Catholic bishops to flock: Fight same-sex marriage

Washington’s four Roman Catholic bishops have taken a foursquare stand against legalization of same-sex marriage, a cause rapidly gaining momentum in the State Legislature.

Catholics should contact their legislators and tell them to “defend the current definition of marriage” against legislation to legalize marriage between same-sex couples, the bishops declared in a strongly worded pastoral letter posted late Friday.

Society’s recognition of marriage is “related to bringing children into the world and the continuation of the human race,” argue the bishops, and any change of definition would add “to the forces already undermining family life today.”

The letter is signed by Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, Spokane Bishop Blase Cupich, Yakima Bishop Joseph J. Tyson, and Seattle Auxiliary Bishop Eusebio Elizondo. It is published on the Archdiocese of Seattle web site.

“My first reaction, as a practicing Catholic, is that this is very hurtful,” said State Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, chief sponsor of marriage equality. Murray is a gay man in a 20-year committed relationship.

Earlier Friday, 23 senators introduced legislation to allow same-sex couples to receive marriage licenses. The marriage equality legislation was requested by Gov. Christine Gregoire, who is also a Catholic.

The Catholic bishops root their argument in what they see as the role of procreation in marriage.

“Marriage is certainly about the public recognition of a relationship between a man and a woman,” said the letter. “But it is much more. Marriage in faith and societal traditions is acknowledged as the foundation of civilization.”

“It has long been recognized that the stability of society depends on the stability of family life in which a man and a woman conceive and nurture new life.”

The Catholic bishops argue that “civil recognition of marriage” has sought to bestow “on countless generations of children the incomparable benefits of a loving mother and father committed to one another in lifelong union.”

“Were the definition of marriage to change, there would be no special laws to support and recognize the irreplacable contribution that these married couples make to society, and to the common good by bringing to life the next generation.”

The definition of marriage has been undergoing change by courts and legislators. Six states and the District of Columbia have legalized marriage between couples of the same sex. Nine states, including Washington, have extended legal recognition and rights to domestic partners.

Several of the states where same-sex marriage is legal — notably Massachusetts and Connecticut — are heavily Catholic.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, a Catholic, pushed his legislature to approve same-sex marriage last spring. Another Catholic governor, Martin O’Malley of Maryland, is campaigning for approval. Gov. Jerry Brown of California, a former seminarian, has refused to defend a narrowly passed initiative that rolled back gay marriage.

Catholic bishops in Washington have taken progressive stands on numerous social issues. They have championed the rights of immigrants, defended social programs, opposed the death penalty, and even taken a strong position for restoring decimated Columbia River salmon runs.

But the statement released Friday upholds traditional Catholic teachings, and appeals beyond the faithful.

“Upholding the present definition of marriage does not depend on anyone’s religious beliefs,” the bishops argue. “Washington State’s present law defining marriage as a ‘civil contract between a male and a female’ is grounded not in faith, but in reason and the experience of society.

“It recognizes the value of marriage as a bond of personal relationships but also in terms of the unique and irreplacable potential of a man and woman to conceive and nurture new life, thus contributing to the continuation of the human race.”

The bishops end their letter by calling for practical action, adding.

“We urge you to contact your own State Senator and your two State Representatives to request that they defend the current legal definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.”

The letter will be made available — or read — at Saturday vigil and Sunday masses around the state.

The reaction is hard to predict.

Bishops often refer to their “flock,” but American Catholics do not behavie like sheep. An ABC News/Washington Post poll last spring found that 63 percent of Catholics in the U.S. support civil marriage betwen same-sex couples.

In Minnesota, where the Catholic Church is supporting a constitutional amendment entrenching heterosexual marriage, Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedy has issued a warning to priests:

“There ought not to be open dissension on this issue. If any have private reservations, I do not wish that they be shared publicly. If anyone believes in conscience he cannot cooperate, I want him to contact me directly and I will plan to respond personally.”

As in New York, the legislation introduced in Olympia Friday would allow churches and clergy full rights in terms of who they choose to marry, and whether to allow marriage on church property.

“As the bill is written, the church would never be forced to marry people of the same sex or divorced people,” said Murray.

Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/connelly/article/Catholic-bishops-to-flock-Fight-same-sex-marriage-2520855.php#ixzz1jjCZfmIT

Complete Article HERE!

Bishops don’t speak for the flock on same-sex marriage

COMMENTARY — Joel Connelly

Our state’s Catholic bishops came out strongly against same-sex marriage this past weekend, and appealed for members of the flock to contact their legislators and tell them to uphold the traditional definition of marriage.

The bishops’ letter left this recently returned Catholic perplexed at the way my shepherds view their faith and human commitment . . . and how they treat people I know who are in loving, committed same-gender relationships, in several cases doing a splendid job of raising children.

The bishops used biology to defend the “present definition of marriage”, returning again and again to a theme they described as “the unique and irreplacable potential of a man and woman to conceive and nurture new life thus contributing to the continuation of the human race.”

We humans are, however, created by God as emotional and spiritual and reasoning beings. Is society to legally “recognize” committeed partnerships only for the potential and purpose of procreation?

“Jesus befriended those who were marginalized because He knew it was only in the security of loving, unconditional relationships that hearts and lives are healed,” argues writer Justin Cannon, reflecting the Christian faith as taught to us by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Not only healed, but enriched. I’ve witnessed a warm, very traditional moment over the years. A goofy, dreamy smile crosses the face of a friend, who after years of playing the field announces “Well, I met this woman (or guy)!” It signals a readiness to settle down. My natural reaction is to say, “You lucky dog!” and to be there, in affection and support, when the knot is tied.

Life together is a natural passage in life. Yet, according to “natural law” the Catholic church frowns on my friends who fall in love with somebody of their own gender. It violates nature, according to a U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops statement, because such “inherently non-procreative” relationships “cannot be given the status of marriage.”

The church’s positions are, as state Sen. Ed Murray put it Friday night, “hurtful” as well as contradictory.

Out of one side of its mouth, the church condemns “all forms of unjust discrimination, harrassment and abuse” against gays and lesbians. At the same time, the Cathechism of the Catholic Church describes “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” as “objectively disordered.”

The bishops see themselves as shepherds, but American Catholics are not sheep. They think and act independently. A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that nearly three quarters of Catholics favor letting gays and lesbians marry (43 percent) or form civil unions (31 percent).

“Catholics are more supportive of legal recognitions of same-sex relationships than members of any other Christian tradition and Americans overall,” the survey concluded.

The church is also hurting itself: Its social activism, defense of human dignity and witness to peace should make it a beacon for all who seek justice. Instead, the church is pilloried as an instrument of reaction.

Its wounds are self inflicted, a classic case of clerical error. As the National Catholic Reporter put it, editorializing after New York legislators approved marriage equality last spring:

“Even if the bishops had a persuasive case to make and the legislative tools at their disposal, their public conduct in recent years — wholesale excommunications, railing at politicians, denial of honorary degrees and speaking platforms at Catholic institutions, using the Eucharist as a political bludgeon, refusing to entertain any questions or dissenting opinions, and engaging in open warfare with the community’s thinkers as well as those, especially women, who have loyally served the church — has resulted in a kind of episcopal caricature, the common scolds of the religion world, the caustic party of ‘no’.”

A couple examples: Bishop Nichlas DiMarzio of Brooklyn directed that his diocese is “not to bestow or accept honors, nor to texend a platform of any kind to any state elected official, in all our parishes and churches for the forseeable.”

Archbishop John Nienstedy of Minneapolis is pushing an amendment to the Minnesota Constitution defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. He recently issued a fiat to diocexan priests: “There ought not to be open dissension on this issue. If any have private preservations, I do not wish that they be shared publicly.”

These guys are losing touch, and costing the church credibility.

Public opinion, among believers and non-believers, is undergoing rapid change. The change is rooted in day-to-day human experience.

Contacts with gays and lesbians — as family members, co-workers and friends — underscores the absurdity of such phrases as “objectively disordered.” As NCR noted: “The label is not only demeaning but to contemporary Christians has no resonance with the heart of the Gospel.”

The best advice, which Catholic bishops in Washington and elsewhere should heed, came recently from Nicholas Cafardi, formerly legal counsel to the Diocese of Pittsburgh and formerly a board member of the bishops’ National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Youth:

“We need to give it up. This is not defeatism. This is simply following Jesus in the Gospels, who besides telling us not to act on our fears, also told us to render to Caesar what it Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Civil marriage is Caesar’s.”

Complete Article HERE!

Catholic Diocese spends $1M on priest sexual abuse cases

The Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese spent more than $1 million during four months of 2011 in connection with priest sexual abuse cases, according to a diocesan report.

The report shows a diocese insurance program incurred $631,553 in costs relating to clergy sexual abuse from July through October. It also paid $427,707 in connection with an independent investigation led by former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves at the request of the diocese.

No legal costs have been paid from that fund or any other diocesan fund for the defense of the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, a priest who was charged last year in state and federal courts with possession of child pornography, the report says. Ratigan’s arrest sparked a flood of lawsuits and resulted in an indictment against Bishop Robert Finn and the diocese on misdemeanor charges of failing to report suspicions of child sexual abuse.

The figures — the most detailed the diocese has provided on the costs related to priest sex abuse cases — were released in a five-page document that was published in The Catholic Key, the diocesan newspaper, and posted on the diocese website.

In a letter with the report, Finn called the document an overview of how the diocese has fulfilled the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, a groundbreaking document that U.S. bishops approved 10 years ago at the height of the church’s sex abuse scandal.

“We have taken many important steps to prevent abuse from happening in diocesan, parish or school settings,” Finn said.

But critics said it was unfortunate that the diocese has had to spend so much on sex abuse cases.

“It’s a shame that the diocese spent a million on this when they could’ve used it for the real purposes of the church,” said Patrick Wall of California, a canon lawyer and former Roman Catholic priest who has worked on behalf of clergy sexual abuse victims since 2002. “That’s a million dollars that couldn’t be used to help the widows and the orphans and the poor on the street.”

Church officials have said that the money doesn’t come directly from offerings.

Funding for the Diocesan Property and Casualty Insurance Program “comes from insurance premiums paid by parishes, schools, cemeteries, and Catholic Charities, as well as interest income on insurance reserves,” according to the report.

The insurance program is not funded by money paid by parishes to support diocesan ministries, offices and programs, nor is it funded by money given to the Bishop’s Annual Appeal, the report says. Money from the appeal goes toward paying for social and emergency services, parish-based ministry grants and educational programs.

But Nicholas Cafardi, a law professor at Duquesne University and former chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Youth, said no matter how the funding is described, the money ultimately comes from parishioners.

“It’s simple logic, really,” Cafardi said. “Every penny the church has today has its origins in the charity of the faithful. They may have insurance policies, but the premiums to pay these insurance policies come from the collection plates.”

Rebecca Summers, spokeswoman for the diocese, said Friday that the report was issued because the diocese had received a number of questions about its safe environment programs and expenses.

“Our purpose in publishing this Special Report is to be responsive — in an open and transparent way — to our Catholic community and to those we serve,” Summers said. “We recognize that, through the stewardship of the people of this diocese, we can remain resolute in our commitment to the mission and ministry of the church.”

The report says the $631,000 paid from the diocesan insurance program in the four-month period last year includes $5,285 for counseling requested by victims or their family members and legal costs for defending the diocese, its employees and priests who are named in 24 pending lawsuits involving sexual abuse allegations from the 1960 through 1980s.

Of the money that went toward the Graves report, $77,432 was to the diocese’s legal counsel for file retrieval, document reviews and interviews conducted for the investigation.

The report also shows that the insurance program paid a total of $14.8 million on issues related to priest sex abuse allegations from July 1, 2002, through Oct. 31, 2011.

That includes a $10 million settlement paid to 47 victims or their family members in 2008 and $4.3 million in legal costs, the report says.

Money also went for safe environment training for adults and children and counseling for victims.

In his letter, Finn said that although the diocese has taken many steps to protect children from abuse, he knows the work will never be completed.

“Together — as bishop, clergy, religious, staff, volunteers and families — we must continue to do all within our power.”

Cafardi, who is a canon lawyer, said the diocese’s hefty expenses are understandable.

“Given the circumstances they find themselves in, I don’t think those are disproportional expenses, but the bigger issue is, wouldn’t they have been better off keeping the terms of the (U.S. Bishops’) charter and following their own internal policies and not finding themselves in the situation they’re in?” he said.

The Graves investigation, released in September, found that diocesan leaders failed to follow their own policies and procedures in responding to reports of child sexual abuse. It laid out a set of recommendations.

Graves said Friday that he hadn’t yet seen the diocese report. However, he said, “When we gave them our report, I believed that they were going to implement virtually everything in the report. And I have no reason to believe any different today.”

The diocese report describes a series of prevention measures that have been implemented to create a safe environment for children, including criminal background screening of clergy and employees, a three-hour training session called “Protecting God’s Children” and education programs for children and youth.

Last year, the diocese established a Department of Child and Youth Protection and hired an independent ombudsman to receive and investigate sexual abuse allegations. The ombudsman also is to report all allegations of sexual abuse of a minor to law enforcement.

According to the report, the earliest allegation of sexual abuse of a minor occurred in 1948 and was reported 60 years later. The diocese to date has received 108 reports of sexual abuse, the report says.

A total of 23 diocesan priests have been accused of sexual misconduct with minors, seven of whom were accused after they died. Of the remaining 16, the report says, four are in the process of being dismissed from the priesthood; six retired and were later barred from ministry; three have died since being accused; two are on administrative leave; and one has been dismissed from the priesthood.

The four priests who are in the process of being formally dismissed have been the subject of credible accusations, the report says. Included among the four is Ratigan, the only priest named in the report.

U.S. dioceses and religious orders have spent billions on priest sex abuse cases, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. In a report prepared for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the organization said the costs associated with child sex abuse in 2010 was $123.7 million for dioceses and $25.9 million for religious orders.

Cafardi acknowledged that enormous amounts have been spent but said the focus shouldn’t be on the costs involved.

“The proper measure of the tragedy is not in the dollars that are paid,” he said. “The proper measure of the tragedy is in the lives that were ruined.”

Complete Article HERE!

For Priests’ Wives, a Word of Caution

COMMENTARY — SARA RITCHEY

WHAT will life be like for the wives of Roman Catholic priests?

On Sunday, the Vatican announced the creation of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, a special division of the Roman Catholic Church that former Episcopal congregations and priests — including, notably, married priests — can enter together en masse. The Vatican has stressed that the allowance for married priests is merely an exception (like similar dispensations made in the past by the Vatican) and by no means a permanent condition of the priesthood. If a priest is single when he enters the ordinariate, he may not marry, nor may a married priest, in the event of his wife’s death, remarry.

Nonetheless, the Roman Catholic Church is prepared to house married priests in numbers perhaps not seen since the years before 1123, when the First Lateran Council adopted canon 21, prohibiting clerical marriage.

Now as then, the church’s critics and defenders are rehashing arguments about the implications of having married priests in an institution that is otherwise wary of them. But in the midst of these debates, we should pause to ponder the environment that the priests’ wives might expect to encounter. After all, the status of the priest’s wife is perhaps even more strange and unsettling than that of her ordained Catholic husband.

While the early Christian church praised priestly chastity, it did not promulgate decisive legislation mandating priestly celibacy until the reform movement of the 11th century. At that point, the foremost purpose of priestly celibacy was to clearly distinguish and separate the priests from the laity, to elevate the status of the clergy. In this scheme, the mere presence of the priest’s wife confounded that goal, and thus she incurred the suspicion, and quite often the loathing, of parishioners and church reformers. You can’t help wondering what feelings she will inspire today.

By the time of the First Lateran Council, the priest’s wife had become a symbol of wantonness and defilement. The reason was that during this period the nature of the host consecrated at Mass received greater theological scrutiny. Medieval theologians were in the process of determining that bread and wine, at the moment of consecration in the hands of an ordained priest at the altar, truly became the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The priest who handled the body and blood of Christ should therefore be uncontaminated lest he defile the sacred corpus.

The priest’s wife was an obvious danger. Her wanton desire, suggested the 11th-century monk Peter Damian, threatened the efficacy of consecration. He chastised priests’ wives as “furious vipers who out of ardor of impatient lust decapitate Christ, the head of clerics,” with their lovers. According to the historian Dyan Elliott, priests’ wives were perceived as raping the altar, a perpetration not only of the priest but also of the whole Christian community.

The priest’s nuclear family was also seen as a risk to the stability of the church. His children represented a threat to laypersons, who feared that their endowments might be absorbed into the hands of the priest’s offspring to create a rival clerical dynasty. A celibate priest would thus ensure donations from the neighboring landed aristocracy. Furthermore, the priest’s wife was often accused, along with her children, of draining the church’s resources with her extravagance and frivolity. Pope Leo IX attempted to remedy this problem in the 11th century by decreeing that the wives and children of priests must serve in his residence at the Lateran Palace in Rome.

Given this history, I caution the clerical wife to be on guard as she enters her role as a sacerdotal attaché. Her position is an anomalous one and, as the Vatican has repeatedly insisted, one that will not receive permanent welcome in the church. That said, for the time being, it will be prudent for the Vatican to honor the dignity of the wives and children of its freshly ordained married priests. And here, I suggest, a real conversation about the continuation of priestly celibacy might begin.

Until then, priests’ wives should beware a religious tradition that views them, in the words of Damian, as “the clerics’ charmers, devil’s choice tidbits, expellers from paradise, virus of minds, sword of soul, wolfbane to drinkers, poison to companions, material of sinning, occasion of death … the female chambers of the ancient enemy, of hoopoes, of screech owls, of night owls, of she-wolves, of blood suckers.”

Complete Article HERE!

German priest admits to 280 instances of child sex abuse

Germany’s Catholic Church has been hit by another case of clerical sexual abuse, with a priest admitting to abusing three boys between the ages of 9 and 15 some 280 times since 2004.

A Catholic priest admitted to a German court on Thursday that he sexually abused three boys over several years, amounting to a total of 280 cases.

The priest, identified as 46-year-old Andreas L. from the city of Salzgitter in Lower Saxony, confessed to charges of sexually abusing the boys, who ranged from nine to 15 years old. The abuse began in 2004, he said.

Instances of abuse occurred at a parsonage, on ski vacations, at the parents’ home, on a trip to Disneyland in Paris and at a church shortly before Mass.

The priest told the regional court in Braunschweig that while working as a chaplain in the same city in 2004, he began a close relationship with a widowed woman. When he was moved to Salzgitter, the woman’s nine-year-old son often spent weekends with the man, who would take him on short trips away. The abuse occurred on several occasions, often three times per weekend.

The suspect said it was not his intention to get close to the boy sexually, and that it never occurred to him that he was harming them.

When the mother began to suspect her son’s interactions with the priest were inappropriately close, she approached the diocese of Hildesheim, the priest’s employer, which forbid further contact with the boy.

Victims two and three

The two other boys named as victims by the priest were brothers, and the abuse began under similar circumstances. When contact with them was also forbidden, the priest approached his first victim, then 17, who in turn told his mother about the abuse.

The mother then went to the authorities, and the suspect was arrested last summer. The court set the maximum sentence for the priest at six and a half years.

A long series of sexual abuse scandals involving Catholic priests in Germany is believed to have contributed to Germans leaving the Church in record numbers. Some 180,000 Germans renounced their Catholicism in 2010, up 40 percent from the previous year.

Pope Benedict XVI met with victims of clerical sexual abuse during a visit to his native Germany in September, expressing his deep regret. The German Catholic Church faces some 600 claims for compensation because of abuse, and Berlin has set up a fund of 100 million euros ($128 million) to pay for the victims’ therapy.

Complete Article HERE!