We urge this not primarily as journalists seeking a story, but as Catholics who appreciate that extraordinary circumstances require an extraordinary response. Nothing less than a full, personal and public accounting will begin to address the crisis that is engulfing the worldwide church. It is that serious.
via Credibility gap: Pope needs to answer questions | National Catholic Reporter.
This is why I am still a Catholic. Our Church is more than the Magesterium and hierarchy.
A canonical trial authorised by Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy was halted after Fr. Murphy wrote to the future pope asking that proceedings be stopped, despite objections from a second archbishop.
The accused priest said in the letter that he was ill and wanted to live out the remainder of his time in the “dignity of my priesthood”.
Victims say Fr Murphy – who died in 1998 – assaulted boys while hearing their confessions, in his office, his car, at his mother’s house and in their dormitory beds.
He was quietly moved to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974, where he spent his last 24 years working freely with children in parishes and schools, according to one lawsuit.
via BBC News – Pope accused of failing to act on sex abuse case.
What bothers me is the Vatican’s response to this. Instead of quiet dignity, we find defiance: it’s about the pope and not about the children who were abused under his watch. Directly or not, you are responsible Pope Benedict. Take responsibility. Accusing the media and critics of “petty gossip” about really serious matters only serves to paint you as petty and seeking to deflect attention from those sins you may have committed. Focus on what matters. Further, you are the Vicar of Christ; so much for blessing those who curse you.
Today’s homily centered on the Passion of Christ and how we read it today during Mass. The passion in Luke’s Gospel was read like a play with different parts read by different people. The folks in the pews read parts where groups of people speak, e.g. the crowds or the High Priests. So Father focused his homily on the parts for us folks in the pews and highlighted how they were all parts that spoke ill of the speakers themselves. “Crucify him!” etc. One section really spoke to me and my sins, Anger and Pride in particular.
Luk 22:49 When those who were around him saw what was coming, they asked, “Lord, should we strike with the sword?”
I really love to draw my sword. It happens when I lord over someone in a debate. It happens when I turn righteous anger into scornful rebuke and feel pride in my self-righteousness. Thank God for the sacrament of Reconciliation and the grace from God of friends who challenge me with love.
This Sunday my pastor gave a great homily on the Scripture readings entitled “Where’s the Fruit?” in homage to the classic “Where’s the Beef” commercial. It struck me how Jesus could be militant about being un-militant. We begin with the parable of the Tree that Did Not Bear Fruit:
And [Jesus] told them this parable:
“There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard,
and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none,
he said to the gardener,
‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree
but have found none.
So cut it down.
Why should it exhaust the soil?’
He said to him in reply,
‘Sir, leave it for this year also,
and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it;
it may bear fruit in the future.
If not you can cut it down.’”
Ouch! The penalty is steep for not bearing fruit. It seemed like another toned down hellfire and brimstone kind of message, until Father brought up some apropos Scripture in St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians Chapter 5:
In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
So we, as Christians, should bear this fruit: we should be loving, joyous, peaceful, patient, kind, generous, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. Otherwise, we get cut down. Wow. That’s a stark image. It seems to paint God as harsh and judging, and indeed Jesus was definitely in the “Repent! The judgment of God is at hand” mode. But think on this. I’ve always found God to be in the rules, “the laws,” of our universe, i.e. 2 + 2 = 4 or F = ma or opposite charges attract. So what would be the destiny of a people who are hateful, joyless, war-like, impatient, unkind, miserly, deceitful, violent, and unruly?
This week my father and I went on retreat to rest and refresh our souls this weekend. It was my second time and I invited my father to come along this time. Our retreat group’s focus is on building spiritual lives of men, esp. fathers and sons. My father and I thoroughly enjoyed our experience together of taking time to stop, look, and listen. To give you a good sense of what we try to stop, look, and listen to see the “Imperatives of Jesus” from the Handbook of Spiritual Exercises. They are good questions to consider.
This week my father and I went on retreat to rest and refresh our souls this weekend. It was my second time and I invited my father to come along this time. Our retreat group’s focus is on building spiritual lives of men, esp. fathers and sons. My father and I thoroughly enjoyed our experience together of taking time to stop, look, and listen. To give you a good sense of what we try to stop, look, and listen to, see the “Imperatives of Jesus” from the Handbook of Spiritual Exercises. They are good questions to consider. Continue reading “Spiritual Re-up”
The American conscience, when it decides to act, is mighty–but it is also sluggish and vain. Americans are crushed by the weight of not fulfilling their own high expectations–so the shameful acts of one generation are often rectified by a subsequent generation unencumbered by their own complicity in such acts…The American conscience is often slow to action, but not because it cannot recognize evil–but because our view of ourselves as a people guided by justice is so important to who we are that when confronted with proof of our own shortcomings, we recoil in shame and precious vanity. Eventually, with the big stuff, we usually find our way–we see this with our slow, staggering, but inevitable march towards full personhood for gays and lesbians. And while those who stained America’s honor with war crimes have escaped accountability for now, these American takfiris will eventually be judged by history with a clarity we cannot muster today.
via American Takfiris – Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Great post by guest Adam Sewer. Definitely worth the read.
Back to that clueless bumper sticker. Let me rewrite it in ways that have a greater basis in American history:
“The last time we mixed religion and politics, we got Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
via God, these people annoy me | WHYY News and Information | WHYY.
Exactly. You can’t inveigh against bigotry and ignorance by being bigoted and ignorant.
A friend asked me if I believed in the resurrection. I’ve been uncomfortable with saying “Yes” because I’m skeptical of the somewhat weak explanations I’ve heard. I’m also uncomfortable with saying “No” because I’ve always believed in my heart of hearts that there is something to it. In other words, I believe in the Resurrection but have not the words to describe it in a way that I feel is honest. Continue reading “Back to Life”
Recently one of my more devout friends got into a mini-debate about so-called Creation Science and the veracity of the Bible as a scientifically true book. His pièce-de-résistance was the article below. It’s not my purpose here to refute Creation Science itself, but to refute calling it true science. It is, like phrenology, a pseudo-science.
Recently one of my more devout friends got into a mini-debate about so-called Creation Science and the veracity of the Bible as a scientifically true book. His pièce-de-résistance was the article quoted below. It’s not my purpose here to refute Creation Science itself, but to refute calling it true science. It is, like phrenology, a pseudo-science. Continue reading “Theoretical Creative Destruction”
Last week I had a disagreement with my pastor over the nativity stories and their veracity as history at Bible study (a story for another day) that got me to thinking about nativity scenes and the old and tired battles about truth and the Bible. However, it never ceases to amaze me how people avoid facing facts in service to what they believe (and this includes you athiests out there, perhaps especially so given recent events). I think it has to do with our need to order our world and make it comprehensible, predictable in some way. I’m not judging whether this is bad or good, just the way it is often discussed in a less than honest fashion IMHO. So back to the nativity.
The discussion at Bible study turned to Christ’s birth and I remember Father speaking of eyewitnesses, etc. I objected to this because there are lots of problems with claiming the birth stories together are eyewitness accounts and are therefore history, at least history of a sort. Even our understanding of the nativity as an amalgam of Luke and Matthew has issues. In the end, magi offering gifts to a babe laid in a manger is not a scriptural scene. In other words it’s not in the Bible. Yet we see nativity scenes in front of plenty of churches and have kids play out Christmas plays every year, traditions that I think speak to a deep need to make the separate stories in Luke and Matthew make sense together and support our faith in a modern world.
And I’m OK with that as long as we are honest and up front about it. When a believer goes into spin mode in an attempt mask the simple fact that Jesus’ birth is a historical mystery beyond the tradition that holds that he was born of a virgin in Bethlehem of Judea a little over two millenia ago, it’s worse than an outright lie, it’s a con job: an attempt to fool another person ( or oneself!) through trickery.
I know such language is harsh and unforgiving but we all know whose game lies and trickery is. It’s important we don’t succumb to such temptations to speak in half truths which are whole lies. It besmirches the Gospel which is so dear to us.
