Benedict and Spanish Laicism

in Pope Benedict, Spain 5 Comments Tags: , ,

 

I finished my Camino on October 31, met my wife, and we stayed in Santiago until November 4, just before the arrival of the Pope. We went to Madrid for a few days and observed, among other things, the controversy started by the remarks that Benedict made to reporters on his plane: 

“In Spain, a strong, aggressive laicity, an anti-clericalism, a secularization has been born as we experienced in the 1930’s,” Benedict said. 

Along the Camino I had seen the memorials to the priests and religious murdered by the Republican side in 1936-1939 – and also the memorials to the leftists murdered by the Nationalist forces. With the wayside crosses, such memorials put the aches and pains I was feeling into a proper perspective.

 

At the Prado we saw Goya’s overwhelming paintings of the violence and repression in Madrid during the battle between the Spanish people and the French forces in 1808. At the Queen Sofia museum we saw an exhibition about the Spanish Civil War – of which Picasso’s “Guernica” was the centerpiece. The Republican propaganda showed the Catholic clergy as murderous allies of the Nazi-dominated fascists. We saw the newsreels of the battle of Madrid, newsreels of the children killed by bombs and artillery.

 

On Saturday we attended mass at the Augustinian church – the  mass of the martyrs of the order, murdered in Spain 1936-1939. We were given cards with their pictures, and the relics were in the church. The priest pointed to the martyrs during his sermon, as he spoke too of the Catholics murdered during the All Saints day mass in Iraq. 

 

Those who know Spain far better than I do say that conditions have changed so much that another civil war is impossible – I hope they are right. But the memories of the war are bitter on both the Catholic and laicist sides.

 

Franco was ruthless in his conduct of the war as a matter of policy and was not magnanimous in victory. The Republican side let mobs massacre soldiers and clergy and suppressed all Catholic activity. It was hardly surprising that Catholics turned to Franco to save them from being slaughtered, but they turned a blind eye to Franco’s slaughter of  Republicans who had done nothing criminal.

 

Are the Pope’s comments justified? I do not know enough about Spanish life to know whether the consumerist secularism of today’s Spain is as dangerous as the murderous “Laicismo” of the 1930s. Catholics and laicists have learned to live together in Spain, but they still do not like or respect each other.

 

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Ultreia

in Camino de Santiago 2 Comments Tags:

Tomorrow, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a friend of ours, Father Al Rose, is saying mass at the Cathedral in Baltimore and giving me the blessing for a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.

C: Our help is in the name of the Lord.
R: Who made heaven and earth.
C: The Lord be with you.
R: And with your spirit.
C: Let us pray .

 

O Lord whose word makes all things holy, bless we beseech you this emblem, this backpack, and these staffs to be used on this pilgrimage. May he who carries them arrive safely at the shrine of St. James the Apostle, the objective of his journey. We ask this through Christ our Lord.

R: Amen

Presenting the backpack

 

 


In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, shoulder this backpack which will help you during your pilgrimage. May the fatigue of carrying it be expiation for your sins, so that when you have been forgiven you may reach the shrine of St. James full of courage, and when your pilgrimage is over, return home full of joy. We ask this through Christ our Lord.
R: Amen

Presenting the staff

 

Receive this staff as support for the journey so that you are able to arrive safely at Saint James’ feet.


Presenting the shell


Receive this shell as a sign of your pilgrimage. With God’s grace may you behave as a true pilgrim throughout your entire journey. We ask this through Christ our Lord.
R: Amen

Blessing the Pilgrim

 

“O God, You who took up your servant Abraham from the city of Ur of the Chaldeans,  watching over him in all his wanderings,
You who were the guide of the Hebrew people in the desert, we ask that You deign to take care of this your servant who, for love of your name, makes a pilgrimage to Compostela.


Be a companion for him along the path,

a guide at crossroads,

strength in his weariness,

defence before dangers,

shelter on the way,

shade against the heat,

light in the darkness,

a comforter in his discouragement,

and firmness in his intention,
in order that, through your guidance, he might arrive unscathed at the end of his journey and, enriched with graces and virtues, he might return safely to his home, filled with salutary and lasting joy.

We ask this through Jesus Christ Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
R: Amen


May the Lord always guide your steps and be your inseparable companion throughout your journey.
R: Amen

 

C: May the Virgin Mary grant you her maternal protection, defend you in all dangers of soul and body, and may you arrive safely at the end of your pilgrimage under her mantle.


C: May St. Raphael the Archangel accompany you throughout your journey as he accompanied Tobias and ward off every contrary or troublesome incident.

R: Amen


C: And may almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
R: Amen

C: Go in the peace of Christ.

 

 

 

 

R: Thanks be to God. 

Like millions before me, I will walk 500 miles from St.-Jean-Pied-de- Porte into the West, into the setting sun, into death and what lies beyond death.  Even before St, James preached the Gospel in Spain, people walked this Way, hoping that the death and rebirth of the sun was a sign that somehow we too would die and be reborn in a different world. 

St. James preached that there was indeed a way through death to a new and eternal life, and that way was the One who said, “I am the Way – Yo soy el Camino.” 

And at the end is Santiago, the city of St. James, the city of the Field of Stars, Compostela. And at the entrance to the Cathedral the pilgrims are welcomed not by the Last Judgment, but by what lies beyond the Judgment, by the Portal of Glory, Christ in Glory, surrounded by the Elders who have cast down their golden crowns before Him, the Lamb who has taken away the sins of the world , who has wiped the tears from every eye, and by St. James, the pilgrim who has walked beside every pilgrim on that road, whether they knew it or not,  St. James whom they now embrace, almost always with tears, but now tears, not of sorrow, but of what?  Joy – why do we cry for joy? – but we do, for in this world love and sorrow are forever joined, the Lamb forever bears His wounds as a sign of His love, as too our sorrow and grief are transfigured but not forgotten.

 

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Cardinal Danneels – The Real Victim?

in Belgium, clergy sex abuse scandal 2 Comments Tags: , , ,

 In the movie Napoleon, Wellington has strictly forbidden his soldiers to loot on pain of death. He comes across a soldier with a chicken under his shirt. The soldier tries to come up with a convincing explanation of why there is a chicken under his shirt. Wellington turns to his aide and tells him to promote the soldier, saying, “I like someone who can defend an indefensible position.” 

Fernand Keuleneer, the attorney for Cardinal Danneels has a similar task. De Standard published the transcripts of the secretly-taped conversation between the victim of Bishop Vangheluwe and Danneels. In an article in the Belgian Catholic paper Tertio (which is available in a translation here on the America blog),  Keuleneer tries to explain and justify the Cardinal’s words.  

Keuleneer claims that Danneels was unprepared for the meeting and thought it was an attempt to achieve family recompilation. Dannels is a victim of an unjustified attack. But if everything that Danneels said is morally and legally justifiable, why is it character assassination to print Danneels’ own words?  

As Austen Ivereigh points out, Danneels was deaf to the victim’s plea for some form of justice and told the victim that it would be almost impossible to achieve and that demanding it was a form of blackmail. 

Vangheluwe was not simply an abuser and a sinner, he was an evil man. In the previous post I reported how he had ordained a convicted abuser as a deacon, an abuser who had driven his victim to suicide, despite the pleas of the victim’s mother not to ordain the abuser (who then went to work in a Catholic school). Vangheluwe insisted that the victim’s family must forgive the abuser, so that the abuser would continue having contact with children. This misuse of forgiveness, which Danneels is also guilty of, is very close to the sin against the Holy Ghost.

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Sexual Abuse and Suicide

in Belgium, clergy sex abuse scandal 11 Comments Tags: , , ,

Because the reporting on the Vangheluwe – Danneels case is in Dutch, much of the information is difficult to access. 

One important piece of background has recently surfaced. Tom Heneghan of Reuters wrote to Austen Ivereigh at America:

 What is not said in the transcripts but was reported in the other paper running the transcripts (Het Nieuwsblad) is that the victim was moved to speak out after learning that Vangheluwe had consecrated a deacon who was a child abuser. One of his victims later committed suicide. Vangheluwe’s victim felt this might have been avoided if he had spoken out about Vangheluwe years ago. The victim cannot just accept an apology from his uncle, he feels a duty to do more, but he does not come across as vengeful. At one point early on, he even says to Danneels that if he (D) suggests a coverup is the only way, he might have to learn to live with that. But then he pulls himself together again and says Vangheluwe simply cannot stay in office if the Church is to stand for anything at all. 

Ivereigh is backing away from his attempt to soften Danneels action or rather refusal to act. Danneels was caught on tape acting like bishops usually act and will continue to act. And Danneels will suffer no consequences, nor will any future bishop who covers up sexual abuse suffer any consequences, and they know it. Until we get a true reforming pope like Pius V, the hierarchy will continue to tolerate abuse whenever they can get away with it – which is almost always. 

What Vangheluwe did to his nephew could have gotten him executed in very painful fashion in the Middle Ages – but Danneels doesn’t even want Vangheluwe to suffer any embarrassment. Such are the tender hearts of our hierarchs – for each other, not for us.

PS It appears from this article that in 1995 Vangheluwe ordained a certain Marc V as a deacon, even though Vangheluwe knew that Marc V. was a convicted child abuser (suspended sentence) and that one of Marc V.’s victims had committed suicide in 1991. The victim’s mother pleaded in vain to Vangheluwe not to ordain the man who had driven her son to suicide. Vangheluwe insisted the victim’s family must forgive Marc V.The nephew felt that his silence enabled this situation: if he had spoken out, Vangheluwe would not be a bishop and therefore he would not have been able to ordain Marc V. as a deacon.  

The attitude of the hierarchy toward child abuse can be seen in this ordination. They were willing to ordain a man who had driven his abuse victim to suicide. Perhaps, in fact, the fact that Marc V  had abused children before his ordination was a plus: another abuser in the clergy who would “understand” and not “judgmental” toward what Vangheluwe had done to his nephew.

Marc V. remained a deacon and worked in a Catholic school until Vangheluwe’s downfall caused his background to become public. Then he was “temporarily” removed.

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A Pox on Both Their Houses

in Belgium, Catholic Church, clergy sex abuse scandal, clericalism, guilt, Moral Theology, repentance, Responsibility 4 Comments Tags: , , , , ,

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 doesn’t matter. So was Archbishop Rembert Weakland, and his handling of some abuse cases was notoriously callous, and in his own attempt to hide a homosexual liaison he saw fit to lift nearly a half million dollars from archdiocesan coffers without telling anyone.

By contrast, Cardinal Anthony Bevelacqua of Philadelphia was a noted conservative, one of those who could be described as leading the reversal on Vatican II reforms. The Philadelphia Grand Jury report on his role in hiding sexual predators and using the law to avoid accountability is deeply disturbing reading. So are the documents in which Cardinals Bernard Law and Edward Egan are depicted overseeing the handling of abuse cases in their respective dioceses. Both are staunch conservatives and would be considered by many as protectors of a traditionalist approach to ecclesiology and church teaching.

Wherever members of the hierarchy are on the political, theological or ecclesiological spectrums, they meet first as brothers in a unique culture of celibate men who have sworn oaths of allegiance to the papacy and who have repeatedly acted to protect the institution while shunning the plight of thousands of child victims of abusive priests.

“I came to think that the problem was in some way cultural,” wrote Australian Bishop Mark Coleridge of the sex abuse crisis. “But that prompted the further question of how; what was it that allowed this canker to grow in the body of the Catholic church, not just here and there but more broadly?”

Coleridge does not provide a magic answer in that pastoral letter prepared last spring for Pentecost. However, he raises a number of issues – inadequat seminary training, the church’s “culture of discretion,” seminary training that creates “a kind of institutional immaturity, “a certain church triumphalism,” and the church’s tendence to see things in the light of sin and forgiveness rather than crime and punishment – that deserve far wider discussion and examination.

He includes in that list “clericalism understood as a hierarchy of power, not service.” It is one of many influences that caused so many in the hierarchy to confront the abuse crisis in ways they now say they regret. Perhaps it ought to be at the top of the list. Danneels is merely the latest sorry example, though a current one, demonstrating that for so long the actions of many of the community’s leaders were drastically out of step with what they were preaching.

Roberts identifies clericalism as the attitude that caused bishops to protect abusers. Even more disturbing, and Benedict has touched on this in his remarks on repentance, is a distortion in Catholic attitudes and teaching on sin, repentance, punishment, and expiation. Unconditional forgiveness is preached: God forgives unconditionally, we are repeatedly told (without our repentance?) and therefore victims must unconditionally forgive their abuser and oppressors, even if the abusers and oppressors remain unrepentant and unpunished. There is something seriously wrong with this, as the first word of the message of the Gospel is “Repent,” but it needs someone more learned in doctrine and history than I am to sort out what went wrong.

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The Clericalist Mind at Work

in Belgium, clergy sex abuse scandal, clericalism 4 Comments Tags: , ,

Roger Vangheluwe was a priest when he began sexually abusing his five-year-old nephew. The abuse continued even after 1984, when Vangheluwe, at age 48, became bishop of Bruges. 

The boy’s family pressured the boy to remain silent to preserve the bishop’s career. The bishop gave the family money (source of money unspecified). As he grew up, the boy was filled with anger. 

 Over the years, the nephew — who still does not want his name used publicly — channeled his rage into creating art: giant screaming images in gnarled wood or a montage of a boy being crushed by a mattress. (NYT) 

In 1996 Father Rik Devillé told Cardinal Godfried Danneels about the abuse.  

… he said, the cardinal listened impatiently, glancing frequently at his watch. Weeks later, Father Devillé received a letter from the cardinal. “Stop making unfounded public accusations against the church and its functionaries if you don’t have proof,” it read. (NYT)

(Danneels now claims to have no memory of this incident) 

A niece of the now-adult nephew received a holy card from Bishop Vangheluwe for her confirmation.  It had a note about the importance of a healthy childhood. This enraged the nephew, and he decided to confront Vangheluwe and Danneels. 

In April 2010 the nephew met with Vangheluwe and Cardinal Danneels. The nephew was expecting the new archbishop Leonard to be there but he did not come.  Vangheluwe left the room. 

(The translation of the transcript is rough. I will replace it if I can find a better one)

Nephew : So I lost my entire youth to abuse by my uncle Roger. Sexual and still mentally and I think I should do something and that I have a duty to report that to a higher authority.Danneels: What would you really want? I know the story, he has already told me. You should not tell me it all again, but what would you really want me to do?

Nephew: I give the responsibility to you, I cannot decide, I have this burden on my shoulders and I want rid myself of this burden and to give that burden to you. That is my intention.

Danneels: Yes …

Nephew: And you do what you think should be done, because I do not know how the whole system works, so …

Danneels: Do you want it to be published, anyway?

Nephew: Euuhm … I leave it to you.

Danneels: Actually, Monsignor will resign next year, would it actually be better that you wait.

Nephew: No, no, no.

 

 

 

(snip)


Nephew: I want to go through it all. For him the only honest and the easiest way to die with an easy conscience would be to give up his responsibilities. It will be much easier for him. And before you actually go through the mud and everything you need to undergo, and then you come to terms with yourself.Danneels: That’s what prompted strong. It is quite strong to say: you have publicly humiliated for everyone.

Nephew: You need to anyway. He should just resign. 


Danneels:

 Ah yes, that’s the humiliation that he must resign, hey.Nephew: Yes yes.

Danneels: Then people say: why should he resign? So, they’re going to find out. you know, why he resigned they’re going to find out. Which is quite a burden …

Nephew: But why are you so sorry for him and not me?

Danneels: I can tell you that.

Nephew: You always try to defend him, I thought I was going to have some support, I must defend myself here from things I cannot do anything about.

Danneels: No, I’m not saying anything you can do anything about it but something should be done differently.

Nephew: But what should be done?

Danneels: Questions of forgiveness anyway.

Nephew: And that was enough for you

Danneels: When you say …

Nephew: Why should I? He had been able to do that much earlier but it was not necessary. When I was 18, my father told him. We are now 25 years on and he has never asked forgiveness, why could he not do that much earlier, then it might never have come this far.

No, I will not accept that he just disappears from the scene in heavenly glory and that it is the matter finished. He has his responsibility that he has taken all this and I wish that you now take your responsibility as the superior. That is my intention.

Danneels: Yes, I can do no wrong because I did not.

 

 

 

  

(snip) 

Danneels: Well, I would suggest that we might be better to wait for a date next year when he would usually resign.

Nephew: No, I do not agree, and him taking glory in saying goodbye, no I cannot. The cover-up technique that you have used for so many years as you have, I’ll have to learn to live with, but eh   

(snip)Danneels: But I have no authority over Monsignor Vangheluwe.

Nephew: And who did?

Danneels: Actually, no one except the Pope.

(snip)

 

 

 


Nephew: Then perhaps you can go through and that you can arrange an appointment with the Pope and then we’ll go there. It is already 42 years that I suffer and I want no more, I can not stop, I can not, and I would not leave everything as it is.It has a very big impact in the family in everything in my relationship with my wife in everything, I’m tired of that life and that the matter remains so dominant, and I would agree to that. I have arrived at the age that I want my freedom for life.

Danneels: Actually, the first responsibility lies with him, he, rather than from his superiors.

Nephew: But if he does not want to do what has to be done …

Danneels: What do you ask of him? that he would resign?

Nephew: But he must decide, I just want to tell, that’s it. You wish me to say something that I cannot say I can not, I do not know how to proceed, or should I look for another way for me to obtain closure.

And today I had demanded that he confess openly speaks to the family, saying that he did those things. While everyone is there.

Danneels: He will do that.

Nephew: I had expected for today, we can directly do better and we’ll see, if nothing happens, then I go to the pope.

Danneels: The pope is not so easy to get though to …

(snip)

 

 

 


Danneels: I do not know if it would benefit either you or him to give a dramatic deadline.Nephew: I still think that the victim’s privacy should be respected, there should not be no names used.

Danneels: But yes, you put him in a quandary.

Nephew: I have all my life been in a difficult position, I’m not planning to have pity, I want that fight to finish, it has done for me, that I finally once again have a clean slate for myself that I do what I want to do.

I was in a Catholic school and I was brought up Catholic. I’m very upset with that institute, I also read the newspapers, so I think I have an obligation to do so. How can I get my children to believe in something with such a background that will not move on, then you just move straight into the next generation. And everything remains as it is, and that is not the intention of the church.

Danneels: No, it’s not the intention to discredit someone?

Nephew: Give me another solution, I should forgive and it is resolved.

Danneels: No, no, no.

Nephew: And he goes on as normal.

Danneels: You could also say he will resign next year anyway, and that for example, he says, look, I no longer go on television and such. With those things, and you come to a year.

Nephew: No, I want it placed in your hands and then you decide.

Danneels: You can grab us and blackmail, hey, and say look, you have to do something.

Nephew: What?

Danneels: You can blackmail and say, look if you do not say …

Nephew: Why should I want to blackmail? I’m not going to blackmail.

Danneels: Well, if you for example say they do nothing, and you bring it to public notice …

(snip)

 

 

 

Nephew:

We were forced to be married by him, for everything, the children were baptized by him, how can I explain to them? I now have my oldest son who asked yesterday: Look, what happened with me. They do not yet know what happened? That is still true, that cannot continue, and waiting for everything to retutn to the same situation- that’s still no solution?Danneels: Ah! We can also, as I said, ask forgiveness and give forgiveness, which is also a possibility.

Nephew:

That’s not possible for me, I do not believe anymore, as you do in these things, no, it is not possible.

That’s not possible for me, I do not believe anymore, as you do in these things, no, it is not possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Nephew: If I cause an accident, drunk, I will also be punished.Danneels: A punishment sentences. You have penalties that are public and private penalties, that’s a big difference huh. Your name gets out, pulled through the mud …

Nephew: My name?

Danneels: His name.

Nephew: He has ensured that my whole life is pulled through the mud. From 5 to 18 years old. Can you imagine?

 

 


After this failed meeting a friend of the nephew e-mailed all the bishops of Belgium and revealed the abuse. The nephew very wisely secretly taped this meeting. He released the transcript after the Belgian bishops claimed that he was trying to blackmail them. 

Vangheluwe publicly admitted the abuse and resigned: 

 “When I was still just a priest, and for a certain period at the beginning of my episcopate, I sexually abused a minor from my immediate environment,” 

Danneels successor, Leonard, said this about the resignation of the confessed incestuous child abuser: 

that Vangheluwe was known as a “great brother and dynamic bishop” who was highly appreciated within the Belgian Church 

Several things come through in this transcript: Cardinal Danneels, a hero of the progressive wing of the Church, is as much a clericalist as the most hidebound Italian cardinal. His sole concern is protecting the career and reputation of a bishop. The pain of the victim, a mere layman, is invisible to Danneels, whose only concern is with a fellow cleric. 

Danneels disclaims all responsibility – only the pope can do anything – but of course it is very difficult to arrange a meeting with the pope. 

Vangheluwe is unrepentant. He has never asked for forgiveness. He nephew correctly states that the only way to obtain forgiveness is for Vangheluwe to take responsibility for what he has done, and Vangheluwe has refused to do that his whole life. 

The nephew is a classic example of the Stockholm syndrome. He let his abuser witness his marriage and baptize his children. The hierarchy has perfected the technique of cultivating the Stockholm syndrome among victims of clerical abuse. 

Danneels tries to manipulate the nephew but claiming that the nephew is blackmailing Danneels by saying he will go public unless V resigns. Danneels tells the victim that he – the victim – should ask for forgiveness. The misuse of demands to forgive to protect clerical malefactors will weigh heavy on the scales at the Day of Judgment. 

Belgian law states that the victim of sexual abuse has ten years after he reaches 18 to report the abuse. Since the nephew was under pressure from his family to keep quiet, he did not report in that time period and  Vangheluwe cannot be criminally prosecuted. 

The police raid that seized documents form Danneels residence was pronounced illegal and the documents cannot be used in prosecutions.


No cleric in Belgium will be inconvenienced by an earthly court of law. The hierarchy are no doubt congratulating themselves on their cleverness in manipulating the situation. We shall see whether they can manipulate the Great Assizes.

 

 

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They Never Learn

in Belgium, clergy sex abuse scandal 2 Comments Tags:

In April 2010, eight years after Boston exploded with the news about pedophile cover-ups, Cardinal Danneels, the great progressive hero in the Church, continued the policy of hushing things up. Reuters reports:

The former head of Belgium’s Catholic Church suggested to a sexual abuse victim it would be better to delay a public statement on the case until the bishop involved resigned in 2011, a Church spokesman said on Saturday.

Jurgen Mettepenningen confirmed transcripts in Belgium’s De Standaard newspaper of a meeting Roman Catholic Cardinal Godfried Danneels held with Bishop Roger Vangheluwe and a sexual abuse victim of the bishop in April 2010.

“It is true this meeting and conversation took place, and that the transcript is correct,” Mettepenningen told Reuters.

Danneels’s spokesman Toon Osaer told Reuters the cardinal had not covered up anything and had openly spoken about the April 2010 meeting following Vangheluwe’s resignation two weeks after the conversation took place.

In the transcripts, published in De Standaard on Saturday, Danneels suggested the victim should make no public statement about the abuse until Vangheluwe retired the following year.

“It might be better to wait for a date in the next year, when he is due to resign,” Danneels told the victim, according to the transcripts.

He told the victim he believed a public announcement would not serve the interests of the victim or the bishop, the transcripts said.

“I don’t know if there will be much to gain from making a lot of noise about this, neither for you nor for him.”

Vangheluwe resigned after admitting having abused the victim for a number of years, both as a priest and a bishop.

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The Jackassiness of the Male

in Masculinity No Comments Tags: , , ,

You Tube has given show-off adolescent males further motivation to engage in spectacularly self-destructive behavior. Teenagers have filmed themselves wearing a protective suit in a bathtub full of fireworks and throwing a flaming basketball soaked in gasoline – with predictable third-degree burns as the result.

 

In Spanish island resorts the sport of balconing has become popular.. It involves climbing from balcony to balcony in a hotel or diving from a balcony into a pool. Death sometime results.

 

The Spanish newspaper ABC reports that the profile of a balconer 

es el de un turista joven, normalmente varón, menor de 30 años (próximo a los 25) y habitualmente de nacionalidad británica, que está pasando una semana de vacaciones en las Islas.

 

That he is a young tourist, usually male, less than 30 years old (on the average 25) and usually of British nationality, who is passing a week’s vacation in the Islands. 

And (surprise!) drugs and alcohol are involved. 

ABC, a conservative Catholic paper, finds such behavior inexplicable and disturbing. But it is mad at Catalonia for banning bullfighting. Getting into a ring with an enraged bull or running before bulls in the streets of Pamplona are fine Spanish traditions.

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Declining Testosterone Levels at the Altar

in Masculinity, Women in Church 8 Comments Tags: ,

 

The Pope welcomed a gathering of altar servers in Rome. As John Allen notes: 

First, for the first time this year, the female altar servers in attendance outnumbered the males. According to organizers, the balance was roughly 60-40 in favor of females. The official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, pointed to the turnout as a symbol of “the massive entry in recent decades of girls and young women into a role once reserved exclusively to males.” 

This predominance of girls was predictable (anyway I predicted it in my book The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity). Western Christianity has for a long time been regarded as unmasculine. It has been difficult to keep men, especially young men, connected to a church which seems to want to lessen their masculinity.

 

If an activity is obviously and mistakably masculine (such as soldiering), opening it to women does not make it a part of the feminine sphere. But if a sphere is already regarded as feminine (and Western Christianity is), opening an activity within it to women will make that activity a feminine activity.

 

The 60-40 split in altar servers mirrors the female-male split in Catholic church attendance. As boys are busy establishing their masculinity at that age, I suspect that the proportion of boy altar servers will decline further.

 

In many mainline Protestant churches, including the Evangelical church in Germany, women are already the majority of seminarians, and the clergy is being converted into a feminine occupation, like nursing. There are male nurses, but they are rare, and someday we willl have to say male minister, as we now say male nurse.

 

To further increase men’s suspicions about Christianity, in some denominations, such as the Episcopal, the remaining men are often homosexual. The heterosexual, male minister will be a rara avis in the not too distant future in the more liberal denominations.

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Albania Bound

in Uncategorized 3 Comments Tags:

My eldest son is marrying Yerina Hajno, a young Albanian woman who was his sister’s roommate at Wellesley. So we are all off to her hometown, Saranda, for an Albanian Orthodox wedding  at the monastery in which she was baptized.

Be back in a few weeks.

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Montana Music

in Augustine, Liturgy, Music 2 Comments

At one point in my peregrinations, I drove from Bozeman to Kalispell. The radio stations offered three choices: Country and Western, Christian, and Christian Country and Western. I listened to each as long as I could stand it: Rollin in my Sweet Baby’s Arms (when does the mail train come back?), Yes We’ll Gather by the River, and Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goal Posts of Life. There was also a translation of In Himmel Gibt’s Kein Bier: In Heaven There is No Beer, which seems to have been a fusion piece. 

The Catholic churches in Montana towns are largely afflicted with the musical schlock that has become mainstream Catholic fare. I dislike it, because trivial, sentimental, and narcissistic music is inappropriate for the Divine Liturgy and also tends to keep men away. But at one church I was reminded that such schlock coexists with profound Christianity: the prayer of the faithful was for those suffering fatal diseases, for those afflicted by war, for those who have no one to pray for them, for the forgotten dead. 

Every day I think of my ancestors and descendants, going back to Adam and forward to the end of the world, and I pray that none of them may be lost. Some Christians (like Augustine) seem to want to view salvation as restricted to a small group of the Elect; I know from Scripture that God loves all that He has made and I have hope in His mysterious plans, although no human eye can penetrate them.

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Wanderings in the West

in Hiking No Comments Tags: ,

I have returned from three weeks of hiking in Glacier National Park and Yellowstone. 

The National Parks are a tool of natural selection, or at least a good locale to win the Darwin Award (given to those whose stupid actions remove them from the gene pool). Despite all the signs warning that all animals in the park are WILD and DANGEROUS and DO NOT APPROACH THEM, many tourists, brought up on Walt Disney, insist in getting as close to the fauna as they can. We saw several people trying to get as close as possible to an elk with a magnificent rack, who could have tossed them in a second. One tourist was gored by a bison when he got too close. Everyone wanted to get close to a bear; two nights ago a grizzly attacked three sleeping campers, killing one and mauling two. Parents sent children to play on slippery rocks above three hundred foot waterfalls. The fatality rate is surprisingly low, although I suspect that guardian angels have to go out for a stiff drink after watching over people in the park. As the saying goes, God watches over children, drunks, and the United States of America – and tourists in the national parks. 

Speaking of drinks, I went to a tapas place in Bozeman, Montana, which had sidewalk tables. While waiting for the server to come out, I read the local papers articles on medical marijuana. Montana legalized medical marijuana about five years ago. At first a few hundred patients, almost all elderly with chronic diseases, signed up. Over 95% of doctors would have nothing to do with marijuana. Then someone got the idea for cannabis caravans.  Vans with doctors and marijuana travelled the state seeing patients. Doctors spent an average of six minutes seeing a patient before prescribing marijuana. There was an epidemic of back pain among twenty year olds, a pain which could be treated only by marijuana. Now there are over twenty thousand users of medical marijuana. Spoilsports have just shut down the cannabis caravans. 

The waiter came out and I ordered my tapas and a glass of wine. The water regretfully replied,” I am sorry, but Montana has an open container law and we any serve wine at the sidewalk café.”

 Montana has an appealing ornery streak. In the gift shop at the hotel I found “Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Montana History.” My favorite in Jacob Thorkelson, a nudist pro-Nazi congressman. This author of this book was inspired by “The Bedside Book of Bastards” which would make an excellent Christmas present. 

Returning to the parks: 

I hiked up to Iceberg Lake in suitably arctic conditions: cold and very, very windy. I could see why the Blackfeet Indians regarded it as a sacred place.

 

I battled my way back to the hotel, and came into the central hall. 

 

Around the fireplace and on the hearth families were sitting, chatting, or playing cards and board games. The fire burned brightly and in the corner a violist played sweet, sad waltzes of the West. I went into the gift shop, and the first thing that caught my eye was a t-shirt. On it was a picture of a young man standing on a ledge looking out at the glory of the Rockies, and overprinted were the words: On Earth As It Is In Heaven.” America, like other countries, has its particular sweetness. 

In the Canadian section of the park we hiked to the Carthew pass. No photographs can capture the view, but this gives an idea:

 

On one side of the ridge were four glacial lakes and a dozen waterfalls cascading from snow covered mountains. On the other side one looked for a hundred miles over the Great Plains. As a gazed at this (and ate my lunch) a young women walked by and remarked to me, “I feel I’ve stepped into heaven.” My sentiments exactly.

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Forgeries Artistic and Eccesiastic

in Maciel 5 Comments Tags: , ,

The New Yorker has a long piece on the complicated world of art forgeries, “The Mark of a Masterpiece.”  In it the author, David Grann observes,

When a forgery is exposed, people in the art world generally have the same reaction: how could anyone have been fooled by something so obviously phony, so artless? Few connoisseurs still think that Han van Meegeren’s paintings look at all like Vermeers, or even have any artistic value. Gorgers usually succeed not because they are so talented but, rather, because they provide, at a moment in time, exactly what others desperately want to see. Conjurers as much as copyists, they fulfill a wish or a fantasy. And so the inconsistencies – crooked signatures, uncharacteristic brushstrokes – are ignored or explained away. 

The art world parallels the religious world. What were people, including the pope, so desperate to see that they were taken in by such a transparent phony at Maciel?

 

 

 

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Conservatives, Liberals, or Reformers?

in Belgium, clergy sex abuse scandal 5 Comments Tags:

Der Spiegel recaps the events in Belgium. Cardinal Danneels can’t imagine why anyone thinks he didn’t act properly in handling allegations of sexual abuse. But 

A few days after the police raids in Mechelen, a dozen men gathered on the steps of the cathedral in Brussels. Ten years ago, on Jan. 25, 2000, they said, they along with eight other men told Archbishop Danneels how they had been abused by Belgian clergymen. Danneels had turned them away. He couldn’t know, he said at the time, whether they were telling the truth or if it was pure fantasy. Then he urged them to keep quiet about it because their prattle would damage the Catholic Church. 

Danneels was no better, maybe worse, than other bishops. He is a leading “progressive” in the Church,  and his fans hoped he would be the new John XXIV, further modernizing eh Church and making it fit better with the modern European ethos. 

Der Spiegel tries to fit the disagreements about how to handle sexual abuse into a liberal-conservative conflict: 

This has led to a power struggle between liberal and conservative forces in the Vatican. The conservatives in the church state see the zero-tolerance policy of US bishops as a means of curtailing the rights of accused priests. By contrast, liberal spirits are pushing to rapidly investigate and refer cases to secular authorities. 

This liberal-conservative dichotomy is inadequate for an understanding of what is going on. A better framework would be seeing on one side those who want to maintain the reputation and privileges of the clergy (let us name them the clericalists) and on the other side those who want a purification of the clergy and of the Church. 

Some of those who want a purification, like Cardinal Schönborn, are closer to Catholic Reformers like Pope Pius V (another Dominican), Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Charles Borromeo. They do not want to conform the Church to the world, but cleanse it of the rottenness that is a barrier to the preaching of the Gospel and the cultivation of a life of holiness.

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