March 2013 – Page 7 – Hear Our Voices

March 6, 2013

Strong policies on abusive priests vital, O’Malley says

Ya gotta love this guy!

By Lisa Wangsness

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley said Tuesday that the next pope must make sure the Roman Catholic Church adopts measures to deal with bishops whose “malfeasance” allowed abusive priests to remain in ministry.

O’Malley said in an interview that the successor to Pope Benedict XVI will need to continue Benedict’s campaign to get bishops across the world to adopt policies for dealing with accused abusers. That should include procedures for disciplining bishops who protect abusive priests, said O’Malley, among dozens of cardinals gathered at the Vatican.

The US bishops adopted a zero-tolerance policy on clergy sexual abuse a decade ago, requiring removal from ministry of any priest credibly accused of abusing a minor, but some church leaders have not followed it. The bishop of Kansas City was convicted last fall of failing to report child abuse by a priest, but the church has not sanctioned him.

“There needs to be a path” for disciplining bishops, O’Malley said. “Right now, it’s not terribly clear, but it’s something the next pope will have to deal with.”

Without a protocol in place, he said, it falls to the Vatican to decide what to do with each errant bishop on a case-by-case basis. “My point is always that if you don’t have policies, you’ll be improvising, and when you improvise, you make a lot of mistakes,” he said.

‘There needs to be a path’ for disciplining bishops. ‘Right now, it’s not terribly clear.’

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston discussed some of the issues at stake in the papal election in a brief interview Tuesday in a corridor of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, a peaceful hilltop seminary about 10 minutes by foot from the Vatican.

O’Malley is among the US cardinals staying there before the conclave. Once voting begins, the cardinals will move to lodgings within the Vatican and remain isolated from the world until they elect a pontiff.

The conclave is held in the Sistine Chapel, which closed at 1 p.m. Tuesday so that work crews could begin installing a raised floor, under which they will put antibugging devices, and the stoves in which the ballots will be burned.

O’Malley, who during the interview wore a gray cardigan over his hooded brown habit and blue socks peeking through his sandals, spent the morning in one of a series of meetings the cardinals are holding before the conclave, called general congregations, in which they discuss issues facing the church.

Being part of the papal process is “surrealistic,” he said, but also moving.

“Growing up a Catholic and knowing a little bit about these traditions and the way the Holy Father is selected in the church — it’s a far cry from seeing it up close and being part of it,” he said.

O’Malley also seemed to ache for a little down time. He had just finished a long press conference and had more reporters to speak with before a dinner with cardinals. He said he had not been able to spend much time going out to dinner or otherwise enjoying the city. “If I didn’t have all these interviews,” he said with a laugh, “I could be in a bookstore right now.”

Yet the shy O’Malley seemed at ease at the press conference. He said that after almost 30 years of being a bishop, he had grown accustomed to being the face of the church and interacting with the press. “It’s not always easy, but it’s important; it’s the way we can communicate with the largest number of people,” he said.

He has been highly sought after by the Spanish-speaking press because of his fluency in the language and his work with the Hispanic community in the United States and with the church in Latin America.

Asked in the Globe interview what he was looking for in a potential candidate, O’Malley said the next pope must “relate well to the universal church.” The Catholic Church is growing quickly in Africa, and more than 40 percent of the world’s Catholics live in Latin America.

He said Benedict’s successor also needs the spiritual and intellectual capacity to deal with the church’s many challenges. Governance of the Vatican, he added, is also an issue.

“We want the Holy Father to have a good team of people around him in a way that will support his ministry and allow him to focus on his teaching office, which we see as so important,” he said.

O’Malley has been deflecting a lot of questions lately about the possibility he could be a contender for pope. Most Vatican analysts consider the notion of an American pope a long shot, but some say that O’Malley’s chances could improve if there is no consensus after a few days of voting.

One reporter at the news conference said she had a question from her daughter: Would O’Malley continue to wear his “cappuccino robe” if elected pope? O’Malley, a Capuchin friar whose order’s name derives from the brown hooded habits its members wear, blushed and chuckled with his audience.

“I have worn this uniform for over 40 years, and I presume I will wear it until I die, because I don’t expect to be elected pope,” he said. He stammered slightly. “So — I don’t expect to have a change of wardrobe.”

The press conference focused on the general congregation meetings, a tricky subject, because the cardinals take oaths promising not to reveal the content of the discussions to outsiders.

As described by cardinals and Vatican representatives, there is little back and forth in these sessions. Cardinals sign up to speak and essentially make speeches without debate.

A half-hour coffee break gives the cardinals time to chat informally. Cardinals who are over 80 years old — the cutoff for being eligible to vote in the conclave — are invited to join the general congregations.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the archbishop of Galveston-Houston, who presided alongside O’Malley at the press conference, said the congregations were “pretty serene — it’s not campaign-like.”

The College of Cardinals has not yet set a date for the conclave, nor have cardinals decided when they will set a date. All electors must be present for the date to be set, and a Vatican representative said 5 of the 115 electors were not yet in Rome. Church law requires the conclave to begin no more than 20 days after a papal vacancy.

O’Malley said the cardinals want to be sure they allow themselves enough time to weigh issues and contenders before the conclave to make sure the voting itself does not “drag on.” All the conclaves in the last century have ended within five days; in earlier centuries, some voting sessions lasted for months or even years.

O’Malley and DiNardo said cardinals who, like themselves, were in charge of dioceses, hoped to return home by March 24 for Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. But they said the prelates do not want to rush. “This is the most important decision that some of us will ever make, and we need to give it the time that’s necessary,” O’Malley said.

He told the National Catholic Reporter Sunday that he hoped the cardinals would meet twice a day every day this week to move the process along. But Tuesday the cardinals decided against meeting twice that day, and they plan on meeting only during the morning Wednesday. O’Malley smiled a little tightly when asked about that. “This is Rome,” he said.

Complete Article HERE!

March 6, 2013

A Papal Surrender?

I thought this was a particularly insightful article. A bit dated, but still.

By Paolo Flores d’Arcais

“There’s no place for a Pope Emeritus,” John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła) declared dryly as recently as 1994. Yet beginning at 8 PM today, we have an Emeritus Pope, with consequences for the Catholic Church that are impossible to overstate. The decision announced two and a half weeks ago by Joseph Ratzinger—from now on simply ex-Benedict XVI—took a kind of courage that many cardinals and men of the curia find rash; some see it rather as a sign of weakness bordering on cowardice.

Indeed, Ratzinger’s decision has the momentous effect of desacralizing the Papacy, reducing it, in the minds of the faithful, to the office of a great religious leader and nothing more. This is a paradoxical outcome for a Pope who can claim (from his point of view) a notable record of success, having brought to completion the process begun by Wojtyła of reestablishing traditional Church doctrine and the conservative hierarchy that had been challenged after the Vatican II Council.

The Pope is often described as the world’s last absolute sovereign, but he is more than that. The Pope is—or was—an absolute sovereign who also had, in the eyes of his believers, a unique aura as the Vicar of Christ on Earth, representing the Holy Spirit in the Holy Trinity—a Deputy God, in other words. But an ex-Deputy God is meaningless. The Bishop of Rome will now become merely the leader of a church, like the Archbishop of Canterbury, even if he has vastly more members in his flock than his English counterpart.

And here is a second paradox. By stepping down, Ratzinger has given credence to the more “secularist” view of the modern Church put forward by his longtime antagonist Hans Küng and by the most progressive members of the Vatican II Council, whose influence Ratzinger had succeeded in marginalizing. In short, the Catholic Church now has to contemplate the coexistence of an Emeritus Pope and a Pope-Pope. The new Pope will certainly exercise the full powers of the Papacy (on the assumption that the ex-Pope will truly withdraw to a life of seclusion and prayer), but he will no longer have a divine aura.

Why then did Benedict XVI make such an extreme decision? Why did he want to discard the seemingly inviolable tradition of leaving the length of Papal tenure up to God, even when the Pope reaches a point of great frailty, with the certainty that the Holy Spirit would transcend the human inadequacy of the pastor? The long decline of Wojtyła was a very recent and decisive example of the Church’s adherence to that exceptional principle.

In contrast, by emphasizing his own physical decline, Ratzinger has introduced an element of rational human calculation into the question of what is “good for the Church”: an approach that in fact suggests a more limited view of the Holy Spirit’s gifts, which are presumed to guarantee papal infallibility at all times. It is a further paradox that the Pope’s recourse to such worldly realism has been blamed on a cowardly desire to evade responsibility precisely for the misdeeds of the most worldly members of the Church hierarchy. (We might add that if Ratzinger’s decision is a demonstration of humility, then we must consider Wotjyla’s decision to remain in power during his long illness arrogant.)

Yet Benedict XVI has explained that he prefers to retire because, as he put it,

in order to govern the bark of St. Peter and proclaim the gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.

Ratzinger emphasized “strength of mind” because that is the key to his reasoning; he added in his statement that he is “well aware of the gravity of this decision.”

In what sense can Benedict XVI regard himself as being unable to “adequately fulfill” his ministry? After all, under his leadership, the Church hierarchy has become more unified than ever; there are no longer major doctrinal rifts between “progressives” and “conservatives.” Never have the bishops shown such doctrinal homogeneity; the last voice that was out of tune with the choir was that of the late Cardinal Martini, who described the Church, in an interview published posthumously last year, as “two hundred years out of date.”

Beyond the Church as well, the theologian-Pope can boast of considerable achievements. Jürgen Habermas, Europe’s leading secular philosopher, has praised his thought; not to mention Julia Kristeva and other fashionable intellectuals in ultra-secular Paris. Indeed, Ratzinger’s counter-enlightenment critique has appealed to a surprisingly long list of secular admirers: for example, his suggestion to non-believers to lead their lives veluti si Deus daretur, as if God existed, because without God, and the ethical principles connected to God, Western society is heading toward collapse.

There is one area of his pontificate, however, in which Benedict XVI can claim “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”: the administration of the Church in the stricter sense of the Roman curia itself. The feud among cardinals that turned the inner sanctum of the Vatican into a vipers’ nest, the war between factions that has unfolded beneath the frescoes of Michelangelo and Raphael, with shining daggers and poison, in the fatal form of secret dossiers and blackmail.

This battle, the so-called Vatileaks controversy, has been provoked by two problems in particular: the twin scandals of priest pedophiles and the Vatican bank (IOR), which is under investigation for money laundering and mismanagement. Sex and money, the seductions of Mammon to which prelates robed in purple, the symbol of their Christian devotion “till martyrdom,” should be perfectly immune.

Ratzinger chose to deal with these problems in the most circumspect and gradual manner. His efforts to uncover the iniquity of priests, and even that of the rogue finance of the Vatican bank, met with enormous resistance, setting in motion a Catherine’s Wheel of machinations. The pedophile crisis (and the related scandal over the powerful Legion of Christ and its leader, the notorious Marcial Maciel Degollado) was the one area in which Ratzinger had had a major disagreement with Wojtyła. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger insisted that the Polish Pope take a firm and clear stand, but was over-ruled by more powerful members of the Curia at a point when John Paul II, by then in the final years of his illness, was largely incapable of governing—a specter that surely played into Benedict’s XVI own decision to retire.

Vatileaks was only the tip of the iceberg, as even lay observers of the Church are now aware. The secret internal investigation of the Vatican leaks submitted in December by Cardinals Julian Herranz, Josef Tomko, and Salvatore De Giorgi must have shaken the Pope. As La Repubblica has now reported, the investigation apparently describes a hugely influential “homosexual underground” within the Curia, while documenting at length the ferocious struggle among cardinals and factions. Even worse, Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State and the Pope’s closest advisor going back to the time when Ratzinger was in charge of the Doctrine of the Faith, seems to be up to his neck in the allegations.

Benedict XVI was unable to take sides in this internal struggle, because Bertone’s rivals themselves are not shining with sanctity. (Bertone’s predecessor and archenemy, Cardinal Sodano, was one of the long-time protectors of Degollado, the disgraced former Legion of Christ leader.) Confronted with such an overflowing sewer of Church filth, Benedict XVI instead decided to surrender, pleading his own incapacity and choosing the only alternative still open to him: prayer.

Complete Article HERE!

March 6, 2013March 6, 2013

Shadow of shame: The conflict facing gay priests

I am delighted that my research and I are referenced in this fine article.

By Dani Garavelli

LOOKING back from a distance of more than 20 years, Fr Joe can see that his decision to join the priesthood was motivated in part by his homosexuality. Coming of age in the 1970s, when there was still a huge stigma attached to coming out as gay, it provided an alternative to getting married and having children.

“I was hugely idealistic and genuinely believed in the priesthood, but I think it was also the only respectable way to be Catholic and single,” he says. “I wouldn’t have recognised it at the time, but I think I was trying to escape having to tell my family about my sexuality or even having to face up to it properly myself.”

Once ordained, however, he realised being gay in a church which considers homosexuality to be intrinsically disordered brings problems of its own. Prey to the same temptations as everyone else, but unable to talk openly about them, many homosexual priests find themselves feeling undervalued and isolated. Trying to navigate their way in a highly sexualised society, with little or no pastoral support, it’s hardly surprising if they sometimes find it difficult to keep their vows.

“I think celibacy is always a struggle, it’s the same for all priests – in fact it’s the same for married people – you try to keep your integrity, to stay true to what you have been called to, ” says Fr Joe, who was a priest in Scotland but has now moved abroad. “I belong to a religious order that means you live with other guys; it means you have emotional support and your chances of being lonely are less. The ones I feel really sorry for are the diocesan priests who are alone in a parish. I think celibacy must be even more difficult for them. They have no-one to confide in when they are feeling low or horny or any other normal human way of feeling.”

As with any same-sex environment, such as a boarding school or prison, there can also be a kind of “super-heated effect” in the seminary or church where, regardless of sexual orientation, men have crushes on other men and that is more likely to spill over into sexual behaviour when the whole subject of sexuality is taboo. “I think that is something gay men in the Church are prone to,” Fr Joe says. “Because the subject is hidden, it creates this secret club kind of environment because priests who are gay are only likely to be open with other priests who are gay, you become part of a secret club, not because you want to, but because your peers are your support group.”

Fr Joe’s experiences are not rare. Studies have suggested the priesthood attracts a disproportionate number of gay men, with Dominican Friar-turned-journalist Mark Dowd suggesting earlier this week, the figure could be as high as 50 per cent. Such statistics have become headline news because even as the Church has become increasingly strident in its position on such issues as gay marriage it is being claimed that an increasing number of homosexual priests, Bishops and even Cardinals are breaking their vow of chastity.

There have, of course, been many scandals in the past involving heterosexual priests and Bishops, who have had affairs and fathered children. But now Italian newspapers are speculating Benedict XVI’s unprecedented resignation was inspired by a dossier revealing a powerful network of actively gay priests in the highest echelons of the Vatican. The dossier was compiled in the wake of the Vatileaks scandal, which saw papers taken from the Pope’s desk published in a blockbuster book, and after Italian journalist Carmelo Abbate took a hidden camera into Rome’s gay nightclubs to expose a group of priests who said mass by day and had sex with male escorts by night.

Back at home, there have been controversies too. In 2008, a man was jailed for blackmailing a priest he had encountered at a meeting point for gay men in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow. And now, of course, there are the allegations that Cardinal Keith O’Brien engaged in “inappropriate behaviour” with several priests, allegations which, though contested, led him to step down.

From a secular viewpoint, the scandal lies less in the sexuality of the priests, but in the perceived hypocrisy of an institution which is seen as homophobic being an apparent cauldron of gay activity. But this contradiction also raises questions as to the degree to which the Catholic Church’s attitude towards homosexuality – and the climate of secrecy it engenders amongst gay priests – has contributed to its own travails.

The fact the priesthood is attractive to homosexuals is neither new nor surprising. Neither are the Church’s efforts to cover this up. Back in the 1980s, Richard Wagner, an openly gay priest from Illinois, who was completing a doctorate in human sexuality, interviewed 50 gay priests about their experiences in order to examine how they reconciled their own identity with the Church’s absolute ban on homosexual activity. As a result of the media firestorm surrounding the publication of his dissertation “Gay Catholic Priests: A Study Of Cognitive And Affective Dissonance”, he says he was hounded out of his religious order. “In one way, the Church is the perfect place for closeted homosexual to prosper,” he says. “But at some point, these people have to face their sexuality and either address it and become comfortable with it or have it contaminate the rest of their lives. When you live in the confines of the seminary there’s not the same kind of distraction you have when, after ordination, you are in ministry in a world awash with sexual imagery. Hopefully that washes over those who are healthy and integrated in terms of their sexuality, but those who are troubled are lost. I was merely pointing out there was a significant population of gay priests, good men who had committed their lives to the Church, who were struggling with their sexuality and there was no encouragement or help.”

The atmosphere such isolation fosters, the deep-seated shame it engenders, lends itself to exactly the kind of abuses of power or inappropriate behaviour O’Brien has been accused of. “A combination of the Church’s immature attitude to sex and the secrecy of the gay priest is a really powerful, really poisonous mix,” Fr Joe says.

The irony is that as society as a whole has become more accepting of homosexuality (and recent research suggests the Catholic laity is less concerned about issues like premarital and gay sex than other Christian denominations), the Church’s position has become more entrenched, with O’Brien, originally perceived as a liberal, at the vanguard of the campaign against same-sex marriage.

“They say their job is not to reflect society, but to challenge society, but I think the Church has lost its moral authority to speak about homosexuality because it has shown so little tolerance of and support for gay and lesbian people,” says Fr Joe, who went out of his way to ensure his Scottish parish was inclusive. “It says, ‘Oh it’s not the sinner we hate, it’s the sin,’ but to my mind, that’s rank hypocrisy.”

In the wake of the succession of sex abuse scandals which has shaken the Church over the past 10 years, the hierarchy tried to clamp down on the ordination of gay priests – a move which was hugely controversial, not only because of the hurt it caused existing gay priests, but also because it implied a connection between homosexuality and paedophilia.

Under the new policy, introduced in 2005, men with “transitory” homosexual leanings could be ordained following three years of chastity, but men with “deeply rooted” homosexual tendencies or those who were sexually active could not. The Church also introduced a tougher screening process. Many candidates for the priesthood in England and Wales, for example, are sent to St Luke’s Centre in Manchester, where they are subjected to a battery of psychological tests.

The sense they are not wanted has made existing gay priests feel even more demoralised. “There’s been a constant drip, drip, drip of negativity, taking away guys’ self-esteem, coming from this hypocritical section of the Church,” Fr Joe says.

Today Wagner runs a website and receives calls from troubled gay priests all over the world. Some of them, he says, want to lead the ascetic life they signed up for, others are looking for sexual fulfilment, but all are trying to reconcile two conflicting parts of their own personality – their vocation and their sexuality.

“They want to know how to navigate this maelstrom of sexual negativity and try to put that together with the Gospel message of authenticity and integrity and truthfulness, but it’s nearly impossible to do,” he says.

The fact that some highly placed gay clergymen endorse the Church’s line on homosexuality could be viewed as the height of cynicism, but others, who have seen the workings of the Church at close hand see it as a manifestation of their inner conflict. “There are a lot of self-hating priests, but there are others who are frightened – they feel they have to toe the line or they will be out of a living,” says Fr Joe.

Vatican adviser John Haldane has suggested one way out of the current crisis is to compel priests – gay or heterosexual – to renew their vow of celibacy or leave the Church. Yet it is hard to feel anything but sympathy for committed priests who took their vows before they really understood their own sexuality or how important the need for companionship might become in later life. “There are men who think they can take this vow and live up to it, especially if they are fairly young,” says Elena Curti, deputy editor of The Tablet. “They are full of enthusiasm and idealism and they can survive on that for the first decade or two, but in my experience, when they get older, into their 40s and 50s, they feel immensely isolated. They see their peers around them with children and a real, intense loneliness kicks in and it’s often at that stage they stage they leave.”

Since the Church can’t afford to lose any more clergy, it seems more sensible to relax the rules on marriage as O’Brien suggested days before he resigned. Celibacy is not a matter of doctrine and there are many liberals who would be happy to see it dropped. This feeling has been strengthened by the Church’s decision to welcome married Anglican priests into the fold. But relaxing the rule on celibacy would not help ease the plight of gay priests; if anything it would make it worse. They would have to continue to battle with their own sexuality while watching their peers enjoy loving relationships.

Fr Joe is realistic; he knows whoever becomes Pope, the Church’s attitude towards homosexuality is unlikely to be radically overhauled in the near future. So what changes would he like to see? “The first thing and the easiest thing in the world, is a change of tone. Notch the warmth up 10 degrees and stop talking about homosexuality in terms of sin and disorder,” he says. “Secondly if the Church wants authority to speak on that matter it needs to show a clear level of pastoral support for lesbian and gay people that is non-judgmental on a spiritual and practical level.

“Then you it look at how the doctrine of the Church is expressed – whether it accurately reflects a good understanding of anthropology or sociology or psychology, or whether the Church is operating from an outdated model.” Fr Joe says that’s a 100-year project. But one thing’s for sure, unless the Church starts to address the disparity between the homophobia it spouts and the conduct of its own priests soon, the new Pope is likely spend his time in the Vatican as his predecessor did – firefighting one sex scandal after another.

Complete Article HERE!

March 6, 2013

Catholic Patriarchy: What the Papal Transition Means and What Feminists Can Do About It

By Mary Hunt

The obvious question is why any self-respecting feminist would worry about the Pope, the Roman Catholic Church, and its machinations. My simple answer is POWER. Religion is one of the many sources that shape how power is shared (or not) in this world. Feminists need to pay attention to the sharing of power if we think we are going to reshape the world in a more just and egalitarian way. As someone who speaks “Catholic,” indeed as a theologian rooted in the tradition, I think there is a lot of power in the balance at the moment, and I want to see it shared.

The papal transition underway in Rome is a classic example of patriarchy prancing for the world to see live and in color. It is without a doubt the biggest religious news story thus far in the 21st century, and there is not a woman in sight. Think about that in light of the media coverage. Apart from the many women reporters now in Rome, the players in this story are all men, all the time.

Of course women are seen in the vast crowds that flock to St. Peter’s Square or greeting the helicopter bearing the out-going pope at his new digs at Castel Gandolfo. But there are virtually no women in the big news of the papal transfer save the nuns who were relocated from their convent so that the Pope Emeritus will have a new place to live in his old neighborhood. They are symbolic of the problem I am underscoring, as I doubt they were consulted. Even the Virgin Mary was consulted!

Likewise, the story of the implosion of the patriarchal church (what Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has better called “kyriarchy”[1]) is utterly devoid of women. Whether the Vatican banking scandal, sexual abuse, or episcopal cover-up, this has been a men’s show from the beginning, and they have done a royal job of making a mess.
I do not think women would necessarily have avoided these pitfalls. However, the historical fact is that as far as we know, women were not involved. Therein lies the most obvious place to start looking at this situation from a feminist perspective. Who else isn’t there and why? Young people, married people, out LGBTIQ people, more than a few men of color, the list is endless. Yet no one seems to notice, or if they do notice they do not seem to care. I notice and I care!

The Conclave will start soon. 115 mostly older men will select the successor to the man who named them as cardinal electors (virtually all of the cardinals were named by Benedict XVI or John Paul II for whom Benedict was the shadow pope for several years). Chances are good that the new pope will be even more conservative than the two before him. Perhaps he will be a little more charismatic, or a little better manager, maybe even from a developing country, but the fundamental conservative trajectory is set, not to be undone.

I would guess that he has already been selected. What organization the size of the Roman Catholic Church would be without a succession plan with an 86 year old CEO? I suspect he is already at work despite the many myths and stories of the secrecy and spirituality of the conclave, and now the display of robes in small, medium and large on hand to fit the fellow who is saddled with the impossible job of being pope. The current discussion, as far as I can tell, is really about what team will hold sway. All heads of Vatican offices must resign at the end of a papacy. So there are many personnel matters, i.e. who will have what power, being decided at the official meetings that began in Rome on March 4, 2013.

There are also lots of informal meetings going on constantly as the gentlemen reshuffle the deck. This is a power shift akin to when a Republican defeats a Democrat. There are a lot of careers and plenty of ideology at stake for which the actual pope is but a vivid symbol. The best analogy is electing a U.S. president because of whom s/he will elect to the Supreme Court. Think of how carefully they have to vet all of the players now that Scotland’s Cardinal O’Brien has been brought down by his former lovers. Skeletons in closets do tend to rattle when the stakes are high, and the stakes are high in terms of the power to shape the future direction of this big church.

No matter who is elected, the process is mortally flawed because it represents a model of church that is long out of date. Until and unless structural changes take place to develop a well integrated, representative governing model in which all members of the Catholic community—including women, married/partnered people, young people—are involved there will be no change. Beginning with local base communities and parishes, adult members need to have real decision-making power about personnel, money, property, sacramental, and social justice work. The same goes for dioceses and regions such that increasingly representative bodies make decisions that clerics cannot overrule. This includes people from the poorest most marginalized parts of the world whose well being and dignity ought to be the center of Catholic concern but clearly is not. We who are part of the community expect and demand that we exercise voice, vote, and responsibility in ministry and in governance.

I am not interested in the personal characteristics of a new pope, even in betting on the outcome of the papal horse race. That is the patriarchal frame of the discussion, which I think feminists need to reject. If I respond favoring Cardinal X over Cardinal Y, or if I sketch out the characteristics of a “kinder gentler” pope, then I am conceding that the model is acceptable. It is not.

I am interested in getting rid of the papacy and other trappings of monarchy in favor of a democratic, participatory model of church. Please don’t suggest that I become a Presbyterian. Though some of my best friends are Presbyterians, I am what a Catholic can and should look like in the 21st century. This is the change we need.

Even though my goal of dismantling the kyriarchy is unlikely to hold sway, I want to look at the religious significance of the elite, exclusionary approaches to governance that are playing out on worldwide television and web because they have a shaping influence. I try to forget what I know about all of the inner dealings of the Roman Catholic Church (electing a pope is like watching the law and sausage being made—not a pretty sight) and imagine what those who simply see the spectacle played out on screen think. I suspect that what people see is at once convincing and confusing.

The trope of tradition is very persuasive. Even though the most recent pope resigned and then made up new rules for the conclave that will replace him, most people do not see the clear elasticity of the church. Those in power reserve to themselves such conscience-bound decisions as resigning from the papacy, while women who make choices about their own bodies are labeled sinners. The gentlemen change the conclave rules with the wave of a Motu Proprio (“on his own impulse”) as they call it, but when we lay people decide on our own impulses to use birth control or to love in a same-sex way we are considered sinful.

The smoke and mirrors that the media report on draw people’s attention to mistaken notions of timeless, tradition-bound splendor. It is hard to compete with the costumes—everyone knows about the pope’s red shoes that signify the blood of the martyrs—the music, the buildings, the grounds for what appears to be God’s own realm. People love the quaint notion that the Cardinal electors will be locked away without their smart phones to let the Holy Spirit decide on the pope’s successor. I do not want to offend anyone, but I am realistic enough to think the deal is long done and the pageantry, not unlike the Wizard of Oz, is simply good for business.

What astounds me is why intelligent people, especially those in the media, are not scratching their heads in utter confusion about the whole scene. Shareholders, stakeholders have absolutely no input into the process. Imagine if this kind of election took place in Cuba or in Washington! I would think they would have some critical questions to ask—where are the women, where are the young people, where are more people of color who make up the growing majority in the church? Of a billion people this tiny cadre has all the power? What is wrong with this picture?

A great deal is wrong with it. The worst part, in my view, is the instrumentalization of religion, of people’s faith, to reinscribe and reinforce ways of being and acting as if they were the will of the divine. This is blasphemy. I make no such counter claim that my approach is what God wants. Rather, I assume that human beings can and should organize themselves in ways that reflect their most deeply held values. To see 115 men hold the power in a worldwide community is frightening because of what it means about their sense of the divine. Obviously they think God favors men over women, the few over the many, their privileged information over the sensus fidelium. Where they read this in Christian scripture is not clear. I respectfully disagree and urge us to change the power model as quickly as possible, beginning by withdrawing financial support from the institutional Roman Catholic Church.

There are deep social implications of the world’s largest Christian denomination modeling a monarchical way of being in an increasingly democratic world. Apart from looking ridiculous and offending people at every turn such that the second largest denomination in the US is ex-Catholics, the outcome of this exercise is to reinforce the power of patriarchy. If these men can act with impunity then other corporations can have few if any women in their boardrooms. If this monarchical model is acceptable, than governments do not need to allow their citizens voice and vote. If God wills the outcome of a papal election, then surely God wills wars, ecocide, and other human-made problems. I reject this theology.

It may be imputing too much power to the Roman Catholic Church to say that it shapes people’s worldviews. But there is virtually no other religious body—not Islam, not Judaism, not the World Council of Churches—that will be the focus of such attention, that will be able to foist its narrative on the world for free in the next few weeks. Given the fact that it is misogynist, exclusivist, kyriarchal in every sense of “lordship” over the majority, I think feminists need to reject it while still affirming the underlying fundamental values of love and justice.

Several feminist strategies are important for countering this approach and creating constructive new ways of being church that focus on participation, safety, and accountability. Keep it simple—stop, look, listen—as we say to children when we teach them to cross the street.

STOP the process.
There is no reason that the papacy cannot remain vacant for a time. Church history includes examples of deadlocked conclaves, lengthy meetings that lasted months unto years. Pope Benedict’s own resignation and subsequent change of conclave rules are evidence of the elasticity of customs and laws.

The current situation of the church is grave: sexual abuse and cover-ups, financial problems, loss of trust and transparency, tawdry sexual conduct, and most importantly, the wholesale exclusion of most members of the community, especially women, from decision-making. Given this gravity, the best solution is simply to call off the conclave. The energies and resources saved can be channeled into envisioning and constructing new, more inclusive ways of being church where safety and accountability are paramount.

LOOK at the facts.
Contemplative Catholic spirituality invites “a long loving look at the real.” Despite the pomp and pageantry of the papal transition, institutional Catholicism is in tatters. No amount of white smoke can obscure the corruption and infighting. No Gregorian chant can drown out the cries of those who have been abused. No reading of the Gospel can excuse the oppressive treatment of women and same-sex loving people.

By contrast, small base communities, some parishes, and many religious communities are robust places where sacraments and solidarity are the norm. Groups across the globe work on social justice, education, and health care based on Catholic commitments without institutional connections. The disconnect is profound between hierarchy and laity. Nonetheless, educated, willing, and capable Catholics abound who embrace the responsibility to be church despite the scandalous actions of the leaders.

LISTEN to the Spirit.
Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit infuses the world with grace. Rather than watch a new pope emerge from the delegates who have been handpicked by the previous two popes, it is time for new ways of organizing and governing the more than one billion members of the Catholic community. Contemporary culture of inclusion and participation demands it, and technology makes it possible.

One new model of church would include a team of people from around the world who represent various and sundry national/regional groups, different styles of worship and ministry, various lifestyles and families, religious and secular people. It would be a democratic assembly of equals, a global network of the people of God, who delegate the fruits of their decisions to ministers who carry out the will of the body in teaching and preaching, sacraments and social justice, finances and public witness.

For those who are not Catholic, this is a time to stop worrying about charges of anti-Catholicism and join voices with those of Catholic feminists who cry foul on the process and the product of the upcoming conclave. Those who have no stake in Catholicism can be helpful by asking the obvious questions of who is not included, involved, able to minister, make decisions, and otherwise exercise adult faith. There is no need to settle for the answer, “They do this because they are Catholic,” and be told if it is not your tradition to have no voice.

The stakes, when examined in global terms, are simply too high. If religions shape worldviews, then everyone has the right and responsibility to look critically at it and go about the communal task of creating something better.

Complete Article HERE!

March 5, 2013

Rome exhibition takes aim at the Church as papal vote looms

By Naomi O’Leary

As cardinals flock to Rome to choose the next pope, two artists have taken the opportunity to stage an exhibition taking aim at the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church and the sex abuse scandals that plagued Pope Benedict.

Held in an ancient building where Italy’s patron Saint Catherine of Siena died, “The Unspeakable Act” is a life-size model of Benedict in a confessional box, his sumptuous red and cream-coloured robes spread about him.

Installed on the stage of a darkly-lit theatre, the artwork is surrounded by eerie music and a track of Benedict announcing in Latin his decision to resign after eight years topped with the whispering sounds of people confessing their sins.

Benedict’s papal tiara lies on the ground and his bejewelled hands cover his face in apparent horror or shame at a phrase from the Gospel of St. Luke that lies open on his knee: “Let the little children come to me”.

The exhibition is the work of artists Antonio Garullo and Mario Ottocento who became famous for lampooning the scandals of the powerful in 2012 with an exhibit depicting a sleeping Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, his hand in his trousers and a satisfied look on his face.

“Too many scandals have been hidden by the Church. Even children were abused in the confessional,” Garullo told Reuters at a preview of the work on Tuesday.

“These jewels and rich clothes contrast with Christ, who was in rags. The Vatican even has a bank, which is hypocrisy.”

A folded paper tucked into the papal tiara represents the ‘Vatileaks’ scandal, when Benedict’s personal butler leaked documents alleging corruption in the Church’s business dealings

The artwork, that opens to the public on Wednesday, has personal importance for Garullo, 48, and Ottocento, 40, an artistic duo for 20 years who were the first Italian gay couple to be married when they wed in Holland in 2002.

Since then they have battled for their union to be recognised by authorities in Italy, which has no legal provision for same-sex couples, although a 2012 survey found 63 percent of Italians support equal rights for gays.

“I don’t understand how the pope could say in one of his last addresses that gay couples are a threat to world peace,” Garullo said. “I don’t understand how we are a threat.”

Their pope statue is surrounded by books by reformist Swiss theologian Hans Kueng and the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a liberal voice who urged the Church to modernise before his death last year, saying it was “200 years out of date”.

Garullo said the fact that Benedict is ignoring the books is a message to the Church to bring its teaching up to date.

“It shows the Church has remained 200 years in the past, and is not open to the modern world,” Garullo said.

Complete Article HERE!