Tag: In The News

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For U.S. bishops, economic justice isn’t on the agenda

Catholic leaders, meeting in Baltimore this week, fail to put society’s main problems front and center

At a time of staggering poverty, rampant unemployment and growing income inequality, Catholic bishops will gather for a national meeting in Baltimore today and remain largely silent about these profound moral issues. A recent Catholic News Service headline about the meeting — “Bishops’ agenda more devoted to internal matters than societal ills” — is a disappointing snapshot for a church that has long been a powerful voice for economic justice.

The U.S. bishops’ relative silence contrasts with a recent Vatican document that urges stronger regulation of the financial sector and a more just distribution of wealth. Urging reforms to the left of even the most liberal Democrat in Congress, the Vatican spoke in stark terms about a global financial system that is unhinged from moral values. It’s a thoughtful critique of free-market fundamentalism, in keeping with centuries of Catholic teaching as articulated by several popes. A Vatican cardinal even acknowledged that the “basic sentiment” behind the Occupy Wall Street movement aligns with Catholic values on the need for ethical corporate practices and humane financial systems.

Twenty-five years ago this month, Catholic bishops were anything but quiet. They helped drive attention to poor and working families with a landmark pastoral letter, “Economic Justice for All,” that offered a subtle but sober critique of the Reagan administration’s embrace of tax cuts for the rich and draconian cuts to government protections for the poor. The bishops spoke not as policymakers but as moral leaders in touch with the needs of the unemployed and concerned about conservative political leaders’ efforts to strip workers of basic union rights. As a longtime staff member at the U.S. bishops’ conference, I was so proud of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago and his colleagues, who insisted that a Catholic vision for human dignity did not stop with concern for the unborn but must include a commitment to economic fairness, peace, care for the environment and opposition to the death penalty.

Where are the bishops’ priorities today? In recent years, church leaders have opposed historic health care reform, lashed out at the University of Notre Dame for inviting President Barack Obama to give a commencement address, and publicly chastised pro-choice Catholic politicians even as they give a pass to Catholic lawmakers who push economic policies antithetical to Catholic teaching about the common good. The bishops’ decades of advocacy for comprehensive health care took a detour last year when they opposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because of concerns it would provide taxpayer funding of abortion — a flawed policy analysis, according to independent experts, some pro-life lawmakers and even the Catholic Health Association.

In recent weeks, the bishops have augmented their campaign against same-sex marriage, appointing a “defense of marriage specialist” to a top position at the U.S. bishops’ conference, and challenged the Obama administration to create a stronger exemption for Catholic organizations that oppose insurance coverage of contraception.

These are important issues, properly addressed by the bishops. However, at a time of economic crisis and growing anti-government ideology embodied by the tea party, Catholic bishops would do well to once again offer a compelling moral response to radical individualism and unbridled capitalism.

Most Americans probably don’t know that Catholic bishops helped lay the groundwork for the New Deal as far back as 1919, when they advocated for a minimum wage and insurance for the elderly, disabled and unemployed. Much of this proud legacy is under threat today from lawmakers, including prominent Catholics like House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Paul Ryan, who think tax breaks for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans are more important than funding nutrition programs for low-income women and children.

The U.S. bishops deserve credit for their participation in an interfaith coalition defending government safety-net programs that save lives and provide a measure of dignity to the most vulnerable. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the bishops’ conference, was right to recently urge pastors to address poverty from the pulpit. And the bishops’ national anti-poverty initiative, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, is a vital resource that helps community-based organizations empower those living on the margins of society. But I fear the church’s revered social justice witness is being crowded out by divisive culture-war battles at a time when Americans need a stronger moral message about the dignity of work and economic justice for all.

A new generation of bishops must find their voice.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic Social Services splits with church over foster care, adoptions

The Belleville-based Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois is getting a new name and is splitting with the Catholic church in an attempt to maintain its state contracts to provide foster and adoption services.

The new organization will be called Christian Social Services of Illinois and will be ending its relationship with the Catholic Diocese of Belleville, according to a joint announcement from the Diocese and Social Services.

“Unable to remain faithful to the moral teaching of the Catholic Church while adhering to the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act, the 64-year-old social service agency chose to dissociate from the Diocese,” the Belleville Diocese said in a prepared statement. “It is hoped that this new entity will experience no interruption in its services and programs.”

Social Services Executive Director Gary Huelsmann said he didn’t like that the organization was separating from the church but said the move was necessary.
“This solution is what is best for the children by providing for their continuity of care and allowing for the retention of the caring, dedicated and professional staff employed by the agency,” Huelsmann said.

The changes come after months of legal wrangling that has followed the Illinois Department of Children and Families Services’ decision to terminate contracts with Catholic Charities agencies because they refused to place foster-care children with unmarried couples, including those in civil unions.
State officials believe a new state law requires placements in those homes. Catholic Charities said its religious beliefs were being violated and the organization should not be forced to make placements.

“We had to make a choice,” Huelsmann said. “It was a very difficult choice.”
The new Social Services will allow placements to civil unions, Huelsmann said. The agency also withdrew earlier this week from a lawsuit filed by Catholic Charities in response to the state’s decision.

Huelsmann said his organization is currently negotiating with the state to maintain foster care and adoption contracts that were to end Nov. 30 and to start receiving new cases. Catholic Charities had not had any foster care cases transferred to new agencies since the department’s decision to terminate the contracts but it hadn’t received any new cases either.

Losing the state contracts for foster care and adoption services would be a huge financial blow to Social Services, considering they account for 72 percent of the organization’s annual revenue of $13.1 million, according to Huelsmann. He had said the loss of that state revenue could have forced the organization to lay off three-quarters of its 187 employees.

Complete Article HERE!

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People power – a stranger at the Catholic church’s door

COMMENTARY

Hear this, bishops and priests: Catholics’ version of the Arab spring has started, and this week has seen important milestones

People power is all around: think the Arab spring, the protesters outside St Paul’s Cathedral, the national outpouring of outrage over phone hacking and, before that, MPs’ expenses. This week, popular democracy came crashing in on yet another institution in desperate need of reform – the Catholic church, which has been a bastion of power for one of the most tightly-knit, elderly male oligarchies of all time.

What has happened over the past few days might not have looked particularly dramatic, but it has shaken the powers that be in the Catholic church in this country to their core. And although ordinary people didn’t seem to be in the vanguard in the same way they were in the Arab spring, they have played a key role.

What’s happened is this: First, Lord Carlile’s report into a Catholic school in west London, St Benedict’s, has concluded that the monks who run it have been guilty of a “lengthy and cumulative failure” to protect the children in their care from abuse, and that the school’s organisational structure lacks “independence, transparency, accountability and diversity, and is drawn from too narrow a group of people”. It recommends that the Benedictine monks who set the school up should forfeit control of it, and two trusts are now being set up to remove “all power from the abbey”. The new body, says Carlile, should have policies and procedures that are clearly understandable to outsiders, and should have monitoring safeguards in place.

Second, a high court judge has ruled that the church is responsible as an organisation for crimes committed by its priests. This follows a case in which a former resident of a Catholic children’s home in Hampshire alleged that she was raped and assaulted by a priest. Lawyers for the diocese involved, who are arguing that the relationship between a priest and a bishop is different from a normal employee/employer situation, have said they will appeal.

That case is likely to drag on for some years (and will do the church no end of PR disaster along the way); but both it and the Carlile report have something important in common, which they share with other popular movements of recent times. It is this: ordinary people, long repressed and silent, but with great power when they do choose to act, have spoken out. If former pupils from St Benedict’s School in Ealing had not come forward; if the woman from the children’s home (and she is not alone; others are alleging similar abuse) had not spoken out, the changes we have seen this week would never have happened.

And they are enormously significant, because power sharing is an entirely novel concept for those at the top of the Catholic church. Transparent, Lord Carlile? Independent? Accountable? Diverse? Oh, dear me: the bishops may need some explanation as to the very meaning of these concepts. And as to the idea that policies and procedures should be put in place at St Benedict’s that are understandable to outsiders: well, I imagine there are a few splutterings over breakfast cereal at bishops’ residences around the Catholic dioceses of the country this week.

I have been a member of the Catholic church all my life (albeit, sometimes, hanging on by my fingernails); and for me, as for many other Catholics, the problem is that the men who control the church do not see democracy as containing any inherent value. As far as they are concerned, power isn’t devolved from the people, it is imposed from above – from God himself. They believe in a God who makes his wishes known to a small and select group of individuals, individuals who happen to be exclusively male, and rather elderly.

I don’t believe in that God any more, and I suspect and hope that many of my fellow Catholics feel the same. I don’t believe in a God who would not merely allow, but actively want power to be concentrated in the hands of a tiny (male) minority, while the majority had to do as they were told until they discover that what they are being told has been shot through for decades and even centuries with lies, cover-ups, smokescreens and an inability to grasp nettles. I believe in a God whose truths and goodness are located, not in the minds and hearts of a small number of men, but in the minds and hearts of a large number of women and men who care about one another and the wider community and the church itself, and whose views have for too long been ignored.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and its untenable power structures won’t be dismantled in one either. The Catholic church’s Arab spring will take many years, probably decades, to achieve. But hear this, bishops and priests: our spring has started, and this week’s developments were important milestones. And know this too: the church that will emerge from the ashes of the old guard will be better, and bigger, and kinder, and more honest; it will be transparent, and accountable, and independent, and diverse. But best of all, it will be more Christ-like, too.

Complete Article HERE!

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Phoenix nun speaks about censure

The hospital official who was excommunicated from the Catholic Church last year is speaking out for the first time.

Sister Margaret McBride, who was targeted by Bishop Thomas Olmsted for her role in a lifesaving medical procedure that the bishop deemed an abortion, will be honored this weekend by Call to Action, a national group that supports a married priesthood, women priests, gay marriage and other positions that the church opposes.

“Call To Action recognizes Sister Margaret’s careful work with a complex issue, her courage in a time of censorship and public pressure, and her witness to the need to stand firm in the face of opposition while striving to protect life in all its venues,” the organization said of its decision to honor McBride.

In response to e-mailed questions, McBride said she is “very proud to be receiving this award.”

“My journey over the past year has led me in many directions, but ultimately to a new understanding of forgiveness and mercy. And that will be my message when I accept the award,” she said. “Whether we are talking about my situation, the state of the church or society in general, I believe that forgiveness and mercy are extremely important for each of us.”

McBride was excommunicated last year, by her own action, the diocese said. But sources say she has resolved that situation by going to confession. She declined to answer a question about the excommunication.

Six months after McBride was punished, the bishop withdrew Catholic sponsorship from her hospital, St. Joseph’s in Phoenix.

Olmsted’s decisions generated a vigorous and long-lasting debate among theologians, medical-ethics experts and Catholics in general. Many concluded his actions were not justified, noting that the intent of the procedure was to save the mother’s life.

McBride still has not talked with the media, and her written answers to The Republic‘s questions are her first comments since the controversy began.

Although McBride declined to respond to several questions, she answered one about the impact the controversy has had on St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, where she has worked for 36 years.

“Our important mission to our community has not changed,” she said. “This is an extraordinary place with people from every religious background doing the impossible every day. At the heart of St. Joseph’s is still our commitment to caring for the poor and ill in our community. Each employee is an inspiration to me every day in carrying out the mission of the Sisters of Mercy,” McBride’s religious order, which is active in education, health care and social service worldwide.

Call to Action was formed in Detroit in 1976 and became so controversial in the mid-1990s that the bishop of Lincoln, Neb., Fabian Bruskewitz, excommunicated local members en masse. Olmsted was ordained in Lincoln in 1973, before Bruskewitz’s arrival. Both served the Vatican in Rome in the late 1970s, and they have been fellow bishops since Olmsted’s ordination in 1999.

Call to Action challenged Olmsted’s actions regarding McBride and St. Joseph’s in a full-page advertisement that ran in The Republic, claiming he had “abandoned a moral theology based on the message of the Gospels and returned to a legalistic moral theology.” It called upon him to demonstrate pastoral care.

Rob DeFrancesco, diocese spokesman, said the bishop had no comment about the award.

Complete Article HERE!

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Cardinal says he did not have all facts in dispute with governor

It’s just like Francis to shoot first and ask questions later. D’oh!

Cardinal Francis George said Sunday that he did not have all the facts when the Catholic Conference of Illinois issued a statement decrying Gov. Pat Quinn for his involvement with an abortion-rights organization that, it turned out, plans to give an award to an advocate for rape victims.

George, leader of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Chicago, and the five other bishops who oversee the church in Illinois released the statement Wednesday criticizing Quinn, a Catholic, for his plans to present an award Nov. 17 at the annual luncheon for the Personal PAC. The statement said Quinn had “gone beyond a political alignment with those supporting the legal right to kill children in their mothers’ wombs to rewarding those deemed most successful in this terrible work.”

It was the most recent volley in a dispute between the church and the governor over abortion. But the bishops were criticized when rape victim Jennie Goodman came forward as the recipient of the award presented by Quinn.

“I deeply regret that,” George said Sunday afternoon, en route to Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, where he was scheduled to present awards to parishioners for their dedication to ministries. “A rape victim demands all the respect and sympathy that anybody can give.”

He said that the Catholic Conference of Illinois, which advises the church on policy, did not inform the bishops about Goodman or her personal story of sexual assault.

“I first heard of Ms. Goodman only after we had crafted the statement (and) published it. Then, all of a sudden she comes forward. All of a sudden, she was there, and that wasn’t part of the story as we did it,” George said.

Bob Gilligan, executive director of the conference, could not be reached Sunday.

Quinn defended his decision to honor Goodman, whom he described as “a strong advocate of helping rape victims all over our state and the country.”

Goodman appeared in TV advertisements last fall that targeted Quinn’s Republican opponent and were paid for by Personal PAC.

But the message contained in the statement, also signed by Catholic bishops from Peoria, Springfield, Rockford, Belleville and Joliet, was meant only for the governor, George said.

“We do not regret reminding the governor that as long as he claims to be Catholic, there are inconsistencies in what he is doing and what the church says is the moral standard for all of us who claim to be Catholic,” George said. “It is the governor we are talking to, not her.”

George said the bishops felt compelled to protest what appears to be a new level of collaboration between Quinn and the political action committee, which describes itself as working to elect candidates who support abortion rights.

“It presented itself to us with news that he was not only pro-choice in his platform — we knew that — nor that he had been receiving help from pro-choice organizations like the PAC,” George said. “The story, from our point of view, was simply that … the governor had crossed a line here in identifying himself with the killing of unborn children.”

George said the bishops might have acted differently had they known Goodman would receive the award.

“I am not sure what we would have done,” he said. “If we had known this, that it was in fact an award to a rape victim, I think our own conversation would have been very different.”

Complete Article HERE!