Month: November 2012

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Fr McVerry questions direction of church

By PATSY McGARRY

How can today’s young people be invited “to commit themselves to a male-dominated, authoritarian institution which suppresses dissent and attempts to control what its members may even discuss?” social justice campaigner Fr Peter McVerry has asked.

The founder of the Peter McVerry Trust for homeless people was speaking in Dublin last night at the first annual general meeting of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP). The meeting continues today.

He said there were “many priests and religious . . . who experience only condemnation, exclusion and marginalisation by the very church which was mandated by its founder to reach out to all in compassion, love, and tolerance”.

The church established by Jesus “was to be a community of brothers and sisters, free of all domination”, he said. Jesus warned against “replicating the relationships of power that existed in the wider society”.

“Whatever little theology I have, I learnt from homeless people,” he said. Listening to them had “changed my understanding of who God is and what God wants”.

Fear

Fr McVerry said the wealth, power and status of the church, and its “fear of losing them”, may have filtered “understanding of the message of Jesus”. Such fear was seen recently in the church authorities’ response to child sexual abuse.

He recalled that “for the religious authorities at the time of Jesus, God was a God of the law” and that “the church, too, has often proclaimed a God of the law”. It meant “anyone, like Jesus, dissident priests, organisations like the ACP who challenge this understanding of God, is seen therefore as a threat . . . to be got rid of”.

“Jesus . . . was just ‘the carpenter’s son,’ one of the laity no less” who “was moved by the suffering of his people. And Jesus proclaimed a different God, a God of compassion”.

He wondered whether this was why today the message of the church was seen by so many as irrelevant to their lives.

Complete Article HERE!

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Watchdog group asks IRS to probe Catholic bishops

By David Gibson

A public watchdog group is charging the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops with openly politicking on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and it wants the Internal Revenue Service to explore revoking the hierarchy’s tax-exempt status.

“In completely unqualified terms, the IRS should immediately tell the Conference of Catholic Bishops that the conduct of its members is beyond the pale,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

“If the Catholic bishops would like to continue receiving the tremendous tax benefits on which they rely, they should follow U.S. law and stay out of American politics,” Sloan added in a statement last Friday (Nov. 2) announcing the complaint.

Sloan argued that last-minute appeals by numerous bishops had crossed the line into electioneering. She named several prelates, including Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Ill., a fierce critic of President Barack Obama, who ordered his priests to read a letter at all Masses on Sunday that sharply criticized Democratic policies and warned that Catholics who voted for those policies would endanger their eternal salvation.

Though the complaint targets the bishops’ conference, the conference itself has no control over what individual bishops do or do not say. While the USCCB has been waging a fierce political battle with the Obama White House over a contraception mandate, it has been careful not to endorse either candidate.

The bishops under scrutiny deny they are being partisan, and say they are only stating Catholic teaching and pointing out that Democratic policies violate those teachings.

Complaints to the IRS about the Catholic Church are relatively infrequent; church-state watchdogs have generally targeted evangelical churches and other groups associated with the Christian right for violating laws on politicking from the pulpit.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a secularist group based in Madison, Wis., on Monday announced that it had filed a report with the IRS charging evangelist Billy Graham’s ministry with campaigning on behalf of Romney.

The aging Graham, who turns 94 the day after the election, surprised many observers last month by pledging to “do all I can to help” Romney. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association subsequently took out full-page newspaper ads in which Graham strongly urges believers “to vote for candidates who support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and woman, protect the sanctity of life and defend our religious freedoms.”

“The context of the ads and publications by BGEA evidence its intent to endorse candidate Mitt Romney,” FFRF co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote in an Oct. 31 letter to the IRS.

The complaints may be moot, however. The Associated Press reported last week that a senior IRS official said the agency has not investigated any houses of worship over political complaints in three years, an assertion supported by many experts in the field.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic Bishops Get Their Ass Kicked By Their Own Flock

Election results all across the country couldn’t have been worse for our boys in the fuschia beanies. All their bigotry, all their hate, all their efforts to manipulate the election in favor of the Republicans have come to nought. All their money was wasted on an indefensible campaign. And I think it is safe to say that the election results shows, that once again, they are on the wrong side of history.

These insulated, monolithic, callous, tone deaf and power-hungry crusty old men have been given the drubbing they so richly deserve. Now we must take the lead. Let’s redouble our effort to take back the church! Hurray for all the courageous Catholics who voted for justice, goodness and Gospel values.

A word to my brother clergy of whatever rank in the Church — you have an important teaching role in our faith community. We’re fine with that. We look to you for guidance. We hope you will continue to share your faith with us in as passionate a way as you see fit. However, your position in the Church does not give you license to shame, humiliate. denigrate or in any other way bully anyone else of conscience for their faith commitment. Let your teaching and leadership be by example, not by harassment.

You must know that you are dangerously close to being completely irrelevant for the vast majority of the people you have been ordained to serve. Let this election be a wake up call to you. Show us some humility and a modicum of humanness and we may once again embrace you as our leaders. But remember, you will have to earn our trust. Because as it stand now; you are morally bankrupt.

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Spain’s Top Court Rules: Gay Marriage is Constitutional

Spain’s highest court has upheld the constitutionality of the seven-year old marriage equality law.

Spain’s top court today ruled that the law passed in 2005 by the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero allowing gay couples to marry is fully constitutional, answering an appeal challenging in it by the conservative Popular Party’s Mariano Rajoy.

Eight judges (seven progressive and conservative Francisco Perez de los Cobos) voted in favor and three judges, all appointed under the Popular Party, dissented.

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Rev. Bourgeois offers apology to women barred from priesthood in Catholic Church

By Wes Woods

The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, who has been criticized by the Catholic Church for his support of women’s ordination, discussed his views Thursday night at Claremont Graduate University.
“I really want to begin with an apology,” Bourgeois said during a panel discussion.

“To all the women in the Catholic Church and also I think in society for taking so long to see this injustice. To see the root of our church’s teaching all about sexism.

“No excuses, I was asleep, I think, for many years and one of the many participating in what we call prejudice. I’ve come to see after much reflection that in life prejudice is our greatest enemy. We learn prejudice. And we can unlearn it.”

Bourgeois was part of a group that also featured Gina Messina-Dysert, visiting assistant professor in the department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University; Rosemary Radford Ruether, visiting professor of religion; and Jane Via of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests.

Via said she agreed with the sentiment expressed by Ruether that the Catholic Church was much larger than the Vatican, which has condemned the idea of women being ordained.

“The Vatican is a tiny, tiny group of very powerful elderly, mostly Caucasian males,” Via said.

“That’s who they are. But the power they exert, over women and children, especially in non-industrialized societies worldwide is enormous. Women will never be able to push their way into that power structure without becoming ordained first,” she said.

Via said she will not walk away from the Catholic Church despite her disagreements.

“My personal attitudes about that are that I am intelligent, articulate, I’m well-educated and if every voice like mine leaves the Catholic Church there will be no one left to speak for women,” she said.

The packed audience inside the Albrecht Auditorium cheered Via’s comment.

Bourgeois said the issue of women’s ordination was an important one.
“Who are we as men to say to women our call is authentic but your call is not?” Bourgeois said.

“Who are we as men to reject God’s call to women to the priesthood? What arrogance. And what I saw in our church’s teaching at its very root was that sin of sexism. And as we all know, sexism, like racism, like homophobia and all those other forms of discrimination is wrong. It’s wrong,” Bourgeois said.

He said such a rule is an injustice against the church.

“And of course an injustice against our loving God who calls both men and women into the priesthood,” Bourgeois said.

“What do we do? You and I when we see an injustice with such clarity. What we do know is silence is the voice of complicity. In order to sleep at night, I had to break my silence.”

Church teaching holds that the priesthood is reserved for men, since Christ chose only men as his apostles. Proponents of women’s ordination say there is no theological basis for excluding women from the priesthood, that there is evidence of women priests in the early church and that the Vatican’s ban is purely sexist.

Complete Article HERE!