Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

Spiritual direction, therapy, and counseling all can be dangerous even to well-intentioned people. Emotional intimacy itself can be problematic, and can lead to physical intimacy.
 
A friend of mine who was an Episcopal minister said that always remembered that both his and the women’s guardian angel were in the room when he talked to the parishioners [...]

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Raymond Gravel is in the news again.
 
He is a colorful figure.
 
Back in 2006 the Globe and Mail (article no longer available on line) reported
Rev. Raymond Gravel had to get permission from the Vatican to run in a federal by-election. Now, the former prostitute who used to work in gay leather bars has to convince [...]

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As Chesterton said, the existence of every human being is a testimony to the courage of women. There is so much bad news about the failings of Catholic priests and religious, it is good to remember the examples that shed a light of divine light on our troubled existence.
 
Women and women religious in France during [...]

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Occasionally churchmen (and churchwomen) notice the lack of male involvement in the various Christian churches and try to think of ways of getting men involved, but the more common reaction is seeking to make the church ever more and more a women’s club.
 
U.S. Catholic celebrates the feminine triumph in the Church:

It’s lunchtime at St. Clement [...]

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Tom put this in a comment box below, but it is so important I thought I would highlight it in a separate blog. As Berger points out, traditionalists priests are disproportionately homosexual, and traditionalist laity are homophobic – a bad combination.  This is from Pray Tell.
 
I have read with interest the lively discussion at Pray [...]

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Tom Roberts at the National Catholic Reporter reflects on the failure of the hierarchy:
Danneels was generally seen as one of the last of the Vatican II generation who knew that council intimately and supported its reforms. He would be, for lack of a better term, a liberal by many of today’s ecclesiastical measures. But it [...]

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Several people have raised the question of the effects of “invalid” sacraments. 
Underlying this question are two views of God’s offer of salvation:
1.     The existence of the Church and the sacraments narrows God’s offer of salvation (Augustine). That is, only those who are in the juridical boundaries of the Church and therefore receive valid sacraments [...]

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Credo Ut Intellegam has been suffering through the news from the German Church, and I feel largely the way he does: 

Wenn mir etwas Angst macht, dann ist es die Naivität, mit der momentan die üblichen Patentrezepte als Allheilmittel ins Spiel gebracht werden: vox temporis - vox Dei, verheirateter Weltklerus, Laienmitsprache und -mitverantwortung, innerkirchliche Frauenförderung etc. [...]

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Cardinal Schonbörn and Wir sind Kirche, the lay reform group in Austria last night held a penitential service in St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. (from Die Presse, Der Standard, and n-tv).
3000 entered a cathedral darkened except for the candles of the victims around the altar. Cardinal Schonbörn entered clad all in black, except for his [...]

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 We are witnessing a cruel irony of history: Joseph Ratzinger, one of the few ecclesiastics to evidence genuine horror at the sexual abuse of children by priests and the one pope since perhaps Pius V to act against corruption in the Church, is receiving a massive international attack for his failures in handling abuse cases. 
It [...]

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When I researching the book on clerical murders that I have underway, I noticed that even secular newspapers from 1900 -1920 used the words expiation in regard to punishment, especially capital punishment. Now the word expiation appears only in crossword puzzles.
 
The word and the concept appear to be suffering a similar fate in Catholic theology: 

According [...]

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In Baltimore, the city I grew up in, 30% of the remaining Catholics schools are being closed. Only a handful remains in the whole metropolitan area, and it was the Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1852 that established the rule that every parish should have its parochial school.
Only 15% of the students in the [...]

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Arturo Vasquez over at the ever-fascinating Reditus spends a great deal of time, perhaps a little too much, in the curious corners of Catholicism, or perhaps semi-Catholicism: the bandit saints, popularly-canonized dogs, curanderos, Hermeticism, etc. I love it. He posited one explanation for his identity: 

3. Arturo Vasquez is a witch: We are surprised that people [...]

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The decline of the Catholic Church in the United States and in Europe is apparent to anyone who looks at the statistics. The American statistics would be comparable to the far worse European ones if it were not for the influx of Hispanic, Vietnamese, and Filipino Catholics. Catholics of European descent are a vanishing race. 
The [...]

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