Punditry

Bishop Kicanas responds to the news story about his time as Rector at a seminary. He strongly denies having any knowledge or being warned ahead of time of problems with future sexual abuser and at that time seminarian McCormack. I can easily believe that the press had previously distorted what he had said about this since they do this so often. Though considering the statement’s made in Cardinal George’s deposition concerning that Kicanas did have such knowledge, I think that there are still some serious questions here. That Bishop Kicanas said that he did not even read this deposition is hard to believe, but of course possible.

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Last week I tweeted a link to a story concerning Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas and his possible election as head of the USCCB, he is currently the Vice President.

Today Tim Drake is commenting on this story. For those unaware of the story, when Bishop Kicanas while rectory of a seminary ordained a sexual abuser even though he was already aware at the time of allegations regarding this. The priest involved, Daniel McCormack, went on to abuse as many as 23 boys and went to prison in 2007.

Asked about it, Bishop Kicanas essentially said that he would do it again.

“It would have been grossly unfair not to have ordained him,” Bishop Kicanas said shortly after being elected as vice president of the USCCB, in a quote that appears in the deposition of Cardinal Francis George. “There was a sense that his activity was part of the developmental process and that he had learned from the experience,” continued Bishop Kicanas. “I was more concerned about his drinking. We sent him to counseling for that.”

I guess hindsight is not always 20/20 after all. Grossly unfair to not ordain a priest who abused so many boys? Not exactly contrition for the role he played.

There’s been speculation that there’s an unspoken practice that the election of the body’s president follows an alternating pattern, as if the body were somehow trying to balance two wings of parliament.

The Church, however, is not parliament.

If there is some unspoken rule, it’s one that should be dismissed. The words “liberal” or “conservative”, “progressive” or “orthodox” cannot truly describe the Church or those in it. If such a practice is taking place with the election of the USCCB’s president, it must be rejected, embracing instead presiding USCCB president Cardinal Francis George’s “simply Catholicism.”

When the bishops gather next week, they have an opportunity to show that elections do matter. It would be best if they met behind closed doors and outside the purview of the media, held an honest conversation not about the voting practice of the previous era, but about who is the best person to lead the brotherhood of bishops at this time and place, and then voted accordingly.

If the Bishop is elected then the USCCB will be shown to be more of an ole boys club than shepherds concerned about their flock. Collegiality in practice seems to mean turning a blind eye.

In September the USCCB released a document on the “Review and Renewal” of The Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

This Review and Renewal is putting in place stronger policies and clearer mechanisms to screen and monitor grants and groups to ensure that these past violations, though very limited, are not repeated. CCHD will do all it can to ensure that groups abide by these strengthened requirements and will act immediately and decisively if it is discovered that any group is violating these essential conditions for CCHD support.

Sounds good, but what about actual practice? Well in the same document they also praise one group.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is an organization of Latino, and Haitian migrant farm workers in Florida. Working with the local diocese, the Florida Catholic Conference and many other groups, CIW has won groundbreaking agreements with major fast food chains to increase wages and improve better working conditions for their members who pick tomatoes.

This group participated in the US Social Forum 2010 (USSF) which sets as part of its national agenda abortion for low-income women, Marxism for the 21st Century (Young Communist League), and LGBT issues including “Radical Queer Festivals.” That they had participated in this was previously reported by Reform CCHD.

CCHD really needs a more radical reform and a look at how it sees its mission. CCHD does not directly fund any charities, but gives grants to groups involved in anti-poverty efforts. As long as this is true CCHD is going to cause scandal simply because it is exactly these types of groups that get themselves involved in an agenda that includes much more than anti-poverty efforts. The people who populate these groups seem to me to have a mindset identical to so many liberal groups. While a group might not personally be involved in activities contrary to Church teaching they are almost always sympathetic to them and will align themselves with such groups. There is very little variety in the types of groups that CCHD has funded which almost always have a more socialist view of economics and why poverty exists in the first place. Just reading over previous grant lists pretty much demonstrate this. CIW saw no inconsistency attending the Social Forum because they are fellow travelers.

So while I am certainly generalizing, it seems to me that as long as CCHD targets such groups for grants in the first place they will continue to cause scandal. It is a prudential question how much good these types of groups have actually achieved in the first place. I am certainly skeptical about this, but no expert on the subject.

From my own point of view I would much rather see such annual collections be directed by the local ordinary who would decide where such money could best serve the poor and other aspects of Catholic social teaching. This is what my bishop is doing since he replaced it with a “Diocesan Schools and Social Action Appeal.” I think this approach is much more effective and in keeping with subsidarity.

Bishop’s Document on CCHD Reform.
Reform CCHD Now Report.

Going over the news feeds I found it odd to see the headline What Is Marco Rubio’s Religion?. But apparently the reporter who wrote the story has been running similar pieces on politicians running in the midterm election.

What is Marco Rubio’s religion?

Rubio is a Roman Catholic.

Where does Marco Rubio worship?

Though he is Catholic, Rubio belongs to the Christ Fellowship nondenominational Church in West Kendall, Fla., where he has attended for the last six years.

Was Marco Rubio born Roman Catholic, or did he convert?

Rubio was born Roman Catholic.

What has Marco Rubio said about the Roman Catholic Church?

When asked about how his faith has sustained him, Rubio said that he derives his family’s strength from faith. “If you get the personal part of your life wrong, nothing else makes sense,” he said, adding that his most important job is father and husband, and “I try to get that right, … and certainly that comes from our faith.” As a Catholic potential senator, he has expressed a possible division (as well as an inference that his Christianity informs his morality): “For those who have the Christian faith and are in politics, there is a constant struggle between a desire to do what is right and how that sometimes may not coincide with what is popular,” he said. “I hope that, more often than not, I make the right choice.”

These were suppose to be answers to frequently asked questions. So whether someone is a convert to a faith is a frequently asked question or what church they attend?

Very strange for a reporter to call someone who attends a Protestant church for six years a Catholic. Somehow I doubt the reporter is considering the nuances of formal defection introduced by the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the subsequent very strict interpretation of it by he Pontifical Commission for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts in 2006. Though since this clarification likely was not retroactive Rubio could be seen as formerly defecting since he is enrolled in another Christian church. Though I don’t play a Canon Lawyer on my blog or on TV. [Jimmy Akin on the subject]

Now the question is how accurate is this report? It does indeed seem that Marco Rubio attends this “denominational non-denomonational” church to which over the years has donated close to 66,000 dollars and his attendance there is referenced in several stories. Though The Huffington Post calls him an “observant Roman Catholic” so I guess that proves that he is now a Protestant. Easy to see the confusion since maybe Rubio is confused himself since his government web page lists Roman Catholic and just about every other source does the same. I would be curious as to what the actual situation is – though this has no effect on my voting for Marco Rubio. Religious affiliation is not what I look for in a candidate, but certainly I desire the unity in that all belong to Christ’s Church – the Catholic Church.

Rich at Ten Reasons points out:

Each year, the USCCB’s Catholic Campaign for Human Development allocates hundreds of thousands of dollars to local projects coordinated by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. The National Catholic Reporter recently asked John Carr, executive director of the USCCB Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, which includes the CCHD staff, about success stories. Here is what he cited for Cincinnati:

And here is the success story referenced:

“Some of it is mundane, but very important,” Carr added. He said on a recent trip to Cincinnati, “I asked the CCHD archdiocesan director if there had been any significant victories recently.

“And he said, ‘Absolutely. There was a huge victory.’ He said one of the groups that CCHD funds was able to persuade the mass transit board to change the route of a bus line so that it didn’t stop three-quarters of a mile from the mall — so that the people who work in the mall and people who shop in the mall who don’t have a car, mostly low-income people, don’t have to walk in the rain, or walk three-quarters of a mile in order to carry out their work or do their shopping.”

Now if that doesn’t grease open your wallet to give money to CCHD I don’t know what would. I mean a success story like that will be passed on for ages.

Well maybe not, I for one am glad my bishop is not contributing to CCHD in our diocese. CCHD is trying to rebrand itself putting aside the errors in the past to forge one. Unfortunately their renewal sounds exactly like more of the same in giving money to exactly the same problematic groups that are better at promoting themselves than actually doing something for the poor.

Earlier the New York TImes had an article Catholic Bloggers Aim to Purge Dissenter that I was tempted to comment on, but a lot of other Catholic bloggers have already spilled plenty of screen pixels on. As you would expect from an NYT article it is pretty much a totally negative piece of agenda journalism. The NYT never could bring itself to mention the purges of Stalin which killed a large multitude, but for conservative Catholic bloggers they find the term just fine. The article goes downhill from the headline.

So this article aptly criticized by many bloggers of course gets called a fine piece by Fr. James Martin of America Magazine. Now as someone who has hundreds of Catholic blogs in my RSS aggregator I get a pretty good sampling of what happens in the Catholic blogosphere. It is no surprise that blogs like people range the gamut and the range of charity in an post will also do the same. Generally though Catholic blogs that focus on punditry usually focus on dissent and bad theology. Personal attacks on people who dissent or advance bad theology I have found to be rather rare, though certainly some blogs are more prone to this than others – again blogs are remarkably like people. So I found the NYT piece to be rather silly and to be expected.

Fr. James Martin should get an Irony of the Week award for the following sentence.

Finally, many in the “Catholic Taliban,” as John Allen so bluntly puts it, seem devoid of any sense of Christian charity.

So Fr. Martin repeating John Allen’s term, which he has subsequently backed off from, and using his own term “web-based McCarthyism” is an example of Christian charity? “Hey you #*$(I@)%, be more civil.” Certainly we all fail at this at times and I guess I will have to work to model myself off of America Magazine wonderfully vicious writer Michael Sean Winters. Father Martin is so concerned about civility that he is associated with and writes for the Huffington Post the very mirror of Christian charity – well an inverse image at least.

Carl Olson in his reply to Fr. Martin’s post said “He’s a smart, well-spoken, and thoughtful man, and a talented writer as well.” I would agree with his assessment and I mostly enjoyed his book “My Life with the Saints” which I would recommend with only some very minor quibbles. Fr. Martin also identified himself as a Progressive when he was writing in the NYT during the Pope’s visit to the U.S.

Fr. Martin seems to have a problem with anonymous bloggers and commenters, though when it comes to anonymous bloggers within St. Blogs there are a very small minority. Though maybe he is thinking of Diogenes and his rather pointed commentary. Fr. Martin seems to forget there is good reason why some might go the anonymous route which is certainly not always cowardly as the charitable Fr. Martin contends. Some people work in situations where their employers might fire them for having a faithful Catholic worldview. Look at what happened in California when homosexual activists went after and got people fired for signing the petition supporting real marriage. Now as to anonymous commenters, well this is the internet and you don’t even know when somebody puts their real name in the first place. I for one would like to live in a troll-less world and peruse comment boxes full of thoughtful opinions – but comment boxes pretty much affirm the doctrine of original sin.

He also complains about the theological ability of “attack-bloggers”, another charitable term he uses. Certainly true to some extent, but you don’t need a degree to say that abortion is intrinsically evil. Most of the battles of today are not at the depth that required the earliest councils concerning Christology. Often though it is those that do indeed have degrees in theology that defend the indefensible so that you can vote for or support whoever you wanted to support anyway. Understanding “Though should not kill” does not take the theological depth of a St. Aquinas and it is an elitist argument to imply that it does. A deeper understanding of theology will serve everybody well, but the issues of the day just aren’t all that nuanced.

Third, the focus of their blogs is almost risibly narrow. Here are the sole topics of interest, in the order in which they cause foaming at the mouth (or on the keyboard): homosexuality, abortion, women’s ordination, birth control, liturgical abuses and the exercise of church authority. Is this really the sum total of what makes us Catholic?

So if people were blogging during the Council of Nicea would you be surprised if the prominent topic was the nature of Christ? Of if blogging during the Council of Trent that the topics concerned the Sacrifice of the Mass and the nature of the Priesthood. I for one would be quite glad to never have to blog on ” homosexuality, abortion, women’s ordination, birth control, liturgical abuses and the exercise of church authority” again. But these are the issues of the day and evil does not go away just because you want a faux civility. The toll of abortion worldwide is such a palpable evil that anyone who decries talking about it just doesn’t get that this is the slaughter of the innocents and a crime continuously calling out to Heaven. I guess Blessed Mother Teresa should have just chilled instead of talking about this issue. Everything he lists except liturgical abuses are intrinsic evils – isn’t that exactly what we should be writing about, praying about, and doing what we can to bring people to the truth and closer to God? Of course America Magazine does not really write about these topics, because it seems to be they are on the other side concerning them. Fr. Martin often blogs stories concerning homosexuality, but never the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically evil. I remember once he wrote a couple of posts concerning some bishop who the press reported said that all homosexuals go to Hell. Now the charitable approach to such a story is to think that the bishop was misquoted as happens pretty much daily in the press. I expresses exactly this in his comment box and once again when he addressed the story again. Several days later the story was clarified showing that the bishop did not say what the story quoted him as saying and expressed what the Church actually teaches instead of the falsehood that all homosexuals go to Hell. Yet there was no followup post to this story and no apology for his slandering of the bishop. Fr. Martin talks about courage and yet it seems rather obvious what his feelings are about what the Church teaches on homosexual acts and yet he seems to dance around this – though certainly I would be happy to have misread him and to see him actually affirm the constant teaching of the Church on this.

Fourth, anonymous attacks drummed up by these bloggers often make their way, slowly but surely, to the offices of church leaders, where they can do real damage to real people with real jobs in Catholic schools and universities, parishes and chanceries. Church officials, often unsure of the veracity of the attacks, may try to play it safe by disciplining or even firing the target of the attack.

Examples please. Certainly some people have lost their jobs such as the USCCB staffer who was supporting John Kerry using USCCB computers during work. Having been involved with the Catholic Blogosphere since 2001 I can’t think of one example of a “anonymous attack” that resulted in such a situation. If anything even when somebody has been shown to dissent against Church teaching in a serious way nothing is done. I could almost wish Catholic bloggers had such power, that is if I wasn’t highly suspicious of power and how it is easily misused. The real world experience I have gathered is that in most cases Church officials ignore scandal until forced to act and not always even then. The idea that they have some hair-trigger response to a rumor mill in Catholic blogs is laughably not credible. As I said “Example please.”

Fifth, there seems is little apparent desire on the part of some of these watchdogs to speak to their targets. Rarely are the targets of ad hominem attacks contacted for any comment or explanation. And, in my experience, when you respond to some of these bloggers, while at times you will receive a thoughtful apology, or a revision on a blog, or you will agree to disagree in charity, most often than not you are met with even more invective and further hateful comments. After a while, you just find yourself give up.

Isn’t it Ad hominem to talk of attack bloggers, Taliban Catholicism, web-based McCarthyism? Seems like a rather personal attack to me concerning my pundit blogging friends. I also can not think of any of the top Catholic blogs that would not issue an apology if mistaken or had the facts wrong since they have done so in the past. I certainly have revised posts when I found I got something wrong.

Of course the common defense is that real charity is pointing out a “heresy,” which will damage the faithful. (As in, “It’s a good thing we burned Joan of Arc at the stake!”) Or they say that calls for charity just mask dissent. But fidelity and charity are not competing values. Or they argue that they’re just doing what Jesus did when he called Herod a “fox.” What they seem to forget is that they are not Jesus. Overall, while many of these bloggers certainly seem Catholic, they don’t seem particularly Christian

Again is the good Father trying for the Irony award? St. Joan of Arc was burned for what were really political reasons by clerics who put politics first. They had a political agenda in condemning this saint and they twisted theology to bring about the result – sound familiar? The targets of so many Catholic bloggers are again those who put something first before the faith whether it is party politics or something else. Certainly fidelity and charity are not competing values and fidelity requires charitably calling out dissent both for love of the dissenter and to prevent harm to others. Purges are not what I want or I believe others want. We talk of excommunication only as medicinal remedy to bring someone back to full Communion with the Church.

Oh and by the way that NYT article that Fr. Martin called a “fine piece.” In one part of the article it says that Catholic bloggers refer to the “National Catholic Reporter” as the “National Catholic Destroyer.” Strangely I have never read anybody actually saying this. Now the term “National Catholic Destroyer” has certainly been used as a play on words. Dale Price Googled the words “National Catholic Destroyer” and found the only hits were related to the NYT piece itself. Yes a fine piece that couldn’t even spend the time to get basic facts right.

One last point. I would certainly agree with Fr. Martin on some of the points that he made and that when a discussion becomes heated and charity is lost – too much is lost. We all need to take G.K. Chesterton as role model in his in that he could be great friends with people like George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells while also critiquing their views in his columns and his books. These men returned his friendship despite the fact that they knew is disagreed with them at a fundamental level. So pray for me that I might emulate the same in my life and my blog.

Tom at Disputations has a good critique of what Fr. Martin wrote and the original article.

Here is an update to a story – first a little background.

Early in 2006, Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a statement clarifying that Church agencies should not place children for adoption with same-sex couples. The statement had particular significance for Levada’s former Archdiocese of San Francisco, whose Catholic Charities agency had been placing children for adoption with same-sex couples.

In response to Cardinal Levada’s statement, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution denouncing the Vatican’s foreign meddling, demanding Levada retract his “hateful,” “insulting,” “discriminatory,” “callous”  and ignorant directive, and urging current San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer and Catholic Charities “to defy all discriminatory directives of Cardinal Levada.” Members of the Board of Supervisors also threatened to remove funding from Catholic Charities’ other programs unless they did defy the Vatican (The City was not funding the adoption program at Catholic Charities).

Always nice to have a city council call your religious beliefs to be hateful. Apparently loving your brother and not wanting them to sin is hateful and calling sin normal is loving.

We would have a different case on our hands had the defendants called upon Cardinal Levada to recant his views on transubstantiation, or had urged Orthodox Jews to abandon the laws of kashrut, or Mormons their taboo of alcohol. Those matters of religious dogma are not within the secular arena in the way that same-sex marriage and adoption are.

Jack Smith at the Catholic Key blog replies to this nonsense succinctly:

Translated, your freedom of religion encompasses all the superstitious voodoo you care to indulge in, but you may not have a religious dogma at variance with something the City cares about – like sex.

Political Correctness is the secular dogma that must be adhered to or you will be banished Now it might sound like no big deal that a silly city council like San Francisco’s would make such a statement, that is almost to be expected. Much worse when the courts turn a blind eye to religious discrimination and bigotry. They of course can not explain why the area of same-sex marriage do not come within the arena of religious thought. Really the opposition to same-sex marriage can be discovered in the natural law and if religion can’t protect marriage the very basis of family life, than really religion becomes only an intellectual hobby with no real-world applications.

This appeal court is not called the Ninth Circus Court for no reason and it is no surprise how often their actions are overturned. This case certainly calls out to be tried in the Supreme Court as an important First Amendment case. If the government gets a pass on religious bigotry and know-nothingism we will certainly get more bigotry of this kind. If the case does make it to SCOTUS it will certainly become a media circus as once again the fact that five justices on the court are Catholic. I wonder if the pundits will say that they must recuse themselves? If only the anti-Catholic bigots would have to recuse themselves.

The Windhill Churches Centre in Bishop’s Stortford is being seen as a milestone in ecumenical relationships.

It was built by the Anglican Parish of St Michael and the Roman Catholic Parish of St Joseph and the English Martyrs.

The project has taken 15 years to come to fruition.

The centre comprises two halls, two kitchens, two offices for clergy and six meeting rooms.

The entrance, toilets and lift for the disabled are all shared.

It was opened on Saturday by the Rt Rev Dr Alan Smith, the Bishop of St Albans, and the Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Westminster, the Rt Rev George Stack. [Article]

Wow we have come a long way. Shared toilets! Though I guess when you are dealing with ecumenism it is best to emphasize what we share.

I once wrote a church bulletin parody for a joint Anglican/Catholic church named “St. Thomas More & King Henry VIII”

The media always want a hook when reporting religion news and preferably a hook that pertains to their worldview is what is wanted. When it comes to canonization sadly holiness and a life of heroic virtue is not a hook they care about at all. Any ole hook will do and it doesn’t even have to be true.

For example the reporting on Mary MacKillop who was canonized today shows proof of this. Over the last week the meme has been that she reported directly to the bishop the case of a Franciscan priest who was an abuser. Hey nice hook that fits the agenda. The only problem of course is that it is totally false.

Sherry Weddell does good work in her post Mary MacKillop: The Whistle That Never Blew by pointing out that the new Saint happened to be living 1,000 miles away at the time the events happened and her Bishop was away for a year and a half at the First Vatican Council. So the idea of her going to the bishop and denouncing this priest just was not possible in any way.

History is sometimes stranger than fiction! The primary whistle-blower turned out to be a wildly eccentric, mentally ill male cleric, Fr. Woods, not our new woman saint. Since Fr. Woods was regarded as “the founder” of the Josephite sisters, Fr. Horan sought to take vengeance by destroying the women’s community that he had founded.

It turns out that the carelessness and incompetence lay elsewhere. Now both Fr. Gardiner and the executive producer of the Australian Broadcasting Company’s Compass show (the source of the original story) have vehemently denied ever asserting that Mary was a whistle-blower.

Though how can we expect the media to get it right when the Vatican press office can’t.

“The merits of Mother Mary MacKillop, her commitment to children, to the poor, to indigenous peoples, to the dignity of all human persons, were much more extensive than the fact that she denounced an abuser,” Lombardi said.

The quote would have been perfect if Fr. Lombardi had left off the last part. She is a saint because she lived a life of heroic sanctity which bore fruit in her helping the poor and others.