Category: Activism

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Vatican Denounces Nun Over Book on Sexuality

The Vatican’s doctrinal office on Monday denounced an American nun who taught Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School for a book that attempted to present a theological rationale for same-sex relationships, masturbation and remarriage after divorce.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that the book, “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,” by Sister Margaret A. Farley, was “not consistent with authentic Catholic theology,” and should not be used by Roman Catholics.

Sister Farley, a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and an award-winning scholar, responded in a statement: “I can only clarify that the book was not intended to be an expression of current official Catholic teaching, nor was it aimed specifically against this teaching. It is of a different genre altogether.”

The book, she said, offers “contemporary interpretations” of justice and fairness in human sexual relations, moving away from a “taboo morality” and drawing on “present-day scientific, philosophical, theological, and biblical resources.”

The formal censure comes only weeks after the same Vatican office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a stinging reprimand of the main coordinating organization of American nuns, prompting many Catholics across the country to turn out in defense of the nuns with protests, petitions and vigils.

The nuns’ organization, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, said on Friday that its board had declared that the Vatican’s accusations were “unsubstantiated,” and that it was sending its leaders to Rome to make its case. Three bishops have been appointed by the Vatican to supervise a total overhaul of the nuns’ organization.

The censure of Sister Farley, who belongs to the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, is the second time recently that a book by an American nun has been denounced by the church’s hierarchy. In 2011, the doctrine committee of U.S. bishops condemned “Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God,” by Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, a professor of theology at Fordham University in New York.

The Vatican’s doctrinal office, led by an American, Cardinal William J. Levada, has spent more than two years reviewing Sister Farley’s book, which was published in 2006. The office first notified Sister Farley’s superior of its concerns in March 2010, and said it had opened a further investigation because a response she had sent to the Vatican in October 2010 hadn’t been “satisfactory.” It said her book had “been a cause of confusion among the faithful.”

The dean of Yale Divinity School, Harold W. Attridge, a Catholic layman, and the president of the Sisters of Mercy, Sister Patricia McDermott, issued statements in support of Sister Farley. So did 15 fellow scholars who, in a document released by the divinity school, testified to Sister Farley’s Catholic credentials and the influence she has had in the field of moral theology.

Cardinal Levada’s statement about the book, dated March 30 but released on Monday, said, “Among the many errors and ambiguities of this book are its positions on masturbation, homosexual acts, homosexual unions, the indissolubility of marriage and the problem of divorce and remarriage.”

He said that the book “cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic teaching, either in counseling and formation, or in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.” The statement said Pope Benedict XVI had approved its contents and ordered its publication. It comes as the Vatican struggles to contain a controversy over leaked documents that have shown infighting and mismanagement in the papacy of Benedict XVI, who on Sunday concluded a three-day meeting in Milan to promote family values.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the Vatican had not called for any sanctions against Sister Farley and was not expected to do so because she has retired from teaching. He added that it was “quite normal” that documents signed by Vatican offices are published much later than when they were signed, according to “internal bureaucratic and organizational needs.”

Sister Farley’s book finds moral and theological justifications for same-sex marriage, which aside from abortion, has become the major galvanizing political and moral issue for American bishops. The statement took Sister Farley to task for writing that same-sex marriage “can also be important in transforming the hatred, rejection, and stigmatization of gays and lesbians.” She wrote that “same-sex relationships and activities can be justified according to the same sexual ethic as heterosexual relationships and activities.”

“This opinion is not acceptable,” the Vatican statement said. It said that the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that homosexual acts are “acts of grave depravity” that are “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to the natural law.” It said that Sister Farley’s assertion that sometimes divorce is a reasonable option for couples who have grown apart contradicted church teaching on the “indissolubility of marriage.”

The statement quoted liberally from some of the racier passages in “Just Love,” including ones in which Sister Farley writes that female masturbation “usually does not raise any moral questions at all.” She adds that “many women” have found “great good in self-pleasuring – perhaps especially in the discovery of their own possibilities for pleasure – something many had not experienced or even known about in their ordinary sexual relations with husbands or lovers.”

The Vatican said that this assessment contradicts church teaching that “the deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.

Complete Article HERE!

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Butler’s journey from trusted servant to accused Judas

Just after dawn on Wednesday, May 23, Paolo Gabriele said goodbye to his wife, passed by the bedrooms of his three children and left to start another day in the service of the man Roman Catholics believe is the vicar of Christ on Earth.

By the end of the day, Pope Benedict’s butler would be branded a traitor and some, including an Italian cardinal, would compare him to the most famous betrayer in history – Judas Iscariot, the man who turned Jesus over to the Romans.

Dark haired and handsome, Gabriele, 46, left his simple home on the third floor of a 1930s Vatican apartment block named after the 7th century monk Saint Egidio.

With the St Ann’s Gate entrance, guarded by Swiss Guard in blue berets, to his back, he passed the Holy See’s central post office on Via Del Belvedere, turned left to climb a stone stairway named after Pope Pius X, and walked up a flight of covered steps to enter the small Renaissance-era Courtyard of Sixtus V.

Here he used a key held by fewer than 10 people to enter an elevator that leads directly to the pope’s private apartment on the third and top floor of the Apostolic Palace in the world’s smallest state. Even cardinals can’t use it.

Gabriele, said by those who know him to be a timid, reserved and shy man, is now at the centre of the worst crisis in Pope Benedict’s pontificate.

His face has appeared on the front pages of newspapers all over the world, accused of being the source of leaked documents alleging serious Vatican corruption and cronyism in a scandal that has shaken the very centre of the Church.

To some – even if he is found guilty – he is an idealist who wanted to root out corruption in the Vatican and was helped by outside accomplices. To others, he is merely a pawn in a much bigger power struggle among cardinals inside the Vatican walls.

“I know Paolo and I don’t think he is capable of doing something like this by himself,” a person who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Reuters.

“It is clearly a betrayal of the pope’s trust but I don’t think he could have acted alone,” that person said.

That Wednesday morning when Gabriele, dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, entered the private papal apartment, he walked down a corridor past the pope’s modern private chapel, with its stained glass ceiling and white leather kneelers.

Even as he was serving the pope his breakfast, after the pontiff had said mass with other members of the “papal family” that morning, Gabriele knew he was a suspect in an investigation into leaks that had begun in January.

“He was questioned earlier but the decisive elements that permitted the arrest surfaced later,” a Vatican official said, adding that one of the pope’s two private secretaries, Monsignor Georg Ganswein, had confronted Gabriele with his suspicions.

LAST RIDE IN THE POPEMOBILE

At precisely 10:30 that sunny Wednesday morning, Benedict rode in his white popemobile through the Arch of the Bells into St Peter’s Square to start his weekly audience. Gabriele was in his usual place, to the right of the driver, and his stony face showed no emotion.

It was the last ride he would take in the iconic vehicle that carries the man world diplomacy recognizes not only as leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics but as “The Sovereign of the State of Vatican City.”

That afternoon, agents led by Domenico Giani, 49, the shaven-headed Vatican police chief who is known by the diminutive “Mimmo” to his friends, rang the buzzer on the Gabriele family apartment and entered.

Giani was formerly a member of the Italian secret service.

“It’s not a fancy place – four rooms, a bath and a kitchen, if I remember correctly,” someone who has been inside told Reuters.

Inside, they found what the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano – which waited nearly a week before writing about the arrest – called “a large number of confidential documents” belonging to the pope.

“A sense of tension, disorientation, stupor and sadness fell over the whole place like a thick fog after news of Paolo’s arrest spread,” said one Vatican worker describing the mood of employees from priests to postmen in the following days.

Because the Vatican does not have a jail, Gabriele is being held in a simple “safe room” with a bed and small table in the Vatican police station.

But the question on many people’s minds and lips, including Gabriele’s friends, was “Why? What is the motive?”

If he is guilty, why would Paoletto (little Paul, as he known), a devout Catholic and devoted father, betray the man whose official titles include “Successor of the Prince of the Apostles” and “Servant of the Servants of God”?

People who know Gabriele, now called “the defendant” in Vatican statements, exclude money as a motive.

They say the butler, who still attends Mass each day in the police station, would not have been able to spend it anywhere without raising suspicion; unless he left his job and probably even Italy.

And why, at 46 with three small children, would he leave a simple but comfortable life in the Vatican? While Vatican employees do not receive large salaries, they do enjoy benefits such as low rent, no income tax and cheap food and petrol at the commissaries of the 108-acre city state.

NO CHECKBOOK JOURNALISM, SAYS AUTHOR

Gianluigi Nuzzi, the Italian journalist who revealed many of the documents alleging corruption in the Vatican and internal conflict over the role of the Vatican bank, declines to reveal his sources but insists he did not pay anyone.

Nuzzi, a respected journalist with a good track record whose book “His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI,” contains some of the allegations, says his sources were simple, devout people “genuinely concerned about the Catholic Church” who wanted to expose corruption.

People who know Gabriele, who started out as a humble cleaning person in the Vatican, said there was no indication either that he could have been blackmailed over his private life to force him to leak the documents.

Apart from Gabriele, the few other people who could go directly into the papal apartments via the reserved private elevator at the base of the Sixtus V courtyard include the pope’s two priest secretaries, Ganswein and Maltese Monsignor Alfred Xuereb, and four consecrated women of “Memores Domini”.

Memores Domini is an association of lay women, similar to nuns, who take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience within the Catholic organization Communion and Liberation. Their names are Carmela, Loredana, Cristiana and Rossella.

The fact that Gabriele was part of a tightly knit group known as “the papal family” explains the sadness and bitterness in the pope’s words when he first spoke about the crisis in public on Wednesday, exactly one week after the butler’s arrest.

“Our life and our Christian path are often marked by difficulties, incomprehension and suffering,” he said, adding that all people must persevere in the face of “conflicts in human relations, often within one’s own family”.

While the pope’s secretaries and the four women who help him run the simple household live in the papal residence, Gabriele stayed in his own apartment nearby with his family.

“He lived in the Vatican but not in the papal apartment,” one Church official who knows Gabriele told Reuters. “He could have met with anyone in the Vatican or outside the Vatican”.

In an interview with Reuters, Nuzzi would not say if any of the documents he had received came from Gabriele.

His book contains a treasure trove of private Vatican correspondence, including documents alleging cronyism and corruption in contracts with Italian companies, conspiracies among cardinals and clashes over management at the Vatican’s own bank, the Institute for Works of Religion, or IOR.

He said the book, which hit the stands last week and is already sold out in Rome, is based on confidential conversations with more than 10 Vatican whistleblowers.

LOOKING FOR THE CROWS

The Vatican has not contested the authenticity of the documents but says their leak was part of a “brutal” personal attack on the pope and their publication “a criminal act”.

The Italian media have dubbed the people who have leaked the documents “Corvi” (crows), a pejorative Italian term for an informant.

“They are not crows, they are doves who wanted to shed light, clean their air,” Nuzzi told Reuters. “If the image of the Vatican that emerges is negative, it is not my fault, it is because of what is written in the documents.”

The leaks began in January when an investigative television show hosted by Nuzzi broadcast private letters to Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and the pope from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former deputy governor of the Vatican City, who has been moved to Washington as the Vatican’s ambassador.

The letters showed Vigano was transferred after he exposed what he said was a web of corruption and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts at inflated prices to Italian contractors.

Bertone responded by removing Vigano from his position three years before the end of his tenure and sending him to the United States, despite his strong resistance.

Bertone, whose job is to keep the Vatican’s central administration, or Curia, running smoothly for the pope, now looks weakened after the leaks scandal and other failures.

They include the abrupt departure last week of the Vatican bank’s Italian chief Ettore Gotti Tedeschi – who was recruited by Bertone from Spanish bank Santander – after a no-confidence vote by its board.

At his position in the papal apartments, Gabriele was in a prime position to see at least some of the disarray and tension in the Curia. But it remains to be seen whether he really was a pawn used by others to undermine Bertone, as some sources say.

“This is a strategy of tension, an orgy of vendettas and pre-emptive vendettas that has now spun out of the control of those who thought they could orchestrate it,” said Alberto Melloni, a prominent Italian Church historian.

After his arrest Gabriele called an old school friend and devout catholic, Carlo Fusco, and asked him to be his defense lawyer. Fusco, a civil advocate, called in criminal lawyer Cristiana Arru to help with Gabriele’s defense.

Gabriele’s fate is now in the hands of Piero Antonio Bonnet, the Vatican’s public prosecutor.

He will decide if the man who once was trusted with the keys to the papal elevator should stand trial for aggravated theft, or even worse, disclosing the documents of a head of state or breaking a special pontifical law protecting papal confidentiality.

The pope has tried to end talk of conflict under his roof.

Breaking his silence on the scandal on Wednesday, he expressed full confidence in his staff, including those who he said work “in silence” to help him carry out his ministry.

But that group no longer includes Gabriele, who only a few days ago was one of the closest men to Pope Benedict but now sits in a lonely room in the Vatican awaiting his fate.

Complete Article HERE!

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US nuns reject Vatican criticism and reform efforts

The largest US organisation of Catholic nuns has fought back against a Vatican review criticising the group.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious said the review contained “unsubstantiated accusations”, after a three-day meeting.

The Vatican investigation said the group had “serious doctrinal problems” and ordered a leadership overhaul.

In recent years the Leadership Conference has diverged from the Holy See on a range of issues.

The Vatican report concluded in April that the Leadership Conference had taken positions on issues ranging from homosexuality to the all-male priesthood that undermined Catholic teaching.

It proposed replacing the leadership of the group with three bishops that would have the authority to rewrite the organisation’s statutes, meeting agendas and liturgical texts.

“Board members concluded that the assessment was based on unsubstantiated accusations and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency,” a statement from the Leadership Conference said.

“Moreover, the sanctions imposed were disproportionate to the concerns raised and could compromise their ability to fulfil their mission.”

The nuns said the Vatican’s report has “caused scandal and pain throughout the church community and created greater polarization”.

Pat Farrell, president of the Leadership Conference, and executive director Janet Mock also said they would travel to Rome to meet Cardinal William Levada and Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain – the US clergyman tasked with reforming the Leadership Conference.

The organisation, whose members represent about 80% of nuns in the US, has also said it intends to hold a conference in August to further discuss its response to the Vatican.

Public opinion has rallied behind the nuns as the dispute with the Vatican unfolded. Vigils have been held across the country, including in many major US cities, in support of the nuns.

Complete Article HERE!

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TJ Williams: Mobilizing Black churches for LGBT equality

For TJ Williams, being Black, gay and heavily involved in the church is not a contradiction or an identity of great complexity.
Homophobes in the Black church, he said, “have forsaken the legacy of the Black Church” as a pillar of justice and social change.

Williams is a student, a gay man and an organizer on a mission to amplify the voices of Black gay preachers who support LGBT equality, of which there are many, he said.

See Tj’s website HERE

“I want folks in the African-American community inspired to understand that LGBT rights are civil rights,” Williams said.

At a time when some have equated Black churches with homophobia, especially in the wake of President Obama’s recent support of marriage equality, Williams is fighting to portray a different image of the Black and faithful.

Williams is a Master of Divinity student at New York Theological Seminary. He is also a member of the Riverside Church in New York City, a church that has been open and affirming towards LGBT people since 1985. Williams married his partner, Brad Williams Hauger, there last year.

Williams grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. His mother was an evangelist who equated LGBT rights with her own struggles as a woman early on.

“She saw this connection between sexism and misogyny and homophobia [in the church],” Williams said.

Williams’ upbringing and his own sense of justice led him to seek out a church that embraced LGBT people and continued to push for fairness. That church, for him, was Riverside.

Riverside has a legacy of social justice. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “Beyond Vietnam” speech there in 1967. Today, the church bills itself as open and affirming on its website, listing same-sex weddings alongside heterosexual ceremonies.

Riverside is not alone. Rev. Otis Moss III of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, President Obama’s controversial former pastor), made headlines recently by backing the president’s support for marriage equality and calling on other Black churches to do the same.

“The institution of marriage is not under attack as a result of the President’s words,” Moss wrote. “Marriage was under attack years ago by men who viewed women as property and children as trophies of sexual prowess. Marriage is under attack by low wages, high incarceration, unfair tax policy, unemployment, and lack of education.” [Windy City Times attempted to contact Moss on numerous occasions. However, he had not responded as of the press deadline.]

Other Black churches have added their voices to a growing chorus of those who support marriage equality. But for those not ready to go public with their support for LGBT causes, said Williams, Black churches are increasingly lending support to LGBT movements in a quieter way: they’re backing President Obama on other issues at a time when his leadership has been called into question.

Williams argues that the media has largely portrayed Black churches as monolithic, interviewing homophobic Black ministers but not ones that embrace LGBT people.

“I often ask myself why the media is missing this,” he said. “If you’re going to give press to these homophobic ministers, then call up these clergy that are well-studied and believe in justice for all.”

Williams is taking matters into his own hands. He is planning a large press conference at June 7 that highlights the voices of Black clergy who support President Obama’s stance on marriage equality. The details of that event have not yet been announced.

Williams believes that Black churches, built on a foundation of equality and justice, should naturally step up to support LGBT rights.

“We find it very foreign when we come across folks that don’t understand that civil-rights narrative,” Williams said. “The legacy was always about justice.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Vatican’s assessment of LCWR about fear, not doctrine

COMMENTARY

The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’s April 18 doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is not about doctrine. It is not primarily about protecting the faith or ensuring an ecclesiology of communion, no matter how many times these terms are woven through the report. It is fundamentally about fear — fear of the loss of power — and the willful use of dominative control to defend that power.

The abundance of religious themes and language do not mask this punitive effort to shore up the crumbling authority of hierarchical leaders. Nor does the document hide the anger that roils beneath the protestations of gratitude and concern. The final report of the LCWR assessment reveals a desperate attempt on the part of some fearful and angry church leaders to protect their turf — to maintain an all-male church leadership, to keep women and laypeople under their authority, and to shield the homophobic-homosexual subculture in the leadership of the Catholic church.

When fear rules

The pattern of using coercive intimidation to control others in one’s household is called domestic abuse. Domestic abuse does not need to involve physical violence — in fact, many abusers never beat their partners. Instead, the threatened person strikes out psychologically to evoke compliance. Public humiliations, corrections, threats, accusations of disloyalty and demands for absolute obedience make up the typical arsenal of the abusive person. In extreme cases, the abuser monitors the actions of the other, keeps a record of his or her transgressions, restricts his or her activities, discredits his or her reputation, takes charge of his or her decisions, and threatens to withdraw support if unquestioned compliance to demands is not maintained.

These abusive acts will sound curiously familiar to anyone who has read the proposed implementations of the Vatican doctrinal assessment.

While females can and do commit domestic abuse, statistically, they do so at much reduced rates, inflict less physical harm and commonly have different motivations than male perpetrators, making domestic abuse primarily a crime against women. Yes, a crime — like child sexual abuse — something many bishops, archbishops and cardinals in the Catholic church failed to take seriously until they were forced to do so by lawsuits and public outcry.

But has transfer of learning taken place? Do they get it? Do they get that they cannot treat women and children as stepping stones to power, privilege and pleasure?

Whether through hits or humiliations, broken bones or broken spirits, threats of bodily harm or warnings of impending excommunication, the goal of abusers is the same: Assert absolute control. Wear the person down until he or she gives in or gives up. Use punishment if he or she dares to claim his or her own authority.

The most dangerous time in a household where domestic abuse is present is right after the person being abused has stood up to the abuser. Have too many members of LCWR claimed their own authority? The classic domestic abuser seeks one thing above all else: obedience to dictates. It is not surprising that obedience is alluded to on every page of the final doctrinal assessment document.

In fact, the mandate for implementation of the results of the doctrinal assessment reads like a how-to manual for the most common form of domestic abuse — no physical violence, just a resolute campaign to rein in those who have dared disobey the master, or, in the case of LCWR, the pope and bishops: “to implement a process of review and conformity to the teachings and discipline of the church, the Holy See” (page 7). Pretty clear.

Diagnosing the abuser

Mental illness, including personality disorders, compound domestic abuse but are not its primary cause. Domestic abuse is power abuse. In its most prevalent form, it is conscious, coercive conduct by men those believe they have the unconditional right to use forceful tactics to enforce their rules and maintain absolute control over those they deem subject to them.

What kinds of people abuse others? While there is no single profile of the domestic abuser, research has identified characteristics frequently seen among perpetrators of all types. Ironically, there is not much difference between those who use their fists and those who use words alone to demand obedience.

* Abusers believe they are entitled to maintain power and control over those in their households (institutions).
* They may believe they have an obligation to compel obedience for the benefit of the victim and the good of the household (church).
* They do not identify their controlling and hurtful tactics as abusive and are insulted when others perceive them that way.
* Perpetrators tend to perceive all interactions within relationships through a prism of compliance or disobedience.
* Abusers tend to be insecure men who need to establish dominance to feel confident.

The single most conclusive thing we know about domestic abuse is that it is learned behavior. Abusers have gained knowledge of abusive behaviors by seeing them in action, either in their families or in the various cultures to which they belong. This applies to religious cultures where the seminarian is taught early to bow to the wishes of his rector, to obey his bishop and to submit to the cardinal — all of whom kiss the ring of the pope.

All of this bowing, obeying and willful submission programs the brain to normalize hierarchical authority, and in some less secure individuals, to deeply internalize this way of relating and to replicate it.

As in sexual abuse, church leaders who have witnessed domestic abuse in their families or who have experienced such abuse as children may be particularly susceptible to behave abusively themselves. When a fragile ego combines with learned patterns of abuse, the stage is set for domestic abuse.

While abusers do not fit neatly into any particular diagnostic category, their behavior is not considered “normal.”

Psychologically healthy adults do not mandate obedience, forbid dialogue about subjects they do not wish discussed, or use oppressive tactics to gain control over others. Personally secure leaders don’t issue orders to other functioning adults, threatening punitive measures if they are not obeyed.

Often described as having a “Jekyll and Hyde” personality, most abusers can be quite civilized and even charming when they need to be. Their ability to function as CEOs of companies and preside over large corporations does not eliminate them from the pool of the insecure who strike out against those who threaten them. Some male abusers have been found to harbor a secret loathing of females, considering them inferior. Since such attitudes are certainly present in the history of the church (read St. Jerome), it is possible that its influence still inhabits, consciously or the unconsciously, the collective mind of church leaders.

The persistent desire of hierarchical leaders to keep women under their control and out of their sphere of leadership, especially women theologians, suggests that the “Jerome Syndrome” might still be operative.

[Fran Ferder is a Franciscan sister, clinical psychologist, author and professor at Seattle University.]

Complete Article HERE!