Uh, right...

Davenport, the city where my bishop has his cathedra, had a bit of a controversy this last weekend. It seems that on the advice of the city civil rights commission, the city manager, without consulting the city council, issued a memo that Good Friday would henceforth be known as Spring Holiday.

Outrage ensued... Aside from the outcry from Christians, a lot of it came from city employees whose contracts stipulate that Good Friday (NOT Spring Holiday) is a city holiday where they are paid time and a half.

Apparently order has been restored thanks to the city quickly backtracking and noting the city manager was out of order.

Hat tip to ABC News and Drudge.

The "Nomenklatura" That Must Disappear

The title given to Magister's latest piece on the Legion of Christ, a naming of names of men who need to go and sooner rather than later.

It is likely that the Vatican authorities will put the Legion under the command of an external commissioner endowed with full powers.

And he will have to be obeyed by the current heads of the congregation, who are the real obstacle to any movement toward renewal, no matter how slight.

But this leadership group is anything but resigned to giving way.

Freed from the annoyance of the visitors, and not yet subjected to the command of the commissioner, during this interim period which they are hoping will last for "several months" they are doing everything they can to consolidate their power and win the support of the majority of the 800 priests of the Legion, and of the other religious and lay members.

This is an excellent point. There needs to be a rooting out immediately. The Church cannot afford more cover-ups.

After giving the list, Magister details the relationships the men currently in place have with the deceased founder of the Legion and then gives a brief account of their actions.

According to some of the testimonies given to the apostolic visitors in recent months, some in this group knew about the founder's double life, about the carnal acts he performed with many of his seminarians over the span of decades, about his lovers, his children, his drug use. But in spite of that, a fortress was built around Maciel in defense of his virtues, devotion to him was fostered among his followers, all of them unaware of the truth, his talents were emphasized, even among the upper hierarchy of the Church. This exaltation of the figure of the founder was so effective that even today it inspires the sense of belonging to the Legion among many of its priests and religious.

Finally is a brief breakdown of where these men come from.

Both are Mexican, like most of the upper echelon of the Legionaries. The second most privileged nationality is Spanish.

The Italians, on the other hand, have always been kept away from the important posts. They are seen as less trustworthy, in addition to having too many connections in the Vatican curia, where the Legionaries have friends but also enemies, and more of them enemies now.

Women in the Sanctuary

Over at TitusOneNine, the Reverend Canon Doctor Harmon has a post with an excerpt from the Detroit Free Press on churches getting creative in adding men to their congregations.

But today, the head of Greater Grace Temple [Charles Ellis III] in Detroit looks out over his flock on Sunday mornings and gazes at a scene where women outnumber men about 2-1. The demographic shift worries him and other Christians looking for ways to draw men back to church.
[...]

To bridge the gap, churches are developing nontraditional programs to reach out to men — from sponsoring hunting trips and car clubs to holding annual men’s conferences. Some have toughened their messages to emphasize power, using masculine imagery in their services.

Longtime readers of Father Z's blog know that Father frequently blogs about how over time a correlation can be drawn between things like Mass attendance and vocations for the priesthood and the entry of women into what were traditionally male roles.

For instance, this is a comment of mine at T19 where I summed up one of Father's points:

Despite all the ballyhoo attempting to prove some kind of causation between priestly celibacy and the decline in vocations, the number of vocations in the Catholic Church started falling off just when women were being introduced into the sanctuaries as readers and music leaders and communion ministers.

The most obvious and visible expression of this trend can be seen in the altar servers (/altar boys being now out of fashion/). As dioceses across the US one by one started allowing girls to join the ranks of servers, the boys who had always enthusiastically sought the job started coming out less and less. The raw material of the Catholic priesthood has been cut off at the source.

Most of the comments at T19 come from Protestants in churches that may or may not have a female clergy, so the comments on the post covering the Detroit story reflect that outlook. One in particular had this to say:

I strongly disagree with the idea that men follow men because they’re men. I think that men generally don’t choose to follow women pastors because women pastors tend to focus on a damp, huggy, indistinct, kumbaya unitarian Christ who accepts you as you are, so there’s nothing to do. Men would rather focus on the rules and how to “win,” thereby.

While the Catholic Church does not have a female clergy and I wouldn't be so bold as to offer such an all-encompassing generalization, the Church has been undergoing since Vatican II a fight between traditional elements of the faith and what the above describes as a "focus on a damp, huggy, indistinct, kumbaya unitarian Christ who accepts you as you are, so there’s nothing to do." At the same time as noted above, women have taken a greater role, not least of which is the catechizing of Catholic youth. When I was in CCD, I was taught mostly by women. Most of them were pious and devout, but in a few classes, the "touchy-feelly" was pronounced.

Coupled with Father Z's points, an explanation arises for the following given in another comment:

OK, I was able to track down the data and found a nerd’s dream site:

Denomination Percent of parishes with 56% or more female
ROMAN CATHOLIC 73.2%
BAPTIST 69.1%
METHODIST 80.1%
LUTHERAN 76.1%
PRESBYTERIAN OR REFORMED 77.8%
PENTECOSTAL 77.9%
OTHER MODERATE OR LIBERAL PROTESTANTS 86.1%
EPISCOPAL CHURCH 85.1%
OTHER CHRISTIAN, NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED 56.0%
OTHER CHRISTIAN, NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED 60.1%
NON-CHRISTIAN 57.6%

To have a lot of geeky fun, do the following steps:

# Go to the National Congregations home page.
# Clicked “explore the survey data”
# Under “Create Cross-tabulations of Two Variables”Wave 2: 2006-2007 data
# Clicked under the first Variable. “Denomination.” For the second variable choose “Percent of regular adult attendees are Female”

May mix it up. Caution: data junkies can spend a lot of time with this site.
# Clicked: “I want my tables to reflect the number of persons in congregations”
# Clicked: Create Frequency Table.

Bolding my own. Let's rearrange those from greatest to least:

OTHER MODERATE OR LIBERAL PROTESTANTS 86.1%
EPISCOPAL CHURCH 85.1%
METHODIST 80.1%
PENTECOSTAL 77.9%
PRESBYTERIAN OR REFORMED 77.8%
LUTHERAN 76.1%
ROMAN CATHOLIC 73.2%
BAPTIST 69.1%
OTHER CHRISTIAN, NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED 60.1%
NON-CHRISTIAN 57.6%
OTHER CHRISTIAN, NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED 56.0%

The Catholic Church isn't at the top of that list, but it can certainly do better that three-fourths.

On this Fifth Sunday of Lent

An important message from Father Z:

You are all going to die.

I am going to die. You are going to die.

There is no way around it.

When we die, and we will, we will be judged.

Heaven and Hell are the only alternatives.

Both of them are never going to end.

Heaven or Hell are not like going on a really good or really bad cruise.

So, get ready.

You could die before you click away from this page.

Or it could be in a few more years.

But it is going to happen.

You might have some warning and lead time.

You might not.

One day that funeral procession that blocks traffic and keeps you sitting an [sic] waiting at the light is going to be about you.

Get ready.

You will have to account for what you have done with your life.

Father Coyle

by Sharon Davies

Remembering the 1921 slaying of Father James E. Coyle
[From Columbia, the magazine of the Knights of Columbus.]

Father James E. Coyle, an extraordinary priest and Knight of Columbus in the early 20th century, courageously stood up against widely-held anti-Catholic views at the risk, and then cost, of his life.

The Irish-born priest was scarcely in his 20s when, after his ordination in Rome, he was dispatched to Alabama to begin his priesthood. The Catholic population in Alabama had exploded with a promise of jobs, especially in and around Birmingham’s network of coal mines, steel mills and iron foundries. Father Coyle arrived in the city shortly before a wave of anti-Catholicism flooded the country, and the revived Ku Klux Klan (KKK) rebranded itself as a “patriotic” fraternity, targeting blacks, Catholics, Jews and foreigners.

[Read it all.]

Curial Reform, Where Art Thou?

From Damian Thompson:

I wrote: “Unfortunately for the Pope, his enemies inside the Church, who include members of the College of Cardinals, are happy for him to take the rap. Ratzinger was never ‘one of the boys’, the ‘magic circle’ of bishops who covered for each other, and now he is paying for it.”

The world’s cardinals (”they” – CMOC) may have elected Joseph Ratzinger pope by a large majority, but the Vatican is stuffed with curial officials, some of high rank, who resent the fact that Benedict has always been his own man. He has an inner circle, of course, but it’s small – and it’s not made up of canapé-chomping ecumenical back-slappers. Also, even some “conservative” curial officials from the JPII era are horribly snooty about the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, and resent its liberation by this great pontiff.

So when the media stitched up the Pope over these Munich allegations, there wasn’t too much support from Vatican II-obsessed Roman Monsignori. Or their grey-shirted English muckers.

To the Irish

PASTORAL LETTER
OF THE HOLY FATHER
POPE BENEDICT XVI
TO THE CATHOLICS OF IRELAND

(Click above to read the full text)

Prayer for the Church in Ireland

God of our fathers,
renew us in the faith which is our life and salvation,
the hope which promises forgiveness and interior renewal,
the charity which purifies and opens our hearts
to love you, and in you, each of our brothers and sisters.

Lord Jesus Christ,
may the Church in Ireland renew her age-old commitment
to the education of our young people in the way of truth and goodness, holiness and generous service to society.

Holy Spirit, comforter, advocate and guide,
inspire a new springtime of holiness and apostolic zeal
for the Church in Ireland.

May our sorrow and our tears,
our sincere effort to redress past wrongs,
and our firm purpose of amendment
bear an abundant harvest of grace
for the deepening of the faith
in our families, parishes, schools and communities,
for the spiritual progress of Irish society,
and the growth of charity, justice, joy and peace
within the whole human family.

To you, Triune God,
confident in the loving protection of Mary,
Queen of Ireland, our Mother,
and of Saint Patrick, Saint Brigid and all the saints,
do we entrust ourselves, our children,
and the needs of the Church in Ireland.

Amen.

Blasphemy in Italy

ANSA.it: Soccer: Blasphemy cards to be used 'with care'

(ANSA) - Rome, March 17 - Italian soccer's new crackdown on blasphemous comments by players and coaches should be applied "with common sense," the head of the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) said Wednesday.

Responding to protests from clubs, CONI President Gianni Petrucci recalled that blasphemy is a crime under Italian law and he was glad to have suggested the campaign to Italian Soccer Federation chief Giancarlo Abete.

Petrucci, whose organisation oversees all Italian sport, said the campaign to give offending players red cards would go ahead but "FIGC will apply it with common sense".

"Blasphemy is not at all a secondary thing," he insisted, "but we have to handle it with care".

The drive to stamp out irreligious oaths has claimed international headlines and spurred protests from coaches including Juventus's Alberto Zaccheroni who said "championships could be altered by this overzealous campaign".
[...]

In an amateur match, three red cards were handed out for sacrilegious language, leaving one team with ten men and the other with nine.

I'm impressed. When I first glanced at the headline on the main English page, I thought it would be an article about a Muslim majority country in the Developing World, but Italy! That surprised me. Yeah, I know Italy is fighting the crucifix ruling from the EU, but a crucifix in a classroom seems pretty tame compared to referees handing out red cards for blasphemy. True, it's not the state mandating this...

But if it's a law and the sport wants to regulate itself and its players, I'm all for it.

I am interested in what constitutes blasphemy under Italian law and if it is specific to the Judeo-Christian God.

Medjugorje

ESTABLISHMENT OF INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON MEDJUGORJE

VATICAN CITY, 17 MAR 2010 (VIS) - The Holy See Press Office today published the following communique:

"An international investigative commission on Medjugorje has been constituted, under the presidency of Cardinal Camillo Ruini and dependent upon the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Said commission - made up of cardinals, bishops, specialists and experts - will work privately, submitting the results of its work to the authority of the dicastery".
OP/INVESTIGATIVE COMMISSION/RUINIVIS 100317 (80)

It begins.

The Legionaries: A Conclusion?

Magister talks about the conclusion of the visitation to the Legion of Christ. Most of it is recounting the past, but a few snippets are new:

The apostolic visit began on July 15, 2009. And the five bishop visitors fulfilled their mandate halfway through this month of March, with the delivery of their report to the Vatican authorities. They were Ricardo Watti Urquidi, bishop of Tepic in Mexico; Charles J. Chaput, archbishop of Denver; Giuseppe Versaldi, bishop of Alessandria; Ricardo Ezzato Andrello, archbishop of Concepción in Chile; and Ricardo Blázquez Pérez, bishop of Bilbao.

It will be the Vatican authorities who decide what to do. The three cardinals charged with the case are Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of state, William J. Levada, prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, and Franc Rodé, prefect of the congregation for institutes of consecrated life.

But the last word will belong to Benedict XVI, the most prescient of all. Even before he was elected pope and when Maciel still had very powerful protectors in the Vatican, Joseph Ratzinger ordered an extensive investigation of the accusations against the founder of the Legionaries. And as pope, on May 19, 2006, he sentenced him to "a retired life of prayer and penance."
[...]

But that the current leaders of the Legionaries should be left at the head of the congregation is entirely unlikely. The more probable decision is that the Holy See will appoint a fully empowered commissioner of its own, and will set the guidelines for a thorough reform, including the replacement of the current leaders.

But rebuilding from the ground up a congregation still deeply influenced by its disgraced founder will be an arduous enterprise. [Magister then describes the insidious influence of Father Maciel.]

Over the eight months of the apostolic visit, this control was relaxed only in part. Some priests told the visitors about the things they believed were wrong. Others have left the congregation and been incardinated into the diocesan clergy. Others have continued to defend Maciel's legacy. Others feel lost. Still others, finally, have faith in the rebuilding on new foundations of a religious congregation that is part of their lives and that they continue to love.

Others may have faith in a rebuilding, but I don't unless two things happen.

1. All the top and mid-level men in the LC need to be removed from office.

2. The statutes and all the other handbooks and rulebooks handed down by Maciel need to be revised completely. If the LC wants to do it itself, under the direct supervision of the incoming commissioner, then the revisers need to be men who were NOT Maciel's top lieutenants and managers.

If Cardinal Ruini weren't already tapped by Vatican watchers to lead the alleged commission to Medjugorje, he'd be a great no-nonsense prelate to tackle this task.

Time and prayer will tell.

Fisichella to Siena?

From Father Finigan:

The Italian blog of the great Magister (Settimo Cielo) [surprise, surprise!] has carried several related articles recently, including a spat over comments made by Fr Federico Lombardi, the Director of the Vatican Press Office. The most significant article is Accademia per la vita, addio. Fisichella fa le valigie per Siena. (Goodbye Academy for Life. Fisichella packs his bags for Siena.) The speculation is that Archbishop Fisichella recently refused the Diocese of Modena, had dreamed of being Cardinal Archbishop of Turin, but is in fact going to Siena.

Archbishop Fisichella seems to be taking the rap fair and square, and will probably be glad to get some fresh air away from Rome. Not for the first time, the Secretariat of State seems to come up smelling of roses while someone else takes the hit. I wonder just how long it can continue before a big enough gaffe brings about some changes there?

Bolding my own. Readers may remember Archbishop Fisichella from earlier postings about the Brazilian abortion fiasco and the discontent among members of the Pontifical Academy of Life regarding their president and the undercurrents leading back to the Secretariat of State and Cardinal Bertone.

Father Finigan's summary of the reporting of this situation is appreciated!

Merry del Val and the Modern Secretariat

This piece from Magister on Rafael Merry del Val is from a few days ago. Magister sets up the contrast between Merry del Val and the current occupant of the office he held, Cardinal Bertone and then reprints the profile of Merry del Val by Gianpaolo Romanato. The profile details the secretary's close collaboration with st. Pius X.

The most interesting part is not the profile, thought I found it quite informative. Rather it is Magister's set-up, especially this paragraph:

Because of this and other fiascos, the past year will be remembered as the "annus horribilis" of the Bertone secretariat, both inside the Vatican and outside, considering the friction between the secretariat of state and various national episcopacies among the strongest and most faithful to the pope, in Italy, the United States, and Brazil.

Bolding is mine.

Magister's Not Buying

Lent 2010. Pope Benedict's Ash Wednesday

His torment is the disappearance of faith. His program is to lead men to God. His preferred instrument is teaching. But the Vatican curia doesn't help him much. And sometimes it harms him

by Sandro Magister

[...] In this daring enterprise, however, it is astonishing that pope Ratzinger has not been given adequate support by his curia.

The statement from the secretariat of state last February 9 is the latest sign of this imbalance between the magisterium of the pope and the operation of the Vatican machine.

Using the pope as a shield to deny the sending of documents from the Vatican to a newspaper, using a pontifical gendarme as a courrier [sic], and the curial origin of an article with a fake signature, against the background of an affair that still remains intact in its substantial outlines of conflict between the secretariat of state and the Italian bishops' conference – a conflict which the pope has always remained above, implicated by no one – seemed to many an outrageous act. [Notice Magister's complete acceptance of all of this as fact regardless of the denial issued last week by the secretariat of State.] Not only disconnected from, but in strident contrast with the quality and content of the magisterium of Pope Benedict, in spite of his formal approval of the publication of the statement and his renewal of trust in his colleagues.

This affair was reported by www.chiesa a few days ago in this article:

> Italy, United States, Brazil. From the Vatican to the Conquest of the World

But to return to the "things that are above," the following is the message with which pope Ratzinger wanted to introduce Lent this year. [...]

Beyond Boffo

Sandro Magister of Chiesa has more on the conflict between the secretary of State and his ally Vian of L'Osservatore Romano.

Magister looks at three instances where the secretary with the aid of Vian has been working counter to the episcopate.

The first is in Italy where Bertone worked to see Ruini removed from office in a bid to wrestle control of the Italian bishops for himself (read here and here for my past posts on this). The next is US with Obama, first with the L'Osservatore Romano's characterization of the president as working in favor of motherhood and then ignoring the bishops' protests when Obama was honored at Notre Dame and the bishops' position on withholding Communion to politicians. The third is Brazil when, "[l]ast March, an article in "L'Osservatore Romano" disowned the Brazilian bishop of Recife for condemning the authors of a double abortion on a child mother. But the Brazilian bishops saw this as a betrayal by Rome while they were fighting a tough battle with the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over the full liberalization of abortion."

The desire to have peaceful institutional relations with the established powers, of whatever shade they may be, is typical of Bertone. In this, he is applying a classic canon of Vatican diplomacy, which is traditionally "realist," even at the cost of clashing with the national episcopates that are often critical of their respective governments.

[Then at the end, Magister sums up...]

In the Boffo case, Pope Benedict "knows." And he personally sees things more the way cardinals Bagnasco and Ruini do, rather than like his secretary of state.

But the pope's stride is that of the perennial Church. Long and patient.

Is that last sentence a reiteration of the VIS statement that the Pope gives his full support to Bertone and Vian? Time will tell.

Communique Regarding Boffo and Avvenire

VATICAN CITY, 9 FEB 2010 (VIS) - Given below is the complete text of a communique released today by the Secretariat of State:

"Since 23 January an increasing number of news items and reconstructions have been appearing, especially in many Italian news media, concerning the events surrounding the resignation of the editor of the Italian Catholic daily 'Avvenire', with the evident intention of demonstrating the involvement of the editor of the 'Osservatore Romano' in the affair, even going so far as to insinuate the responsibility of the Cardinal Secretary of State. These news items and reconstructions have no basis whatsoever in fact.

"Specifically, it is false that officers of the Vatican Gendarmerie or the editor of the 'Osservatore Romano' passed on the documents which lay behind the resignation of the editor of 'Avvenire' on 3 September last year; it is false that the editor of the 'Osservatore Romano' gave - or in any way transmitted or endorsed - information about these documents; and it is false that he wrote under a pseudonym, or inspired, articles in other publications.

"It seems clear from the proliferation of the most incredible assertions and hypotheses - repeated by the media with truly remarkable consonance - that everything rests on unfounded convictions, with the intention of gratuitously and calumniously attributing to the editor of 'Osservatore Romano' an unmotivated, unreasonable and malicious action. This is giving rise to a defamatory campaign against the Holy See, which even involves the Roman Pontiff.

"The Holy Father Benedict XVI, who has been kept constantly informed, deplores these unjust and injurious attacks, renews his complete faith in his collaborators, and prays that those who truly have the good of the Church to heart may work with all means to ensure that truth and justice triumph".

SS/COMMUNIQUE/... VIS 100209 (310)

Layout

I am going to be messing with the newfangled layout system. Links in the sidebar may disappear without notice. Dum dum DUM!

Bertone: The Worthy Successor of Sodano?

Rorate Caeli has a post on an ongoing conflict where certain powers in the Roman Curia have been attacking their perceived enemies in the Italian bishops' conference. Rorate has a lengthy excerpt from an Italian daily on the situation and the article sums up the situation well:

The rumors, never denied by the Vatican, specifically accuse the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope's number two, and the director of L'Osservatore Romano [the Vatican's semi-official newspaper], Giovanni Maria Vian, of hatching a Machiavellian plan to hit Boffo [the former and allegedly driven out director of the Italian bishops' newspaper], in order to attack his mentor, powerful Cardinal Camillo Ruini, former president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, and his successor, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, considered too independent. Everything in a dark and serious plot now under the observation of Benedict XVI [Rorate note: a report on the matter has been prepared for the Pope by his personal secretary, Mons. Gänswein, according to this Sunday's edition of La Repubblica]. A conspiracy that reflects the harsh internal struggles within the Italian Church.

According to the article excerpt, it was thought that the Boffo affair came about in the first place as a part of an ongoing conflict between the Church and the Italian PM, but the excerpt instead brings to light information that the dossier besmirching Boffo's reputation came from inside the Church.

That sums up the excerpt at Rorate, but it has more detail and the comments are always interesting and informative after some sifting.

As I stated in a comment at Rorate, the Holy Father missed his chance when Sodano stepped down to do it, but his chance is coming up again with the impending retirement of Cardinal Bertone (he's nearing/at the retirement age of 75): once the secretary of State is out of office, the Pope needs to exercise some serious authority and break up the secretariat once and for all.

Deafness in the Catholic Church

At his blog, Father Z posted this question he received and asked for answers since he didn't have one himself:

I have often wondered if there was any specially approved liturgy for profoundly/ severely deaf people prior to the liturgical reforms of the ‘60s? Surely, there must have been some adaptations of the Tridentine Mass to accomadate their needs? For instance, a Tridentine facing the people, or even it being said in sign langauge or something?

In the comments, there are no specific answers and the general consensus is that there were no provisions for the extraordinary form of the Mass prior to the introduction of the new Mass. The comments though focus more on the larger question of how best to accommodate the deaf in Mass. My comments throughout are from the perspective of an adult who has lost his hearing after already being fluent in English. The commenter Ana argues from the point of view of a congenitally deaf person (she is hearing, but her brother is deaf and she is a sign language interpreter).

I could summarize it all, but it would be time consuming. Just go check out the thread.

A World Apart

Last night I watched A World Apart with Barbara Hershey and Jodhi May. It takes place in South Africa during Apartheid. It came out in 1988 and was written for the screen by the real life daughter of the Barbara Hershey character who was played by May in the movie.

I enjoyed the movie, but I have mixed emotions regarding the Barbara Hershey character and the husband/father in the movie. They were both idealists fighting for the cause and were selfless in their efforts and the sacrifices they made and yet their selflessness was negated by their selfishness in having three daughters who suffered.

Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Bentham would say so. On the other hand, I am reminded of this: "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire."

Jewish Ladies

Catholic bloggers and blog readers may remember the blog Once A Chicken, Now A Fish by Janjan from the Boston area who recounted in her blog her religious journey from the Reform Judaism of her youth to Messianism and finally to the Holy Catholic Church. Janjan kept up with blogging for awhile, but eventually deleted all her posts except for her multi-post recounting of how she became Catholic along with her husband.

As is usually the case, I came upon Janjan's blog late in the game when her story was about done after reading about at Amy Welborn's Typepad blog. Janjan's story is one that I've kept in mind since I first read it not only because of its content, but also because Janjan bore a resemblance to a friend of mine, a Jewish lady who is also from the Boston area.

This afternoon I was checking up at a political blog I read now and then and I read a post by one of the blog's many contributors who goes by the nom de plume of Robin of Berkeley [California], a Jewish lady herself who has made her own journey from liberalism to conservatism. She recounted her experience in attending Christmas Eve Mass. It reminded me of Janjan's story and so I thought I'd post a link back to Janjan's old blog and Robin's post for consideration.

Merry Christmas!

Rorate: On the loss of Latin

This post from Rorate Caeli is a good starting point for investigating the anti-intellectualism that has come upon the Church in the last forty years.

Quotes

In email or in posts at messageboards, little quotes at the end of each message have been a common sight since the beginning. Below is a series of quotes I've used over time that I rediscovered the other day when I was checking something out.

My indifference has shut me out. I live in a world of ghosts, a prisoner of dreams. I want God to put out his hand, show his face, speak to me. I cry out to him in the dark but there is no one there.
-Antonius Block, 'The Seventh Seal'

Block is of course the protagonist in Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Block here is expressing his existential crisis of faith as he struggles with Death to learn what comes after.

But I say to you, King of the Numenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive.
-Arwen Undomiel, 'The Lord of the Rings'

This passage spoken by Arwen the daughter of Elrond in an appendix of The Lord of the Rings is one of my favorites. Tolkien's elves are immortal, bound to the earth unto the end. Men on the other hand are granted at their creation the Gift: they are allowed to die and their souls pass beyond the circles of the World to heaven. Of course, immortal elves view death as a release while mortal men view death and the great unknown beyond as a punishment. Hence Arwen's words as she goes from immortality to mortality.

There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.
-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

This is one of Frank Herbert's epigrams attributed to the protagonist that preceded each chapter of Dune. The idea that 'hard times' and 'oppression' bring out human ingenuity in coping and overcoming is certainly not new, but Herbert's expression of the concept is eloquent.

Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
-Roy Batty, 'Blade Runner'

All the best lines from the science fiction/cyberpunk classic Blade Runner are given to the antagonist Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer). In the movie, Roy is an artificially created and enhanced being whose ranks are used by Man to fight, to work in hazardous environments and to provide sexual services. Roy escapes in order to track down his creator in a bid to obtain more life (his kind live and die in a span of only a few years). In this quote, Roy expresses to the protagonist as the protagonist hangs off a building about to fall to his doom the sense of what it is to be a slave.

The Zero Sum Game

It's been awhile since I've written about the People's Republic of China (mainland, communist China). The Holy Father issued his letter back in 2007 and after that, things in the Far East dropped off my radar screen.

Now we have this: China: One Bishop's About-Face Reignites the Dispute between Bertone and Zen by Sandro Magister.

I'll sum up very briefly: The secretary of state Cardinal Bertone believes that now is the time to come out of the shadows, even if it means accepting the directions of the communist regime; this is based on the Pope's phrasing on how the clandestine Church is not a natural state. He makes other points as well on the state of the clergy in China. Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong on the other hand believes that the Pope's words about the clandestine Church not being a normal feature of Church life, the Pope means that the Church should continue until the abnormal circumstances of communist oppression are at an end.

My first instinct in this matter is to go with Cardinal Zen and give nothing to the communist Chinese.

Just as it is easy to connect to the clandestine community Bertone's statement that "a truly Eucharistic community cannot retreat into itself, as though it were self-sufficient, but it must stay in communion with every other Catholic community."

This point of Bertone's quoted by Magister is on the outside convincing, but I am reminded of various instances throughout history when Christians have been persecuted or when a small, orthodox faction of Christians have been at odds with a far larger faction of heterodox Christians that have the backing of the State. Does communion with other Catholic communities trump the freedom of the Church to govern its own affairs? I would say no.

Health Care

I wrote this as a comment at TitusOneNine:

It’s a slippery slope. All the things that may end up left out of the bills now (abortion, euthanasia, etc.) may be slipped in later once control is handed over. What I am fearful of is that the bishops are either letting their own personal or ‘institutional’ (USCCB) opinions intrude or else simply being short-sighted by approving of a concept that will subvert the autonomy of the individual conscience.

As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations. Still, that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.
—Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 79

If you want to talk about conscience, then feel free to discuss free will and each person’s willingness to give to charity to help those in need. But I for one do not accept the premise that government confiscation of revenue for whatever reason beyond the most basic necessities is a legitimate means to provide for those in material need.

The Apostolic Constitution

Anglicanorum coetibus Providing for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans Entering into Full Communion with the Catholic Church (November 4, 2009) - in English

Complementary Norms for the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus (November 4, 2009) - in English

I'm waiting to see what some canonists think, but at a first reading, it all looks pretty impressively done.

Pro-Life Advocates Beware

From AveWatch.com: Ave Maria Loses Catholic Moral Authority, Moves Focus to Pro-Life Crowd.

Everyone who frequents this blog should by now know of my fascination with all things Ave Maria and Tom Monaghan. AveWatch.com is the premiere watchdog site that keeps track of the pizza baron and his great boondoggle down in Florida. In an article posted on Tuesday, Ave Watcher analyzed recent data points and draws the conclusion that with large segments of orthodox Catholicism onto his MO, Tom and his co-conspirators are moving to woo the pro-life movement at large in a bid to further the brand of Ave Maria.

Read it all, it's pretty damning.

No More Crucifixes

Reuters/Yahoo!: Italy, Vatican in uproar over court crucifix ruling

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that crucifixes should be removed from Italian classrooms, prompting Vatican anger and sparking uproar in Italy, where such icons are embedded in the national psyche.

"The ruling of the European court was received in the Vatican with shock and sadness," said Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, adding that it was "wrong and myopic" to try to exclude a symbol of charity from education.

Read the whole thing for various responses, etc. Will Italy tell the EU courts to stick it or will it knuckle under? Only time will tell.

EDIT; Zenit's in my inbox, so here are more links...

Vatican "Regrets" European Court Ruling on Crucifix

and

Crucifix Ruling Seen as Severing Italy From Roots

"It ignores or neglects the multiple meaning of the crucifix, which not only is a religious symbol, but also a cultural sign," a communiqué from the conference stated. "It does not take into account the fact that, in reality, in the Italian experience, the display of the crucifix in public places is in harmony with the recognition of the principles of Catholicism as part of the historical patrimony of the Italian people, confirmed by the Concordat of 1984."

Notes on All Saints Day

I've read through the clarification from the Press Office on married men being ordained and I've read reaction and analysis to it around the blogosphere both saying that it both clarifies and muddies the issue. We'll wait for the apostolic constitution.

For those of you who have come upon this blog looking for information on papal appearances, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I do not have the fluency in Italian to serve as the Holy Father's social diary. I wish you well though in finding what you're looking for.

Rorate always has good posts compiling relevant excerpts from Catholic history and tradition: this is one of them.

A Disgusting Case

Dr. Edward Peters, the esteemed canon law expert, has posted this morning on the case of Sister Donna Quinn of Sinsinawa Dominicans who is known for serving as an escort at abortion clinics.

You can read more about the Sinsinawa Dominicans at the left under the Father Mazzuchelli link (yes, those sisters).

Dr. Peters suggests a few canons under which Sister Donna could fall, but he is not enthusiastic as to if any consequences will come from her actions. I wonder though if this lack of action on the part of the community could be brought before those undertaking the current examination of women religious here in the US?

Homeless Widows and Orphans

From the Belfast Telegraph care of Kendall Harmon:

At the moment when a Catholic priest retires, the church only has responsibility towards him.

But what if the priest was married, has a wife and family?

Where would they go if they had to vacate their parochial home? What would they live on? What would happen to clerical widows or, even more distressingly, orphaned children?

Secondly, how could the Catholic Church maintain its stance on clerical celibacy?

It cannot argue logically that it is permissible for married Anglican clergy to convert to full communion with the Catholic Church and yet deny Catholic clergy the right to marriage.

Bolding mine. I don't bring all these questions up in my posts because I'm opposed to this move by the Pope. On the contrary, I am all for it. The Anglican Communion has been a mess for years now and it's about time Rome stepped in in an authoritative way, especially with the TAC petitioning for entrance. However, these are all questions that are going to need to be answered in the Apostolic Constitution or any companion documents before people start coming over or else Rome is going to have a real mess on its hands as the usual circumstances of human life rear their ugly heads.

Kudos to Kendall Harmon for bringing together so many good links on all of this.

Contraception

From a Commonweal blog post linked to by Kendall Harmon:

A friend of mine, a former Anglican actually, brought up an issue that I hadn’t thought about with respect to the new Anglican rite: contraception. In 1930, the Lambeth Conference declared that contraception was not always immoral, and could be used (for serious reason) to regulate the number of children that a married couple had. That declaration prompted a negative response from the Roman Catholic Church–the encyclical Casti Connubii, which declared that the use of contraception was never morally permissible. As most people know, that stance was reaffirmed by Humanae Vitae.

Now, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that the prohibition against contraception is not a matter of “rite” or religious practice–it is a matter of natural law, binding not only upon Catholics, but upon all persons. So Anglicans who join the Catholic Church will be expected to conform to the prohibition There is no such thing as a dispensation from the strictures of negative moral absolutes. It’s true, of course, that many Roman Catholics make their own decisions about this matter, and come to their own private peace with God in the “internal forum” of their conscience. But the new influx of Anglicans will include people who will not be able to come to a purely private peace–the married members of the clergy, who will be required to follow Humanae Vitae no less than other married persons.

As far as I am aware, however, the morality of contraception under certain circumstances has been more or less a settled issue among Anglicans–even traditionally minded Anglicans. How will this change work out?

As we know, the leaders of the Traditional Anglican Communion have already signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church and they and their followers must be prepared to accept Catholic dogma and doctrine and all that it requires.

But for other Anglicans who may have issues with the Anglican Communion, but are not so interested in all that comes with Rome, one hopes Rome is prepared with its requirements for ordaining married Anglicans that this is singled out as a primary point.

Marriage

From Rorate, a quote by John Hepworth in an interview:

JH: Bishops in the new Anglican structure will be unmarried. This is out of respect for the tradition of Eastern and Western Christianity. But priests who come from Anglicanism will be able to serve as priests in the new structure, whether married or not, after satisfying certain requirements. The truly radical element is that married men will be able to be ordained priests in the Anglican structure indefinitely into the future. It is anticipated that Anglican bishops who are married when they joined the new structure will still be able to serve as priestly ordinaries, exercising some of the responsibilities of bishops.

Yeah...

...I was afraid of this. Ruth Gledhill yesterday:

A source in Rome tells me that the African bishops have been watching the Anglican developments with interest, in some cases with amazement. Even though England, Wales and the US have been quietly receiving married former Anglican priests to work as Catholic priests for decades, it seems that until this new Apostolic Constitution with its juridical implications was announced, the African bishops had no idea this had been going on.

Now that it is to get canonical standing, some of these bishops are asking, understandably, 'If they can, why can't we......?'

Maybe those who are suggesting the Anglican annexe about to be built onto Rome may be better described as a Trojan horse are on to something. Even the superbly-informed Francis Rocca is writing about the new light this throws on the celibacy issue, so you never know.

Ruth certainly represents a specific constituency (above the passage cited here, she was giving praise to NCReporter for its reporting on the Anglican ordinariate announcement), but if her source is reliable, then certainly such rumblings will have to be headed off immediately. Hard and fast rules are needed now to both clarify the situation for possibly incoming Anglicans and answer those Catholic clerics who are less attached to celibacy than the Pope, especially with Archbishop Milingo still in recent memory.

Anglican Ordinaries

I don't have all the links to the statements and responses just now as I've been off to the dentist this morning. As it has been noted by various people, there are several key points that await clarification when the apostolic constitution is made public:

-There there be one uniform 'Anglican' liturgy?

-Will married clergy be permitted past the first generation?

-What are the differences between the new structure and existing ones?

And so on. Past posts at this blog do much to lay out the background of today's announcements.

Quinceanera Season?

One of the top images provided by a search for the term 'quinceanera' at Google is found at this blog, specifically this post.

The Twilight Zone

NORWAY PM SAYS OBAMA TO COME TO OSLO TO ACCEPT NOBEL PEACE PRIZE... DEVELOPING...

SOURCE: Obama will accept award on 'behalf of Americans and America's values'... Developing...

OCTOBER SURPRISE: OBAMA WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE...

MIXED REVIEWS; 'EMBARRASSING JOKE'...

PAPER: This makes mockery of peace prize...

White House Aide: 'It's Not April 1st, Is It?'...

Carter: 'Bold statement'...

Lech Walesa: 'Too early. He has no contribution so far'...

Oslo 'political endorsement'...

The headlines off Drudge this morning as of 9:55 AM CDT. Everyone is a winner, right? :P

UPDATE: There are a lot of blog posts out there this morning on this subject. I'm not going to duplicate the effort, but the one observation I find most relevant is that nominations had to be in by February 1st. Do ten days worth of being a rookie president of the United States merit the Nobel Peace Prize? Apparently the committee thought so.

Or Else!

Via Drudge, we have this blog post from ABC News' George Stephanopoulos:

In a letter just released, the three Catholic bishops leading the Church’s efforts on health care warned Congress that “we will have no choice but to oppose the bill” unless current bills are amended.

The letter signed by Bishop William Murphy, Cardinal Justin Rigali and Bishop John Wester outlines three main areas of concern: “that no one should be forced to pay for or participate in abortion, that health care should be affordable and available to the poor and vulnerable, and that the needs of legal immigrants should be met.”

Of those, of course, abortion poses the gravest threat to the bill. The bishops simply don’t buy the argument that House Democrats found a way to block public funding for abortions with the Capps amendment, and they insist that the Hyde amendment doesn’t apply to the bills because they are not appropriations measures. A sizable bloc of House Democrats, led by Bart Stupak of Michigan, agree and are pressuring for a clear prohibition on public funding.

Not really much new here, but the reference to /legal/ immigrants (my emphasis) is heartening.

More Ave Maria News

AveWatch: Safranek Wins Settlement from Ave Maria and Monaghan

Detroit attorney Deborah Gordon announced today that former Ave Maria School of Law professor Stephen Safranek accepted a settlement offer in his October 2007 wrongful termination suit against Tom Monaghan, the Ave Maria Foundation, the Law School, and Bernard Dobranski (the recently-resigned AMSL Dean and President). The Law School’s Board of Governors will rescind its earlier revocation of Professor Safranek’s tenure; further, the Board will rescind the preceding suspension and all censures imposed by then-Dean Dobranski.

Lots of links and reaction. Check it out.

Ouch

Peruse this article in American Thinker: The Catholic Bishops and ACORN by Mark Wauck. He goes into detail, quoting many previous articles, in describing the Catholic Campaign for Human Development's history and relations with the world of ACORN (before CCHD severed ties with it amid news of massive embezzlement at ACORN) and community organizing at large. (Guess which organization funded a few of our present president's jobs?)

Summing up:

The article [a CNS article quoted by Wauck] goes on to relate a CCHD spokesman's claims that CCHD subjects its grantees to a great deal of scrutiny, and that they had no suspicion of irregularities in voter registration drives. You can take those claims for what they're worth, but the fact remains that CCHD -- which is to say, the Catholic Church in America -- has for decades been funneling millions of dollars into an organization founded by radical leftists.

That's bad news. Bad for the bishops, bad for the Church, bad for America.

In an addendum written after the new revelation on CCHD's funding of pro-abortion and prostitution groups, Wauck refers to the widely-quoted words of Father Neuhaus of First Things regarding where the Catholic laity's money is going: down the rabbit hole:

He called the organization "misbegotten in concept and corrupt in practice," and went so far as to urge that it be terminated. "What most Catholics don't know, and what would likely astonish them," wrote Fr. Neuhaus, "is that CHD very explicitly does not fund Catholic institutions and apostolates that work with the poor." Neuhaus suggested that the bishops would do better to spend their money on more Catholic-related projects, such as "Catholic inner-city schools."

Bolding mine.

Pretending and Reality

Father Z has pointed out an article at the website of the Cincinnati Enquirer regarding the actions of the local ordinary in dismissing a female religious for advocating on behalf of women's (pretend) ordination. They're also doing a poll.

Check it out.

Last checked: 6:10 PM CDT

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Should the Church allow women to be ordained as priests?
Yes (1560) 55.85%
No (1157) 41.42%
I'm undecided (76) 2.72%
Total Votes: 2793

Dipping Into Health Care

His Excellency R. Walker Nickless of Sioux City has this to say regarding the health care debate (hat tip to Hotair.com):

First and most important, the Church will not accept any legislation that mandates coverage, public or private, for abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic stem-cell research.

We refuse to allow our own parish, school, and diocesan health insurance plans to be forced to include these evils. As a corollary of this, we insist equally on adequate protection of individual rights of conscience for patients and health care providers not to be made complicit in these evils. A so-called reform that imposes these evils on us would be far worse than keeping the health care system we now have.

Second, the Catholic Church does not teach that “health care” as such, without distinction, is a natural right.

The “natural right” of health care is the divine bounty of food, water, and air without which all of us quickly die. This bounty comes from God directly. None of us own it, and none of us can morally withhold it from others. The remainder of health care is a political, not a natural, right, because it comes from our human efforts, creativity, and compassion.

As a political right, health care should be apportioned according to need, not ability to pay or to benefit from the care. We reject the rationing of care. Those who are sickest should get the most care, regardless of age, status, or wealth. But how to do this is not self-evident. The decisions that we must collectively make about how to administer health care therefore fall under “prudential judgment.”

Third, in that category of prudential judgment, the Catholic Church does not teach that government should directly provide health care.

Unlike a prudential concern like national defense, for which government monopolization is objectively good – it both limits violence overall and prevents the obvious abuses to which private armies are susceptible – health care should not be subject to federal monopolization.

Preserving patient choice (through a flourishing private sector) is the only way to prevent a health care monopoly from denying care arbitrarily, as we learned from HMOs in the recent past. While a government monopoly would not be motivated by profit, it would be motivated by such bureaucratic standards as quotas and defined “best procedures,” which are equally beyond the influence of most citizens. The proper role of the government is to regulate the private sector, in order to foster healthy competition and to curtail abuses. Therefore any legislation that undermines the viability of the private sector is suspect.

Emphasis mine. The bolded parts are excellent illustrations of his point.

FUMARE has a post on monetary policy and the Pope's failure to address it in his encyclical. The post references a critique by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. in Taki's Magazine.

I'm not so interested on the monetary policy bits as I am the general response of Woods to Caritas in Veritate:

I actually didn’t want to write anything about the Pope’s encyclical. In 2007, I wrote a book, Sacred Then and Sacred Now: The Return of the Old Latin Mass, in defense of the Pope’s restoration of the traditional Latin liturgy, an area in which Benedict XVI is quite knowledgeable and has much of value to say. I like this Pope. He is smart and serious, not frivolous or vain. He is in many ways a substantial improvement over his predecessor. (I cite as evidence the very fact that the media believes the opposite.) And having been viciously denounced and ridiculed by some pretty despicable people, he certainly has all the right enemies.

I have reluctantly yielded to the urging of quite a few correspondents and typed up a few thoughts. So here goes: Caritas in Veritate strikes me as at best a relatively unremarkable restatement of some familiar themes from previous social encyclicals. At worst, it is bewilderingly naïve, and its policy recommendations, while attracting no one to the Church, are certain to repel.

The response to the encyclical throughout the right-of-center Catholic world was drearily predictable: with few exceptions, it was a performance worthy of the Soviet Politburo, with unrestrained huzzahs everywhere.

It is one thing to receive a statement from the Pope with the respect that is due to the man and his office. It is quite another to treat his every missive as ipso facto brilliant, as if the Catholic faith depended on it. If his supporters are trying to live down to the Left’s portrayal of Catholicism as a billion-person cult, they could hardly do a better job.

Woods then launches into an explanation of the concepts of his book and how economics should be viewed only as what it really is, an objective study of economic processes and the theories that attempt to describe those processes. Then Woods goes on:

Nothing in the Deposit of Faith even comes close to deciding this and countless other important economic questions one way or the other. Not even the most uncomprehending or exaggerated rendering of papal infallibility would have the Pope adjudicating such disputes as these. Yet misunderstandings or ignorance regarding such seemingly abstruse points are so often at the heart of the policy recommendations that bishops’ conferences propose and papal encyclicals can seem to imply.

It is obviously not “dissent” merely to observe that the cause-and-effect relationships that constitute the theoretical edifice of economics are not a matter of faith and morals. They simply do not fall within the range of subjects on which a Catholic prelate is endowed with special insight or authority. Catholic laity cannot head up petition drives against them. They are facts of life. Facts cannot be protested, defied, or lectured to; they can only be learned and acted upon. There is no use in shaking our fists at the fact that price controls lead to shortages. All we can do is understand the phenomenon, and be sure to bear it and other economic truths in mind if we want to make statements about the economy that are rational and useful.

Woods closes out the section of his critique by basically saying what we already know in the real world (and the Holy Father does in his Catholic world when dealing with Catholic things): just saying it should be this way won't make it so, especially when economics is a trade-off. One can't ask for higher wages for all bread winners and expect employers to be able to pay to hire as many bread winners as before.

Anyway, go read through the rest. It's pretty interesting.

Unidentified Body

I follow a few cases at websleuths.com including the following:



We have a few readers out that way. Leave a comment if you know anything.

The Canonization of John Paul II

Damian Thompson at his blog Holy Smoke takes a look at a post by a law student named Eric Giunta at RenewAmerica.

Thompson includes long excerpts of Giunta's column, including:

Though Catholics and others are loathe to admit it of an otherwise beloved Pope, John Paul II oversaw a church which deteriorated in both its inner and outer life. His callous indifference toward the victims of priestly sexual abuse in refusing to meet personally with a single one of them, and his stubborn refusal to compel the resignation from office of any of the bishops who aided, abetted, and covered-up the abuse, are testamentary to his utter failure: not as a Catholic or a theologian, but as a Pope.

And so on. Read the entire thing at RenewAmerica, but that's the gist. After the long excerpts, Thompson concludes with the following:

I don’t endose these views: in fact, it seems perfectly obvious that the reign of John Paul II was one of slowly growing orthodoxy in the Church, nurtured by his Catechism and a series of magnificent encyclicals. And those Catholics who want to draw a sharp distinction between the agendas of John Paul and Benedict are overlooking the fact that the theological direction of the last pontificate owed an enormous amount to the current Holy Father, who would be horrified by Giunta’s article.

Yet this debate is clearly gathering pace. JPII loyalists are also on the warpath. (George Weigel is using the Maciel scandal as a stick with which to beat this administration, not the last one.) So I’d be interested in your views.

Though Mr. Thompson is right that a lot of good that we're seeing now began first during the pontificate of John Paul II through the continued influence of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, I think that Mr. Thompson ignores by painting over Giunta's comments as just more anti-JPII rhetoric that Giunta's points deserve at the very least direct refutation since they aren't dealing necessarily with /theology/. John Paul II was by most accounts an indifferent administrator at best. Whether that in itself is grounds for blocking canonization I cannot say, but that indifference certainly had consequences that we're living with and cleaning up to this day.

This comment left by Hamish McGlobbie contains the best advice:

I think we could wait 20 years or so before rushing to canonize anyone. Presumably it is God who decides whether they go fast-track to Heaven, rather than a Vatican committee, and it will be easier to make such evaluations when we have had more time. JP2 = good guy? (yes). JP2 = saint? (hard to tell).

A Great Quote

To be Roman Catholic, on the other hand, is to join a motley crew. We come from all classes. We are sometimes desperate in our prayers and excessive in our devotions.

And further on:

Yes, let us continue to bring a greater dignity and reverence to Roman Catholic liturgy, and yes, in this let us learn something from Anglo-Catholics if we can. But let us never lose sight of who we do it for. Someone once said to Newman, dismissively, ‘Who are the laity, anyway?’ To which Newman quietly replied: ‘The Church would look pretty foolish without them.’

Cardinal Newman's Cause

Cardinal Newman's cause is coming along. I was glancing through the website for bits of material and decided to share with you all.

The current process for canonization is a bit too streamlined and modernized for my tastes, but the venerable Cardinal Newman is I would say more than worthy of being raised to the altars.

Walter Cronkite Dead At 92

The former CBS News anchor is dead at age 92. Walter Cronkite is a bit before my time, though of course I've known of him for as long as I can remember. Kind of like waiting to have the telephone installed, gas pumps with analog dials and a world without cable, Uncle Walt represented a different era.

Rest in peace.

Pope Breaks Wrist, Has Surgery

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99G8D704&show_article=1

Not much to it. He fell in the night, probably stumbling around in the dark on the way to the kitchen.

AOSTA, Italy (AP)—Doctors say Pope Benedict XVI will have to stay in a cast for a month after breaking his right wrist in a fall in his chalet while vacationing in the Italian Alps.

Pierluigi Berti, the director of the Umberto Parini hospital in Aosta, said doctors had successfully performed a 20-minute operation and the pope would be released later Friday.

The surgery was performed under local anesthesia to reduce the fracture, a procedure to realign the broken bone fragments.

A Vatican statement said the 82-year-old pope fell in his room in a nearby chalet overnight and despite the accident, celebrated Mass and had breakfast before going to the hospital.

Thankfully it isn't anything worse than that.

Sistani Redux

Read this: August 2007

Then read this (from Pajamas Media, quote below from Threatswatch):

This is a huge development. One of the biggest questions I and others have had since the Iranian protests/revolt/revolution began was whether Mousavi would be any different in tangible effect (Hizballah & Hamas support, etc.) than Ahmadinejad and whether Rafsanjani was seeking to sack ‘Supreme’ Leader Khamenei simply to acquire the powerful position for himself. That question perhaps may have been answered today. My ears first perked up when word made it through the grapevines over the weekend that Rafsanjani had been meeting with other Ayatollahs and clerics in Qom, and had among them a representative of Iraq’s Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Why? Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in 2007 made two very critical statements: that “I am a servant of all Iraqis, there is no difference between a Sunni, a Shiite or a Kurd or a Christian,” and that Islam can exist within a democracy without theological conflict. You will never hear such words slip past the lips of Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei. Ever. Sistani’s presence at the Rafsanjani talks in Qom, Iran, through a representative brings therefore added significance. And the al-Arabiya report above seems to suggest that Rafsanjani is not seeking Sistani’s support for superficial reasons. In November 2007 at National Review Online, I wrote about this aspect of Ayatollah Ali Sistani, including a reference to another analysis I had written earlier in the spring.
[...]

Sistani’s appeal does not end at the Iraqi border, as Iranians increasingly observe his leadership with interest and fondness. Some are “intrigued by the more freewheeling experiment in Shi’ite empowerment taking place across the border in Iraq,” which is fundamentally different in approach than the Iranian theocratic brand of dictated observance and obedience. The Boston Globe’s Anne Barnard reports that within Tehran’s own central bazaar, “an increasing number of merchants are sending their religious donations, a 20 percent tithe expected from all who can spare it, to Iraq’s most senior Shi’ite cleric.”

If that didn’t quite sink in, go read that paragraph again. many Iranian merchants have been sending their 20% tithes to Sistani, not Khamenei. Since at least 2007. I spoke to the significance of Rafsanjani seeking Sistani’s support earlier on ‘The Steve Schippert Show’ on RFC Radio just before the al-Arabiya story broke. His name is an attention-getter for those aware of players and forces in both Iran and Iraq. And for good reason. Perhaps in Iran, just as in Iraq today, true democracy can exist “without theological conflict” with the Shi’a faith. And perhaps the most unlikely cast of available men in Iran are set to bring that to be. Perhaps only something close, or closer. But whatever the change, and the extent of the change - and it appears the intent is significant change and not simply a game of Shuffling Ayatollahs - it will be positive for Iranians, for the region, for Americans and for the entire world. I think it is nearly inevitable at his point, and time is not on the regime’s side.

This is huge if Sistani is truly playing a part in whatever is going on in clerical circles in Qom. Sistani is the most senior cleric in Shi'ite Islam and any move by the Iranian clerics toward him and the tradition he represents would be as the quote says truly beneficial for Iran and the Middle East.

Theological Underpinnings

According to reports, things in Iran are mostly quiet. The threat of using the Revolutionary Guard to put down further revolt has been made, but plans are allegedly being made for a general strike.

Reza Aslan at The Daily Beast has a new post up on the origins and theological underpinnings of the religious portions of the Iranian government.

Called Valayat-e Faqih, or “Guardianship of the Jurist,” this unique religio-political system was the brainchild of the founder of the Islamic republic, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who died in 1988. In theory, the faqih—what the West calls the supreme leader—was supposed to be the most learned religious authority in the country. He was originally supposed to be a sort of pope-like figure that would ensure the Islamic nature of what would otherwise be a democratic state. He would have moral and spiritual authority, and he would certainly wield enormous political influence, but he would by no means maintain direct political control over the state.

However, in the years following the revolution of 1979, through a series of constitutional amendments pushed through parliament, the position of faqih [supreme leader] was gradually transformed from a symbolic moral authority into the supreme authority of the state.

Aslan then goes on to explain how this new system when originally conceived ran counter to a thousand years of Shi'ite clerical non-meddling in politics as all government was illegitimate until the coming of the Madhi, the messiah figure of the Islamic end times. Khomeini though adopted for himself the trappings (if not the actual title) of the Madhi for himself as supreme leader; his thought was that as agents of the messiah, the clerics must work to build his kingdom of earth before his coming.

But by far the most overt connection Khomeini established between himself and the messiah was his doctrine of the Valayat-e Faqih. In Khomeini’s view, the faqih would have more than just supreme authority, he would have infallible and divine authority—authority that, in fact, would be equal to the authority of the Prophet Muhammad.
[...]

Khamenei was chosen to succeed Khomeini because he was considered a safe bet, someone who would not rock the boat, someone who could be easily controlled by more powerful, more charismatic figures who chaired the various clerical subcommittees, like his fellow revolutionary Hashemi Rafsanjani (now an ayatollah himself), who was instrumental in Khamenei’s selection to the post of supreme leader.

This leads us to the present situation. Khomenei's power was slowly diffused among the committees of the clerics, but Aslan points out that this crisis is his attempt to reassert absolute control.

Except:

Simply put, Khamenei’s reckless and rambling Friday sermon has changed the tenor of Iran’s uprising, making it as much about his own leadership and the nature of clerical rule, as it is about Ahmadinejad’s presidency. He has, in other words, helped create a revolution.

Thanks to Hot Air. I also suggest reading this primer on the geopolitical situation for Shi'ites across the Middle East and into South Asia as detailed by Spengler.

June 20, 2009

I'll make no claims as to accuracy, but this is the young woman's Wikipedia bio that has been quickly put together.



Neda
1982 - 2009

Seen this yet? Horrified? I'm sick to my stomach just looking at the still image of the video embed when I preview this post. Say a prayer that these people may be delivered from bondage.

Ave Maria

Greetings to you all. To my priestly readers (probably few in number...), happy Year of the Priest to you.

There seems to be much going on of late, but little of it interests me enough to mount an effort at posting. There are plenty of sources out there with more in-depth coverage.

But I have found one thing that has developed further that always interests: Ave Maria and Tom Monaghan.

Check out this headline from AveWatch: Monaghan Legal Claim: Ave Maria School of Law is a “Religious Institution” with “Ministerial” Professors.

In a stunning legal maneuver that could trigger unintended negative consequences involving a host of sources (Catholic legal academics, the American Bar Association, Ave Maria students/employees/alumni/recruits, official Church authorities) — Tom Monaghan’s lawyers argued in court on Wednesday that Ave Maria School of Law is a “religious institution” claiming “ministerial exception” such that any inquires into their “underlying motivation for a contested employment situation” should be barred from government courts. They also argued that AMSL’s law professors are “ministerial employees”, claiming that the “legal doctrine of ‘ecclesiastical abstention‘ is pertinent to the court’s lack of subject matter jurisdiction of AMSL’s employment decision and the allegations concerning AMSL’s governance”.

Nice, huh. AveWatch has all kinds of analysis in that post, go check it out if you're so inclined. The crew at Fumare took a look at the development from a civil standpoint and Doctor Ed Peters from a canon law standpoint.

Mr. Monaghan's latest legal maneuver comes on the heels of a Michigan Supreme Court ruling that upholds a lower court's order for Monaghan to turn over his notes regarding Ave Maria School of Law, formerly of Ann Arbor, MI and soon to be of Naples, FL, for the lawsuit of former three professors.

The saga of Monaghan and the various incarnations of Ave Maria (the college, the university, the law school, the town, etc.) is covered with great attention by AveWatch and Fumare, but despite Monaghan's tendrils throughout the more traditional wing of American Catholicism, his allegedly less-than-ethical affairs don't receive much attention from more mainstream Catholic blogs. Hopefully this latest clain will draw some attention given just how ludicrous it is.

Help Needed

A long time ago, I was reading an article at a sedevacantist website about the liturgical reforms that culminated in the Novus Ordo in 1970. The article looked back to the reforms of the early twentieth century.

What made this article memorable was that it had this graphic, a larger rectangle divided up into smaller rectangles. They each contained a specific year when a reform was promulgated (for instance '1945' for when the Psalter of Pius XII came out). The years went from left to right from earlier to later. The first box was white and as one went left, each box was greyer than the one before it, representing the supposed diminishing of the liturgy.

I'm doing some reading on the subject and if anyone knows of this website and can direct me to it, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

Central African Confusion

Reader Louis pointed this out to me yesterday in an email. I have no idea what is behind this. Perhaps some of our more knowledgeable readers could help us in figuring out why two bishops from the Central African Republic, both in their fifties and well short of retirement, have resigned this month.

Paulin Pomodimo, archbishop of Bangui, resigned on May 26 (today), just short of his fifty-fifth year.

François-Xavier Yombandje, bishop of Bossangoa, resigned on May 16 (a week ago Saturday), just short of his fifty-third year.

Both men were consecrated by Joachim N'Dayen, archbishop emeritus of Bangui.

Tu esse Pietro.

Or something. I don't remember the exact Italian quoted by Oskar Werner in his conversation with Anthony Quinn.

In case you all haven't guessed yet and don't have TCM, The Shoes of the Fisherman was on this afternoon. I was flipping back and forth between that and Family Feud. The movie has great production values. It's an MGM film made during that time when MGM still made films that looked truly epic in scope. The only part that really looked fake was the final balcony scene where the balcony was superimposed over the real thing at St. Peter's. Just not quite convincing. But aside from all that, I found the film to be slightly annoying with the annoyance growing as the movie went on.

If you haven't seen it and don't know the resolution of the plot, I won't spoil it, but I will say that it is pretty unbelievable in the first viewing and its hokey-ness only increases in subsequent viewings. Seeing it tonight and knowing it was coming, it just worked against the entire thing. The movie is a positive portrayal (to me) of the Church and I want to like the movie for that reason and because it looks so cool, but the plot just totally turns me off.

The actora were all great. About the only problem I had with the actors was the performance of Oskar Werner as the heterodox priest in his interview with the commission from the Holy Office. His views were actually not that hard to understand and his final answer to their question was actually pretty interesting, but he answered everything in such a convoluted way, he basically gave the commission no choice but to condemn his works. Father Telemond comes off as not very articulate.

Notre Dame: Those Outside Looking In

While the Catholic blogosphere has been doing its thing lately in looking at Notre Dame and all that, I've found interesting the look by 'secular' blogs at the Catholic divide.

To wit: Laura Ingraham: Notre Dame’s no longer a viable Catholic institution at HotAir.com. HotAir.com has two lead bloggers, one of them Catholic and the other atheist, both conservatives. The atheist's view on ND and the Church's overall response to Obama:

The real question here isn’t whether Notre Dame is still Catholic in any meaningful sense, it’s what it means to be “Catholic” in America today. 54 percent of Catholics voted for The One last fall and 67 percent approved of his job performance as of three weeks ago; majorities approve of torture in at least some circumstances and say they’re more likely to consider common sense and experience when making decisions than Church teachings; a narrow plurality think priests should be allowed to marry. Even on abortion and stem cells, those calling themselves Catholic are almost indistinguishable from non-Catholics (although there are sharp differences between non-Catholics and Catholics who attend mass regularly). And of course the Vatican itself is as squishy as can be when it comes to taking on Obama for his stances. The Church, ironically, seems to have the opposite problem from the GOP these days: They’re so comfortable with “centrists” that it’s no longer clear what American Catholicism stands for. Which puts Notre Dame squarely inside the mainstream.

While the traditional, orthodox elements of the Church work on renewal and are seeing signs of life from the US episcopate, at the same time, what should be the Church's allies in political life look in from the outside and they don't seem that encouraged, especially by the Vatican itself and the whole deal with L’Osservatore Romano's efforts of late in wooing Obama.

Anyway, food for thought.

L’Osservatore Romano: All the News That's Fit to Spin!

So I had a subscription to the weekly English edition of L’Osservatore Romano that I got a Christmas or so ago. It seems to have run out this spring and not a moment too soon! I had been impressed with the tenor of the paper and even had a few clippings (an essay by Ruini, etc.).

But I have missed out on the last few weeks of the paper's efforts to get along with Mr. Obama (though editorials didn't find their way into the English edition too often anyway). And so we have this latest post from Father Z:

Who else could be it be but the Vatican’s Secretariat of State?

Think about it. What could produce such a dopey article if not for the section of the Secretariat of State involved with the relations with states?

Leaving aside the personal political tendencies of many who work up there, the President is scheduled to go to Rome in, ... what is it, ... July?

The diplomat elements in the Secretariat of State probably don’t want anything to spoil the planning.

Ta da!

Cause and effect.

I could go back through and find all the links to past posts where the Secretariat of State has been documented running amok, but it would be tedious. With Cardinal Sodano's departure, one would think that with the head gone and Bertone in power... Of course, we also have reports from last year of Bertone jetting around to all kinds of meetings and acting like a papabile instead of running his dicastery like a good little soldier.

The greatest single disappointment so far of this pontificate has been the failure of the curial reform to materialize.

Off to the Holy Land

Sandro Magister has a new column out on the Pope's trip. In it, Magister determines that the biggest obstacle will be the local Christian population. By appearing evenhanded and not favoring Israel, the Pope has been attempting to earn their trust. Magister also claims that in recasting the conflict as a political one, the Pope hopes to return the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians back to its political origins...

Right.

This is one instance where I would say the Pope is flying blind. The Arab-Israeli conflict has many causes and origins. I would point out though that as my professor always reminded my class, politics and religion for the Muslims of the Middle East are one and the same given the fact that the Shariah handed down to Muhammad from God is their Law and the political Ummah (Muslim Community) was the religious and soclal Ummah. If the Christian West and the Pope want to delude themselves into thinking that politics and religion can be separated out, I hope they find their disillusionment sooner rather than later so that we can get on with it.

Let's face it. We've been reading about the alleged Palestinian majority that is tired of war and wants only peace for fifteen years and more, but it has yet to rise up to do anything against Hamas in Gaza. (The West Bank under Fatah has been flying under the radar lately.)

The US Declaration of Independence:

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

The average, moderate Palestinian is supposedly long past the point Jefferson set out, but Hamas is still in charge and lobbing rockets as Israel.

Widescreen

Has anyone else noticed the tendency lately for Youtube videos to be widescreen? This video looks interesting and the quotes are nice. Could use some subtitles though.

1,001 Posts

I was going to commemorate the 1,000th post with lots of cool things, but I just noticed that that was the last post. I guess I wasn't paying that much attention. Oh well. That spares me the obligation to get creative.

The Pope is going to Israel soon and will be visiting a Palestinian refugee camp.

Professor Glendon (I don't recall right offhand her first name) declined the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame as she didn't want to the token next to Obama. Father Jenkins has rounded up a judge who is a past recipient and the medal won't be given out this year. Nice sidestepping there, Father.

Archbishop Ranjith is said to be headed home to Colombo, but there's no official word.

Over at Rorate, they're busily commenting about curial rumblings surrounding the exile of Ranjith (whenever it eventually happens if it does). One poster, Matt, made an excellent point:

With all of this rumbling, the Holy Father should do what any Head of anything does, he or his designates walk into the office of the slacker prelate with security and tell him, "Thank you for your services but the Holy Father had decided it's time to part company." They are then given fifteen minutes to clean out their desks and are escorted out. Done. Why this is so hard for the Pope is beyond me and the reason why so much trouble exists in the Church. Do what the heck you want and no one can fire you? No wonder they act like that.

These prelates are not OWED, or ENTITLED. They serve at the pleasure of the Pope and can be dismissed at his pleasure. I suppose the Vatican has an alternate reality

If the One (Mr. Obama for you neophytes) can go around sacking top bank officials and the CEO of GM, I should think the Pope himself could do as Matt suggests.

That's enough of a round-up for now. I ask for your prayers in this hour of anxiety for me.