and then broke with them again to endorse the Department of Health and Human Services abortion drug and contraception mandate, providing political cover for the administration.

Both acts were widely criticized, and it appeared to many that Sr. Keehan was a willing tool of the administration’s “divide and conquer” strategy for dealing with the Catholic community–playing the role of an alternative Catholic authority that could be pitted against and thus neutralize the voice of he bishops.

But she is not so willing today, it seems, and the new move must come across to the administration as an act of betrayal of it and its agenda.

Jimmy Akin goes on to give a history of what Sr. Keehan has said in the past along with an analysis of the current letter.

The letter from the CHA is certainly an improvement on what they have said in the past, but it certainly lacks some moral clarity in regards to cooperation with evil. In regards to this I refer to Jimmy Akin’s look at one of the sections.

It also brings up another question about broadening the current narrowly defined HHS mandate to be more in line with the religious exemption in the past. Likely if this had been done in the first place there would not have been the sustained outcry that resulted. It would have still been a forced violation of the conscience of some employers who did not fall into this category. In some ways it is a good thing the Obama Administration so overstep themselves in that it might go on to protect the consciences of this category also.

This article makes the same point: Hey CHA: Catholics who run non-religious businesses are people, too.

Now what I want to know is if Sr. Carol Keehan will return her Obamacaare signing pen to the Obama Administration. If so they could buy a potter field with it.

From Amy Welborn

Okay, so I was thinking about all the virtual ink that’s been spilled, tears that have been shed and skin that’s been worn off hands because of all that wringing over the LCWR/Sr. Farley business, and I figures at some point soon, the columnists and bloggers are going to run out of material, and they just might need another example of a Religious Sister, Kept Down By The Men.

(Not a fake issue, historically speaking, by the way! Not kidding!)

So, I thought of one!

Here you go: the American religious sister who’s had more conflicts with more bishops than any other over the past few decades. Who’s gone head-to-head with a bishop or two, whose work has been supported by lay people, but who’s had bishops has her primary opponents, both overtly and covertly, who, up until various shifts and changes of the past 5-7 years, has had probably 80% of the American bishops strongly in opposition to her ministry.

Nun v. Male Bishops! For your next column, blog post, Colbert bit or #hashtag campaign! Ready?

Now this is an interesting comparison, but a comparison with a major difference. Mother Angelica certainly clashed with some bishops and in many ways it was a mirror image of the CDF/LCWR situation. There were certainly some bishops quite unhappy with EWTN especially in comparison the the Bishop conferences foray into cable television. You might ask “What Bishop’s conference cable show?” – well it was less than popular and not always exactly brimming with orthodoxy as I have heard told.

One of those things that nerved some bishops was EWTN’s televised Masses that dared to be devoid of all the experimentations that were so common and of course still exist. It must have been quite striking for some to see the difference between EWTN’s televised Mass that epitomized “Read the black, do the red” in contrast to “Read the black, ignore, the red, and make it up as you go.”

Specifically EWTN’s use of Ad Orientum with the priest facing East towards the Tabernacle really bothered some people. It did not matter that this is totally valid and it was only on that fictions list of “things done with at Vatican II.” Regardless their were complaints made to her bishop and ultimately her bishop ordered EWTN to not televise Masses conducted Ad Orientum. Now while EWTN was technically correct in having Masses this way, they still complied with their bishop. That is what obedience looks like. If you are obedient only when you agree with your bishop, than you are not obedient. Now EWTN still went on using Ad Orientum for Masses not televised and conducted at their temple, but did indeed comply with the specific restriction of their bishop.

This is the aspect of obedience that is almost totally missing among nuns/sisters who are among the media darlings for resting the “evillll” Vatican. There is a total lack of humility when it comes to clashes. There is no humble reply as the result of a CDF theological investigation – it is always cast into almost political lines where every dissident theologian is a martyr to the Vatican. The use of “leadership” in the initialism LCWR is a total misnomer since they have shown no real leadership. Instead of course correction and fulfilling their vows (especially obedience) they refused to clean up their own mess and after decades forcing the CDF to intervene. Then of course when the inevitable happens they are totally shocked. Not exactly leadership and certainly not obedience.

There will always be clashes between people and their bishops and between priest and religious and their bishops. In some of these cases the bishop will be handling something badly or even being totally wrong. But again if your obedience is dependent on how much the bishop is on the same page as you, it isn’t obedience.

As the start of Veritatis Splendor states:

1. Called to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, “the true light that enlightens everyone” (Jn 1:9), people become “light in the Lord” and “children of light” (Eph 5:8), and are made holy by “obedience to the truth” (1 Pet 1:22).

This obedience is not always easy. As a result of that mysterious original sin, committed at the prompting of Satan, the one who is “a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44), man is constantly tempted to turn his gaze away from the living and true God in order to direct it towards idols (cf. 1 Thes 1:9), exchanging “the truth about God for a lie” (Rom 1:25). Man’s capacity to know the truth is also darkened, and his will to submit to it is weakened. Thus, giving himself over to relativism and scepticism (cf. Jn 18:38), he goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself.

The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports.

The new human rights reports–purged of the sections that discuss the status of religious freedom in each of the countries covered–are also the human rights reports that include the period that covered the Arab Spring and its aftermath.

Thus, the reports do not provide in-depth coverage of what has happened to Christians and other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East that saw the rise of revolutionary movements in 2011 in which Islamist forces played an instrumental role.

For the first time ever, the State Department simply eliminated the section of religious freedom in its reports covering 2011 and instead referred the public to the 2010 International Religious Freedom Report – a full two years behind the times – or to the annual report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which was released last September and covers events in 2010 but not 2011.The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports.

Makes sense, otherwise they would have had to add the United States to the list.

(Hat tip: Creative Minority Report)

…but I’m still puzzled by the fact that, after 40 years of pro-abort zealotry from the Democratic party, some Democrats are just now leaving the party–because of gay “marriage” and the HHS mandate. Those things are bad, of course. But it’s still weird to me that somebody could go for decades watching the spectacle of Dems passionately defending sticking scissors in a baby’s brain and then suddenly say, “But gay marriage? That’s crossing the line!” It makes me wonder how such people process information and make moral evaluations. Glad to see they are abandoning any organization committed to these “core values”. But it doesn’t fill me with too much confidence that they are necessarily going to bring moral wisdom to whatever political home they wind up in (assuming they wind up anywhere, since a lot of us are politically homeless and alienated from the worthless circus of American politics). (Mark Shea)

I had similar thoughts when I read some of these stories from those who left the Democrat Party. Considering all the moral straws that have been piling on the proverbial’s camel back you think this must have been one strong mutant camel with a backbone made of titanium. But with Mr. Shea I am happy to see them realize the truth and pray more do the same, especially as an ex-Democrat myself and one who also had a high-resistance to reality.

In a spirited retort to the Vatican, a group of Roman Catholic nuns is planning a bus trip across nine states this month, stopping at homeless shelters, food pantries, schools and health care facilities run by nuns to highlight their work with the nation’s poor and disenfranchised.

Because the whole reason the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is investigating the LCWR is because of their work with the poor. You know how much the Vatican hates nuns and sisters working with the poor and providing healthcare. The beatification of Blessed Mother Teresa was a close thing because the CDF objected to her work with the poor and the healthcare her order provided. Once the Vatican hears about consecrated religious opening up food pantries they immediately get put on the inquisition list.

Now if these consecrated women religious really wanted to plan a bus trip that was more symbolic of the LCWR they would also stop off at a the Women’s Ordination Conference, a Reiki Training Center, a provide advice that helps religious leave their orders and start non-canonical ones taking the properly along (yes the LCWR actually did this), go to and abortion clinics and pray for choice.

Or how about instead of complaining about crackdowns and whining about the hierarchy they actually helped address the actual problems. While they do indeed do many good works, it does not mean that dissent and bad works become acceptable. We are all called to holiness and have to admit and repent of our faults.

I haven’t been able to confirm this, though I think this is the bus they will be using.

“We’re doing this because these are life issues,” said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a liberal social justice lobby in Washington. “And by lifting up the work of Catholic sisters, we will demonstrate the very programs and services that will be decimated by the House budget.” (Source)

Use the same NETWORK that supported pro-abortion Obamacare and is not outraged at all by the HHS Mandate. Obamacare directly led to forced funding of abortion-inducing drugs. For NETWORK federal funding for social programs is mandatory, and the unborn can be sacrificed to the federal altar. What is being ‘decimated” is the unborn.

This happened less than a week ago and I am just getting around to it.

[Washington, DC] The national board of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) held a special meeting in Washington, DC from May 29-31 to review, and plan a response to, the report issued to LCWR by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The board members raised concerns about both the content of the doctrinal assessment and the process by which it was prepared. Board members concluded that the assessment was based on unsubstantiated accusations and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency. Moreover, the sanctions imposed were disproportionate to the concerns raised and could compromise their ability to fulfill their mission. The report has furthermore caused scandal and pain throughout the church community, and created greater polarization.

Hey this is great to know since there is actually no problem they will have no problems complying with CDF oversight since it was all just a big misunderstanding in the first place. Really the LCWR has been getting a bum rap since after all they are quite orthodox in their beliefs.

This picture was from the latest LCWR sponsored Papal Pride meeting where they got together to discuss the theology of Pope Benedict XVI along with his writing from when he was a Cardinal. Heated debates often breakout at LCWR meetings as to as which of his books are the greatest contribution to the Church. They also pray for the reform of the reform and the liturgical vision as outlined in then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s “Sprit of the Liturgy”. Blessed John Paul II is not left out in admiration as they discuss the merits of the Theology of the Body and it significance in regard to the false views of human sexuality as espoused by the culture. In fact this year the biggest selling button was “I ♥ Magisterium”.

I just don’t have any idea why the CDF would persecute the LCWR since they are such a bastion of orthodoxy and supporters of the hierarchy.

Now just what were some of these “unsubstantiated accusations”?

• For one it was just a misunderstanding when the LCWR appointed a liaison to the Women’s Ordination Conference and more misunderstanding when they refused a request from the Vatican to not get involved. That many of their members have made public statements supporting women’s ordination just shows we don’t understand the nuance of what they were saying. Just because it appears a first blush that rejected that they rejected this teaching that requires definitive assent is just unsubstantiated just as long as you ignore the public record. In fact it is really quite surprising that the women’s ordination conference fully supports the LCWR when LCWR’s support of them is just a misunderstanding.

• After the Vatican intervened with New Ways Ministry and ordered the founders to have nothing to do with this organization which promotes a view of homosexual acts contrary to the truth, again it was all misunderstanding when the LCWR national board agreed in 2002 to write letters in support of New Ways Ministry. You just have to wonder how the CDF can see this negatively?

• When Blessed Pope John Paul II approved a document of guidelines titled “Essential Elements in Church Teaching on Religious Life”, it is hard to understand how the LCWR’s repudiating this document could reflect on their obedience. This repudiation was actually a sign of their love for the Pope.

• When the LCWR assembly had as a speaker a pro-abortion nun and refused to withdraw the invitation at the behest of the US bishop’s conference, again you have to wonder why the CDF does not see just how fully faithful the LCWR is.

• In 1993 the national board of the LCWR issued a statement, “Concerning the Rights of Gay and Lesbian Persons.”, you just have to wonder how that was misunderstood. Obviously the CDF is out for blood for no discernible reason.

• Surely the CDF is just cherry-picking when they pulled statements like from Sister Laurie Brink, OP who said “Who’s to say that the movement beyond Christ is not, in reality, a movement into the very heart of God?” So what if this was a keynote speech. Another keynote speaker Sister Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, complained about “patriarchal values that, by any objective measure, relegate women to second-class status governed by male-dominated structures, law, and ritual.” Later this year wacky new age teacher Barbara Marx Hubbard will be the keynote speaker. There just is no pattern here and the CDF makes too big a deal of it.

• The National Catholic Register notes that The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith today published a “Notification Regarding the Book ‘Just Love. A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics’ by Sister Margaret A. Farley R.S.M”. They wrote that the CDF was targeting her just because she is a member of the LCWR. This is obviously true and has nothing to do with the book supporting masturbation, homosexual acts, divorce an remarriage, etc. Why is the CDF getting on her case just for rejecting dogmatic teachings?

No doubt what is really going on is that somebody at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had his knuckles rapped on too many times by an American ruler-wielding nun and is just acting in revenge. After all everything detailed here is just “unsubstantiated accusations” and the result of the lack of transparency. The reality is that the members of the LCWR are totally orthodox and just misunderstood.

When these sisters aren't escorting women for abortions, they sit around reading "Dominus Iesus" and do things totally orthodox sisters do.

Vatican City, 3 June 2012 (VIS) – At midday today, after having celebrated Mass in the presence of almost one million faithful at Bresso Park in Milan and before praying the Angelus, the Holy Father announced that the eighth World Meeting of Families will be held in Philadelphia, U.S.A. in the year 2015. “I send my warm greetings to Archbishop Charles Chaput”, he said, “and to the Catholics of that great city, and look forward to meeting them there along with numerous families from all around the world”. (source)

I really need to move to wherever Archbishop Chaput is at the time. When he was in Denver they had World Youth Day there and not that he is in Philadelphia they are going to have the “World Meeting of Families” there.