The Uncreating Word

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Vatican 5 Comments

Pope Benedict will write a letter to the faithful of Ireland.

Ecclesiastical bureaucrats and professors (and Pope Benedict was both) live in a world of words, and think that saying the correct thing is equivalent to, even better than, doing the correct thing. Having said the correct words, they cannot understand why people want them to do something. The Pope will write a letter; and bishops have allowed tens of thousands of children and young people to be molested, raped, and tortured by Catholic priests and religious.  And Benedict will think he has done enough.

 

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Mental Illness and Guilt

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Psychology, Responsibility 1 Comment

My discussion of the Schmidt case has obvious relevance to clerical sexual abuse. The abusers may have been, in some sense of the word, “sick”; they certainly had distorted personalities. But whatever the source of their desire to have sex with minors, they were guilty when they acted on that desire. 

As Joe said, a good verdict would be “sick but guilty.” The general approach of the Church during the past fifty years that abusers were sick, and were therefore not guilty, and therefore it would be wrong to punish them. The fallacy is that any mental illness removes responsibility and guilt.

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Ireland and the Pope

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Ireland, Vatican 9 Comments Tags: , ,

Pope Benedict and the Irish bishops have issued a communiqué. 

For his part, the Holy Father observed that the sexual abuse of children and young people is not only a heinous crime, but also a grave sin which offends God and wounds the dignity of the human person created in his image. 

 The Holy Father also pointed to the more general crisis of faith affecting the Church and he linked that to the lack of respect for the human person and how the weakening of faith has been a significant contributing factor in the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors.

 Good words, but only words.

 Although Benedict has acted more strongly against priest-abusers than any pope since Pius V, he has not really acted against bishops who have abused or against bishops who have tolerated abuse. 

Bishops who have committed sexual abuse remain bishops: they could be laicized, like Bishop Fernando Lugo of Paraguay was when he was elected president But these criminal bishops remain bishops “in good standing” in the Church. 

Cardinal Law was given a luxurious post in Rome and sits on my important committees. A few Irish bishops have been forced to resign because of public outrage, but of all the bishops who have tolerated sexual abuse, only a handful have suffered any consequences beyond having to issue apologies written by their lawyers. 

Having read hundreds of cases, I wonder whether many of the abusers are atheists, in fact whether some of the bishops are atheists. It is hard to imagine a believer who thought he would stand before the judgment of God who would enact, tolerate, and enable such blasphemous sacrileges. 

It would not be the first time the clergy and hierarchy was riddled with unbelief –  the weakness of faith in the French clergy of the 18th century was unmasked by the Revolution.

 

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The Deific Exception

in guilt, law enforcement, Responsibility 1 Comment

The Naples Daily  News reports

A Brevard County woman claiming to be God’s messenger has been charged with attempted murder after reportedly shooting at a family on their back porch.

The sheriff’s office reports that 47-year-old Kathleen Aceto showed up with a gun and began shooting Friday morning. A man in the house grabbed a gun and fired back, and Aceto ran away.

Deputies responded and arrested Aceto, who lives a block from where the shooting occurred. She reportedly told the deputies that God told her to do it.

Aceto was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, armed burglary, shooting into an occupied dwelling and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

She was being held without bail, and her mental health was being evaluated.

If she really thought that God told her to shoot the neighbors (to judge the probability of this one would have to know the neighbors) and she had been a better shot, should she be found guilty of murder? Or should she be sent to a theological reeducation camp like St. Luke’s in Suitland?

In 1913 a priest from Germany, the Rev. Hans Schmidt, killed his pregnant mistress. The police, after finding her dismembered body in the Hudson, suspected foul play. A pillowcase (of all things) let them to Schmidt, and he immediately confessed he had killed her, but that God had appeared to him in the chalice and told Schmidt to offer her as a love offering, in the same way God had appeared to Abraham and commanded him to sacrifice Isaac.

The State of New York did not believe Schmidt, and tried him for murder. Schmidt put on a good show of insanity at the trial, confessing to everything up to and including necrophilia. The jury at the second trial thought he was acting and convicted Schmidt, who was sentenced to death.

Schmidt then appealed his conviction on the grounds that he was only pretending to be insane. Schmidt admitted that he had accidentally killed his mistress in the course of giving her an abortion, but he had not intended to kill her. The penalty for abortion in New York was draconian, and Schmidt wanted to protect his accomplices. Schmidt assumed he would be found not guilty by reason of insanity, put in a comfy asylum for a while, and then deported to Germany.

Justice Cardozo heard the appeal. He told Schmidt that he was entitled to a new trial only if evidence not known at the time of the trail came to light. But Schmidt knew the evidence and lied to the court. Therefore Cardozo refused the appeal.

Cardozo, not letting well enough alone, went on to create the “deific exception.” Cardozo said that if Schmidt sincerely thought that God had commanded him to kill his mistress, Schmidt would not be guilty.

But what of the Moslems who tell courts that God told them (in the Koran, or elsewhere) to kill promiscuous daughters? This defense has been used in honor killing cases.

What Cardozo should have said that if Schmidt sincerely believed that God wanted him to kill his mistress he should also remember that God had established the secular power to do justice and therefore wanted Schmidt to suffer the consequences of his actions in the electric chair. Schmidt is the only priest ever executed in the United States and Canada.

Therefore, even if Ms. Aceto sincerely believed that God wanted her to shoot her neighbors (and I have had neighbors who needed shooting), she should also believe that God wanted the secular authorities to carry out their God-given task of disarming and incarcerating Ms. Aceto.

Incarceration is usually shorter than treatment.  Our legal system has not yet determined how to deal with criminals who we are almost certain will commit another crime after their release. In general, it is not good to punish a person for a crime he might commit, and civil commitment to an asylum is in reality punishment.

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Singing in the Reign

in Liturgy, Music 8 Comments Tags: , ,

Commonweal is having a discussion in the decades-old topic “Why Catholics Can’t (or Won’t) Sing.” 

The lack of singing at Mass is a symptom that the liturgical renewal was not a popular movement: it was developed by a small group of enthusiasts and scholars and imposed on the laity without any consultation. Catholics have a strong attraction to a priori reasoning: according to theological principles, the liturgy should looks like this (full active participation) so let’s change it so that it does look like this. There was a weak sense of the realities of the situation. 

The standard low Mass had its faults, but it was familiar, and people were used to it it and had no real objections to it. Breaking the habit of the low mass was one of the reasons that mass attendance has declined precipitously. 

Catholics who continue to go to Mass do so mostly out of a sense of duty and many if not most would be relieved if the laity were never asked to sing again. 

The situation of elites imposing their agenda is often a function of narcissism. The cantor and the choir and the musicians want to give a performance, and often do not care if the congregation sings. I have watched cantors and organists change tempos so that the confused congregation would stop singing and everyone could pay attention to the performers. Even if the cantor is not a narcissist (it occasionally happens), sound systems guarantee that the cantor’s voice will dominate everyone else’s.

When the congregation does sing, it often shows an equal narcissism and likes songs of the utmost theological questionableness: “Ashes” for Ash Wednesday, “To Dream the Impossible Dream,” and similar self-indulgent, emotional bathos. 

I do not see any easy way to cultivate congregational singing. Traditions cannot be made to appear at command. Catholic schools used to teach music, but there are fewer and fewer students in these schools very year.

PS: I wish Catholics would sing. When I go to Protestant services and everyone sings enthusiastically, it really increases the experience that we are praying and praising together.

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Emotions and the Fall of Man

in anger, Moral Theology 6 Comments Tags: , ,

The Greek philosophers in general and Christian thinkers after them have seen the emotions (passions) as innate parts of human nature. Even the Stoics, who seem to condemn the passions, really only condemn disorderly, irrational passions, as Aquinas and others have noted. 

John Chrysostom cautions against anger, but he implicitly means disorderly anger, as he sees both anger (the irascible appetite) and desire (the concupiscible appetite) as essential, and therefore God-created, parts of human nature. 

Yet surely both are naturally implanted, and both are set in us for our profit, both anger, and desire: the one that we may chastise the evil, and correct those who walk disorderly; the other, that we may have children, and that our race may be recruited by such succession. (Homily XVII on Matthew V.28.28) 

Of anger Chrysostom says: 

And what is the proper time for anger? When we are not avenging ourselves, but checking others in their lawless freaks, or forcing them to attend in their negligence. 

And what is the unsuitable time? When we do so as avenging ourselves….(Homily XVI. Matt.V.37) 

(One author met someone who said the Israelis must forgive the Palestinians for their attacks on children and turn the other cheek; but this pacifist then went on an length and vituperatively about a colleague who had failed to give the pacifist proper mention in an academic article. I think we have all encountered the type. It is easy to tolerate evils done to others.) 

As someone in the comments mentioned, this analysis of the role of the passions creates a problem for the doctrine of creation: if man was created in a world without evil (and God had pronounced it “very good) and was immortal, why are these two passions clearly designed for a world beset by evil and death?  

I have not yet encountered a good explanation.

Presumably, in an unfallen world the energies that we feel as anger and desire would take different forms – but the forms are unimaginable. And what will they be look in the new creation, when death and evil will be no more? 

My tentative guess is that God, know that his rational creates would sin and fall, create the universe ruled by transiency (and therefore death) and created human nature such that it had these passions so that man could face with courage the evils of the world and reproduce in his warfare against death. 

But that is just a guess.

 

 

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Bach and the Enemies of Christ

in Music 1 Comment

 

 

I heard Bach’s cantata, Wenn die stolze Feinde schnauben, at Christ Lutheran Church in Baltimore.

 

It is the last part of the Christmas oratorio, and was sung on Epiphany.

 

While the recitative recounts the narrative of the Three Kings, the meditative parts focus on the evil that already desires to destroy the Child.

 

Herr, wenn die stolzen Feinde schnauben,

So gib, daß wir im festen Glauben

Nach deiner Macht und Hülfe sehn!

Wir wollen dir allein vertrauen,

So können wir den scharfen Klauen

Des Feindes unversehrt entgehn.

 

Lord, when the proud enemies snarl, grant that we in steadfast faith may look to your strength and help! We will trust you alone, and so are able to escape unharmed the sharp claws of the enemy.

 

The Soprano addresses Herod as Du Falscher, You false one, who tries to use his List, his cunning, to destroy the child. A fox is listig, cunning, and Jesus later called another Herod “that fox.”

 

The chorus sings the tender hymn

 

Ich steh an deiner Krippen hier,

O Jesulein, mein Leben;

Ich komme, bring und schenke dir,

Was du mir hast gegeben.

Nimm hin! Es ist mein Geist und Sinn,  

Herz, Seel und Mut, nimm alles hin,

Und laß dirs wohlgefallen.

 

I stand here at your crib, o little Jesus, my life. I come and bring and give to you what you have given to me. Take it, it is my spirit and soul and mind and heat and strength, take it all, and let it be pleasing to you.

 

The Child escapes to Egypt. The tenor sings 

 

Was will der Höllen Schrecken nun,

Was will uns Welt und Sünde tun,

Da wir in Jesu Händen ruhn?

 

What will the horrors of Hell now do, what will the world and sin do to us, who rest in Jesus’ hands.

 

The choir concludes with the Passion chorale (O Sacred Head Surrounded)

 

Tod, Teufel, Sünd und Hölle

Sind ganz und gar geschwächt;

Bei Gott hat seine Stelle

Das menschliche Geschlecht.

 

Death, devil, sin and hell are absolutely weakened. The human race has its place with God.

 

Bach modulates from the Christmas season to Lent in this cantata, and connects the two. The sweetness and tenderness of Christmas are not sentimentalized by being isolated. Already the proud enemy seeks the blood of the Child, but already God’s wisdom and strength triumphs. He laughs to scorn the proud, and already the Child is Victor. The extraordinary note of universalism in the last line of the cantata looks forward to the final triumph, because already humanity is forever united to God in Christ, and that union contains a promise for the whole human race.

 

As I listen again and again to Bach’s cantatas, I marvel both at the music, which has never been surpassed, and at the depth of the theology and religious feeling.

 

Italian musicians periodically have asked the Vatican to canonize Bach, which demurs because he was a Lutheran, but I think that he would be a worthier object of veneration and imitation than a lot of the saints that clutter the calendar.

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Ecclesiastical Con Men

in clergy sex abuse scandal, clericalism 10 Comments Tags: , ,

One of my responders is fortunate enough to live in the parish to which Father Dwight Longenecker is attached. 

Father Longenecker in his blog on Con Men has written one of the best analyses of clerical abusers, Maciel being the most famous. 

Why do people fall for priests who turn out to be such stinkers? It’s pretty complicated, but it goes like this: first of all, the bad priest himself is usually a complex character. He has deep flaws and serious sins deep down in his life. To compensate he tries very hard to be good, and what better way to be good than to become a priest? Becoming a priest helps him to cover up his flaws. He puts on a uniform everyday which proclaims that he is a holy man. The uniform allows him to play a part. He is comfortable being a good pastor, a caring person, a wonderful preacher, a man of prayer. It makes him feel better about himself and if he is not careful, he soon starts believing his own priestly image.If he is charismatic, charming, debonair and dynamic he is even more attractive. If he is wise and wonderful and eloquent and compassionate and caring and almost Jesus himself, then he becomes even more popular and the real deep down problem is only made worse by the imposture, not better. Have you ever noticed how often it is the priests and pastors who seem the very best and most wonderful who are the ones who fall? Every asked yourself if the reason they were so wonderful is linked with their crash? 

 (Snip)

 Furthermore, the whole dynamic of parish life contributes to build up the false image. Everyone loves Father Fantastic. Everyone looks up to him. In fact they invest an awful lot of spiritual capital in him. They put him on a pedestal. In fact, the people, rather than learning to love God (which is hard work) love the priest instead. They idolize him and he can do no wrong because they actually want an idol of a priest who can do no wrong. He epitomizes for the their whole religion. All this false religion does is to make the bad priest’s conflict between his inner demons and the outer false image even worse. 

(Snip) 

Why were so many taken in by Father Maciel? Because so many people wanted to be taken in. It was easier and more exciting to believe the whole fabricated fiction than to take the effort to find out the truth and follow it.

 I have noticed that older Catholics literally make idols of priests: priests can do no wrong, they are a substitute for God. One women recounted how happy how dying mother was to have six priests surrounding her death bed. First of all, I happen to suspect that some of those priests were real stinkers; Secondly, while I want to receive the last sacraments, I want t be surrounded by my family when I die. My wife and I were both blest to be able to be holding our mothers when they died. 

And Father Longenecker considers only the better class of criminals. There are those, such as Rudy Kos, who were abusers before they entered the priesthood and entered the priesthood so that they would have easier access to victims and the protection of the hierarchy. One document I saw proposed that Kos’s ordination be annulled and I suspect it was on tehse grounds. 

Even deeper into evil are those priests who under a holy exterior practice Satanism. A private detective I spoke with had investigated many cases of abuse, and the boys (always boys) said that the priests often used Satanic rites as part of the abuse. The boys’ lawyers told them never to breathe a word of this to the papers or the courts, for fear they would be dismissed as delusory. 

The detective thought that the abusers were trying to scare the boys with Satanism. I thought the motivation was more subtle. They did unbelievable things with the boys, so that of the boys described the abuse and the accompanying rites, they would be dismissed as delusory. People don’t do such things – or do they? 

Perhaps the priests involved in Satanism were atheists and did these things just to discredit the victims and perhaps add a frisson to the abuse. Or perhaps they weren’t atheists, and really believed they were involved with evil spirits – and perhaps they were.

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U.S. Catholicism: Decline and Fall

in Catholic Church 19 Comments Tags: , ,

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

The 2009 Catholic directory reported:

—There were 191,265 church-recognized marriages in the year ending Jan. 1, 2009, more than 5,000 fewer than the year before.

— Confirmations numbered more than 622,000, down about 8,500 from the previous year.

— First Communions numbered nearly 822,000, a drop of about 1,300.

— Infant baptisms totaled more than 887,000, down by almost 16,000.

— Adult baptisms and receptions into full communion totaled more than 124,000, a decline of more than 12,000 from the previous year.

This decline in sacramental practice occurred when the number of Catholics was, according to the Church directory, increasing.

The decline in some places (such as Quebec) began before Vatican II, but the years after Vatican II have seen an accelerating decline. Some blame the Council itself, saying  that the Church was doing fine and should not have changed. Others say that the failure to make enough changes is the cause of the decline. 

The proponents of more changes want the Catholic Church to follow the example of the Episcopal Church in accepting married priests, women priests, homosexual marriages, contraception, abortion, lay governance etc. But the Episcopal Church is in even steeper decline. Why should the Catholic Church not follow the same path if it adopts the same policies? 

Those who want the Church to return to 1950 point to the relative stability or success of conservative Protestant churches. But the worship of these churches is often either charismatic or media-saturated, about as far from the 1950 Tridentine mass as one can get. 

From my limited point of view, I think that the sudden and autocratic changes in Catholic life which were imposed autocratically by the Vatican on the advice of a handful of theological experts, was one source of the decline. Catholics had developed habits: the Latin mass, Marian devotions, fish on Fridays, the Baltimore Catechism. Suddenly, overnight everything was gone. It is always harder to start a new good habit, and many people just drifted away. Whatever the value of the reforms, the way they were imposed was bound to cause damage. 

In an attempt to overcome the hostile, fortress mentality that characterized Catholicism, Vatican II opened new doors to ecumenism and to a less hostile attitude to other religious and philosophies. But this was rapidly interpreted to mean indifferentism: one religion is as good as another, the differences mean little or nothing. 

The legalism that characterized 1950 Catholicism has been succeeded by antinomianism especially in sexual matters: anything that is socially acceptable goes. The Catholic Theological Society has defended about any sexual perversion that one can imagine, and lay Catholics have assimilated the message. 

Larry R. Petersen, Gregory V. Donnerwerth in “Secularization and the Influence of Religion on Beliefs about Premarital Sex” (Social Forces, Vol. 75, 1997) analyze changes in attitudes to pre-marital sex among Catholics and Protestants and conclude: 

The findings indicate that among conservative Protestants who attended church often there was no decline in support for traditional beliefs about premarital sex between 1972 and 1993. On the other hand, support for such beliefs declined significantly among mainline Protestants and Catholics at all levels of church attendance and among conservatives who were infrequent attenders. 

Secularity, or worldliness as it used to be called, is not the inevitable winner in the contest with Christianity. The Catholic Church adopted policies that allowed secularism to erode Catholic belief and practice. Some of the policies were changes that upset established routines. In addition, while continuing to maintain traditional doctrine, the hierarchy allowed corrosive ideas to circulate, and sometimes even discouraged the laity who tried to defend traditional teachings – such conservatives were seen as disruptive. Episcopal toleration extended to the advocacy and practice of pedophilia (Paul Shanley).

Apart from the bishops, the Catholic establishment in the United States (chanceries, colleges, universities, religious orders) would like to see Catholic sexual morality become a dead letter: an interesting intellectual curiosity, like the strictures against usury, that might contain a gleam of wisdom but would not usually affect the way Catholics behaved in either their public or private lives. 

Bishops are careerists and balance their need to impress the Vatican with their orthodoxy against the reality that most of the members of the Catholic Church in the United States, including the members who supposedly transmit traditional teaching, do not accept that teaching. These are the people who pay the bills and give the Catholic Church the illusion that it has an influence in the public sphere.  

Such a compromise with worldliness does not even maintain Catholic numbers. If the Catholic Church is so meaningless, why bother with it? Why get up on Sunday morning to hear third-rate music and intellectual pablum? If you take the Gospel seriously, you are more to end up in a conservative Protestant church which, for all its limitations, has not surrendered, on some key issues that affect daily life, to the world.

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Cincinnati and the Decline of Catholicism

in clergy sex abuse scandal 10 Comments Tags: ,

 

1982

2009

Priests

882

482

Parishes

256

220

Seminarians

89

28

Catholic school students

38,531

30,212

Catholic population

506,000

476,189

Catholic marriages

4,427

2,112

 This is the table for the Cincinnati Inquirer that shows the state of the Catholic Church in 1982 when he became the archbishop of Cincinnati and as it is today when he leaves it. 

Ohio is a declining state, and the small shrinkage in parishes and number of Catholics and Catholic school students is not unexpected. 

However, the decline in the number of priests, seminarians, and especially marriages shows that the level of adult commitment to Catholicism is about half what it is when he took over. The decline in marriages is especially significant. It would be interesting to see the figures for baptism and confirmation. 

Usually such massive declines have occurred only in times of extreme crisis such as the Reformation or the French Revolution. To have such a decline (and it is paralleled in other areas of North America and Europe) shows that the Catholic Church s undergoing a crisis as severe as the better known historical ones. 

Yet Pilarczyk thinks that all is basically well, at least in the areas that he controls: 

“We have to avoid the trap of equating numbers with quality. Would I be happier if we had more priests? Sure I would. But it doesn’t mean catastrophe has struck because we have fewer … Today we’ve got lay ministers and professional people working with the priests. In the old days, there was a pastor, a school principal and a maintenance man. Today, (the pastor) has a staff.” 

Pilarczyk blames “secularity” but conservative Protestant churches have shown vitality during the same period. The Gallup Poll shows that as Catholic attendance has declined, Protestant attendance has risen. 

In 1955, adult Catholics of all ages attended church at similar rates, with between 73% and 77% saying they attended in the past week. By the mid-1960s, weekly attendance of young Catholics (those 21 to 29 years of age) started to wane, falling to 56%, while attendance among other age groups dropped only slightly, to around 70%. By the mid-1970s, only 35% of Catholics in their 20s said they had attended in the past week, but attendance was also starting to fall among those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.

Attendance for most of the groups continued to fall from the 1970s to the 1990s. However, over the past decade it has generally stabilized, particularly among Catholics in their 20s and 30s.

Across this entire period, attendance among Catholics aged 60 and older has dropped from 73% to 58%.

But if “secularity” is the cause of this drop in Church attendance why has Protestant attendance risen? 

The picture in attendance by age is entirely different among Protestants. Apart from a temporary dip in weekly church attendance among 21- to 29-year-old Protestants in the 1960s and 1970s, attendance has stayed the same or increased among all the age groups. It even rebounded among young Protestants in the 1980s, and is now close to 1950s levels.

 Because the liberal, main-line churches are in long-term decline, this increase must be in the more conservative churches.

 Pilarczyk may have saved the finances of the archdiocese by setting aside 3 M for victims (although I estimate the life-long financial damage to each victim at 500,000 – 1,000,000) but he has not saved the heart of the church– but that is not his concern.

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Popes and Canonization

in clergy sex abuse scandal, clericalism, Maciel, Vatican 8 Comments Tags: ,

Commonweal has a discussion of the Vatican’s decision to place Pius XII and John Paul II on the path to canonization.

 

I share the concerns. Canonization is supposed to provide a role model for Catholics to follow, but how can you imitate even a good pope? For centuries almost all saints have been priests and religious, but only a vanishingly small percentage of Catholics live in those states of life.

 

Canonization, especially of popes, has become another exercise in clericalism, of which the Church needs far less, not more. It is the ultimate career step.

 

How can Pius XII’s actions during World War II be judged until the archives are opened? From my tiny bit of research around the fringes, I think he will probably come out OK – he did what little he could to save lives. He made mistakes in dealing with Hitler (who didn’t?), but Pius was not in any way sympathetic to Nazism. What he did not do, and it is a serious matter, was ac against Catholic clerics who were sympathetic to Nazism (see my case study). Pius was a good man in horrifying times. He did better than Allied leaders who turned Jews away. Whether he was heroic – only  full study of the documents from 1939 to 1945 might show that, and those are not yet available.

 

John Paul II, for all his virtues, was a lousy judge of character. His so-called priest friends in the chancery in Cracow betrayed him to the secret police. John Paul II recommended the abuser Maciel as a guide to youth. John Paul II refused personal appeals from a cardinal to make a statement about an abuser. Should a person whose work in the Church is administration and failed so badly in key issues be canonized?

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How Do Say Chutzpah in Swahili?

in Uncategorized 2 Comments Tags:

The inimitable Bishop Milingo (APA):

 

Zambia’s controversial Roman Catholic Church archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, who has been defrocked (dismissed) from the church’s leadership after years of controversial actions, on Friday demanded that the Vatican should pay him his pension for the years he served the church.

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Molester, Thief…and a Plagiarist!

in Maciel 4 Comments Tags:

Maciel molested seminarians, fathered children, and stole Legion money to support them.  

 

The spiritual writings that he gave to the Legion to form its members turn out to have been written by someone else.

 

Catholic News  Agency reports:

 

In an effort to distance itself from the wrongdoings of its founder, the Legion of Christ has recently circulated an internal memo detailing how a long venerated work of spirituality attributed to Fr. Marcial Maciel was actually a slight re-writing of a book from a little-known Spanish author.

 

“El Salterio de mis días” (The Psalter of my Days), according to the Legionary tradition, was regarded as written by Fr. Maciel during the period of the “great blessing,” (1956-59), when the Mexican founder was submitted to a canonical process by the Vatican that was finally called off.

 

The memo now reveals that the text, very popular among the Legion in its original in Spanish and partially translated into English for internal use, was “based” on the little known work of a Spanish Catholic politician, Luis Lucía.

What begins as tragedy ends as farce

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Bishop Milingo Out; Abuser-Bishops Still In

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Vatican 2 Comments Tags:

Archbishop and Mrs. Milingo

Archbishop Milingo, after years of increasingly outrageous conduct, has been defrocked, according to Catholic Word News. 

Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo—the renegade African prelate who has launched a worldwide crusade for married priests, under the influence of the Korean sect figure Sun Myung Moon—has been defrocked, the Vatican announced on December 17.

Because of Milingo’s “regrettable conduct” that resulted in his canonical suspension in 2001 and later his excommunication in 2006, and because he “has shown no sign of the desired repentance,” the Vatican statement said, “the Holy See has therefore been obliged to impose upon him the further penalty of dismissal from the clerical state.”

Archbishop Milingo was suspended in 2001 after he flew to New York to participate in a mass marriage ceremony, at which Rev. Moon presided, in which he was joined to a Korean woman, Maria Sung. After being reconciled with the Church for a short time, in 2006 the African archbishop ordained four married men as bishops, without the approval of the Holy See, thus incurring automatic excommunication.

In recent months Milingo has continued ordaining bishops in illicit ceremonies. Those ceremonies demonstrate his “persistent contumacy,” the Vatican statement said, and show the need for new disciplinary action.

However, no bishops involved in the sexual abuse crisis have been so punished, not even the bishops who were abusers themselves, much less the ones, like Cardinal Law, who were enablers of abusers.

 

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The Wheat and the Tares

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

Augustine had to deal with scandals in the North African Church and with bishops who refused to discipline evil clerics. Irish Catholics are suffering both from abusers and stony-hearted bishops. 

But that grief which arises in the hearts of the pious, who are persecuted by the manners of bad or false Christians, is profitable to the sufferers, because it proceeds from the charity in which they do not wish them either to perish or hinder the salvation of others (The City of God 51) 

God does not desire the death of sinners but that they be converted and live – even abusers and bishops. But God also does not want them to hinder the salvation of others, and that is what they are definitely doing in Ireland.

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