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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Although words are not everything, they are a beginning, especially if they reveal the heart. Perhaps we can take some hope from these words of Pope Benedict: 

In terms of what we today can discover in this message, attacks against the Pope or the Church do not only come from outside; rather the sufferings of the [...]

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Julián Carrón, the president of Communion and Liberation, in a letter to La Republica, has written the most profound reflection on sexual abuse in the Church I have seen so far.

None of us has ever been as dismayed as we are in front of the heart-wrenching story of child abuse. Our dismay arises from [...]

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The NYT has the story of how everyone: bishops, priests, Pope, police, failed the deaf children who were molested by Father Murphy. Some critics have asked why victims sometimes take so long to come forward. As the experience of the deaf children showed, even going directly to the police, even leafleting in front of the [...]

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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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Benedict’s letter on sexual abuse, addressed to the Church in Ireland, has disappointed almost everyone.
Confession that is a requirement of repentance involves confessing the whole truth and a desire to make reparation.
Benedict makes some dubious assertions, half-truths at best. He claims that a misunderstanding of Vatican II led to a neglect of the penal [...]

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As the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich, Joseph Ratzinger  let a pedophile work in his diocese. The London Times reports 
 

The Pope was drawn directly into the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal for the first time tonight as news emerged of his part in a decision to send a paedophile priest for therapy. The priest went on [...]

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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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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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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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Nightmares are a hazard of those who investigate child abuse, and one of the most potent sources of the nightmares is the explicit sacrilege that is sometimes, perhaps often, involved in the abuse. Some abusive priests have dressed boys as Jesus and then assaulted them.
 
Bishop Lahey not only had child porn on his computer (bad [...]

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Bishop Lahey, formerly bishop of Antigonish, will have his day in court. On the face of it, he is guilty of importation and possession of child pornography. Nor is his behavior that of an innocent man who has been framed. 
Archbishop Mancini of Halifax, in whose province Antigonish lies, was surprised and shocked by the news. [...]

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