I was traveling last week and did not realize until I returned that the Vatican has suffered a significant legal setback in it's claim to sovereign immunity from U.S. prosecution for the actions of pedophile priests and of bishops who repeatedly reassigned them and hid their crimes from local prosecutors.
I first became aware of the development as one of several listed by National Catholic Reporter Senior Correspondent John Allen Jr. in a July 2nd analysis entitled Seven Days That Shook the Vatican. Allen noted "A decision by the Supreme Court in the United States to allow a sex abuse lawsuit against the Vatican in Oregon to proceed, and the filing of a new lawsuit against the Vatican (as well as the Salesian order) in Los Angeles just two days later."
A Google search led me to more specific coverage, including articles in Reuters and The Huffington Post. The articles said that a lower court in Oregon had held that the case met one of the exceptions to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. An appeals court had agreed, ruling that the plaintiff in the case had sufficiently alleged that the priest charged in the civil suit was "an employee of the Vatican acting within the scope of his employment under Oregon law." The Supreme Court declined to hear the Vatican's appeal of the rulings by the two lower courts.
Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's attorney for all sex abuse claims naming it in the United States, tried to spin the development as positively as possible, telling Catholic News Agency that the decision was not on the merits of the case and that the Supreme Court rejection merely meant that the case was being returned to the Oregon court to hear other defenses.
This, however, minimizes the significance of the development drastically. Sovereign immunity has been one of the pillars of the Vatican defense for several years, and this case marks the first time the courts have called the Vatican claim bogus. Having lost all the way to the Supreme Court in the Oregon case, the Vatican ought to assume that it will face similar losses in others.
As observed here before, the claim that priests and bishops do not function as employees of the Vatican does not comport with reality in parishes and chancery offices around the globe. It is disingenuous for the Vatican's attorney to push such a claim, and all it does is fuel the public perception that the Vatican has something to hide. The Vatican needs to abandon the claim and own up to its civil and criminal liability for child abuse.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Belgian Police in Sex Abuse Probe Detain Bishops, Search HQ, Homes and Tombs
The National Catholic Reporter has some excellent coverage of a Belgian police action against sexual abuse stonewalling June 24th: bishops gathered for a scheduled meeting were detained in their assembly room, their cell phones and some documents seized, and their headquarters searched, along with some of their personal residences and even the tombs of two deceased cardinals.
The coverage describes the Vatican as officially shocked and outraged at the conduct of the Belgian authorities. But the article about that makes it clear that the actions came after several years of investigators being stonewalled by the bishops.
A separate analysis by John Allen Jr., NCR's Senior Correspondent, provides additional background on the decades of sexual abuse and church obstruction that led up to the police action.
Perhaps Belgium will be the first nation to shatter the fiction that the church and its officials are immune from prosecution as functionaries of the Vatican State--and the first to subject a few bishops to criminal prosecution for an international conspiracy to obstruct justice in several countries.
The coverage describes the Vatican as officially shocked and outraged at the conduct of the Belgian authorities. But the article about that makes it clear that the actions came after several years of investigators being stonewalled by the bishops.
A separate analysis by John Allen Jr., NCR's Senior Correspondent, provides additional background on the decades of sexual abuse and church obstruction that led up to the police action.
Perhaps Belgium will be the first nation to shatter the fiction that the church and its officials are immune from prosecution as functionaries of the Vatican State--and the first to subject a few bishops to criminal prosecution for an international conspiracy to obstruct justice in several countries.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Presiding Bishop Tells Canterbury That Episcopal Church Will Keep on Valuing Gays
The National Catholic Reporter has posted a June 8th article by Daniel Burke of Religion News Service, reporting that Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA, has declared that the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion will continue to value gay people, gay priests and gay bishops, and will continue to resist the anti-gay moralizing of the Communion's more conservative national churches.
Bishop Jefferts Schori was especially critical of efforts by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to enforce global uniformity in the Communion's stance toward gay people. She insisted that each national church has the right and the obligation to develop its own moral, pastoral and liturgical guidelines toward gay individuals and same-sex couples--and that the Episcopal position reflects 50 years of discernment and debate from which the church will not retreat.
Schori's position reflects historic characteristics of Anglicanism that I have applauded previously here. Is it time for Catholics who agree more with the Episcopal position than Rome's to consider swearing allegiance to the Episcopal Church, and to bishops who are more open to what the Spirit is doing and saying in the lives of Christian people?
Excerpts from Burke's article follow:
Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has forcefully defended her church's embrace of gays and lesbians, and firmly rejected efforts to centralize power or police uniformity in the Anglican Communion.
Anglicans should be led by local communities rather than powerful clerics, Jefferts Schori argued in a June 2 letter to her church's 2 million members. And, after 50 years of debate, the Episcopal Church is convinced that gays and lesbians are “God's good creation” and “good and healthy exemplars of gifted leadership within the church, as baptized leaders and ordained ones.”
In May, the Episcopal Church consecrated its second openly gay bishop despite warnings the move would increase tensions in the worldwide Anglican Communion, many parts of which view homosexuality as a sin.
Last month, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said Episcopalians, who form the U.S. branch of the 77 million-member communion, are out of step with fellow Anglicans and should not fully participate in ecumenical dialogue and doctrinal discussions.
Jefferts Schori firmly rejected the push to centralize power and discipline, saying that Anglicanism, and the Episcopal Church, were founded by Christians who wished to escape the strong hand of an established hierarchy.
“Unitary control does not characterize Anglicanism; rather, diversity in fellowship and communion does,” she said.
Imposing uniformity on the 77 million Anglicans scattered across the globe runs the risk of repeating the “spiritual violence” and “cultural excesses” of colonial missionaries who built the communion on the back of the British Empire, the presiding bishop added.
“We live in great concern that colonial attitudes continue,” said Jefferts Schori, “particularly in attempts to impose a single understanding across widely varying contexts and cultures.”
The presiding bishop also said that criticism of the Episcopal Church often comes from parts of the communion that bar women from becoming priests or bishops; and charged that other Anglican churches allow gay bishops under an unofficial don't ask/don't tell agreement.
“In our context, bowing to anxiety by ignoring that sort of double-mindedness is usually termed a `failure of nerve,'” Jefferts Schori said.
Liberal Episcopalians applauded Jefferts Schori's letter, which was remarkable for its full-throated defense of Episcopal Church policies.
“It is an understated declaration of independence,” said Jim Naughton, editor of the blog Episcopal Cafe. “The presiding bishop is not going to allow the Archbishop of Canterbury to establish the terms of the debate anymore.”
Jefferts Schori's rehashing of Anglican history may seem innocuous to outside observers, said church historian Diana Butler Bass, but her strong defense of democratic Anglicanism is a “call to arms.”
“Those are fighting words,” Butler Bass said. “She's saying, `this is our tradition and you're violating it.' She is accusing Williams of being an imperialist.”
Bishop Jefferts Schori was especially critical of efforts by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to enforce global uniformity in the Communion's stance toward gay people. She insisted that each national church has the right and the obligation to develop its own moral, pastoral and liturgical guidelines toward gay individuals and same-sex couples--and that the Episcopal position reflects 50 years of discernment and debate from which the church will not retreat.
Schori's position reflects historic characteristics of Anglicanism that I have applauded previously here. Is it time for Catholics who agree more with the Episcopal position than Rome's to consider swearing allegiance to the Episcopal Church, and to bishops who are more open to what the Spirit is doing and saying in the lives of Christian people?
Excerpts from Burke's article follow:
Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has forcefully defended her church's embrace of gays and lesbians, and firmly rejected efforts to centralize power or police uniformity in the Anglican Communion.
Anglicans should be led by local communities rather than powerful clerics, Jefferts Schori argued in a June 2 letter to her church's 2 million members. And, after 50 years of debate, the Episcopal Church is convinced that gays and lesbians are “God's good creation” and “good and healthy exemplars of gifted leadership within the church, as baptized leaders and ordained ones.”
In May, the Episcopal Church consecrated its second openly gay bishop despite warnings the move would increase tensions in the worldwide Anglican Communion, many parts of which view homosexuality as a sin.
Last month, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said Episcopalians, who form the U.S. branch of the 77 million-member communion, are out of step with fellow Anglicans and should not fully participate in ecumenical dialogue and doctrinal discussions.
Jefferts Schori firmly rejected the push to centralize power and discipline, saying that Anglicanism, and the Episcopal Church, were founded by Christians who wished to escape the strong hand of an established hierarchy.
“Unitary control does not characterize Anglicanism; rather, diversity in fellowship and communion does,” she said.
Imposing uniformity on the 77 million Anglicans scattered across the globe runs the risk of repeating the “spiritual violence” and “cultural excesses” of colonial missionaries who built the communion on the back of the British Empire, the presiding bishop added.
“We live in great concern that colonial attitudes continue,” said Jefferts Schori, “particularly in attempts to impose a single understanding across widely varying contexts and cultures.”
The presiding bishop also said that criticism of the Episcopal Church often comes from parts of the communion that bar women from becoming priests or bishops; and charged that other Anglican churches allow gay bishops under an unofficial don't ask/don't tell agreement.
“In our context, bowing to anxiety by ignoring that sort of double-mindedness is usually termed a `failure of nerve,'” Jefferts Schori said.
Liberal Episcopalians applauded Jefferts Schori's letter, which was remarkable for its full-throated defense of Episcopal Church policies.
“It is an understated declaration of independence,” said Jim Naughton, editor of the blog Episcopal Cafe. “The presiding bishop is not going to allow the Archbishop of Canterbury to establish the terms of the debate anymore.”
Jefferts Schori's rehashing of Anglican history may seem innocuous to outside observers, said church historian Diana Butler Bass, but her strong defense of democratic Anglicanism is a “call to arms.”
“Those are fighting words,” Butler Bass said. “She's saying, `this is our tradition and you're violating it.' She is accusing Williams of being an imperialist.”
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Hierarchy Uses Sex Prohibitions as Last-Gasp Efforts to Control Priests and Laity
Author James Carroll has posted a commentary in the Boston Globe and the National Catholic Reporter saying that mandatory celibacy "cuts to the heart of what is wrong in the church today." Carroll says: "I write from inside the question, having lived as a celibate seminarian and priest for more than a decade when I was young."
On celibacy as a stand-alone issue, Carroll echoes many of the critiques of mandatory celibacy documented in earlier postings here. What is novel about his analysis, however, is how he ties together the hierarchy's attempts to control priests through celibacy with its efforts to control lay people with sexual prohibitions directed toward them, especially the teachings on birth control and abortion (although I would include other prohibitions, such as masturbation and homosexual relationships, as well).
Carroll sees these as parallel tactics in the hierarchy's last-gasp effort to cling to power by asserting an absolute right to control Catholics' sex lives. And he ties these tactics to the very interesting historical fact that birth control and celibacy were the only issues during Vatican II on which Pope Paul VI intervened and prevented the world's Catholic bishops from discussing.
Here are some excerpts from the NCR version of Carroll's commentary:
Celibacy began in the early church as an ascetic discipline, rooted partly in a neo-Platonic contempt for the physical world that had nothing to do with the Gospel. The renunciation of sexual expression by men fit nicely with a patriarchal denigration of women. Nonvirginal women, typified by Eve as the temptress of Adam, were seen as a source of sin.
But it was not until the Middle Ages, at the Second Lateran Council in 1139, that celibacy was made mandatory for all Roman Catholic clergy -- a reform bracing clerical laxity and eliminating inheritance issues from church property. But because the requirement of celibacy is so extreme, it had to be mystified as sacrificial -- “a more perfect way” to God. Monastic orders of both males and females had indeed discovered in such sexual sublimation a mode of holiness, but that presumed its being both freely chosen and lived out in a nurturing community... But when the monastic discipline of “chastity” was imposed on all priests as “celibacy,” something went awry. The system broke down during the Renaissance and the Reformation, with the Counter-Reformation hierarchy more attached to it than ever.
Not sex, but power was the issue. The imposition of sexual abstinence was a mode of control over the interior lives of clergy, since submission in radical abstinence required an extraordinary abandonment of the will. In theory, the abandonment was to God; in practice, it was to the “superior.” The stakes were infinite, since sexual desire marked the threshold of hell. The normally human was, for priests, the occasion of bad faith.
Obsessive sexual moralism, along with that bad faith, spilled out of pulpits. The confessional booth became a cockpit for screening “mortal sins,” with birth control emerging as the key control mechanism over the laity. If they were willing to abide by this intrusion and its burdens, it was only because the celibate priest could be seen to have made an even greater sacrifice. They were subject to an even greater control.
As is suggested by the contemporary hierarchy’s apparent equanimity about the exodus of tens of thousands of priests, and the crisis of ministry it has caused, church authorities will pay any price to maintain a vestige of that control. That is why bishops have exchanged their once ample influence on matters of social justice for a strident single-issue obsession with abortion, a last-ditch effort to control the intimate sexual decisions of laypeople. When it comes to their clergy, the single-issue obsession remains celibacy.
This nearly changed at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), when the bishops prepared to reconsider both birth control and celibacy. Until then, an insufficiently historically minded church had regarded such contingent questions as God-given absolutes. What was the point of even discussing them, since change was out of the question? But change was suddenly in the air. What? St. Peter was married? Even before the council acted, the myth that these disciplines were eternally willed by God was broken.
The conservative wing of the hierarchy panicked. Pope Paul VI astonished the council fathers, and the Catholic world, by making two extraordinary interventions that violated the letter and the spirit of the council. In late 1964, just as the fathers were about to debate the question of “responsible parenthood,” the pope ordered them not to take up the question of “artificial contraception.” Snap! Birth control was “removed from the competence of the council.”
But there was every sign that the council fathers, when they inevitably took up the subject of the priesthood, were still going to discuss celibacy, as if change were possible there. Yet it was politically unthinkable that the church could maintain the prohibition of birth control, the burden belonging to the laity, while letting clergy off the sexual hook by lifting the celibacy rule.
Therefore, in late 1965, Paul VI made his second extraordinary intervention to forbid any discussion of priestly celibacy. A council had initiated the discipline, but a council was now not qualified even to discuss it. The power play was so blatant as to lay bare power itself as the issue. And just like that, Catholics had reason to suspect that celibacy was being maintained as a requirement of the priesthood because of internal church politics, not because of any spiritual motive. God was not the issue; the pope was.
The abrupt elimination of the mystical dimension of vowed sexual abstinence left it an intolerable and inhuman way to live, which sent men streaming out of the priesthood, and stirred in many who remained a profound, and still unresolved, crisis of identity. Paul VI sought to settle the celibacy question with his 1967 encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, which proved to be a classic instance of the disease calling itself the cure.
The celibacy encyclical, maintaining the weight of “sacrifice” on clergy, prepared the way for the laity-crushing Humanae Vitae in 1968, with its re-condemnation of birth control.
In response to the pope’s initial removal of birth control from the “competence” of the council, one of its leading figures, Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens of Belgium, rose immediately with a warning; “I beg you, my brother bishops, let us avoid a new ‘Galileo affair.’ One is enough for the church.” Galileo was famously forced to renounce what he had seen through his telescope, an imposition of dishonesty. (“And yet it moves,” he was reported to have muttered under his breath.)
Paul VI’s twin re-impositions of the contraception and celibacy rules plunged the whole church into a culture of dishonesty. Catholic laypeople ignore the birth control mandate. Catholic priests find ways around the celibacy rule, some in meaningful relationships with secret lovers, some in exploitive relationships with the vulnerable, and some in criminal acts with minors. If a majority of priests are able to observe the letter of their vow, how many do so at savage personal cost? Well-adjusted priests may live happily as celibates, but how many regard the broad discipline as healthy? Insisting that celibacy is the church’s “brilliant jewel,” in Paul VI’s phrase, defines the deceit that has corrupted the Catholic soul.
But the most damaging consequence of mandatory celibacy lies in its character as the pulse of clericalism. The repressively psychotic nature of this inbred culture of power has shown itself in the still festering abuse scandal. Lies, denial, arrogance, selfishness and cowardice -- such are the notes of the structure within which Catholic priests now live, however individually virtuous many of them nevertheless remain. Celibacy is that structure’s central pillar and must be removed. The Catholic people see this clearly. It is time for us to say so.
On celibacy as a stand-alone issue, Carroll echoes many of the critiques of mandatory celibacy documented in earlier postings here. What is novel about his analysis, however, is how he ties together the hierarchy's attempts to control priests through celibacy with its efforts to control lay people with sexual prohibitions directed toward them, especially the teachings on birth control and abortion (although I would include other prohibitions, such as masturbation and homosexual relationships, as well).
Carroll sees these as parallel tactics in the hierarchy's last-gasp effort to cling to power by asserting an absolute right to control Catholics' sex lives. And he ties these tactics to the very interesting historical fact that birth control and celibacy were the only issues during Vatican II on which Pope Paul VI intervened and prevented the world's Catholic bishops from discussing.
Here are some excerpts from the NCR version of Carroll's commentary:
Celibacy began in the early church as an ascetic discipline, rooted partly in a neo-Platonic contempt for the physical world that had nothing to do with the Gospel. The renunciation of sexual expression by men fit nicely with a patriarchal denigration of women. Nonvirginal women, typified by Eve as the temptress of Adam, were seen as a source of sin.
But it was not until the Middle Ages, at the Second Lateran Council in 1139, that celibacy was made mandatory for all Roman Catholic clergy -- a reform bracing clerical laxity and eliminating inheritance issues from church property. But because the requirement of celibacy is so extreme, it had to be mystified as sacrificial -- “a more perfect way” to God. Monastic orders of both males and females had indeed discovered in such sexual sublimation a mode of holiness, but that presumed its being both freely chosen and lived out in a nurturing community... But when the monastic discipline of “chastity” was imposed on all priests as “celibacy,” something went awry. The system broke down during the Renaissance and the Reformation, with the Counter-Reformation hierarchy more attached to it than ever.
Not sex, but power was the issue. The imposition of sexual abstinence was a mode of control over the interior lives of clergy, since submission in radical abstinence required an extraordinary abandonment of the will. In theory, the abandonment was to God; in practice, it was to the “superior.” The stakes were infinite, since sexual desire marked the threshold of hell. The normally human was, for priests, the occasion of bad faith.
Obsessive sexual moralism, along with that bad faith, spilled out of pulpits. The confessional booth became a cockpit for screening “mortal sins,” with birth control emerging as the key control mechanism over the laity. If they were willing to abide by this intrusion and its burdens, it was only because the celibate priest could be seen to have made an even greater sacrifice. They were subject to an even greater control.
As is suggested by the contemporary hierarchy’s apparent equanimity about the exodus of tens of thousands of priests, and the crisis of ministry it has caused, church authorities will pay any price to maintain a vestige of that control. That is why bishops have exchanged their once ample influence on matters of social justice for a strident single-issue obsession with abortion, a last-ditch effort to control the intimate sexual decisions of laypeople. When it comes to their clergy, the single-issue obsession remains celibacy.
This nearly changed at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), when the bishops prepared to reconsider both birth control and celibacy. Until then, an insufficiently historically minded church had regarded such contingent questions as God-given absolutes. What was the point of even discussing them, since change was out of the question? But change was suddenly in the air. What? St. Peter was married? Even before the council acted, the myth that these disciplines were eternally willed by God was broken.
The conservative wing of the hierarchy panicked. Pope Paul VI astonished the council fathers, and the Catholic world, by making two extraordinary interventions that violated the letter and the spirit of the council. In late 1964, just as the fathers were about to debate the question of “responsible parenthood,” the pope ordered them not to take up the question of “artificial contraception.” Snap! Birth control was “removed from the competence of the council.”
But there was every sign that the council fathers, when they inevitably took up the subject of the priesthood, were still going to discuss celibacy, as if change were possible there. Yet it was politically unthinkable that the church could maintain the prohibition of birth control, the burden belonging to the laity, while letting clergy off the sexual hook by lifting the celibacy rule.
Therefore, in late 1965, Paul VI made his second extraordinary intervention to forbid any discussion of priestly celibacy. A council had initiated the discipline, but a council was now not qualified even to discuss it. The power play was so blatant as to lay bare power itself as the issue. And just like that, Catholics had reason to suspect that celibacy was being maintained as a requirement of the priesthood because of internal church politics, not because of any spiritual motive. God was not the issue; the pope was.
The abrupt elimination of the mystical dimension of vowed sexual abstinence left it an intolerable and inhuman way to live, which sent men streaming out of the priesthood, and stirred in many who remained a profound, and still unresolved, crisis of identity. Paul VI sought to settle the celibacy question with his 1967 encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, which proved to be a classic instance of the disease calling itself the cure.
The celibacy encyclical, maintaining the weight of “sacrifice” on clergy, prepared the way for the laity-crushing Humanae Vitae in 1968, with its re-condemnation of birth control.
In response to the pope’s initial removal of birth control from the “competence” of the council, one of its leading figures, Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens of Belgium, rose immediately with a warning; “I beg you, my brother bishops, let us avoid a new ‘Galileo affair.’ One is enough for the church.” Galileo was famously forced to renounce what he had seen through his telescope, an imposition of dishonesty. (“And yet it moves,” he was reported to have muttered under his breath.)
Paul VI’s twin re-impositions of the contraception and celibacy rules plunged the whole church into a culture of dishonesty. Catholic laypeople ignore the birth control mandate. Catholic priests find ways around the celibacy rule, some in meaningful relationships with secret lovers, some in exploitive relationships with the vulnerable, and some in criminal acts with minors. If a majority of priests are able to observe the letter of their vow, how many do so at savage personal cost? Well-adjusted priests may live happily as celibates, but how many regard the broad discipline as healthy? Insisting that celibacy is the church’s “brilliant jewel,” in Paul VI’s phrase, defines the deceit that has corrupted the Catholic soul.
But the most damaging consequence of mandatory celibacy lies in its character as the pulse of clericalism. The repressively psychotic nature of this inbred culture of power has shown itself in the still festering abuse scandal. Lies, denial, arrogance, selfishness and cowardice -- such are the notes of the structure within which Catholic priests now live, however individually virtuous many of them nevertheless remain. Celibacy is that structure’s central pillar and must be removed. The Catholic people see this clearly. It is time for us to say so.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
BP's Gulf Gusher Proves: "Our Addiction to Oil Is Making Our Lives Dysfunctional"
National Catholic Reporter staff writer and columnist Rich Heffern specializes on Christianity's duty to steward God's creation in a way that upholds the inherent value of all creatures and to resist the self-destructive evil of every assault on the global environment. Yesterday he posted an important perspective on BP's oil attack on the Gulf of Mexico by Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners magazine.
Wallis says that as long as we rely on fossil fuels for most of our transportation, each one of us is complicit in BP's crime. And we cannot re-wire our energy grid until we first re-wire "ourselves, our assumptions, demands, expectations, our requirements." Heffern's interview with Wallis follows:
Jim Wallis is an evangelical Christian writer and political activist, best known as the founder and editor of Sojourners magazine and of the Washington, D.C.-based community of the same name. He is author of God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (Harper) and The Soul of Politics (HarperCollins). I interviewed him June 2.
What are your feelings about the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico as the technological solutions continue to fail?
I think the announcement last weekend that the top kill had failed marked a critical shift in the issue. The conversation up until then has been dominated by technological issues, how to make oil drilling safe. The fact that they can’t fix it now until late summer shifted the whole picture.
To me, it’s a picture of addiction. What happens with addiction is that after a while it makes your life not work. There’s a lot of denial until you lose your job or family or home or self respect, then finally there is a moment of epiphany and conversion. “Hello, my name is John S. and I’m an alcoholic.” That’s a moment of redemption and redirection.
What we see in the heartbreaking pictures of out-of-work shrimpers, wheezing clean-up workers, or oil-soaked wildlife are the effects of this addiction. I was doing the Chris Matthews show last weekend; his focus was on politics, BP and Obama. But now these pictures from Louisiana show that our life as we have organized it isn’t working. Our addiction to oil is making our lives dysfunctional.
Whether it’s the Gulf coast wetlands, tourism, or livelihoods -- when this touches Florida then it will become a national issue. Mississippi, Alabama or Louisiana are just southern states but Florida is America, the destination state for East coasters.
What does our Christian moral and spiritual vision bring to the discussion?
It’s heartbreaking as we see how this is spilling out of control. The only redemptive thing here will be if it really does change us, if we take a long look in the mirror. It reminds me of Chesterton when asked what he thought was most wrong with the world. He responded, “I am.”
We did a powerful piece on our blog by a young woman, Tracy Bianchi, who drove her family from Illinois to Wisconsin on the Memorial Day weekend. She reflected on being in bumper to bumper traffic as Illinois people conveyed themselves to Wisconsin “ …so we could be next to a lake watching all this unfold and criticizing BP. But rarely do I hear anyone getting angry with themselves. Really though, I am part of the reason for that oil spill. As I sat on the highway with thousands of motorists, all fresh off a weekend that chugged down gallons of gas to fuel boats and other recreational toys, I was reminded once again of the total dichotomy that is my life. On the one hand I want to sit back all smug and hope for the demise of BP and all things petroleum. But I cannot be so quick to hate the oil companies since I really like their product. It gets me from point A to B on a daily basis and it launches me into the state of Wisconsin whenever I need a vacation.”
It’s not just that BP is lying. BP is a lie. Everything BP stands for is a lie. It’s not just them, though, it’s our participation as well.
I’m not often touched by advertising but some of the ads I’ve seen of soldiers who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, saying that to change our lifestyle would be hard but no harder than what we all asked those soldiers to do in Iraq and Afghanistan, have gotten to me.
“I was fighting because I thought my country was under attack, not for oil companies,” they say.
We’ve had many teachable moments over the last 10 years, like 9/11 or Katrina, which we chose to move beyond without learning much. Whether this can be another moment we can miss or one that finally gets our attention is the question.
The faith community can and should now get involved. When it was a who’s in charge, who’s going to pay issue, there wasn’t much role for us but now there is. Chris Matthews told me: “Well, Jim, you’re going further and deeper than we usually get on this show.” He was right: Further and deeper is what is called for.
The nation needs a moral teacher. Matthews is convinced it can only be politicians but I think we of the Christian faith community need to step in. To move from fossil fuels to clean energy sources will take a re-wiring of our energy grid but it also will take a re-wiring of ourselves, our assumptions, demands, expectations, our requirements. I think this could be the beginning of a serious national reflection about our whole way of life. I’m not saying it will be so, because the forces against that are enormous, to keep us from really looking at how we live.
We have a moment of opportunity, especially as the quick fixes fail. It’s clearly a moral issue. It’s time for moral reflection about our whole way of life, and the Christian community has a key role to play. It’s bipartisan as well. Both parties are equally guilty. Once you move beyond politics it’s about a conversion process, about changing our habits of the heart, our way of living.
Wallis says that as long as we rely on fossil fuels for most of our transportation, each one of us is complicit in BP's crime. And we cannot re-wire our energy grid until we first re-wire "ourselves, our assumptions, demands, expectations, our requirements." Heffern's interview with Wallis follows:
Jim Wallis is an evangelical Christian writer and political activist, best known as the founder and editor of Sojourners magazine and of the Washington, D.C.-based community of the same name. He is author of God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (Harper) and The Soul of Politics (HarperCollins). I interviewed him June 2.
What are your feelings about the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico as the technological solutions continue to fail?
I think the announcement last weekend that the top kill had failed marked a critical shift in the issue. The conversation up until then has been dominated by technological issues, how to make oil drilling safe. The fact that they can’t fix it now until late summer shifted the whole picture.
To me, it’s a picture of addiction. What happens with addiction is that after a while it makes your life not work. There’s a lot of denial until you lose your job or family or home or self respect, then finally there is a moment of epiphany and conversion. “Hello, my name is John S. and I’m an alcoholic.” That’s a moment of redemption and redirection.
What we see in the heartbreaking pictures of out-of-work shrimpers, wheezing clean-up workers, or oil-soaked wildlife are the effects of this addiction. I was doing the Chris Matthews show last weekend; his focus was on politics, BP and Obama. But now these pictures from Louisiana show that our life as we have organized it isn’t working. Our addiction to oil is making our lives dysfunctional.
Whether it’s the Gulf coast wetlands, tourism, or livelihoods -- when this touches Florida then it will become a national issue. Mississippi, Alabama or Louisiana are just southern states but Florida is America, the destination state for East coasters.
What does our Christian moral and spiritual vision bring to the discussion?
It’s heartbreaking as we see how this is spilling out of control. The only redemptive thing here will be if it really does change us, if we take a long look in the mirror. It reminds me of Chesterton when asked what he thought was most wrong with the world. He responded, “I am.”
We did a powerful piece on our blog by a young woman, Tracy Bianchi, who drove her family from Illinois to Wisconsin on the Memorial Day weekend. She reflected on being in bumper to bumper traffic as Illinois people conveyed themselves to Wisconsin “ …so we could be next to a lake watching all this unfold and criticizing BP. But rarely do I hear anyone getting angry with themselves. Really though, I am part of the reason for that oil spill. As I sat on the highway with thousands of motorists, all fresh off a weekend that chugged down gallons of gas to fuel boats and other recreational toys, I was reminded once again of the total dichotomy that is my life. On the one hand I want to sit back all smug and hope for the demise of BP and all things petroleum. But I cannot be so quick to hate the oil companies since I really like their product. It gets me from point A to B on a daily basis and it launches me into the state of Wisconsin whenever I need a vacation.”
It’s not just that BP is lying. BP is a lie. Everything BP stands for is a lie. It’s not just them, though, it’s our participation as well.
I’m not often touched by advertising but some of the ads I’ve seen of soldiers who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, saying that to change our lifestyle would be hard but no harder than what we all asked those soldiers to do in Iraq and Afghanistan, have gotten to me.
“I was fighting because I thought my country was under attack, not for oil companies,” they say.
We’ve had many teachable moments over the last 10 years, like 9/11 or Katrina, which we chose to move beyond without learning much. Whether this can be another moment we can miss or one that finally gets our attention is the question.
The faith community can and should now get involved. When it was a who’s in charge, who’s going to pay issue, there wasn’t much role for us but now there is. Chris Matthews told me: “Well, Jim, you’re going further and deeper than we usually get on this show.” He was right: Further and deeper is what is called for.
The nation needs a moral teacher. Matthews is convinced it can only be politicians but I think we of the Christian faith community need to step in. To move from fossil fuels to clean energy sources will take a re-wiring of our energy grid but it also will take a re-wiring of ourselves, our assumptions, demands, expectations, our requirements. I think this could be the beginning of a serious national reflection about our whole way of life. I’m not saying it will be so, because the forces against that are enormous, to keep us from really looking at how we live.
We have a moment of opportunity, especially as the quick fixes fail. It’s clearly a moral issue. It’s time for moral reflection about our whole way of life, and the Christian community has a key role to play. It’s bipartisan as well. Both parties are equally guilty. Once you move beyond politics it’s about a conversion process, about changing our habits of the heart, our way of living.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Nun "Excommunicated" Over 'Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care'
Well, immigration policy isn't the only thing Arizona is infamous for.
Conservatives there have run amok on yet another issue, the National Catholic Reporter says.
This time it's religious conservatives: Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmstead has declared that Margaret McBride, the highest ranking Sister of Mercy at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center, excommunicated herself when she interpreted a gray area in the U.S. Bishops 2001 'Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services' (ERD) as allowing a therapeutic abortion of an 11-week old non-viable fetus to save the life of a mother of four.
NCR reports that the hospital disagrees that it did not follow the bishops' guidelines:
"In a statement, Suzanne Pfister, a hospital vice president, said that the facility adheres to the Ethical and Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. But, she argued, the directives leave some gray areas.
"'In those instances where the Directives do not explicitly address a clinical situation -- such as when a pregnancy threatens a woman's life -- an Ethics Committee is convened to help our caregivers and their patients make the most life-affirming decision,' she said. 'In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother's life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy.'
"Pfister issued the statement on behalf of the hospital, its parent company Catholic Healthcare West, and the Sisters of Mercy, McBride's religious order.
"A letter sent May 10 from Catholic Healthcare West, signed by Sr. Judith Carle, board chairwoman, and President and CEO Lloyd Dean, asks Olmsted to provide further clarification about the directives. Agreeing that in a healthy mother, pregnancy is 'not a pathology,' it says this case was different. The pregnancy, the letter says, carried a nearly certain risk of death for the mother.
"'If there had been a way to save the pregnancy and still prevent the death of the mother, we would have done it,' the letter says. 'We are convinced there was not.'"
The article quotes a Catholic News Service report "that in a letter to the editor of The Arizona Republic May 18, Dr. John Garvie, chief of gastroenterology at St. Joseph's, called McBride 'the moral conscience of the hospital' and said 'there is no finer defender of life at our hospital.'"
So far the NCR article has generated five pages of reader comments. Most of the them are strongly critical of the bishop's interpretation of the health care guidelines and his cavalier assertion that Sister McBride procured a direct abortion and therefore incurred automatic excommunication under canon law.
A number of commentators point out that there is in fact a gray area between two different provisions in the ERD.
Directive 45 reads: "Abortion (that is, the directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability or the directly intended destruction of a viable fetus) is never permitted. Every procedure whose sole immediate effect is the termination of pregnancy before viability is an abortion, which, in its moral context, includes the interval between conception and implantation of the embryo. Catholic health care institutions are not to provide abortion services, even based upon the principle of material cooperation. In this context, Catholic health care institutions need to be concerned about the danger of scandal in any association with abortion providers."
However, Directive 47 adds: "Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child."
The ethics committee and the hospital argue that in this case the mother's pulmonary hypertension was a pathological condition requiring treatment and that allowing the pregnancy to continue would have killed both the mother and the fetus. They saw this specific situation as not being clearly addressed in the directives and believed that saving the only life which could be saved was their clear priority.
Obviously there is room for an alternate interpretation by the bishop and his ethics advisers. However, because there is room for more than one interpretation, the hospital and its ethics committee members should not be penalized for conscientiously doing their best with the guidelines they had.
For the bishop to construe the situation as Sister McBride directly procuring an abortion in violation of Directive 45 is arbitrary, unwarrantedly excessive and unjustifiably punitive. And for him to show no commitment toward saving the life of the mother of four existing children seriously undercuts his credibility as a moral theologian. If the church is pro-life, surely it favors life continuing for the living.
The bishop should retract his intemperate, ill-considered remarks and join the rest of us in affirming Sister Margaret McBride as a Catholic in good standing with the church.
Conservatives there have run amok on yet another issue, the National Catholic Reporter says.
This time it's religious conservatives: Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmstead has declared that Margaret McBride, the highest ranking Sister of Mercy at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center, excommunicated herself when she interpreted a gray area in the U.S. Bishops 2001 'Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services' (ERD) as allowing a therapeutic abortion of an 11-week old non-viable fetus to save the life of a mother of four.
NCR reports that the hospital disagrees that it did not follow the bishops' guidelines:
"In a statement, Suzanne Pfister, a hospital vice president, said that the facility adheres to the Ethical and Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. But, she argued, the directives leave some gray areas.
"'In those instances where the Directives do not explicitly address a clinical situation -- such as when a pregnancy threatens a woman's life -- an Ethics Committee is convened to help our caregivers and their patients make the most life-affirming decision,' she said. 'In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother's life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy.'
"Pfister issued the statement on behalf of the hospital, its parent company Catholic Healthcare West, and the Sisters of Mercy, McBride's religious order.
"A letter sent May 10 from Catholic Healthcare West, signed by Sr. Judith Carle, board chairwoman, and President and CEO Lloyd Dean, asks Olmsted to provide further clarification about the directives. Agreeing that in a healthy mother, pregnancy is 'not a pathology,' it says this case was different. The pregnancy, the letter says, carried a nearly certain risk of death for the mother.
"'If there had been a way to save the pregnancy and still prevent the death of the mother, we would have done it,' the letter says. 'We are convinced there was not.'"
The article quotes a Catholic News Service report "that in a letter to the editor of The Arizona Republic May 18, Dr. John Garvie, chief of gastroenterology at St. Joseph's, called McBride 'the moral conscience of the hospital' and said 'there is no finer defender of life at our hospital.'"
So far the NCR article has generated five pages of reader comments. Most of the them are strongly critical of the bishop's interpretation of the health care guidelines and his cavalier assertion that Sister McBride procured a direct abortion and therefore incurred automatic excommunication under canon law.
A number of commentators point out that there is in fact a gray area between two different provisions in the ERD.
Directive 45 reads: "Abortion (that is, the directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability or the directly intended destruction of a viable fetus) is never permitted. Every procedure whose sole immediate effect is the termination of pregnancy before viability is an abortion, which, in its moral context, includes the interval between conception and implantation of the embryo. Catholic health care institutions are not to provide abortion services, even based upon the principle of material cooperation. In this context, Catholic health care institutions need to be concerned about the danger of scandal in any association with abortion providers."
However, Directive 47 adds: "Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child."
The ethics committee and the hospital argue that in this case the mother's pulmonary hypertension was a pathological condition requiring treatment and that allowing the pregnancy to continue would have killed both the mother and the fetus. They saw this specific situation as not being clearly addressed in the directives and believed that saving the only life which could be saved was their clear priority.
Obviously there is room for an alternate interpretation by the bishop and his ethics advisers. However, because there is room for more than one interpretation, the hospital and its ethics committee members should not be penalized for conscientiously doing their best with the guidelines they had.
For the bishop to construe the situation as Sister McBride directly procuring an abortion in violation of Directive 45 is arbitrary, unwarrantedly excessive and unjustifiably punitive. And for him to show no commitment toward saving the life of the mother of four existing children seriously undercuts his credibility as a moral theologian. If the church is pro-life, surely it favors life continuing for the living.
The bishop should retract his intemperate, ill-considered remarks and join the rest of us in affirming Sister Margaret McBride as a Catholic in good standing with the church.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Clergy Sex Abuse: U.S. Legal Strategy Fuels Perception That Vatican Is Dishonest
Disingenuous. That was the first word that came to mind this morning when I read MSNBC's posting of an Associated Press report on how a U.S. attorney plans to defend the Vatican in a Kentucky courtroom today--against claims that church officials in Rome are liable for mishandling the clergy sex abuse scandal and intentionally trying to hide it over several decades.
Because it is disingenuous, the strategy will again fuel the perception, among the public and in the pews, that the Vatican is still trying to evade responsibility for its administrative malfeasance in the crisis and still marshaling bogus, untruthful arguments to avoid being held civilly and criminally liable.
The strategy is disingenuous on three counts.
First, according to the article, the attorney plans to claim that bishops and other clergy are not employees of the Vatican, and that therefore the Vatican cannot be held liable if bishops or priests violate civil or criminal laws.
The argument is bogus because it directly contradicts the way the Catholic church has operated for centuries--and is still operating today.
It is true that the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s tried to reassert the role of bishop as the chief shepherd in each diocese. But it is also true that the Vatican worked over the next four decades to prevent that reform from having much effect and that it actually strengthened a military-like chain of command running from the pope as commander in chief, through the bishops as his field commanders, to the priests as the officers on the front line. The Vatican exercised absolute control over every bishop and priest, and it is directly liable for decisions to repeatedly reassign those who known to be abusing children into new settings where they could repeat the behavior.
Second, the attorney will contend that a document issued by the Vatican in 1962 and reaffirmed by the Vatican in 2001 did not require bishops to report sexually abusive priests only to the Vatican and never to local public officials.
The argument is a lie, as documented by a Houston attorney and covered in a posting here on April 23, 2010. The plaintiff's attorney in Kentucky is entirely correct in maintaining that these documents are the smoking gun in the Vatican's international conspiracy to cover up the crimes.
Third, the article says the attorney plans to ask the court "to dismiss the case on the grounds that the court doesn't have jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which protects sovereign states from being sued in U.S. courts except under certain circumstances." This rehashes the Vatican's claim that the pope and the members of his curia should be shielded from all civil liability as a head of state. The State Department agreed with the claim in the Houston case, and the pope was dismissed as a defendant.
As observed here previously, the argument is bogus because Rome's absolute authority over its clergy is not exercised by the pope as head of a state, but rather as the chief official of a worldwide religion. The chief official is specifically liable for (a) the procedures he dictates for reassigning priests, (b) the secrecy he dictates when they violate civil and criminal laws, and (c) the legal strategies he dictates to evade liability.
Eventually some court, somewhere, is going to see these arguments for the frauds they are. Pope Benedict XVI ought to have the wisdom to see that writing on the wall. And he ought to have the fortitude instruct his attorneys, in the United States and elsewhere, to stop making claims that can only diminish the church further in the eyes of reasonable men and women. Otherwise, whatever the Vatican gains in litigation it will more than lose in allegiance from the public and even from ordinary Catholics.
Because it is disingenuous, the strategy will again fuel the perception, among the public and in the pews, that the Vatican is still trying to evade responsibility for its administrative malfeasance in the crisis and still marshaling bogus, untruthful arguments to avoid being held civilly and criminally liable.
The strategy is disingenuous on three counts.
First, according to the article, the attorney plans to claim that bishops and other clergy are not employees of the Vatican, and that therefore the Vatican cannot be held liable if bishops or priests violate civil or criminal laws.
The argument is bogus because it directly contradicts the way the Catholic church has operated for centuries--and is still operating today.
It is true that the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s tried to reassert the role of bishop as the chief shepherd in each diocese. But it is also true that the Vatican worked over the next four decades to prevent that reform from having much effect and that it actually strengthened a military-like chain of command running from the pope as commander in chief, through the bishops as his field commanders, to the priests as the officers on the front line. The Vatican exercised absolute control over every bishop and priest, and it is directly liable for decisions to repeatedly reassign those who known to be abusing children into new settings where they could repeat the behavior.
Second, the attorney will contend that a document issued by the Vatican in 1962 and reaffirmed by the Vatican in 2001 did not require bishops to report sexually abusive priests only to the Vatican and never to local public officials.
The argument is a lie, as documented by a Houston attorney and covered in a posting here on April 23, 2010. The plaintiff's attorney in Kentucky is entirely correct in maintaining that these documents are the smoking gun in the Vatican's international conspiracy to cover up the crimes.
Third, the article says the attorney plans to ask the court "to dismiss the case on the grounds that the court doesn't have jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which protects sovereign states from being sued in U.S. courts except under certain circumstances." This rehashes the Vatican's claim that the pope and the members of his curia should be shielded from all civil liability as a head of state. The State Department agreed with the claim in the Houston case, and the pope was dismissed as a defendant.
As observed here previously, the argument is bogus because Rome's absolute authority over its clergy is not exercised by the pope as head of a state, but rather as the chief official of a worldwide religion. The chief official is specifically liable for (a) the procedures he dictates for reassigning priests, (b) the secrecy he dictates when they violate civil and criminal laws, and (c) the legal strategies he dictates to evade liability.
Eventually some court, somewhere, is going to see these arguments for the frauds they are. Pope Benedict XVI ought to have the wisdom to see that writing on the wall. And he ought to have the fortitude instruct his attorneys, in the United States and elsewhere, to stop making claims that can only diminish the church further in the eyes of reasonable men and women. Otherwise, whatever the Vatican gains in litigation it will more than lose in allegiance from the public and even from ordinary Catholics.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Louisiana Using Mississippi River Diversions to Push Oil Away from Coastal Wetlands
The Times-Picayune of New Orleans is reporting on a creative effort by the State of Louisiana to pump flowing water from the Mississippi River through flood-diversion channels into the coastal wetlands, in the hope of pushing the oil slick back into the Gulf. Water is flowing out of seven diversions and a navigation lock at a combined rate of 29,550 cubic feet per second. Most of the article follows:
The state has opened gates at the Bayou Lamoque freshwater diversion in Plaquemines Parish to use Mississippi River water to help protect the parish's fragile network of wetlands.
The opening will send around 7,500 cubic feet per second of river water into wetlands adjacent to Black Bay and Breton Sound, the state Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness said.
The hope is that the river water will help push any oil from the Gulf oil spill away from the coastal wetlands.
"The potential effects of this oil spill could last for decades, so we are using every means at our disposal to try to lessen the devastation the oil could inflict on our wetlands," Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Department Secretary Robert Barham said.
Garret Graves, chairman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said the Lamoque diversion joins several others already pressed into service.
"We have been using diversions, siphons and locks on both the east and west side for more than 10 days to try and push the oil away from our coastal wetlands. Louisiana's coastal wetlands are a maze of marshy islands, grass beds, bayous, ponds and lakes. It will be nearly impossible for us to clean the oil out of these areas for years if it gets in there," Graves said.
The state said seven diversions and siphons and one navigation lock are now in use to send river water into the coastal wetlands. The total measurable flow from these diversions is 29,550 cubic feet per second.
The state has opened gates at the Bayou Lamoque freshwater diversion in Plaquemines Parish to use Mississippi River water to help protect the parish's fragile network of wetlands.
The opening will send around 7,500 cubic feet per second of river water into wetlands adjacent to Black Bay and Breton Sound, the state Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness said.
The hope is that the river water will help push any oil from the Gulf oil spill away from the coastal wetlands.
"The potential effects of this oil spill could last for decades, so we are using every means at our disposal to try to lessen the devastation the oil could inflict on our wetlands," Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Department Secretary Robert Barham said.
Garret Graves, chairman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said the Lamoque diversion joins several others already pressed into service.
"We have been using diversions, siphons and locks on both the east and west side for more than 10 days to try and push the oil away from our coastal wetlands. Louisiana's coastal wetlands are a maze of marshy islands, grass beds, bayous, ponds and lakes. It will be nearly impossible for us to clean the oil out of these areas for years if it gets in there," Graves said.
The state said seven diversions and siphons and one navigation lock are now in use to send river water into the coastal wetlands. The total measurable flow from these diversions is 29,550 cubic feet per second.
Texans Should Just Ignore State Board of Education, Houston Chronicle Says
The Houston Chronicle recently had a great editorial, summarizing the most recent antics of the infamously dysfunctional Texas State Board of Education--and suggesting it would be best for all Texans to just ignore the board's latest curriculum mandates. Editorial follows:
How bad is the new history curriculum now under consideration by the Texas State Board of Education?
It's so bad that Jon Stewart made fun of it on TV. He played footage of the board voting to remove Oscar Romero from a list of great political and moral figures of the 20th century — because one board member said she'd never heard of the archbishop assassinated by an El Salvador death squad. “That,” cracked Stewart, “is how Oscar Romero got disappeared by right-wingers for the second time!”
The proposed curriculum is so bad that it would strike Thomas Jefferson from a list of Enlightenment thinkers who influenced the world. So bad that it plays down the civil rights and women's rights movements — in a state where minorities and women easily form a majority.
It's so bad that to date, more than 1,200 historians and professors have signed a letter complaining that the revisions “undermined the study of the social sciences in our public schools by misrepresenting and even distorting the historical record and the functioning of American society.”
But you know what? There's something even worse than that curriculum. And that's the multi-billion-dollar budget shortfall facing Texas.
So we think it makes sense for the Legislature to put off buying $800 million in history books based on that curriculum. “There's no rush necessary,” argues Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio. “We have plenty of time to do it right.”
In these lean times, students and teachers can make do with their old textbooks. And certainly, using them for another year or two beats investing in bad books that would stick around for a decade.
In the meantime, the state board can redeem itself by formulating a less-embarrassing curriculum. Or maybe the Legislature can reformulate the board by putting it up for a sunset review.
To slash the state budget, the Texas Legislature will have to make lots of hard choices. But not buying lousy textbooks? That's a no-brainer.
Let's disappear that curriculum. And let's bring back Thomas Jefferson and Oscar Romero.
How bad is the new history curriculum now under consideration by the Texas State Board of Education?
It's so bad that Jon Stewart made fun of it on TV. He played footage of the board voting to remove Oscar Romero from a list of great political and moral figures of the 20th century — because one board member said she'd never heard of the archbishop assassinated by an El Salvador death squad. “That,” cracked Stewart, “is how Oscar Romero got disappeared by right-wingers for the second time!”
The proposed curriculum is so bad that it would strike Thomas Jefferson from a list of Enlightenment thinkers who influenced the world. So bad that it plays down the civil rights and women's rights movements — in a state where minorities and women easily form a majority.
It's so bad that to date, more than 1,200 historians and professors have signed a letter complaining that the revisions “undermined the study of the social sciences in our public schools by misrepresenting and even distorting the historical record and the functioning of American society.”
But you know what? There's something even worse than that curriculum. And that's the multi-billion-dollar budget shortfall facing Texas.
So we think it makes sense for the Legislature to put off buying $800 million in history books based on that curriculum. “There's no rush necessary,” argues Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio. “We have plenty of time to do it right.”
In these lean times, students and teachers can make do with their old textbooks. And certainly, using them for another year or two beats investing in bad books that would stick around for a decade.
In the meantime, the state board can redeem itself by formulating a less-embarrassing curriculum. Or maybe the Legislature can reformulate the board by putting it up for a sunset review.
To slash the state budget, the Texas Legislature will have to make lots of hard choices. But not buying lousy textbooks? That's a no-brainer.
Let's disappear that curriculum. And let's bring back Thomas Jefferson and Oscar Romero.
Arizona Immigration Gestapo Shows American Aversion to Complex Solutions
In a recent insightful column, Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. said Arizona's new law requiring local police to be the state's immigration gestapo focuses attention--once again--on "one of the least attractive traits of the American character. Meaning a preference for responding to complicated questions with simplistic answers."
In the process of analyzing this, Pitts even manages to applaud President George W. Bush's 2006 attempt at immigration reform, torpedoed by the same American character flaw. Excerpts from his column follow:
If we really wanted immigration reform, we'd have had it years ago.
In 2006, President George W. Bush supported a proposal that would've required undocumented immigrants to take English classes and pay fines and back taxes in exchange for guest worker status and, eventually, citizenship. "I know this is an emotional debate," said Bush. "But one thing we cannot lose sight of is that we're talking about human beings, decent human beings that need to be treated with respect."
But Bush was shouted down by angry people carrying "Go back to Mexico!" signs. Their counter proposal? To somehow round up and bus an estimated 11 million people to the border, an idea that was to pragmatism and practicality as Lady Gaga is to modesty and restraint.
Similar thinking, if you want to call it that, is evident in the bill recently signed into law by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona...
Predictably, the new law has galvanized protesters around the country. Incredibly, one of the state's own congressmen, Democrat Raul Grijalva, has even called for a boycott. He told Politico.com, "If state lawmakers don't realize or don't care how detrimental this will be, we need to make them understand somehow."
But if the willingness or ability to understand existed, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Bush's reasonable proposal would have long ago been the law of the land.
Unfortunately for him and for all of us, he was unable to surmount one of the least attractive traits of the American character. Meaning a preference for responding to complicated questions with simplistic answers. Meaning a distaste for any remedy that requires more patience than the average microwave or that cannot be explicated on the average bumper sticker. Meaning a bias toward the angry, emphatic response, a native suspicion of anything that acknowledges complexity, thereby indicating weakness of purpose or softness of heart.
Meaning, metaphorically speaking, a tendency to use the meat cleaver for vascular surgery.
From this impulse we get debacles like the three strikes law that once sent a man to prison for 25 to life after he stole a slice of pizza, or the zero tolerance rules that got a girl kicked out of school for bringing Midol to class.
Now that impulse gives us this: an open invitation to ethnic profiling, an embarrassment to American ideals, an arguable violation of constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, and foolish politics, besides. Or does anyone believe the GOP's pathway to power lies in offending the nation's largest minority?
You know something is haywire when a congressman campaigns against his own state. But Grijalva is right. Until this shameful law is rescinded, Arizona is a great place not to be.
In the process of analyzing this, Pitts even manages to applaud President George W. Bush's 2006 attempt at immigration reform, torpedoed by the same American character flaw. Excerpts from his column follow:
If we really wanted immigration reform, we'd have had it years ago.
In 2006, President George W. Bush supported a proposal that would've required undocumented immigrants to take English classes and pay fines and back taxes in exchange for guest worker status and, eventually, citizenship. "I know this is an emotional debate," said Bush. "But one thing we cannot lose sight of is that we're talking about human beings, decent human beings that need to be treated with respect."
But Bush was shouted down by angry people carrying "Go back to Mexico!" signs. Their counter proposal? To somehow round up and bus an estimated 11 million people to the border, an idea that was to pragmatism and practicality as Lady Gaga is to modesty and restraint.
Similar thinking, if you want to call it that, is evident in the bill recently signed into law by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona...
Predictably, the new law has galvanized protesters around the country. Incredibly, one of the state's own congressmen, Democrat Raul Grijalva, has even called for a boycott. He told Politico.com, "If state lawmakers don't realize or don't care how detrimental this will be, we need to make them understand somehow."
But if the willingness or ability to understand existed, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Bush's reasonable proposal would have long ago been the law of the land.
Unfortunately for him and for all of us, he was unable to surmount one of the least attractive traits of the American character. Meaning a preference for responding to complicated questions with simplistic answers. Meaning a distaste for any remedy that requires more patience than the average microwave or that cannot be explicated on the average bumper sticker. Meaning a bias toward the angry, emphatic response, a native suspicion of anything that acknowledges complexity, thereby indicating weakness of purpose or softness of heart.
Meaning, metaphorically speaking, a tendency to use the meat cleaver for vascular surgery.
From this impulse we get debacles like the three strikes law that once sent a man to prison for 25 to life after he stole a slice of pizza, or the zero tolerance rules that got a girl kicked out of school for bringing Midol to class.
Now that impulse gives us this: an open invitation to ethnic profiling, an embarrassment to American ideals, an arguable violation of constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, and foolish politics, besides. Or does anyone believe the GOP's pathway to power lies in offending the nation's largest minority?
You know something is haywire when a congressman campaigns against his own state. But Grijalva is right. Until this shameful law is rescinded, Arizona is a great place not to be.
"Competence Is the Antidote to ... Sick Feeling about Public Authority"
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. pointed out recently that "this moment's anti-government feeling reflects two entirely different strains of thinking."
One strain, he wrote, is "exemplified by the tea party movement, opposition to government bailouts and an absolute hatred of Congress. This is the old-fashioned, garden-variety conservatism that somewhere between a fifth and a third of Americans have long subscribed to. These are the citizens you see on television at the anti-Obama rallies, the members of Congress who give speeches denouncing 'overregulation,' and the think tankers who insist that the private sector always performs more efficiently and effectively than 'government bureaucrats.'"
But Dionne observes that, apart from the tea-baggers, there is a "more important and dynamic force" at work. These are Americans who believe that government can work and should work, but who are distressed at how badly government has failed to work over the last decade or so:
"They do not think that the market is automatically rational or that the government has to be dumb. They are not fed up with government because their ideology or philosophy tells them to be but because they don't think government has been doing a proper job of promoting prosperity, equity and fair dealing."
These Americans, Dionne argues, are still just begging for President Obama to bring on change they can believe in. The trouble is that competent governance cannot be wished into being overnight and that so far Obama's team has not done a very good job of demonstrating government's competence.
Dionne sees the cooperative effort between street vendors and police in preventing the recent attempted car-bombing in Times Square as a basic model for how government needs to partner with private citizens. Obama's challenge is to deliver a lot more instances of this model in action:
"Conservative ideas generally gain ground when government is discredited.
"But progressives who insist on government's constructive role can't succeed unless they persuade voters that public agencies are up to the missions they undertake.
"Starting with the newly urgent threat of domestic terrorism and the environmental disaster in the Gulf, the administration does not lack for obvious challenges to which it must respond effectively. Competence is the antidote to the electorate's sick feeling about public authority."
One strain, he wrote, is "exemplified by the tea party movement, opposition to government bailouts and an absolute hatred of Congress. This is the old-fashioned, garden-variety conservatism that somewhere between a fifth and a third of Americans have long subscribed to. These are the citizens you see on television at the anti-Obama rallies, the members of Congress who give speeches denouncing 'overregulation,' and the think tankers who insist that the private sector always performs more efficiently and effectively than 'government bureaucrats.'"
But Dionne observes that, apart from the tea-baggers, there is a "more important and dynamic force" at work. These are Americans who believe that government can work and should work, but who are distressed at how badly government has failed to work over the last decade or so:
"They do not think that the market is automatically rational or that the government has to be dumb. They are not fed up with government because their ideology or philosophy tells them to be but because they don't think government has been doing a proper job of promoting prosperity, equity and fair dealing."
These Americans, Dionne argues, are still just begging for President Obama to bring on change they can believe in. The trouble is that competent governance cannot be wished into being overnight and that so far Obama's team has not done a very good job of demonstrating government's competence.
Dionne sees the cooperative effort between street vendors and police in preventing the recent attempted car-bombing in Times Square as a basic model for how government needs to partner with private citizens. Obama's challenge is to deliver a lot more instances of this model in action:
"Conservative ideas generally gain ground when government is discredited.
"But progressives who insist on government's constructive role can't succeed unless they persuade voters that public agencies are up to the missions they undertake.
"Starting with the newly urgent threat of domestic terrorism and the environmental disaster in the Gulf, the administration does not lack for obvious challenges to which it must respond effectively. Competence is the antidote to the electorate's sick feeling about public authority."
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Ex-Monk Says Celibates' Wanting to Have Sex and Keep It Secret Fuels Sex Abuse Crisis
The National Catholic Reporter has posted a difficult but very accurate analysis of the clergy sex abuse crisis by Richard Sipe, whom NCR describes as "a mental health counselor and author who earlier spent 18 years as a Benedictine monk and priest."
What is difficult about the article is that Sipe's writing style is sometimes an obstacle to the insights he wants to communicate. For example, in the first paragraph of his analysis, Sipe comments: "the sexual abuse of minors by declared celibate clerics poses special issues. There are three factors that draw special attention to the sexual practices of Roman Catholic clerics today." After several readings of the entire posting, I still can't fathom what the three factors are.
But what I do get--and, from my own experience, strongly agree with--is Sipe's diagnosis of the pathology of the Roman Catholic clerical culture.
His research and clinical experience lead him to conclude that requiring celibacy is the major factor that leads clerics to abuse minors--yet not among the clerics and vowed religious who are actually practicing celibacy, but among the large numbers of their confreres who can't live that ideal (Sipe estimates about 50%), who are furtively having sex and trying desperately to keep it a secret. Their need to keep their sex lives hidden and maintain the fiction that almost all priests are celibate impede them from restraining and reporting the much smaller percentage of priests whose sex lives fixate on minors.
Sipe asks pointedly: "What is the connection between this requirement of sexual abstinence and deprivation and sexual activity with minors? If one is going to be sexually active in defiance of a vow, why involve a minor? Is mandated celibacy alone causal to sex abuse of a minor?" He answers:
"As the single factor the answer is no. Vowed celibacy does not drive a bishop or priest to have sex with minors. The answer, however, is also yes. Required celibacy in concert with the clerical culture of entitlement and secrecy is a prominent element for some clergy seeking out minors as sexual partners."
He goes on to describe the pathology in strikingly accurate detail:
"Many priests who abuse minors were themselves abused as special friends of older priests or others. These kinds of liaisons are frequent in seminaries where solitary or mutual masturbation is looked upon as an 'innocent' failure. Secrecy about all clerical sex is sacrosanct within the system.
"Roman Catholic clerical culture favors doctrinal rigidity, conformity, obedience, submission and psychosexual immaturity, mistaken for innocence, in its candidates. These are the personality elements that lead to advancement and power in the clerical system. Single men are more easily controlled if their sexuality is secret. Double lives on all levels of clerical life are tolerated if they do not cause scandal or raise legal problems. Sexual activity between bishops and priests and adult partners is well known within clerical circles. The secret system forms a comfortable refuge for unresolved gay conflicts. There is a new emerging awareness of the systemic nature of sexual/celibate behavior within the Roman Catholic ministry that is increasingly destabilizing to the church."
Sipe's observation that "the secret system forms a comfortable refuge for unresolved gay conflicts" is also accurate. But it has led some who have commented on NCR's website to say that Sipe is confusing homosexual priests with pedophiles. I don't read him that way. I hear him saying that priests who feel compelled to be sexual beings and yet pretend that they are not sexual beings tend to feel those compulsions even in the case of a pedophile colleague. They can't out the colleague without fear of outing themselves and the entire culture of secret sex that a whole lot of 'celibates' actually live.
I was a member of two Catholic religious orders for ten years, from 1969 through 1979. For the first seven years I lived in novitiate and seminary settings, completing a masters degree in theology and eventually a Ph.D. I was ordained in 1976 and served my first year as the Catholic chaplain at a public university and then two years as one of three co-pastors of a suburban Catholic parish.
Without getting into some of the grimmer details, I can testify that I experienced many of the behaviors Sipe describes. I would say that I experienced them more so in the diocesan parish setting than the earlier ones. But I can affirm that I was aware of seminarians and priests having sex with each other and with lay people as well as non-Catholics and non-Christians, both male and female, and trying their utmost to keep it secret.
My concern at the time was how could we be effective or credible shepherds if we had to lie every day about who we really were. Lecturing others on sexual morality struck me as beyond hypocritical. Ironically, in those years I was never aware of pedophile behavior by any priest. In that respect, I learned much later how limited my experience had been. Perhaps the worst revelation was that a seminarian I was quite close to emotionally for several years abused several children a few years later; I learned this after he was convicted and sentenced to prison. I never saw that coming in the time we lived together.
I should finish that part of my personal story by saying that in 1979 I fell in love--and out of favor with my religious superiors--and that my partner and I have been together ever since. So the celibacy culture was not for me, and I continue to say "Thank God."
I agree with Sipe that exposing the "secret sex in the celibate system" could mean either of two outcomes. If the People of God are willing to face "the truth about clerical celibacy and its systemic corruption" the present crisis offers the opportunity for much needed reform. If on the other hand the traditionalists in Rome continue in denial about this pathology, Humpty Dumpty may be too kind a metaphor for the demise of European Catholicism.
What is difficult about the article is that Sipe's writing style is sometimes an obstacle to the insights he wants to communicate. For example, in the first paragraph of his analysis, Sipe comments: "the sexual abuse of minors by declared celibate clerics poses special issues. There are three factors that draw special attention to the sexual practices of Roman Catholic clerics today." After several readings of the entire posting, I still can't fathom what the three factors are.
But what I do get--and, from my own experience, strongly agree with--is Sipe's diagnosis of the pathology of the Roman Catholic clerical culture.
His research and clinical experience lead him to conclude that requiring celibacy is the major factor that leads clerics to abuse minors--yet not among the clerics and vowed religious who are actually practicing celibacy, but among the large numbers of their confreres who can't live that ideal (Sipe estimates about 50%), who are furtively having sex and trying desperately to keep it a secret. Their need to keep their sex lives hidden and maintain the fiction that almost all priests are celibate impede them from restraining and reporting the much smaller percentage of priests whose sex lives fixate on minors.
Sipe asks pointedly: "What is the connection between this requirement of sexual abstinence and deprivation and sexual activity with minors? If one is going to be sexually active in defiance of a vow, why involve a minor? Is mandated celibacy alone causal to sex abuse of a minor?" He answers:
"As the single factor the answer is no. Vowed celibacy does not drive a bishop or priest to have sex with minors. The answer, however, is also yes. Required celibacy in concert with the clerical culture of entitlement and secrecy is a prominent element for some clergy seeking out minors as sexual partners."
He goes on to describe the pathology in strikingly accurate detail:
"Many priests who abuse minors were themselves abused as special friends of older priests or others. These kinds of liaisons are frequent in seminaries where solitary or mutual masturbation is looked upon as an 'innocent' failure. Secrecy about all clerical sex is sacrosanct within the system.
"Roman Catholic clerical culture favors doctrinal rigidity, conformity, obedience, submission and psychosexual immaturity, mistaken for innocence, in its candidates. These are the personality elements that lead to advancement and power in the clerical system. Single men are more easily controlled if their sexuality is secret. Double lives on all levels of clerical life are tolerated if they do not cause scandal or raise legal problems. Sexual activity between bishops and priests and adult partners is well known within clerical circles. The secret system forms a comfortable refuge for unresolved gay conflicts. There is a new emerging awareness of the systemic nature of sexual/celibate behavior within the Roman Catholic ministry that is increasingly destabilizing to the church."
Sipe's observation that "the secret system forms a comfortable refuge for unresolved gay conflicts" is also accurate. But it has led some who have commented on NCR's website to say that Sipe is confusing homosexual priests with pedophiles. I don't read him that way. I hear him saying that priests who feel compelled to be sexual beings and yet pretend that they are not sexual beings tend to feel those compulsions even in the case of a pedophile colleague. They can't out the colleague without fear of outing themselves and the entire culture of secret sex that a whole lot of 'celibates' actually live.
I was a member of two Catholic religious orders for ten years, from 1969 through 1979. For the first seven years I lived in novitiate and seminary settings, completing a masters degree in theology and eventually a Ph.D. I was ordained in 1976 and served my first year as the Catholic chaplain at a public university and then two years as one of three co-pastors of a suburban Catholic parish.
Without getting into some of the grimmer details, I can testify that I experienced many of the behaviors Sipe describes. I would say that I experienced them more so in the diocesan parish setting than the earlier ones. But I can affirm that I was aware of seminarians and priests having sex with each other and with lay people as well as non-Catholics and non-Christians, both male and female, and trying their utmost to keep it secret.
My concern at the time was how could we be effective or credible shepherds if we had to lie every day about who we really were. Lecturing others on sexual morality struck me as beyond hypocritical. Ironically, in those years I was never aware of pedophile behavior by any priest. In that respect, I learned much later how limited my experience had been. Perhaps the worst revelation was that a seminarian I was quite close to emotionally for several years abused several children a few years later; I learned this after he was convicted and sentenced to prison. I never saw that coming in the time we lived together.
I should finish that part of my personal story by saying that in 1979 I fell in love--and out of favor with my religious superiors--and that my partner and I have been together ever since. So the celibacy culture was not for me, and I continue to say "Thank God."
I agree with Sipe that exposing the "secret sex in the celibate system" could mean either of two outcomes. If the People of God are willing to face "the truth about clerical celibacy and its systemic corruption" the present crisis offers the opportunity for much needed reform. If on the other hand the traditionalists in Rome continue in denial about this pathology, Humpty Dumpty may be too kind a metaphor for the demise of European Catholicism.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Pope's Obstruction-of-Justice Immunity Might Be Overturned, Houston Attorney Says
The Houston Press published a potentially significant article yesterday titled The Man Who Sued the Pope.It tells the story of Daniel Shea, a Houston attorney who filed a civil suit against the Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston on behalf of victims molested by a Catholic seminarian.
In December 2004 Shea added as a defendant one Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then in charge of the church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The amended filing charged Ratzinger with participating in an international obstruction of justice in clergy sex abuse cases, based on a letter he sent to all Catholic bishops on May 18, 2001. It said allegations of abuse should be reported only to the congregation and not to local public officials. Shea highlighted a footnote in the letter citing Crimen Sollicitationis, a 1962 Latin document from the Holy Office which, he said, set the stage for the obstruction by requiring secrecy in similar matters back then.
The article reports that Ratzinger was actually served with papers to testify in a Houston courtroom and scheduled to appear.
Not long after, however, Ratzinger was elected as Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican asserted he had immunity from prosecution as a head of state, the U.S. State Department told the court it agreed, and the judge dismissed the pope from the case.
Shea says the broadening sex abuse scandal in Europe and Latin America leads him to hope that some other government may reject the immunity argument. After all, Ratzinger was not acting as a head of state when he set policy for handling sex abuse cases and allowed at least some offenders to go unpunished. And his handling of the controversy since becoming pope was in his capacity as the official leader of the Catholic Church, not as the head of the Vatican state. Shea hopes that some government will buy that distinction and hold Ratzinger accountable in court.
Shea has another hope, but the outcome is less likely. He suggests that Ratzinger was elected pope because the conclave sought explicitly to give him immunity against child abuse lawsuits. If that could be proven, it would taint the papal election and bring calls for Pope Benedict XVI to resign because of the appearance of impropriety.
While such intrigue would exceed those imagined in The DaVinci Code, it is implausible the electors of the College of Cardinals would be savvy enough to concoct it. And getting anyone who was behind the closed doors of the Sistine Chapel to admit to it seems even more far fetched. However, it is important to note that critics of the pope are thinking along these lines and that they are being lured in that direction because the assertion of immunity feeds the strong suspicion that Joseph Ratzinger really does have something sinister to hide.
I have emailed several editors and reporters at the National Catholic Reporter to alert them about the article and suggest that they might want to look into it in more depth.
I would also note that on its website Village Voice Media, the national group of newspapers to which the Houston Press belongs, recommends the article as its pick of the week. So it's likely to cause ripples far beyond Houston.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The Case Against Sainthood for Pope John Paul II: Sex Abuse Exhibits A, B and C
Recent reporting and analysis by the National Catholic Reporter offers a treasure trove of reasons why Pope John Paul II should not be canonized. Not surprisingly, three of them document the revered pope's failure to discipline priests and bishops who perpetrated the sexual abuse of children. Let's call them Exhibits A, B and C--in the order I read about them, though certainly not in order of magnitude. Undoubtedly there will be more: easily enough to exhaust the alphabet, bless his heart.
Exhibit A: John Paul II approved a letter from the cardinal who headed the Congregation for the Clergy, congratulating a French bishop who refused to report a sexually abusive priest to the police. On April 15th the Vatican tried to use this revelation to show that at the time Joseph Ratzinger was doing more to control pedophile priests than the other cardinal. But in implicitly condemning the cardinal, the Vatican damns John Paul II's sainthood.
Exhibit B: "Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, recently said that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, had wanted to investigate charges that Vienna’s former Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër molested novices at a Benedictine monastery in the 1970s, but was blocked by John Paul II. Schönborn said Ratzinger told him at the time, 'The other side won.' Schönborn intended that as a defense of Benedict, but it was also implicitly a criticism of John Paul..."
Exhibit C: Guided mainly by his personal secretary Msgr. Stanislaw Dziwisz (now a cardinal) and Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Pope John Paul II repeatedly blocked Ratzinger's efforts to investigate charges that Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the rich and powerful Legionaries of Christ, sexually abused between 20 and 100 seminarians, in addition to fathering children with several mistresses. Only when John Paul II was in declining health did Ratzinger launch the investigation in earnest. After he became Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger removed Maciel from priestly ministry for a "life of penitence and prayer." But Maciel was not given a full church trial due to his advance age. Cardinal Sodano, by the way, is presently the Dean of the College of Cardinals, who during this past Holy Week said, infamously, that criticism of Pope Benedict XVI was akin to persecution of the Jews. Cardinal Sodano doth cover his own ass too much, methinks--and John Paul II's much too little.
And that just the beginning of the sex abuse exhibits. One could start a separate set of exhibits on John Paul II's apostasy from the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.
Exhibit A: John Paul II approved a letter from the cardinal who headed the Congregation for the Clergy, congratulating a French bishop who refused to report a sexually abusive priest to the police. On April 15th the Vatican tried to use this revelation to show that at the time Joseph Ratzinger was doing more to control pedophile priests than the other cardinal. But in implicitly condemning the cardinal, the Vatican damns John Paul II's sainthood.
Exhibit B: "Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, recently said that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, had wanted to investigate charges that Vienna’s former Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër molested novices at a Benedictine monastery in the 1970s, but was blocked by John Paul II. Schönborn said Ratzinger told him at the time, 'The other side won.' Schönborn intended that as a defense of Benedict, but it was also implicitly a criticism of John Paul..."
Exhibit C: Guided mainly by his personal secretary Msgr. Stanislaw Dziwisz (now a cardinal) and Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Pope John Paul II repeatedly blocked Ratzinger's efforts to investigate charges that Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the rich and powerful Legionaries of Christ, sexually abused between 20 and 100 seminarians, in addition to fathering children with several mistresses. Only when John Paul II was in declining health did Ratzinger launch the investigation in earnest. After he became Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger removed Maciel from priestly ministry for a "life of penitence and prayer." But Maciel was not given a full church trial due to his advance age. Cardinal Sodano, by the way, is presently the Dean of the College of Cardinals, who during this past Holy Week said, infamously, that criticism of Pope Benedict XVI was akin to persecution of the Jews. Cardinal Sodano doth cover his own ass too much, methinks--and John Paul II's much too little.
And that just the beginning of the sex abuse exhibits. One could start a separate set of exhibits on John Paul II's apostasy from the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.
Monday, April 19, 2010
'We Are Church': Urge Bishops to Revolt Against Rome's Attempts to Thwart Vatican II
We Are Church, an international group of lay Catholics who have worked since 1995 to resist papal efforts to undo the reforms mandated by the Second Vatican Council, is marking the fifth anniversary of Joseph Ratzinger's election as Pope Benedict XVI by arguing that the ever-widening sexual abuse crisis makes the need for reform even more obvious and urgent.
In an April 17th press release also posted on its website, We Are Church says:
Now is the time to start these reforms:
1. The People of God have to be allowed to participate at all levels of our Church so that innovative ways to meet the pastoral challenges of our time can be started. The faithful should have a say in the appointment of their bishops, otherwise Rome will continue appointing bishops who care more for the institution than for their flock.
2. Ecclesial misogyny should come to an end and women be admitted to all church ministries, which need to be ministries of service and not of power.
3. Celibacy should become optional, so that marital love is no longer a taboo for clerics.
4. The results of Human Sciences concerning sexual morals should come to be acknowledged and the primacy of the individual informed conscience should be respected.
5. The Gospel should be proclaimed as an invitation to life in fullness and not a means to discipline people through intimidation.
Perhaps more significantly, We Are Church is urging Catholics to read Hans Küng's April 16th open letter to the world's Catholic bishops--a manifesto that calls on the bishops to revolt against Rome's efforts to stifle Vatican II, and to take concrete actions to ensure that the Council's reforms become reality. The text of Küng's letter follows:
VENERABLE BISHOPS,
Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest and the only ones still fully active. I have always understood my theological work as a service to the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In doing so, I am motivated by my profound concern for our church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation. Please excuse the form of an open letter; unfortunately, I have no other way of reaching you.
I deeply appreciated that the pope invited me, his outspoken critic, to meet for a friendly, four-hour-long conversation shortly after he took office. This awakened in me the hope that my former colleague at Tubingen University might find his way to promote an ongoing renewal of the church and an ecumenical rapprochement in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.
Unfortunately, my hopes and those of so many engaged Catholic men and women have not been fulfilled. And in my subsequent correspondence with the pope, I have pointed this out to him many times. Without a doubt, he conscientiously performs his everyday duties as pope, and he has given us three helpful encyclicals on faith, hope and charity. But when it comes to facing the major challenges of our times, his pontificate has increasingly passed up more opportunities than it has taken:
Missed is the opportunity for rapprochement with the Protestant churches: Instead, they have been denied the status of churches in the proper sense of the term and, for that reason, their ministries are not recognized and intercommunion is not possible.
Missed is the opportunity for the long-term reconciliation with the Jews: Instead the pope has reintroduced into the liturgy a preconciliar prayer for the enlightenment of the Jews, he has taken notoriously anti-Semitic and schismatic bishops back into communion with the church, and he is actively promoting the beatification of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of not offering sufficient protections to Jews in Nazi Germany.
The fact is, Benedict sees in Judaism only the historic root of Christianity; he does not take it seriously as an ongoing religious community offering its own path to salvation. The recent comparison of the current criticism faced by the pope with anti-Semitic hate campaigns – made by Rev Raniero Cantalamessa during an official Good Friday service at the Vatican – has stirred up a storm of indignation among Jews around the world.
Missed is the opportunity for a dialogue with Muslims in an atmosphere of mutual trust: Instead, in his ill-advised but symptomatic 2006 Regensburg lecture, Benedict caricatured Islam as a religion of violence and inhumanity and thus evoked enduring Muslim mistrust.
Missed is the opportunity for reconciliation with the colonised indigenous peoples of Latin America: Instead, the pope asserted in all seriousness that they had been “longing” for the religion of their European conquerors.
Missed is the opportunity to help the people of Africa by allowing the use of birth control to fight overpopulation and condoms to fight the spread of HIV.
Missed is the opportunity to make peace with modern science by clearly affirming the theory of evolution and accepting stem-cell research.
Missed is the opportunity to make the spirit of the Second Vatican Council the compass for the whole Catholic Church, including the Vatican itself, and thus to promote the needed reforms in the church.
This last point, respected bishops, is the most serious of all. Time and again, this pope has added qualifications to the conciliar texts and interpreted them against the spirit of the council fathers. Time and again, he has taken an express stand against the Ecumenical Council, which according to canon law represents the highest authority in the Catholic Church:
He has taken the bishops of the traditionalist Pius X Society back into the church without any preconditions – bishops who were illegally consecrated outside the Catholic Church and who reject central points of the Second Vatican Council (including liturgical reform, freedom of religion and the rapprochement with Judaism).
He promotes the medieval Tridentine Mass by all possible means and occasionally celebrates the Eucharist in Latin with his back to the congregation.
He refuses to put into effect the rapprochement with the Anglican Church, which was laid out in official ecumenical documents by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, and has attempted instead to lure married Anglican clergy into the Roman Catholic Church by freeing them from the very rule of celibacy that has forced tens of thousands of Roman Catholic priests out of office.
He has actively reinforced the anti-conciliar forces in the church by appointing reactionary officials to key offices in the Curia (including the secretariat of state, and positions in the liturgical commission) while appointing reactionary bishops around the world.
Pope Benedict XVI seems to be increasingly cut off from the vast majority of church members who pay less and less heed to Rome and, at best, identify themselves only with their local parish and bishop.
I know that many of you are pained by this situation. In his anti-conciliar policy, the pope receives the full support of the Roman Curia. The Curia does its best to stifle criticism in the episcopate and in the church as a whole and to discredit critics with all the means at its disposal. With a return to pomp and spectacle catching the attention of the media, the reactionary forces in Rome have attempted to present us with a strong church fronted by an absolutistic “Vicar of Christ” who combines the church’s legislative, executive and judicial powers in his hands alone. But Benedict’s policy of restoration has failed. All of his spectacular appearances, demonstrative journeys and public statements have failed to influence the opinions of most Catholics on controversial issues. This is especially true regarding matters of sexual morality. Even the papal youth meetings, attended above all by conservative-charismatic groups, have failed to hold back the steady drain of those leaving the church or to attract more vocations to the priesthood.
You in particular, as bishops, have reason for deep sorrow: Tens of thousands of priests have resigned their office since the Second Vatican Council, for the most part because of the celibacy rule. Vocations to the priesthood, but also to religious orders, sisterhoods and lay brotherhoods are down – not just quantitatively but qualitatively. Resignation and frustration are spreading rapidly among both the clergy and the active laity. Many feel that they have been left in the lurch with their personal needs, and many are in deep distress over the state of the church. In many of your dioceses, it is the same story: increasingly empty churches, empty seminaries and empty rectories. In many countries, due to the lack of priests, more and more parishes are being merged, often against the will of their members, into ever larger “pastoral units,” in which the few surviving pastors are completely overtaxed. This is church reform in pretense rather than fact!
And now, on top of these many crises comes a scandal crying out to heaven – the revelation of the clerical abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries. And to make matters worse, the handling of these cases has given rise to an unprecedented leadership crisis and a collapse of trust in church leadership.
There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the “secretum pontificium” , the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties. With good reason, therefore, many people have expected a personal mea culpa on the part of the former prefect and current pope. Instead, the pope passed up the opportunity afforded by Holy Week: On Easter Sunday, he had his innocence proclaimed “urbi et orbi” by the dean of the College of Cardinals.
The consequences of all these scandals for the reputation of the Catholic Church are disastrous. Important church leaders have already admitted this. Numerous innocent and committed pastors and educators are suffering under the stigma of suspicion now blanketing the church. You, reverend bishops, must face up to the question: What will happen to our church and to your diocese in the future? It is not my intention to sketch out a new program of church reform. That I have done often enough both before and after the council. Instead, I want only to lay before you six proposals that I am convinced are supported by millions of Catholics who have no voice in the current situation.
1. Do not keep silent: By keeping silent in the face of so many serious grievances, you taint yourselves with guilt. When you feel that certain laws, directives and measures are counterproductive, you should say this in public. Send Rome not professions of your devotion, but rather calls for reform!
2. Set about reform: Too many in the church and in the episcopate complain about Rome, but do nothing themselves. When people no longer attend church in a diocese, when the ministry bears little fruit, when the public is kept in ignorance about the needs of the world, when ecumenical co-operation is reduced to a minimum, then the blame cannot simply be shoved off on Rome. Whether bishop, priest, layman or laywoman – everyone can do something for the renewal of the church within his own sphere of influence, be it large or small. Many of the great achievements that have occurred in the individual parishes and in the church at large owe their origin to the initiative of an individual or a small group. As bishops, you should support such initiatives and, especially given the present situation, you should respond to the just complaints of the faithful.
3. Act in a collegial way: After heated debate and against the persistent opposition of the Curia, the Second Vatican Council decreed the collegiality of the pope and the bishops. It did so in the sense of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Peter did not act alone without the college of the apostles. In the post-conciliar era, however, the pope and the Curia have ignored this decree. Just two years after the council, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical defending the controversial celibacy law without the slightest consultation of the bishops. Since then, papal politics and the papal magisterium have continued to act in the old, uncollegial fashion. Even in liturgical matters, the pope rules as an autocrat over and against the bishops. He is happy to surround himself with them as long as they are nothing more than stage extras with neither voices nor voting rights. This is why, venerable bishops, you should not act for yourselves alone, but rather in the community of the other bishops, of the priests and of the men and women who make up the church.
4. Unconditional obedience is owed to God alone: Although at your episcopal consecration you had to take an oath of unconditional obedience to the pope, you know that unconditional obedience can never be paid to any human authority; it is due to God alone. For this reason, you should not feel impeded by your oath to speak the truth about the current crisis facing the church, your diocese and your country. Your model should be the apostle Paul, who dared to oppose Peter “to his face since he was manifestly in the wrong”! ( Galatians 2:11 ). Pressuring the Roman authorities in the spirit of Christian fraternity can be permissible and even necessary when they fail to live up to the spirit of the Gospel and its mission. The use of the vernacular in the liturgy, the changes in the regulations governing mixed marriages, the affirmation of tolerance, democracy and human rights, the opening up of an ecumenical approach, and the many other reforms of Vatican II were only achieved because of tenacious pressure from below.
5. Work for regional solutions: The Vatican has frequently turned a deaf ear to the well-founded demands of the episcopate, the priests and the laity. This is all the more reason for seeking wise regional solutions. As you are well aware, the rule of celibacy, which was inherited from the Middle Ages, represents a particularly delicate problem. In the context of today’s clerical abuse scandal, the practice has been increasingly called into question. Against the expressed will of Rome, a change would appear hardly possible; yet this is no reason for passive resignation. When a priest, after mature consideration, wishes to marry, there is no reason why he must automatically resign his office when his bishop and his parish choose to stand behind him. Individual episcopal conferences could take the lead with regional solutions. It would be better, however, to seek a solution for the whole church, therefore:
6. Call for a council: Just as the achievement of liturgical reform, religious freedom, ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue required an ecumenical council, so now a council is needed to solve the dramatically escalating problems calling for reform. In the century before the Reformation, the Council of Constance decreed that councils should be held every five years. Yet the Roman Curia successfully managed to circumvent this ruling. There is no question that the Curia, fearing a limitation of its power, would do everything in its power to prevent a council coming together in the present situation. Thus it is up to you to push through the calling of a council or at least a representative assembly of bishops.
With the church in deep crisis, this is my appeal to you, venerable bishops: Put to use the episcopal authority that was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council. In this urgent situation, the eyes of the world turn to you. Innumerable people have lost their trust in the Catholic Church. Only by openly and honestly reckoning with these problems and resolutely carrying out needed reforms can their trust be regained. With all due respect, I beg you to do your part – together with your fellow bishops as far as possible, but also alone if necessary – in apostolic “fearlessness” ( Acts 4:29, 31 ). Give your faithful signs of hope and encouragement and give our church a perspective for the future.
With warm greetings in the community of the Christian faith,
Yours, Hans Küng
In an April 17th press release also posted on its website, We Are Church says:
Now is the time to start these reforms:
1. The People of God have to be allowed to participate at all levels of our Church so that innovative ways to meet the pastoral challenges of our time can be started. The faithful should have a say in the appointment of their bishops, otherwise Rome will continue appointing bishops who care more for the institution than for their flock.
2. Ecclesial misogyny should come to an end and women be admitted to all church ministries, which need to be ministries of service and not of power.
3. Celibacy should become optional, so that marital love is no longer a taboo for clerics.
4. The results of Human Sciences concerning sexual morals should come to be acknowledged and the primacy of the individual informed conscience should be respected.
5. The Gospel should be proclaimed as an invitation to life in fullness and not a means to discipline people through intimidation.
Perhaps more significantly, We Are Church is urging Catholics to read Hans Küng's April 16th open letter to the world's Catholic bishops--a manifesto that calls on the bishops to revolt against Rome's efforts to stifle Vatican II, and to take concrete actions to ensure that the Council's reforms become reality. The text of Küng's letter follows:
VENERABLE BISHOPS,
Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest and the only ones still fully active. I have always understood my theological work as a service to the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In doing so, I am motivated by my profound concern for our church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation. Please excuse the form of an open letter; unfortunately, I have no other way of reaching you.
I deeply appreciated that the pope invited me, his outspoken critic, to meet for a friendly, four-hour-long conversation shortly after he took office. This awakened in me the hope that my former colleague at Tubingen University might find his way to promote an ongoing renewal of the church and an ecumenical rapprochement in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.
Unfortunately, my hopes and those of so many engaged Catholic men and women have not been fulfilled. And in my subsequent correspondence with the pope, I have pointed this out to him many times. Without a doubt, he conscientiously performs his everyday duties as pope, and he has given us three helpful encyclicals on faith, hope and charity. But when it comes to facing the major challenges of our times, his pontificate has increasingly passed up more opportunities than it has taken:
Missed is the opportunity for rapprochement with the Protestant churches: Instead, they have been denied the status of churches in the proper sense of the term and, for that reason, their ministries are not recognized and intercommunion is not possible.
Missed is the opportunity for the long-term reconciliation with the Jews: Instead the pope has reintroduced into the liturgy a preconciliar prayer for the enlightenment of the Jews, he has taken notoriously anti-Semitic and schismatic bishops back into communion with the church, and he is actively promoting the beatification of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of not offering sufficient protections to Jews in Nazi Germany.
The fact is, Benedict sees in Judaism only the historic root of Christianity; he does not take it seriously as an ongoing religious community offering its own path to salvation. The recent comparison of the current criticism faced by the pope with anti-Semitic hate campaigns – made by Rev Raniero Cantalamessa during an official Good Friday service at the Vatican – has stirred up a storm of indignation among Jews around the world.
Missed is the opportunity for a dialogue with Muslims in an atmosphere of mutual trust: Instead, in his ill-advised but symptomatic 2006 Regensburg lecture, Benedict caricatured Islam as a religion of violence and inhumanity and thus evoked enduring Muslim mistrust.
Missed is the opportunity for reconciliation with the colonised indigenous peoples of Latin America: Instead, the pope asserted in all seriousness that they had been “longing” for the religion of their European conquerors.
Missed is the opportunity to help the people of Africa by allowing the use of birth control to fight overpopulation and condoms to fight the spread of HIV.
Missed is the opportunity to make peace with modern science by clearly affirming the theory of evolution and accepting stem-cell research.
Missed is the opportunity to make the spirit of the Second Vatican Council the compass for the whole Catholic Church, including the Vatican itself, and thus to promote the needed reforms in the church.
This last point, respected bishops, is the most serious of all. Time and again, this pope has added qualifications to the conciliar texts and interpreted them against the spirit of the council fathers. Time and again, he has taken an express stand against the Ecumenical Council, which according to canon law represents the highest authority in the Catholic Church:
He has taken the bishops of the traditionalist Pius X Society back into the church without any preconditions – bishops who were illegally consecrated outside the Catholic Church and who reject central points of the Second Vatican Council (including liturgical reform, freedom of religion and the rapprochement with Judaism).
He promotes the medieval Tridentine Mass by all possible means and occasionally celebrates the Eucharist in Latin with his back to the congregation.
He refuses to put into effect the rapprochement with the Anglican Church, which was laid out in official ecumenical documents by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, and has attempted instead to lure married Anglican clergy into the Roman Catholic Church by freeing them from the very rule of celibacy that has forced tens of thousands of Roman Catholic priests out of office.
He has actively reinforced the anti-conciliar forces in the church by appointing reactionary officials to key offices in the Curia (including the secretariat of state, and positions in the liturgical commission) while appointing reactionary bishops around the world.
Pope Benedict XVI seems to be increasingly cut off from the vast majority of church members who pay less and less heed to Rome and, at best, identify themselves only with their local parish and bishop.
I know that many of you are pained by this situation. In his anti-conciliar policy, the pope receives the full support of the Roman Curia. The Curia does its best to stifle criticism in the episcopate and in the church as a whole and to discredit critics with all the means at its disposal. With a return to pomp and spectacle catching the attention of the media, the reactionary forces in Rome have attempted to present us with a strong church fronted by an absolutistic “Vicar of Christ” who combines the church’s legislative, executive and judicial powers in his hands alone. But Benedict’s policy of restoration has failed. All of his spectacular appearances, demonstrative journeys and public statements have failed to influence the opinions of most Catholics on controversial issues. This is especially true regarding matters of sexual morality. Even the papal youth meetings, attended above all by conservative-charismatic groups, have failed to hold back the steady drain of those leaving the church or to attract more vocations to the priesthood.
You in particular, as bishops, have reason for deep sorrow: Tens of thousands of priests have resigned their office since the Second Vatican Council, for the most part because of the celibacy rule. Vocations to the priesthood, but also to religious orders, sisterhoods and lay brotherhoods are down – not just quantitatively but qualitatively. Resignation and frustration are spreading rapidly among both the clergy and the active laity. Many feel that they have been left in the lurch with their personal needs, and many are in deep distress over the state of the church. In many of your dioceses, it is the same story: increasingly empty churches, empty seminaries and empty rectories. In many countries, due to the lack of priests, more and more parishes are being merged, often against the will of their members, into ever larger “pastoral units,” in which the few surviving pastors are completely overtaxed. This is church reform in pretense rather than fact!
And now, on top of these many crises comes a scandal crying out to heaven – the revelation of the clerical abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries. And to make matters worse, the handling of these cases has given rise to an unprecedented leadership crisis and a collapse of trust in church leadership.
There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the “secretum pontificium” , the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties. With good reason, therefore, many people have expected a personal mea culpa on the part of the former prefect and current pope. Instead, the pope passed up the opportunity afforded by Holy Week: On Easter Sunday, he had his innocence proclaimed “urbi et orbi” by the dean of the College of Cardinals.
The consequences of all these scandals for the reputation of the Catholic Church are disastrous. Important church leaders have already admitted this. Numerous innocent and committed pastors and educators are suffering under the stigma of suspicion now blanketing the church. You, reverend bishops, must face up to the question: What will happen to our church and to your diocese in the future? It is not my intention to sketch out a new program of church reform. That I have done often enough both before and after the council. Instead, I want only to lay before you six proposals that I am convinced are supported by millions of Catholics who have no voice in the current situation.
1. Do not keep silent: By keeping silent in the face of so many serious grievances, you taint yourselves with guilt. When you feel that certain laws, directives and measures are counterproductive, you should say this in public. Send Rome not professions of your devotion, but rather calls for reform!
2. Set about reform: Too many in the church and in the episcopate complain about Rome, but do nothing themselves. When people no longer attend church in a diocese, when the ministry bears little fruit, when the public is kept in ignorance about the needs of the world, when ecumenical co-operation is reduced to a minimum, then the blame cannot simply be shoved off on Rome. Whether bishop, priest, layman or laywoman – everyone can do something for the renewal of the church within his own sphere of influence, be it large or small. Many of the great achievements that have occurred in the individual parishes and in the church at large owe their origin to the initiative of an individual or a small group. As bishops, you should support such initiatives and, especially given the present situation, you should respond to the just complaints of the faithful.
3. Act in a collegial way: After heated debate and against the persistent opposition of the Curia, the Second Vatican Council decreed the collegiality of the pope and the bishops. It did so in the sense of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Peter did not act alone without the college of the apostles. In the post-conciliar era, however, the pope and the Curia have ignored this decree. Just two years after the council, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical defending the controversial celibacy law without the slightest consultation of the bishops. Since then, papal politics and the papal magisterium have continued to act in the old, uncollegial fashion. Even in liturgical matters, the pope rules as an autocrat over and against the bishops. He is happy to surround himself with them as long as they are nothing more than stage extras with neither voices nor voting rights. This is why, venerable bishops, you should not act for yourselves alone, but rather in the community of the other bishops, of the priests and of the men and women who make up the church.
4. Unconditional obedience is owed to God alone: Although at your episcopal consecration you had to take an oath of unconditional obedience to the pope, you know that unconditional obedience can never be paid to any human authority; it is due to God alone. For this reason, you should not feel impeded by your oath to speak the truth about the current crisis facing the church, your diocese and your country. Your model should be the apostle Paul, who dared to oppose Peter “to his face since he was manifestly in the wrong”! ( Galatians 2:11 ). Pressuring the Roman authorities in the spirit of Christian fraternity can be permissible and even necessary when they fail to live up to the spirit of the Gospel and its mission. The use of the vernacular in the liturgy, the changes in the regulations governing mixed marriages, the affirmation of tolerance, democracy and human rights, the opening up of an ecumenical approach, and the many other reforms of Vatican II were only achieved because of tenacious pressure from below.
5. Work for regional solutions: The Vatican has frequently turned a deaf ear to the well-founded demands of the episcopate, the priests and the laity. This is all the more reason for seeking wise regional solutions. As you are well aware, the rule of celibacy, which was inherited from the Middle Ages, represents a particularly delicate problem. In the context of today’s clerical abuse scandal, the practice has been increasingly called into question. Against the expressed will of Rome, a change would appear hardly possible; yet this is no reason for passive resignation. When a priest, after mature consideration, wishes to marry, there is no reason why he must automatically resign his office when his bishop and his parish choose to stand behind him. Individual episcopal conferences could take the lead with regional solutions. It would be better, however, to seek a solution for the whole church, therefore:
6. Call for a council: Just as the achievement of liturgical reform, religious freedom, ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue required an ecumenical council, so now a council is needed to solve the dramatically escalating problems calling for reform. In the century before the Reformation, the Council of Constance decreed that councils should be held every five years. Yet the Roman Curia successfully managed to circumvent this ruling. There is no question that the Curia, fearing a limitation of its power, would do everything in its power to prevent a council coming together in the present situation. Thus it is up to you to push through the calling of a council or at least a representative assembly of bishops.
With the church in deep crisis, this is my appeal to you, venerable bishops: Put to use the episcopal authority that was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council. In this urgent situation, the eyes of the world turn to you. Innumerable people have lost their trust in the Catholic Church. Only by openly and honestly reckoning with these problems and resolutely carrying out needed reforms can their trust be regained. With all due respect, I beg you to do your part – together with your fellow bishops as far as possible, but also alone if necessary – in apostolic “fearlessness” ( Acts 4:29, 31 ). Give your faithful signs of hope and encouragement and give our church a perspective for the future.
With warm greetings in the community of the Christian faith,
Yours, Hans Küng
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