Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

Commonweal is unhappy with Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, who gave a talk to a Catholic men’s group calling them to defend the Church, citing Obamacare as an example of an attack on the Church
The offending remarks are:

The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the [...]

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Clericalism is destructive and provokes the reaction of an irrational and even murderous anticlericalism. In attempting to get the laity to pay some attention to what priests are telling them (not a bad idea), the Church has made some wild claims about the clergy.
     Innocent III claimed that scripture called priests gods: “‘Diis no detrahes,’ [...]

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I often wonder at what age the male mind starts functioning in a rational manner (some women say never).
 
The NYT has an article on a young song writer who thought it would be hilarious
 
·       To sing an innocuous children’s song to a grade school class
 
·       Video their response
 
·       Go home and on his computer [...]

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I am including a chapter on anticlericalism in my revised The Church Impotent.
 
When I was a student at St. Matthew’s Grammar School in Baltimore in the mid 1950s, I remember being told by a nun that Leo XII had a vision of Freemasonry. He looked at all the grades from the lowest to the [...]

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Crowhill makes the point:

There is a perspective on the problem of (heterosexual) abuse that I think Catholics avoid — for obvious reasons.
When a man gives a woman spiritual counsel, it is an intrinsically intimate thing and the possibility of sexual entanglement is very real. The husband is the head of the home and of [...]

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 Supi, celibacy is going to disappear,and you can marry me - or?
 
German Catholics have long manifested a discontent with clerical celibacy. One of Luther’s first acts was to abolish clerical celibacy; Germans currently criticize Zwangszölibat, compulsory celibacy, forced celibacy. As Cardinal Brandmüller points out, the term Zwangszölibat misrepresents the discipline; no one is forced to be celibate.
 
Now [...]

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In Männer Glauben Anders, Markus Hofer sketches the situation in the early church: the married men heading local churches and the wandering celibate missionary.
 
In Death Comes to the Archbishop, it is clear that the missionary priests must be celibate, because they have to be ready to go anywhere, into dangerous situations, on a moment’s [...]

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Pope Benedict  has approved the beatification of six more martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. Because they were martyred, a proof of a miracle is not required, only that they had been killed because of hatred of Christ and had forgiven their persecutors. 
About 2,000 more cases are wending their way through the Vatican. About 10,000 [...]

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