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Vatican Reprimands U.S. Nuns Group

The Vatican has appointed an American bishop to rein in the largest and most influential group of Catholic nuns in the United States, saying that an investigation found that the group has “serious doctrinal problems.”

The Vatican’s assessment, issued on Wednesday, said that members of the group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, have challenged church teaching on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood, and promoted “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

The sisters were also reprimanded for making public statements that “disagree with or challenge the Bishops, who are the Church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.” During the debate over the health care overhaul in 2010, the American bishops came out in opposition to the health plan, but dozens of sisters, many who belong to the Conference, signed a statement supporting it — support that provided crucial cover for the Obama administration in the battle over health care.

The Conference is an umbrella organization of women’s religious communities, and claims 1,500 members who represent 80 percent of the Catholic sisters in the United States. It was formed in 1956 at the Vatican’s request, and answers to the Vatican, said Sister Annmarie Sanders, the group’s communications director.

Word of the Vatican’s action took the group completely by surprise, Sister Sanders said. She said that the group’s leaders were in Rome on Wednesday for what they thought was a routine annual visit to the Vatican when they were informed of the outcome of the investigation, which began in 2008.

“I’m stunned,” said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby founded by sisters. Her group was also cited in the Vatican document, along with the Leadership Conference, for focusing its work too much on poverty and economic injustice, while keeping “silent” on abortion and same-sex marriage.

“I would imagine that it was our health care letter that made them mad,” Sister Campbell said. “We haven’t violated any teaching, we have just been raising questions and interpreting politics.”

The verdict on the nuns group was issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is now led by an American, Cardinal William Levada, formerly the archbishop of San Francisco. He appointed Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle to lead the process of reforming the sisters’ Conference, with assistance from Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki and Bishop Leonard Blair, who was in charge of the investigation of the Leadership Conference.

They have been given up to five years to revise the group’s statutes, approve of every speaker at the group’s public programs and replace a handbook the group used to facilitate dialogue on matters that the Vatican said should be settled doctrine. They are also supposed to review the Leadership Conference’s links with Network and another organization, the Resource Center for Religious Life.

Doctrinal issues have been in the forefront during the papacy of Benedict XVI, who was in charge of the Vatican’s doctrinal office before he became pope. American nuns have come under particular scrutiny. Last year, American bishops announced that a book by a popular theologian at Fordham University, Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, should be removed from all Catholic schools and universities.

And while the Vatican was investigating the Leadership Conference, the Vatican was also conducting a separate, widespread investigation of all women’s religious orders and communities in the United States. That inquiry, known as a “visitation,” was concluded in December 2011, but the results of that process have not been made public.

Complete Article HERE!

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Philadelphia priest-abuse jury hears about Passion play with naked boys, whippings

A Philadelphia jury heard Tuesday about Catholic schoolboys who said they had to strip before a priest and endure whippings as they played Christ in a Passion play.

Prosecutors pursuing a child-endangerment case against a church official said the Rev. Thomas J. Smith remained in ministry despite those 2002 accusations. Church officials and an in-house review board didn’t think Smith was seeking sexual gratification when he allegedly had boys undress or get naked with him in a hot tub.

Smith was removed in 2005, after another accuser said Smith had taken several boys to a motel in the late 1970s, put ice down their pants and made them remove their underwear so it would dry. The accuser said he awoke to find a naked Smith rubbing his body against the naked boy.

Smith, now 64, was defrocked in 2007. The Associated Press could not immediately determine his current whereabouts. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia cannot comment because of a gag order imposed in the trial of Monsignor William Lynn.

Lynn, 61, is the first church official in the U.S. charged with child endangerment and conspiracy for allegedly helping the Roman Catholic church cover up the sexual abuse of children by priests. Lynn is fighting the charges, with a defense based largely on his insistence that he took orders from the powerful archbishop, the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua.

Lynn served as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, nearly all of it under Bevilacqua. Lynn’s lawyers point out that Lynn had no training — in law, psychiatry, social work or other fields — to tackle the unfolding sex-abuse scandal.

For the most part, Lynn was dealing with old complaints stored in secret files that he reviewed when he arrived at headquarters from the archdiocesan seminary, where he had been dean of students.

But toward the end, more adults like Smith’s accusers were coming forward.

Smith had put on the Passion play at several parishes over nine years. He would take the lead actor to a room and have him strip while Smith pinned a loincloth on the boy, several accusers said.

The boys said he then had other children whip them, to the point of pain, during the crucifixion story. Asked by church officials why he had them naked, Smith later said, “for authenticity,” while conceded it was poor judgment.

At least one boy wanted to quit, but his proud, unsuspecting parents wouldn’t let him.

It was later clear to at least one regretful father who met with Lynn in 2002 that Smith “likes to look,” according to a memo Lynn wrote about the meeting, which was shown in court Tuesday.

Smith by then was a regional church administrator for suburban Delaware County. Cardinal Justin Rigali approved an “educational sabbatical” in 2004, after the loincloth allegations surfaced. But Smith continued living at his Springfield parish for at least another year, until a man came forward to complain about the ice-cube antics.

Smith had been taking several teens on retreat when his car supposedly broke down in Valley Forge, leading him to bunk with the boys at the hotel, the accuser said. Another priest picked them up the next day. Springfield is about 20 miles from Valley Forge.

Complete Article HERE!

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Homophobes need (gay) love too

COMMENTARY

And then came the headline that surprised exactly no one and delighted a great many, even as it openly terrified countless thousands across the deep south and also Utah and Kansas and pretty much the entire GOP. The poor dears.

“Homophobes might be secretly attracted to people of the same sex,” is what the headline read, I mean obviously, I mean of course you already know what the researchers discovered, you and every conscious human within a 10,000 mile radius who also snickered, rolled her eyes and then sighed heavily with the obviousness of it all. It is not always the way?

Really, who doesn’t already know? Who among us with the slightest acumen toward self-reflection doesn’t fully understand that the more you wail against something, the more violently outspoken or hateful you are against this or that perceived indiscretion, sexual proclivity, perversion, deviance, expression, delight, taste sensation, the more certain it is that said deliciousness secretly attracts you, turns you on and makes you enormously, terrifically scared?

Case after case, priest after priest, GOP senator after megachurch pastor after spittle-flecked Tea Party zealot — all suddenly caught pants down in a bathroom stall, in a leather bar, gay chat room, in a Grindr hookup app, living out their real and honest selves even as they rail and oppose and thump their Bibles everywhere else. Hypocrisy, thy name is homophobe.

Which is, essentially, exactly what the study found. One’s level of homophobia lies, quite frequently, in direct proportion to one’s own brutally closeted desire for homosexual sex. Result: self-denial, self hatred, wailing and thrashing and Prop 8-ing against an unfair world.

But before we dance and snicker too much, perhaps we should acknowledge: there is more to this study, and the common adage, than meets the jaundiced eye. Behind the humor and the sarcasm, there’s a sadness, a brutal truism common to the human melodrama. Shall we have a glance?

It goes something like this: Perhaps nasty homophobes are, the study gently suggests, to be empathized with, to be offered a modicum of compassion and understanding, due to the abject tragedy of their ignoble fate. And perhaps this offering, particularly in light of hateful trolls like Rick Santorum and his dark coven, perhaps this is one of the most difficult challenges you can name.

See, in this light, you can say homophobes (and in a similar way racists, sexists, Islamophobes, et al), they have been indoctrinated in the worst possible way. They have been led to their shallow bloodpuddles of misunderstanding by the church, by awful parenting, by violent misrepresentations of God, by shameful media propaganda, bad tattoos and cheap beer and way, way too much professional sports on weekends. Just a thought.

For most, it probably happened early. Somewhere along the arc of childhood, many anti-everything crusaders were stabbed in the heart with a very narrow idea of how life, love and sexuality are supposed to look, feel, move. And if, by adulthood, they fail to feel that way — and more importantly, if one’s own desires, deepest longings, spiritual aches somehow fail to line up with that bogus image (as they almost always do) — well, someone’s gotta pay.

Put another way: Hatred is, we all know, a learned experience. Someone teaches you that blacks are scary, Muslims are evil, women are lesser. Someone force feeds kids the vile falsehood that gay love is an abomination, as opposed to something obvious and common across every species of animal on the planet. I say ‘force,’ because kids will never believe it otherwise.

And why would they? The human soul, far from fixed, linear and predisposed to suspicion and doubt, is instead a fluxive, malleable, infinitely evolving thing, matching the insane, kaleidoscopic sweep of life itself. To lock the human heart into a cage of timid ideology or rigid sexual conduct, to forcibly limit its capacity for love is one of the most oppressive things you can ever do. Just ask the Catholic church.

Does this all excuse the homophobe’s acts, their nasty legislation, their bilious congressional votes? Does it give Rick Santorum, Rick Warren, Rush Limbaugh some sort of pass? Hell no. Does it give it a hint of understanding, and perhaps empathy, as we all recognize those places in ourselves where we have been similarly programmed, lied to, horribly misled? It might. Depends on your whisky.

Of course, it’s not universal. Not all hardcore conservatives secretly wish for a gay romp or ten. Many just act out of purely poisoned souls, or from the unconscious demon telling them that if they’re not allowed to express their deepest selves, if they can’t live life at a more honest frequency, no one can.

“How dare you!” they then sneer, to the gay couple, to the Burning Man participant, to the hippie or the artist or the educated deviant, the meditator, the spiritual seeker, the yogi or activist or appreciator of sex and tongue and yes. “What gall you have to be open-minded, autonomous, free to love and screw and dance however and with whomever you want. Don’t you know about the rules? Don’t you know how ugly life is? Don’t you know how flawed and guilt-soaked God designed you to be?

“Here, let me stab you with this ice pick of mistrust and visceral spiritual lack. There now. You are hereby as miserable as me. We are equal. I feel better. But not really.”

Maybe this is the greatest human tragedy, more divisive than any other: We are taught how to hate, to fear. American culture offers few tools with which to perform any sort of honest self-inquiry, to feel around in the subtler realms and see what we’re really about, independent of church, media, failed parenting, Rick and Rush and Fox. We are taught to ignore our deeper selves in favor of the collective group-think, codified programming, a wrathful and disconnected God.

This is the lesson: Do not ask deeper questions. Do not tap into your own genuine needs, sexuality, fierce spiritual magma. Do not dare suggest that most fundamentalist notions of Christian God are sort of detestable and gloomy, the exact opposite of what Jesus actually intended. Do not, most of all, dare to define it all for yourself, as your sex, your soul, your internal ethical slut see fit. What the hell do you think you are, free?

Complete Article HERE!

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Palm Coast women follow passion to become ordained as priests

Miriam Picconi remembers sitting before a life-sized crucifix adorned with the body of Christ at her church as a young teenager.

“I would just see Jesus on the cross and I kept thinking, ‘If you did that for me, what can I do for you?’ ” she said.

Picconi, 68, said she was “called to minister” early in life. By age 16, she was teaching disabled children about Christ and visiting isolated people who were unable to leave nursing homes and hospitals. She said she became a nun at age 20, delivering communion and praying with people who were too ill to attend church.

“I always had a deep love for the Eucharist, in the way Jesus shares himself with us,” Picconi said.

There was one thing she couldn’t do — becoming a priest was off limits.

The Catholic Church doesn’t ordain women but some are seeking to change that. Picconi and Wanda Russell, both of Palm Coast, will be ordained into the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Ormond Beach.

Together they’re challenging a centuries-old tradition of an all-male clergy within the Catholic Church and many Protestant denominations. The ceremony will include the same rite used to ordain male Catholic priests.

‘A DESPERATE PUSH’

The Catholic Church won’t recognize the ordination as being valid, according to a statement from the Diocese of St. Augustine.

“The Catholic Church is very clear and doesn’t take positions unilaterally and without substantiation,” according to a statement emailed from director of communications Kathleen Bagg. “And the Church does not discourage dialogue, except on the question of the ordination of women.”

Catholic leaders have repeatedly made it clear they have no intention of allowing women to join the priesthood. In his homily on Holy Thursday, Pope Benedict XVI denounced priests who have questioned the church’s policies on celibacy and ordaining women. He suggested dissenters were making “a desperate push to do something to change the church in accordance with (their) own preferences and ideas.”

But Picconi and Russell, who call each other “best friends,” say they’re not seeking the priesthood for the sake of protest. They believe God has been preparing them for this role for years and they’re ready to embrace it.

“If we were doing this just to revolt, we wouldn’t be accepted,” said Russell, 67. “You don’t do something like this just in revolt.”

About 130 women worldwide have been ordained into the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests since 2002, Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan said. The movement campaigns for “justice for all,” not just women, she said. To be ordained, women must earn a master’s degree in pastoral ministry or an equivalent.

The two Palm Coast women and others say there’s historical and biblical support for a female priesthood. Many Protestant denominations ordain women and some have done so for decades. Russell remembers walking through the catacombs in Rome and seeing an image of a feminine priest wearing earrings.

Archeological evidence suggests the early church included female clergy, said Dorothy Irvin, an independent scholar with a doctorate in theology. Though Irvin said many lay people believe women are fit for the priesthood, Catholic church leaders squelch research or support for that cause, she said.

Picconi and Russell blame a climate of clericalism: Many Catholics grow up believing their church, and its leadership, are infallible. Fearing retribution, Catholics and their clergy don’t question authority. The women say several priests have told them privately that they support their cause.

“I don’t disparage them for not having the courage to speak the truth because I understand the dilemma,” Picconi said.

They were hard-pressed to find local churches, even those from other denominations, that would host their ordination. Some congregations said they supported the women’s mission, but they didn’t want to offend Catholic leaders and members.

A WAY OF LIFE

Though they take exception with parts of the church, Picconi and Russell say they are “cradle Catholics.” Picconi compared being Catholic to being Italian — it’s in her blood, she said. She said she joined the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity in Philadelphia when she was 20. She was a sister for 25 years.

Even after she joined the ministry, she couldn’t shake the feeling she would “fall short of the ideal.” That changed about 10 years later as she sat on a beach and watched waves roll to the shore during a retreat in Puerto Rico.

“Once I discovered God’s profound, unconditional love, it became a passion,” Picconi said. “It’s not a matter of obeying laws or rules, even though there are guidelines. But ultimately, it is responding to God’s love. Not out of fear. Not out of obligation. But out of love.”

Picconi later served as a pastoral director and associate at a church in Frankfort, Ky., but she says she was “forced out” in 2008 when there was a changeover in church leadership. She was devastated, but she now thinks that period eventually helped lead her to the priesthood.

“Crosses are not always easy to bear but if you can bear them, it leads to resurrection,” she said.

Like Picconi, Russell also joined the ministry after high school. She joined the joined the Sisters of Loretto, a Catholic women’s community in Nerinx, Ky., for 13 months, though she didn’t take her final vows. Growing up during the Civil Rights era, Russell said she was inspired by the bravery of black Americans as they fought racial discrimination.

“I always knew I wanted to save the world,” she said.

But back then, career paths for women were limited, she said. She couldn’t stomach becoming a nurse and didn’t think teaching would suit her. After she left the ministry, she married, had a daughter and became a social worker. She retired after 25 years because she was “tired of putting Band-Aids on problems.”

She recalled going to church with her husband when she was in her 20s. The couple often grumbled about the sermons during the car ride home.

One Sunday morning, Russell said she was stunned by the priest’s message: If you don’t believe every word the church says, go home. She left for three years.

But she says God “expects you to go back to your roots” and Russell returned to the Catholic church. She had “an adult conversion” in her early 30s. She described that moment as a door opening and God’s love instantly encompassing her.

“I just fell in love with God’s people — all kinds of people,” she said.

‘WE CAN’T WAIT’

Since moving to Palm Coast nearly three years ago, Picconi and Russell have attended St. Thomas Episcopal Church, which they say has supported their calling. Seeking the priesthood was a hard decision, they say, partly because they feel the church leaders and some of the members that they grew up with will reject them. But Russell says she fears only “the awesomeness of the responsibility.”

Even their own friends and family members have resisted their decision. Russell’s mother and sister told her they still love her, but won’t attend the ordination because they don’t understand it and won’t support it, she said.

Afterward, they plan to celebrate mass in their home with a small group of other believers. They envision a collegial relationship with the rest of the congregation. People will take turns giving meaningful sermons — a far cry from the “dead rituals” Russell said she experienced in some churches.

“God is present where two or more people are gathering in Jesus’ name,” she said.

Most of all, the two women say they dream of an affirming environment where all people, even those of other religious backgrounds, can worship together.

Though their path hasn’t been easy, the two women say it must be done.

“We have to do it now,” Picconi said. “We can’t wait for the next generation.”

“If we wait for Rome to change, it probably would never happen,” Russell added.

If you go

WHAT: Ordination of Miriam Picconi and Wanda Russell to the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests

WHEN: 2 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: Unitarian Universalist Society, Ormond Beach, 56 N. Halifax Drive, Ormond Beach.

CONTACT: Miraim Picconi, miriampicconi@gmail.com, and Wanda Russell, tawandarussell0504@aol.com.