Tag: Vatican

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Pope Brings English Church to Heel

By Richard Palmer

It’s hard to think of a more complete victory in the Vatican’s long-running battle with the English Catholic Church. To fully understand the magnitude of this victory, please bear with me while we go over some history first.

Catholic officials in Rome have long been frustrated by England’s liberal Catholic bishops.

One of the biggest reasons for this is the liberals’ refusal to follow Rome’s strict line on homosexuality. Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, the senior Catholic leader in England, has consistently given the impression that the Catholic Church supported homosexuals forming marriage-like unions in the form of civil partnerships. In approving homosexual partnerships, Nichols has been accused of defying Vatican guidelines.

But perhaps more brazenly, Nichols has consistently supported the Soho Masses. These masses deliberately cater to homosexual Catholics—again prompting accusations that Nichols and the English bishops are defying the Vatican. The Catholic Herald’s Dr. William Oddie called the issue “the most potentially inflammatory source of division between Rome and Westminster.”

Last year, Gerhard Ludwig Müller was appointed prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Formerly known as prefect of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, this role is the Vatican’s enforcer. And one of Müller’s top goals was, reportedly, to end the Soho Masses.

A German magazine, Katholisches Magazin für Kirche und Kultur, wrote that Müller “intends, very firmly, to address the problem of the Mass.”

The other big bone of contention between the Vatican and the English bishops has been the bishops’ unenthusiastic welcome for Anglicans defecting to Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI personally orchestrated the creation of a personal ordinariate, to allow defecting Anglicans to retain their traditions. He even donated a quarter of a million dollars toward its upkeep.

But the English bishops have refused to support it. They’ve given the ordinariate no buildings to hold its own church services in. The last thing the English Catholics want is for the Church of England’s most conservative members and priests to cross over into the Catholic Church. That’s not to say that England’s Catholics are liberal. But the bishops are, and they don’t want Anglican conservatives.

Many Catholic commentators believe that Nichols’s defiance over these issues is the reason he is still Archbishop Nichols, not Cardinal Nichols—a promotion he traditionally would have received by now.

With all that in mind, now appreciate the magnitude of the English church’s January 2 announcement.

The Soho Masses will be shut down, and the building they were held in will be given to the Anglican Ordinariate.

The Vatican suddenly got its way on the two issues that have frustrated it for years. The Soho Masses are gone, and, for the first time, Anglicans returning to Rome will be able to worship in their own church building, all with one stroke. It’s hard to think of a better sign that the Vatican is now getting its way in England.

If the change translates into a more welcoming attitude toward the ex-Anglican Catholics, many more may cross over into the Catholic Church.

Just a few days earlier, in his Christmas Eve message, Nichols strongly condemned the government’s plan to introduce same-sex “marriage”—bringing himself back in line with the Vatican.

This all shows the progress the Vatican has made in reasserting control over the more liberal areas of the church. As we’ve point out before, the pope is cementing his control over the church. With England brought to heel, this process seems almost over.

With unity imposed on the church, it will be ready for its new public role. The Trumpet has long forecast that the Catholic Church will rise in power. Now that the dissenters have been defeated, it’s ready for this rise.

For more information on the role the Catholic Church will soon play in world events, read our article “Europe: The Next Chapter.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Swiss abbot makes fiery appeal for church reform

By Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

A fiery appeal for church reform by an influential Swiss abbot has attracted widespread attention throughout Europe, and has, moreover, been welcomed by the future president of the Swiss bishops’ conference.

Abbot Martin WerlenFifty-year-old Abbot Martin Werlen, leader of the Abbey of Einsiedeln and himself a member of the Swiss bishops’ conference, first voiced his appeal in a sermon on the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council in October. The sermon was later published in a 39-page brochure that sold out within three days and is now in its third edition.

Titled “Discovering the Embers Under the Ashes,” it echoes remarks by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini in his last interview before his death Aug. 31. Referring to the state of the church today, Martini spoke of his sense of powerlessness and how Catholicism’s “embers” were “hidden under the ashes.”

Werlen said he is alarmed by the present state of the church. “The situation of the church is dramatic, not only in the German-speaking countries,” he said. “It is dramatic not only because of the rapidly decreasing number of priests and religious or because of plummeting church attendance. The real problem is not a problem of numbers. What is missing is the fire! We must face the situation and find out what is behind it.”

He said there is leeway for reform and discussed possible reforms at length.

For example, he said, the church could learn from the way the Orthodox church deals with remarried divorced people, who are not barred from Communion. The Catholic church has never condemned the Orthodox approach, Werlen emphasized.

Local churches should also have more say in episcopal nominations, he said, recalling that religious orders have always elected their superiors democratically over the centuries.

On priestly celibacy, he quoted the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1990. The code says that clerical celibacy “is to be greatly esteemed everywhere,” but adds that “likewise, the hallowed practice of married clerics in the primitive Church and in the tradition of the Eastern Churches throughout the ages is to be held in honor.”

There is also a lot of leeway as far as cardinals are concerned, Werlen pointed out. Women and men from all over the world, both young and old, could be elected to the cardinalate for a period of five years and could meet with the pope every three months in Rome. “Such meetings could bring a new dynamism into church leadership,” Werlen suggested.

The church could also “rediscover” synodal processes. “If bishops’ synods are so influentially prepared and accompanied by the Roman Curia that nothing new can emerge, is that a witness of faith?” he asked. As at Vatican II, “bishops should realize their responsibilities and with the help of theologians, and together with the pope, face changes in full faith — and let paper remain paper!”

Werlen wrote that he deplores the lack of courage, vision and creativity in today’s church, which he says is crawling along “with the hand brake on.”

“The problems are known. Pope Benedict on occasion refers to them. But nothing concrete is done to solve them,” Werlen said.

Sweeping problems under the table or forbidding discussion of certain issues undermines the church’s credibility, he warned.

“Not taking a situation or a person seriously is an act of disobedience. When those in authority in the church do not fulfill their duty and are therefore disobedient, initiatives are started as emergency measures … which can lead to schisms or to people leaving the church. The disobedience deplored by church officials is often the consequence of those very church officials’ own disobedience. I can understand why so many initiatives were started in recent years.”

But polarization between conservatives and progressives in the church, which he said has now reached a “frightening” level, has a deadening effect, he cautioned.

“I myself together with the Einsiedeln community would like to take another path, namely that of seeking the embers in the ashes,” he said. He pointed out that Einsiedeln is in dialogue with both the Lefebvrist Society of St. Pius X and the progressive Catholic theologian Fr. Hans Küng.

Within a week after the brochure was first published, Werlen received more than a 1,000 emails and 100 letters, many from prominent Catholics. He said he was “quite overwhelmed” by this and added, “The embers are there. One can feel people of different generations heaving a deep sigh of relief.”

After reading the brochure, Bishop Markus Büchel of Sankt Gallen, newly elected president of the Swiss bishops’ conference, released the following statement: “Abbot Werlen has taken up urgent questions the faithful are asking; he has outlined the problems very clearly and has put forward possible solutions. This is an impetus for very necessary discussions in the church that are also a great concern of mine. That is why I am most thankful to him.”

Büchel has been elected to succeed Bishop Norbert Brunner of Sion as conference president for three years starting Jan. 1.

Werlen became abbot of Einsiedeln in 2001. The abbey is a famous pilgrimage shrine in the oldest part of Switzerland, its heartland. Between 150,000 and 200,000 pilgrims annually visit the shrine, which at times rivaled Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Complete Article HERE!

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Pope Benedict pardons former butler Paolo Gabriele

What A Guy! The truth of the matter is this is all about Vatican corruption. It has virtually nothing to do with charitable forgiveness. But it makes for a fabulous photo op, huh?

Pope Benedict XVI has pardoned his former butler, Paolo Gabriele, who is serving an 18-month jail sentence for stealing confidential papers.

The Pope visited Gabriele in prison to personally inform him of the decision, the Vatican said in a statement.

In October the former butler was found guilty of stealing and copying the Pope’s documents and leaking them to an Italian journalist.

Gabriele said he acted out of love for the Church.

“This morning the Holy Father Benedict XVI visited Paolo Gabriele in prison in order to confirm his forgiveness and to inform him personally of his acceptance of Mr Gabriele’s request for pardon,” the Vatican statement said.

Following Gabriele’s conviction by a Vatican court, officials said he was likely to be pardoned by the pontiff.

In November the court convicted a computer expert, Claudio Sciarpelletti, of helping leak the papal documents.

Sciarpelletti was given a suspended sentence of two months.

Gabriele’s trial heard that he had taken advantage of his access to the pontiff to photocopy thousands of confidential documents.

He later passed some to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, who this year released a best-selling book detailing scandals and infighting within the Vatican.

Gabriele confessed to taking the papers, but said he believed the Pope was being manipulated and hoped to reveal alleged corruption at the Holy See.

Complete Article HERE!

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Pope attacks gay marriage…AGAIN!

File under “Doubling Down — In The Vain Hope That The Tide of History Will Turn Back The Clock.”

Benedict promoted traditional marriage in his annual ‘State of the Church’ speech at the Vatican and added posts lauding truth, faith and family to his popular personal Twitter account this week.

Benedict ClausSpeaking to the Curia, the bureaucrats who run the global church of 1.2 billion Catholics, the pope said opposition to gay marriage is a way of defending humanity: “Whoever defends God is defending man.”

Benedict also quoted the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, who has written that promoting a right to same-sex marriage is an “attack” on the traditional family made up of a father, mother and children.

The address echoed his recently released annual peace message, which said gay marriage, abortion and euthanasia are threats to world peace.

These are the threats to world peace, huh? Not war! Not poverty! Not a lack of access to education! Not sectarianism! Not nuclear arms! Not the changing climate! Jesus! No wonder fewer and fewer people take the man and the institution he represents seriously any more.

Complete Article HERE!

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Theologian Hans Küng condemns pope’s modern ‘Inquisition’

The Vatican is reining in the progressive leadership of American nuns, raising the stakes over the future of a faith with one billion adherents worldwide. Described as a modern ‘Inquisition,’ this political test of wills is playing out on the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council as a rigid papacy imposes a disciplinary culture on American nuns who were inspired by Vatican II in taking the social justice gospel directly to the world’s poor.

By Jason Berry

Fifty years ago in this medieval city with its steep hills and the sprawling campus of one of Germany’s great universities, Hans Küng and Joseph Ratzinger were priests and theology department colleagues.

Emerging out of the University of Tübingen, Küng and Ratzinger were the youngest and most influential progressives to advise bishops in Rome at The Second Ecumenical Council, or Vatican II, which began in the fall of 1962.

When Vatican II concluded in 1965 it unleashed an historic movement in the church toward greater engagement in the daily lives of People of God, as the council documents called rank and file believers. A new sensibility for justice and individual rights arose in the church that would grow to 1 billion Catholics worldwide, with missions of activism in many of the poorest countries on earth.

Back in Tübingen, Küng, a native of Switzerland, and Ratzinger, who had grown up in the Nazi darkness of his native Germany, soon found themselves at odds over the sweeping changes in the church, and a theological debate that would echo across Europe and the global church.

Now on the 50th anniversary of Vatican II, Küng, an internationally renowned scholar, and Ratzinger, known as Benedict XVI since his election as pope seven years ago, are even more at odds. Of the many issues that divide them, Küng sees the attempt to rein in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious as a sign of myopia, a failure of vision.

“You cannot deny that Joseph Ratzinger has faith,” says Küng, in a coat and tie, seated in his office, speaking in calm tones in the blue twilight. “But he is absolutely against freedom. He wants obedience.”

“He is against the paradigm of Vatican II.” Küng pauses. “He has a medieval idea of the papacy.”

“Many sisters are better educated and more courageous than a lot of the male clergy,” he says matter-of-factly. The Roman Curia “will try to condemn them.”

The legendary intellectual battle between Küng and Ratzinger holds a mirror to divisions in the larger church. Their split began shortly after Vatican II. During student revolts of 1968, Ratzinger was appalled when protesters disrupted his classroom. That same year, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which condemned the use of artificial contraception, met with enormous protest from lay people, theologians like Küng, even scattered bishops.

Ratzinger shifted to the right, embracing institutional continuity. Küng attacked papal infallibility as an accident of history, devoid of genuine theological meaning.

Küng sees the clergy abuse crisis and the crackdown on the leadership council of American nuns as symptoms of a pathological power structure. By his lights, the impact on church moral authority, and finances, is a crisis rivaling the Protestant Reformation.

In his years at the university here, Ratzinger, polite and bookish, was a familiar sight on his bicycle. “He did not have a driver’s license,” recalls Hermann Häring, a retired faculty theologian who knew both men.

Ratzinger saw the church’s future in rebuilding its orthodox roots.

Polls since 1968 have shown that some 85 percent of Catholics do not follow the birth control teaching.

From academia Ratzinger rose to archbishop of Munich, then a cardinal appointed by Pope John Paul II as the prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the old office of the Roman Inquisition. As he prosecuted theologians for straying from official teaching, he became known as an enforcer of truth.

Küng became a highly influential popular theologian with a stream of writings, including a book critical of papal infallibility. Ratzinger reacted with a CDF investigation and suspension of his license to teach theology. But at University of Tübingen, a public facility that dates to 1477, Küng had job safety. Still a priest, he became a pariah to orthodox Catholics and an intellectual hero to mainstream believers as he kept publishing and speaking.

As CDF proceedings targeted more church scholars, notably Charles Curran of America and Leonardo Boff, the Brazilian scholar of Liberation Theology, Küng likened Ratzinger to the Grand Inquisitor, in Dostoyevski’s “The Brothers Karamazov” — the sinister monk who tells Jesus the masses must be subdued by superstition for religion to maintain its power.

“You cannot be for human rights in society and not be for it in the church,” he continues. ”In Ireland, the prime minister is more outspoken than anyone” — referring to Edna Kenny’s blistering 2010 speech in the parliament attacking the Vatican for the rooted concealment of pedophiles. Ireland closed its embassy to the Holy See.

In the French edition of his new book (forthcoming in English as “Can the Catholic Church Be Saved?”), Küng expands on the analogy between a church that once put heretics on trial and injustice at the CDF under Ratzinger, as cardinal and now as pope.

“The Roman Inquisition continues to exist,” he writes, “with methods of psychological torture and the use in our day of many enforcement manuals.”

Küng, 84, expanded on the Inquisition theme in a Nov. 15 interview at his split-level residence, which also has offices for Global Ethic Foundation, which he founded.

“The [Roman] Curia realized that the practical life of nuns was different,” he says, “and that was enough to persecute them. You go to Rome for a hearing and it’s a dictate — take it or leave it.”

Küng and Pope Benedict personify the polarized camps as the church has evolved since Vatican II church. One side sees a church of rising aspirations in lay people, particularly women; the papal side seeks a return to deeper piety, a rules-based tradition that honors the hierarchy.

The monarchical notion of papal absolutism has Benedict XVI and John Paul II standing out in high relief from the clamor of Vatican II-inspired theologians and activists. Küng sees the CDF investigation of the nuns’ leadership group as symptomatic of papal retrenchment from Vatican II.

“Dissent is important in the history of the United States,” he explains. “The Catholic Church is different. They are persecuting people who are dissenting. … Is the church one boss who has the truth, and not much justice?”

Küng is not surprised that the climate of fear generated by the CDF has been met with silence by American priests.

“I have already written,” he says, as if the lesson should be memorized, “that one priest, acting alone, is nobody. Ten priests are a threat taken seriously. Fifty priests acting together are invincible.”

Küng has announced his retirement next year on turning 85. The handsome, book-lined home here in Tübingen will continue housing the foundation he launched. For a man of such fierce idealism, he seems a portrait in serenity.

“Most people do not remain in the church because they identify with the local bishop — or the church,” he says, as the lights of the town twinkle across the hills of Tübingen. “They are loyal to their community and not the Roman Curia.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Why does Benedict XVI receive anti-gay politicians in audience?

The Vatican Engages In More ‘Popesplainin’–And It’s Not Very Good ‘splainin’

Funny how Sr Simone Campbell was not honored with a papal audience since she was also in Rome getting an award from the same group at the same conference for which Uganda’s Rebecca Kadaga came to Rome specifically to attend.

One of the stories out of the Vatican from last week that utterly revolted me concerned the meeting between Pope Benedict and Uganda’s Parliamentary President Rebecca Kadaga. Ms Kadaga promised the people of Uganda a Christmas present in the form of passage of the ‘kill the gays’ bill. Well, that’s not going to happen. The bill has suddenly moved to the bottom of the priority list, but I’ll have more on that after the following article. I too wondered what in the world the UnHoly See thought it was doing by allowing such a photo op as the one that leads this post.

Needless to say the story became something of an internet sensation, forcing Pope Benedict’s official popesplainer, Fr Lombardi to finally address the controversy, but through Vatican Insider, not Osservatore Romano. Interesting. I should warn readers I have a ton of comments with in the body of this article, but…. I just….. had to make them.

“Why does Benedict XVI receive anti-gay politicians in audience?” 

“Tensions are high over the Pope’s meeting with the Ugandan parliament speaker who favours a law that would introduce life imprisonment as a punishment for “aggravated homosexuality”
Alessandro Speciale – Vatican Insider – 12/15/2012 As if the passage on marriage in the Pope’s Message for the World Day of Peace had not kicked up enough of a storm, another case has recently erupted on the Internet, rekindling hostilities between the homosexual community and the Catholic Church.
 
The woman at the centre of the row is the President of the Ugandan Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, who is in Rome for the 7th Consultative Assembly of Parliamentarians for the International Criminal Court and the Rule of Law, organised by the Italian Chamber of Deputies. During the assembly, a prize was awarded to American nun, Simone Campelle, leader of the “Nuns on the Bus” campaign against the Republicans’ cost-cutting budget plan. Kadaga kissed the Pope’s hand during the Wednesday General Audience on 12 December in the Vatican, which she attended as part of a group of Ugandan MPs.(Let’s just throw in a sentence that has nothing to do with the story, but might make people feel less hostile since it refers to the most famous of the ‘nuns on the bus’ for how she and they defeated the ‘Republican’ budget plan. Nothing like using nuns you have specifically sent the CDF after like the Vatican has after Sr Simone’s lobbying group NETWORK.  No shame, no shame, absolutely no shame.)
 
As speaker for the Ugandan Parliament, Kadaga publicly expressed her support  for the famous anti-homosexuality bill which, in its original version presented in 2009 by MP David Bahati, established the death penalty as punishment for those found guilty of “aggravated homosexuality”. According to the bill, a person commits this offence where “the person against whom the offence is committed is below the age of 18 years” or “the offender is a person living with HIV”. Ever since it was presented, the bill – renamed “Kill the Gay Bill” – has been at the centre of controversies and sharp criticisms on the part of the international community and human rights organizations.(‘aggravated homosexuality’ is also defined as a long term relationship. Funny how that got left out.)
 
The provision is being discussed and it is unlikely it will be approved by the end of the year, despite Kadaga’s promises. In its current form, the bill no longer presents the death penalty as a punishment for “aggravated homosexuality”. Instead it stipulates life imprisonment for the offence, but the sentences for those who engage in relations with other people of the same sex – which are illegal in Uganda – have become tougher on the whole.(Either Vatican Insider is privy to information no one else knows, or this is really disingenous ‘splainin’.  Every other source I’ve read, including Ugandan, says no one knows for sure if the death penalty statues have been removed. It’s an assumption at this point. These details in the bill are very hush hush.)
 
The case exploded when certain elements of the Ugandan press made Kadaga’s brief meeting with the Pope – when the speaker kissed Benedict XVI’s hand and the two exchanged a quick greeting that lasted no more than 20-30 seconds –look by like a “blessing” from Pope Benedict XVI to the President of the country’s Parliament. According to Flavio Romani, president of the Italian LGBT association Arcigay, with “the blessing he gave yesterday in the Vatican to the Ugandan parliamentary delegation led by spokesman Rebecca Kadaga,  one of the arch promoters of the “Kill the Gay Bill”…he continues to present himself as an apostle of injustice, division and discrimination against gay, lesbian and transsexual people.”
 
Not so according to Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi who issued a statement to Vatican Insider: “relations with the delegation were not out of the ordinary and no blessing was given.” The group of Ugandan MPs greeted the Pope “just like any other individuals attending an audience with the Pope would” and this “is by no means a specific sign of approval of Kadaga’’s actions or proposals.” (Sure, and it would just be another day at the Vatican zoo if Benedict greeted any other individual who say….favored women’s ordination. (as if they would get into an audience.)  Speaking of just another day at the zoo, how come no papal audience for Sr Simone Campbell and the nuns on the bus? After all, she and they actually got an award.  Ooops I forget, these audience things have nothing to do with making any political statements or giving any blessings to politicians, or lobbyists, or anti gay crusaders.)
 
Lombardi also reiterated the Catholic Church’s absolute opposition to the death penalty, regardless of the case or the country. (I hope all my right wing buddies picked up on ‘absolute opposition’ to the death penalty. No wishy washy cutting corners in the words ‘absolute opposition’.  On the other hand, no mention of gays or treating gays with dignity and compassion, just the implication that it isn’t OK to kill gays for being gays.)
 
A Wikileaks cable had shown how in 2009 the United States had been actively – and apparently successfully – committed to creating awareness among Holy See diplomats about Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill. In December 2009, when the debate over the “Kill the Gay Bill” was at its peak the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN, Mgr. Celestino Migliore, condemned “all forms of violence and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons.” A few weeks later, the Archbishop of Kampala, Mgr. Cyprian K. Lwanga, condemned the bill because it targeted “the sinner not the sin” and did not reflect a very “Christian caring approach” to the issue of homosexuality. (Again, some interesting ‘splainin’.  What this fails to mention is that in 2008 Migliore caused another uproar by notifying France that the UnHoly See would be the only European state that did not sign onto the French UN resolution to decriminalize homosexuality.  Reasoning:  “it would create new and implacable discriminations against opponents of same-sex marriage”.  The Vatican thinks it is better to imprison gays than discriminate against people (like the Roman Catholic Church) who don’t like the idea of same sex marriage.)

 *******************************************

This entire Ugandan situation was a set up from the get go.  President Museveni got precisely what he wanted from the ‘kill the gays’ bill.  At the same time the Parliament under Ms Kadaga was blathering on about gays, they passed the Petroleum Bill which gives the entire over site of Ugandan oil production and exploration to one cabinet member under Museveni’s control. It appears to me this was always the main prize and that gays were used as a distraction from this agenda.  It is not surprising then, why American C Street fundamentalists were the main instigating force in the attack on gays.  C Street is in the Koch brothers pockets.  Shock and awe, that all  of a sudden ‘the kill the gays’ bill is at the bottom of parliament’s priority list.

But now it can get even better. When Ugandans watch the Museveni family and his supporters get even richer off Ugandan mineral and oil wealth they will get to hear how it’s all the fault of the gays and having had to capitulate to Western agitators on the ‘kill the gays’ bill.  This will happen after Museveni is nominated for the Nobel peace prize by Dick Cheney.  That last is a joke…..I think.

I bet Fr Lombardi wishes he didn’t have to continually cover for Pope Benedict’s machinations.  I bet he wishes the just made Archbishop Ganswein would have to do this kind of dirty work.  But it’s not to be, and so he offered this incredible piece of ‘popesplainin’ for an act that is too obvious to ‘splain’ away and this is really really bad ‘slainin’.  I wonder how he sleeps at night. Probably only with the help of a lot of sacramental wine or really good meds.

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Vatican disciplines Austrian dissident priest

File under … “Oh Snap!”
Apparently someone’s got his white cassock in a twist. The pettiness of these “holy” men is absolutely astounding.

By Philip Pullella

The Vatican has cracked down on a prominent Austrian Roman Catholic priest who has been leading a disobedience campaign to openly challenge Roman Catholic teachings on celibacy and women priests.

The Vatican said on Thursday it had stripped Father Helmut Schueller of the right to use title monsignor and said he also was no longer a “Chaplain of His Holiness”. Schueller remains a priest.

Schueller, a former deputy to Vienna’s archbishop, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, had been given the honorary title in his capacity as head of the Austrian branch of the Catholic charity group Caritas.

Schueller is head of the group “Call to Disobedience”, which has broad public backing in opinion polls and says it represents about 10 percent of the Austrian clergy.

Nearly 150,000 Austrians left the Church in 2011-2012, many in reaction to sexual abuse scandals.

The group wants Church rules changed so that priests can marry and women can become priests. It has said it will break Church rules by giving communion to Protestants and divorced Catholics who remarry.

Schueller told Austrian media that the Vatican decision had not shaken his principles.

Reformist Austrian Catholics have for decades challenged the conservative policies of Benedict and his predecessor John Paul, creating protest movements and advocating changes the Vatican refuses to make.

Schueller has met like-minded clergy in Austria and abroad since launching the “Call to Disobedience” group. Catholic reform groups in Germany, Ireland and the United States have made similar demands from the Church.

The Catholic Church does not allow priests to marry and teaches that it has no authority to allow women to become priests because Jesus willingly chose only men as his apostles when he instituted the priesthood at the Last Supper.

Proponents of a female priesthood say Jesus was only adhering to the social norms of his times.

Last week, the Vatican disciplined another priest who advocated women’s ordination.

Father Ray Bourgeois, an American of the Maryknoll religious order, was kicked out of the priesthood and the order by the Vatican’s doctrinal department, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Last year, Bourgeois, who had been a priest for 40 years, was among a group of Roman Catholic activists detained by Italian police after they tried to deliver a petition to the Vatican in favor of a female priesthood.

Benedict, who for decades before his 2005 election as pope was the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer, directly denounced disobedient priests last April, saying it was not the right path to renewal in the Church.

Complete Article HERE!

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50 Reasons to Boycott the Catholic Church

The Church uses its resources to oppose social progress and positive change all over the world.

By Adam Lee

Last month in Ireland, Savita Halappanavar died, and she shouldn’t have. Savita was a 31-year-old married woman, four months pregnant, who went to the hospital with a miscarriage in progress that developed into a blood infection. She could easily have been saved if the already doomed fetus was aborted. Instead, her doctors did nothing, explaining that “this is a Catholic country,” and left her to suffer in agony for days, only intervening once it was too late.

Savita’s death is just the latest in a long line of tragedies directly attributable to the doctrines and beliefs of the Roman Catholic church. I acknowledge that there are many good, progressive Catholics, but the problem is that the church isn’t a democracy, and those progressives have no voice or vote in its governance. The church is a petrified oligarchy, a dictatorship like the medieval monarchies it once existed alongside, and it’s run by a small circle of conservative, rigidly ideological old men who make all the decisions and choose their own successors.

This means that, whatever individual Catholics may do, the resources of the church as an institution are bent toward opposing social progress and positive change all over the world. Every dollar you put into the church collection plate, every Sunday service you attend, every hour of time and effort you put into volunteering or working for church organizations, is inevitably a show of support for the institutional church and its abhorrent mission. When you have no voice, there’s only one thing left to do: boycott. Stop supporting the church with your money and your time. For lifelong Catholics, it’s a drastic step, but it’s more than justified by the wealth of reasons showing that the church as an institution is beyond reform, and the only meaningful response is to part ways with it. Here are just a few of those reasons:

1. Throughout the world, Catholic bishops have engaged in a systematic, organized effort going back decades to cover up for priests who molest children, pressuring the victims to sign confidentiality agreements and quietly assigning the predators to new parishes where they could go on molesting. Tens of thousands of children have been raped and tortured as a result of this conspiracy of silence.

2. Strike one: “What did the pope know and when did he know it?” The current pope, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was personally implicated in a case from the 1970s in which at least three sets of parents reported that a priest in his diocese had sexually abused their children. In response, Ratzinger assigned the priest to therapy, without notifying law enforcement, and washed his hands of the matter. That priest was back on duty in just a few short days and went on to molest more children.

3. Strike two: In 1981, again when the current pope was Cardinal Ratzinger, he got a letter from the diocese of Oakland asking him to defrock a priest who had acknowledged molesting two children. Ratzinger ignored this letter, and several followup letters, for four years. Finally, in 1985, he wrote back saying that more time was needed, and that they had to proceed very slowly to safeguard “the good of the Universal Church” in light of “the young age of the petitioner” — by which he meant not the victimized children, but the pedophile priest. (By contrast, when a rogue archbishop ordained married men as priests, he was laicized six days later.)

4. Strike three: In 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a letter, De Delictis Gravioribus, to all Catholic bishops advising them how to handle accusations of sex crimes by priests. There was no recommendation to contact the police, but rather an instruction for them to report such cases only to the Vatican and tell no one else: “Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret.”

5. Some church officials, like the American friar Benedict Groeschel, have blamed the epidemic of child molestation on sexually wanton boys who tempt priests into assaulting them.

6. They threaten to cut off funding for immigrants’ rights advocates because they sometimes work with gay-rights advocates. Preventing immigrants from getting legal and medical aid is less important than ensuring the church isn’t contaminated by even indirect contact with anyone who helps gay people.

7. In a sign of how ridiculously disproportionate and unhinged the church’s martyrdom complex is, the current pope has compared expanding the rights of women and gay people to the murderous anticlerical violence of the 1930s Spanish civil war.

8. They’ve used their official UN observer status to team up with Islamic theocracies like Iran and Libya to oppose calls for family-planning services to be made available in the world’s poorest nations.

9. They’ve gone to desperately poor, AIDS-ravaged regions of Africa to spread the life-destroying lie that condoms don’t prevent transmission of HIV.

10. In the mid-20th century, they appointed a special papal commission to study whether Catholicism should permit the use of birth control. When the commission almost unanimously recommended that they should, they ignored that recommendation and doubled down on their absolute ban on contraception.

11. They excommunicated the doctors who performed an abortion on a pregnant 9-year-old who’d been raped by her stepfather.

12. They did not excommunicate the stepfather.

13. Savita Halappanavar wasn’t the first: Catholic-run hospitals are willing to let women die rather than get lifesaving abortions, even when a miscarriage is already in progress and no possible procedure could save the fetus.

14. They refused to provide contraception or abortion to women who were abducted and forced to work as prostitutes, and then filed a lawsuit complaining it was violating their religious freedom when the government took away their contract.

15. In Poland, they ordered politicians to vote for a law banning IVF and threatened to excommunicate any who didn’t comply.

16. They were a major source of the pressure on the Komen Foundation that led to its disastrous decision to cut ties with Planned Parenthood.

17. They’ve announced an inquisition into the Girl Scouts to get to the bottom of its association with morally suspect groups like Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam.

18. They’ve been one of the major forces attacking Obamacare, filing lawsuits arguing that non-church Catholic employers should be able to decide whether or not employee health insurance plans will cover contraception. This is effectively an argument that a woman’s employer should be allowed to force her to pay more for medical coverage, or even place it out of her reach altogether, based on his religious beliefs.

19. In Australia, they allegedly derailed a police investigation of an accused pedophile, putting pressure on higher-ups to get an investigating officer removed from the case.

20. They demanded that Sunday school teachers sign a loyalty oath agreeing to submit “will and intellect” to the proclamations of church leaders.

21. Some top church officials, including the current pope, have advocateddenying communion to politicians who support progressive and pro-choice political ideas. Notably, although the church also opposes preemptive war and the death penalty, no conservative politician has ever been denied communion on this basis.

22. They’ve cracked down on American nuns for doing too much to help the poor and not enough to oppose gay marriage, condemning them for displaying a seditious “feminist spirit.”

23. In Germany, where parishioners pay an officially assessed tax rate to the church, they’ve tried to blackmail people who don’t want to pay the church tax, threatening to fire them from jobs in church institutions. In some cases, if the person opts out but later loses the paperwork, they demand on-the-spot repayment of decades of back taxes.

24. In America, bishops have compared Democratic officeholders, including President Obama, to Hitler and Stalin and have said that it jeopardizes a person’s eternal salvation if they don’t vote as the bishops instruct them to.

25. They fight against equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. It’s not enough for the Catholic church hierarchy that they refuse to perform church weddings for gay and lesbian couples; they want to write that prohibition into the civil law and deny marriage equality to everyone who doesn’t fit their religious criteria, and have invested vast amounts of money and effort into doing so. In the 2012 election cycle alone, the church spent almost $2 million in an unsuccessful fight to defeat marriage-equality initiatives in four states.

26. They’ve compared gay sex to pedophilia and incest and called for it to be forbidden by law, saying that “states can and must regulate behaviors, including various sexual behaviors.”

27. They’ve shut down adoption clinics rather than consider gay people as prospective parents. The church’s official position, apparently, is that it’s better for children to remain orphans or in foster care than to be placed in a loving, committed same-sex household.

28. They barred an anti-LGBT bullying group, anti-teen-suicide foundation from a Catholic school ceremony, explaining that the group’s mission is “contrary to the teachings of the Catholic church.”

29. They told a teenager he wouldn’t be allowed to go through confirmationbecause he posted a pro-gay-rights status message on Facebook, and theyexpelled a preschooler from a private Catholic school because his parents were lesbians.

30. They have a history of dumping known pedophile priests in isolated, poor, rural communities, where they apparently assumed that local people wouldn’t dare to complain or that no one would listen if they did.

31. They’ve given huge payouts — as much as $20,000 in some cases — to pedophile priests, to buy their silence and quietly ease them out of the priesthood, after specifically denying in public that they were doing this.

32. When the Connecticut legislature proposed extending statute-of-limitations laws to allow older child-abuse cases to be tried, the bishops ordered a letter to be read during Mass instructing parishioners to contact their representatives and lobby against it.

33. To fight back against and intimidate abuse-survivor groups like SNAP, the church’s lawyers have filed absurdly broad subpoenas demanding the disclosure of decades’ worth of documents.

34. In the Netherlands, some boys were apparently castrated in church-run hospitals after complaining to the police about sexual abuse by priests.

35. When a Catholic official from Philadelphia, William Lynn, was charged with knowingly returning predator priests to duty, his defense was to blame those decisions on his superior, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, thus acknowledging that the corruption reaches to the highest levels of the church.

36. When confronted with hundreds of complaints about child-raping priests spanning decades, a Dutch cardinal used the same “we knew nothing” excuse once given by Nazi soldiers. Several months later, it was reported that this same cardinal had personally arranged to move a pedophile priest to a different parish to shield him from accusations.

37. In one case, Mother Teresa successfully persuaded the church to return a suspected pedophile priest to duty because he was a friend of hers. Eight additional complaints of child abuse were later lodged against him.

38. In yet another case, they appointed a priest with a history of child molestation to a board that advises the church on what to do when they get reports of priests molesting children.

39. And after all this, they’ve had the audacity to plead for money and ask parishioners to pick up the tab for legal costs and settlements.

40. They abducted tens of thousands of babies from unwed mothers who gave birth in Catholic-run hospitals all over the world throughout the 20th century, forcing drugged or helpless women to give their newborn children up for adoption against their will.

41. They tried to have the Indian skeptic Sanal Edamuruku charged with blasphemy and imprisoned for debunking a claim of a miraculous weeping statue.

42. They publicly supported the Russian Orthodox church’s decision to have the punk band Pussy Riot charged and imprisoned for blasphemy.

43. Their finances are a disorganized mess, lacking strong accounting controls and clear internal separations, which means parishioners who give to the church can have no assurance of what the money will be used for. According to an investigation by the Economist, funds meant for hospitals, cemeteries and priests’ pensions have been raided to pay legal fees and settlements in several diocesan bankruptcies.

44. They’ve said in public that the sexist prohibition on women priests is an infallible part of Catholic dogma, and hence can never be changed.

45. They’ve silenced priests who call for the ordination of women and other desperately needed reforms, exhorting them to instead show “the radicalism of obedience.”

46. They’ve excommunicated at least one priest for advocating the ordination of women.

47. They lifted the excommunication of an anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying bishop who also thinks women shouldn’t attend college or wear pants.

48. When it comes to the question of who’s financially responsible for compensating the victims of sex abuse, they argue that priests aren’t employees and therefore the church bears no responsibility for anything they do.

49. They canonized Mother Teresa for doing little more than offering a squalid place for people to die. Outside observers who visited her “Home for the Dying” reported that medical care was substandard and dangerous, limited to aspirin and unsterilized needles rinsed in tap water, administered by untrained volunteers. The millions of dollars collected by Mother Teresa and her order, enough to build many advanced clinics and hospitals, remain unaccounted for.

50. They announced that voluntary end-of-life measures, such as terminal patients’ directives for when they wish to have a feeding tube removed, won’t be respected at Catholic hospitals.

Complete Article HERE!

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For Gay Catholics, an Alternative to the Collection Plate

By donating gift cards to local priests, churchgoers can support their parishes without accidentally funding political causes.

Salvatore Cordileone is the archbishop of San Francisco. Although — or, perhaps, because — he lives in the American city most identified with same-sex relationships, he is also the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. During a press conference last Tuesday, a reporter asked Cordileone to comment on the string of successes for same-sex marriage during this month’s elections. The archbishop responded, “This is not a time to give up, but rather a time to redouble our efforts.”

The Catholic bishops may be holding firm, but their flock is drifting away from them. According to a recent poll by Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans has risen over the last five years. The poll’s authors attributed this decline in part to public cynicism about religious leaders who tap revenue streams from their congregations to advance their own political goals.

For gay Catholics our straight Catholic allies, this question became especially relevant during the recent elections. We saw the highly-coordinated efforts by some bishops to stanch the growing marriage equality movement – and the Catholic church resources that helped fuel their effort – and wondered, “Is it really possible to support marriage equality while still being a church-going Catholic who tithes?”

Take Minnesota, one of the four states where voters faced referenda on gay and lesbian couples. Using resources from churchgoers, the Minnesota Catholic Conference was able to give $600,000 to “Minnesota for Marriage,” an anti-marriage equality group. In Washington state, some Catholic bishops were so aggressive in their fundraising that the Public Disclosure Commission, the state’s campaign finance agency, had to warn the Washington Catholic Conference that they were not permitted to collect donations at Mass. (To comply with the law, volunteers were required to collect donations in separate envelopes.) In Baltimore, Archbishop William Lori headlined a pre-election fundraiser for Maryland’s anti-marriage equality group.

According to the Human Rights Campaign’s report Catholic Church: Top Funder of Discrimination, the Church and affiliated organizations – the Knights of Columbus and the National Organization for Marriage – were responsible for a whopping 60 percent of all funding for anti-marriage equality campaigns in the four states where the issue appeared on the 2012 ballot.

Yet according to a 2011 Public Religion Research Institute poll, nearly three-quarters of the American Catholic laity support state recognition of same-sex marriage or civil unions. According to that same poll, when same-sex marriage is explicitly defined as civil marriage – having no involvement with the church – support for it jumps from 43 percent to 71 percent.

Still, the reality is this: Every time Catholics tithe at a local parish, they are not only helping to keep the lights on for Mass and to make sure the priest has enough food in his stomach, they are contributing to diocesan coffers, which are often tapped for anti-equality ballot initiatives. So far, the IRS has not seemed especially interested in investigating allegations that the Catholic Church has violated its tax-exempt status by conducting political activity. And as Melissa Rogers, a legal scholar at Wake Forest Divinity School, told the Religion News Service, “When there’s an impression that the IRS is not enforcing the restriction – that seems to embolden some to cross the line.”

Given such circumstances, what are gay Catholics and our straight Catholic allies to do? Should we leave the Catholic church, as increasing numbers of Americans are doing? Or should we stay in the church and keep our hands at our sides, offering nothing more than a poker face when the collection basket comes around?

Fortunately, there is an alternative. Gift cards for priests — to local grocery stores, pharmacies, and gas stations — are a clear way to support the real work of the Catholic Church without undermining our own rights or those of our friends. We can ask our priests each week what their upcoming material needs will be and then following through with the appropriate gift cards — to local grocery stores, pharmacies, and gas stations. Catholic finance councils could even make arrangements with utility companies, allowing parishioners to make direct online donations toward a parish’s monthly utility bills. That would allow Catholics to help keep the lights on for Mass without unwittingly putting money in the hands of bishops like John Myers of Newark, who has publicly intimated that Catholics who support marriage equality are unworthy to receive communion.

Indeed, gift cards, which cannot be redeemed for cash, allow us to reaffirm our commitment to the clergy. Over the past several years, Catholic priests have had their image sullied in the public square, largely because of misguided bishops who chose to protect the church’s reputation instead of removing child abusers from the ranks. The entire profession suffered as a result. (A 40-something priest in the archdiocese of Washington once told me that at the height of the scandal, mothers at the supermarket would see him wearing his Roman collar and nervously pull their small children close to them.) Those of us who respect and admire our local clergy know that the vast majority of priests, far from being pedophiles, are good leaders who truly want the best for their congregations. Gift cards give us a way to empower them, making sure our funds go toward their immediate needs.

This non-cash tithing could result in an economic revival for Catholic parishes all over the country. It need not preclude cash gifts for specific Catholic charities and causes, like the St. Vincent de Paul Society or foreign missions. It would simply keep the anti-marriage equality movement from using faithful congregants as a major source of revenue. In this way, mainstream Catholics -the majority of whom support marriage equality for same-sex couples – can send an unmistakable message to Catholic bishops: We support our congregations and the clergy who serve them, but we also believe that love, happiness, and equal rights for everyone are part of God’s plan.

Complete Article HERE!