Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

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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In reading the cases of sexual abuse, I pity the victims, but I often pity the abusers, who are often psychopaths on a straight path to hell. They must be punished, both to affirm  justice and to waken them to the enormity of their acts. Punishment is necessary for justice, and justice is necessary if [...]

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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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When sinners repent, we are informed by the highest authority, the angels in heaven rejoice.
 
Michael Anthony Rodriguez paid a hit man to kill his wife because he was infatuated with a young woman. He was imprisoned in Texas, and with the Texas Seven escaped on Christmas Eve 2000. They killed a young police officer who [...]

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The Naples Daily  News reports

A Brevard County woman claiming to be God’s messenger has been charged with attempted murder after reportedly shooting at a family on their back porch.
The sheriff’s office reports that 47-year-old Kathleen Aceto showed up with a gun and began shooting Friday morning. A man in the house grabbed a gun and [...]

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I am happy to report that Father Fessio acted on my advice and has republished Daypring, a novel by Harry Sylvester about the encounter of a secular Easterner with the Penitentes of New Mexico. 
In December 2007 I commented on the original edition. 
Every time I visit the Southwest something extraordinary happens – I try not to [...]

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If I may quote from my 1998 book Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church:

Both literary critics for whom transgressive is a word of praise and whose hero is the Marquis de Sade, and psychologists who desire an ever-expanding field of sexual; liberation put forward the idea that sex with boys is the next area [...]

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Notre Dame did not anticipate the level of criticism it is getting for its invitation to Obama, criticism not only from grass-root pro-life activists, but also from bishops and cardinals. Those who defend the invitation have been rather lame. They claim that the invitation does not show an approval of Obama’s positions on life; this [...]

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White-collar perpetrators of fraud are a popular target of rage, with good reason. I have lost a substantial amount to fraud over the years, including some to Bernie Madoff – and I’m not even Jewish. It is therefore extremely satisfying to see such crooks enjoy the hospitality of the Department of Corrections.

The New York Times [...]

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The future Dr. Svensson of Sweden

One possible source of the Vatican’s lax attitude to sexual abusers in the clergy is that the Vatican is staffed by Europeans who consider America’s harsh punishments of crime barbaric.

Sweden, the New York Times reports, has a convicted neo-Nazi murderer in medical school.

Mr. Svensson…was convicted in the 1999 hate [...]

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I have been reading Augustine’s letters. They reveal a lot of how his mind works; they also contain the good and bad things that he embedded in the Western Church.

Augustine interpreted all Scriptures passages and Church practices so as to narrow the scope of salvation. Humanity was a massa damnata, from which a few of [...]

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In Der Spiegel, Slavenka Draculic, a Croatian, writes of why she cannot visit Belgrade: 

Why had I not visited for all of these years?
Was it about “them”? About what “they” did to “us”? Or about what Serbs did to themselves? If I traveled there I would carry two decades of images and emotions with me, [...]

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