Despite the efforts of two Vatican Councils to contain the ultramontanist view of papal infallibility, it continues to rear its ugly head in the official pronouncements of the current pontiff.
The ultramontanists--who held that the pope should be understood as "as if heaven were always open over his head and the light shone down upon him" and that opposition to him was the sin against the Holy Spirit--could conceive of nothing more beneficial than "an infallible statement at the breakfast table each morning with their copy of the London Times."
By insisting that infallibility could only be exercised ex cathedra, i.e. from the chair of Peter under the most stringent of conditions, the First Vatican Council tried to seriously restrict the ultramontanist view. The Second Vatican Council tried to dilute it still further, by recontextualizing papal infallibility alongside of the infallibility of the church's bishops when they taught together and the infallibility of the body of the faithful as a whole.
But since the papacy of John Paul II, guided intellectually by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who succeeded John Paul II as Benedict XVI, ultramontanism has been on the ascendant once again.
The latest manifestation was the claim, made by Benedict XVI in a recent letter dismissing an Australian bishop, that John Paul II “decided infallibly and irrevocably that the church has not the right to ordain women to the priesthood.”
On May 23, 2011, the National Catholic Reporter published two postings challenging the validity and accuracy of Benedict's claim--one an article quoting several theologians who said that Benedict was on very shaky ground, the other an editorial whose title speaks for itself: Ordination ban not infallibly taught.
The editorial states the case succinctly. John Paul II never said ex cathedra that the church had no right to ordain women. What he said was that such was the constant teaching of the church's bishops over several centuries. A few years later, Ratzinger (as the Vatican's chief enforcer of orthodoxy) issued a statement saying that because it was a constant teaching of the bishops, John Paul's edict had to be definitively held by all Catholics. Now, decades after that chain of events, Ratzinger as Pope Benedict translates his interpretation of John Paul's statement into an infallible pronouncement by John Paul! What is infallible is what I say is infallible. What could be more ultramontane?
Of course, what this illustrates above all is how slippery and untenable the notion of any infallibility really is. My dissertation shows on historical, linguistic and cosmological grounds why it is impossible for any church teaching to be irreformable. (Those who are interested in the documentation should click on the link to the right of these postings.) So the real problem is that when Vatican I, in partial deference to the ultramontanists, declared that the pope possesses "that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed His Church to be endowed," it gratuitously attributed infallibility to the will of Jesus Christ. What the bishops at Vatican I refused to consider is that Jesus Christ may not have willed his church or its leaders to be infallible at all--because such a wish contradicts the metaphysical structure of the universe and future actions by the living God.
So we can continue to fight about "creeping infallibility" and try to rein it in. But even if Benedict were to buy the argument that he has misrepresented what John Paul II said, all he would have to do to overcome the problem would be to mount the chair of Peter and declare ex cathedra what John Paul attributed (inaccurately) to the constant, universal teaching of the bishops.
What really needs to be addressed is how any kind of infallibility can be sustained--philosophically, linguistically or historically. The honest answer is that it cannot be sustained under any of those tests, and that continuing to adhere to a dishonest doctrine can only result in more dishonesty.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
U.S. Clergy Sex-Abuse Report Ignores 'Arrogant Clericalism,' the Primary Cause
Dominican Father Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer and a long-time advocate of justice and compassion for clergy sex-abuse victims, says the recently released John Jay report on the causes of sex abuse by U.S. clergy misses the mark by blaming most of the abuse on the permissive sexual culture of the 1960s and 1970s--when several other reports have concluded, accurately, that the main causes were within the Catholic Church and that the pre-eminent one was 'arrogant clericalism."
Doyle posted his commentary on the website of the National Catholic Reporter May 21, 2011. Most of the critique follows.
In the last few days I have carefully read the entire 143-page John Jay report on the causes of clergy sex abuse in the United States and have again reviewed the executive summaries and conclusions of 17 of the 27 reports on clergy sexual abuse that have been published between 1989 and 2011.
Most of these are from official sources such as the U.S. grand juries, the three Irish reports (Ferns, Ryan, Murphy) or the two Canadian reports that resulted from the Mt. Cashel debacle of the eighties. Others are from Church sources such as the National Review Board Report of 2004, The Bernardin Report of 1992 or Church sponsored reports such as the Defenbaugh Report (Chicago, 2006) or the first John Jay Report from 2004. Most of the reports contained a section on causality. None of the reports said anything about the effect of the culture of the sixties or seventies as a factor of causality but every one of them pointed to the various kinds and levels of failure by the bishops as the essential cause of the phenomenon of sexual abuse of children and minors by clerics.
Some of the reports went into more detail about socio-cultural factors that had a causal effect but none of these factors included somehow shifting the blame to the “increased deviance of society during that time” as Karen Terry said in her statement released with the report. There was unanimity about the effect of culture, but it was not the culture outside the church but the culture within. Arthur Jones hit the nail squarely on the head in his NCR column on May 18 when he named arrogant clericalism as the culture that in many ways created the offending clerics and allowed the abuse to flourish.
There is a third source of information that perhaps provides the most accurate data on clergy sexual abuse in our era and that is the data obtained by victims’ attorneys in the six thousand plus civil and criminal cases from the U.S. alone. Add to this the information from similar cases in Canada, Ireland, Australia, the U.K. and several other European countries and you have a picture that is much different than that proposed in this latest John Jay report. The report refers to the sixties and seventies as the peak period with cases dwindling off after that period. This apparently fits in with what some of the cynics have called the “Woodstock Defense.”
Those who see the main conclusions from the Executive Summary as support for the bishops’ blame-shifting tactics are probably right. Yet these conclusions are only a part of the whole story and in some ways they are of minor relevance. The finding that the majority of cases occurred in the 1960s and 1970s can be quickly challenged. It is more accurate to say that the majority of cases reported in the post 2002 period involved abuse that took place in the period from the sixties to the eighties. Its way off base to assume that the majority of incidents of abuse happened during this period. Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald founded the Paraclete community in 1947 to provide help to priests with problems. From the beginning he was treating priests with psycho-sexual issues and in a letter to a bishop he said that 3 out of every 10 priests admitted were there because they had sexually molested minors.
Fr. Gerald wrote that letter in 1964. Unfortunately it is difficult if not impossible to do a study of abuse victims between the 30’s and the 50’s but Fr. Gerald’s information leaves no doubt that sexual abuse by priests was a significant phenomenon long before the free-wheeling 60’s and 70’s. The one constant that was present throughout the entire period from before the 60’s to the turn of the millennium has been the cover-up by the bishops and the disgraceful treatment of victims. The John Jay researchers were commissioned by the bishops to look into the reasons why priests molested and violated minors. They were not asked to figure out why this molestation and violation was allowed to happen. That would have been deadly for the bishops and they knew it.
Nevertheless the researchers could not avoid the blatant role played by the hierarchy. In this regard the report should not be written off as largely either irrelevant or enabling of the bishops’ never-ending campaign to avoid facing their responsibility square on. That’s why it’s important to read the whole report and not depend on the Executive Summary or Karen Terry’s statement or the statements of any of the bishops or church sponsored media outlets. Well into the body there is recognition of the real issues that have caused the anger and are the basis for the thousands of lawsuits and official reports. The section entitled “Mid-1990’s Diocesan Response” on pages 86-91contains a sobering antidote to the soft-peddling about priests who lost their way in the Woodstock Era. To their credit the research team included information critical of the bishops’ responses on several levels. A few quotes:
The failure of some diocesan leaders to take responsibility for the harms of the abuse by priests was egregious in some cases. (p. 89)
Parishioners were not told, or were misled about the reason for the abuser’s transfer (p. 89)
Diocesan leaders rarely provided information to local civil authorities and sometimes made concerted efforts to prevent reports of sexual abuse by priests from reaching law enforcement even before the statute of limitations expired. (p. 89)
Diocesan officials tried to keep their files devoid of incriminating evidence . (p. 89)
Diocesan leaders attempted to deflect personal liability for retaining abusers by relying on therapists’ recommendations or employing legalistic arguments about the status of priests. (p. 89)
Dioceses, the interviewee reported, would intimidate priests who brought charges against other priests; he reported that the law firm hired by the diocese wiretapped his phone and went through his trash. (p. 90).
The interviewee was a priest-victim who had come forward in 1991.
These citations do not represent exceptions. This was the operating procedure that was standard throughout the institutional Church until the public revelations that began in 1984 and reached a boiling point in 2002 caused widespread media attention, legal scrutiny and public outrage which in turn forced the bishops to change their tactics. The John Jay report refers to the organizational steps taken by the bishops in response to the “crisis” and points out that no other institution has undertaken a public study of sexual abuse and as a result there are no comparable data from other institutions (Executive Summary, p. 5).
The report gave short shrift to mandatory celibacy and the all-male environment of the clerical world. This will feed right into the defenses of those who try to claim that the problems are all from outside influences. Yet the influence of mandatory celibacy and the sub-culture of which it is an integral part play a major role in the socialization and maturation processes of the men who will eventually violate minors. The clerical culture should have been the subject of the 1.8 million dollar venture because if looked at closely and honestly it would have yielded information that not only provided believable reasons for the abuse nightmare but valuable though radical steps to take to avoid similar travesties in the future. That would have been much too dangerous for the hierarchical establishment though, because without doubt, it would point to needed fundamental changes.
There will be a variety of levels of both praise and criticism of this document. Among the more valuable will be the critical responses of other academic professionals, especially sociologists, which will help place the document in a more realistic and relevant light.
The report was released along with statements by Karen Terry, the lead investigator, Diane Knight, chair of the National Review Board and Blase Cupich, chair of the Bishop’s Committee for the Protection of Children. The most disturbing sentence of all of the documents presented with the report is from Karen Terry’s statement: “The problem of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests in the United States is largely historical, and the bulk of cases occurred decades ago.” I am quite certain that Dr. Terry had no idea of how offensive this statement is to the thousands of victims who were abused decades ago and who still live with the intense pain that never goes away. These people aren’t “historical” they are now. What happened to them years or decades ago is still real and still destructive in their lives.
While the bishops and their defenders bask in the illusion that this report validates their standard defenses and their self-affirmation for the procedures and policies they have created to try to heal the wound, the reality of the “phenomenon of sexual abuse” is something this report will not be able to answer. What is important is not why the thousands of clerics went off the tracks and raped and violated tens of thousands of innocent children.
What is important is what the institutional Church has done, or to be more precise, not done, to help heal the thousands of victims who still live in isolation and pain. More than anything else these men and women have had their very souls violated and in the words of some, murdered. Rather than go to such great lengths to try to exonerate themselves the bishops could have done what they should have done…..try, at least, to begin to understand the profound depth of the spiritual wounds inflicted on these many men and women, once innocent and trusting boys and girls. Abandon the insincere promises, the endless efforts to hide the secrets and the debasing legal strategies to pound the victims into submission. Once the official Church figures out how to authentically respond to its victims, and actually does it, then and only then will this abominable disgrace start to slowly move towards being historical.
Doyle posted his commentary on the website of the National Catholic Reporter May 21, 2011. Most of the critique follows.
In the last few days I have carefully read the entire 143-page John Jay report on the causes of clergy sex abuse in the United States and have again reviewed the executive summaries and conclusions of 17 of the 27 reports on clergy sexual abuse that have been published between 1989 and 2011.
Most of these are from official sources such as the U.S. grand juries, the three Irish reports (Ferns, Ryan, Murphy) or the two Canadian reports that resulted from the Mt. Cashel debacle of the eighties. Others are from Church sources such as the National Review Board Report of 2004, The Bernardin Report of 1992 or Church sponsored reports such as the Defenbaugh Report (Chicago, 2006) or the first John Jay Report from 2004. Most of the reports contained a section on causality. None of the reports said anything about the effect of the culture of the sixties or seventies as a factor of causality but every one of them pointed to the various kinds and levels of failure by the bishops as the essential cause of the phenomenon of sexual abuse of children and minors by clerics.
Some of the reports went into more detail about socio-cultural factors that had a causal effect but none of these factors included somehow shifting the blame to the “increased deviance of society during that time” as Karen Terry said in her statement released with the report. There was unanimity about the effect of culture, but it was not the culture outside the church but the culture within. Arthur Jones hit the nail squarely on the head in his NCR column on May 18 when he named arrogant clericalism as the culture that in many ways created the offending clerics and allowed the abuse to flourish.
There is a third source of information that perhaps provides the most accurate data on clergy sexual abuse in our era and that is the data obtained by victims’ attorneys in the six thousand plus civil and criminal cases from the U.S. alone. Add to this the information from similar cases in Canada, Ireland, Australia, the U.K. and several other European countries and you have a picture that is much different than that proposed in this latest John Jay report. The report refers to the sixties and seventies as the peak period with cases dwindling off after that period. This apparently fits in with what some of the cynics have called the “Woodstock Defense.”
Those who see the main conclusions from the Executive Summary as support for the bishops’ blame-shifting tactics are probably right. Yet these conclusions are only a part of the whole story and in some ways they are of minor relevance. The finding that the majority of cases occurred in the 1960s and 1970s can be quickly challenged. It is more accurate to say that the majority of cases reported in the post 2002 period involved abuse that took place in the period from the sixties to the eighties. Its way off base to assume that the majority of incidents of abuse happened during this period. Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald founded the Paraclete community in 1947 to provide help to priests with problems. From the beginning he was treating priests with psycho-sexual issues and in a letter to a bishop he said that 3 out of every 10 priests admitted were there because they had sexually molested minors.
Fr. Gerald wrote that letter in 1964. Unfortunately it is difficult if not impossible to do a study of abuse victims between the 30’s and the 50’s but Fr. Gerald’s information leaves no doubt that sexual abuse by priests was a significant phenomenon long before the free-wheeling 60’s and 70’s. The one constant that was present throughout the entire period from before the 60’s to the turn of the millennium has been the cover-up by the bishops and the disgraceful treatment of victims. The John Jay researchers were commissioned by the bishops to look into the reasons why priests molested and violated minors. They were not asked to figure out why this molestation and violation was allowed to happen. That would have been deadly for the bishops and they knew it.
Nevertheless the researchers could not avoid the blatant role played by the hierarchy. In this regard the report should not be written off as largely either irrelevant or enabling of the bishops’ never-ending campaign to avoid facing their responsibility square on. That’s why it’s important to read the whole report and not depend on the Executive Summary or Karen Terry’s statement or the statements of any of the bishops or church sponsored media outlets. Well into the body there is recognition of the real issues that have caused the anger and are the basis for the thousands of lawsuits and official reports. The section entitled “Mid-1990’s Diocesan Response” on pages 86-91contains a sobering antidote to the soft-peddling about priests who lost their way in the Woodstock Era. To their credit the research team included information critical of the bishops’ responses on several levels. A few quotes:
The failure of some diocesan leaders to take responsibility for the harms of the abuse by priests was egregious in some cases. (p. 89)
Parishioners were not told, or were misled about the reason for the abuser’s transfer (p. 89)
Diocesan leaders rarely provided information to local civil authorities and sometimes made concerted efforts to prevent reports of sexual abuse by priests from reaching law enforcement even before the statute of limitations expired. (p. 89)
Diocesan officials tried to keep their files devoid of incriminating evidence . (p. 89)
Diocesan leaders attempted to deflect personal liability for retaining abusers by relying on therapists’ recommendations or employing legalistic arguments about the status of priests. (p. 89)
Dioceses, the interviewee reported, would intimidate priests who brought charges against other priests; he reported that the law firm hired by the diocese wiretapped his phone and went through his trash. (p. 90).
The interviewee was a priest-victim who had come forward in 1991.
These citations do not represent exceptions. This was the operating procedure that was standard throughout the institutional Church until the public revelations that began in 1984 and reached a boiling point in 2002 caused widespread media attention, legal scrutiny and public outrage which in turn forced the bishops to change their tactics. The John Jay report refers to the organizational steps taken by the bishops in response to the “crisis” and points out that no other institution has undertaken a public study of sexual abuse and as a result there are no comparable data from other institutions (Executive Summary, p. 5).
The report gave short shrift to mandatory celibacy and the all-male environment of the clerical world. This will feed right into the defenses of those who try to claim that the problems are all from outside influences. Yet the influence of mandatory celibacy and the sub-culture of which it is an integral part play a major role in the socialization and maturation processes of the men who will eventually violate minors. The clerical culture should have been the subject of the 1.8 million dollar venture because if looked at closely and honestly it would have yielded information that not only provided believable reasons for the abuse nightmare but valuable though radical steps to take to avoid similar travesties in the future. That would have been much too dangerous for the hierarchical establishment though, because without doubt, it would point to needed fundamental changes.
There will be a variety of levels of both praise and criticism of this document. Among the more valuable will be the critical responses of other academic professionals, especially sociologists, which will help place the document in a more realistic and relevant light.
The report was released along with statements by Karen Terry, the lead investigator, Diane Knight, chair of the National Review Board and Blase Cupich, chair of the Bishop’s Committee for the Protection of Children. The most disturbing sentence of all of the documents presented with the report is from Karen Terry’s statement: “The problem of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests in the United States is largely historical, and the bulk of cases occurred decades ago.” I am quite certain that Dr. Terry had no idea of how offensive this statement is to the thousands of victims who were abused decades ago and who still live with the intense pain that never goes away. These people aren’t “historical” they are now. What happened to them years or decades ago is still real and still destructive in their lives.
While the bishops and their defenders bask in the illusion that this report validates their standard defenses and their self-affirmation for the procedures and policies they have created to try to heal the wound, the reality of the “phenomenon of sexual abuse” is something this report will not be able to answer. What is important is not why the thousands of clerics went off the tracks and raped and violated tens of thousands of innocent children.
What is important is what the institutional Church has done, or to be more precise, not done, to help heal the thousands of victims who still live in isolation and pain. More than anything else these men and women have had their very souls violated and in the words of some, murdered. Rather than go to such great lengths to try to exonerate themselves the bishops could have done what they should have done…..try, at least, to begin to understand the profound depth of the spiritual wounds inflicted on these many men and women, once innocent and trusting boys and girls. Abandon the insincere promises, the endless efforts to hide the secrets and the debasing legal strategies to pound the victims into submission. Once the official Church figures out how to authentically respond to its victims, and actually does it, then and only then will this abominable disgrace start to slowly move towards being historical.
Friday, May 06, 2011
Pope Fires Australian Bishop for 2006 Pastoral Letter on Priest Shortage
The National Catholic Reporter has posted an editorial angrily denouncing Pope Benedict XVI for firing the bishop of Toowoomba in Queensland, Australia, after local Catholic reactionaries questioned his loyalty to church teachings in an Advent 2006 pastoral letter. The letter said that his diocese might need to consider "other options" for dealing with its shrinking supply of priests than those so far endorsed officially by Rome.
NCR noted scathingly the pope's speed in firing a bishop for having thoughts, in contrast with his inability to fire any bishop who enabled and covered up priestly molestation of children. It shows, NCR said, where the pope's priorities lie. The editorial follows.
The Australian Catholic diocese of Toowoomba, encompassing more than 300,000 square miles, has just a relative handful of healthy priests to serve the church’s 35 parishes. So it came as no surprise to Toowoomba’s Catholics when the area’s bishop, William M. Morris, addressed the priest shortage in a candid but still cautious Advent 2006 pastoral letter.
“We do face an uncertain future with regard to the number of active priests in our diocese,” wrote Morris. “Other options,” he wrote, “may well” need be considered. These include:
1. “ordaining married, single or widowed men who are chosen and endorsed by their local parish community;
2. welcoming former priests, married or single, back to active ministry;
3. ordaining women, married or single;
4. recognizing Anglican, Lutheran and Uniting Church Orders.”
For these words, this week the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI has fired Morris. Eighteen years as bishop ended with the stroke of a papal pen. (Click here for original the news story about the Morris firing.)
Some obvious but necessary points need making:
First, it turns out it’s really not that difficult for the pope to give a bishop a pink slip. In the course of the quarter-century clergy sexual abuse cover-up, there’s been considerable hand wringing over just this question. Bishops don’t “work for” the pope, we have been told. Bishops are “fathers” to their flock – with all the unconditional love and commitment that entails – not employees subject to the whims, well-intentioned or otherwise, of the boss. Canonical procedures must be followed.
Apparently, that’s just so much hooey. If the pope and his advisers care deeply about an issue about which a bishop has publicly raised questions – such as women priests and optional celibacy – a way can be found to dismiss that bishop.
And – noteworthy because it goes to some underlying issues – a bishop who acts against church teaching and law related to sexually abusive priests apparently need fear no such reprisal.
Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali, for example, continues a life befitting a prince in splendorous surroundings, even as his flouting of church procedures (and perhaps civil law) resulted in nearly 30 diocesan priests facing administrative suspension and heat from local prosecutors.
And not to forget Cardinal Bernard Law, orchestrator of the Boston clergy abuse cover-up. His punishment? An extended Roman holiday and a healthy pension. Meanwhile, Morris gets the door.
The pope’s priorities are clear.
The pervasive intellectual chill in the church reaches beyond the towers of academia (note the recent chastisement of theologian St. Joseph Sr. Elizabeth Johnson) or to those who directly challenge the rules – Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois’ open support for women’s ordination a most recent case in point. (Bourgeois is facing excommunication for saying what he thinks on the subject.)
Now even those directly in the line of apostolic succession are forbidden to speak freely.
Note that Morris did not offer answers to the provocatively posed semi-questions on celibacy and ordination he raised that Advent. Instead, employing what one advocacy group terms the “progressive bishop’s style book,” he couched his concerns more obliquely. (No doubt to avoid Rome’s wrath. Lot of good that did him.)
Today, it seems, even such carefully couched queries are completely verboten; such so-called “open questions” (non-doctrinal in every sense of the word) such as the ordination of married men are grounds for dismissal. That the overwhelming majority of clergy (not to mention laypeople) think the failure to even consider options like married priests in the midst of a clergy shortage crisis goes beyond Dilbertesque mismanagement. It is, to employ the psychobabble of the era, completely dysfunctional.
As we prepare to celebrate the feast of the first pope next month, are we still permitted to remind church fathers that Peter was a married man? That this Holy Father was likely a human father? Or should Mrs. Peter and her progeny, like so many nettlesome Stalin-era apparatchiks, be airbrushed from history?
Because of Morris, we know that the dysfunction flows right from the top. Canon law may be more flexible than previously promoted, but a bishop’s dismissal cannot be shuffled to an underling, buried, as in Bourgeois’ case, in a bureaucratic chain of command. No, the canning of a bishop is a task only a pope can command.
And he has made his priorities quite clear.
While the reasons for Morris’ dismissal are relatively clear, the process remains an unholy mess, shrouded in secrecy.
Soon after Morris’ 2006 Advent pastoral was released, Benedict sent Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput to “investigate” the incident, which is a little like sending the fox to investigate the hens. Given his well-known views on the concerns raised by Morris (Chaput is more Catholic than the pope on these issues), we are skeptical that Toowoomba’s bishop got a fair hearing. There’s a relatively small number of right wing Catholics in the diocese (Morris and others call them the “Temple Police”) who have long been after the bishop. That Chaput gave them undue weight and deference seems more than plausible.
You know the type. In the U.S., they are the crowd that takes marching orders from The Wanderer, their time at Mass searching for a violation of a rubric rather than receiving whatever wisdom or grace might come their way. Then, having detected an “Alleluia” where an “Amen” was called for, they write letters to Vatican congregations, hoping for a sympathetic ear to their pathetic pleas.
Their Australian equivalents were, it appears, successful in transforming Morris’ molehill into a mountain.
But, we acknowledge, our skepticism is partly emotional, or perhaps ideological. We’re inclined to give Morris a break because we’re inclined to agree with him that the issues he raises require airing.
But, and here’s the point, we simply don’t know what Chaput found because no one’s talking. Not even Morris has received a copy of Chaput’s report (assuming something has been reduced to writing).
We presume, given the public nature of Morris’ offenses, that Chaput’s findings have something to do with the bishop brainstorming some remedies to the priest shortage in the face of the real crisis in his local church.
Did Chaput find something more dastardly, such as a bishop speaking like an adult to his church? Heaven forbid. We likely will never know. When NCR asked Chaput to respond to a series of questions regarding his apostolic visitation to Morris’ diocese, he declined to answer, explaining that “any apostolic visitation is governed by strict confidentiality. This is for the benefit of all parties involved.”
So are we to believe Morris has benefitted from being tossed out without ever having been allowed to defend himself against Chaput's findings, which were never shared with the Australian prelate? This is the kind of trial and judgement one more often associates with China or Iran. The Catholic church?
The real scandal to the faithful in this matter has nothing to do with the way Morris has conducted himself. It has everything to do with priorities and processes within our church today. It has much to do with the trampling of human rights and professed values of decency and charity by our church’s prelates, in this case including, sad to say, Benedict himself.
This is no way, shall we say, to set a Christian example – or manage the church.
In 2003, Fred Gluck, a former managing partner of McKinsey & Company who currently serves on the board of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management, wrote a memo to church leaders. It’s crafted in managementese, but disregard the jargon for the moment and pay attention to the message.Wrote Gluck:
The pope has made his priorities all too clear.
NCR noted scathingly the pope's speed in firing a bishop for having thoughts, in contrast with his inability to fire any bishop who enabled and covered up priestly molestation of children. It shows, NCR said, where the pope's priorities lie. The editorial follows.
The Australian Catholic diocese of Toowoomba, encompassing more than 300,000 square miles, has just a relative handful of healthy priests to serve the church’s 35 parishes. So it came as no surprise to Toowoomba’s Catholics when the area’s bishop, William M. Morris, addressed the priest shortage in a candid but still cautious Advent 2006 pastoral letter.
“We do face an uncertain future with regard to the number of active priests in our diocese,” wrote Morris. “Other options,” he wrote, “may well” need be considered. These include:
1. “ordaining married, single or widowed men who are chosen and endorsed by their local parish community;
2. welcoming former priests, married or single, back to active ministry;
3. ordaining women, married or single;
4. recognizing Anglican, Lutheran and Uniting Church Orders.”
For these words, this week the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI has fired Morris. Eighteen years as bishop ended with the stroke of a papal pen. (Click here for original the news story about the Morris firing.)
Some obvious but necessary points need making:
First, it turns out it’s really not that difficult for the pope to give a bishop a pink slip. In the course of the quarter-century clergy sexual abuse cover-up, there’s been considerable hand wringing over just this question. Bishops don’t “work for” the pope, we have been told. Bishops are “fathers” to their flock – with all the unconditional love and commitment that entails – not employees subject to the whims, well-intentioned or otherwise, of the boss. Canonical procedures must be followed.
Apparently, that’s just so much hooey. If the pope and his advisers care deeply about an issue about which a bishop has publicly raised questions – such as women priests and optional celibacy – a way can be found to dismiss that bishop.
And – noteworthy because it goes to some underlying issues – a bishop who acts against church teaching and law related to sexually abusive priests apparently need fear no such reprisal.
Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali, for example, continues a life befitting a prince in splendorous surroundings, even as his flouting of church procedures (and perhaps civil law) resulted in nearly 30 diocesan priests facing administrative suspension and heat from local prosecutors.
And not to forget Cardinal Bernard Law, orchestrator of the Boston clergy abuse cover-up. His punishment? An extended Roman holiday and a healthy pension. Meanwhile, Morris gets the door.
The pope’s priorities are clear.
The pervasive intellectual chill in the church reaches beyond the towers of academia (note the recent chastisement of theologian St. Joseph Sr. Elizabeth Johnson) or to those who directly challenge the rules – Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois’ open support for women’s ordination a most recent case in point. (Bourgeois is facing excommunication for saying what he thinks on the subject.)
Now even those directly in the line of apostolic succession are forbidden to speak freely.
Note that Morris did not offer answers to the provocatively posed semi-questions on celibacy and ordination he raised that Advent. Instead, employing what one advocacy group terms the “progressive bishop’s style book,” he couched his concerns more obliquely. (No doubt to avoid Rome’s wrath. Lot of good that did him.)
Today, it seems, even such carefully couched queries are completely verboten; such so-called “open questions” (non-doctrinal in every sense of the word) such as the ordination of married men are grounds for dismissal. That the overwhelming majority of clergy (not to mention laypeople) think the failure to even consider options like married priests in the midst of a clergy shortage crisis goes beyond Dilbertesque mismanagement. It is, to employ the psychobabble of the era, completely dysfunctional.
As we prepare to celebrate the feast of the first pope next month, are we still permitted to remind church fathers that Peter was a married man? That this Holy Father was likely a human father? Or should Mrs. Peter and her progeny, like so many nettlesome Stalin-era apparatchiks, be airbrushed from history?
Because of Morris, we know that the dysfunction flows right from the top. Canon law may be more flexible than previously promoted, but a bishop’s dismissal cannot be shuffled to an underling, buried, as in Bourgeois’ case, in a bureaucratic chain of command. No, the canning of a bishop is a task only a pope can command.
And he has made his priorities quite clear.
While the reasons for Morris’ dismissal are relatively clear, the process remains an unholy mess, shrouded in secrecy.
Soon after Morris’ 2006 Advent pastoral was released, Benedict sent Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput to “investigate” the incident, which is a little like sending the fox to investigate the hens. Given his well-known views on the concerns raised by Morris (Chaput is more Catholic than the pope on these issues), we are skeptical that Toowoomba’s bishop got a fair hearing. There’s a relatively small number of right wing Catholics in the diocese (Morris and others call them the “Temple Police”) who have long been after the bishop. That Chaput gave them undue weight and deference seems more than plausible.
You know the type. In the U.S., they are the crowd that takes marching orders from The Wanderer, their time at Mass searching for a violation of a rubric rather than receiving whatever wisdom or grace might come their way. Then, having detected an “Alleluia” where an “Amen” was called for, they write letters to Vatican congregations, hoping for a sympathetic ear to their pathetic pleas.
Their Australian equivalents were, it appears, successful in transforming Morris’ molehill into a mountain.
But, we acknowledge, our skepticism is partly emotional, or perhaps ideological. We’re inclined to give Morris a break because we’re inclined to agree with him that the issues he raises require airing.
But, and here’s the point, we simply don’t know what Chaput found because no one’s talking. Not even Morris has received a copy of Chaput’s report (assuming something has been reduced to writing).
We presume, given the public nature of Morris’ offenses, that Chaput’s findings have something to do with the bishop brainstorming some remedies to the priest shortage in the face of the real crisis in his local church.
Did Chaput find something more dastardly, such as a bishop speaking like an adult to his church? Heaven forbid. We likely will never know. When NCR asked Chaput to respond to a series of questions regarding his apostolic visitation to Morris’ diocese, he declined to answer, explaining that “any apostolic visitation is governed by strict confidentiality. This is for the benefit of all parties involved.”
So are we to believe Morris has benefitted from being tossed out without ever having been allowed to defend himself against Chaput's findings, which were never shared with the Australian prelate? This is the kind of trial and judgement one more often associates with China or Iran. The Catholic church?
The real scandal to the faithful in this matter has nothing to do with the way Morris has conducted himself. It has everything to do with priorities and processes within our church today. It has much to do with the trampling of human rights and professed values of decency and charity by our church’s prelates, in this case including, sad to say, Benedict himself.
This is no way, shall we say, to set a Christian example – or manage the church.
In 2003, Fred Gluck, a former managing partner of McKinsey & Company who currently serves on the board of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management, wrote a memo to church leaders. It’s crafted in managementese, but disregard the jargon for the moment and pay attention to the message.Wrote Gluck:
- “Your organization [the church] has no effective central point of leadership that can energize the necessary program change.
- “Your leadership is aging and also largely committed to the status quo or even the status ante.
- “Your tradition of hierarchy dominates most of your thinking about management.”
- “Coming to grips with this formidable set of challenges in an organization as historically successful as yours will be a daunting challenge, and can only be accomplished by a comprehensive program of change with strong leadership from the top,” he concluded.
The pope has made his priorities all too clear.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Scripture Cannot Be a Guidebook for Sexual Morality, Boston Baptist Scholar Argues
Kudos to the Houston Chronicle for carrying a slightly abbreviated version of the following article in its weekly Belief section (print edition) today. It's by Cecile S. Holmes of Religion News Service. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a link to the article on the Chronicle's website. So here's the link to the complete article as posted yesterday by The Christian Century.
I want to learn more about the specific content of Jennifer Wright Knust's scriptural analysis, especially where it might dove-tail with the analysis of various church teachings on sexual morality discussed in Part III of my doctoral dissertation (see link at right).
Is the Bible good for your sex life, but bad for a sex ed class?
A Boston biblical scholar challenges widely held beliefs about the Bible and sex in her new book, arguing Scripture cannot and should not be a guidebook for sexual morality.
The Bible is a complex compendium of human experience including stories of love, prostitution, extramarital sex and more, Boston University religion professor Jennifer Wright Knust argues in "Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire."
Her book goes against most biblical conservatives' view that the Bible specifically prohibits sex outside of marriage and condemns homosexuality. From Genesis to the Gospels, Knust's research turns many traditional interpretations upside down.
She's also unafraid to get a little racy: a full-page ad for her book in the venerable ChristianCentury magazine asks, "Is it OK to pray for better orgasms?"
Exploring the love poetry of the Song of Songs, for example, she notes the text does not shrink from describing "sexual intimacy and climax." Its vivid and lurid details worried some church thinkers, including the ancient Christian theologian Origen.
Turning the Bible into a sexual rulebook doesn't work, Knust says, because it can be use to support an almost endless set of "interpretive agendas." Too often, she says, the holy book has been used to silence rebels, repress women and minorities, condemn homosexuals and even justify slavery.
Her intent, Knust says, is to move conversations about sex and the Bible past "polemical and shortsighted" claims using passages to support this or that particular viewpoint.
A good example is "the unfortunate history around biblical interpretation around the slavery issue," she says. "Slavery was natural and even believed to be divinely inspired by some" who used the Bible to support their outlook.
"When the abolitionists began to argue that the Bible was against slavery, they really tied themselves up in knots trying to cite certain passages in a certain way that supported their arguments." The same can be said for arguments over sexuality, she says.
Equally alarming to Knust are present-day situations in which political opponents on either side of an issue use biblical texts to underscore their outlook.
"I hate to see the Bible being employed as kind of a weapon against women, against girls, against lesbian, gay, and transgendered people," she said. "I've seen so many people injured by this kind of biblical interpretation. For example, I was talking with a really wonderful woman recently who was saying she wanted to get a divorce from her husband because he was physically abusive. The message she was getting from her church was that the Bible was against divorce and therefore she had no choice but to stay in the marriage."
As a child, Knust read Bible stories before school most weekday mornings. Seated on her family's big gold couch, she and her mother read from a two-volume illustrated book. Never once did her mother tell her it was "silly or bad" to ask questions about the stories.
Knust grew up to see the Bible as neither a collection of policy statements nor a treatise to enforce a particular point of view. Instead, the Bible offered "an invitation to think abut who God might be and what it means to be human."
Knust is an ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches USA, which generally has a more open approach to interpreting Scripture than the more conservative (and larger) Southern Baptist Convention. As a scholar, Knust is at ease talking about the Bible in both church and academic circles. And as an author, she writes with authority yet keeps the general reader in mind.
Her book demonstrates "the extraordinary range of scriptural attitudes toward the body," says fellow scholar Peter S. Hawkins, Yale University professor of religion and literature. It also shows "the impossibility of using any particular saying as warrant for a monolithic biblical teaching," he says.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
Au Contraire, Mr. Ryan: You Can't End the Deficit Unless You Tax the Super Rich
I am grateful to National Catholic Reporter columnist Joe Feuerherd for his blog posting yesterday saying that the conservative blueprint for eliminating the federal deficit unveiled by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) "lacks seriousness," especially in comparison to the real budget balancing and actual budget surplus achieved by the Democratic Congress and the Clinton administration in the post-Reagan 1980s and 90s.
Feuerherd ticks off several reasons why Ryan's plan won't accomplish what it claims:
"Repeal of last year's health care reform bill...is simply not going to happen." Maybe. But the chances that Republicans will succeed in rendering it unfunded seem pretty high.
Seniors and the AARP will not buy Ryan's proposal, a reiteration of the one he and Alice Rivlin submitted to the bipartisan deficit commission, to change the single-payer Medicare system--"socialism that America's seniors have learned to love"--into a voucher system to help them buy private health insurance. I think Feuerherd is right about this.
Governors "already facing the most daunting budget challenges since the Great Depression, will fight the plan to convert Medicaid to a block grant." Unfortunately, several Republican governors were already cheering for block grants, even though their states would be getting less money than they do under the current matching-funds approach. What they want is relief from having to provide state funds as a condition of receiving the federal match.
But what I am especially grateful for is that Feuerherd pointed his readers to an excellent April 4 posting by Robert Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, who again supports what I have argued repeatedly here:
"The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich."
Reich lays out in painstaking, unassailable detail all the ugly reasons why this is the case. Those who are not super rich cannot afford more taxes. But those who are super rich have managed to pay higher taxes in the past and still remained ultra wealthy. It is a time for a country that desperately needs their financial support to stop coddling them and block their relentless drive to impoverish the rest of us.
The question is whether serious people, including President Obama, will pay attention--or whether they will continue to cringe in fear before the tea bagger know-nothings who dominate what currently passes for political dialog.
Friday, March 18, 2011
"A Truly Living Tradition...Must Always Be Recontextualized in the Present Moment"
The headline of this post could easily be lifted from my doctoral dissertation, The Creativity of Church Teaching: A Whiteheadian Alternative to the Notion of Development of Doctrine (1983). One of the central points argued there is that church teaching is a process and that the process moves forward by the continuous, endless interplay of scripture, tradition and contemporary experience.
In fact, however, the headline is a direct quotation from Dr. Richard Gaillardetz, a highly regarded Roman Catholic theologian, in his final Murray/Bacik lecture at the University of Toledo on January 27th, "The State of the Church, 2011." The link is to the website of the National Catholic Reporter, which published the complete lecture online, and the second half of it in its print edition of March 4, 2011. The lecture was his last in Toledo because starting this fall he begins his appointment to the Joseph Chair of Catholic Systematic Theology at Boston College.
For my money, the import of the Gaillardetz quotation is that it is part of his vision of how the exercise of authority in the church could be productively reformed. It comports very comfortably with the recontextualization model that my dissertation tried to articulate: the interplay of scripture and tradition with contemporary experience results in newer church teachings, which simultaneously take their place among the old and make the old teachings available in a novel context, thereby redefining the limits of the older teachings and redistributing the intensities among them.
The context of Gaillardetz vision is provided by the first half of his lecture, in which he traces the history of American Catholicism from the 19th century to the present, but with particular emphasis on the period since Vatican II. Agreeing with other commentators, he sees the tensions within the church as a struggle between those who remain inspired by the achievements of Vatican II, versus those who bought the very conservative, overly clerical interpretation of Vatican II which Pope John Paul II drummed into Catholics during his historically lengthy reign.
In this Gaillardetz explicitly distinguished his analysis from that of Catholic conservative George Weigel, in whose narrative "the church of the 70s and 80s was characterized by a flimsy and irresponsible application of conciliar teaching accompanied by an episcopal practice of cultural accommodation that needed to be corrected by John Paul II's insistence on fidelity to 'settled teaching' and his robust confrontation with the toxic cultural elements of our age." Instead, Gaillardetz argues that in the 70s and 80s "the bishops' conference was not concerned with cultural accommodation but with balanced critical engagement with a sensitivity to the need to moderate the authority claims of their policy judgments."
Gaillardetz suggests that reforming the exercise of authority in the church requires that pastoral leaders "recover the ancient conviction of St. Cyprian of Carthage that you cannot be a good leader and teacher unless your are a humble learner and listener." This would open the door to re-imagining ecclesial authority in three ways.
First, pastoral leaders would recognize that the legal or de jure authority of their offices is only a part of, and in fact quite secondary to, their larger leadership roll. They are called first of all to excel in the charism of leadership. And they are unlikely to achieve success with their de jure authority if they lack the charism of leadership. Thus the screening for candidates for priest and bishop should call forth those who actually possess that charism, rather than finding the most competent dogmatists and legalists.
Second, pastoral leaders need to see themselves not as museum curators controlling how dogmatic antiquities are exhibited, but more as gardeners, tending the living tradition of the church but also trying "to create the best possible conditions for healthy growth but [who] ultimately have to allow the growth process to act according to its own independent processes."
This is where Gaillardetz gets closest to my own thinking. And he can be about as scathing as I think he needs to be: "Too often a crass and antihistorical 'traditionalism' masquerades as a love of tradition. As Jaroslav Pelikan famously put it: 'Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.' If a religious tradition is a truly living tradition and not merely a preoccupation of those prone to nostalgia and love of antiquities, it must always be recontextualized in the present moment. With every new social context the tradition will have to, in some sense, assume a new form."
Third, Gaillardetz recommends his own version of Alfred North Whitehead's dictum, it is more important for a claim to be interesting that for it to be true. Church teaching advances, not by trying to resurrect "the juridical paradigm of command and obey" and not by insisting "on an uncritical and unswerving obedience to all church teachings," but by encouraging Catholics and Christians and other believers and even non-believers to wrestle with the tradition and at least take it seriously in their decision-making. This might not end in internal assent, but it at least allows the tradition to be entertained conscientiously by individuals and by a wide variety of groups. By contrast, a self-proclaimed dictatorship of religious absolutes will be dismissed out of hand.
My dissertation maintains that the only guarantors of the accuracy of church teachings are God and the future. God keeps luring forth new teachings and the future progressively sets them within new limits, provided by the context of newer teachings still. Gaillardetz ends with some sentences which resonate quite harmoniously with that view:
"The Venerable Bede once wrote: 'Every day the church gives birth to the church." Out of this present moment, a new church will doubtless be born. All Catholics should pray that we will be its humble and faithful midwives."
In fact, however, the headline is a direct quotation from Dr. Richard Gaillardetz, a highly regarded Roman Catholic theologian, in his final Murray/Bacik lecture at the University of Toledo on January 27th, "The State of the Church, 2011." The link is to the website of the National Catholic Reporter, which published the complete lecture online, and the second half of it in its print edition of March 4, 2011. The lecture was his last in Toledo because starting this fall he begins his appointment to the Joseph Chair of Catholic Systematic Theology at Boston College.
For my money, the import of the Gaillardetz quotation is that it is part of his vision of how the exercise of authority in the church could be productively reformed. It comports very comfortably with the recontextualization model that my dissertation tried to articulate: the interplay of scripture and tradition with contemporary experience results in newer church teachings, which simultaneously take their place among the old and make the old teachings available in a novel context, thereby redefining the limits of the older teachings and redistributing the intensities among them.
The context of Gaillardetz vision is provided by the first half of his lecture, in which he traces the history of American Catholicism from the 19th century to the present, but with particular emphasis on the period since Vatican II. Agreeing with other commentators, he sees the tensions within the church as a struggle between those who remain inspired by the achievements of Vatican II, versus those who bought the very conservative, overly clerical interpretation of Vatican II which Pope John Paul II drummed into Catholics during his historically lengthy reign.
In this Gaillardetz explicitly distinguished his analysis from that of Catholic conservative George Weigel, in whose narrative "the church of the 70s and 80s was characterized by a flimsy and irresponsible application of conciliar teaching accompanied by an episcopal practice of cultural accommodation that needed to be corrected by John Paul II's insistence on fidelity to 'settled teaching' and his robust confrontation with the toxic cultural elements of our age." Instead, Gaillardetz argues that in the 70s and 80s "the bishops' conference was not concerned with cultural accommodation but with balanced critical engagement with a sensitivity to the need to moderate the authority claims of their policy judgments."
Gaillardetz suggests that reforming the exercise of authority in the church requires that pastoral leaders "recover the ancient conviction of St. Cyprian of Carthage that you cannot be a good leader and teacher unless your are a humble learner and listener." This would open the door to re-imagining ecclesial authority in three ways.
First, pastoral leaders would recognize that the legal or de jure authority of their offices is only a part of, and in fact quite secondary to, their larger leadership roll. They are called first of all to excel in the charism of leadership. And they are unlikely to achieve success with their de jure authority if they lack the charism of leadership. Thus the screening for candidates for priest and bishop should call forth those who actually possess that charism, rather than finding the most competent dogmatists and legalists.
Second, pastoral leaders need to see themselves not as museum curators controlling how dogmatic antiquities are exhibited, but more as gardeners, tending the living tradition of the church but also trying "to create the best possible conditions for healthy growth but [who] ultimately have to allow the growth process to act according to its own independent processes."
This is where Gaillardetz gets closest to my own thinking. And he can be about as scathing as I think he needs to be: "Too often a crass and antihistorical 'traditionalism' masquerades as a love of tradition. As Jaroslav Pelikan famously put it: 'Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.' If a religious tradition is a truly living tradition and not merely a preoccupation of those prone to nostalgia and love of antiquities, it must always be recontextualized in the present moment. With every new social context the tradition will have to, in some sense, assume a new form."
Third, Gaillardetz recommends his own version of Alfred North Whitehead's dictum, it is more important for a claim to be interesting that for it to be true. Church teaching advances, not by trying to resurrect "the juridical paradigm of command and obey" and not by insisting "on an uncritical and unswerving obedience to all church teachings," but by encouraging Catholics and Christians and other believers and even non-believers to wrestle with the tradition and at least take it seriously in their decision-making. This might not end in internal assent, but it at least allows the tradition to be entertained conscientiously by individuals and by a wide variety of groups. By contrast, a self-proclaimed dictatorship of religious absolutes will be dismissed out of hand.
My dissertation maintains that the only guarantors of the accuracy of church teachings are God and the future. God keeps luring forth new teachings and the future progressively sets them within new limits, provided by the context of newer teachings still. Gaillardetz ends with some sentences which resonate quite harmoniously with that view:
"The Venerable Bede once wrote: 'Every day the church gives birth to the church." Out of this present moment, a new church will doubtless be born. All Catholics should pray that we will be its humble and faithful midwives."
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Time to Fire Philadelphia Cardinal Who Failed to Stop Priestly Sex Abuse
National Catholic Reporter blogger Michael Sean Winters makes a persuasive case that failure to remove 21 sexually abusive priests from active ministry in Philadelphia is way beyond embarrassing for the Catholic bishops of the United States. Illustrating that the bishops' 2002 norms on handling sexually abusive priests have failed, it constitutes dire episcopal malfeasance by Cardinal Justin Rigali--so serious that the Vatican should remove Rigali from office. Winters' posting follows:
It has been almost ten years since the clergy sex abuse scandal blew up in Boston in 2002. NCR readers, of course, had earlier been made aware of the issue but no one in the national media or in the country’s chanceries paid much attention before 2002.
That was when the revelations in Boston were so gruesome, with clear evidence that priests who had raped dozens of children were passed from parish to parish, always with the intent of keeping their horrific activities under wraps, that there was no possibility of containing the scandal.
The press and the people of God both demanded an accounting.
Cardinal Law was forced to resign, giving those clamoring for change a pound of hierarchic flesh, but the truth be told, Law did not do anything that other bishops and cardinals had not also done.
The centerpiece of the bishops’ response to the scandal was the adoption of the Dallas norms for the protection of children. The bishops of the United States essentially said to the Catholics of America: We recognize that we have a real problem.
Horrific attacks on children were called to our attention and we did not react with horror, we reacted with a defensive, self-protecting, overly legalistic response. Instead of caring for the child-victims, we cared more about the priest-predators, and more than either, we cared most about the Church’s and our own reputation. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
But the Dallas norms also did something else. They promised a change. Like the prodigal son, the bishops turned around from their former ways at Dallas. They adopted standards of reporting, guidelines for investigating, and independent review boards to look at the ways every diocese in America handled allegations of clergy sex abuse.
It was not only that they had repented, but they promised that the new measures would make any further cover-ups impossible. They got it, and even if they didn’t get it, the norms were in place to force them to confront this horrific sin and stain upon the life of the Church.
After Dallas, we had the most solemn pledge from our bishops that no priest against whom charges had been made would be in active ministry unless an investigation proved those charges to be groundless.
The announcement yesterday that 21 priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia were being placed on administrative leave demonstrates conclusively that the Dallas norms have failed. (Another five were either already retired or had left the archdiocese.)
Last Sunday, those 21 priests presided at Mass in their parishes. Last Sunday, those 21 priests were in active ministry. The charges against them had been examined before and...what? They were either wrongly exonerated or diocesan officials decided to look the other way.
And this is no ordinary diocese. It is led by a cardinal, indeed, by one of the most powerful cardinals in America given his active responsibilities as a member of the Congregation for Bishops. Over the past few years, the fastest way to become a bishop was to be a successful monsignor in Philadelphia.
But we now know the man at the helm was not only derelict in his duties, he completely misunderstood the nature and import of the promises made to the faithful at Dallas.
To be clear, the entire reputation of the entire American hierarchy, and that of the officials in the Vatican, is being weighed in the balance. There is nothing that has been done or said by SNAP, or by victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson, or by any of the Church’s critics that comes even close to the damage to the Church’s reputation inflicted by Cardinal Justin Rigali.
All of the warnings from SNAP about the lack of independence by the independent review boards have been confirmed. The Vatican must remove Cardinal Rigali and remove him now.
On a New Orleans radio show the other day, Archbishop Gregory Aymond said, “What has happened in Philadelphia, quite frankly, is embarrassing to us.”
That is putting it mildly, although Aymond gets credit for breaking the unwritten rule that no bishop criticizes a situation in another diocese. What has happened in Philadelphia eats at the very heart of the credibility of the American bishops as a whole.
If they can’t get the clergy sex abuse mess right, after all their protestations that they had taken steps to deal with the problem, and all their claims that the Catholic Church was now ahead of the curve on the issue, that our policies were such that the Catholic Church was the safest place for a child to be, nothing else matters.
The New Evangelization? Forget about it. Pro-life activities? Not a chance. Advocacy for the poor? It rings hollow. If the leaders of the Church cannot be trusted to keep their most solemn pledge to protect children, they cannot be trusted at all. If they fail to see this, their moral sensibility is not merely skewed, it is dead. It is not only that they cannot be trusted, it is that they should not be trusted.
I do not believe that Cardinal Rigali’s mishandling of this situation is the norm. I believe many bishops, even most bishops, have been faithful to the Dallas norms. But if those norms shifted the responsibility for the safety of children from the clergy to the bishops, and those norms have now been spectacularly breached, either the man who breached them must go or the norms will be seen to have no force.
The bishops and the Holy See can no longer place this scandal on the backs of the clergy. The issue is no longer pedophilia among the priests. The issue is episcopal governance.
St. Augustine taught us many centuries ago that evil is an absence. In Philadelphia, there has been a great evil, the absence of effective, Christian leadership. The culture of bowing and scraping, of “Yes, your Eminence” and “As you wish, your Eminence” has brought into question the credibility of the entire American hierarchy.
Cardinal Rigali has proved himself eminent in his arrogance, in his willingness to flout the standards of conduct to which he had pledged himself. For the good of the Church, no, for the survival of the Church, he must go and he must go in disgrace. No continued membership of the Congregation for Bishops. No sinecure. Let him go someplace quiet and repent of his sins.
Rigali’s brother bishops are said to be livid, as well they might be. But livid is an emotion, not an action, and the situation demands action.
Only the Holy See can remove a bishop from his diocese. The ball is now in the Vatican’s court. If they fail to move swiftly in Philadelphia, the people of God in Ireland and Germany and around the world will take note and the church will be seen to be unserious in its promises.
The day of reckoning in civil court will come, and the payouts to the victims of these priests in Philadelphia will be enormous. But, now, immediately, the Holy See must act to restore whatever credibility can still be salvaged.
The situation in Philadelphia is not, as one person put it, “Boston Reborn.” This is worse than Boston. After Dallas, there is no excuse.
It has been almost ten years since the clergy sex abuse scandal blew up in Boston in 2002. NCR readers, of course, had earlier been made aware of the issue but no one in the national media or in the country’s chanceries paid much attention before 2002.
That was when the revelations in Boston were so gruesome, with clear evidence that priests who had raped dozens of children were passed from parish to parish, always with the intent of keeping their horrific activities under wraps, that there was no possibility of containing the scandal.
The press and the people of God both demanded an accounting.
Cardinal Law was forced to resign, giving those clamoring for change a pound of hierarchic flesh, but the truth be told, Law did not do anything that other bishops and cardinals had not also done.
The centerpiece of the bishops’ response to the scandal was the adoption of the Dallas norms for the protection of children. The bishops of the United States essentially said to the Catholics of America: We recognize that we have a real problem.
Horrific attacks on children were called to our attention and we did not react with horror, we reacted with a defensive, self-protecting, overly legalistic response. Instead of caring for the child-victims, we cared more about the priest-predators, and more than either, we cared most about the Church’s and our own reputation. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
But the Dallas norms also did something else. They promised a change. Like the prodigal son, the bishops turned around from their former ways at Dallas. They adopted standards of reporting, guidelines for investigating, and independent review boards to look at the ways every diocese in America handled allegations of clergy sex abuse.
It was not only that they had repented, but they promised that the new measures would make any further cover-ups impossible. They got it, and even if they didn’t get it, the norms were in place to force them to confront this horrific sin and stain upon the life of the Church.
After Dallas, we had the most solemn pledge from our bishops that no priest against whom charges had been made would be in active ministry unless an investigation proved those charges to be groundless.
The announcement yesterday that 21 priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia were being placed on administrative leave demonstrates conclusively that the Dallas norms have failed. (Another five were either already retired or had left the archdiocese.)
Last Sunday, those 21 priests presided at Mass in their parishes. Last Sunday, those 21 priests were in active ministry. The charges against them had been examined before and...what? They were either wrongly exonerated or diocesan officials decided to look the other way.
And this is no ordinary diocese. It is led by a cardinal, indeed, by one of the most powerful cardinals in America given his active responsibilities as a member of the Congregation for Bishops. Over the past few years, the fastest way to become a bishop was to be a successful monsignor in Philadelphia.
But we now know the man at the helm was not only derelict in his duties, he completely misunderstood the nature and import of the promises made to the faithful at Dallas.
To be clear, the entire reputation of the entire American hierarchy, and that of the officials in the Vatican, is being weighed in the balance. There is nothing that has been done or said by SNAP, or by victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson, or by any of the Church’s critics that comes even close to the damage to the Church’s reputation inflicted by Cardinal Justin Rigali.
All of the warnings from SNAP about the lack of independence by the independent review boards have been confirmed. The Vatican must remove Cardinal Rigali and remove him now.
On a New Orleans radio show the other day, Archbishop Gregory Aymond said, “What has happened in Philadelphia, quite frankly, is embarrassing to us.”
That is putting it mildly, although Aymond gets credit for breaking the unwritten rule that no bishop criticizes a situation in another diocese. What has happened in Philadelphia eats at the very heart of the credibility of the American bishops as a whole.
If they can’t get the clergy sex abuse mess right, after all their protestations that they had taken steps to deal with the problem, and all their claims that the Catholic Church was now ahead of the curve on the issue, that our policies were such that the Catholic Church was the safest place for a child to be, nothing else matters.
The New Evangelization? Forget about it. Pro-life activities? Not a chance. Advocacy for the poor? It rings hollow. If the leaders of the Church cannot be trusted to keep their most solemn pledge to protect children, they cannot be trusted at all. If they fail to see this, their moral sensibility is not merely skewed, it is dead. It is not only that they cannot be trusted, it is that they should not be trusted.
I do not believe that Cardinal Rigali’s mishandling of this situation is the norm. I believe many bishops, even most bishops, have been faithful to the Dallas norms. But if those norms shifted the responsibility for the safety of children from the clergy to the bishops, and those norms have now been spectacularly breached, either the man who breached them must go or the norms will be seen to have no force.
The bishops and the Holy See can no longer place this scandal on the backs of the clergy. The issue is no longer pedophilia among the priests. The issue is episcopal governance.
St. Augustine taught us many centuries ago that evil is an absence. In Philadelphia, there has been a great evil, the absence of effective, Christian leadership. The culture of bowing and scraping, of “Yes, your Eminence” and “As you wish, your Eminence” has brought into question the credibility of the entire American hierarchy.
Cardinal Rigali has proved himself eminent in his arrogance, in his willingness to flout the standards of conduct to which he had pledged himself. For the good of the Church, no, for the survival of the Church, he must go and he must go in disgrace. No continued membership of the Congregation for Bishops. No sinecure. Let him go someplace quiet and repent of his sins.
Rigali’s brother bishops are said to be livid, as well they might be. But livid is an emotion, not an action, and the situation demands action.
Only the Holy See can remove a bishop from his diocese. The ball is now in the Vatican’s court. If they fail to move swiftly in Philadelphia, the people of God in Ireland and Germany and around the world will take note and the church will be seen to be unserious in its promises.
The day of reckoning in civil court will come, and the payouts to the victims of these priests in Philadelphia will be enormous. But, now, immediately, the Holy See must act to restore whatever credibility can still be salvaged.
The situation in Philadelphia is not, as one person put it, “Boston Reborn.” This is worse than Boston. After Dallas, there is no excuse.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Texas Legislature Threatens Poor Seniors with Triple Whammy, AARP Says
The Houston Chronicle ran a cogent analysis by Ollie Besteiro, president of AARP Texas, showing how the Texas Legislature's proposed state budget for the next biennium would "devastate older Texans" in three different ways, compounding their misery and exacerbating health care costs for everyone who is not poor. Yet another example of conservative Republicans' willingness to sacrifice the genuine needs of real human beings to their ridiculous fiscal ideology that increasing government revenue is never a good thing:
What does it say about the value that Texas places on its older citizens when we pay fast-food restaurant workers more than those who provide care for our elders?
Who will take care of our aging parents and grandparents if we keep putting up roadblocks to quality long-term care, both community-based and in nursing homes? Will the services be there for us some day if we need them?
All these are fair questions in light of recent budget proposals being bandied about at the Texas Capitol.
Under consideration is a 10 percent cut in payments to Medicaid providers — including community-based services and nursing homes - on top of a recent 2 percent rate cut that's already gone into effect for nursing homes.
AARP believes that pulling the rug out from under seniors on both ends of the long-term care service spectrum is penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Why? For starters, it's a little-known fact that Medicaid helps pay for two out of three nursing home stays in Texas. Medicaid is easily the largest payer of long-term care in our state, with more than 60 percent of its dollars devoted to the care of the elderly and disabled. That's more than the program spends on low-income women and children. Plus, Medicaid brings important federal matching dollars to the state, to the tune of $1.47 for every one dollar the state puts up.
Texas currently pays the second lowest Medicaid reimbursement rates for nursing homes in the country. Further cuts would have a direct impact on the quality of care received by residents, leaving nursing homes with no option but to reduce staffing. There are volumes of research documenting the relationship between staffing levels and the quality of care. Reduced payments to nursing homes will place our most vulnerable seniors in a highly dangerous situation.
At the same time, the Legislature is proposing to reduce oversight of nursing homes by reducing the number of staff responsible for their monitoring. This would only add insult to injury when it comes to ensuring our seniors are safe.
Cutting Medicaid funding for community-based care would push more people into nursing homes, which are more expensive for the state. We also know that the vast majority of older Texans want to stay in their homes for as long as they are able. On average, nursing home care costs the state more than $3,000 per person per month. Care at home costs the state between $700 and $1,500 per person per month. Community care funds are wisely spent state dollars because they provide coverage while people are still in reasonably good health, preventing the need for more costly treatment later.
Reducing payments for community care programs will make it increasingly difficult for Texans getting help from them to find workers who are willing to care for them. These programs already pay about minimum wage, $7.25 per hour.
In a nutshell, the Legislature's approach is seriously misguided. Lowering payment rates would put the lives of nursing home residents at risk by reducing the number of facility staff. Reducing oversight of these facilities by state personnel will degrade the quality of care received by patients, potentially putting their health at risk. At the same time, reducing rates for community-based care would have the effect of pushing more people into nursing homes, which are more expensive for the state.
Wages for workers who care for clients either in the community or in a nursing home have not kept pace with the cost of living. It's essential that direct-care workers be paid a living wage in order to ensure quality care.
Rather than saving money, the proposed state budget is dangerous for our seniors as well as costly for taxpayers. Both in terms of money and human lives, it is a plan we just can't afford.
What does it say about the value that Texas places on its older citizens when we pay fast-food restaurant workers more than those who provide care for our elders?
Who will take care of our aging parents and grandparents if we keep putting up roadblocks to quality long-term care, both community-based and in nursing homes? Will the services be there for us some day if we need them?
All these are fair questions in light of recent budget proposals being bandied about at the Texas Capitol.
Under consideration is a 10 percent cut in payments to Medicaid providers — including community-based services and nursing homes - on top of a recent 2 percent rate cut that's already gone into effect for nursing homes.
AARP believes that pulling the rug out from under seniors on both ends of the long-term care service spectrum is penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Why? For starters, it's a little-known fact that Medicaid helps pay for two out of three nursing home stays in Texas. Medicaid is easily the largest payer of long-term care in our state, with more than 60 percent of its dollars devoted to the care of the elderly and disabled. That's more than the program spends on low-income women and children. Plus, Medicaid brings important federal matching dollars to the state, to the tune of $1.47 for every one dollar the state puts up.
Texas currently pays the second lowest Medicaid reimbursement rates for nursing homes in the country. Further cuts would have a direct impact on the quality of care received by residents, leaving nursing homes with no option but to reduce staffing. There are volumes of research documenting the relationship between staffing levels and the quality of care. Reduced payments to nursing homes will place our most vulnerable seniors in a highly dangerous situation.
At the same time, the Legislature is proposing to reduce oversight of nursing homes by reducing the number of staff responsible for their monitoring. This would only add insult to injury when it comes to ensuring our seniors are safe.
Cutting Medicaid funding for community-based care would push more people into nursing homes, which are more expensive for the state. We also know that the vast majority of older Texans want to stay in their homes for as long as they are able. On average, nursing home care costs the state more than $3,000 per person per month. Care at home costs the state between $700 and $1,500 per person per month. Community care funds are wisely spent state dollars because they provide coverage while people are still in reasonably good health, preventing the need for more costly treatment later.
Reducing payments for community care programs will make it increasingly difficult for Texans getting help from them to find workers who are willing to care for them. These programs already pay about minimum wage, $7.25 per hour.
In a nutshell, the Legislature's approach is seriously misguided. Lowering payment rates would put the lives of nursing home residents at risk by reducing the number of facility staff. Reducing oversight of these facilities by state personnel will degrade the quality of care received by patients, potentially putting their health at risk. At the same time, reducing rates for community-based care would have the effect of pushing more people into nursing homes, which are more expensive for the state.
Wages for workers who care for clients either in the community or in a nursing home have not kept pace with the cost of living. It's essential that direct-care workers be paid a living wage in order to ensure quality care.
Rather than saving money, the proposed state budget is dangerous for our seniors as well as costly for taxpayers. Both in terms of money and human lives, it is a plan we just can't afford.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Hysteria Over Muslim Growth: A Myth Shared by Jihadists and Islamophobes Alike
The New York Times has an excellent article by religion writer Laurie Goodstein, covering a report by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life on the pace of Muslim growth globally over the next twenty years. The upshot for that time period is that even though the number of Muslims will increase at twice the rate of non-Muslims, the growth rate will level off and will occur at a rate too slow to create any drastic shift in balance among world religions.
(I learned of Ms. Goodstein's report from a reprint in the Belief section of today's Houston Chronicle. I have not been able to find an electronic link to the Chronicle's version, but it appears they published the New York Times article in full.)
The Pew Research Center has a strong track record of gathering actual facts about peoples' religious beliefs and behaviors, and of using expert analysis to dispel myths and misunderstanding. The myth in this case is a pretty much global hysteria about the pace of Muslim growth--shared, ironically, both by Jihadists who want non-Muslims to fear a Muslim tide of global dominance and by Islamophobes who feel compelled to do all in their power to stem that tide.
The Pew findings show that the tide is imaginary. As Muslim economic, education and political levels improve, birthrates in majority-Muslim countries (and among Muslims in majority-non-Muslim countries) will become more like the birthrates among non-Muslims.
The following are excerpts from Laurie Goodstein's report:
A new report forecasts that the number of Muslims around the world will grow over the next 20 years at twice the rate of non-Muslims, but that the rapid growth will level off. With more Muslim women getting educations and jobs, people migrating to cities, and living standards improving, the report says, the birthrate in majority-Muslim countries will come to more closely resemble the pattern in other nations.
Predictions that Europe will become a majority-Muslim “Eurabia” are unfounded, according to the report by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, a nonpartisan research group.
Muslims in Europe made up only 6 percent of the population in 2010, and will grow to 8 percent by 2030, the report says. In France and Belgium, Muslims will be about 10 percent of the population in 20 years, and in Britain, 8 percent.
Globally, Muslims now make up 23.4 percent of the population, and if current trends continue, will be 26.4 percent by 2030. Such growth is not enough to create a drastic shift in the world’s religious balance, experts said. The world’s Christian population has been estimated in other reports to be 30 percent to 33 percent.
Amaney A. Jamal, associate professor of politics at Princeton and a consultant for Pew on global Islam, said that the report could challenge assertions by some scholars and far-right political parties about future demographic domination by Muslims.
“There’s this overwhelming assumption that Muslims are populating the earth, and not only are they growing at this exponential rate in the Muslim world, they’re going to be dominating Europe and, soon after, the United States,” she said. “But the figures don’t even come close. I’m looking at all this and wondering, where is all the hysteria coming from?”
In the United States, the report found about 2.6 million Muslims in 2010, a number projected to rise to 6.2 million in 20 years. (The 2.6 million figure is far lower than the numbers claimed by some American Muslim groups, but not out of line with some previous studies.) At that rate of growth, Muslims would still be a religious minority in 2030, 1.7 percent of the American population — about the equivalent of Jews in the United States today.
The report suggests that economic and educational factors affect population growth rates among Muslims far more than the religious factor. In Iran, which encourages family planning and birth control, the fertility rate of only 1.7 children per woman resembles that of many European countries. It has the lowest fertility rate of any Muslim-majority nation, while Niger, a poor African nation, has the highest, at 6.9 children per woman. Iranian girls receive 15 years of schooling on average; in Niger, it is four years.
(I learned of Ms. Goodstein's report from a reprint in the Belief section of today's Houston Chronicle. I have not been able to find an electronic link to the Chronicle's version, but it appears they published the New York Times article in full.)
The Pew Research Center has a strong track record of gathering actual facts about peoples' religious beliefs and behaviors, and of using expert analysis to dispel myths and misunderstanding. The myth in this case is a pretty much global hysteria about the pace of Muslim growth--shared, ironically, both by Jihadists who want non-Muslims to fear a Muslim tide of global dominance and by Islamophobes who feel compelled to do all in their power to stem that tide.
The Pew findings show that the tide is imaginary. As Muslim economic, education and political levels improve, birthrates in majority-Muslim countries (and among Muslims in majority-non-Muslim countries) will become more like the birthrates among non-Muslims.
The following are excerpts from Laurie Goodstein's report:
A new report forecasts that the number of Muslims around the world will grow over the next 20 years at twice the rate of non-Muslims, but that the rapid growth will level off. With more Muslim women getting educations and jobs, people migrating to cities, and living standards improving, the report says, the birthrate in majority-Muslim countries will come to more closely resemble the pattern in other nations.
Predictions that Europe will become a majority-Muslim “Eurabia” are unfounded, according to the report by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, a nonpartisan research group.
Muslims in Europe made up only 6 percent of the population in 2010, and will grow to 8 percent by 2030, the report says. In France and Belgium, Muslims will be about 10 percent of the population in 20 years, and in Britain, 8 percent.
Globally, Muslims now make up 23.4 percent of the population, and if current trends continue, will be 26.4 percent by 2030. Such growth is not enough to create a drastic shift in the world’s religious balance, experts said. The world’s Christian population has been estimated in other reports to be 30 percent to 33 percent.
Amaney A. Jamal, associate professor of politics at Princeton and a consultant for Pew on global Islam, said that the report could challenge assertions by some scholars and far-right political parties about future demographic domination by Muslims.
“There’s this overwhelming assumption that Muslims are populating the earth, and not only are they growing at this exponential rate in the Muslim world, they’re going to be dominating Europe and, soon after, the United States,” she said. “But the figures don’t even come close. I’m looking at all this and wondering, where is all the hysteria coming from?”
In the United States, the report found about 2.6 million Muslims in 2010, a number projected to rise to 6.2 million in 20 years. (The 2.6 million figure is far lower than the numbers claimed by some American Muslim groups, but not out of line with some previous studies.) At that rate of growth, Muslims would still be a religious minority in 2030, 1.7 percent of the American population — about the equivalent of Jews in the United States today.
The report suggests that economic and educational factors affect population growth rates among Muslims far more than the religious factor. In Iran, which encourages family planning and birth control, the fertility rate of only 1.7 children per woman resembles that of many European countries. It has the lowest fertility rate of any Muslim-majority nation, while Niger, a poor African nation, has the highest, at 6.9 children per woman. Iranian girls receive 15 years of schooling on average; in Niger, it is four years.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
All Our Taxes Won't Save Texas; Leave That to the Least of Our Brothers and Sisters
Houston Chronicle political reporter Lisa Falkenberg has an excellent commentary in today's newspaper on the suicidal folly of the state budget Texas Republicans plan to enact.
Being last among the fifty states in per capita spending and health insurance coverage? That just wasn't good enough for Texas. And so, says Falkenberg, Governor Rick Perry shows us what he really means when he urges Republicans "seize the moment" and "show the rest of the country how conservative governing and budgeting can help lead the way out of this national economic crisis."
They will accomplish this feat by unemploying up to 100,000 educators, denying financial aid to 60,000 students, and cutting programs like Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and food stamps by $2 billion. Really something to be proud of! Go Rick!
Falkenberg's commentary follows in full:
Hey you! Teacher who's going to lose your job, stop worrying. There's no state budget shortfall.
Hey you, community college student who's going to lose your financial aid, and maybe even your campus, stop whining. There's no budget shortfall.
Hey you, kid from the poor side of town who could lose your health insurance and probably your access to pre-school, stop crying. There's no budget shortfall.
There can't be. This is Texas. And according to Gov. Rick Perry, we don't have shortfalls in Texas. And certainly not deficits.
We may have "budget challenges," as Perry termed them in his inauguration speech. They may be challenges that require more than $30 billion in cuts. Those cuts may lead to, among many other things, the elimination of nearly 10,000 state jobs and as many as 100,000 public education jobs, loss of financial aid for 60,000 students; and $2 billion in cuts to programs like Medicaid, CHIP and food stamps that keep our most vulnerable citizens alive.
But, hey, no biggie.
Lost jobs and health insurance aren't exactly urgent matters. And investing in our state's future through the education of our young people is no emergency.
No, in the great state of Texas we reserve that term "emergency" for much weightier matters.
Like cracking down on voter fraud that doesn't exist, outlawing sanctuary cities that never were, and supporting a federal balanced budget amendment that has no hope of passing.
And, of course, allowing the government to barge into a medical exam room and order a woman considering an abortion to submit to a procedure that will compound her emotional distress. You know, important stuff like that.
The governor recently bestowed upon the above issues emergency status while he was in Las Vegas peddling his book at a hunting and shooting trade show. I think this is what the governor would call "multitasking."
Like nearly every other state, Texas is required to balance its budget each session. This means we'll never rack up trillions in credit card debt like the federal government.
In lean times — doomsday times, if you read those paranoid liberal loons in the mainstream media - when there's not enough money coming in to pay the bills, when we're estimated to have only slightly more revenue than we spent in 2006-2007, despite inflation and population growth and increased demand on social services, we don't raise taxes. (Maybe a few fees that nobody will notice, but not taxes.)
We simply cut the fat. Even if there isn't any. Even if we find ourselves hacking away at bone matter.
Now, to the faint of heart, this may sound draconian, especially considering that Texas already ranks dead last in per capita state spending and first in the number of people without health insurance.
But there simply aren't any other options - except, well, it is true that Perry boasted proudly in his campaign ads last year that "today, we have billions in surplus." Indeed we do. It's called the Rainy Day Fund. But the governor has vowed to defend from frantic pillaging that $9 billion pile of your money and mine for the logical reason that if it were spent, the governor and his Republican colleagues could no longer proudly boast that today we have billions in surplus.
It really all comes down to a simple exercise in prioritization. Some things count: the governor's Enterprise "deal closing" Fund for businesses. And some things don't: Early childhood education.
It's the Texan way, the Texas Exception. And lest you take exception, take a moment to recall the prophetic words in Perry's recent inauguration speech. He called on Texans to show the rest of the country how conservative governing and budgeting can help lead the way out of this national economic crisis.
This, declared the governor, will some day come to be known by historians as the "Texas Century."
"This is our time, this is our place in history," according to the governor's speech. "We must seize the moment."
And so we must!
After all, the way we're headed, it could be our last.
Being last among the fifty states in per capita spending and health insurance coverage? That just wasn't good enough for Texas. And so, says Falkenberg, Governor Rick Perry shows us what he really means when he urges Republicans "seize the moment" and "show the rest of the country how conservative governing and budgeting can help lead the way out of this national economic crisis."
They will accomplish this feat by unemploying up to 100,000 educators, denying financial aid to 60,000 students, and cutting programs like Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and food stamps by $2 billion. Really something to be proud of! Go Rick!
Falkenberg's commentary follows in full:
Hey you! Teacher who's going to lose your job, stop worrying. There's no state budget shortfall.
Hey you, community college student who's going to lose your financial aid, and maybe even your campus, stop whining. There's no budget shortfall.
Hey you, kid from the poor side of town who could lose your health insurance and probably your access to pre-school, stop crying. There's no budget shortfall.
There can't be. This is Texas. And according to Gov. Rick Perry, we don't have shortfalls in Texas. And certainly not deficits.
We may have "budget challenges," as Perry termed them in his inauguration speech. They may be challenges that require more than $30 billion in cuts. Those cuts may lead to, among many other things, the elimination of nearly 10,000 state jobs and as many as 100,000 public education jobs, loss of financial aid for 60,000 students; and $2 billion in cuts to programs like Medicaid, CHIP and food stamps that keep our most vulnerable citizens alive.
But, hey, no biggie.
Lost jobs and health insurance aren't exactly urgent matters. And investing in our state's future through the education of our young people is no emergency.
No, in the great state of Texas we reserve that term "emergency" for much weightier matters.
Like cracking down on voter fraud that doesn't exist, outlawing sanctuary cities that never were, and supporting a federal balanced budget amendment that has no hope of passing.
And, of course, allowing the government to barge into a medical exam room and order a woman considering an abortion to submit to a procedure that will compound her emotional distress. You know, important stuff like that.
The governor recently bestowed upon the above issues emergency status while he was in Las Vegas peddling his book at a hunting and shooting trade show. I think this is what the governor would call "multitasking."
Like nearly every other state, Texas is required to balance its budget each session. This means we'll never rack up trillions in credit card debt like the federal government.
In lean times — doomsday times, if you read those paranoid liberal loons in the mainstream media - when there's not enough money coming in to pay the bills, when we're estimated to have only slightly more revenue than we spent in 2006-2007, despite inflation and population growth and increased demand on social services, we don't raise taxes. (Maybe a few fees that nobody will notice, but not taxes.)
We simply cut the fat. Even if there isn't any. Even if we find ourselves hacking away at bone matter.
Now, to the faint of heart, this may sound draconian, especially considering that Texas already ranks dead last in per capita state spending and first in the number of people without health insurance.
But there simply aren't any other options - except, well, it is true that Perry boasted proudly in his campaign ads last year that "today, we have billions in surplus." Indeed we do. It's called the Rainy Day Fund. But the governor has vowed to defend from frantic pillaging that $9 billion pile of your money and mine for the logical reason that if it were spent, the governor and his Republican colleagues could no longer proudly boast that today we have billions in surplus.
It really all comes down to a simple exercise in prioritization. Some things count: the governor's Enterprise "deal closing" Fund for businesses. And some things don't: Early childhood education.
It's the Texan way, the Texas Exception. And lest you take exception, take a moment to recall the prophetic words in Perry's recent inauguration speech. He called on Texans to show the rest of the country how conservative governing and budgeting can help lead the way out of this national economic crisis.
This, declared the governor, will some day come to be known by historians as the "Texas Century."
"This is our time, this is our place in history," according to the governor's speech. "We must seize the moment."
And so we must!
After all, the way we're headed, it could be our last.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
"Smoking Gun:" 1997 Letter Shows SOME Vatican Officials Tried to Obstruct Justice
Several different news outlets are carrying versions of an Associated Press article with headlines like Vatican Told Irish Bishops Not to Report Abuse.
The article says that in a 1997 letter that has not been made public before, Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, expressed Vatican misgivings about "a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits."
The article continues: "Storero wrote that canon law — which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church — 'must be meticulously followed.' He warned that any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the 'highly embarrassing" position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome."
Anti-child-abuse activists in Ireland and the United States saw the letter as "the smoking gun we've been looking for" to document that the Vatican not only sanctioned bishops' hiding pedophiles from criminal investigators but in fact ordered bishops to do so.
Not so fast, says the National Catholic Reporter's John Allen Jr. in a posting today. Allen allows that the letter documents "that in the late 1990s the Vatican was ambivalent about requirements that bishops be required to report abuse to police and civil prosecutors." Allen argues, though, that "There are three bits of context...which complicate efforts to tout the letter as a smoking gun."
The first was that one of the points of the letter was to avoid having bishops' determinations to remove sexual abusers overturned at the Vatican level on procedural grounds if the bishops did not follow the Code of Canon Law meticulously.
Second, the highest concern reflected in the letter was that reporting sexual abuse to the police could not be allowed to violate the seal of the confessional between the priest and his confessor: as long as the bishop protected the sanctity of the confessional, there was nothing to stop him from cooperating with local authorities.
Third, the letter reflected "a debate among senior Vatican officials about how aggressive the church ought to be in streamlining procedures for sex abuse cases." The letter, says Allen, reflects the position of Colombian Cardinal DarÃo Castrillón Hoyos, head of the Congregation for the Clergy at the time. Allen notes that Castrillón lost the argument to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whose tougher stance eventually prevailed.
Allen's bits of context may nuance how the letter constitutes "a smoking gun." But they cannot fully exonerate the Vatican--or Pope John Paul II, whose cause for sainthood is very much tarnished by the Vatican's mismanagement of the entire sexual abuse crisis.
It was good for the abused and for the church that Ratzinger's position eventually trumped the Castrillón stance which John Paul II allowed to dominate for too many years. But at the very least the Vatican is criminally liable for obstruction of justice during the time before Ratzinger prevailed.
The letter undoubtedly is one of the smoking guns for that period. Everyone believes there are more. Now Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger knows that first-hand. He ought to admit it publicly--and in every court case in which the issue is raised. That is the only substantive way for the Roman Catholic institution to make amends for its criminal behavior.
The article says that in a 1997 letter that has not been made public before, Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, expressed Vatican misgivings about "a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits."
The article continues: "Storero wrote that canon law — which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church — 'must be meticulously followed.' He warned that any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the 'highly embarrassing" position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome."
Anti-child-abuse activists in Ireland and the United States saw the letter as "the smoking gun we've been looking for" to document that the Vatican not only sanctioned bishops' hiding pedophiles from criminal investigators but in fact ordered bishops to do so.
Not so fast, says the National Catholic Reporter's John Allen Jr. in a posting today. Allen allows that the letter documents "that in the late 1990s the Vatican was ambivalent about requirements that bishops be required to report abuse to police and civil prosecutors." Allen argues, though, that "There are three bits of context...which complicate efforts to tout the letter as a smoking gun."
The first was that one of the points of the letter was to avoid having bishops' determinations to remove sexual abusers overturned at the Vatican level on procedural grounds if the bishops did not follow the Code of Canon Law meticulously.
Second, the highest concern reflected in the letter was that reporting sexual abuse to the police could not be allowed to violate the seal of the confessional between the priest and his confessor: as long as the bishop protected the sanctity of the confessional, there was nothing to stop him from cooperating with local authorities.
Third, the letter reflected "a debate among senior Vatican officials about how aggressive the church ought to be in streamlining procedures for sex abuse cases." The letter, says Allen, reflects the position of Colombian Cardinal DarÃo Castrillón Hoyos, head of the Congregation for the Clergy at the time. Allen notes that Castrillón lost the argument to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whose tougher stance eventually prevailed.
Allen's bits of context may nuance how the letter constitutes "a smoking gun." But they cannot fully exonerate the Vatican--or Pope John Paul II, whose cause for sainthood is very much tarnished by the Vatican's mismanagement of the entire sexual abuse crisis.
It was good for the abused and for the church that Ratzinger's position eventually trumped the Castrillón stance which John Paul II allowed to dominate for too many years. But at the very least the Vatican is criminally liable for obstruction of justice during the time before Ratzinger prevailed.
The letter undoubtedly is one of the smoking guns for that period. Everyone believes there are more. Now Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger knows that first-hand. He ought to admit it publicly--and in every court case in which the issue is raised. That is the only substantive way for the Roman Catholic institution to make amends for its criminal behavior.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Westboro Backs Off Protesting All Tucson Victims' Funerals, Kansas TV Station Says
KCTV Channel 5 of Kansas City, MO, reports that Fred Phelps' Kansas hate group, which masquerades as Westboro Baptist Church, has backed off plans to picket the funerals of any of the Tucson shooting victims, in exchange for air time on a local Christian radio station and a Canadian radio talk show:
A Kansas church that pickets the funerals of soldiers and blames their deaths on the country's tolerance of homosexuality now says it won't protest the funerals of any victims of Arizona's mass shooting.
Shirley Phelps-Roper, of Topeka's Westboro Baptist Church, says her church has agreed to avoid Thursday's funeral of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green in exchange for live radio interviews in Canada and Arizona.
The church also promised to not protest the funeral of U.S. District Judge John Roll or other victims of the shooting after a nationally syndicated radio show agreed to host church members Monday.
Christina and Roll were among six killed in the shooting Saturday targeting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
Westboro church members picket high-profile funerals to promote their beliefs.
Judging from Google searches, other outlets confirm that the Phelps Klan agreed not to picket yesterday's funeral of nine-year old Christina Green; but KCTV seems to be virtually alone is quoting their change of heart about the funeral of Judge Roll or the other victims. It will interesting to see if KCTV turns out to be accurate.
Meanwhile, kudos to all the Tucson residents and visitors who participated in Angel Actions like the one above at the two funerals that have been held so far, as well as all those who lined streets for miles to protect the mourners and their loved ones from the Phelps's attempt to violate their religious freedom to conduct funerals without harassment from those who believe only in intolerant theocratic nonsense.
In the Crosshairs: Incite Paranoia, And the Crazies Will Do the Killing for You
Predictable. Yet still amazing. That Sarah Palin and her worshippers would disclaim any responsibility for the gun assault on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of Arizona Chief Federal Judge John Roll, along with five others who happened into the line of fire, including a budding nine-year old girl.Those gun-scope sites Palin put on her map of 20 Congressional representatives she wanted eliminated were just map symbols, the Palinistas claim. Even though Rep. Giffords herself, right after Palin published her targets, warned that such right-wing paramilitary symbolism could have very dire consequences. I'd say "hogwash" or "bullshit." But neither term is strong enough to capture the utter hypocrisy of Palin's weaseling. Perhaps the Jack Ohman cartoon above says it best.
At least Palin's lack of remorse has forced brighter minds to reflect on why most of us feel in our gut--despite assurances from all over that such feelings are unjustified--that Palin is not without blame, that at the very least she contributed to the political atmosphere in which the Tuscon shooter became increasingly deranged. The most helpful I have read was Dangerous Outcomes from a Culture of Paranoia, written by Harold Meyerson, op-ed columnist for the Washington Post.
Meyerson helps situate between more accurate limits exactly how Palin and Beck and Limbaugh and the tea partiers incite such violence. They are very careful to maintain a position of plausible deniability and not say outright that anyone should kill anybody else. But instead they paint such a paranoid picture of what their opponents are "doing to the country," and rant about it so often and so dramatically, that some troubled person somewhere is bound to think it's their patriotic duty to do something about it.
Such tactics, of course, have precedent. Consider the Nazis leading up to World War II. Consider the extremists of the pro-life movement. The pattern is the same: arouse paranoia about those you oppose, and the crazies will take them out for you. Here's Meyerson's analysis in full:
Last October, Glenn Beck was musing on his radio show about the prospect of the government seizing his children if he didn't give them flu vaccines. "You want to take my kids because of that?" he said. "Meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson."
Last April, Erick Erickson, the managing editor of the right-wing RedState blog and a CNN commentator, was questioning the legality of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey on a radio show. "We have become, or are becoming, enslaved by the government. . . . I dare 'em to try to come to throw me in jail. I dare 'em to. [I'll] pull out my wife's shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door."
Do right-wing talk show commentators incite violence against the government? Feel free to draw your own conclusions - but to dwell on the rise of violent rhetoric on the right is to miss an even bigger, though connected, problem. Let's focus, rather, on the first part of Beck's and Erickson's observations: The government wants to take away Glenn Beck's (and by extension, your) kids. The government wants to take a census and will throw Erick Erickson (and by extension, you) in jail if he, and you, don't comply.
Can we see the hands of all the kids taken from their parents because they didn't get flu shots? How about all those people rotting in jail because they didn't cooperate in compiling the census?
The primary problem with the political discourse of the right in today's America isn't that it incites violence per se. It's that it implants and reinforces paranoid fears about the government and conservatism's domestic adversaries.
Much of the culture and thinking of the American right - the mainstream as well as the fringe - has descended into paranoid suppositions about the government, the Democrats and the president. This is not to say that the left wing doesn't have a paranoid fringe, too. But by every available measure, it's the right where conspiracy theories have exploded.
A fabricated specter of impending governmental totalitarianism haunts the right's dreams. One month after Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, Beck hosted a show that gamed out how militias in Southern and Western states might rise up against an oppressive government. The number of self-proclaimed right-wing militias tripled - from 42 to 127, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center - in 2009 (and that doesn't count those that are entirely underground).
As much of the right sees it, the government is planning to incarcerate its enemies (see Beck and Erickson, above), socialize the economy and take away everyones guns. At the fringe, we have figures like Larry Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America, who told a rally in Washington last April that, "We're in a war. The other side knows they are at war, because they started it. They are coming for our freedom, for our money, for our kids, for our property. They are coming for everything because they are a bunch of socialists."
But the imputation of lurking totalitarianism, alien ideologies, and subversion of liberties to liberals and moderates has become the default rhetoric of the right. Never mind that Obama is a Marxist, a Kenyan and an advocate of sharia law. Consider the plight of poor Fred Upton, the Republican congressman just installed as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, over considerable right-wing opposition. According to Beck, Upton is "all socialist," while Rush Limbaugh calls him the personification of "nannyism" and "statism." Upton's crime is that he supports more energy-efficient light bulbs. How that puts him in a league with Marx, Engels and Nanny McPhee, I will leave to subtler minds.
American politics and culture have a rich history of paranoia, as historian Richard Hofstadter and many others have documented. Many of the incidents of anti-government violence over the past couple of years - flying a plane into an IRS building in Texas, shooting police officers in Pittsburgh and carrying out last weekend's savagery in Tucson - came from people who, however individually loony they may have been, also harbored paranoid visions of the government that resembled, though by no means entirely, those put forth by the Becks and the Ericksons.
That doesn't make Beck, Erickson, Rupert Murdoch and their ilk responsible for Tucson. It does make them responsible for promoting a paranoid culture that makes America a more divided and dangerous land.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Westboro Fascist Church Hits New Low: Now "God Hates Catholics" Not Just Fags
CNN has been reporting for several hours on steps by the Arizona Legislature and local citizens to mitigate plans by the infamous Fred Phelps and his neo-Nazi Westboro 'Baptist' Church to picket the funerals of those killed by a deranged gunman in Tucson Saturday.
Evidently the first target of Phelps' storm troopers will be the family of Christina Green, the nine-year old girl who was the youngest of the innocents slaughtered.
Earlier postings of the CNN article said a flier on the Westboro website declared they would picket her funeral because she attended a Catholic church with her family, and “God Hates Catholics...God calls your religion 'vain,' as it's empty of His truth; you worship idols!”
At this hour the Westboro website appears to be down--so that linking to the hateful flier, or verifying it was taken down, is not possible. However, CNN has now replaced its earlier reporting with the following more generic account:
"Westboro Baptist Church spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Fred Phelps, provided CNN with a statement detailing their decision to picket the funerals. It is filled with the usual anti-gay, anti-abortion and anti-divorce church members used to justify their pickets -- that God hates America because it has turned its back on what they see as God's way."
Whether the "God hates Catholics" flier is still posted or not, the fact that Phelps and company could use this terrible incident to descend from "God hates fags" to "God hates Catholics" only illustrates more vividly their complete intolerance for any religious belief but their own.
Shame on Phelps and his followers for calling themselves Baptist and sullying the Baptist Church with a message that is neither Baptist nor Christian.
And thank God there are decent people in Tucson and Arizona who are doing what they can to protect the victims' families from theocrats who are as deluded and dangerous as the man who pulled the trigger.
Evidently the first target of Phelps' storm troopers will be the family of Christina Green, the nine-year old girl who was the youngest of the innocents slaughtered.
Earlier postings of the CNN article said a flier on the Westboro website declared they would picket her funeral because she attended a Catholic church with her family, and “God Hates Catholics...God calls your religion 'vain,' as it's empty of His truth; you worship idols!”
At this hour the Westboro website appears to be down--so that linking to the hateful flier, or verifying it was taken down, is not possible. However, CNN has now replaced its earlier reporting with the following more generic account:
"Westboro Baptist Church spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Fred Phelps, provided CNN with a statement detailing their decision to picket the funerals. It is filled with the usual anti-gay, anti-abortion and anti-divorce church members used to justify their pickets -- that God hates America because it has turned its back on what they see as God's way."
Whether the "God hates Catholics" flier is still posted or not, the fact that Phelps and company could use this terrible incident to descend from "God hates fags" to "God hates Catholics" only illustrates more vividly their complete intolerance for any religious belief but their own.
Shame on Phelps and his followers for calling themselves Baptist and sullying the Baptist Church with a message that is neither Baptist nor Christian.
And thank God there are decent people in Tucson and Arizona who are doing what they can to protect the victims' families from theocrats who are as deluded and dangerous as the man who pulled the trigger.
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