Category: COMMENTARY

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Church needs saving from its dysfunctional structure

By DIARMAID MACCULLOCH

The Catholic Church, aka the western church of the Latin rite, trades on tradition. That is what so fascinates many people: the lure of its continuity, the certainty, the serene provision of answers.

Pope Benedict XVI leads his last Angelus prayer before stepping down in Saint Peter's Square at the VaticanAs anyone mildly acquainted with its history will know, this is a series of illusions. Christian history, like all history, is a delicious Smorgasbord of unintended consequences, paradoxes, misunderstandings, sudden veerings in new directions.

If you like to call that the work of the Holy Spirit, then fine, but do note that the Holy Spirit delights in confounding human expectations and going its own way.

The church of Rome, having been around from near the start of the story, illustrates this general truth particularly well. Its prestige derives from possessing the tomb of the Apostle Peter, who probably never visited the city.

This Palestinian fisherman, who would have spoken a version of Aramaic, plus enough street-Greek to make himself understood in the forum, may have been illiterate in either language, but he is represented among the books of the Bible by two elegantly-penned Greek letters written by two different authors – he himself was neither of them.

The current position of the Roman Catholic Church as the largest section of world Christianity depends on a variety of later accidents. One of these – the French Revolution of 1789 – produced the modern papacy. Until then, the pope was one Italian prince among several others.

Certainly he was equipped with a dozen centuries and more of ideological baggage, bulging with his aspirations to be something universal.

But he shared his power in the church inescapably with European Catholic monarchs, prince-bishops of the Holy Roman Empire and a host of other fiercely independent local jurisdictions in cathedrals and the like, all of which were themselves the products of the happenstance of history.

The revolution dealt them a devastating blow. As its consequences unfolded, it swept nearly all away, and the first World War delivered the coup de grace.

To begin with, it looked as if the revolutionaries would do for the pope as well. Poor Pius VI died in a revolutionary prison in France, his death in 1799 being recorded by the local mayor (with chilling Jacobin wit) as that of “Jean Ange Braschi, exercising the profession of pontiff”. But the papacy drew on its historical resources and on revulsion in much of Europe against revolutionary brutality and destructiveness.

It very successfully played the tradition card to create something brand new: a monarchy for the whole western church, which increasingly eliminated competition from rival jurisdictions. The 19th century revival of Catholicism laid the foundations of the rock-star papacy of John Paul II, kissing airport tarmac and thrilling crowds with the force of his exceptional personality.

While popular participation in secular politics has grown throughout Europe and America over two centuries, precisely the reverse has happened in the church of Rome: it has eliminated any wider participation, even that of kings.

The post-revolutionary Vatican remodelled the church across the world, to eliminate independence in church government, local initiative or scholarship.

In Ireland, the process took up the later 19th century, to produce the variety of Catholic Church still easily within the memories of many, embodied by such prelates as the late and widely unlamented John Charles McQuaid.

The reforming work of the second Vatican Council (1962-1965) looked for a moment as if it would roll back this 19th-century innovation, but the curia’s bureaucrats in the Vatican were left to implement council initiatives, and we all know the results of that in the two pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Benedict, arch-traditionalist, expounding even this week a narrative of Vatican II in which nothing much happened at all to the church, has by his resignation set the church on yet another new path.

It is paradoxical but admirable that this sensitive and learned man has recognised the limits of his office. The all-powerful, all-providing papacy constructed after 1789 has simply been too much for any one man to embody, regardless of whether he is frail or old.

The cardinals whom John Paul and Benedict appointed to parrot the myth of enduring tradition will no doubt resist the implications, scrabbling around to find the most convincing representative of the post-French Revolution state of the hierarchy. But it is just possible that the Holy Spirit might seize them afresh.

Wouldn’t it be a wonderful surprise for the Christian world if they reached beyond the conclave and chose someone from beyond their ranks? That’s a big ask at the moment. But look back before the French Revolution, and we can find stories to help the church in framing a more workable version of its future than the present dysfunctional structure.

At the moment, the debate between Catholic “liberals” and “conservatives” is stuck around the second Vatican Council: what happened there? Not much? A lot? Even more than a lot, but frustrated by the Curia? Let’s recognise that the debate is much older than that.

A great many Catholics over the centuries have considered a monarchical papacy a very bad idea: particularly all those monarchs, prince-bishops, cathedral chapters. They constructed coherent theologies out of their convictions.

Historians use labels for these ways of thinking which have become merely pieces of historical jargon: Gallicanism; Cisalpinism; Conciliarism.

It’s a pity that these words now seem off-putting and archaic, because once they were living affirmations that the church’s future should be decided in broader arenas than a few chambers in the Vatican palace.

That future won’t resemble the past – it never does – so I’m not suggesting we restore the Holy Roman Empire, or the heirs of Louis XVI to the French throne. But history has rich resources to offer: showing how they did things in the past, so Catholics can find sensible solutions for what to do next.

In the middle of what any fool can see is a deep crisis in Catholic Church authority, let historians ride to the rescue.

Complete Article HERE!

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Benedict XVI Could Turn into a Shadow Pope

Progressive Catholic theologian Hans Küng, whose authority to teach Catholic theology was rescinded by the Vatican in 1979, spoke to SPIEGEL about the challenges facing the next pope and the need for reform of the Catholic Church.

By Peter Wensierski

SPIEGEL: What will change now that Pope Benedict XVI has resigned?

Hans Küng: There is now a realization that a pope should step down when the time has come. Joseph Ratzinger made it very clear that he could no longer fulfill his duties. His predecessor felt he had to turn his death into a show. Fortunately, Benedict chose another way, in order to demonstrate that when a pope is no longer capable of doing his job, he should give it up. This is exactly how the office should be approached. In John Paul II’s final years, we weren’t led by a pope so much as by a curia, which governed the Church in his place.

SPIEGEL: Who would you like to see lead your Church as pope?

Hans Küng: A pope who is not intellectually stuck in the Middle Ages, one who does not represent mediaeval theology, liturgy and religious order. I would like to see a pope who is open first to suggestions for reform and secondly, to the modern age. We need a pope who not only preaches freedom of the Church around the world but also supports, with his words and deeds, freedom and human rights within the Church — of theologians, women and all Catholics who want to speak the truth about the state of the Church and are calling for change.

SPIEGEL: Who is your ideal candidate for the office of pope?

Hans Küng: If I were to name anyone, he would most certainly not get elected. But background should not play a role. The best man for the job should be elected. There are no more candidates who belonged to the Second Vatican Council. In the running are candidates who are middle of the road and toe the Vatican line. Is there anyone who won’t simply continue on the same path? Is there anyone who understands the depth of the Church’s crisis and can see a way out? If we elect a leader who continues on the same path, the Church’s crisis will become almost intractable.

SPIEGEL: Is there likely to be friction between the former pope and the incumbent pope?

Hans Küng: Benedict XVI could turn into a shadow pope who has stepped down but can still exert indirect influence. He has already assigned himself a place within the Vatican. He is keeping his secretary, who will also remain prefect of the papal household under the new pope. This is a new form of nepotism, and one that isn’t appreciated in the Vatican either. No priest likes to have his predecessor looking over his shoulder. Even the bishop of Rome doesn’t find it pleasant to have his predecessor constantly keeping an eye on him.

SPIEGEL: So the new pope will have a hard time asserting himself?

Hans Küng: If the next pope is clever, he will appoint a cabinet that will allow him to lead effectively. A solitary pope, isolated from the curia the way that Ratzinger was, will not be able to lead a community of 1.2 billion people. The pope urgently needs a cabinet made up of new, competent men (and why not women, too) in order to overcome the crisis. Unless there is an end to the tradition of the Roman royal household and an introduction of a functioning, central church administration as well as a curia reform, no new pope will be able to bring about change and progress.

Complete Article HERE!

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WHAT THE POPE CAN PRAY FOR

BY JANE KRAMER

In the twelve days since Benedict XVI announced his retirement, I’ve been wondering whether the Church of Rome might not have been better served—at least from the point of view of progressive Catholics—by the Pope keeping his job and drawing an eventual last breath, in what he would call God’s time, on Peter’s throne. It would have released those Catholics from the strictures of empathy, admiration, and grueling patience his voluntary leaving seems to have placed upon them. (St. Peter, by the way, was married.) The response has been uncharacteristically kind. And how could it not be, at the shock of such eloquent and simple humility coming from the man who, for the past thirty-two years, enforced and eventually led the doctrinal retreat into the Middle Ages begun by his predecessor. There have been endless comparisons between the style of Benedict’s departure and that of John Paul II, in 2005; they are almost comically stereotypic: Pope John Paul II’s ardent, emotional, and pointedly public ecce-homo calvary through disease, senility, and incapacity to death; and Benedict’s rational, considered decision, clearing the way for a like-minded successor who would presumably restore obedience and fealty to a Church whose authority, like his own, was waning. “For the good of the Church,” is how Benedict described his resignation. It may be that, however weakened, Benedict was crafty.

There have been many theories, though few, to my knowledge, say that Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger was pushed into retirement, let alone that those honest, eloquent words about no longer possessing the quality of mind and body that the papacy requires had been scripted for him. And with good reason: knowing Benedict, he probably pushed himself. Today, the average age of the Church’s cardinals, who will convene next week to begin considering candidates for the next pope, is seventy-two, and those who are under eighty—the only ones eligible to actually cast ballots in a papal conclave—were all appointed by John Paul II or, more often than not, by Benedict XVI. So it’s safe to say that the College of Cardinals has been stacked to ensure that their linea gotica continues moving backward. And never mind that the Church has been losing both priests and nuns because of a doctrine of celibacy that began not in the Gospels but in the fourth century (and was largely ignored until much later); because of a doctrine of infallibility that in fact only became canonic in 1870; and because of an institutionalized misogyny that has not only kept women from the priesthood but sends them to Hell if they drop by Planned Parenthood for a morning-after pill, or even if, like those valiant American “nuns on the bus,” they drive off without permission to minister to the poor. The list goes on. A new face, with a new infallibility chakra under his papal hat, may be the Church’s last best hope for what is now called “putting the past behind us”—“the past,” in this case, including decades of rampant, officially closeted pedophilia, involving thousands of priests preying on tens of thousands of children—and continuing its long march backward.

I once met a writer who had been working for years on a book about the Vatican. His idea was that the Catholic Church was the oldest successful corporation in the world, and he predicted that the legacy of John XXIII, whose famous metaphor for the Second Vatican Council was throwing open the windows of the Church of Rome and letting in fresh air, would prove to be, corporately speaking, inconvenient. He was right. Dissident underlings are never convenient, in theology as in business.

When John Paul II was elected in 1978, he was certainly a breath of air, at least in style. He was warm. He wrote poetry. He was “the people’s pope”—a disarming populist and Mary worshipper, which endeared him, if not to Catholic intellectuals, at least to the Catholic masses trying to beat back poverty around the world. He was also a fervent anti-Communist. His support of Solidarity played a huge role in the dismantling of Soviet power that began in deeply Catholic Poland, and people loved him for that. It tended to obscure the fact that, like the Polish Church in which he’d been raised, he was profoundly conservative when it came to dogma. He instructed poor Catholic women (who filled the stadiums of the Third World to hear him) to reproduce, and to keep reproducing, and never mind if the women were struggling against all odds to feed the children they already had. He refused to consider the possibility of married priests or women priests, let alone openly gay priests. What’s more, he arrived at the Holy See with what could be called a professional deformation—understandable in a priest who had spent half his life under Stalinist rule, but delusional all the same. He saw Communists everywhere, and nowhere more than in the communitarian Christian movement called liberation theology, which was the real fresh air of Roman Catholicism and, at the time, doing more to revive Catholic practice in South and Central America than any pope could, or would, short of joining that movement himself.

Enter Joseph Ratzinger, who, three years into John Paul’s papacy, in 1981, took on the role of Bad Cop to Karol Wojtyla’s Good Cop (an arrangement not unheard of in corporations). The official title was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition. It was, you could say, the job Ratzinger was born for. He made an enthusiastic stalker of “heretical” practices and opinions, so much so that the people he held in his doctrinal sniper’s sight took to calling him the Grand Inquisitor. His targets ranged from an old Tübingen University friend and mentor, Hans Küng (whom he reportedly had a hand in barring from teaching Catholic theology just before his appointment as Prefect, in 1979), to priests and teachers in progressive orders like the Jesuits. The list is long. Under his watch, America’s liberal Conference of Catholic Bishops quickly became a conservative force, responsible for, among other things, denying communion to Catholic politicians who accept that contraception and abortion rights could be granted under the Constitution of our (still) secular state. He marginalized a group of Brazilian cardinals and bishops who had risked their lives to bear witness to atrocities in the political prisons of their country’s right-wing military junta—most notably the cardinal Aloísio Lorscheider, an appointment of Paul VI (and a strong contender to succeed him) and a lifelong defender of the liberation-theology movement and its priests.

The theologian Leonardo Boff was not only one of those priests but one of the founders of the liberation movement. I knew him in Brazil, in the mid-eighties, where I was writing a piece on a liberation-theology parish priest. Boff had been sentenced to silence for a year—courtesy of Cardinal Ratzinger—for his deviant views. Happily, Boff (who would leave the priesthood six or seven years later, when Ratzinger tried to silence him again) was ignoring the Vatican’s punishment, at least at home. He was, and remains, a remarkable Christian: “as Marxist as Luke” is how he described himself and his dedication to the poor. Twenty years later, Ratzinger was Pope, and one of the words he brought with him from the C.D.F. was “deviant.” Remember his exhortation on “deviant sects,” his term for other faiths, including Christian ones? Remember, for that matter, his Regensburg speech about the inherent illogic (if not evil) of Islam? His friend Rowan Williams, the former Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, once told me how much he always looked forward to talking to Benedict on his unofficial visits to Rome; they shared an interest in Augustine, and Williams was, as he put it, immensely impressed by the Pope’s quality of mind. That did not prevent Benedict from poaching on Williams’s turf when he opened the Church of Rome to Anglican priests opposed to the ordination of women bishops. It remains unclear whether Benedict counts the Church of England as another “deviant sect” or simply as a lapsed Catholic institution that refused to acknowledge him.

What is “deviant”? Most of us would consider the Holocaust-denying followers of the late Marcel LeFebvre deviant. LeFebvre was a French cardinal so frighteningly racist that he and the four “bishops” he had illegally appointed were excommunicated by John Paul II. But Benedict reversed the excommunication of those bishops—on condition that they kept their views on the Holocaust to themselves. (Their silence was equivocal, given that you could read those views in the books and pamphlets they continued to sell, along with cakes and honey, in their monastery-churches.) It seems that in any reasonable church they would be considered more “deviant,” theologically, than a Leonardo Boff or a Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian liberation theologian who lived with the poor, practicing theology “from below.” And what about those child-molesting priests who, once caught, were not only protected by their bishops and, for years, ignored by the Vatican but were, instead, discreetly transferred to other parishes, where they could begin molesting again. I wish Ratzinger well in his new life of prayer. But I hope that, in the tranquility of his reflections, he reconsiders the meaning of the word “deviant.”

Complete Article HERE!

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The loneliness of the short distance pope

By Philip Pullella

In Havana last March, when Pope Benedict sat down with Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader jocularly asked his fellow octogenarian: “What does a pope do?”

Benedict proceeded to tell Castro, who had stepped down as president in 2008 for health reasons and had to be helped to walk into the room, about his duties as leader of the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church.

Little did Castro know that Benedict was himself contemplating retirement.

A pope has not abdicated in some six centuries, and the Catholic faithful have come to expect the man whose titles include successor of St. Peter and “servant of the servants of God,” to stay in office until his dying breath. His decision to take that step, just under a year later, would shake the foundations of a Church already reeling from a series of scandals – from problems at the Vatican Bank to allegations of sexual abuse – and facing challenges to its authority around the world.

Back home in the Vatican in the weeks after his Cuba visit, Benedict spent time in the prayerful silence of his small private chapel in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace where a large bronze Christ on a crucifix looks down from a wall. At some point last spring he decided he should go.

“The pope’s decision was made many months ago, after the trip to Mexico and Cuba, and kept in an inviolable privacy that nobody could penetrate,” wrote Gian Maria Vian, editor of the Vatican newspaper l’Osservatore Romano.

The current pope has never been as well-loved as his charismatic predecessor John Paul, who died in pain because he felt he should “not come down from the cross”. Benedict’s decision has some faithful asking if Benedict was the right person for the job in the first place.

It was at least partly borne of his own physical shortcomings. While he was in Mexico on the first leg of his March trip, he lost his balance in his residence, hitting his head on a bathroom sink. The accident was kept secret until the Vatican confirmed it last week, but insiders say it reminded Benedict of his encroaching age and physical frailty. The pope was fitted with a pacemaker years ago, the Vatican also disclosed.

Reuters has spoken to cardinals and other Vatican insiders and Church experts to delve into Benedict’s thinking and get an idea of how he made his decision to step down. Most sources spoke on condition of anonymity. The picture they paint is of a serious intellectual who let himself become isolated in the Vatican, ill at ease with the day-to-day running of the Church.

Pope John Paul wore his accidents, his hospitalizations and his diseases like badges, believing they could inspire others who were suffering. But Benedict is a different type of man.

“This is a man of incredible privacy,” said a Vatican official who has known him for many years. “He had very few friends.”

“He certainly did not consult widely,” said another Vatican official. “You cannot consult widely in the Vatican without it leaking. It might have been to a very restricted group, perhaps posing the question hypothetically.”

A BETRAYAL

On May 23, 2012, less than two months after his meeting with Castro, Benedict faced an event that would shake his confidence and reinforce his still-secret decision.sad lonely pope

The Pope’s personal butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested and charged with leaking sensitive documents from the pontiff’s desk to the media. The documents alleged corruption in the Vatican and sparked a scandal that cast a rare and unwelcome public light on the inner workings of the Holy See.

Gabriele, one of fewer than 10 people who had a key to an elevator that led to the pope’s private apartments, was convicted last October and released from jail after Benedict pardoned him three days before Christmas.

The betrayal had a devastating effect on Benedict, according to an official who knows him well. The Vatican tried to put a good face on the affair, stressing the pope’s benevolence towards his betrayer. But the mood in the Apostolic Palace was different.

“He was never the same after that,” one official source said of the treachery by someone Benedict considered a son. “It was like shooting Achilles in the heel.”

There were other worries on Benedict’s mind last year, insiders said.

The Vatican Bank, for decades tainted by scandals, found itself mired in fresh controversy, this time over an Italian investigation into alleged money-laundering.

A group of American nuns, disciplined by the Vatican for being too liberal on issues such as homosexuality, was enjoying a groundswell of popular support, their backers accusing the Vatican of excessive rigidity.

Fresh allegations of sexual abuse committed by priests continued to emerge, in Philadelphia and elsewhere in the United States. In the once staunchly Catholic country of Ireland, the deputy prime minister demanded the resignation of the head of the Church, Cardinal Sean Brady, over his handling of abuse cases.

And despite the pope’s strong condemnation of it, gay marriage was making advances in the United States and some Catholic European countries.

At the same time Benedict’s health was deteriorating.

Peter Seewald, a German journalist who wrote a book with the pope in 2010 in which Benedict first publicly floated the possibility of resigning, visited him at the end of 2012 while working on a new biography.

“His hearing had worsened. He couldn’t see with his left eye. His body had become so thin that the tailors had difficulty keeping up with newly fitted clothes … I’d never seen him so exhausted-looking, so worn down,” Seewald wrote in the German magazine Focus after Benedict announced his abdication.

“I think he simply decided that the forces that were mounting against him were too great and the forces on which he could rely were too meager to counter this,” said the Vatican official who knows him well.

PRIVATE AND ISOLATED

Towards the end of last year came a hint that 2013 would be different. The Vatican usually gives journalists an unofficial indication of how many international trips the pope plans in the following year.

Last year the only trip confirmed was to Brazil in July, for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Youth, a kind of “Catholic Woodstock” that can take place with or without the pope.

Benedict had already decided that he would not be there. The only thing left to do was announce his momentous news to his aides and to the world.

In September the pope travelled to Lebanon and in November, with much fanfare, Benedict joined Twitter, attracting more than 1.5 million followers in just a few days. Christmas, New Year and Epiphany came and went with all the pomp and pageantry that only an institution like the Vatican can offer.

Benedict, a stickler for liturgical precision, did not want the Church to be devoid of a visible leader for any of its most important feasts, insiders say. He timed his announcement for a liturgical lull, so a new man could be in place before the start of Holy Week on Palm Sunday, which falls on March 24 this year.

He broke the news to cardinals just after 11:30 a.m. on February 11. It was a regularly scheduled meeting to announce new saints, and most cardinals’ minds were probably wandering, according to several who were there.

“People were thinking of their next appointments, at least I was,” said one participant.

Then Benedict dropped the bombshell.

“Both strength of mind and body are necessary (to run the Church), 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,” he told them in Latin.

Benedict had written the 350-word statement himself and before reading it sent it to a Latin expert in the Secretariat of State to make sure the grammar was correct, according to a source familiar with the event.

He read his note in a steady voice with no outward sign of emotion.

“For a few minutes after we understood what had happened, no one moved,” said one cardinal. Another said: “I just left in a daze without uttering a word to anyone.”

Although the official line is that the pope was “courageous” in making his decision, in private conversations officials repeat two words more than any others to describe Benedict, and how he came to the decision: private, and isolated.

One Vatican official who “respects but disagrees with” Benedict’s decision said the pope had become isolated but had also isolated himself.

“Because of his privacy, he was not an easy person to help,” the official said. “This was his decision.”

Several insiders said they believed part of the decision lay in the fact that the pope never made the full transfiguration from Joseph Ratzinger to Benedict XVI.

“I don’t think that he ever really internalized being the pope. He never made that transition where the previous person, that individual, is gone and now you are the pope, that’s all you are,” one official said.

One sign of this, two Vatican sources noted, was that Benedict continued writing his books using two names: first, Joseph Ratzinger and beneath, Pope Benedict XVI.

“The pope cannot publish private books … the pope does not have a private person,” one official said. “Maybe because he was already too advanced in age, maybe because Joseph Ratzinger was already too substantial a person.”

DISAPPOINTMENT

Long before he became a bishop, Joseph Ratzinger was a towering theologian, a university professor known around the Catholic world for his dozens of books and ground-breaking, thought-provoking lectures.

As a young priest he was an “expert” called to assist cardinals at the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, which attempted to bring the Church into the modern world with liturgical changes and outreach to other religions.

“For experts, Ratzinger was a pioneer in a movement known as ‘ressourcement’, trying to return Catholicism to its original sources such as the Bible, the Fathers of the Church, and its liturgy,” said John Allen, author of several books on Benedict.

Benedict continued in the professor mould as bishop, cardinal and even when he became pope. This was painfully clear in 2006 when he delivered a weighty lecture on “faith and reason” at the University of Regensburg in Germany, where he once taught theology.

Benedict quoted a remark by a Byzantine emperor who linked Islam and violence, offending Muslims around the world. He apologized but still seemed surprised at the power his words carried.

One Vatican official, speaking privately, speculated that the conclave to elect Benedict’s successor may discuss whether the new pope should promise not to write “private books” but only papal documents.

In his abdication statement, Benedict concluded that it had become impossible for him to continue being pope “in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith”.

Many inside and outside the Vatican wonder why he did not put better governance in place in the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration, to help ease the load on his mind and body.

Critics, such as leading Italian Vatican expert and author Sandro Magister, say the pope put people in positions of administrative power because he knew them and felt comfortable with them rather than for their abilities.

One Vatican official said he believed the Curia “let the pope down” by not preventing problems. In particular, some Vatican insiders criticize Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Benedict’s number two.

“Bertone will probably be remembered as one of the worst secretaries of state in history,” said another official.

In confidential cables from the U.S. embassy to the Vatican published by WikiLeaks in 2010, diplomats depicted Bertone as a divisive “yes man” with no diplomatic experience or linguistic skills, who protected the pope from bad news.

At the time, Bertone replied: “I am happy to be a ‘yes man’ if it serves the Holy Father.”

A number of Vatican officials privately say that instead of abdicating and throwing the Church into the unknown, the pope could have cut back on travel and other activities to conserve his strength, limiting himself to major decisions and pronouncements, and delegating more.

“It is easy to understand why an 85-year-old man in difficult conditions may feel terribly tired. But the pope does not need to be a hands-on chief executive if he puts in place a good team, which he could have done at any moment because he is a sovereign,” a Vatican source said.

“He could content himself with doing very little except praying … but because the people he had in place were not adequate, instead of removing them, he removed himself,” the source said, adding that he would have tried to talk him out of it.

Many Catholic faithful, from elderly women praying in the pews in New York, to monsignors who work in the frescoed offices on the floor below the papal apartments, share that sense of disquiet and loss.

“The fundamental idea that the papacy does not end until the death of a pope has been eroded. It will take 100 years of popes never retiring for this to become a blip,” one Vatican source said.

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Nurse destroys archbishop’s gay marriage stance with a stroke of her pen

A 65-year-old former nurse has told the leader of England’s Catholics to ditch the robes, the Latin and activism against gays and start helping the needy

A 65-year-old former nurse has delivered a withering telling off to the Archbishop of Westminster – England’s most senior Catholic – for his stance on gay marriage.

The woman, who now works with animals and lives in northern England, says she has been married for 30 years but gay marriage doesn’t threaten the status of her relationship whatsoever.

The Most Reverend Vincent Nichols arrives at Westminster Cathedral in central London, ahead of the formal service to install him as the 11th Archbishop of Westminster, on May 21, 2009. AFP PHOTO/Leon Neal (Photo credit should read Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)

And she says Archbishop Vincent Nichols and his church have become obsessed with gay sex, ignoring the real problems of society – the economy, schools, hospitals and our children’s future.

She tells him the so-called ‘Princes of the Church’ should ditch the ‘silk, the gold, the Gucci shoes, the ridiculous tall hats’ in favor of a simple pilgrim’s staff and get on with helping real people.

And she says Jesus ‘appears to have happily shared meals with prostitutes, drunkards, lepers, Gentiles and I do not doubt with people of same-sex orientation’.

Nichols has campaigned vigorously against same-sex marriage but she warns him the church’s propaganda calling homosexuality ‘disordered’ and ‘evil’ makes it impossible for the LGBT faithful to feel at home in Catholicism.

She has requested to remain anonymous but asked GSN to share her letter. We understand that she has received a reply from Nichols, but it failed to address the substance of her comments.

You can read her letter here:

Dear Archbishop,

I listened to your letter of Sunday 3 February in which you asked us as a matter of urgency to either send a postcard provided or write to our local MP to request him to vote against the government’s proposed legislation to legalize same-sex marriage. I came out of the church with two thoughts and one resolve. Firstly I thought ‘Lord pity and help any gay person sitting listening to that letter’ not a word a charity or understanding did it contain. Secondly I thought or asked ‘Where in that is the love of Christ for all humankind?’ My resolve was not to contact my MP.

That decision was not made because of the tone of your letter however. I do not find it at all easy or even possible to uphold the church’s teaching on homosexuality. Among gay people of my acquaintance are those who have a deep spiritual life, to have one’s sexual orientation, an orientation that one is born with, described as an ‘objective disorder’ and to hear homosexual acts described as ‘intrinsically evil’ surely makes it almost impossible to feel at home or welcome in the church. It is utterly unrealistic to expect homosexual people to live celibate lives (We all know that many priests find this very difficult and sometimes impossible). The revelations of clerical sex abuse have led many of us to look with a very critical eye on the so-called celibate life and to realize that it has all to often lead to warped and destructive behavior.

To return to same-sex marriage, can it be abhorrent that two people of the same sex would wish to experience that emotional and physical closeness that marriage offers? We believe that God is love and so it must follow that in every loving and committed relationship God must be present – or does this, in your understanding, only apply in heterosexual relationships? Is heterosexuality more valued by God and by the church than homosexuality? You are, I suppose, aware that there are more than a few homosexual men in the priesthood and that nowadays heterosexual men are much less willing to embrace the celibate life. Is the good work done by such men less valuable in the eyes of this church? If so is it further evidence of its dysfunctional state?

I am 65 years of age and have been married for almost 30 years. I would so have appreciated an explanation from you or any of the hierarchy exactly how my long and happy marriage will be threatened by the union of gay couples. When I meet people in my day to day existence they talk about the economic climate (bad), lack of employment (bad), uncertain future for their children (bad), state of schools, hospitals (bad) – never ever has anybody expressed concern about a threat to their marriage by the proposed legalizing of same-sex marriage. You, the church, claim that marriage is the bedrock of society and indeed it is but you also seem to consider it so fragile that allowing a few gay people access to it will endanger it forever. Here the implicit homophobia cannot be ignored.

Sadly you still think your pronouncements will be accepted without question by a meek credulous herd. You have spent far too much time telling us just how sinful we are while drawing veils of respectability over your own grievous wrongdoings.

I sometimes despair of this church, this institution. It seems to me in my reading of the Gospels that Jesus had no problem whatsoever with those who were considered outsiders or exceptions. He appears to have happily shared meals with prostitutes, drunkards, lepers, Gentiles and I do not doubt with people of same-sex orientation since such an orientation has existed since time began. The church seems much happier with its version of order over compassion and love towards the so-called exceptions. It has an appalling history of excluding and torturing those who do not think or subscribe to its definition of ‘right’.

The world is facing disaster on all levels and this church, when not obsessing about matters sexual, spends an inordinate amount of time on pointless activities such as changing the liturgy back to a correct translation of the original Latin – a language not spoken by Jesus but spoken by the oppressors of his time and country. Do you imagine that this obsession with precisely translated texts will win you a single new adherent? To me, you (particularly but not exclusively the hierarchy) appear to be a frightened group of men preoccupied with titles, clothing and other religious externals. You seem, with some wonderful and brave exceptions, to pay only lip service to ecumenism and matters of social justice. I would love to see the so-called ‘Princes of the Church’ (Where did all these triumphant, utterly anti-Gospel titles you award yourselves come from?) get rid of the silk, the gold, the Gucci shoes, the ridiculous tall hats, croziers, fancy soutanes etc etc and substitute bare heads and a simple pilgrim’s staff on all liturgical occasions and that might be taken as a small outward sign of your inner acceptance of fundamental Gospel values.

I seem to have digressed somewhat but to return to where I started, same-sex marriage. I will always be unsure of the validity of any principle or opinion that makes one act in an unkind or intolerant way. Toleration, of course, has its limits, I want you to cry out against injustice and cruelty. Explain to me please exactly how marriage will be ‘changed forever’ by the proposed new laws, specifically tell me how my marriage will be threatened.

I admit that I am not very well versed on biblical texts and I know that there are those who can find a text to confirm any prejudice without having to resort to any sort of reasonable debate but surely if we accept one piece of scripture (Lev 18:22) which declares homosexuality to be an abomination, to judge what is right or wrong, we must accept them all. Following this logic we are therefore forbidden to wear garments made of two different kinds of thread (Lev 19:19), men must never have their hair trimmed especially around the temples (Lev 19:27). According to Lev 25:44 I may possess slaves provided they are purchased from neighboring nations, not sure if this applies to non-members of the EU! As for organizing the stoning of transgressors – well, a logistical nightmare!

Archbishop, we have grasped the principles of evolution, stopped burning witches and holding heresy trials, discounted the flat earth theory. Do you now think we could move the debate about equal human rights for people of same-sex orientation and also the status of women in the church on by a few millennia please?

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It’ll be a miracle if a new pope ushers in real change in a decaying Church

By Colette Browne

THE resignation of Pope Benedict has prompted much debate about his legacy but another question also arises — why do so many people in this country continue to care about an anachronistic institution that doesn’t want them as members?
It’s ironic really. Senior Church figures whine about the increasing marginalisation of religion in society without ever conceding that it is their own intransigent dogma that is to blame for its increasing irrelevance.

While the behaviour of the Catholic Church is hard to comprehend, so too is that of à la carte Catholics determined to remain part of an organisation with core teachings many find offensive or, frankly, ridiculous. Personally, I have some degree of sympathy for the view of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who last year implored lapsed Catholics to have the courage of their non-convictions and stop cloaking themselves in the comfort blanket of a faith they no longer possess.

There should be no confusion. It’s not as if the Church’s strident views on a host of controversial social issues — like homosexuality and contraception — are shrouded in any mystery. In his infamous letter on the pastoral care of homosexual people, written in 1986, the then Cardinal Ratzinger was unequivocal. “Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.

“Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not,” he wrote.

Anyone who doesn’t believe that homosexuality is “a disordered sexual inclination” is engaging in “deceitful propaganda” which is “profoundly opposed to the teaching of the Church”.

But wait. All is not entirely lost. Renouncing homosexual acts and living a chaste existence will allow gay people to “dedicate their lives to understanding the nature of God’s personal call to them”.

In short, you can spend your life as a self-hating homosexual, tormented with the knowledge that God instilled in you such disgusting urges as a sort of bizarre penance, or you can simply ignore all of that guff and get on with your life.

The stark choice between abstinence and damnation is something of a recurring theme when it comes to much Church teaching. In his 1968 encyclical, Humane Vitae, Pope Paul VI laid out the unambiguous Catholic position on contraception — it’s against God’s divine plan.

“It is not licit, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil so that good may follow … even when the intention is to safeguard or promote individual, family or social wellbeing.”

Couples wishing to plan their families were told to roll the dice and rely on the rhythm method. Bizarre as it seems now, this view persisted in Ireland up until the early 1980s, even after a young mother was forced to go to the Supreme Court, in 1973, to fight for the right to import contraceptives after her doctor told her another pregnancy could kill her.

While there may still be some devout Catholics who adhere to this teaching, the suspicion must be that most happily ignore it yet the Church’s position hasn’t changed a jot in the intervening 40 years.

“One cannot accept the hypothesis that a slight moral disorder, on the lines of venial sin, is at stake … for the Magisterium contraception is such a morally disordered form of behaviour that it constitutes gravely sinful matter,” explained professor of moral theology, Fr Lino Ciccone.

The only softening was an admission by Pope Benedict, two years ago, that the use of contraceptives was acceptable “in certain cases”, for example by gay prostitutes to reduce the risk of HIV.

However, the Vatican later stressed that the Pope was not redefining Catholic teaching and the pope had merely “considered an exceptional situation in which the exercise of sexuality represents a real risk to the lives of others”.

So, if you’re married and using contraceptives you are still engaging in “gravely sinful” behaviour. Meanwhile, it goes without saying that those unmarried people living in sin — with contraceptives or without — are hopeless cases whose eternal reward will likely be a fiery affair.

While the Church is happy to see women barefoot and pregnant, it definitely doesn’t want to see them ordained and anywhere near an altar. To understand why a penis is the most important qualification when becoming a priest, the faithful are asked to delve back into the mists of time and remember that Jesus chose 12 male apostles.

Writing in 1994, Pope John Paul II repeated this mantra, saying the Church therefore had no authority to ordain women, while Pope Benedict urged Catholics, seeking a more nuanced explanation, to submit to the “radicalism of obedience”. Basically, just accept it. In case there was any lingering confusion, the Vatican, in 2010, said that anyone involved in the ordination of women was engaged in a grave crime against the church, on a par with child abuse, and would be instantly excommunicated. Strangely, the fact that there were no female apostles is reason enough to debar women from ever being ordained, but the fact that the same apostles were married is not seen as convincing evidence that priests should also be allowed to marry. None of this makes any sense, but that doesn’t stop otherwise erudite members of the hierarchy trotting this out as a supposedly credible excuse when asked about the lack of women in positions of authority in the Church.

MEANWHILE, a recent discovery by a Harvard professor, who has found a scrap of 4th-century papyrus that indicates early Christians believed that Jesus was married and his wife was an apostle, could prove most inconvenient for the Church.

While the scrap of papyrus is still undergoing tests to prove its authenticity, a number of preliminary examinations by experts have found no evidence of any forgery — a minor detail that has not stopped the Vatican from claiming that it is a dud in order to avoid any awkward questions.

Instead of encouraging dialogue and debate about contested teachings, the hierarchy advises conflicted Catholics to either shut up or sling their hook — and then professes bafflement when church attendance is down and their archaic views don’t gain any traction in public debates.

Religious faith is a matter for each individual’s conscience, but the line of demarcation between faith and habit seems to have grown increasingly blurred for many still maintaining a tangential relationship with an organisation that displays so little comprehension of the reality of their lives.

The election of a new pope is certainly a historic occasion, but there has been no indication that a modernising or revitalising force is waiting in the wings to breath life into a decaying institution.

Once the pomp and spectacle is over, it is likely that nothing substantive will have changed and the inexorable decline of the church in the West will continue unabated.

Complete Article HERE!

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What kind of pope do Roman Catholics need?

By Cristina LH Traina

Selection of the next Pope will factor in a host of complicated variables as wings of the Church compete for ascendancy.

Pope Benedict XVI’s impending resignation has already fuelled all the usual speculation about candidates for his successor, accompanied by profiles, photos and odds of election. Behind the hoopla is the question, what sort of leader will really be best for the Church?

Benedict’s own admission that an elderly man cannot undertake the globe-trotting that effective relations require suggests that as a rule, a younger, healthier leader would be a wise choice. But the Church also faces the question what style of leadership would be most fruitful.

Despite the vision of Vatican Council II, which recommended collegial authority and granted the laity almost complete province over action in the world, Pope John Paul II’s and Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificates have echoed an ultramontane, top-down model in which the authority of the pope supersedes that of the bishops, individually or in national organisations.

History of papal power

Vatican I ratified the ultramontane model in an era in which the Roman Catholic Church felt besieged on all sides. The Church had just lost the Papal States and suffered long periods of anti-clericalism and persecution in Europe. The Council responded by absolutising the popes’ control over the one thing left to them: the Church. Over the next 50 years, popes declared a single standard of orthodoxy (the works of Thomas Aquinas) and published – and enforced – laundry lists of anathematised philosophical and political beliefs.

In earlier periods, strong central control could not be realised so easily in practice, except in cases like the Inquisition in which civil power could be conscripted. But when travel took place on foot, by horse, or by sailing ship, and all communications were carried by letter, people had to choose carefully what information to send up and down the chain of the hierarchy. Practices varied, and many “irregularities” simply went uncommented.

Flash forward to the present day, and ultramontanism becomes a little less forgiving. Photos, news reports and blog posts make their way across oceans in seconds or less. Not only does Rome have theoretical authority over every Catholic person and organisation, it has actual access to real-time information about them. This is not to belittle the silencings, excommunications, and even executions of earlier eras, or to overlook the inefficient contemporary Vatican bureaucracy, in which branches famously work at cross purposes. But strong central control combined with instant communication from every layer of the church in every corner of the world creates unprecedented micro-managerial possibilities.

Contemporary contradictions

Cue the debate over the next pope. So-called “conservative” Catholics will be cheering for a candidate who POPEX390continues Benedict’s line of strong Catholic identity. Conservatives, so the stereotype goes, will want a firm hand guiding a centralised, top-down hierarchy capable of overseeing of theology and charitable work all over the world. The ultramontane trend confirmed at Vatican I, and alive and well in the CEO model of the papacy, is their ideal.

A look back at Pope Benedict XVI’s career

In contrast, conventional wisdom says that so-called “liberal” Catholics will be hoping for a candidate who, like John XXIII 50 years ago, might surprise the world by changing direction. Liberals will want a decentralised, participatory structure that places most power in the hands of national bishops’ conferences, in collaboration with the laity. On this view, popes are good for inspiration, pastoral care and ecumenical diplomacy but too far removed from the local details of daily life to rule sensitively on regional questions.

Recent events seem to reinforce these stereotypes. Liberal Catholics took it amiss when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) undertook a comprehensive review of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the largest organisation of Catholic women major superiors. The CDF judged that rampant “radical feminism”, dissent and collaboration with questionable social justice organisations needed correction, and it appointed Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain to oversee the “renewal” of the organisation.

Liberals viewed this as an attempt to silence the most educated and independent branch of American women religious. Conservatives held up the smaller Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, which was not investigated, as an example of fidelity and obedience.

Similarly, when Benedict blocked Lesley Anne Knight’s run for a second term as director of the Catholic umbrella organisation Caritas Internationalis and issued his motu proprio on preserving the Catholic identity of Catholic charities, liberals fretted over Catholic groups’ losses of funds and of opportunities for collaboration with independent non-profits. Conservatives, on the other hand, heralded the increased oversight as an overdue means of ensuring the purity of Catholic teaching and of income streams.

The important exception seems to be the clerical sex abuse crisis. Here organs associated with American liberal Catholicism – Voice of the Faithful, The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Call to Action, BishopAccountability.org, the National Catholic Reporter and others – have echoed conservatives in demanding authoritative, decisive action from the Vatican against bishops who facilitated and hid priestly sexual abuse. Catholics in Ireland and much of Europe, not to mention other parts of the world, have joined them in this demand.

Demand for clerical accountability

And here’s the contradiction. Catholics may not be able to have their cake and eat it too. Some conservative laypeople have laid aside ultramontanism to join the liberal demand for clerical accountability to laypeople, and liberals have joined the conservative chorus requesting action from Rome. Only a tough, centralised hierarchy that monitors all of its outposts carefully can take the strong action against bishops that liberal Catholics seek. A truly collegial model – perhaps a federation of strong national churches with a single spiritual leader, as in the Anglican Communion – would yield more adaptability at the local level but would not have the central power to depose transgressing bishops.

Thus liberal Catholics face a quandary. A pope strong and authoritative enough to purge transgressing bishops is likely to use his power as well to purge liberal theologians, nuns and clergy. A pope who opts for a collegial style more in keeping with Vatican Council II’s precedent will have to rely on his fellow bishops to monitor each other, something they have so far shown little willingness to do.

Conservatives face a similar quandary. What will ensure that the strong hierarchy they envision protects laypeople from clerical transgressions?

There is a third option, of course. If the Catholic Church had structures of accountability that operated from below rather than from above, it would not need to rely on benevolent ultramontanism to get rid of destructive bishops. The next pope could undermine the Vatican’s managerial authority even more radically by insisting that bishops share power collegially with priests, vowed religious and laypeople, and by instituting term limits for bishops like those observed by many Protestant communions. Benedict XVI’s resignation could be the precedent. Stranger things have happened.

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What’s the message on the runway for Baroque fashions?

By Thomas F. O’Meara

When I was a boy, more than 50 years ago, ecclesiastical clothes were impressive. They were unusual and colorful, antique and sacral; they were distinctively Roman Catholic. The colored watered silk, the jeweled gloves, the red slippers (buskins) pointed to an individual caught up in a church office. This transcendent figure, a representative of the divine, appeared among the ordinary suits and dresses of working-class Catholics at rare moments. Nonetheless, even as a teenager singing in a college choir at the archbishop’s liturgies, I had already noticed that sometimes rituals focused more on the clothes than on religious words and sacrament. Removing gloves and putting on glasses, keeping a skullcap in place or adjusting a pallium could appear more important than the elevation of the chalice.

SampleTime passes, and today ecclesiastical clothes are less intelligible and point less clearly to something beyond their colors and gilt. They raise questions of gender and class, of culture and sacramentality.

There are three kinds of clothes male Catholics wear for public ecclesiastical and liturgical events. There are vestments for the liturgy of the Eucharist and other sacraments and for devotions. Among them are chasuble and stole, alb and cincture, miter and cope. Second, there are the habits of religious orders and congregations. Third, there are special garments for those in the episcopal order and for those in levels below (monsignors) or above (cardinals). Vestments at the Eucharist and other liturgies appear at their best when they are simple, aesthetically pleasing and inspiring to the people viewing them. Members of religious orders, particularly monks and friars, tend to wear their habits at liturgy and at other times inside their religious houses.

Here is a ninth-century description of the liturgical clothes used by the bishop of Rome, clothes related in their style to garments worn by Romans two centuries earlier. Walahfrid Strabo, who died in 849, wrote: “Priestly vestments have become progressively what they are today: ornaments. In earlier times priests celebrated Mass dressed like everyone else.”

Often special church garments do not come from the patristic or medieval period (which did not encourage distinctive clothes). They come from the Baroque period from 1580 to 1720, when liturgy as theater arranged rituals to channel graces. After 1620, in the world of Pope Urban VIII, ecclesiastical garments began to assume the importance they have today in spotlighting ecclesiastical officeholders. Who may wear what, in which color, and at which church services? The years from 1830 to 1960 witnessed additional, quite artificial elaborations of church attire. Today vestments that reflect the simplicity of the patristic or early medieval style also appear contemporary, while those that appear antiquarian and flamboyant are the product of the Baroque.

Critics of religious clothes

Jesus is a critic of religion. He warns against human display and the use of religious objects to disdain others. He condemns using religion to further being noticed or set apart from most people. “The scribes and the Pharisees … do all their deeds to be seen by people; they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues … The greatest among you must be your slave” (Matthew 23:5-6, 12).

Few dimensions of human life aroused Jesus’ anger, but religious leaders seeking attention and power through clothes were called “whitewashed tombs that look handsome on the outside but inside are full of the bones of the dead” (Matthew 23:27).

In the years just before the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Dominican Fr. Yves Congar wrote a critique of the church’s display of power and privilege. He had researched the origins of church vestments and insignia in the Roman Empire and in feudalism, concluding that those clothes no longer have any clear meaning for people. He concluded that vestments can have value, although their religious presence must resonate with the people they address.

One contemporary critique of ecclesiastical clothes was Federico Fellini’s 1972 movie “Roma.” Ecclesiastical fashions are exhibited on a runway where models display chasubles and miters for an audience of nuns and clerics and a presiding cardinal, a pale, sexless creature with crimson robes and ill-suited sunglasses who falls asleep. The style show ends with new designs using electric lights on chasubles.

Vatican II spoke of “a noble simplicity” for ecclesiastical clothes. In the years just after Vatican II, Pope Paul VI sold papal tiaras and issued instructions to set aside unusual clothes like flamboyant cloaks, colored stockings, special buckles and sashes with tassels.

Clothes today

Among a few small groups in the church, religious clothes are returning. They may be returning not as religious signs but as distractions from faith and ministry. Sashes and birettas, chains and large crosses, amices and maniples, special gloves and shoes have reappeared. Restorationist and reactionary groups tend to have striking clothes just as dictatorships have uniforms.

These groups show a preference for special kinds of clerical collars, tall miters, elaborate trains, a metal cross hung around the neck. Programs on EWTN are the runway for Baroque fashions, some authentic, some from the 19th century, most imitations. Great attention is given to gold vestments and gold vessels, odd new habits and distortions of past religious objects. Monastic habits with tunic and hood were originally the ordinary clothes of laborers. As centuries passed, they became unusual when ordinary clothes changed. Still, the habits of the medieval monks and friars were simple, and no sashes and capes or medals are added. The habits of many congregations of men founded after 1830 were colorful and attention-getting, elaborating on the medieval or Baroque but without any connection to the modern world.

At graduations at Catholic universities, students, faculty and administrators wear their academic robes, while parents and families wear suits and dresses. A bishop in a silk cape with ribbons and a skullcap looks out of place. Once, at a fundraising event in a large hotel, a bishop wore what he called his “full dress uniform, which attracts lots of compliments on my wardrobe.” The main speaker of the night remarked: “If I were dying and someone with a red bow and gown drew near, I would be scared stiff.”

The media pays attention to the current pope’s red-pink shoes, fur-lined hat of the eighth century, elaborately embroidered stole from the 18th century. Recent images on television of bishops and popes in white and red cassocks, Renaissance hats and jeweled gloves no longer seem religious and sacramental but antiquarian and self-centered. The pope, during a visit to the White House garden in white cassock and no visible pants, looked out of place; distinctive and different, yes, but not spiritual. American Catholics are, for the first time, reacting to televised gatherings of bishops and cardinals where there is concern over wearing properly colored skirts and sashes.

Clothes and ministry

New religious groups in the United States, along with some young members of older orders seem eager to wear a religious habit in public, not just on the grounds around a school but at airports or on the subway. What does a monastic habit or a cassock in public say to Americans at the beginning of the 21st century? It is not at all evident that the general public knows who this strangely dressed person is or even connects the clothes to religion. The symbolism is not clear and a message is not evident. The person does stand out, but as a kind of public oddity. Eccentric clothes instill separation. While some argue that odd clothes attract people, the fact is that more often than not they repel. Normal people are not attracted by the antique or bizarre costume, and ordinary Christians are not drawn to those whose special costume implies that others are inferior. Sometimes wearing clothes seems to be a substitute for real ministry.

It is not clear how men wearing dresses and capes proclaim God’s transcendence or the Gospel’s love. A man’s identity is something complex; the search for it lasts a lifetime. A celibate cleric gives up things that form male identity, like being a husband and a father. One cannot overlook possible links between unusual clothes and celibacy. Does the celibate male have a neutral or third sexuality that can put on unusual clothes? Are special clothes a protection of celibacy? Or are they a neutralization of maleness? Why would a man want to wear a long dress or a cape in public? Are spiritual reasons the true motivation?

Cultural meaning

Clothes are useful as they keep us warm or cool and cover our nakedness. They can make men and women attractive to others. Human beings and societies have come up with a variety of clothes to which they give particular meanings, using a few clothes as symbols — the toga, the high hat, the veil, the robe. What do ecclesiastical clothes say today? This question touches not only the wearer’s identity but the community’s faith. There is no absolute answer, no answer apart from people in their time and culture. Tradition and history are not an answer, for there is always a time when this ecclesiastical garment was unknown and there will be a time when it will be seen only in a museum.

Time brings and then buries styles. A medieval person probably understood episcopal regalia fairly well because aspects of his or her life depended upon its rare appearance, and it was seen in a milieu of many insignia. The elaborate arrangement of artificial clothes in the Catholic church is from the past four centuries. Today, unusual clothes appear on television as something connected to entertainment. What thoughts are conjured up when a cardinal or archbishop appears at a baseball game in a cape and gown? What does the cape and sash say personally and socially? Does it recall the New Testament or the liturgy of the Christian community?

There are no intrinsically religious clothes. Religious clothes are meant to point to some truth of faith or suggest a sacramental presence. The public person of each minister in the church should relate to the humble Jesus and to sacramentality in this church’s life. In the Christian community all clothing — this includes liturgical clothing — expresses the church’s life animated by the Spirit. Capes and cloaks in a Baroque style are neither prophetic nor countercultural. If regal or antiquarian distinction was once a value for church leaders, if pretension to being ecclesiastically or even metaphysically better was presumed, since Vatican II more and more people ignore such displays. Time never stands still. What seemed powerful in the past is today merely curious. Many Catholics are reaching a point where antiquated clothes are not inspiring and sacramental but exist outside human life.

Both the church’s expression of the reign of God and the culture to which it speaks are historical. Change touches everything. At any time, something new is being born and something static and alien is dying. History flows through the relationships between faith and grace and people, and those are always being determined anew in the concrete. The Holy Spirit strives, against sin, unreality and selfishness, to animate the church. In the last analysis, clothes are just clothes.

Henry David Thoreau said it well: “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Perhaps some lesson remains in the words of Psalm 132: “I will vest the priests in holiness, and the faithful will shout for joy.”

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The Pope’s dangerous sex appeal

By Ian Buruma

Human sexual behaviour can be perilous, as the ghastly rape of a 23-year-old woman by six men on a Delhi bus in December once again showed. After going to the cinema, she and her boyfriend were beaten, before she was brutally assaulted and attacked with an iron rod for more than an hour. Thirteen days later, she died from her wounds.

It is often claimed that rape is not really about sex, but about power. True enough. But it is not unrelated to sex. The sexual act is used as a form of torture, or even, in some cases, as a deadly weapon.

But that was not what Pope Benedict XVI had in mind when he spoke in his pre-Christmas speech to the Roman Curia.

It was a deeply confused speech. His disquisition on the dangers posed by same-sex marriage followed a passage deploring the modern tendency to avoid lifelong commitments in human relationships, as if that were not precisely what gay marriage is about. Of course, in the pope’s view, commitment in gay relationships is part of the problem: more and more people, especially in the Western world, now claim the freedom to choose their own sexual identities instead of sticking to the “natural” roles “ordained by God.”

The pope’s words suggest that homosexuality is a kind of lifestyle choice, a form of modern decadence – a secular, even blasphemous act against God and nature – rather than a fact of birth. Fear of sexual behavior is one of the main reasons why most religions establish strict rules concerning sexual relationships. Marriage is a way to contain our dangerous desires. Restricting sexual conduct to procreation is supposed to make the world safer and more peaceful.

Benedict is not so extreme. Nor does he advocate violence against homosexuals. On the contrary, he sees himself as a deeply civilised man of peace. But I would argue that his speech actually encourages the kind of sexual aggression that can result in the savagery that took place in Delhi recently.

The six rapists who killed the young woman were not modern decadents who chose to defy God and nature by claiming new secular freedoms, let alone heterodox sexual identities. From what we can surmise from this case – and many others like it – they are the semi-urbanised products of a highly conventional rural society where the roles of men, and especially women, are tightly regulated. Their victim, a well-educated physiotherapy intern, seems to have been a great deal more modern than her attackers. The men were not uneducated, but they were unable to cope with the freedoms of contemporary women.

For that reason, the six rapists saw her as a “loose” woman, a city slut, fair game. After all, she was out late with her boyfriend. That is precisely how the men taunted the young couple: What was an unmarried young woman doing out in the Delhi streets with a young man? She deserved what was coming to her.

Violent hatred of homosexuals comes from a similar source. Just as women outside the family home – women who stake a claim to public space, working and living among men – are seen as dangerous temptresses, men who love men are often regarded as predators, ready to pounce on society’s children. What many people fear is not just uncontrolled sexual behavior, but sex itself.

But the more sex is repressed and people are made to fear it the greater the chance of sexual violence, because anyone who might possibly stir our sexual desires, man or woman, becomes a potential target of our rage.

This might help to explain what happened in Delhi, but it does not in any way excuse it.

One wishes that the pope had said something about that, and had offered some words of encouragement to the men and women in India who have had enough of sexual violence coming not from modern libertines, but from deeply repressed men. But that is too much to expect from a man who appears to understand little about sexual life. That is why, instead of talking about rapists, he targeted peaceful homosexual men and women who wish to show their commitment to their lovers by marrying them.

Complete Article HERE!