Doomed to Fatness

in Health 7 Comments Tags: , ,

As everyone has noticed, the average weight of human beings is creeping up and up and up, as airline seats become smaller and smaller. America is not even in the lead. Mexico and Central Europe are putting in the avoir-du-pois faster than we are. Even worse – obesity may be contagious!

What gives?

Even more alarming, domestic and wild animals and lab rats are getting fatter. Simple gluttony and indulgence in sweets and fats may explain human gains, but what about animals, including those who do not share food with humans?

No one knows. Changes in gut bacteria are the prime suspect. These could be cause by a number of things. One possibility is the overuse of antibiotics, which as everyone who had had to take them knows, have a highly deleterious effect on our intestinal flora. Perhaps the antibiotics have gotten into the war supply, as giardia did from campers pooping in the woods.

Another possibility is that children raised on junk food have changes in the gut bacteria and metabolism that make them crave more junk food. The changed bacteria can be transferred within families and may also get into the ecosystem where they affect pets and wild animals and even lab animals (although the last are hard to explain).

If the gut bacteria of thin people differ from that of fat people, one treatment for obesity might be- yuk – stool transplants. Or a change in diet to more healthy foods might also lead to a change in gut bacteria – but as anyone who has tried to change his diet knows, it is not easy. Even educated people, even medical professionals who know what overweight is doing to their hearts, find it hard to change.

Adults should know better, but I truly saddened by obese children. They are at great risk for diabetes, and they miss out on the only time of life when almost everyone is energetic and resilient. Even if – and this is highly unlikely – they change their habits when they become adults, they still have missed out on childhood’s activities. Even if they can do it, most forty year olds don’t enjoy skipping rope or climbing trees.

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The Slippery Slope in a Formerly Catholic Country

in Uncategorized 26 Comments Tags: ,

Any resemblance to the Nazi program of killing people whose lives were in terrible condition and suffering from illness and dementia is purely accidental.

From the National Post:

Should children have the right to ask for their own deaths?

In Belgium, where euthanasia is now legal for people over the age of 18, the government is considering extending it to children — something that no other country has done. The same bill would offer the right to die to adults with early dementia.

Advocates argue that euthanasia for children, with the consent of their parents, is necessary to give families an option in a desperately painful situation. But opponents have questioned whether children can reasonably decide to end their own lives.

Belgium is already a euthanasia pioneer; it legalized the practice for adults in 2002. In the last decade, the number of reported cases per year has risen from 235 deaths in 2003 to 1,432 in 2012, the last year for which statistics are available. Doctors typically give patients a powerful sedative before injecting another drug to stop their heart.

Only a few countries have legalized euthanasia or anything approaching it. In the Netherlands, euthanasia is legal under specific circumstances and for children over the age of 12 with parental consent (there is an understanding that infants, too, can be euthanized, and that doctors will not be prosecuted if they act appropriately). Elsewhere in Europe, euthanasia is only legal in Luxembourg. Assisted suicide, where doctors help a patient to die but do not actively kill them, is allowed in Switzerland.

In the U.S., the state of Oregon also grants assisted suicide requests for residents aged 18 or over with a terminal illness.

In Belgium, the ruling Socialist party has proposed the bill expanding the right of euthanasia. The Christian Democratic Flemish party vowed to oppose the legislation and to challenge it in the European Court of Human Rights if it passes. A final decision must be approved by Parliament and could take months.

The principle of euthanasia for children sounds shocking at first, but it’s motivated by compassion and protection,” said John Harris, a professor of bioethics at the University of Manchester. “It’s unfair to provide euthanasia differentially to some citizens and not to others [children] if the need is equal.”

(snip)

And Dr. Gerlant van Berlaer, a pediatric oncologist at the Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussels hospital, says the changes would legalize what is already happening informally. He said cases of euthanasia in children are rare and estimates about 10 to 100 cases in Belgium every year might qualify.

“Children have different ways of asking for things but they face the same questions as adults when they’re terminally sick,” van Berlaer said. “Sometimes it’s a sister who tells us her brother doesn’t want to go back to the hospital and is asking for a solution,” he said. “Today if these families find themselves (in that situation), we’re not able to help them, except in dark and questionable ways.”

(snip)

The change in the law regarding people with dementia is also controversial.

People now can make a written declaration they wish to be euthanized if their health deteriorates, but the request is only valid for five years and they must be in an irreversible coma. The new proposal would abolish the time limit and the requirement the patient be in a coma, making it possible for someone who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s to be put to death years later in the future.

In the Netherlands, guidelines allow doctors to euthanize dementia patients on this basis if they believe the person is experiencing “unbearable suffering,” but few are done in practice.

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A View from Australia

in Anglicans, Australia, clergy sex abuse scandal, Moral Theology 3 Comments Tags: ,

Patrick Parkinson AM, Professor of Law, University of Sydney recently gave a lecture,  CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE AND THE CHURCHES: A story of moral failure? He stresses that his observations are based upon incomplete data, but that he has observed and fought sexual abuse for many years. he is an evangelical who once studied in Czechoslovakia where be observed the brutal repression of the Catholic Church and admired the courage of Catholics. He says “I regard myself as a friend of the Catholic Church” and wants it to overcome this corruption.

From the evidence he has examined it appears to him that sexual abuse is more prevalent among Catholic clergy than among the clerical and lay workers of other denominations and among the general male population:

Prof. Des Cahill identified 378 priests who graduated from a particular seminary in Melbourne and who were ordained between 1940 and 1966. Of these, 14 (3.7%) were convicted of sex offences against children and, after their deaths, another four were acknowledged to have abused children. That is, 18 priests or 4.8% of the total who were ordained between those years, sexually abused children. Taking a later cohort of seminarians, the 74 priests who were ordained between 1968 and 1971 from that seminary, 4 (5.4%) had been convicted of sex offences against children.

In fact, I think it is higher. In the United States I think that between 7% and 10% of Catholic clergy have been sexually involved with minors. But even the lower percentages that Parkinson cites are alarming. Parkinson asks

Is this level of offending higher than for men in the general population? There is no reliable baseline data on levels of offending in the general population in Australia. Peter Marshall’s study in England found some indication of population-wide conviction rates (Marshall, 1997). One in 150 men over the age of 20 had a conviction for sexual offence against a minor. Lifetime propensity figures will of course be higher than those derived from a snapshot of the adult male population at a given moment in time. Based on his data of various cohorts of these men, Marshall estimates that between 1% and 2% of the male population would be expected to be convicted for some form of sexual offence over their lifetime (including sex offences against adults). If those figures are similar for Australia, then Prof. Cahill’s research would indicate that the rate of convictions for Catholic priests who studied at the seminary in Melbourne is much higher than in the general population (3.7% of those ordained between 1940 and 1966 and 5.4% of those ordained between 1968 and 1971).

How do  Catholic clergy compare to church workers in other denominations? Parkinson notes that

The figure for the number of victims in the Catholic Church was exactly 10 times that in the Anglican Church. This is only partially explained by the greater size of the Catholic Church in Melbourne. The Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne lists 287 parishes on its website. The Anglican Diocese of Melbourne contains 203 parishes covering greater Melbourne and Geelong (Anglican Diocese of Victoria, 2012). That is, the Anglican Church is about 70% of the size of the Catholic Church in the two Archdioceses as counted by number of parishes. In addition to parish ministries, the Catholic Church also ran schools and children’s homes in which priests and brothers worked, and this would add significantly to the tally of sexual abuse incidents which might involve members of religious organisations. There is not the same tradition in Protestant denominations of clergy or other people called to religious vocations running schools and children’s homes. Such institutions tend to be run by lay people. For these reasons, Catholic priests and religious have had a much greater opportunity for abuse than their counterparts in other denominations.

On the other hand, Anglican churches, like other Protestant churches, would also have many paid youth workers. When all explanations have been offered, the rate of convictions of Catholic Church personnel does seem to be strikingly out of proportion with the size of this faith community compared with other faith communities.

The profile of the victims of abuse also differed from those in the general population. In Australia, about 27% of girls and 9% of boys have been sexually abused. But both the Catholic and Anglican Churches vary from this pattern.

The John Jay College study of child sexual abuse in the US Catholic Church found that 81% of the victims of abuse were male. This is the opposite of patterns seen in the general population, where approximately three times as many females are abused as males.

Lest it be thought that these patterns are unique to the Catholic Church, we found a similar pattern in our Anglican Church study. Three-quarters of complainants who alleged sexual abuse were male.

Parkinson thinks that the difference is caused by the greater access to boys that clergy have:

The greater abuse of boys than girls in both the US Catholic Church and the Anglican Church of Australia is likely to reflect the fact that priests, ministers and youth leaders have a much greater opportunity to abuse boys than girls, given the patterns of their ministry. In the past, at least, it has been more common for priests and religious to be alone with adolescent boys or to have the opportunity to form unsupervised friendships with them, than with girls. Parents were likely to be concerned by too close a friendship between a 30-40 year old man and a teenage girl; but they would have had no such concerns if the priest took an interest in their troubled teenage son.

Little of the abuse by clergy has been true pedophilia. Most of the victims are adolescents:

No doubt some offending priests and members of religious orders have been paedophiles; but this is likely to explain only a proportion of sex offending against children by priests and religious. The loneliness and difficulty of a celibate life with all the demands of the priesthood may lead other men to seek out teenagers to meet their needs without them being paedophiles. Indeed, sexual attraction to post-pubescent teenagers may be, biologically-speaking, within the boundaries of normal adult sexuality.

If adults are sexually attracted to adolescents, male or female, why do the Catholic clergy succumb to this temptation more than other clergy and the general male population do?

One of the unanswered questions about sex offending by clergy is how much of it is situational, or influenced by the culture of a group, rather than the outworking of an abnormal sexual deviation.

And that is where the Catholic Church may have a unique problem.

Some priest-offenders rationalise their abusive behaviour on the basis that sexual activity with boys is not a breach of their vow of celibacy whereas sexual relations with a woman would be. Different levels of sexual contact falling short of intercourse may also be excused in this way. Some support for this thesis emerges from the survey conducted as part of the research for Towards Understanding, the discussion paper on sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Australia. Respondents noted that offenders within the Church dissociated their abusive behaviour from their commitment to celibacy. Indeed, a high number of respondents described offenders they knew as having a strong commitment to celibacy (Towards Understanding, 1999, p. 44).

This cognitive distortion may well be an important factor in sex offending against boys. If priest offenders have a strong commitment to celibacy, then sexual relations with adult women or girls will not be permissible. If these men rationalise sexual contact with men or teenage boys as either not being a breach of their vow of celibacy at all, or a sexual peccadillo which may be both tolerated within the Church and forgiven by God, then they may well be as prone to situational same-sex activity as men in prison or in other confined, all-male environments. Teenage boys in children’s homes and boarding schools, and boys in parish contexts with whom the priest or religious may find good enough reason to be alone, may disproportionately become victims because of their accessibility and vulnerability, not necessarily because of a paraphilic sexual attraction to boys of that age.

What this means is that it is impossible to end abuse by screening out men with abnormal sexual desires, because their abuse is not caused by abnormal sexual desires.

I would add that a flattening down of sexual sins is part of the problem. Traditionally, theologians have taught that there is no light matter involving sexuality. Therefore any sexual sin, a voluntary fantasy, masturbation, fornication, adultery, and child abuse, are all mortal sins that lead to damnation. Although it was not taught tat they were all equally serious, the differences among them were less important than the fact that they were all mortal sins. But they could all be forgiven by going to confession and saying a few prayers.

Clericalism has long afflicted the Catholic Church and is deeply ingrained in canon law.

There has long been a culture within international Catholicism that in some way the Church is its own jurisdiction, its own legal system, and that the proper place for judging clergy is within the structures established by Canon Law. Canon Law provides that clergy or religious who abuse children under 18 are to be “punished with just penalties, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state” (Canon 1395(2)). However, it is no part of canonical thinking that child sexual abuse is a crime that ought routinely to be reported to the police and dealt with by the criminal courts.

Priest thought they were beyond the reach of the police and the courts.

Another was the culture of clericalism. The 2011 document puts it succinctly: “The bishop has a duty to treat all priests as father and brother” (Congregatio Pro Doctrina Fidei, 2011).

That was interpreted, in some quarters, as involving an obligation to protect priests and religious brothers from the criminal law. In 2001, Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux was given a three-month suspended prison sentence for not reporting Fr René Bissey, who had been sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2000 for sex offences against children. It appears that the bishop indicated at his trial that the admission of guilt by the priest had not been in the confessional. Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, wrote to the Bishop, congratulating him on not denouncing a priest to the civil authorities. He was said to have acted wisely in preferring to go to prison rather than denounce his priest-son. Cardinal Hoyos advanced a theological reason for this position. He explained that the relationship between priests and their bishop is not professional but sacramental and forges very special bonds of spiritual paternity. He drew the analogy with rules of law in various countries which excused one close relative from testifying against another.

The letter concluded that in order to ‘encourage brothers in the episcopate in this delicate matter’, a copy of the letter would be forwarded to all the conferences of bishops. The Cardinal said at a conference in 2010 that he wrote the letter after consulting Pope John Paul II, and that it was the Pope who authorised him to send this letter to all the bishops.

Pope Francis plans to canonize John Paul in the spring of 2014 – will Francis follow the example of his sainted predecessor in the way he handled sexual abuse?

Parkinson also notes the chaotic structure of the Catholic Church as a source of the failure to deal with abuse:

People think of it as a highly structured and hierarchical institution; but actually the opposite is the case. Each bishop is the prime authority in his diocese, subject to oversight from Rome. Each leader of a religious Order is responsible for his or her members subject to direction from the worldwide leadership of the Order, if there is one.

The management structure made sense in the Middle Ages, when the fastest mode of transport was a horse and authority even within countries, was highly decentralised. All that has changed now. To address these issues in future, the Church needs to find a way of throwing out its rotten apples, publicly rebuking or removing leaders from their positions if they have failed egregiously to do the right thing. It needs, in other words, to modernise and to create an authority structure with power to deal with the recalcitrant and the obstructive in its midst. I have no reason for confidence that this leadership will come from the Vatican or from the leaders of the worldwide religious orders, some of which are also based in Rome.

I would add that the laity are the only possible source of reform, but except for a handful of people, the laity don’t want to think about abuse or actively blame the victims for making it public. Only pressure from the police and courts will control the corruption.

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The Root of All Evil

in Church finances, clergy sex abuse scandal, homosexuality, Masculinity, Narcissism 36 Comments Tags: , , , , ,

If the Catholic Church were serious about preventing sexual abuse (which it is not), one simple method is available: audited accounting of all church financial records.

Almost invariably, sexual misconduct has been paid for by misuse or outright theft of church funds,

The case of Gary Mercure is only one of thousands:

The records reveal that Mercure systematically stole money from church coffers and used it to lavish young men and boys with cash, gifts and living expenses as he brazenly maintained a sexually active, homosexual lifestyle for decades.

The donations of the faithful funded Mercure’s lifestyle:

In 2008, when Bishop Howard J. Hubbard sought to confront Mercure about overwhelming evidence that he had sexually abused minors, the priest responded that he was on vacation and could not be reached by telephone.

But Hubbard, in an internal document, had his staff trace the phone number. They learned Mercure was secretly vacationing at a gay resort “where the choice to wear something or nothing is yours … (with) erotic video lounge showing adult male videos.”

Sexual activity is private and is sometimes hard to detect, but money can be traced with ease.

However, church officials are even less interested in ending theft than they are in ending sexual abuse.

One elderly pastor told me that he had never been in a parish in which someone was not on the take.

Diocese accounts are set up so that money can be siphoned off with ease. Perhaps this goes back to the feudal concept under the old canon law, in which the income of a parish was the property of the pastor. From that he paid his assistants, the upkeep of the church, the dollar a day he allowed to the nuns, etc.

The financial system in many dioceses is susceptible to theft or misappropriation, and dioceses show little interest in preventing it until the problem becomes public.

In Baltimore each parish has its own bookkeeper and accounts. There seems to be little overall supervision or regular auditing.

Father Nick Cieri on the left

and his housemate Father Larry Johnson in the center

with two young friends

Domenic Cieri was director of liturgy (1984-1992) in the archdiocese of Baltimore  and then pastor (1992-2007) of St. Bernadette’s parish in Severn, Maryland, on the far southern fringe of the Baltimore metropolitan area.

There he set to accomplish two things: making St. Bernadette’s a gay-friendly parish and making himself financially comfortable. He succeeded in both.

In making St. Bernadette’s a national center of gay ministry, he set up several groups with the assistance of Ann McDonald.

As pastoral associate at St. Bernadette Parish on Stevenson Road, Ms. McDonald helped found Reclaim in 1997 as a group for homosexual adults to ease the pain of alienation they felt toward the church and its teachings. Today, she helps preside over a group that has grown significantly, touching on issues such as the Catholic church’s relationship with gay adults, as well as its relationship with the parents of gay children, gay families and even gay teenagers. The most recent branch of the group, called Recharge, is an alumni group for the more than 200 people who have completed Reclaim over the years and either have joined Catholicism though Baptism or reinvesting in the faith through Catechism and confirmation. Some gay members join Reclaim if only to feel comfortable enough in their spirituality to attend Mass again, Ms. McDonald said. The church’s pastor said the newest incarnation of Reclaim will help graduates stay energized about and connected to Christianity, if only by knowing they’re part of a larger religious family.|”Reclaim is about trying to touch people in a meaningful way,” said St. Bernadette Pastor Domenic L. Cieri. “The church teaches its members to love and be loved in return and we want to help gay and lesbian members feel wanted by the church and by God.”|With a progressive, 1,200-family congregation at St. Bernadette Parish, Ms. McDonald said, there are plenty of ways for gays and lesbians, no matter their religion, to find acceptance and learn that being gay is not a sin. With dozens of pamphlets about gay and lesbian issues in the church office and vestibule, straight congregation members have numerous opportunities to educate themselves and realize that being gay is not an evil choice, Ms. McDonald said,

This was all done with the blessing of the Archdiocese of Baltimore:

With the Catholic church struggling with a myriad of issues, Reclaim is a step ahead of many of the 161 churches in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.|”Reclaim is a good gateway to educate people on the church’s teachings,” said Deacon Paul A. Weber, director of the Office of Ministry with Gay and Lesbian Catholics for the Archdiocese. “Many communities, quite frankly, are unfamiliar with issues of same-sex orientation.”|According to the Rev. Weber and Ms. McDonald, no one at St. Bernadette or the Archdiocese of Baltimore hierarchy has ever voiced any objections to Reclaim, even though some Catholic circles frown upon the practice of homosexuality.”

It is not clear whether  St. Bernadette’s and the Archdiocese are or are not among those Catholic circles which frown upon the practice of homosexuality. However the parish’s web site claims that it is “providing pastoral care in keeping with the church’s teaching on chastity.” It is not clear which teaching this is referring to – Dominic Cieri’s or the Vatican’s.

(In July 2008 Ann McDonald was appointed Pastoral Life Director at St. Bernadette’s.)

Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski of the Archdiocese of Baltimore participated in this work at St. Bernadette’s:

With a message of humility, faith in times of suffering and God’s unconditional love, a bishop with the Archdiocese of Baltimore celebrated Mass yesterday at a service devoted to gay and lesbian Catholics.

“‘As bishop, being here this afternoon in this community, I do so with genuine affection and gentleness to you,’ Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski, the eastern vicar, told those gathered at St. Bernadette Roman Catholic Church in Severn, [Md.,] a parish that has had a thriving gay and lesbian ministry since 1997.

“Reflecting on Scripture readings about the Apostle Paul’s admiration for the Thessalonians as ‘faithful people who embraced the cross at a time of suffering,’ the bishop added, ‘In our own time, you know the struggle, some of you, of being gay and lesbian.’

“The service – the second in five years sponsored by Baltimore’s Archdiocesan Ministry with Gay and Lesbian Catholics and offered by St. Bernadette’s – attracted same-sex couples, single gay men and women, and parents of gay children, as well as churchgoers hoping to send a message to Catholic leaders with their presence at such a Mass.

“Attendees traveled from Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District of Columbia and across Maryland for the religious service – and, more important, they said, an inclusive welcome that is not available to them at many Catholic parishes.

Cieri’s work in making St. Bernadette’s a gay-friendly parish was acknowledged by the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Gay and Lesbian Ministries and by New Ways Ministry. He explained: “My integrative awareness status is indicated to me by the work in establishing safe and welcoming places for GBLT in my parish.”

He explains what he means:

“I identity as a white, middle-class, suburban gay male…You might say I am a soft male (my words). I am not macho and never have been.

“At the time of puberty I was very aware of being attracted to males. This was somewhat distressing, Even though I wanted to be a priest, I still had a desire to have a family.  I began to wonder what it would be like to be a girl.  Then I could get married and have a family with the boy of my dreams.

Cieri claims that his pro-gay work got him into trouble: “Naturally it got me into trouble with Church authority.” This does not seem to be the case; auxiliary bishops (Bishop Newman and Bishop Rozanski) spoke at St. Bernadette’s and praised the work there. Something else led to trouble for Domenic Leo Cieri.

While demonstrating a revisionist attitude toward traditional morality on sexuality, Cieri also set about his second goal of achieving financial comfort.

In 1999, 2000 and  2005 St. Bernadette’s, a very-well-to do suburban parish, ran an operating deficit. This is not surprising in light of what was later revealed.

In October 2006 Archbishop Keeler of Baltimore was in a serious automobile accident. He needed brain surgery in June 2007, and was therefore out of commission and had to be replaced by Archbishop Lori in July 2007.

Immediately after the accident, in October 2006, and after it had received an anonymous tip, the Archdiocese conducted an audit of St. Bernadette’s with special attention to compensation and was not happy with the results.

Domenic Cieri was pastor of St. Bernadette’s in Severn. He was supposed to be in residence there and receiving compensation according to an archdiocesan scale.

In fact (see here and here and here):

· Cieri was not in residence at St. Bernadette’s. He was living in Glen Arm, 34 miles away, in a house he had purchased with the Rev. Lawrence Johnson (former agent for the AIDS Interfaith Network of Central Maryland and now chaplain at Stella Maris) in 2001 for $255,000. The house is currently estimated at $455,000.

· Cieri earned nearly $48,000 a year for the fiscal year ending in June 2006, about 70 percent more than the $28,122 that the archdiocese says he was to earn as a pastor ordained for 25 years. His pay and other compensation was hidden in the budgeted single line item of $475,000 for “Salary and related.”

· Cieri was reimbursed nearly $36,000 for rectory expenses, although he did not live in the rectory attached to the church.

· Cieri received $14,000 as a housing allowance,

· Cieri received $6,300 in Mass stipends. Priests have the choice of receiving Mass stipends for individual Masses or a lump sum of $2,000 per year – for all masses an amount set by the archdiocese.

· Cieri, since he was not in residence, paid other priests to do his work. The church also paid a lot of money in stipends to visiting priests who celebrated some of the church’s four Masses each weekend,

· The lay parish officials had approved all payments, so there was no possibility of the parish recovering any of the money. The leaders thought that because others on staff earned salaries in the $40,000 range, it was appropriate to pay the pastor a comparable wage. They said they felt manipulated by the Rev. Cieri in approving his salary and compensation.

· According to the Bishop Rozanski, the archdiocese has no plans to formally reprimand or punish the Rev. Cieri, and his fate will depend on his own decisions after he ends his leave.

It is not clear whether this extra compensation was the annual or the total figure; it seems to be annual. If that is the case, during his pastorate Cieri received about $1 million more than archdiocesan guidelines provided.

Cieri resigned on May 29, 2007, because of, he explained, “differences regarding fiscal policies.” That’s one way of putting it. Cieri’ s attitude to the  priesthood seems to be based on that of Pope Leo X, who is reported to have said on his election “God has given us the papacy; let us enjoy it.”

Cieri claims he is experienced in “financial management.” Under the name of Nick Cieri, he became a financial advisor with SmithBarney and then with First Financial Group. In this capacity he was

Licensed to sell insurance products and to offer securities in the Mid-Atlantic States, Nick Cieri serves as a Financial Advisor for MassMutual Financial Group, a marketing segment of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual or MML). Headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, Nick Cieri operates as a registered representative delivering investment advisory, securities, and financial planning services through MML Investors Services, LLC, a member of the Securities Investor Protection.

An expert financial counselor – ask St. Bernadette’s!

He would help his clients  engage in careful financial planning to achieve their financial goals – as he had done.

A seasoned financial advisor, Nick Cieri serves clients through MassMutual Financial Group, a firm located in Hunt Valley, Maryland. Understanding that financial planning often involves a great deal of anxiety, Mr. Cieri offers all of his clients the personalized attention and insight that they deserve. Individuals come to MassMutual Financial Group for a variety of reasons. Some want assistance with preparations for college, retirement, or other life milestones, while others simply need reliable life, long-term care, or disability income insurance. Nick Cieri listens closely to the needs of each client, discusses the relevant options, provides them the information necessary to make an informed decision, and connects them to the best products and services available. Mr. Cieri places his clients’ well-being above all else and is committed to integrity (my emphasis).

Through his practice, Nick Cieri gives clients advice about navigating today’s complex markets to achieve financial freedom. He employs a team of experienced professionals who support his mission with expertise in retirement services, annuities, charitable giving, executive compensation, and estate planning. When clients first come to Mr. Cieri, he performs a comprehensive audit of their financial situations to accurately represent where they stand. After discussing expectations and strategy with clients, he matches them to the products that will best help them achieve their goals, which often involves a diverse array of services.

It should be a great comfort to clients to know that Cieri is “committed to integrity,” as his record so clearly demonstrates.

Cieri is now a substitute school counselor in the Baltimore County public schools.

I had met Cieri when he was the director of liturgy for the archdiocese. Cieri would frequently come to say mass at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Mount Washington, where the pastor was Nicholas Amato, who had worked with Cieri in the central offices because Amato had been archdiocesan director of education. Cieri explained to me that Jesus had not initiated the Catholic priesthood, but it was started centuries later. I pointed out that this was what the fundamentalists also claimed.  I mentioned to Cieri that the Baltimore Sun had reported that half the members of the burgeoning evangelical and charismatic churches around Baltimore were former Catholics. He said they had left because Catholicism was too perfect for them, and we should not try to persuade them to come back. I now suspect that he feared that might bring back with them their ideas about sexual morality, which they had learned from the highly unreliable source of the Bible.

Toodle-oo!

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Rod Dreher and the Catholic Church

in Catholic Church, clergy sex abuse scandal, repentance 23 Comments Tags: , ,

Rod Dreher has an essay in Time about why he left the Catholic Church. The immediate case for his discontent was the failure of the Church to preach repentance, and its long-time toleration of sexual abuse by the clergy.

He adds in his column the essential reason (which should have been in the essay) – that he no longer believes the ecclesiological claims of the Roman Catholic Church – that is, that to be saved it is necessary to be subject to the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff.

Things could be much worse that Dreher portrays (and they have been much worse in the past) but if one believes the claims of the Roman Catholic Church, the problems in the Church would not affect one’s membership in it.

I sympathize with the Orthodox criticism of Roman legalism and juridicism. The fact that so many bishops have degrees in canon law is a bad sign. Canon law is like the traffic code: necessary and useful, but it should not be the central focus of study for a pastor.

Repentance has never been popular, although it is the first word that is addressed to us: Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Instead we are repeatedly told God loves you as you are. This is true, but inadequate. We also need to be told Go and sin no more.

The Jesuits attacked the Jansenist clergy. A Jansenist priest was not content with hearing a list of sins and then giving absolution. He wanted the penitent to see the deep reality of sin within himself. Such a priest would often refuse absolution until the penitent had demonstrated that he had wrestled with the deep reality of sin and alienation from God that affects even the baptized Christian.

Father Ruff criticized Dreher:

The author pins sex abuse to lax, feel-good Christianity after Vatican II. This is tendentious and unsupported by fact – for example, the fact that so much abuse also happened in the 1950s and 1940s and before. The causes of sex abuse are many; one of them is an overly authoritarian power system, coupled with such undue respect for religious authority that victims aren’t believed and media won’t publish such “scandalous” reports. These tendencies were much stronger in the “good old days.” The looseness of the 60s and 70s certainly caused lots of problems in behavior – but even here, clergy coped so poorly with the new freedoms in part because the old system didn’t prepare them for it and stunted their maturation. It’d be helpful if the author tried to look at the complexities of such issues, instead of using conservative ideology to twist a few facts in his direction.

Ruff is correct in that the problems precede the 1960s. Too often a priest would confess something like I abused thirty boys and two committed suicide and the confessor would tell him to say seven Hail Marys and give him absolution, and the bishop would transfer the abuser to another parish.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, Evangelical Christians in Latin America seem to have more success than Catholics do in bringing about true conversions. In part it is because they demand repentance, and that word and concept have evaporated in the Catholic Church.

Even before the 1960s, repentance was too often reduced to a mechanical fulfillment of the canonical requirements for confession, rather than a search for the deeply rooted evils in our nature and a desire to have them purged and our natures transformed by the searing and healing light of Christ.

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Conversion and Repentance

in Catholic Church, clergy sex abuse scandal, Pope Francis, Protestantism 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , ,

I have never been in pastoral work and have only visited South America. But in researching the role of men in the churches in Latin America, I have noticed the consensus among anthropologists that Evangelicals have more success is reach men, especially young men involved in drugs and gangs, than Catholics do.

Evangelicals do this by a simultaneous proclamation of repentance and conversion to Jesus. Francis seems to be envisioning first conversion, and then, sometime later, repentance.

Rod Dreher has had discussions on Pope Francis’ interview, and one South American does not like the interview.

Mr. Dreher, I’m Latin American (Brazilian) and, let me tell you, this explanation is bunk.

The “very juridical and hierarchical and morality-focused Catholic Church of Latin America” has not existed for fifty years. It was replaced by exactly the Church that Pope Francis seems to want. The results have not been impressive, to say the least. There’s no reason to think that more of the same will give different results.

The section that describes the new Evangelical Protestants as not putting the culture war agenda in the foreground is, again, precisely backwards. They do precisely that which Mr Chapp says they don’t. They are very, very morally strict, which is why they grow so fast in the poorest areas: they give order to the disordered lives of the very poor, who come from generations of poverty and broken homes and have never known anything better. They take a huge portion of the poor’s meagre income in tithes and “gifts”… and even then the poor are better off in these churches, because the order the church gives, much like a military boot camp, helps them to plan for the future, educate themselves, not fall into drugs, not have multiple children out of wedlock, etc.

And this is not just inwards. The politicians elected by the Evangelicals are at the forefront of the resistance to homosexual “marriage”, to abortion, and most of the left’s culture war agenda. In my own country, abortion would have been legalized a few years ago if not for the resistance organized by the Evangelical politician-preachers across almost all parties – a fight in which, by the way, the Catholic hierarchy was entirely silent. If the Church retreats from these issues, the pull of the Evangelical Protestant churches will only INCREASE throughout Latin America.

To sum up, as we say here, when “the Church chose the poor, the poor chose the Protestants”.

This is also what neutral anthropologists have found.

Francis, like many of us as we grow older, may be fighting the battles of his youth, although history has moved on. The dead textbook Thomism he laments disappeared over a generation ago. Traditionalist restorationism is a tiny, tiny fringe movement in the Church. Strict moralism has disappeared, and laxity reigns.

It is true that a few bishops seem to delight in enforcing petty rules (even as they have let sexual abusers continue in ministry). Cardinal Müller, when he was bishop of Regensburg, severely disciplined priests for participating in an ecumenical wedding and for receiving communion at a Lutheran service. But Müller assigned a convicted abuse to a parish, where the priest molested numerous children. When parents complained, Muller threatened to sue them for criticizing him. In Baltimroe a priest was removed for letting an Episcopal priest, a woman, read the Epistle at a funeral mass for a relative of hers. But I was at a funeral of a friend of mine at the Cathedral in which all, even the unbaptized, were urged to receive communion. Bishops seem to be very arbitrary in their exercise of discipline, and strain out the smallest flies while swallowing obese camels.

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Francis’ New Approach

in Catholic Church, Pope Francis 7 Comments Tags: ,

In the early Church, converts were baptized with a minimum of instruction: the crowds at Pentecost, the Ethiopian eunuch.

However, it soon became apparent that this was not a good idea. The heresies and immorality that Paul combated flourished, and recent converts fell away rapidly when persecutions began.

The Church then began insisting on a lengthy catechumenate before baptism. This provided a time for instruction, repentance, and the breaking of sinful habits. Only then were converts baptized. The Church maintained the disciplina arcana; the Eucharist was reserved for the fully converted.

But as Christianity spread and infant baptism became the norm, and whole tribes were baptized because their kings commanded them to convert, the level of Christian knowledge and practice declined. Christianity became the religion of whole societies.

In the modern Church infant baptism is the norm, and instruction and conversion are chancy.

Some are appalled by the low level of knowledge, practice, commitment, and spirituality in the Catholic Church. Most parishes are sacrament factories. Spiritual seekers often leave for evangelical churches. Church discipline is non-existent. This situation has led to widespread support among Catholics for abortion and same-sex marriage, as well as almost complete ignorance of Christian doctrine and a lack of discipleship. The book Forming Intentional Disciples discusses this unhappy situation.

Some want to tighten up discipline and cultivate more intense practice and spirituality, even if that leads to a smaller church, which however would a better witness to the world.

Others denounce such an approach as sectarianism, and want the Church to be pastoral, that is,  lax, even more so than at present, so as to include as many people as possible, with little regard for what they might believe or their level of moral practice or spirituality. The proponents of this approach want a least a vague Christianity among many, rather than an intense Christianity among few.

To some extent Francis agrees with this second group:

This church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people.

But he continues

We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity.

Neither sectarianism or lax mediocrity.

Francis wants both approaches: he wants the Church to both universal and intense: open to sinners, perhaps by not emphasizing the hard moral doctrines, but preaching the heart of the Gospel, the saving death and resurrection of Jesus, which will lead to conversion.

the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds…. And you have to start from the ground up.

To be with sinners, to heal them:

the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all. The confessor, for example, is always in danger of being either too much of a rigorist or too lax. Neither is merciful, because neither of them really takes responsibility for the person. The rigorist washes his hands so that he leaves it to the commandment. The loose minister washes his hands by simply saying, ‘This is not a sin’ or something like that. In pastoral ministry we must accompany people, and we must heal their wounds.

To be both zealous and merciful is the ideal:

The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to descend themselves into their people’s night, into the darkness, but without getting lost.

“without getting lost” – Is this possible? Many priests, many Jesuits, have gotten lost, even about the central truth of the unique mediatorship of Jesus Christ.

Francis desires priests (and this interview seems to be directed mainly to priests) to focus on the central message of the Gospel:

Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.

It is true that proclaiming the Law without the Gospel leads to despair. Laws, however good and holy and wise, cannot give sinful man the power to obey them. The Law by itself leads only to despair or to the modern rebellion  that seeks to change the Law itself.

A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation. There is nothing more solid, deep and sure than this proclamation. Then you have to do catechesis. Then you can draw even a moral consequence. But the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing.

This indeed sometimes happens. I agree with the sermons that condemn abortion and same-sex marriage and sexual trafficking and torture, but I fear that sometimes the focus on these obscures the central message of the Death and Resurrection. As Francis said

The message of the Gospel, therefore, is not to be reduced to some aspects that, although relevant, on their own do not show the heart of the message of Jesus Christ.”

Obviously one matter is more central than the other, but they are not really separate. The proclamation of the Gospel always includes an immediate call to repentance.

Repentance is always joined to faith, not a remote and much later corollary of faith. As now, during the initial proclamation of the Gospel hard-heatedness, cruelty, lust and avarice were major obstacles to hearing the Gospel, and had to be set aside simultaneously with accepting the Gospel, not much later, if ever.

But times change, and perhaps Francis’ approach would work. I agree that the Church has not done a very good job of proclaiming the central Christian message, and that the departure of Catholics for evangelical churches demonstrates this – and Bergoglio saw that happening in Argentina.

However, I do not see any evangelical ardor in the Jesuits or what is usually called the progressive movement in the Church (It is also lacking in the traditionalist movement, which Francis rightly criticizes).  I suspect that Bergoglio’s approach will be used to cultivate in the Catholic Church a situation such as the Episcopal Church suffers from: a vague acceptance of historic Christian doctrine and a total acceptance of modern moral vagaries. This approach has not contributed to the health of the Episcopal Church, and I do not see why the Catholic Church should be any different.

But God has many surprises, and perhaps He will raise up, perhaps He is already raising up, saints large and small through whom His healing light will shine in the world. In the meantime, I  thought the best part of Francis’ interview was this:

“I see the holiness,” the pope continues, “in the patience of the people of God: a woman who is raising children, a man who works to bring home the bread, the sick, the elderly priests who have so many wounds but have a smile on their faces because they served the Lord, the sisters who work hard and live a hidden sanctity. This is for me the common sanctity.“

Fulfilling our duties, caring for people, praying for the living and the dead – and thereby making present the Kingdom in the midst of the world.

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Navajos Wear Nikes

in Southwest 3 Comments Tags: , , , , ,

On the way to Moab I read Navajos Wear Nikes: A Reservation Life by Jim Kristofic. Here is a picture of the author with Delicate Arch in the background.

Jim Kristofic’s divorced mother moved from Pennsylvania to the Navajo reservation and worked as a nurse. He grew up there, attended high school in a border town, and went East to college.

People frequently ask him “Are you an Indian?” and this book is the answer.

The hazing and bullying he received as an Anglo kid in the Navajo school was brutal. The Navajos did it to one another, too – it toughened them in a harsh environment. He collected his scars like trophies of manhood. He does not romanticize the reservation – alcoholism and domestic violence are all too prevalent.

In the year I graduated high school, about 83 percent of crimes on Indian reservations that were investigated by the FBI were either violent crimes or involved child, physical, or sexual abuse. Child abuse and sexual assault rates are consistently the highest in the nation. Most of this violence (more than two-thirds of it) involves alcohol, despite the Navajo Nation-wide ban.

His mother had experience with two violent Navajo boyfriends. This was not unusual.

…women on Indian Reservations were victims of domestic violence at a rate of 23 per 1,000. Mom would have had better odds in Pittsburgh; the rate among Anglos inPennsylvania and oteh rstates was only 8 per 1,000 women.

Nor is sexual abuse unique to Catholic priest. The good boyfriend, Nolan, had apprenticed to a traditional singer, a hataalii,

Relatives of the sick child that Nolan and the hataalii were practicing on discovered that the hataalii had molested the child during a private session before a ceremony.

Nolan, like Catholics, became skeptical about his traditional religion after this incident.

But Kristofic feels close to the Navajo. A solid Navajo moved in with his mother, and he has Navajo half-siblings.

Gangs started moving into the Rez, and he can’t understand why they wanted to abandon their heritage:

The Navajos who would not be Navajos. The Navajos who wanted to be black, who wanted to be Mexican, who dressed like a South Side Chicago teenager or a Compton native. I never knew if it was a way for them to feel strong and united with other minorities that fed on the same sense of white injustice. Or whether it was armor for some war they were still determined to wage against Anglos. Or against themselves.

They addressed one another as “Nigra” and wanted to live the thug life.

Kristofic describes the coming of age ceremony, the Kinalda, that recognizes the transformation of Navajo girls into women, but the Navajos have abandoned the coming-of-age ritual that boys used to go through.

The man had to strip down to his loincloth and strap on his best running moccasins. Taking only a bag of tádídíín (sacred corn pollen) and a knife, the man went out alone and ran down, trapped, or captured a live coyote. He had to take the tádídíín from the bag and put it on the coyote’s paws,  sift it through the skin and hair, pick the corn pollen up and collect it back into the bag, and then rel;ease the coyote unharmed. That tádídíín became a powerful medicine for him the rest of his life.

I think that as traditional ways of proving manhood were abandoned by the Navajo and other Indians, often under government pressure, Indians turned to alchol and domestic violence. A similar phenomenon has occurred among Afro-Americans. Black manhood was severely repressed, and the male role was replaced by welfare.

The Navajos have beautiful customs.

In the Navajo Way, whoever makes a newborn baby laugh for the first time is expected to sponsor the ceremony that marks the child’s first steps toward empathy and sq’ah naaghái bike’hózhǫ.

Kristofic also describes encounters with skinwalkers, witches who can transform into animal shapes. Some of what he recounts might be ascribed to imagination or coincidence, but he also says the dogs went mad with anger – and dogs don’t have much imagination.

People died mysteriously.

Manuela was a German nurse who’d worked at the hospital less than a year before she was found dead at the vase of a cliff on the outskirts of Steamboat one morning with an owl perched over her body.

I have heard stories from reliable people about incidents in the Southwest that are hard to explain. The Desert Fathers went into the desert not to escape urban temptations but to confront the demons there.

The Navajo idea is hózhó, harmony, beauty, and like other humans they both strive for it and often fail to attain it. On my desk I have the end of the Blessing Way:

In beauty may I walk.

All day long may I walk.

Through the returning seasons may I walk.

On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.

With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.

With dew about my feet may I walk.

With beauty may I walk.

With beauty before me, may I walk.

With beauty behind me, may I walk.

With beauty above me, may I walk.

With beauty below me, may I walk.

With beauty all around me, may I walk.

In old age wandering of a trail of beauty,

lively,

may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty,

living again,

may I walk.

It is finished in beauty.

It is finished in beauty.

Hózhó náhásdlíí.

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Dead Run

in conspiracy theories, Southwest 1 Comment Tags: , , , , ,

I was in Moab the past few weeks; I picked up and read Dead Run: the Murder of a Lawman and the Greatest Manhunt of the Modern American West by Dan Schultz.

Here is one Amazon reviewer’s summary of the events:

The story begins with a stolen water truck on the outskirts of Durango. Water trucks from “Overright Trucking” were borrowed all the time. A brand new truck was missing; it happened. The three men in the cab, however, had a plan. And automatic rifles. They were dressed in camouflage. The next morning in Cortez at McElmo Bridge, Officer Dale Claxton spotted the truck after having read a routine police bulletin about the case.

The white water truck was hard to miss–a four-thousand-gallon tank, New Mexico plates and “Overright Trucking” on the doors. Claxton was filling in for a colleague, who was attending training seminar. At 9:24 a.m., he radioed Cortez police dispatcher that he had spotted the Mack truck.

“Dead Run” breaks down the day-of incident in great detail. All the random vehicles in proximity to Claxton’s slaying are identified. Witnesses who saw Claxton trailing the truck tell their version of events. The perspective of fellow police officers is recounted–and the McElmo Bridge scene comes into full relief. Schultz doesn’t flinch in capturing the violence.

But the hunt has just begun. Schultz breaks down the day-by-day search for the killers and intersperses portraits of the three men–a pair of good friends (Jason McVean and Bobby Mason) and an odd acquaintance (Alan Pilon). None of the men were ever captured by police–though their remains have since been located. Mason was found a few days Claxton’s murder. Mason had wounded another police officer in a shootout. Pilon’s body was found in 1999, though his cause of death remains a mystery (a mystery Shultz explores at length). McVean’s remains were found in 2007, although precisely when McVean perished–and how–is a source of great controversy.

Schultz characterizes the three fugitives as conspiracy theorists who combined right –wing paranoia about the New World Order and UN black helicopters with Edward Abbey ecoterrorist environmentalism. Schultz also described the utter chaos of the manhunt, in which 500 law enforcement people stumbled over each other and failed to find the fugitives.

Police claim all three fugitives committed suicide soon after the start of the manhunt.

I do not have the expertise to judge the forensic evidence, but Schultz, if he is accurate, makes a strong case that one fugitive, Bobby Mason, was murdered, probably by police, that Monte Pilon was murdered by one of the other two fugitives, and that Jason McVean was murdered years after the manhunt by persons unknown, but probably vigilantes.

What were they planning to do with the water truck? Schultz speculates that they were going to try to blow up Glen Canyon Dam, which is widely hated in the Four Corners area.

Schultz respects the Navajos’ tracking ability and is certain that a Navajo tracker saw McVean for years after his supposed date of suicide.

I have spent many months hiking in the areas in which the crime and manhunt occurred. The area is full of mysteries, including the compelled abandonment of the area by the Anasazi around 1290. Tony Hillerman used the manhunt as a background in Hunting Badger, and Bluff as a setting for Thief of Time.

Schultz blames Abbey in part for inspiring these criminals and other ecoterrorists; I don’t know whether this is fair. The Monkey Wrench Gang is eco-pornography; it is what many people would like to do to those who are despoiling the West, but I doubt 99.9999% of its audience would take any violent action. Any deeply held belief can inspire violence in people who are strongly inclined to violence, but usually the belief is not to be blamed.

The Monkey Wrench Gang was going to be made into a movie; it involves an attempt to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam. After 9/11/01 the movie was dropped and will never be made.

As to conspiracy theories; they are funny until they end in catastrophe. I wonder why conspiracy theorists ignore undoubted conspiracies like the Mafia and the narcotraficantes. In my experience, conspiracies are usually attempts to cover up a crime that would embarrass important people: sexual abuse in the church, and, as this books makes a good case, the possible murders of the three fugitives.

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Lying

in Moral Theology 21 Comments Tags: , , ,

An occasion of many venial sins

Over at Mark Shea, there is a heated discussion of whether lying is ever not sinful. We should never deliberately commit any sin, venial or mortal.

The Catholic Catechism seems to say that all lies are sins:

By its very nature, lying is to be condemned. It is a profanation of speech, whereas the purpose of speech is to communicate known truth to others.

But is that the ONLY purpose of speech? Is it an intrinsic part of all speech? Cardinal Schönborn wrote the catechism; he is a Dominican and a Thomist, and he certainly presents Aquinas’s position here.

But is that really the only purpose of speech? If you tell an ugly and deformed person, “You are very beautiful,” in Aquinas’s view would be sinful and should never be done, even if the purpose were to dissuade the poor person  not to commit suicide in despair.

I suspect that Aquinas had Asperger’s Syndrome, and his view of the purpose of speech is that which Aspergers and autistic people have.

Speech had many purposes, and “communicating known truth” is only one of them, and is not an intrinsic part of every statement.

The Greek Fathers had a very lax attitude to lying, which led to a lot of Anglo-Saxon sniffing by their English translators. God deceived Satan into killing Christ, according to one school of theology.

BTW, the bishops and the Vatican certainly do not follow the Catechism. They lie frequently, copiously, and by habit.

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A Lively Faith

in Uncategorized 3 Comments

The discussion has been helpful. It is tautological to say a personal relationship. A relationship between persons is by definitely personal – but simply to say it is personal does not define it very well. There are many kinds and levels of personal relationship.

The older language of a lively faith is perhaps more helpful. Faith can be separated from charity. As James says, the demons believe and tremble. A faith can be merely notional, a commitment to a set of abstract statements.

Or we can have faith in a person, trust in that person’s love for us, and this is the sort of faith that we have (or should have) in God. It is obscure or weak in many people, but I think it keeps them going.

However, when we realize that Jesus died for us, for each of us and all of us as the new humanity, and pours his Spirit upon us, and cares for us, and wills our good, we have lively faith.

The key word is realize, and I think that Newman discussed that matter at length. When the truth of the Redemption becomes real to us, something we stake our whole existence on, that gives meaning to everything, then we have what some call a personal relationship with Jesus. Is this what people mean?

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A Personal Relationship?

in Uncategorized 4 Comments

Waddell’s book Formng Intentional Disciples does not really answer the question about what exactly a personal relationship with God is.

For some people, personal has an erotic connotation – up close and personal. The unfortunate tradition of erotic mysticism uses this sort of language to describe the Christian’s relationship with God  – Christ as the Bridegroom of the soul, falling in love with God (language Waddell uses) and even more explicit language and images (think of Bernini’s St. Theresa). Perhaps some people (especially men) do not like this language and that is why they do not use us the word personal to describe a relationship with God.

Also, our relationship with Jesus is not like that with another human person. Unlike those who met him while he was on earth, we, like Paul, do not know Jesus according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Jesus is glorified now, and pours forth his Spirit through many channels, both ordinary (Scripture, the sacraments) and extraordinary. This is not the sort of personal relationship we have with other human beings, so again, that may be a reason Catholics do not think it is possible to have a personal relationship with God in Christ.

If a person believes in God, and says his relationship with God is not personal, what kind of relationship is it? I find it hard to imagine it’s being an impersonal relationship, the type we have with the force of gravity, or the US government.

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Personal or Impersonal God

in Catholic Church, Protestantism 5 Comments Tags: , ,

John, I took your recommendation and am reading Sherry Waddell’s Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus.

It raises many questions.

You can’t have a personal relationship with God unless you believe God is personal, and according to a Pew survey that Wadell refers to, 30% of Catholics believe in an impersonal God.

Strictly speaking, God is no “a being” or “a person” or “personal.” These are analogies by which we speak of God – or by which God speaks of himself through revelation. This is apophatic theology – but I doubt that is what most people mean.

C.S. Lewis wrote:

A good many people nowadays say, `I believe in a God, but not in a personal God.’ They feel that the mysterious something which is behind all other things must be more than a person. Now the Christians quite agree. But the Christians are the only people who offer any idea of what a being that is beyond personality could be like. All the other people, though they say that God is beyond personality, really think of Him as something impersonal: that is, as something less than personal. If you are looking for something super-personal, something more than a person, then it is not a question of choosing between the Christian idea and the other ideas. The Christian idea is the only one on the market.

God is not less than personal, but more than personal. A human person is an image and likeness of God, but God is uncreated and man is created.

We know God in Jesus. He is fully and completely human but not a human person. He is a divine, uncreated Person whom we come to know not in the flesh but in the Spirit (more on this later).

It is hard to know what people mean by an impersonal God – something that is less than we are? Something like gravity, or dark energy, or the Force in Star Wars?

I suspect that they have not even thought about it much. But why would the call God impersonal. Again, I suspect it is not apophatic theology, but something else.

A lack of considering the Incarnation? God manifested himself through a human being, so the human is the highest and best image and likeness of the Divine. God nursed, learned how to walk, had friends, was sad, happy, affectionate, tender, suffered, and tasted the bitterness of death. As one thinks about this, it is hard to see why one would call God impersonal. What could these Catholics mean? I wish that Waddell had explored that.

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Honoring St. Dominic

in Catholic Church, Pueblos, Southwest 1 Comment Tags:

We went to Santo Domingo pueblo for the feast day, August 4. We were instructed not to take photographs, so I have assembled from the internet some old pictures which may help convey what happened.

We went to the 7 AM mass at the pueblo mission church. The Sacristan looked very Mexican; he read the first two scriptures for the mass, and it was clear that English was not his first language.

A youngish priest then preached. He explained that the Franciscans had few vocations, and therefore had decided to pull out of the pueblos after 400 years. He was from the Archdiocese, and this was his first mass at the pueblo. He then gave a decent sermon on Saint Dominic. I suspect that the previous priest had not told him what was going to happen during mass.

In the middle of the sermon we heard through the open doors BOOM BOOM BOOM on a drum and TOOT TOOT TOOT on an old bugle. Two men entered, dressed as matachines and riding pantomime horses with bells, followed by men dressed as parody Spaniards, Mexicans, and Anglos (I think). They processed down the aisle and did a little circle in front of the altar as the priest (a little non-plussed) continued preaching. People reached out and patted the horses’ heads.

The horsemen looked sort of like this

They then went out of the church, jingle, jungle, jingle, and the priest finished the sermon.

At the consecration we heard through the open door BOOM BOOM BOOM BANG BANG BANG (firecrackers? rifles?).

After the mass four men held a canopy over the statue of St. Dominic, carried by other men, and all, priest, people, and we hangers-on, processed through the pueblo for about 45 minutes, singing the Hail Mary in Spanish, over and over again:

Dios te salve María.
Llena eres de Gracia
El Señor es contigo, bendita eres entre todas las mujeres
y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesús.

Santa María Madre de Dios
ruega por nosotros pecadores
ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte.

The bugle went TOOT TOOT TOOT.

The streets and rooftops were lined by the pueblo people, many in their dancing clothes. As we passed they crossed themselves or cast sacred corn meal – and set off firecrackers and blanks.

In the main plaza, about a football field wide and three football fields long, we stopped at the arbor sent up for St. Dominic. He was placed in it, and we went in and venerated him, making an offering of food or money.

I turned around because I heard a sound from the far end of the plaza. A line of 40 koshares (the sacred clowns) were at the end of the plaza, singing in their deep voices.

They sang and walked slowly up the entire plaza, and then broke up behind the arbor. Young women brought them breakfast. They remained in character, eating with their mouths open and loudly burping.

Then the dancers and singers of the first moiety started filing into the plaza. There were perhaps 100 men singing and a 1000 men and women dancing, filling the plaza. One man swung a large pole banner with the corn symbol.

The dancers held spruce branches, and imitated the corn sprouting, growing, and swaying. From the top of the plaza it looked like a field of ripe corn, swaying in the wind.

The men wore kilts; the women wore dresses and turquoise tablitas (headdresses). The dance was a prayer for rain, and the women wore their hair down to imitate the rain. Some women’s hair reached almost to the ground. The clowns shepherded and instructed the little children in the dance. After the first group had danced for an hour, they all filed out, and the second moiety, another thousand dwellers of the pueblo, entered, sang, and danced.

Pueblo dwellers hold open house and an all-day feast. We were invited into one house and sat at a table with about 30 different types of food on it. We thanked out hostess, and returned to watch the dance.

We started hearing thunder, and around 3 PM we decided to leave. As we were leaving the pueblo we looked back. Sirens were going off for flash flood warnings. Over the mountains, directly behind the plaza, was a thousand-foot waterfall of rain, flashing with lightning. Elsewhere all was clear. Never underestimate the power of prayer.

A few weeks previously I had been in Iceland, singing Mass in Icelandic and Latin, and hearing Swiss singers in domes above a fjord chanting Laudate Dominum omnes gentes – Praise the Lord, all ye Nations.

Catholicism has its problems, but it also gives one the sense of being a part of an immense and immensely varied community, across the vastnesses of time, space, languages, and culture, across life and death.

(PS: I want firecrackers as part of the liturgy in America.)

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