Tag: Vatican

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Pope Francis’ run-in with Benedict XVI over the Prophet Mohammed

Pope Francis came close to losing his position within the Catholic Church after he criticised his predecessor seven years ago.

By Alasdair Baverstock

In 2005, then Pope Benedict, while quoting from an obscure medieval text, declared that the Prophet Mohammed, founder of the Islamic faith, was “evil and inhuman”, enraging the Muslim population and causing attacks on churches throughout the world before an apology was issued.

Reacting within days to the statements, speaking through a spokesman to Newsweek Argentina, then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio declared his “unhappiness” with the statements, made at the University of Regensburg in Germany, and encouraged many of his subordinates with the Church to do the same.

“Pope Benedict’s statement don’t reflect my own opinions”, the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires declared. “These statements will serve to destroy in 20 seconds the careful construction of a relationship with Islam that Pope John Paul II built over the last twenty years”.

The Vatican reacted quickly, removing one subordinate, Joaquín Piña the Archbishop of Puerto Iguazú from his post within four days of his making similar statements to the Argentine national media, sending a clear statement to Cardinal Bergoglio that he would be next should he choose to persist.
Reacting to the threats from Rome, Cardinal Bergoglio cancelled his plans to fly to Rome, choosing to boycott the second synod that Pope Benedict had called during his tenure as pontiff.

“The only thing that didn’t happen to Bergoglio was being removed from his post”, wrote investigative journalist Horacio Verbitsky in his column in left-wing daily newspaper Página/24. “The Vatican was very quick to react,”
Cristina Kirchner, the Argentina president, stated at the time that such diatribes were “dangerous for everyone”.

Complete Article HERE!

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The sorry tale of the Catholic Church in Scotland continues to unfold

By Alistair McBay

It seems there is no end to the woes of the Catholic Church in Scotland in the wake of Cardinal O’Brien’s abrupt departure.

o'brianThe latest reports in the media examine the Scottish Catholic Church’s record on dealing with historic allegations of child sex abuse by clergy, with one former investigator hired by the Church in the mid-1990s now considering a formal request to the police to investigate the Church’s handling of abuse cases.

The revelations confirm the now all too familiar pattern of protecting the Church’s reputation first and foremost – allegations not taken seriously enough or simply dismissed, offending priests quietly moved to another parish where they could offend again, and the Church continuing to refer to the cover-up with euphemisms like “errors” in handling cases.

The Church’s first line of defence is to claim that it had tackled the problem when it introduced formal guidelines in 1999 for the protection of children. But it was only five years earlier that O’Brien’s predecessor Cardinal Winning had enraged lay Catholics by stating that it was up to the victims of abuse to go to the police, not the Church authorities. A spokesman for the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children observed at the time that the Church in Scotland had “dealt with this issue in a shabby, damaging and incompetent way.” There is now emergent evidence that Cardinal Winning’s view was the one that still retained currency after 1999.

It gets no better for the Church when the names of those dismissive of investigators’ concerns are recalled. The investigator appointed by the Church in the mid-1990s suggested that the investigation remit be widened to include “inappropriate relations” among the clergy. Given the recent revelations surrounding the ‘inappropriate behaviour’ of Cardinal O’Brien with young priests and seminarians, this suggestion seems to have been made with some merit. But Bishop Roddy Wright of Argyll and the Isles had, according to media reports, expressed his disquiet at this. Bishop Wright, we now know, resigned shortly after this in the mid-1990s when it became known he had father­ed a child with a parishioner. He then abandoned his diocese and his vocation to marry a divorcee. No wonder the Bishop had been uncomfortable at the prospect of an investigation of ‘inappropriate relations’ among the clergy. It is not hard to see now that it may also have unsettled the then Archbishop of St Andrews & Edinburgh, one Keith Patrick O’Brien.

Bishop Wright was not alone in his disavowal of priestly celibacy. More recently we have had ‘Father Flash’ Roddy MacNeill from the island of Barra (who had an affair with his first cousin and is believed to be the father of her child) and Father Gerry Nugent who admitted to having sex with Angelika Kluk, (subsequently murdered by Peter Tobin who buried her body under the floor in Nugent’s church, St Patrick’s, where he had been working). There was also the case of Monsignor Creegan in the Diocese of Dunkeld, whose long-term mistress confessed to her affair with him after details of his illicit relationship with a second woman came to light.

So it would seem that the headline in the Daily Telegraph of 8 March that some Scottish priests under O’Brien’s watch were’out of control sexually’ would appear to be beyond challenge.

Another inconvenient truth for the Scottish Church is that you can have as many guidelines and policies as you want, but if bishops refuse to implement them, they are worthless. With the publication of the Nolan report in 2001, the Church boasted that its 1999 actions had preceded Nolan by two years, and claimed that “there is much sharing of information, expertise and resources among the eight Scottish Dioceses. There is also liaison between the Catholic and Reformed Churches in Scotland and a developing relationship with other Churches in Britain and Ireland.”

Was the Diocese of Cloyne in Ireland one of those with which this liaison occurred? For nowhere was the gulf between having procedures and actually putting them into practice more evident than in the case of Bishop John Magee in the Irish Diocese of Cloyne. Magee’s failures led to the Irish Government’s report revealing that the Vatican considered the Irish bishops’ child protection policies and guidelines to be a ‘study document’, not a definitive set of instructions and rules. This in turn led to the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s devastating speech in the Irish Parliament in 2011, when among other stinging criticisms of the Irish Catholic Church he noted the Cloyne report told “a tale of a frankly brazen disregard for protecting children,” and this even after formal procedures had been put in place and reassuring noises as to future full compliance had been made.

Now it seems that a similar tale of guidelines and procedures being ignored has been the case in Scotland under His Eminence Cardinal O’Brien’s tenure. In 2004, five years after the introduction of child protection guidelines and seven years after the initial investigative report, the director of child protection for the Catholic Church in Scotland found the system in disarray.

In a detailed report on Scotland’s eight dioceses, carried out between December 2003 and March 2004, she found out that problem priests were inadequately supervised and potentially dangerous to children and young adults. The report, entitled A Review of Child Protection Practices, referred to the Church’s ‘secret archives’ and stated: “There is no consistent system of monitoring clergy who present, or may present, a risk to children. Active cases requiring some further
action indicate that unacceptable levels of risk to children may have been and could remain present.”

She resigned after just four months, shortly after delivering her report to the Bishops. Further allegations of abuse are now appearing as more victims realise that they were not alone in being abused by Catholic clergy, nor alone in having their initial complaints summarily dismissed. As Cardinal O’Brien is alleged to have told one complainant at the time of his abuse by the notorious Father Lynagh, “you are just another abused child, no-one will believe you.” But times change.

Earlier this month, Lord McConnell, Scotland’s former First Minister, told of his regret that almost ten years on since he made a landmark apology to historic child abuse victims of the Catholic order the Sisters of Nazareth, the victims had yet to see redress. In an interview with BBC Scotland, Lord McConnell said there had been “absolutely no progress” on compensation for victims, and called on the Scottish Government to “do the right thing”.

As we await the inevitable media-inspired ‘Popefest’ this week from the Vatican, we wonder if the new Bishop of Rome will adopt a fresh approach to these issues and take on the Herculean task of cleansing the Catholic equivalent of the Augean stables. We wonder if the Church, whether globally or locally in Scotland, will at last grasp the full meaning of the words transparency and accountability. We wonder too if the Scottish Government will front up to the challenge of announcing a full inquiry of the sort announced last year by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Don’t anyone hold their breath.

Complete Article HERE!

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Well good luck to you sir!

Argentina’s Pope Bergoglio a moderate focused on the poor

By Alejandro Lifschitz

The first Latin American pope, Argentina’s Jorge Bergoglio is a moderate known for his strong negotiating skills as well as a readiness to challenge powerful interests.

pope francisHe is a modest man from a middle class family who is content to travel by bus.

Described by his biographer as a balancing force, Bergoglio, 76, has monk-like habits, is media shy and deeply concerned about the social inequalities rife in his homeland and elsewhere in Latin America.

“His character is in every way that of a moderate. He is absolutely capable of undertaking the necessary renovation without any leaps into the unknown. He would be a balancing force,” said Francesca Ambrogetti, who co-authored a biography of Bergoglio after carrying out a series of interviews with him over three years.

“He shares the view that the Church should have a missionary role, that gets out to meet people, that is active…. a church that does not so much regulate the faith as promote and facilitate it,” she added.

“His lifestyle is sober and austere. That’s the way he lives. He travels on the underground, the bus, when he goes to Rome he flies economy class.”

The former cardinal, the first Jesuit to become pope, was born into a middle-class family of seven, his father a railway worker and his mother a housewife.

He is a solemn man, deeply attached to centuries-old Roman Catholic traditions. Since rejecting a comfortable archbishop’s residence, he has lived in a small apartment outside Buenos Aires where he spends his weekends in solitude.

In his rare public appearances, Bergoglio spares no harsh words for politicians and Argentine society, and has had a tricky relationship with President Cristina Fernandez and her late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner.

TURBULENT TIMES

Bergoglio became a priest at 32, nearly a decade after losing a lung due to respiratory illness and quitting his chemistry studies. Despite his late start, he was leading the local Jesuit community within four years, holding the post from 1973 to 1979.

Bergoglio’s vocational success coincided with the bloody 1976-1983 military dictatorship, during which up to 30,000 suspected leftists were kidnapped and killed — which prompted sharp questions about his role.

The most well-known episode relates to the abduction of two Jesuits whom the military government secretly jailed for their work in poor neighborhoods.

According to “The Silence,” a book written by journalist Horacio Verbitsky, Bergoglio withdrew his order’s protection of the two men after they refused to quit visiting the slums, which ultimately paved the way for their capture.

Verbitsky’s book is based on statements by Orlando Yorio, one of the kidnapped Jesuits, before he died of natural causes in 2000. Both of the abducted clergymen survived five months of imprisonment.

“History condemns him. It shows him to be opposed to all innovation in the Church and above all, during the dictatorship, it shows he was very cozy with the military,” Fortunato Mallimacci, the former dean of social sciences at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, once said.

Those who defend Bergoglio say there is no proof behind these claims and, on the contrary, they say the priest helped many dissidents escape during the military junta’s rule.

But in the Vatican, far removed from the dictatorship’s grim legacy, this quiet priest is expected to lead the Church with an iron grip and a strong social conscience.

In 2010, he challenged the Argentine government when it backed a gay marriage bill.

“Let’s not be naive. This isn’t a simple political fight, it’s an attempt to destroy God’s plan,” he wrote in a letter days before the bill was approved by Congress.

Complete Article HERE!

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The Pope’s inbox: Top priorities for Benedict’s successor

Pope Benedict XVI’s successor takes the helm at a difficult time for the Catholic Church.

By Michael Hirst

In the West, the Church is struggling to fill pews as congregations dwindle, while the number of priests is also falling.

Meanwhile, the rise of evangelical Churches, especially in Latin America and Africa, is checking the growth of Catholic congregations, which are also threatened in some areas by religious intolerance.

Benedict XVI rejected calls for a debate on the issue of clerical celibacy, and reaffirmed the ban on Communion for divorced Catholics who remarry.

Equality laws being debated in several Western countries are a major issue. Benedict XVI has said the Church’s strict positions on abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality are “not negotiable”, and such outspoken orthodoxy has alienated liberal-minded Catholics.

And the next Pope will also have to shore up confidence in an institution that been rocked for several years by the sexual abuse of minors by priests.

Here are some of the major issues facing the next Pope once he is elected.

Managing the Vatican

The recent leaking of Vatican documents by the Pope’s butler have exposed the Church’s central government – the Curia – as a seriously dysfunctional institution.

It appears to be “riddled with rival factions and there were accusations of corruption in high places”, says veteran Vatican analyst Clifford Longley.

“The reform of the Vatican, which he only began at the margins, has a long way to go yet,” says Mr Longley. “Decentralisation is now imperative. His successor has a huge and unenviable task.”

Systems of oversight need to be put in place to ensure corruption is detected and halted, while Vatican financial transactions need to be made more transparent.

Equality laws


“The one issue which overshadows all others is the growing pressure on Catholics because of equality laws in the West,” says Catholic commentator Austen Ivereigh.

Gay marriage legislation in France and the UK, the closure of Catholic adoption agencies in the UK, the battle in US courts between leading Catholic institutions and the State over sexual equality are all serving to have a chilling effect on the Church in the West, he says.

“Equality laws such as same-sex marriage make Christians and church organisations vulnerable to lawsuits and anti-discrimination claims.”

Ultimately, says Mr Ivereigh, the State could be developing positions through equality legislation that will serve to marginalise Catholics and the presence of the Church in public life.

“There is no bigger file in the Pope’s inbox,” he says.

Sex abuse
USCCB and Survivors of AbuseBenedict XVI has spoken of the Church’s shame for “unspeakable crimes” committed by paedophile priests, as well as offering heartfelt apologies to victims, groups of whom he has met during his trips overseas.

But many critics feel the Vatican was – and still is – far too slow, too reluctant and too secretive when it comes to acknowledging and investigating sexual abuse.

The new Pope will have the task of continuing to ensure perpetrators are held to account, and to ensure the changes introduced by Benedict XVI are implemented – particularly when it comes to bishops signing up to child protection guidelines.

David Clohessy, Executive Director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, told the BBC: “The next pontiff must do more to safeguard children.

“He should stop issuing apologies and making gestures, and instead demote bishops who continue to conceal heinous crimes.

“And he should insist that prelates work with secular authorities to craft and pass stronger child sex laws across the globe.”

The role of women


Benedict XVI acknowledged progress on promoting women within the Church – particularly in its administrative bodies – was too slow.

In 2007 he pointed out that while Jesus chose 12 men as apostles, “among the disciples many women were also chosen. They played an active role within the context of Jesus’s mission”.

Despite this, though, he has refused to countenance women priests, delivering a fierce rebuke last year to Catholics who challenged the Church’s teaching.

And while certain women have risen to posts in the Vatican, others considered “difficult” have been removed, says Dr Gemma Simmonds, Director of the UK’s Religious Life Institute.

An investigation into statements made by a group of Catholic nuns in the US on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood caused controversy. Fr Drew Christiansen, a Jesuit priest and visiting scholar at Boston College, says it is one of the key shortcomings of the pontificate.

“The USA owes a huge debt to generous, heroic sisters who have dedicated their lives to offering education, healthcare and pastoral provision only to be subjected to an intrusive, inherently hostile process of investigation for alleged doctrinal errors,” says Dr Simmonds.

“The contrast between their treatment and that of paedophile clergy has caused widespread scandal.”

It is widely acknowledged that a culture shift needs to take place within the Vatican, and the Pope will be expected to promote women into senior management positions in the Curia.

Interfaith tensions

The welfare of persecuted Christians around the world, particularly in troubled areas of the Middle East, Asia and Africa, will be a major issue for the next Pope.
Pope Benedict XVI at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem on 12 May, 2009 The exodus of Christians from the Holy Land will be a troubling issue for the next Pope

The ongoing exodus of Christians from the Holy Land will add significance to the Pope’s approach to relations with Jews and Muslims.

Such a bridge-building attempt was not welcomed in some Muslim circles, particularly coming shortly after the Pope quoted from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who labelled the Prophet Muhammad “evil and inhuman”.

Benedict XVI’s successor will be challenged to find common ground with Islam, which is on the rise in Africa and Asia where Roman Catholicism has a large base.

Benedict XVI irked Jews by forwarding the path of Pope Pius XII to sainthood despite criticisms that the wartime Pope did not do enough to prevent the Holocaust. He also angered some in the Church of England by encouraging those disaffected with Anglicanism to convert to Catholicism.

In general, relations with Anglicans and Jews seem to be on a good footing. But the new Pope will have to tread carefully to build bridges with the Muslim world while not alienating Jews and without being seen to pander to Islamic extremism.

Smaller congregations, fewer priests


There are 1.2 billion Catholics around the world, a large proportion of whom (42%) come from Latin America. Europe, Catholicism’s historic heartland, is now home to just a quarter of Catholics.

However, Benedict XVI seemed reasonably untroubled by this numerical decline, envisioning a smaller, but more faithful, Church.

Key for his successor will be to consolidate this changing position of the Church within society. As it becomes more distant from official institutions, says Austen Ivereigh, the Church will have to ensure that those within the pews – and those who lead them – are well supported.

Similarly, it must continue to ensure it takes advantage of modern technology to spread its message.

The appointment of Fox News’ Rome correspondent Greg Burke as an adviser in 2012 signalled a modern communications strategy at the heart of Vatican decision-making that had previously been lacking. And then the Pope took to Twitter.

His successor will be expected to take a similarly enthusiastic approach to modern technology.

Complete Article HERE!

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Vatican department shares Rome palazzo with gay sauna

A historic palazzo in Rome that houses a key Vatican department is also the home of a well-known gay sauna.

The Holy See paid 20m euros (£17.5m) in 2008 for around 20 apartments in the building for the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples.

Its Prefect Emeritus, Cardinal Ivan Dias, is one of the priestly residents.

The proximity to Europa Multiclub, billed as Italy’s top gay sauna, has drawn comment due to the Vatican’s strict stance on gay partnerships.

The facility boasts a Turkish bath, Finnish sauna, whirlpools and massages.

Also on offer are “bear parties”, which are advertised on its website with a video of a man stripping down before donning clerical attire.

Bruno, “a hairy, overweight pastor of souls, is free to the music of his clergyman, remaining in a thong, because he wants to expose body and soul”, the website says.

The Vatican has declined to comment on the proximity of the sauna to the headquarters of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples – which is responsible for missionary activities – but Cardinal Dias has previously said that gays and lesbians can be cured of their “unnatural tendencies” through the “sacrament of penance”.

The 76-year-old cardinal, who is Indian and a former archbishop of Mumbai, will take part in the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, which will begin later on Tuesday.

Complete Article HERE!

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Conclave: the secretive end to unannounced campaigns

By Tom Heneghan

The conclave to pick a Roman Catholic pope is the dramatic final stage of a secretive election process that quietly began weeks, months or even years ago.

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Some of the 115 cardinals who file into the Sistine Chapel for the election on Tuesday have been “papabile” – a possible pope – for years. Other names have surfaced only since Pope Benedict announced on February 11 that he would resign.

All of them, whether they seek the job or are put forward less willingly, will be subject to the same unpredictable dynamics that make conclaves among the most mysterious elections in the world.

Archbishop Piero Marini, master of ceremonies for the 2005 conclave, dated the start of pre-election canvassing this time round to February 28, when he saw cardinals chatting in small groups after bidding farewell to Pope Benedict in the Vatican.

“That’s when the preparation for the new pope began,” he told journalists while explaining the conclave rituals last week.

Italian theologian Massimo Faggioli said one of the main candidates, Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, had prepared for years. He cited Oasis, a Christian-Muslim dialogue network Scola launched in 2004, as a platform that has boosted his chances.

“Scola is very smart and he has built his campaign for this conclave very carefully,” he said. “Now he is much better known internationally than the other Italians.”

Oasis, a Venice-based foundation respected for its work with the Muslim world, is much more than just a campaign vehicle, and has surely helped Scola burnish his international credentials.

KINGMAKERS

All cardinals would deny campaigning for an election they believe is guided by the Holy Spirit. Stumping for votes is the best way to turn other electors against a candidate.

Instead, an ambitious cardinal takes part in Vatican synods to mingle with other prelates, visits colleagues regularly and delivers lectures that show off his wisdom and language skills. Publishing regularly is also advisable.

Once a pope has died or retired, “grand electors” emerge to discreetly promote candidates at pre-conclave meetings called general congregations where the cardinals gather to discuss the Church’s future and search for the man who could lead it.

Usually cardinals not running themselves, they work as “kingmakers” to line up votes in informal talks on the sidelines of those meetings, during dinners in their favourite restaurants around Rome and in the breaks between conclave voting sessions.

When cardinals met for their second conclave of 1978 after the sudden death of Pope John Paul I, Vienna’s Franz Koenig rallied the German-speaking cardinals, and Polish-American John Krol the U.S. prelates, to support Krakow’s Karol Wojtyla, who went on to become Pope John Paul II.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had support from Curia cardinals in 2005 and boosted his chances by ably leading the general congregation debates and denouncing “the dictatorship of relativism” in a Mass sermon just before the conclave began.

RATZINGER BANDWAGON

In the Sistine Chapel itself, cardinals pray, vote and wait for election results. No consultation is allowed in the Chapel but they can discuss options over meals in the residence behind St Peter’s Basilica where they stay during the conclave.

The first round of voting, on the afternoon they enter the conclave, is like a primary ballot where votes are scattered across a wide range of candidates. Some are courtesy votes, cast to flatter a friend before serious voting starts the next day.

Cardinals are sworn to secrecy, but a report in the Italian magazine Limes after the 2005 conclave said Ratzinger got a solid 47 votes in the first round, Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires got 10 and the rest were scattered among other names.

Votes began to switch in the second voting round the next morning, pushing Ratzinger’s count to 65 and Bergoglio’s to 35. Limes said the Argentinian was backed by several moderate German, U.S. and Latin American cardinals.

The third round just before lunch went 72 for Ratzinger and 40 for Bergoglio, according to Limes, and the German cardinal clinched it on the fourth round that afternoon with 84 votes.

Bergoglio’s tally sank in the fourth round to 26, indicating some supporters had jumped on the Ratzinger bandwagon. “Some apparently concluded this was the way the Holy Spirit was moving the election,” one cardinal said after the vote.

Among the many Roman sayings about popes is one that goes: “He who enters a conclave as a pope comes out as a cardinal.” That has not always proven true, however.

In 1939, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli entered the conclave the odds-on favourite. He fell one vote short of election on the second ballot and won it on the third to become Pope Pius XII.

Complete Article HERE!

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Church’s two-faced attitude to gays cruel

By Fintan O’Toole

A few years ago, I was on a studio-based television show. One of my fellow guests was a reasonably well-known Catholic priest. He was in a buoyant, perhaps reckless mood, pepped up by the adrenalin surge that comes with the nervous anticipation of a live appearance before the nation. And he was charmingly, delightfully camp.

He flirted harmlessly with everybody, made amusingly risqué comments to the make-up ladies about another male guest who had just sat in the same chair, created self-consciously exaggerated gestures with his hands. He was for all the world like Mary O’Rourke in a dog collar.

I watched on the television in the green room as he went live on air, riveted to see what the nation would make of this camp clerical persona. But the persona had vanished. The priest had performed an exorcism on himself. It would not be true to say that he was now a paragon of macho manliness. But there is a priestly demeanour – soft, asexual, unthreatening, controlled, precise – and he seemed to have just slipped it on like a mask. He was fluent and self-confident and charming, but all the campy exaggerations were gone. The charm was now bland, the body language stilted, the voice half an octave lower.

I have no idea whether or not the priest in question is gay and it’s none of my business anyway. Being camp doesn’t mean you’re gay and most gay men are not camp. But it was pretty clear, at least, that he was quite comfortable, behind the scenes, with a version of himself that matched a certain kind of gay male persona. And equally clear that he could switch that persona off at will, that he could be a different person on the altar, on the pulpit, in a parishoner’s home, on television. Maybe he had worked out some kind of compromise with himself and, if so, he seemed able to manage it with admirable agility.

Everybody who has had contact with clergy over the years knows that there are many, many priests who are gay. How could it be otherwise? At the very least, one would expect the same proportion of homosexuality in the priesthood as in the general population. But – and Colm Toibín has written particularly perceptively about this – the likelihood is that the proportion within the priesthood is actually significantly higher than among the general population of men.
Sexuality is a very troubling issue for young gay men, especially if they come from families where coming out would be impossible. The celibate priesthood seems to offer a refuge from those storms of doubt and guilt. Even when it becomes clear that the storms will not subside, the black suit and white collar create a decent disguise.

There’s no great shame in this. There are far worse sins than hypocrisy and if everyone who is hypocritical about sex were sent to hell, heaven would be an awfully lonely place. But it is awfully weird. It creates an institution that is very like the priest I encountered in the TV studios: with one face for the public, another in private. There may be some hermit in the mountains or anchorite in the desert who does not know that many, many priests, nuns, bishops and cardinals are gay. But for everyone else in the church, it’s just a fact – a fact that cannot be true.

How those who are gay cope with their situation is their own affair, but there are some public consequences to this strange doubleness. One of them is particularly paradoxical: it ups the ante in the game of homophobia. Knowing that many good priests are gay doesn’t result in tolerance and decency. It creates a perverse form of denial, that of protesting too much.

It is, alas, not at all accidental that Cardinal Keith O’Brien, alleged by four priests to have “attempted to touch, kiss or have sex” with them, has been the most hysterical denouncer of proposals to legalise gay marriage, which he compared to legalising slavery.

Even more damagingly, but just as paradoxically, the two-faced approach has fed into the church’s appalling responses to child sexual abuse. The confusion and evasion that surround the perfectly normal state of homosexuality generated an atmosphere in which all sex, whether with consenting adults or with victimised children, is treated on the same level, as a fall from grace and an administrative problem to be managed.

And, in the end, the church’s double life in relation to homosexuality is just cruel. Some priests manage maintaining two different personas very well. Some perhaps even take a kind of pleasure in it. But for some, even at the very top of the clerical tree, it is an appalling strain.

When the desire to touch and be touched, to love and be loved, is “inappropriate behaviour”, it must become appallingly hard to know what is and is not appropriate. In an age when covering up the inevitable outbreaks of desperate desire is increasingly impossible, the church must learn to embrace what is normal and natural.

Complete Article HERE!

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Roman Catholic leaders need to get rid of their groupthink

By Lisa Miller

Recent events prompt a stating of the obvious. The Roman Catholic Church is not now, nor has it ever been, a democracy. It values neither free speech nor freedom of the press. Its leaders are not elected officials, so they do not sweat opinion polls. Roman Catholic bishops and cardinals do not represent the interests of their members, and members, if dissatisfied with their leadership, cannot vote those leaders out. The next pope, the Vatican press office continually reminds us, will be selected not by the 115 cardinals who will soon be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel, but by God.

But in the 21st century, this blatant disregard of democratic principles rankles. Even the cardinals from the United States showed uncharacteristic irritation when their daily news conferences in Rome were canceled last week. Italian newspapers had published leaked accounts of the closed-door meetings at which the voting cardinals are gathering pre-conclave and painted the leadership of the church as divided, rancorous and political. No one accused the Americans of leaking outright, but the news conferences abruptly stopped, and the U.S. cardinals weren’t happy. “In true old-style Catholic school teacher fashion, someone talks and everybody stays after school,” Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the Associated Press.

After decades of sex scandals, financial improprieties and rumors of further financial scandals to come, the American cardinals had been demanding more transparency from the church’s governing body, the Curia. “Obviously, we want to know and learn as much as we can relative to governance in the Church, and the Curia is part of that issue,” said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston. “So, certainly we want to discuss and learn what we can, and I think that will go on as long as the cardinals feel they need the information.”

When their news conferences were shut down, the USCCB issued a news release: “The U.S. Cardinals are committed to transparency.” Others in the College of Cardinals, the statement seemed to be saying, not so much.

Transparency is not just a post-Enlightenment, democratic ideal. It’s a post-Watergate value, learned the hard way. Corrupt leaders betray the faith and trust of generations to come. Healing and renewed trust in authority happens only when all the secrets have finally been revealed. No one understands this better than Americans, who have gotten used to seeing their government and business leaders apologize, express remorse, and — sometimes cynically, sometimes not — remediate their sins before re-committing themselves to power. The church’s continued refusal to do this after wave upon wave of revelations of abuse of innocents and corporate malfeasance infuriates even her most loyal members.

Institutions as wide-ranging as Google and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia have made transparency a core value. A group called Transparency International ranks countries on the basis of the perceived corruption in their governments. (The United States is 19th, after the United Kingdom but before Chile.) How is it in a world such as this, the men at the Vatican’s highest levels continue to close ranks and insist not only on their own authority but also on their own moral privilege? How is it that the church can continue to be faced with evidence that it abused children and insist that it protects the weak and the vulnerable?

A rereading of Jonathan Haidt’s wonderful book “The Righteous Mind” (just out in paperback) is illuminating here. Groups of like-minded people reinforce their own beliefs. And worse. They convince themselves that those beliefs are moral, even righteous. Individuals “lie, cheat and cut corners quite often when we think we can get away with it,” he writes, “and then we use our moral thinking to manage our reputations and justify ourselves to others. We believe our own post hoc reasoning so thoroughly that we end up self-righteously convinced of our own virtue.”

Groups are worse. Evolutionarily speaking, “group selection pulls for cooperation, for the ability to suppress antisocial behavior and spur individuals to act in ways that benefit their groups. Group-serving behaviors sometimes impose a terrible cost on outsiders.” In other words, in the most powerful groups, people work together — suppressing individual quirks and desires — to protect the group. And then they overlay that group-serving behavior with a moral righteousness that explains and exonerates their ruthlessness. Democratic values — openness, transparency, diversity, free exchange of ideas — do not come naturally to groups, Haidt explains. The brilliance of the American experiment is that it created the freedom for many different groups to thrive.

But then Haidt issues this warning, which the men who run the church would do well to heed: The most effective groups take good care of the people within them.

And the group known as the Catholic Church includes all of its believers, not just the cardinals.

Complete Article HERE!

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Unfit for purpose and in denial: a church that has lost all authority

As a matter of urgency, the new pope must extend the gift of marriage to all priesthood candidates. Failure to do that will mean, in less than a generation, a priesthood comprised solely of social misfits and emotionally damaged refugees from reality.

By Kevin McKenna

Of all the theories advanced explaining why the Catholic priesthood attracts so many young gay men, this is the most valid: it is a direct consequence of the church’s official attitude to homosexuality and the way that this has insinuated itself into the fabric of what we might call a traditional Catholic family with its roots in Ireland.

In such an upbringing homosexuality is still treated as the sum of all sins. Catholic families long ago found a way of dealing with abortion, extramarital sex and divorce, the other three horsemen of the Catholic apocalypse, whenever they occurred close to home, but not homosexuality.

The others could all be processed and interpreted as very human failings stemming from the powerful instinct of physical desire and our need for affection and love. The Christian virtues of understanding, compassion and forgiveness are built to outlast initial shock and hurt in these “acceptable” moral failings. Not so homosexuality.

For how many Catholic parents have secretly prayed that their son “does not turn out gay” or obsess about their response if the eldest boy shows no interest in football and insists on taking a shower every day and buying all his own clothes? The church’s pastoral care and guidance for its own gay community is nonexistent. Catholic gays are non-people in my church; they are “los desaparecidos” and one day many of us will be called to account for how we have treated them.

The church has nothing to say to a child reared in these circumstances and who is beginning to encounter issues with his sexual identity. And so, by a perverse irony, the Catholic priesthood becomes a viable option for him. For what better way to submerge your “problem sexuality” than by committing yourself to a life of celibacy and a lifetime of reflection on the burden that God has deemed you must bear for your redemption and his glory?

Neither of these, though, explains why a church which has become a haven for homosexual men has become so obsessive about warning the rest of us about the dangers of gay sex.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric, has been accused of “inappropriate behaviour” towards four priests, stretching back 30-odd years. Thus far he has refused to “deny” the claims, merely to “contest” them. The press office for the Catholic church in Scotland, by way of explanation, lamely insists that the cardinal does not know the identity of his accusers, nor the details of which he is being accused.

Has such behaviour occurred so many times that the cardinal simply has trouble recalling specific instances? Or might he genuinely think that what the priests describe as “inappropriate behaviour” was merely a misunderstanding arising from an encounter with an over-affectionate and tactile boss?

The sullen “no comments” and “I can’t help you” are curious, too. This is an organisation that has become the church’s de facto witchfinder-generals, ever vigilant for examples of anti-Catholicism and never missing an opportunity to portray this country as bigoted and backward.

Like the entire hierarchy of the global Catholic church, they are in complete denial about a culture of sexual dysfunction that has been operating at its core for several decades. Hardly a year passes without an example of grotesque sexual behaviour, both homosexual and heterosexual, by a priest or bishop in the church.

The damage to the church is incalculable. In response to last week’s Observer story, the historian Tom Devine, a Catholic, described it as the church’s biggest crisis since the Reformation. It means that the Scottish Catholic church has lost all authority to speak on matters of human relationships until it at least recognises the root of the problem. Quite simply, the Catholic hierarchy in Scotland is no longer fit for purpose. It hasn’t been for a long time now: its default position is denial and concealment before accusing its critics of being motivated by bigotry.

The Vatican says it will investigate the complaints of the cardinal’s accusers. I have very little faith that an inquiry conducted in another country and of indeterminate legal structure and under the authority of another old man in Rome – identity, as yet, unknown – will deliver anything resembling a just outcome.

Nothing less than a full-scale investigation into the structure and leadership of the Scottish Catholic church will suffice to begin the task of recovering its lost authority. The commission to oversee this must be headed by an overseas cardinal of impeccable character and must comprise clergy and lay people in equal measure.

As a matter of urgency, the new pope must extend the gift of marriage to all priesthood candidates. Failure to do that will mean, in less than a generation, a priesthood comprised solely of social misfits and emotionally damaged refugees from reality. Ordinary Catholics have been incessantly grossly betrayed by the Catholic hierarchy. It is time we ignored the weekly collection plate until we receive some answers.

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Former Catholics say rigid church forced them to leave

Opposition to female ordination and the prohibition on marriage for priests are among the factors causing an exodus from the Catholic Church.

By: Leslie Scrivener
Joanna Manning, former nun, award-winning religion teacher, advocate for the poor and activist-intellectual, was battle-weary.

For decades she had challenged the Catholic Church, arguing for women’s ordination, the right of priests to marry and accountability in repeated sexual abuse crises.

So Manning, once the public face of the reform movement in Catholic Canada and a persistent burr in the side of the church establishment, decamped a decade ago.

She is now a priest in the Anglican Church.

“I did go through a period of grieving for the loss of the vision I’d grown up with after Vatican II,” says Manning, now 69, referring to the 1962-1965 council to modernize the church. “But the church hierarchy had shut down and retreated . . .”

Critics say the Catholic Church hierarchy is disconnected from many if not most of its followers on issues of reform. Theologian Hans Kung writes that a recent poll in Germany shows 85 per cent of Catholics say priests should be allowed to marry, 79 per cent say divorced persons should have permission to remarry in the church and 75 per cent favour ordaining women.

“There’s a catastrophic shortage of priests, in Europe and in Latin America and Africa,” Kung wrote in the New York Times last week. “Huge numbers have left the church or gone into ‘internal emigration,’ especially in the industrialized countries.”

Around the world there are 49,000 parishes without a resident priest pastor.

The question, says Kung, author of the forthcoming book Can the Church Still Be Saved? , is whether cardinals, gathering to elect a new pope — likely in the next 10 days — will discuss progressive issues, or be “muzzled, as they were at the last conclave, in 2005, to keep them in line.”

In Canada many churches have closed and priests have been brought in from other countries to serve. The Catholic Register has reported that in the Archdiocese of Halifax, elderly priests have been brought out of retirement to serve in parishes.

In the sprawling diocese of London, 42 Catholic churches — including half those in Windsor — closed between 2006 and 2008. About one-third of the remaining parishes are “clustered” or share a priest. Declining attendance, the shortage of priests and the high costs of maintaining old buildings have all contributed to the shuttering, says Connie Paré, the diocese’s director of pastoral planning. “It was a very painful process.”

Speaking from her Bloor West home, Manning recalls of her break with Catholicism that she “had put too much energy into something in which I could see no future.” Her spiky white hair, jeans and purple jacket, worn with a clerical collar, contribute to her youthful appearance. “At my age I could no longer give my life over to resisting.”

She looked elsewhere for a place to practise her faith and found, about 10 years ago, San Lorenzo Anglican church on Dufferin St., which has a Spanish-speaking congregation.

“I’d been in exile and alien in my own church,” says Manning, who received horrific hate mail for her views. “Finally, I’d found a place where I was accepted for who I was without having to check anything at the door, including my brain.”

About five years after she joined the San Lorenzo community, Manning, who is single and has two adult sons and two grandchildren, was unprepared when her fellow parishioners suggested she consider the Anglican priesthood. “It was like I was surprised by the Spirit.”

Women have been ordained as Anglican priests in Canada since 1976.

Manning was ordained in 2011. More than half of those who attended the service were Catholic.

Among them was Ted Schmidt, retired teacher, author and former editor of the Catholic New Times. “This was a woman so far ahead of the institutional leadership she would be shot as the enemy,” says Ted Schmidt, a church progressive. “She’s a prophetic person.”

Manning now works as an assistant curate at two parishes, the inner city All Saints Sherbourne and All Saints Kingsway. She finds herself living with a “deep, abiding joy. A place where I can exercise all my gifts.”

She compares her present state to 10 years ago. “My energies were being drained by struggle. I felt a real outsider. I’d been rejected and was on the fringes of the church. Today my energy is so positive, I feel a flowering . . . at my age to have a second chance to do God’s work in the world.”

The Anglican Church has also attracted Catholic men who wanted to marry and raise families as much as they wanted to be priests. The Rev. Canon Joseph Asselin has been the rector of St. Cuthbert’s Anglican Church in Oakville for the past 13 years.

He was raised Catholic — and was a student of Ted Schmidt — and was so committed that as a young person never once missed Sunday mass over 20 years. His mother continues to attend mass up to four times a week.

Asselin was steeped in Catholic social teaching, he says, and was taught to challenge the culture of consumerism and materialism. His experiences in the church were positive. “I was so happy to have healthy role models and mentors.”
But he could never consider being a priest in the Catholic Church. “This could never happen because I always wanted to be a husband and father. Probably, what I find the greatest joy in is being a father.”

He and his wife, Maureen, an elementary school teacher, have a teenage daughter and son, whose photos adorn his church office.

“The Catholic Church is turning its back on a lot of people who have a genuine calling to be priests, and they are the poorer for it,” says Asselin, 49. “No surprise,” he adds, “women can have the same calling.”
He counts many Catholics in his congregation and has married divorced Catholics who do not want to go through painful, lengthy annulments.

“I am able to relate to families here, with all the joys and challenges of being in a family,” he says.
He adds that the Anglican Church has options for men who feel the calling to live celibate lives as monks.

“When you see priests not leading sexually health lives, it saddens me, because they have been asked to a live a life that is not really for them.”

A radical option for Catholic women who feel called to the priesthood is to be ordained in the Catholic Church.
The price is excommunication.

Monica Kilburn-Smith, a 52-year-old Calgary hospice chaplain and mother of two, is a member of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests group, and was ordained in 2008. “The first priests and bishops in our movement were ordained by male bishops in full communion with Rome, who did this out of their own conviction/conscience that it was wrong for women to be refused this sacrament,” she explains.

Pope John Paul II said that the church has no authority to ordain women, using the argument that the first apostles were all men.

Later, Pope Benedict XVI declared that anyone taking in a woman’s ordination was committing a grave sin.

Kilburn-Smith’s St. Brigid of Kildare Catholic Faith Community is growing, she says, with 200 on the mailing list and up to 60 coming to a monthly service held in a United church. By the fall she hopes to say mass twice monthly.

“When women come to mass for the first time and see a woman in vestments and all that represents, on the surface and at deeper levels, it hits them and makes them cry,” says Kilburn-Smith. “It’s not about me; it’s seeing a woman as a person as a representative of God.”

The movement is not just about getting women into the priesthood, but also about a renewed church for the 21st century.

Why not leave the church and join a denomination that ordains women? “To leave women’s voices out just seems wrong,” Kilburn-Smith says.

“If you see something isn’t right, and you feel called in your own faith, why would you go? The Anglican Church changed because women were ordained. It didn’t come from the hierarchy.”

Complete Article HERE!