The Rev. Tom Pivinski helped Asbury Park greet marriage equality by performing ceremonies for three same-sex couples this morning, and he and his long-term male partner have taken out a license as well.
BY TRUDY RING
The Roman Catholic Church may not accept same-sex marriage, but one of its retired priests was happy to perform ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples in Asbury Park, N.J., as marriage equality became law in the state today. And he intends to marry his same-sex partner as well.
The Rev. Tom Pivinski, who now works with an Episcopal church in Asbury Park, officiated vows for three couples on the steps of the Paramount Theater in the beach community shortly after midnight, the Asbury Park Press reports. One of the couples he wed, Karen Nicholson-McFadden and Marcye Nicholson-McFadden, were plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to marriage equality in New Jersey. He also performed a joint ceremony for City Council member Amy Quinn and her partner, Heather Jensen, and for Steven Brunner and Daniel Baum.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Pivinski told the Press. “I am just very grateful that the state has recognized the equality of all people.” Pivinski and his longtime partner, Malcolm Navias, applied for a license Friday with the intention of marrying today, according to another local news outlet, the Asbury Park Sun.
Same-sex marriages became possible in New Jersey after the state Supreme Court Friday refused to delay a lower court judge’s ruling that such marriages should begin today. The court was to hear Gov. Chris Christie’s appeal of the ruling in January, but this morning Christie dropped the appeal.
Roy Bourgeois, a former Maryknoll priest, has been disinvited from a Philadelphia-area fundraising event for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) because some members of the organization feared he would use the event to advance the cause of women’s ordination.
“It was a Blaine screw-up,” said Barbara Blaine, SNAP’s Chicago-based president, in a phone interview with NCR. “I invited someone without checking with the local membership.”
Bourgeois, who received a letter in 2008 stating he had incurred his own excommunication for his advocacy of women’s ordination, including participation in a women’s ordination ceremony, was supposed to be part of a panel discussion with Blaine and Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle, a longtime advocate for victims of clergy sexual abuse.
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a retired auxiliary of Detroit who openly supports SNAP and attends its annual gatherings, was also to take part in the panel.
The fundraiser, hosted by the Philadelphia-area Voice of the Faithful group and scheduled for the evening of Oct. 21* in Plymouth Meeting, Penn., is being held to celebrate the 25th anniversary of SNAP’s founding.
Blaine said she invited Bourgeois without consulting the Philadelphia-area SNAP membership and said some in the area voiced concern that the group not be perceived as allowing its events to be used to foster any agenda other than support of victims of abuse. She dismissed rumors that Voice of the Faithful, another group supportive of victims, or Gumbleton objected to Bourgeois’ appearance.
Gumbleton told NCR on Wednesday he did not understand why Bourgeois had been invited to attend the SNAP event.
“It would seem very strange to me to have a fundraiser for SNAP in which you bring in the issue of women’s ordination,” he said. “It’s a very single-minded organization. And I think that would be one of its strengths.”
Doyle said in a separate NCR interview that he had earlier informed Blaine that a prior commitment that was postponed had been rescheduled, and he would be unable to attend the event. But he added he was “very disappointed with SNAP” for disinviting Bourgeois and said he would have considered withdrawing his participation because of it.
Doyle, a civil and canon lawyer, represented Bourgeois in his dealings with the Vatican and the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers after Bourgeois was disciplined for supporting women’s ordination.
He said while he understands SNAP’s desire not to have its platform used for political purposes, he said Bourgeois “has some outstandingly prophetic points he could have made. He could have brought something very interesting to the discussion about what this whole picture might have been like had there been women in the clergy. He suffered greatly for his beliefs and his conscience. He stood up for what’s right and I think he needs to be listened to.”
Bourgeois told NCR in a phone interview he was “disappointed and baffled” by his dis-invitation. He said he “rearranged my plans to attend a fundraising event for an organization which I hold in high regard. Then came the disinviting.”
“I was going there to support that organization and their cause,” he said, “not to talk about women’s ordination.”
At the same time, he said, “I really believe that if we had had women in the clergy all along, we wouldn’t have a need for this fundraiser because they never would have covered up for the old boys’ club.”
Bourgeois, who is on the road almost weekly giving talks opposing U.S. militarism and supporting women’s ordination, said when the Vatican excommunicated him, church officials accused him of causing scandal.
“I always say, ‘Over 5,000 priests in the United States have sexually abused or raped more than 12,000 children. When Catholics hear the word “scandal,” they don’t think about women’s ordination. They think of priests who abused children and bishops who covered it up.’ ”
File under: Follow the money! Truth is, all bishops have huge slush funds and these guys are showing us only what they want us to see.
By Tom Heneghan
German Catholic bishops are scrapping centuries of secrecy and reporting the value of their private endowments as a scandal caused by a free-spending prelate puts pressure on them for more financial transparency.
Limburg Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst – dubbed “the luxury bishop” – has shocked the Church by admitting six-fold cost overruns on construction of his luxurious new residence, which is now priced at 31 million euros, most of which will be paid from his ample reserves.
She’s got the bling!
His lavish spending clashes with the humble style of Pope Francis, who urges bishops to turn away from wealth and pomp and get closer to the faithful. Francis has also promised to clean up the murky finances of the Vatican’s own bank.
The Limburg scandal has also prompted worried German Catholics to ask what their dioceses were doing.
“We take these concerns very seriously,” Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann of Speyer said in a communique revealing his 46.5 million euro reserve.
German dioceses have secret reserves called the “bishop’s chair” known only to the bishop and a few advisors. Run as a diocesan nest egg and source of funds for special projects, they are not taxed and not listed in the annual balance sheets.
In some older dioceses, “bishop’s chair” reserves include age-old property holdings, donations from former princely rulers and funds from German states over the past two centuries. Their make-up and value vary widely from diocese to diocese.
RICHES AND MORE RICHES?
Cologne, the largest and reportedly richest diocese in Europe, announced on Tuesday “in connection with the current discussion about Church finances” that its archbishop had reserves amounting to 166.2 million euros in 2012.
It said the 9.6 million euro earnings from its investments were, as in previous years, added to the diocesan budget of 939 milllion euros in 2012, three-quarters of which was financed by the “church tax” levied on churchgoers.
A critic of church financial secrecy, Berlin political scientist and journalist Carsten Frerk, said Cologne’s total should be about 1.1 billion euros because its large real estate investments were listed at only nominal values.
“They don’t pay tax so they don’t update their assessments,” he told Reuters. “It’s not in their interest to publish these amounts because then they wouldn’t get as many donations.”
Dioceses also had holdings in other accounts and some even have their own private banks, somewhat similar to the Vatican’s bank, so their full wealth is hard to calculate, he added.
Cologne diocesan officials were not immediately available for comment. Cathedral Provost Rev Norbert Feldhoff told the diocesan radio station it would be hard to explain some aspects of Church finances if all details are published.
“There are big sums and there are problems,” he told Domradio. “We can explain it all to experts, but it could be difficult for the average housewife in Cologne to understand.”
TIGHT-LIPPED
At least six of the country’s other 26 dioceses also opened their books, several showing much smaller “bishop’s chair” reserves but some revealing quite large amounts.
The small diocese of Trier, Germany’s oldest, had a reserve of 84 million euros and said part of its earnings went to pay damages to victims of the clerical sexual abuse scandals that rocked the German Church in recent years.
Limburg, where Tebartz-van Elst’s lavish spending has led to loud calls from priests and parishioners for his resignation, has not posted its reserves. Media reports have estimated the sum at about 100 million euros.
German dioceses have traditionally been tight-lipped about their “bishop’s chair” reserves. In 2010, 25 of the 27 dioceses refused to discuss them when asked by Der Spiegel magazine.
Last week, four of the five dioceses in North Rhine-Westphalia – including Cologne – declined to give any information to the local West German Radio station. By Tuesday, only Paderborn diocese had still not published its details.
Germany’s church tax, collected by the state and handed over to the churches, raised 5.2 billion euros for the Catholics and 4.6 billion euros for Protestants in 2012, making them major economic actors at home and abroad.
File under: No independent thinking, thank you very much!
By Tom Heneghan
The Vatican warned bishops on Tuesday not to reform faster than Pope Francis, after a German diocese said that some divorced and remarried Catholics would now be allowed to receive communion and other sacraments.
Vatican spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi, announcing the pope would hold a special synod of bishops in October 2014 to discuss issues facing the family, said local churches that come up with their own reforms in the meantime could create confusion.
Pope Francis has indicated he could consider exceptions to a Church law that bars remarried Catholics from the sacraments because Rome considers marriage to be inviolable. Many bishops have mentioned this as a growing problem in their dioceses.
The archdiocese of Freiburg in Germany issued a guidebook on Monday for priests ministering to remarried Catholics that spelled out a way for them to express remorse for their failed first marriage and receive communion and other sacraments.
Speaking at the Vatican, Lombardi did not mention the Freiburg guidebook but stressed that Francis was working with his bishops on a reform of family issues.
“In this context, offering special pastoral solutions by individuals or local offices can risk causing confusion,” he said in a statement, stressing the importance of “conducting a journey in full communion with the Church community.”
The Argentine-born pope has shaken up the Church since his election in March by focusing more on reform and forgiveness than issues such as abortion and homosexuality, where Vatican opposition to current social trends is well known.
But he is also consulting his advisers closely, and they have stressed the reform process will take some time to complete.
File under: Insulated, monolithic, callous, tone deaf church power structure.
By Dagmara Leszkowicz
The comments from Archbishop Jozef Michalik entrenched the view among some younger Poles that the church is out of touch with modern society and failing to properly confront allegations of sexual abuse by priests.
In comments shown on Tuesday by broadcaster TVN24, Michalik said child sexual abuse by priests was unacceptable, but the debate about it needed to be broadened out beyond the immediate physical or psychological wounds inflicted on the victims.
“And one has to say … how many wounds are inflicted when parents divorce? We often hear that this inappropriate attitude (paedophilia), or abuse, manifests itself when a child is seeking love,” said the clergyman, who is head of the Roman Catholic episcopate in Poland.
“It (the child) clings, it searches. It gets lost itself and then draws another person into this.”
After the comments were broadcast, Polish social media networks reverberated with angry comments.
“This is disgusting, and is soaked in a sick logic, when a victim is responsible for a crime,” wrote one person, who gave her name as Anna, posting on Facebook.
Another poster on the site, who identified himself as Adam, wrote: “While reading this, we can only be happy that this ‘Polish institution’ has committed ritual suicide.”
Church authorities later on Tuesday convened a news conference to try to calm the outrage. A spokesman for the episcopate said the archbishop’s comments had been a “a pure slip of the tongue” and the archbishop has been misunderstood.
Michalik himself, who was present at the news conference, apologised for the situation. “The context of my comment was as follows: a child is always innocent. But it can be hurt not only by priests but also by its own environment,” he said.
Poland is one of Europe’s most devoutly Catholic countries. The church’s role at the centre of public life was cemented when clergymen, led by Polish-born Pope John Paul II, helped bring down Communist rule in the late 1980s.
That role is now being challenged by a generation of Poles who feel uncomfortable with the church’s traditional views on issues such as abortion, divorce and same-sex partnerships.
While the Catholic church in countries such as Ireland and the United States has taken steps to be more assertive about uncovering child sex abuse by priests, in Poland it remains largely a taboo subject.
Abuse allegations are reported from time to time in the Polish media, but there has so far been no far-reaching public debate about the issue.
Pope Francis said soon after he was elected as Roman Catholic pontiff this year that he wanted to act decisively to root out sexual abuse of children by priests and ensure the perpetrators are punished.
The Rev. Tom Pivinski, who now works with an Episcopal church in Asbury Park, officiated vows for three couples on the steps of the Paramount Theater in the beach community shortly after midnight, the Asbury Park Press reports. One of the couples he wed, Karen Nicholson-McFadden and Marcye Nicholson-McFadden, were plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to marriage equality in New Jersey. He also performed a joint ceremony for City Council member Amy Quinn and her partner, Heather Jensen, and for Steven Brunner and Daniel Baum.
