Punditry

Pope Benedict XVI to use SMS text message to reach youth during World Youth Day

I have seen reference to this story a great deal over the last couple of days and it makes me wonder about a couple of things. Number one why is it a story in the first place.

One thing to remember is that he did the same thing at World Youth Day in Germany almost three years ago. This article references the use then. So it kind of annoys me that the stories don’t even reference the fact that he did the same thing already at the last World Youth Day. Back fin 2002 the Vatican used cell phone SMS to send out daily messages based on papal speeches and daily homilies and entered in with distribution deals with Verizon Wireless and other carriers.

The other thing that annoys me about the story is that there is always the air of "Pope of anti-science Catholics Church actually uses technology at times." That the story is suppose to be kind of funny using the humor of the disconnect. Pope + technology = funny. Oh well, I guess we will just continue to get stories like this every time the pope uses some form of new technology.

Speaking on the day that the Archbishop of Canterbury met Benedict XVI in Rome, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council of Christian Unity, said it was time for Anglicanism to “clarify its identity”.

He told the Catholic Herald: “Ultimately, it is a question of the identity of the Anglican Church. Where does it belong?

“Does it belong more to the churches of the first millennium -Catholic and Orthodox – or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century? At the moment it is somewhere in between, but it must clarify its identity now and that will not be possible without certain difficult decisions.”

It is a good question, but is it answerable? Back when the Anglican three branch theory was somewhat plausible and didn’t make you laugh out loud thinking about it this would have been a very good question. Nowadays the branch theory could be used to describe the multiple branches within Anglicanism itself. Whenever two or three Anglican/Episcopalians gather in his name they form another province.

There is no single hierarchy that can speak for Anglicanism and even in days of a more unified Anglican identity the Archbishop of Canterbury was still a figurehead since every national/regional church has its own autonomy. In Orthodoxy even with the different national Orthodox churches there are always possibilities of them coming back into full Communion with the Church as has happened in the past. Anglicanism like Protestantism in general I don’t see how this type of large movement can happen. The Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue as certainly made some advancements as far as agreement on some areas of theology, but of course even this is accepted by only a segment of Lutheranism.

The whole structure of Protestantism leads to individualism and for the foreseeable future it is going to be individual converts who will decide to come in the Church or the occasional rare occurrence of an individual congregation coming into full Communion with the Church. This is not to say that ecumenism on a larger level is pointless since it can lead to clarity even in disagreements and when there is unity in agreements that is all the better. But even if the Archbishop of Canterbury started to move Anglicanism in a Catholic direction and eliminated the multiple barriers that currently exist, just how many would go along with him?

Recently I read that Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson who was the son the Archbishop of Canterbury and a convert to the Catholic Church referred to ecumenism as YouComeInism. Pretty triumphalistic, but also pretty funny.

A reader sent me a link to the announcement is on the front page of this week’s Sacred Heart Cathedral bulletin in Rochester.

College students from the Catholic Newman Community of the Eastman School of Music will present the
fourth annual "Concert at the Cathedral," today, May 4th,
at 2:00. Come enjoy an afternoon of beautiful classi-
cal and sacred music performed by some of the most talented young musicians in the church today. This year the
event will honor all the ordained men and women who are
celebrating special anniversaries this year. A reception
will follow
the dedication and blessing of our new Cathedral Community
and its liturgical ministers

Another part of the bulletin requests:

During all Masses on the Feast of Pentecost
next weekend, May 10th and 11th.
Red clothing is requested.

Cool, I was thinking of wearing my tongues of fire hat to Mass Sunday. Though wearing color coded clothing to Mass seems rather odd to me unless it is vestments, but not out of the question. But please don’t ask me to do this on Laetare and Gaudete Sunday.

I also found this interesting.

To help you enter into our blessing ritual next weekend, I will now describe the six stations at which we will
pray:

1. We will begin at the doors of the Cathedral where a
member of our Community will knock, symbolically seeking admission. The presider will then turn to the congregation in church and ask "why are you assembled in this
church today?" We will all answer “we have come at
God’s invitation to form a new community and worship our
maker as the Body of Christ.” Then the presider will welcome the community, acknowledging all involved in ministries of welcome, and we will all ask the Lord to bless the
doors of our church and keep them open always.

…

*
Please note that at each of the six stations the priest
will not only bless the sacred space but bless the members
of our community whose ministry helps to make the
space sacred for all of us.

I do wonder if I get my keyboard blessed if I can make a sacred space using the sacred spacebar.

Russell Shaw writes an absolutely great article on clericalism at Inside Catholic. This is the first of a multi part series on clericalism. The article has a great balance in explaining this with the necessary caveats in that clericalism is a distortion of the role of the priesthood and condemning clericalism does not mean blurring the lines between the priesthood of the faithful and the ordained priesthood. I also likes the examples he used to explain clericalism which made me to see more fully what this term means.

We can forget about the dangers of clericalism when what we mostly see is the danger of those that seem to be reducing the role of priests to some kind of sacramental dispenser.

It also seems to me that the women’s ordination movement is also a form of clericalism. Where these women seem to think that the only way to serve the Church is via the priesthood only. In this day and age of specialists this is no surprise since we can see the priesthood as the ultimate religious specialist and we forget that holiness is not caused by our vocational state in life, but by fully responding with love to the vocation we have. The Devil tempts priests and religious by making them long for the lay life and the Devil tempts the laity to long for the priesthood and religious life even when they don’t have a vocation to it.

It is ironic that sometimes clericalism is used to support blurring the lines between the laity and the priesthood as for example Bishop Clark has managed to do in his diocese. He uses the term ministerium which is also used by many Protestants to do some of this blurring I must admit when I saw the term ministerium today in a headline in association to the bishops ministerium event I thought that the word was a contraction for minimizing the magisterium.

The fourth-annual ministerium event brought together people who serve in various leadership positions across the diocese. Participants are invited by Bishop Clark, who had introduced the term ministerium — Latin for "body of ministers" — in 2001 to define those who exercise an official of ecclesial ministry. This group is inclusive of ordained priests and deacons, and also such people who are considered lay ecclesial ministers: women religious, pastoral administrators, pastoral associates, religious-education coordinators, youth ministers, hospital chaplains, campus ministers, prison chaplains, Catholic-school principals, parish volunteers with significant ministerial responsibilities and diocesan employees.

Under Canon Law to be chaplain in the first place you must be an ordained priest. It really isn’t correct to term lay volunteers to these ministries as chaplains. The definition of ministry in this context is a mirror form of clericalism where to be doing something for the Church this means physically doing something for the local diocese as an employee or volunteer to the parish or diocese. Lay apologists, the faithful praying at home for the Church, etc, are left out of this equation. This is like the distorted meaning of active participation meaning physically doing something during Mass.

Time Magazine asks in an actually readable story Is Liberal Catholicism Dead? Even though it quotes the usual suspects it brings up some interesting points such as how the progressives in their positions have done nothing to distinguish themselves from liberal Protestantism. I don’t think however that the Pope speaking out on sex abuse has changed the dynamic. Groups such as VOTF who latched on to priestly sexual abuse to advance their own agenda were never really influential and peaked pretty quickly as far as membership goes.

I think though that the real question is was liberal Catholicism ever alive in the first place. Any movement whether it arises on the so-called right or the left that denies some doctrines or diminishes them and places too much emphasis on another can never be truly alive. Only the truth is alive. When truth and error are mixed in we don’t get something fully alive, but something stillborn that can never successfully reproduce itself. The birth defect of error ensures that while it might cause a commotion for a time, that without a true promotion of the faith it is bound to die out. The Church has bounded over constant heresies and while they might have tossed the Ark of the Church about the Church always stayed on course since the Holy Spirit is her steersman.

Modernism has not brought the Church to the world, but tried to bring the world into the Church. Modernism has worked like a canal lock, but instead of raising the world to the Church, has tried to lower the Church to the world. This equivocation has been detrimental in vocations. Why answer the call of sacrifice when all forms of sacrifice and self-restraint are suppose to be a sign of an unbalanced personality. Where sin becomes just guilt to be overcome on a psychologists couch and not the confessional.

There has been talk about the graying of the Call to Action crowd and the same thing for those convents and monasteries that have in most ways abandoned the faith for a bunch of modernist pottage. It is always a temptation to follow something new that seems exciting at the time if you are on the cusp of some new fad. The pride of thinking that your insights into the faith despite the fact that they contradict the constant teaching of the Church is what is in fact true. In a culture of constant change and invention it is attractive to invent something new when it comes to the faith. This is an easy path since it is much harder to truly absorb the faith and to meditate on it and to perhaps even illumine the mysteries of the faith further in contemplation. So while it is exciting to be involved in the latest theology that brings much itch to the ears, later generations will see it as the fad it was; though this won’t keep them from following a different fad.

We are not exactly conditioned to giving our fiat to the Church when we are buffeted about by the winds of rugged individualism. That to be an individual it to have an opinion different from other individuals. Though mostly this gets played out by doing exactly the same thing as a bunch of other individuals who are proclaiming their individuality. I do thank God for my own experience in the military since it removed so many false ideas from when I was a wannabe hippie. It prepared me for the Church militant where I could both be fully alive as a person and also a part of the body of Christ. That obedience to Christ and his Church is a joy and I have not lost any freedom, but only gained true freedom by doing what I ought.

Last week at Ten Reasons Rich Leonardi posted an article from one of Bishop Clark’s pastoral administrator.

As pastoral administrator of St. Mary’s Church in Rochester, I have been blessed with the responsibility for the pastoral and administrative care of a Roman Catholic community of 900 families who gather for worship in a beautiful city-center church. I collaborate with a talented pastoral staff including a full-time priest and a retired priest who serves us voluntarily.

I can’t imagine a better place to be. We are in a city that is showing such positive signs of new life. Our church tradition has a rich and beautiful wealth of spirituality, theology and liturgy. We are in a diocese that has a courageous, encouraging leader in Bishop Matthew Clark.

Traditionally, the leader of a parish would have been an ordained priest. At present, only an ordained priest may preside at Eucharist, give absolution and anoint the sick. However, as a lay pastoral leader, I do not feel less capable in serving the community in most other ways. Readily we seek to offer care, compassion and spiritual guidance, as well as teaching and administrative leadership.

The sure sign of the progressive is to use the words "at present." But as Chesterton noted on modernists is that they might as well call themselves Thurdayites. I idea of the constant teaching of the Church changing in a contradictory way to me is a nightmare and certainly nothing to hope for. To paraphrase Flannery O’Connor if the Church can change her doctrines than the Hell with her. This of course does not apply to the development of doctrine, but a democratic view of doctrine where the Holy Spirit doesn’t get a vote. Where Apostolic Tradition doesn’t get a proxy vote. Were the Church to do such a thing I would have no choice but cynicism and atheism since the Church is all or nothing. This is something I will never loose any sleep over since with Peter I would say "Where would I go, you have the words of eternal life."

I do wonder what metrics she uses for evidence of positive signs of new life, I get the feeling our understanding on what constitute new life would vary. The only real metric is one that we can’t know in this life and that is just how many of the parishioners make it to Heaven. The training for life in Christ seems to me to be the fundamental purpose of a diocese just as it is the fundamental concern of parents to raise their children in Christ.

I would think that a diocese that has to resort to pastoral administrators which as Rich mentioned is canonically legitimate only under temporary and exceptional circumstances. I also would think that the response to vocations in the priestly and religious life would be an important indicator of new life. When your vocation chart represents the flat line of an EKG connected to someone dead you might think their might be a problem there or maybe resorting to pastoral administrators is the same thing as the plot of Weekend at Bernie. We’re alive here!, just don’t look too closely. As many have mentioned there is no vocation crisis, their is a response to vocation crisis. When the priesthood and religious life becomes just social work why not just be a social worker for better pay and conditions? By theological diminishing the ordained faithful and raising the priesthood of the faithful to an equal level why exactly should we be surprised that answering to the vocational call is met with resistance?

Other metrics I would look at for seeing if a diocese is truly alive is Mass attendance, lines for Confession, a falling divorce rate, etc. The metric for most people seems to be how faithful is the Catholic Church to them and not how faithful they are to the Catholic Church. There is only vibrant orthodoxy and vibrant heterodoxy is an oxymoron. But even orthodoxy can be lived in an unorthodox manner when it becomes a narrowing instead of the large thumping creature that it is since it is the very heartbeat of truth. Pope Benedict when speaking to Catholic educators said that Catholic education can not "be equated simply with orthodoxy of course content." Orthodoxy of course content is the foundation to be built upon and when it is not, as modernism demonstrates, it is the foundation built on rocky ground that Jesus preached about.

When I think of liberalism/modernism/progressivism or whatever ism it is going by I can only think of what G.K. Chesterton said.

�A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.�

A reader sent me a link to the following interview between Larry King and Michael Moore.

King: What about how he’s handled the Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright thing?

Moore: Jeez, you know, I mean I go to Mass still. I’m a practicing Catholic. I’ve been that way all my life. But if I had — if I had gotten up every time I heard a priest from the pulpit in my travels around the country say things like I’ve heard them say, that birth control is a sin, that women should not be priests, that women should have a different role in church …

King: You’d be walking out all the time?

Moore: I would have been walking out so much — that would have been so much aerobic activity for me … I wouldn’t look like this.

I thinks I will call BS on this. Either that or I would like a list of churches he has attended that actually mention birth control and women’s ordination. But even if true it can’t me much of a shock or surprise to hear a homily that actually teaches what the Church teaches.

Though what is really ridiculous is his comparison of Wright’s rants with the constant teaching of the Catholic Church. As if the Church teaching against contraception is the same thing as saying that the government invented AIDS to kill black people. This is just relativism used to divert a question. Just like when Obama was asked about Ayers he said he was also friends with Sen. Coburn as if being friends with a pro-life senator is the same thing as opening your senate campaign in the home of a unrepentant domestic terrorist. In Moore’s case just mentioning the Catholic Church is sure to get no follow up from Larry King since the Catholic Church is the epitome of evil for liberals.

In a typical Fr. Reese. S.J. article in Commonweal on "Reforming the Vatican" he starts of with the fact that the structures of the Church have developed over time and I guess from his analysis all in the wrong direction.

The contemporary papacy rules the church with powers that would be the envy of any absolute monarch: the pope holds supreme legislative, executive, and judicial authority with few checks on his power. This power is especially evident in the appointment of bishops.

Though one of those checks being Papal Infallibility and the promise of the Holy Spirit that the gates of Hell will never prevail against the Church. That is a pretty good check and balance that even morally evil popes never changed Church teaching.

He then goes on to talk about the history of how Bishops were selected from when the faithful in the early centuries were chosen via general acclaim and the various systems that included control by nobles and kings up to the present day. He does give a fairly good historical overview of this.

All of this changed in the nineteenth century, when revolutions wiped out most of the Catholic monarchs in Europe. Rather than returning the selection of bishops to the local church, popes made it their own prerogative. Unsurprisingly, this led to the appointment of bishops who were loyal to Rome and would support its preeminence in the church.

Wow this leads to the appointment of Bishops loyal to the Church and who actually believed in the role of the Pope! Well this would be nice if it actually always happened. But the Pope relies on the recommendations of the local Church and the Papal Nuncio and is not infallible in this regards.

But the appointment of bishops is not the only example of the papacy’s consolidation of power. In the early centuries of the church, regional or national councils of bishops helped define doctrine, coordinated church policy, and even provided a forum for judging bishops. The bishop of Rome acted as a court of appeal when bishops and councils disagreed.

For liberals everything is always about power, nothing can be done because it might be more prudent or efficient. The Bishop of Rome though has never acted as a court of appeal. Always the Pope made the final decisions as to what was approved and not approved in a council. They did not simply appeal to him upon conflicts since even unanimous decisions would have to be signed off by the Pope.

National bishops’ conferences are the true successors of these councils, but the Vatican refuses to allow them the independence to act like the councils of old. Similarly, ecumenical councils once had greater independence; according to some theologians, the councils even had the authority to impeach popes.

Say what? But I guess whenever you are about to say something really stupid you start off the sentence with "according to some theologians" and I guess this is a form of plausible deniability. There is just so much mistaken in what he says on both impeaching the pope and bishops conferences being the true successors to councils. There is no absolute requirement for a local bishop conferences. I believe then-Cardinal Ratzinger has even said that they have no theological basis for existence. They are simply a prudential structure that has been setup for administrative reasons to serve the Church. It is strange how many progressives will attack the authority of the pope which certainly is backed up by scripture and Apostolic Tradition and of course dogmatic teaching and yet will praise bishop conferences which have no real authority other than what the individual bishops as a whole give it. This type of statement would claim that a local bishops conference can decide doctrinal questions and I guess different local bishop conferences could come up with contrary answers. The local conferences in no way will ever be the successor of a true ecumenical council and the real councils were never independent from the pope in the first place.

The centralization of power in the Vatican was often a legitimate response to the political interference of kings and nobles in the life of the local church. Popes could stand up to kings better than the local church could. But now that few kings or noblemen are in a position to meddle with the church, one could argue that such centralization is no longer necessary—and that it is in fact counterproductive.

He doesn’t explain exactly how this is counterproductive. The Pope as the ultimate decider of episcopal ordinations is also a corrective to a diocese that has gone off the rails. We don’t want to see places like the Diocese of Rochester and others to perpetuate themselves with like minded bishops. To have various diocese perpetuating their own form of Catholicism in whatever form it might take would be counterproductive. That the modern approach was not used in the early church and beyond is simply because they did not have the forms of timely communication that we are now use to.

Now we come to his reforms:

Make the Vatican a bureaucracy, not a court. Most countries have found that a royal court composed of a king and his nobles is not a good way to govern. The Vatican is still as much a court as a bureaucracy, with cardinals referred to as princes of the church and bishops acting like nobles. I would recommend that no Vatican bureaucrat be made a bishop or a cardinal. One of the problems with nobles and bishops is that it is difficult to fire them even when they are incompetent or when there is a change in administrations. Such a reform would also remind the Vatican bureaucracy that it is a servant of the pope and the college of bishops and not itself part of the magisterium.

The problem here is that he is starting with too broad a generalization of how curial officials act and the idea that non-Bishops in these positions would make a major difference. That because they are called princes of the Church that they necessarily act like that. Last I checked we all suffer from original sin. Truly he has a point about having a greater difficult in firing incompetent Bishops and Cardinals in the curia, but is this really a major problem that we need to eliminate cardinals and bishops from the equation? The trend of having more lay people serving in the curia is a growing one and a positive one and surely having a mix of clergy and lay people in the curia is the better solution.

Strengthen the legislative bodies in the church. At the same time that the role of the nobility in governance was declining in civil society, the role of independent legislatures was increasing. No modern political philosophy would advise a polity to depend only on the wisdom of an executive. There is universal recognition that the synod of bishops created by Paul VI has failed to rise to expectations. I would recommend that no member of the Vatican bureaucracy be a member of the synod of bishops: they could attend the synod as experts and staff, but not as voting members. All of the members of the synod should be elected by episcopal conferences; none should be appointed. The synod should also meet on a regular basis—say, once every five years—and, of course, the synod would need committees to prepare agendas and documents between meetings. There should also be an ecumenical council at least once every generation.

I think the idea of timed synods is mistaken. Nothing is worse than meetings timed on a schedule that have nothing to do with need. We are having a meeting because it is Tuesday. The Synod of Bishops is at the service of the Pope and called when he thinks something requires this collaboration. The reality is that since the Second Vatican II council 21 special and general assemblies have been called and general assembles are occurring roughly every four to five years already. I get the idea that he just doesn’t like how the synods have turned out because they have not created the changes in doctrine and practice he desires. I also wonder why he thinks being a member of the curia and a synod would be a conflict in the first place? They are not in opposition to each other unless you think that the role of the synods is to mainly change the curia and this is seen as a loss of power. The idea of timed ecumenical councils is even worse. Do we put the Holy Spirit on a calendar?

Convert congregations into elected synodal committees. Vatican congregations and councils are committees of cardinals and bishops appointed by the pope. Each is responsible for a special domain within the church-such as liturgy, ecumenism, evangelization, and canon law. The Vatican cardinals are the most influential members of these committees. The chairman of each committee (called a prefect for a congregation and a president for a council) is also the head of an office of the same name. These offices advise the pope and implement church policy.

Not sure exactly what a "elected synodal committee" are and who they would be elected by. Though generally I guess it flows from the idea that Vatican cardinals are the cause of problems and this is consistent with the rest of his reforms.

One important function of any legislative body is oversight of the bureaucracy. Members of Vatican congregations and councils should therefore be elected by synods or by episcopal conferences; that way synods and conferences can act as policy-making and oversight bodies for the Vatican bureaucracy. Vatican bureaucrats should not also be members of congregations, though they could attend meetings as experts and staff.

First off how in the world could individual conferences perform these elections? I guess you could have something like a football draft where each conference takes turns with an appointment. Conferences could trade picks since this model is all about power and influence. Time and time again he forgets that there is oversight and it is called the pope. But the purpose of Fr. Reese’s reforms are about moving responsibility from the pope and distributing it. That the papacy should be all about the pope being in union with the bishops and not the fact that the teaching magisterium consists of the pope and the bishops in communion with him. Time and time again I get the idea that progressive really don’t believe in papal infallibility and that if they could just get their own guy in there everything would change. The fact that doctrine doesn’t change within the Church is due to stubborn popes and not the protection of the Holy Spirit seems to be their view.

Create an independent judiciary. One of the most important elements in a government that operates under the rule of law is an independent judiciary. To allow the executive to indict, prosecute, judge, and sentence a defendant is today considered a violation of due process. The treatment of theologians accused of dissent by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) is one of the scandals of the church. The potential for such scandal will remain as long as the CDF continues to act as policeman, prosecutor, judge, and jury. An independent jury, perhaps made up of retired bishops, could correct the problem.

Anybody that actually looks at the record of the CDF in regards to the treatment of dissenting theologian will find a record of very slow deliberations and less than a handful of actual excommunications. Some would think that the scandal of the CDF is how slow they react and how rare any punitive action is. I happen to think that the CDF is doing this functioning quite correctly in giving every opportunity for these theologians to explain themselves adequately. Can he give one example of a theologian that has had some punitary action given that did not deserve it? What he really wants is that no theologian be disciplined as long as they espouse a faddish heresy to his liking. I doubt if he is much upset with the actions by the CDF in regards to Archbishop Lefebvre. He also does not explain how this "independent jury" would be so different and what the actual problems are with the CDF. I guess the CDF is the boogeyman for some and you just have to reference it and it is understood to be evil.

Elect bishops. The appointment of bishops by the pope is a modern innovation that follows a corporate model, whereby the pope acts as CEO and the bishops as branch managers. While this corporate model is highly centralized, successful political models teach us that local leaders need to be chosen by local citizens. Today it might be possible, and advisable, to return to the system endorsed by Pope Leo I, so that every bishop would be elected by the local clergy, accepted by the people of his diocese, and consecrated by the bishops of his province.

This model works much better in the early Church when communities are much smaller and just being members of the Church could get them martyred. Cafeteria Catholicism was not very prevalent then. Today it does not seem very practical and exactly what would this mechanism for acceptance be? Would they take a poll or vote on it? Would Catholics who thinks they can be a good Catholic and miss Mass regularly be acceptable voters? If the selected bishop actually teaches the hard sayings of Christ is he going to get accepted in a culture such of ours? With the current model of input by the local Church, papal nuncio, and final decision by the Pope really gives us the best model for now and increases the connection between the local Church and the Pope. Somehow the checks and balances he wants don’t apply when it comes to the selection of bishops. Though I don’t know why I am spending time fisking this article. If someone sees the Pope as CEO and bishops as branch managers they really need to go back and take Church ecclesiology 101. There is a reason we call the Pope Holy Father and not Holy CEO. Why we see bishops as shepherds and not branch managers. The CEO/branch manager understanding of the Church could hardly be more wrong.

Hey how about the laity getting to vote on the next Jesuit General or perhaps the editorial boards at America and Commonweal Magazines? Power to the people!

Strengthen episcopal conferences by making them councils. Not everything can or should be decided by a centralized government. Catholic social teaching speaks of the importance of subsidiarity in political structures and policy: what can be done locally should be done locally. In ancient times, local and regional councils of bishops played an important part in determining church teaching and discipline. Episcopal conferences need to become episcopal councils. They need to regain their independent role in establishing church policy. They should not need to have every decision and document reviewed and ratified by the Vatican. Bishops must be trusted to know what is best for the local church.

Unless that bishop is the Pope I guess. Bishops do have a lot of autonomy in how they best spread the Gospel and a lot of leeway within their own diocese regarding their flock. They just don’t have the authority to "teach another Gospel." Again we see the suggestion of having what would be hundreds of councils as if this idea shouldn’t be mocked for its stupidity especially in regards to determining Church teaching. That you could go from country to country and have Church teaching change. Local and regional councils were never independent from the authority of the Pope and if you wanted to go by this model we would all be Aryans today or whatever heresy that would have replaced it. If Bishops must be trusted to know what is best for the local Church than we can eliminate bishop conferences.

What are the chances of such reforms actually taking place? As a social scientist, I’d have to say they’re probably close to zero. The church is now run by a self-perpetuating group of men who know such reform would diminish their power. It is also contrary to their theology of the church. But as a Catholic Christian, I still have to hope.

Yes it is all about power. People serve in the curia only for power. No other motives possible. Protecting the faith from error, the liturgy from abuse, and all the other roles performed are all just about power. But he is right that his reform won’t be implemented because of their theology of the Church. Fr. Reese’s ecclesiology is much different with no role for the papacy other than as a figurehead that should rubber stamp anything coming across his desk. I wonder if he considers Apostolic succession as a "self-perpetuating group of men."

As a listener of plenty of podcast including many Catholic podcasts – one thing that annoys me is that the ones put out by major Catholic organizations don’t have any cover art. If you have pretty much and recent MP3 player with a video screen, use iTunes, most recent versions of Winamp and many other media players they will show cover art for the podcast or song if any is embedded. Instead for all of the EWTN podcasts, Catholics Answers, Greg Popcak’s HMS radio, and Mark Shea’s "Rock Solid" I get treated with no cover art and a big question mark on my iPod Touch. Almost all Catholic podcasts put out by amateurs include the cover art. Even Vatican Radio has finally got on board in including it. It would be nice if at least they used a generic cover art for their podcast, even better if it was tailored towards the program itself. It would be a lot more professional for them to use cover art considering how many media devices can use it.

I would complain about the America Magazine podcast also not including covert art if I could actually listen to their podcasts without my iPod accidentally becoming a missile. Having interviews with people like Fr. Roger Haight, S.J., Fr John "Let Terri Schiavo die" Paris, S.J. Phillip Pullman fan Donna Freitas, and the author of the worst biography on Pope Benedict XVI is not exactly my cup of tea. Now if they had a separate feed for Fr. Jim Martin I would subscribe to that. Actually though I am subscribed to their podcast feed, I just usually end up deleting more shows than I listen to.

It also annoys me when EWTN puts up blogs by Raymond Arroyo and Joan Lewis without RSS feeds. Memo to EWTN: WordPress is free and you don’t have to attempt to roll your own blogging software.

While I am on petty rants. Please give me back the original Catholic Answers theme music. I loved how the violins punctuated the opening Catholic Answers Live, plus you have to love the irony of using a piece from "New Age" musician Yanni for Catholic Answers. The new theme isn’t very distinctive and much more modern sounding, though I guess I don’t have to worry about Hans Kung being a guest any time soon, though he would make a great April Fools guest.

But Harris said she sees the problems caused by small, rural parishes closing due to a shortage of priests as having grave consequences for U.S. Catholic religious life.

"The people of God in the Catholic communion are starving because of the want of Eucharist," she said.

"Why is it that the people of God have to starve while the institution is holding to clergy celibacy?" said Harris, who lives in Schoharie County, about 150 miles north of New York.

"I have to place the excitement of the pope’s visit next to the fact that there are now only a few churches in my county," she said.

…The pope remains a symbol of a hierarchy "that has failed the victims," Kirk said, adding that he believed media coverage of the pope’s visit was focusing too much on Pope Benedict’s pastoral image rather than on what Kirk said was the pope’s potent political symbolism.

"If the pope had gone to the nearest soup kitchen after arriving and (President) Bush had been the third person, rather than the first person, he had met, I’d be happier," said Kirk.

Catholic students are a minority at Union but one of the largest single denominational groups at the predominantly Protestant school.

Although Union is still perhaps best-known for being the midcentury intellectual home of such leading Protestant theologians as Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, since the 1970s the school has been known as a leading center of study in the United States for black and feminist liberation theologies. The prominent black theologian James Cone, for example, has taught at Union for more than three decades.

But Union also has had a long tradition of hosting well-known Catholics. Liberation theologians such as Peruvian Dominican Father Gustavo Gutierrez have taught for short terms at Union, which has ties with Columbia University. Catholic scholars not associated with liberation theology, including the late biblical scholar Sulpician Father Raymond Brown, have also been permanent faculty at Union.

Of the current five full-time Catholic faculty members at Union, three are women. Union’s current Catholic faculty includes Jesuit Father Roger Haight, whose book, "Jesus Symbol of God," was sharply criticized by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when it was headed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict. The Vatican has banned Father Haight from teaching at a Catholic institution.

Another Roman Catholic theologian who has had trouble with the Vatican is Paul F. Knitter, currently Union’s Paul Tillich professor of theology, world religions and culture.

Kirk told [??????????] April 20 that Union was lucky to have scholars like Father Haight and Knitter on the faculty, adding that the student view of Pope Benedict at Union is colored in large part by the pope’s relationship with them, with figures like Father Sobrino and by Pope Benedict’s past criticism of liberation theology.

For her part, Harris — a Catholic who used to be Presbyterian — said her concern about church reform, specifically the need to expand the eligibility for clergy to include noncelibate men and women, is coming out of real and "lived experience."

Catholic women at Union share a commissioning service as a tribute to their work and also as a formal recognition that they cannot be ordained as clergy within their church.

Harris said she would like to be ordained if she could be, though she doubts that her ineligibility will change in her lifetime. Still, she added, "We never thought we’d see altar girls and now we do have altar girls."

So is the above a typical New York Times article? Or perhaps Newsweek, AP, or some other typical outlet looking for the negative side of the Pope’s visit?

No we owe this article to Catholic News Service the U.S. Bishop’s news arm. Surely going to an extremely liberal Protestant seminary is the best place to get reactions to the Pope’s visit. Surely you wouldn’t want to actually highlight the largely positive response from Evangelicals such as in this post.

It is also pretty ironic for those from liberal Protestant congregations that each year have less and less attendance being concerned over the availability of Catholic priests. Anglicans and other allowing pretty much anybody into leadership roles has only lead to splits and smaller congregations and yet this is the cure they would thrust on us. Maybe miserly loves company. There is also an irony of Protestants worried about Catholics not having access to the Eucharist. Why exactly are they worried about access to "just a symbol." Protestantism has been the larger force ever for denying people the Eucharist and while the majority in good conscience don’t realize this, it is rather silly for them to lecture us on access to the Eucharist.

American Papist has a good roundup of reactions to this article.

The always sensible Amy Welborn has a good post on the NYT Papal Discussion blog in regards to Latin and Vatican II. She ends with an absolutely great line.

I mean, if you think about it, wasn’t Jesus, well … “pre-Vatican II”?

This demarcation using the council never made much sense and pre and post Vatican II is often treated as having the same weight as B.C. and A.C. which I guess now means Before Council and After Council. This is quite silly and is like looking at one tree ring and picking it out as having more meaning than all the other tree rings. When in reality every Council is a continuation and a sign of growth within the Church.