Phil Lawyer posts at CatholicCulture.org.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Graham tells me something that I hadn’t heard about Boston Marathon bombing. As dozens of victims were sprawled across Boylston Street, many of them in danger of death, Catholic priests came running to the scene—and were turned away.

Doctors and nurses were welcome at the bombing scene. Firefighters and police officers were welcome. But Catholic priests, who might have offered the solace of the sacraments, were not.

”Catholics need not apply.” That slogan was familiar in Boston years ago, before Irish and Italian immigrants took over control of the city. Now, after decades of decline in Catholic influence , the attitude has returned. One priest who was barred from Boylston Street remarked that in the past a priest was admitted anywhere. “That’s changed,” he said. “Priests are no longer considered to be emergency responders.”

Unless police officers in Boston are uniquely hostile to priests (a distinct possibility), the tide has turned very quickly on this question. On September 11, 2001, there were Catholic priests at the staging areas near the World Trade Center, giving absolution to firefighters before they rushed into the doomed building: mass-producing saints!

Unable to provide spiritual help to those whose lives were endangered, the priests in Boston retreated to a nearby church, were they “set up a table with water and oranges and bananas to serve people.” Doesn’t that nicely capture what a once-Catholic, now-secular culture expects from the Church? It’s not essential for priests to administer the sacraments; in fact it’s unwelcome. But if they could just stay out of the way, and give people something to eat, that would be fine.

If true this is extremely sad but not surprising. Just another move into the “bodies without souls” direction. First responders now can not be last rite responders. I wonder how other clergy were treated? I remember that wonderful scene at the start of The Apostle with Robert Duvall involving this.

Jennifer Graham captures the problem well:

But it is a poignant irony that Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy who died on Boylston Street, was a Catholic who had received his first Communion just last year. As Martin lay dying, priests were only yards away, beyond the police tape, unable to reach him to administer last rites…

On a related note I would wonder about the “Catholics need not apply”, there is the semi-famous “No Irish Need Apply” that might well be a historical myth in America imported from experience abroad.

The fact that Irish vividly “remember” NINA signs is a curious historical puzzle. There are no contemporary or retrospective accounts of a specific sign at a specific location. No particular business enterprise is named as a culprit. No historian, archivist, or museum curator has ever located one; no photograph or drawing exists.

Still you don’t need physical signs to harbor that attitude as the Obama administration has shown.

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

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

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

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

Kind of a reverse mandatum.

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

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

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

Pope Francis reaffirms crackdown on U.S. nuns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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