Press Grill Vatican on Divorce, Remarriage, and Homosexuality

By Austin Ruse

(Breitbart) VATICAN CITY, Vatican-- Today, the Vatican released the controversial compilation document that will guide the Synod of Bishops next year. The document was put together by a committee and was intended as a distillation of the speeches given by Bishops and laymen last week.

At the press conference today no other section of the document received more questions for three Cardinals and an Archbishop than the section called “Welcoming Homosexuals.”

The section begins by asserting, “Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer the Christian community; are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing them a fraternal space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine of the family and matrimony?”

The document goes on, “The question of homosexuality leads to a serious reflection on how to elaborate realistic paths of affective growth and human and evangelical maturity integrating the sexual dimension…”

The opening question of the packed press conference was from noted Rome-based journalist Sandro Magister who asked what the term “sexual dimension” meant. He wanted to know if it referred to the orientation of same-sex desire or sexual relations between those of the same sex.

Cardinal Peter Erdo of Hungary and who is the head communicator for the Synod said the term came about as a result of consultation during the previous week and then started talking about education in general. Magister and many others in the room were left obviously confused since Erdo didn’t’ come close to answering the question.

One questioner pointed out that this is the first time the concept of homosexuality has occurred in a Synod document and wondered if homosexual couples should be given a place at next year’s Synod. Cardinal Antony Tagle of Manila, described by one seasoned Vatican observer as friendly to liberation theology, started talking about the “spirit of Vatican II” and “dialoging with the world.” He also did not answer the question.

Michael Voris, from the conservative Church Militant TV in Michigan, asked a pointed question about whether Synod fathers were proposing that the “gifts and qualities” of homosexuals to the Church flow from their homosexuality. Archbishop Bruno Forte from the diocese of Chieti and Vasto in Italy joked, “It is not easy to answer such an ‘ontological discussions’ but that we must respect the dignity of all human persons quite separate from their sexual orientation.”

The other controversial topic that received great attention today was on the Church’s attitude toward divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. The Church teaches that marriage is forever and that remarriage after divorce are not allowed unless the Church agrees that the first marriage was invalid. The new document suggests this Church teaching could change and allow for such persons to receive communion after a taking a “penitential path.”

Delia Gallagher of CNN wanted to know what this “penitential path” might be. Archbishop Forte said it would be similar to the debate in the early Church about whether widows could remarry and that the Church allowed after she had trod a “penitential path.” Forte did not answer the question.

This was the feeling of many of the journalists afterwards; that the document is not only controversial but also confusing and the press conference did not clear up much of anything.

Respected Vatican journalist John Allen of the Boston Globe said the document is promoting a kind of “lifestyle ecumenism” similar to the ecumenism that grew out of the Second Vatican Council where the Church recognized the partial truth existing in other Christian denominations and even other religions while understanding the whole truth resides in the Catholic Church.

In this document and in the subsequent Synod, Allen is suggesting that the Church will maintain that a married man and women with children is the Church teaching and the gold standard but that the Church will recognize at least the partial the truth and goodness in other couplings including the divorced and civilly remarried and homosexual couples.

The document presented today will inform the rest of this week’s meetings where the bishops will divide into language groups and make further recommendations for the whole Synod to take place next year.

Link:

• Press Grill Vatican on Divorce, Remarriage, and Homosexuality
• Confused, Contradictory Chaos in Rome

Moving Beyond

By Father Ray Blake

So according to rumours Cardinal Burke is off to become Cardinal-Patron of the Order of Malta. It is hardly surprising considering his opposition to the new orthodoxies. If anyone has presented himself as the 'loyal opposition' it is Burke. Magister points out that he unlike many other Curial Cardinals has maintained his integrity and that is what I have heard from Rome. He is a Nathanael, 'an Israelite without guile'. Others might jockey for position, like renaissance princes, playing the Machiavellian games that are as much part of the Roman scene today as they were five hundred or a thousand years ago.

Ratzinger might well have appointed his enemies to key positions, so long as they could hold an intellectual position together but things are different now, broken corpses are now on display in the city squares. It is not necessary for the Prince to say anything, or even to know his policies, it is actions that are important and being part of his party. It is not the law but the style of interpreting it that matters. The signs of the times are more important than spoken words, the nuance than what is actually said. The straight bat of Burke was hardly going to survive for long in that environment.
Machiavelli, some clerics bedside reading, calls for examples to made, for occasional acts of cruelty.

What seems to be being said is that the age of dogma and doctrine is dead, everything is pastoral, focus groups replace creeds, there is more concern with how we are conceived by public opinion than any teaching... (continued)

Click Here to Read the Rest

Link:

• Moving Beyond

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Catholic vs. Katholyc

"These games are a joke."

 Photo - ChurchMilitant.TV Facebook 

"These games are a joke." — Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and current NFL broadcaster Troy Aikman

"Well, the officials decided a game." - Adam Schefter, ESPN

By Jim Litke

(AP) If you tried to stage a photograph to symbolize the confusion that’s dogged the NFL and its games since commissioner Roger Goodell let a lockout of the regular officials spill over into the regular season, you couldn’t have done it any better.

The reaction was predictable, overwhelmingly negative, and swift. Anyone still have questions about the integrity of the game? Thought so.

Let’s put it this way: If the NFL were a hamburger chain, Goodell would have been fired on the spot...

Link:

• NFL deserves Seahawks-Packers botched ending

Anathema sit! - Michael Voris in Trent, Italy

Bishop Morlino Warns Dissenters to Stop Calumnious Inciting of Hatred of Priests, the Faith, and Himself — or Else

The action by Bishop Robert Morlino, which two Catholic scholars called highly unusual, appears to include the possibility of offenders being prohibited from taking part in church sacraments such as communion, confession and burial.

DOUG ERICKSON | Wisconsin State Journal

Madison Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino has moved to quell a backlash against a group of conservative priests in Platteville by warning parishioners they risk formal church censure unless they stop spreading "rumors and gossip."

The action by Morlino, which two Catholic scholars called highly unusual, appears to include the possibility of offenders being prohibited from taking part in church sacraments such as communion, confession and burial.

The warning came in a five-page letter Wednesday from Morlino to St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Platteville. The congregation has been roiled by opposition to the traditionalist priests, who began serving the parish in June 2010.

Within months, church donations fell by more than half, and about 40 percent of the church’s 1,200 members signed a petition seeking the priests’ ouster. The church’s 77-year-old school is set to close June 1, a loss many parishioners tie directly to the collapse of donations.

The letter, in which Morlino raises the prospect of invoking the church’s Code of Canon Law against dissenters, has stunned many parishioners.

"There’s almost shock and awe," said Myron Tranel, a member of the church’s finance council. "But mostly, there’s a lot of disappointment that the bishop has decided to deal with it this way."

Others applaud the bishop’s move, saying decisive action was needed because criticism had gotten out of hand.

"This is a warning shot across the bow — you either want to be a Catholic or you don’t," said Gregory Merrick, a member of the church’s pastoral council.

Diocesan spokesman Brent King said Morlino’s main message is that this should be a time of "prayer, serious introspection and forgiveness." The specific texts from the church’s code of law were included precisely so that they may never be needed, King said.

"The bishop’s caution that ‘this cannot continue’ should not be made into anything more than that — a caution," King said.

Standing by the priests

The priests are from the Society of Jesus Christ the Priest, a group known for traditionalist liturgy and devotion to strict Catholic teaching. They do not allow girls to be altar servers or allow parishioners to assist in distributing communion. Critics say they emphasize doctrine over pastoral care and institute changes in a heavy-handed way.

Morlino has stood by them and did so again in the letter to parishioners, the primary purpose of which was to announce his decision to accept the parish’s recommendation to close the school. The priests have admitted "that they undertook some changes in a way that was abrupt for many people," Morlino wrote, yet he said no one has provided concrete examples of the priests straying from church doctrine.

In the end, "the Catholic faith is being taught according to the proper understanding of the Second Vatican Council, and what remains are personal likes and dislikes, along with inflated rumors and gossip, some of which may even rise to the level of calumnious inciting of hatred of your priests, the faith and myself," Morlino wrote.

Where there are those who work to "incite hatred," there "may need to be more formal warning and action," Morlino wrote. An addendum cites many church laws, including one in which anyone who publicly incites animosities or hatred toward church authorities "is to be punished by an interdict or other just penalties..." (continued)

Read More Here

On the west coast of Florida, a small group of Catholic women priests is saying mass in defiance of the Vatican

Damon Higgins/The Palm Beach Post

Just before administering communion to a small group of Catholics in Estero , Dena O’Callaghan, an unofficial Catholic priest from Ocala kisses her husband John, who is a Catholic priest suspended from official ministry.

By Lona O'Connor Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
  

"Shame on the Vatican," said Bridget Mary Meehan, a woman bishop considered a rogue by the institutional church. "They must truly be desperate. What's next, the Inquisition?"

Dena O'Callaghan, 73, ordained two years ago, remains upbeat in the face of every new Vatican pronouncement. She is certain that the church will eventually change its position on women priests.
"Gosh, if I didn't believe that, I'd have no vision," said O'Callaghan...

This occurred during the aftermath of the groundbreaking Second Vatican Council, when anything seemed possible within the Catholic Church. English replaced Latin in the Mass and priests turned to face their congregations...

"It all started with Vatican II and all these wonderful things we were going to do," said Ellen McNally, president of the southwest Florida chapter of Call to Action, an umbrella group that supports women priests and social justice issues. "People really wanted to go home and make it happen..."

 More

Review: "The Ecumenical Vatican Council II: A Much Needed Discussion" by Msgr. Brunero Gherardini

From Hospitallers:

This is a remarkable book, not necessarily because it espouses especially new propositions, theories, or analysis on Vatican II, but because it espouses ideas the Fraternal Society of Saint Pius X (FSSPX) espoused for years, and was termed "heretical" or "schismatic" for espousing, AND this book was written (and, this is the important distinction) by a Vatican theologian, and published by a Vatican-based publisher. This would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago. So, let's poke our noses into this book, and I am going to let Msgr. Gherardini speak for himself, hopefully not rendering his words out-of-context [page numbers and occasional comments will be in brackets.] ....

"In all truth Modernism hid itself under the cloak of Vatican II's hermeneutic...The new rite of Holy Mass practically silenced the nature of sacrifice making of it an occasion for gathering together the people of God...the eucharistic gathering was given the mere sense of sharing a meal together...After having said all of this about Vatican II, if someone were to ask me if, in the final analysis, the modernist corruption had hidden itself within the Council documents themselves, and if the Fathers themselves were more or less infected, I would have to respond both yes and no...But yes as well, because not a few pages of the conciliar documents reek of the writings and ideas of Modernism--this can be seen above all in GS." [92--boldface mine]...

"Anyone who, in quoting it [VII], puts it on a par with Trent or Vatican I, and accredits to it a normative and binding force which it does not possess in itself, commits a crime and, in the final analysis, does not respect the Council itself." [30]...

This volume is available from the "Academy of the Immaculate," 124 North Forke, Advance, NC 27006. Ph. 1-888-906-2742.

Read more

"The Ecumenical Vatican Council II: A Much Needed Discussion" Msgr. Brunero Gherardini

Priestesses protesting Vatican

 

From WDTPRS:

ROME, June 8, 2010
Protesters March in Vatican for Female Priests
Reform Groups Press for Ordination of Women, as Catholic Church Struggles With Abuse in Male-Only Priesthood

(AP)   Groups [Makes it sound like a big deal, doesn’t it?] that have long demanded that women be ordained Roman Catholic priests took advantage of the Vatican’s crisis over clerical sex abuse to press their cause Tuesday, demanding the Vatican open discussions on letting women join the priesthood.

Representatives of a half-dozen Catholic reform groups [bringing the grand total of this pressing demonstration to about four old women] marched on St. Peter’s Square on the eve of a three-day rally marking the end of the church’s yearlong celebration of the priest...

More

Women religious not complying with Vatican study

By Thomas C. Fox

(National Catholic Reporter) The vast majority of U.S. women religious are not complying with a Vatican request to answer questions in a document of inquiry that is part of a three-year study of the congregations. Leaders of congregations, instead, are leaving questions unanswered or sending in letters or copies of their communities' constitutions.

"There's been almost universal resistance," said one women religious familiar with the responses compiled by the congregation leaders. "We are saying 'enough!' In my 40 years in religious life I have never seen such unanimity...."

The Vatican initiated the study in January, saying its purpose is to determine the quality of life in religious communities, given the decline in vocations in recent decades. From the outset, the women have complained they were never consulted before Vatican officials announced the investigation and there is no transparency in the process. Some have called the effort demeaning and intrusive...

NCR contacted more than a dozen women religious familiar with the responses. Almost no one would allow her name to be used, citing fear of reprisal against their congregations and the desire to have the apostolic visitator receive their letters before word of the actions became public...

She said women religious have been virtually unanimous in spirit that they have been living out their missions, as directed by the gospels and by the Second Vatican Council...

"Vatican II took us out of the ghettos and into ecology, feminism and justice in the world," she said. "The Vatican still has a difficult time accepting that..."

Still another said that at first when confronted with the questionnaire, many women religious congregation heads felt isolated. But after discussions within their communities and after regional meetings with other women religious and after consultations with their canon lawyers, they overcame the initial sense of isolation and grew in common resolve.

Several women said canon lawyers told the women they were not required to answer all the questions...

NCR contacted several canon lawyers consulted by women religious communities. These canon lawyers declined to be interviewed for this story.

All along, said one woman religious, the challenge has been to respond to the Vatican in a way that breaks a cycle of violence. She said that the women religious communities have attempted to respond by using a language "devoid of the violence" they found in the Vatican questionnaire and within the wider study. She characterized the congregation responses as "creative and affirming," and part of an effort to set a positive example in "nonviolent resistance."

"On the one hand we didn't want to roll over and play dead," she said. "So the question was, "How do you step outside a violent framework and do something new?' That was the challenge that emerged." One congregation, she said, cited a U.S. bishops' statement concerning domestic abuse in its response letter to Millea. "The point is, there have to be more than two choices: Take the abuse and offer it up, or kill the abuser."

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Bishops split over Mass translation

Monday, November 16, 2009

By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The nation's Catholic bishops will address many social controversies at their meeting in Baltimore this week. But the topic with the greatest potential for conflict among them is a new translation of the Mass.

They will vote on a pastoral letter on marriage that explains church opposition to artificial contraception, cohabitation and gay marriage. They are expected to approve an easy-to-read pamphlet explaining church opposition to technologies that aid conception. They're also updating directives on the tube-feeding of incapacitated people. While they may debate how best to make those points, they are points the bishops agree on.

What divides them is a new translation of the Mass that has been in the works for years. Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie has led the charge against what he sees as a "slavish" rendering of Latin into convoluted, ungrammatical English....

"American Catholics have every right to expect a translation of the new missal to follow the rules for English grammar. But this violates English syntax in the most egregious way," he said...

In 2001, the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments published Liturgiam Authenticam, new rules for translation. It stressed faithfulness to fourth-century Latin texts that were translations from Greek, Hebrew and other languages. It encouraged a special vocabulary for prayer that differed from everyday speech.

"Thus it may happen that a certain manner of speech which has come to be considered somewhat obsolete in daily usage may continue to be maintained in the liturgical context," it said.

Bishop Trautman, a biblical scholar and a past president of the bishops' committees on doctrine and liturgy, has been the most vocal critic of the resulting translations. The bishops have already approved most of the new Mass. The last few parts -- mostly prayers for saints days -- are now up for a vote.

Bishop Trautman's objections aren't to the most recent changes but to the tone of the entire translation. He wants the bishops to reject at least one set of translations this week, then send a high-level delegation to Rome to work out revisions throughout the Mass.

"This is our last chance to raise these issues and talk about them. But the parliamentary laws probably won't allow us to get at the heart of the issue [in Baltimore], because we can only discuss and debate the four items before us," he said...

*snip*

He already has lost arguments against changing the Nicene Creed's declaration that Jesus is "of one being with the Father" into "consubstantial with the Father." His focus now is on an issue that any parochial school student should understand: poor grammar and syntax.

Latin has sentences without subjects, so the literal translation has produced fragments rather than sentences. A "sentence" for Lent says, "Who, after he told the disciples of his coming death, manifested his glory to them on the holy mountain to show, as the law and the prophets also bear witness, that the path of suffering leads to the glory of the resurrection."

In the Nicene Creed, the current "we believe" will become "I believe." Bishop Trautman objects that the original Greek says "we believe." But his focus now is on the fact that "I believe" is said once at the beginning of the creed, without repeating it for each article of faith. When the U.S. bishops inserted three more "I believe" statements for clarity and good grammar, Vatican officials removed them.

The Vatican liturgy office is run by a Spaniard who speaks no English, although one of his top aides is American. Bishop Trautman noted that the new Spanish Mass has all the repetitions of "I believe" that were cut from the English Mass.

Not every bishop shares his concerns. The new Mass has strong defenders, such as Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit, who believe it will introduce a new generation to a lost spiritual vocabulary. Others believe that the texts aren't bad enough to cause a crisis or that there are better ways of winning Vatican cooperation than lambasting the proposed prayers in public.

Bishop David Zubik said he respects Bishop Trautman's scholarship, but finds the new translations acceptable.

"This has been in discussion for the better part of a dozen years," he said. "You're never going to have a perfect package. ... I think some of the translations are beautiful. There are others that I might not particularly like, but I would have to say that I find the majority of them meaty, thought-provoking and coming from the heart."

Rocco Palmo, a Philadelphian who talks with bishops for his blog, "Whispers In the Loggia," said many who share Bishop Trautman's opinion believe his tactics may backfire.

"I'm not sure there will be a floor fight," he said. "Rome has shown a willingness, if the conference has passed the texts, to be considerate of amendments that the bishops want. That strategy of collaboration has a much better chance of working."

But Bishop Trautman believes it's irresponsible to approve prayers that people can't easily commit to heart. If these prayers are used in parishes, he said, "I think there will be fewer people coming to Eucharist."

He's been getting e-mails from Catholics dismayed at the examples they found on a Web site that the bishops set up to prepare Catholics for the new Mass: www.usccb.org/romanmissal.

"I've got Ph.D.s, monks, parish priests, everyone writing and asking me to please do something about this," he said.

"We need to stand up. We still have a chance."

• Bishops split over Mass translation
• Erie's Catholic bishop speaks his mind on church issues
• Bp. Donald “Ineffable” Trautman’s jihad against the new translation [Fr. Z POLL]
• Quotes from your e-mail about Bp. Trautman’s war on the translation 1, 2, 3

Cross Examination [Dissent Alert]

Why Is Rome Investigating U.S. Nuns?

Sister X

I have been a religious sister for more than thirty years, part of a community that has been active in this country for over a century, and whose work centers on teaching and health care. Our order belongs to an umbrella organization, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which represents 95 percent of U.S. Catholic women’s congregations.

Thanks to recent Vatican actions, the LCWR has garnered a few headlines. In February the Vatican announced it would conduct a three-year “visitation” to assess the “quality of life” of American sisters. A month later, the president of LCWR received a letter from Cardinal William Levada, formerly archbishop of San Francisco and now head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), informing her that there would also be an investigation, or “doctrinal assessment,” of the Leadership Conference itself. Certain problems, Levada explained, needed to be addressed. As it turns out, these have to do with the LCWR’s alleged failure to express sufficiently rigorous doctrinal compliance with several recent church documents. Evidently, the Vatican is concerned that the LCWR has not been forthcoming about the magisterium’s teachings regarding the ordination of women, the relation of the Catholic Church to non-Christian religions, and the “intrinsically disordered” nature of homosexual acts.

The Vatican’s visitation—conducted under the auspices of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL)—does not assess the “quality of life” of cloistered orders of Carmelites, Benedictines, Dominicans, or other communities devoted to the monastic contemplative life. Neither does it assess international congregations with members working in the United States whose central motherhouses are outside this country. Rather, the visitation exclusively targets active women religious whose centers and houses of formation are in the United States—women educated here and trained for religious life here, women who work with major health-care and educational institutions in this country, and who collaborate with one another financially on ministerial projects such as peace and justice ministries.

Why are American sisters being singled out? One widely shared area of concern, of course, is the dramatic drop in vocations in recent decades. Forty years ago, there were 180,000 vowed sisters across the country; today there are fewer than 60,000. Yet the number of priests has also dropped precipitously during the same period, leaving more than 10 percent of parishes without resident pastors. Why isn’t the priest shortage the subject of a visitation? And during the same period U.S. bishops have presided over a sexual-abuse scandal that has cost the Catholic community more than $2 billion and the episcopacy much of its moral credibility. So why no visitation for the bishops?

I want to offer my own view, as an ordinary member of a congregation that belongs to the LCWR, of what is happening to American sisters.

Let me begin by saying that I want to believe in the good will of the institutional church. An essential part of my commitment to Christ is a belief in the holiness of the church; that is what I professed when I took my vows. For me, religious life outside the structure of the institutional church is hardly imaginable. I love the church. I love its vision of God, its Scriptures and sacraments, its heritage, its tradition of faithful change, its saints and thinkers. I believe in its mission and future.

Yet my reaction to the visitation, and especially to the prospect of “doctrinal assessment,” contains more than a little skepticism. While I’m glad for a chance to “let Rome know the truth” about our lives and our devotion to Christ, I can’t help suspecting that those behind these initiatives are not primarily interested in the quality of my spiritual life. To put it bluntly, I feel that American women religious are being bullied. The fact that the visitation is apparently being paid for by anonymous donors, and that the leaders of our communities will not be permitted to see the investigative reports that issue from it, does not engender trust. And indeed, the dynamics of the visitation and investigation so far have been experienced by women religious as secretive, unfriendly, and one-sided.

The implicit accusation underlying the doctrinal assessment of the LCWR is that its leaders are not Catholic enough in the church’s eyes. Having lived, worked, and prayed with these women for decades, I find this suggestion both insulting and absurd—so absurd, in fact, that one wonders whether the investigation is actually meant to undermine confidence in women’s leadership of their own congregations. Canon law, as well as the constitutions of our congregations, ensures that vowed members can freely elect our own leaders, rather than have them imposed on the community by a bishop. Like those in other vowed religious congregations, I have acted on the belief that democratic governance of my community is ultimately guided by the Holy Spirit. In helping me choose our leadership, I have relied on my knowledge of my sisters’ gifts and my history of prayer and dependence on the Holy Spirit. Yet Cardinal Levada now informs me that the doctrinal integrity of those leaders is questionable.

The threat of disciplinary action makes it difficult for women religious to speak out on this topic. That is why I am writing anonymously. I happen to trust my local bishop and thank my lucky stars for him. But what if a bishop from some other diocese, or an American cleric at the Vatican—or a bishop on a USCCB committee who wanted to make a show of doctrinal orthodoxy-decided to target me for what I have written? This has happened to other sisters. In the current climate, would my bishop be willing to violate the tacit norm that bishops “don’t criticize one another in public” by intervening to defend me? I don’t want to put him in such a position.

And that’s not the only worry. When a bishop wants to go after an individual sister—to “make an example of that nun”—he often has some Vatican office write a letter to the superior or the president of her congregation, pressuring the leadership to “do something.” The rule is judgment first, evidence later; and if the women in leadership don’t do something to punish the allegedly wayward sister, the Vatican will move against them. It’s a form of collective punishment, and the threat keeps rank-and-file women religious silent on controversial topics—such as the visitation. And so with a few notable exceptions, such as Sisters Joan Chittister, OSB, and Sandra Schneiders, IHM, the rank and file has been silent about the visitation since it began nine months ago. Members don’t want to say anything that will draw down the Vatican’s wrath on their leadership.

Cardinal Levada has delegated the work of doctrinal assessment of the LCWR to Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo, Ohio. Bishop Blair seems a genial man; yet his dissertation for his doctorate at the Angelicum in Rome was titled “Masculine and Feminine Symbolism in the Church: A Reappreciation of the Marian/Feminine Dimension.” I’m sorry, but I tend to get nervous when bishops start expatiating on the symbolism of the eternal feminine. Bishop Blair was also a member of a bishops’ committee that was scheduled to meet at the University of Notre Dame last year, but moved the meeting off campus to protest a performance of The Vagina Monologues. Suffice it to say, most bishops are good and well-meaning men; still, it is the rare bishop who has any real understanding of the lives women actually lead.

Let’s back up a bit and ask: Where did the impetus for the visitation and investigation originate? During a visit to Rome last April, several officers of the Leadership Conference put this question to Cardinal Franc Rodé, head of CICLSAL, and were informed that the initiative had been suggested by American members of the curia, some U.S. bishops, and some members of religious communities. Cardinal Rodé told LCWR officers that “concerns” had been expressed on issues ranging from living arrangements to the lack of new vocations to the public positions some women religious take on topics such as women’s ordination, homosexuality, and abortion.

In early August, the Vatican made available the twelve-page Instrumentum laboris that outlined the visitation process. The document’s provisions are not reassuring. For instance, no women representatives of American congregations are slated to speak to Cardinal Rodé; nor will any be allowed to read a draft of the report submitted to him by the appointed “visitator,” Mother Mary Clare Millea, ACSJ. Thus, no congregational president will have the chance to qualify the report’s evaluation or dispute its conclusions—or even to see a list of the American cardinals and bishops who recommended the study in the first place. Such secrecy does not create a climate in which the church’s pastoral outreach can be effectively communicated; and one suspects that Rome’s interventions will hardly promote vocations to women’s religious communities.

There are other concerns. Being a pontifical institute, rather than a diocesan congregation, carries the privilege of self-governance, which protects women religious from a local bishop’s intrusion into their internal life and governance. Or, it’s supposed to. Ominously, the visitation initiative calls for a willingness on the part of visitation team members to make a public profession of faith and take an oath of fidelity to the Apostolic See. The visitation decree instructs the apostolic visitator to “seek information from those diocesan bishops” where the sisters’ “general houses, provincial houses, and centers of initial formation are located.” That reinforces the suspicion that some diocesan bishops, still trying to reclaim the moral authority lost in the sexual-abuse scandals, want to assert personal and jurisdictional authority over women religious. Some women’s communities, to be honest, also worry about designs bishops might have on appropriating their properties.

The inquisitorial spirit behind the current initiative contrasts sharply with that taken by Pope John Paul II in the early 1980s, documented in Religious Life in the U.S. Church: The New Dialogue (1984). Then, the pope asked bishops to assist in a process aimed at strengthening and encouraging religious life for women. The purpose was to widen a dialogue between U.S. religious and U.S. bishops, and between members of U.S. religious communities and the church as a whole. It was a credible effort to help create a greater sense of communion in the church surrounding the role of vowed women and men. This was an era when many women religious participated in cross-congregational discussions in a sincere effort to reach out to their bishops and to the church as a whole; in that context, an invitation to dialogue by John Paul II was heard and responded to with gratitude and candor. Today, the Vatican’s interest in American women alone has the feel—at best—of an examination. Any pastoral invitation to dialogue in the current visitation has largely been compromised by Cardinal Levada’s simultaneous investigation of the LCWR’s doctrinal orthodoxy.

The plain fact is: Since the early 1980s the Vatican has not seemed interested in hearing what women religious themselves think about the quality of life in their own communities. This lack of interest puzzles and disappoints. These women are members of congregations that have taught in Catholic grade schools and high schools, academies and colleges. They are the sisters who staffed hospitals and still sponsor health-care systems throughout the United States; who have pooled millions of dollars in sisterly commitment to relieve homelessness; who have formed national coalitions, partnering with local and national government, to provide and manage low-cost housing projects.

These are the same women religious who for years have asked the laity—begged is really the word—to contribute to the Retirement Fund for Religious, a national effort to shore up religious communities’ inadequate retirement funds. This effort is needed because nuns have been woefully underpaid by parishes and dioceses, and received no pensions as teachers in Catholic parish schools; their subsidized housing evaporated decades ago, as pastors found alternative uses for convents. When thinking about women religious, Catholics often assume that “the church is taking care of them.” I have to remind people that there is no check in the mail from the Vatican or from local bishops to women religious. Residences and medical care for retired priests are taken care of by dioceses. Religious communities are on their own. Sisters who served in diocesan ministries still must provide for their own retirement and medical coverage.

Instead of extending a helping hand, however, Rome evidently wants the minds and hearts of American sisters to be retested for orthodoxy. It’s not lifelong fidelity to the church that matters, but conformity of mind to current formulations of doctrine, formulations that theologians and even bishops have not reached a consensus on. Why demand such uniformity of opinion from the LCWR, which is not a theological organization? Why is Rome demanding submission from women religious to church teachings that honestly perplex most Catholics?

The assumption seems to be that in putting aside our habits and moving out of parish convents, we somehow misplaced our true charism. I can tell you that this view of vowed religious women is nothing more than caricature. I admire my community’s practical innovations since taking up the call of the council to adapt our ministry and community life to the needs of our times, to renew our spiritual life, and to follow Christ by retrieving the charism of our founder. Since I entered religious life, my community has continued to serve the church in our traditional ministries while encouraging a flowering of new initiatives that, I am sure, would have delighted our founder.

Several months ago, a well-regarded U.S. bishop remarked to a gathering of clergy and laity that he understood his ordination as bishop as a mandate to carry out the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. He sensed that there has been a pulling-back from such efforts, and lamented the retreat, asserting that if he ever had to make a choice between carrying out this mandate and being obedient to Rome, “I would resign.” In light of his remarks, one wonders whether the “quality of life” question about women religious is best understood as part of a battle among the bishops over the implementation of Vatican II. Is control over the lifestyle, dress, work-sphere, and public voice of women religious a matter of which side wins?

As Sandra Schneiders wrote in the National Catholic Reporter, two theological visions of church and religious life exist within the documents of Vatican II. The council’s statement on the renewal of religious life can be read through the lens of Lumen gentium (church as institution, fortress, and witness to a godless world) or through Gaudium et spes (church as people of God, a pilgrim church uniting believers in the ministry of relieving suffering and promoting the kingdom of God). The tension between “leaving the world” and “embracing the world” inevitably creates conflicts over how vowed religious life should be organized. Right now, Rome seems partial to the worldview of Lumen gentium, and that bias raises the need for a theological dialogue in which women religious explain why and how they discarded the habit, embraced new ministries, and yet managed to preserve a faithful spiritual life even when they lived outside the walls of a convent building.

I am proud of my community’s support for members who went back to school for higher degrees and began doing new kinds of work. Reflecting the call of the council, the LCWR’s sense of religious commitment is shaped by dialogue with the world and its political systems. For almost three decades, the organization’s public resolutions have reflected a focus on issues addressed by U.S. bishops: universal access to health care and economic justice for all; protection of refugees and immigrants; opposition to war-making, the death penalty, and apartheid; promotion of the human rights of women; revocation of debt for poor countries; and care for the environment. For the member communities of LCWR, vows include taking public stands on social and political issues; the group’s Web site broadcasts its mission “to advocate against poverty, racism, powerlessness, or any other form of violence or oppression.”

An exhibit sponsored by the LCWR, and currently traveling across the United States under the title “Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America,” honors Catholic sisters and their contributions to national life and culture. The exhibit chronicles a nearly two-hundred-year period in which vowed women came to this country and built motherhouses, hospitals, schools, orphanages, and training centers. Attracting new members, they became embedded in the fabric of American society, defining Catholic life while ministering and supporting the growth of the church over many decades of service. Are the cardinals and bishops who suggested the visitation and investigation interested in this rich history, and in women’s thoughts about their vocational commitment? These bishops want to know why things aren’t the way they used to be, but they don’t seem to want to hear the answer from religious women.

Perhaps there exists a basic problem of communication. Perhaps the personal and interpretive language women religious speak to each other is not sufficiently “Vaticanese.” The theological worldview of women has evolved in ways that bishops may not understand, let alone accept. When I entered religious life after Vatican II, it was already taken for granted in sister-formation that the traditional language and categories of theology, mysticism, and spirituality were not adequate to express and account for the development of the person within religious life. Traditionally, of course, women religious often described themselves as “brides of Christ.” Today, however, thanks to what we have learned from modern scriptural scholarship and the work of feminist Christian thinkers about the role of women in the early church, women religious have sought to reclaim their historical roles alongside “the twelve” as followers of Jesus, community leaders, and missionaries. Our directors introduced us to the basics of religious life: union with God in prayer, identity with the church, Scripture, the vows, mission and apostolate, community life. But we also read sociology, psychology, and literature. Along with our Vatican II documents and the Jerusalem Bible, we read Jung, historical novels, and poetry. Our retreats included the Psalms, but also meditative films about nature. There was a great effort to integrate our spiritual life with “real life.” We came to identify ourselves with Mary, whom Jesus himself called “woman” in John’s Gospel, and with Mary Magdalene, the first witness of the Resurrection; or with one of the healed women in the Gospel who goes out and tells others about her life-changing experience, and attracts others to come to Jesus too. It was a process that has served me and many others well, enabling women religious to create a whole body of self-explanatory narrative, reflection, and theological analysis.

Did it also accelerate a growing distrust between sisters and the episcopacy? That distrust has been present for a long time. In the late 1960s, after Los Angeles Cardinal James McIntyre ordered the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to get back into their habits and classrooms or get out of the diocese, the LCWR tried to address issues of women’s ministerial equality. Later, in 1976, came Inter insigniores, the CDF’s “definitive” rejection of the possibility of ordination for women. It shut down any formal discussion of women’s equality in the church. For many women religious, the emphasis shifted then to social-justice concerns.

Since then, Rome has been busy shoring up its doctrinal barricades, and in the process has seemed intent on casting feminism into the outer darkness. Under John Paul II, the Vatican became enamored with a reading of Scripture and the tradition as calling on every woman to understand herself spiritually as “spouse.” I find this at odds with the presentation of women in Scripture, and would point out that Jesus uses neither spousehood nor marriage as a model for discipleship. Quite the contrary. This reductionist anthropology, moreover, has become so arcane and removed from real life that much of what is written about how the church understands sexual symbolism has taken on a frankly gnostic character. Do we really want to limit our notions of the essential nature and meaning of embodiment to little more than the physical function of father and mother and the social relationship of bridegroom and bride, husband and wife? Again and again in recent years, this seems to be Rome’s mantra. Particularly offensive was the 2004 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and the World, issued by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, which demeaned feminist theory as inimical to the common good of the church, the family, and society, and as the logical outcome of this analysis argued against women’s ordination. In my opinion, his letter expressed a great deal of hostility to what women have attempted to say about themselves for the past forty years. It hardly encouraged dialogue.

What I sense today is that the Vatican will not budge in how it thinks theologically about what it means to be a woman; nor will it consider opening positions of real ecclesial authority to women. There is simply no getting away from the fact that in the Catholic Church it is men who tell women how they should understand themselves as women. Rome wants women religious to accept such understandings not merely without dissent, but without comment. The Vatican doesn’t want independent-minded women theologians or biblical scholars, and seemingly won’t read or quote them unless the women mimic the Vatican’s—and that means men’s—voice and views. But we are not “men” or “mankind.” We are persons with minds and hearts and voices, who have lived lives of integrity and loyalty, and who remain loyal to this church, even when it treats us as second-class citizens and makes us beg for financial support in our old age.

Since Rome wants to know about the quality of my life as a religious sister, let me tell you about a common form of liturgical life in my community. At our cemetery we recently observed the gravesite rite for a deceased sister. No priest was there. One sister led the prayer, and another sprinkled holy water, while the rest of us made the responses. Few of sister’s family members—nieces and nephews living many states away—were able to attend. In the end, we sisters are in effect the family, enacting one of the rights—called “suffrages after death”—that women religious have as a result of taking vows. Taking end-of-life responsibility for one another means a Catholic funeral, burial with your community members, and the prayers and remembrances of those with whom you “persevered unto death.”

Earlier that day we had been lucky to find a kindly but frail eighty-plus priest to say the funeral Mass at the motherhouse. Priests’ numbers have dropped, even in a metropolitan area like ours, and it’s all “retired” priests can do to manage multiple Masses and pastoral services at some local parish. Consequently, women religious aren’t at all assured of having daily Eucharist—the practice that grounded their spirituality for most of their lives as religious and one that is fundamental to their congregational constitutions. (Cardinal Rodé and his consultors would do well to ponder the relationship between Vatican policy and the “quality of life” of women religious: the refusal to ordain women has created a shortage of priests, and the quality of nuns’ spiritual and sacramental life has suffered accordingly.)

Fortunately, despite the crisis in priesthood, there were men present to serve us in conducting our sister’s last rituals on earth. I’m referring to the unionized cemetery crew. Until “the job moment,” they awkwardly stood at the edge of our prayer circle. One in muddy Levis discreetly chewed gum. Another had a plastic water bottle jammed into a back pocket of his raggedy khakis. Not exactly vestments. Finally the “job moment” had come. Balancing on their grass-stained, thick-soled sneakers, the four men carefully coordinated the sets of tightly woven, three-inch-wide straps around the coffin. Two quickly pulled away the steel beams holding the coffin above the open grave. The coffin’s weight shifted to the straps, and letting out the strap length evenly, fist over wrist, they skillfully lowered the coffin till it touched bottom.

Like other nuns, our deceased sister had put in many years of six-and-a-half-day work weeks, with lots of walking in the days before we drove cars. She had been a hospital nun, which meant that after her own shift ended, she would fill in on the floor for nurses who were sick. I recalled her at our dinner table. In her retirement years she had been careful about her diet, obsessively cutting off all fat from her meat. Nuns are self-effacing, and you never know all they did until you read their obituaries; but at the motherhouse you could always tell which had been hospital nuns. They were the fastest eaters at any table—a speed developed over years of eating in hospital dining rooms. You didn’t linger when you had other nurses to supervise and patients to tend.

The cemetery crew didn’t have to strain, since in her last illness our sister’s body, always thin to begin with, had become weightless, like a ballet dancer’s. We threw flowers down into the grave. Mine slipped into the narrow space between the coffin and the wall of earth. By her side, I thought.

Two hours earlier, standing at the open coffin before Mass, I’d read the signatures on her vow document, placing my hand on hers and silently thanking her for her life. Then two sisters had closed the coffin for the last time. Now, at the end of the litany, we invoked other sisters who had died, asking their help. “Pray for us,” we murmured. This is the time to recall your friends: deceased sisters who mentored you; the one who offered you a shoulder to cry on or used her influence to help you; all those who gave you the example of persevering unto death through their own lives.

We sisters are buried with the paper we signed at final profession of vows, an event attested to by the superior and her vicar. The signatures on this sister’s vows belonged to women elected as leaders a half-century before. I knew who they were. Their headstones could be found in the long line of graves that stretched out before us, rows and rows of nuns’ graves, going back more than a century. I thought about cemeteries like this all over the United States, and the many thousands of nuns who faithfully served the church for a lifetime, building up its schools and hospitals. They kept their vows. They didn’t cost the church $2 billion in legal settlements. Their gravestones don’t memorialize ecclesial appointments, ministerial accomplishments, educational degrees, or elected congregational positions. For religious women, the headstone notes date of birth, religious name, date of profession of vows, and date of death. The facts of lifelong fidelity are simple and few.

Some years ago, with prudent foresight, my community bought up plots—enough of them to guarantee a place for me and for those likely to enter the community in the future. Mine is up the line a way. How far up is not under my control, though if I stay in good health and die of natural causes, it’s probably a good way up. But here is the general area where you can expect to find me, long after the Vatican’s visitation and investigation are over. The prospect of death and life in their full reach puts things in a frank perspective, and I end with the same question with which I began this essay: Is the Vatican visitation truly being done out of concern for American nuns? Here in the cemetery, I couldn’t help but think that the question Rome is really asking is, “Why don’t you have more nuns to bury? Why aren’t there more of you?”

Do they really wonder why our numbers shrink and shrink? They might ponder their own actions. The visitation and investigation continue; the doctrinal assessment will ferret out our patches of heterodoxy. Standing at our late sister’s grave I remembered, as if it were yesterday, a question she innocently asked me years ago in a group meeting. “Do we have rights?” she wondered. “What are they?”

Those were good questions then, and American sisters should ask them now. Meanwhile, as I glance up the line of graves, I wonder how many sisters will be here when the day comes to toss flowers on my coffin.

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A New Church? Dissenter umbrella group forms

7/15/2009

California Catholic Daily (calcatholic.com/)

A coalition of dissenting organizations and individuals called the American Catholic Council forms.

SAN DIEGO (California Catholic Daily) - A coalition of dissenting organizations and individuals called the American Catholic Council are calling for “discussion at every level of the Catholic Church in the United States to consider the state and future of our Church.” The council plans to hold the council on June 10-11, 2011 (Pentecost), in Detroit...

We seek nothing short of a personal conversion of all to create a new Church, fully in tune with the authentic Gospel message, the teachings of our Church, and the American context in which we live.”

The website’s press release page contains one item: a release from “Voice of the Faithful.” The release is headlined: “Historic move for VOTF and U.S. Catholics--VOTF instrumental in launching American Catholic Council...”

’The way the Church is now is not the way it was meant to be,’ says John Hushon, a VOTF board member who serves as council’s co-chair. ‘The Gospels make it abundantly clear that Jesus envisioned a community that welcomes and encourages the gifts of all. The two-tiered clerical system that separates the ordained from the non-ordained was never meant to be, and it has caused enormous harm. Vatican II attempted to recapture the universal call to ministry, but this promise has not been fulfilled.’”

While the webpage and release avoid specific policy statements, they do mention those who have joined the organizing efforts, including Sr. Joan Chittister, whom is described as a “well-known author on issues of contemporary spirituality.” Chittister was the keynote speaker at Women's Ordination Conference in Dublin, Ireland in June, 2000. Another endorser is former priest Dr. Paul Lakeland, professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue at the (Jesuit) Fairfield University.

Dr. Lakeland was recently in the news for his public support of Connecticut bill 1098, introduced by homosexual activist state Senators Mike Lawlor and Andrew J. McDonald. Bill 1098 sought to use legislative means to restructure the governance of the Catholic Church in Connecticut. The bill was tabled after intense opposition. On March 10, 2009, the Catholic News Agency reported: “The bill, which bears resemblance to Voice of the Faithful’s Strategic Plan, is being supported by Dr. Paul Lakeland, who believes that in this case it’s appropriate to use state legislation to force the Church’s hand…

Full Article

• A New Church? Dissenter umbrella group forms

Related:

• Voice of the Faithful facing financial collapse

Former Papal MC: Pope Paul VI's "Smoke of Satan" Remark Referred to Abuses of the Liturgy

Excerpt of Father Z's translation of an interview with His Eminence Virgilio Card. Noè:

"Paul VI’s denunciation of the presence of the smoke of Satan in the Church is unforgettable. Still today, that discourse seems to be incredibly relevant.

You from Petrus, have gotten a real scoop here, because I am in a position to reveal, for the first time, what Paul VI desired to denounce with that statement. Here it is. Papa Montini, for Satan, meant to include all those priests or bishops and cardinals who didn’t render worship to the Lord by celebrating badly (mal celebrando) Holy Mass because of an errant interpretation of the implementation of the Second Vatican Council. He spoke of the smoke of Satan because he maintained that those priests who turned Holy Mass into dry straw in the name of creativity, in reality were possessed of the vainglory and the pride of the Evil One. so, the smoke of Satan was nothing other than the mentality which wanted to distort the traditional and liturgical canons of the Eucharistic ceremony."

It is thought that Paul VI was the real culprit as the cause of all the ills of post-Conciliar liturgy. But based on what you have revealed, Eminence, Montini compared the liturgical chaos, even if in a veiled way, actually to something hellish.

He condemned craving to be in the limelight and the delirium of almighty power that they were following the Council at the liturgical level. Mass is a sacred ceremony, he often repeated, everything must be prepared and studied adequately, respecting the canons, no one is "dominus" [lord] of the Mass. Sadly, in many after Vatican II not many understood him and Paul VI suffered this, considering the phenomenon to be an attack of the Devil.

Your Eminence, in conclusion, what is true liturgy?

It renders glory to God. Liturgy must be carried out always and no matter what with decorum: even a sign of the Cross poorly made is synonymous with scorn and sloppiness. Alas, I repeat, after Vatican II it was believed that everything, or nearly, was permitted. Now it is necessary to recover, and in a hurry, the sense of the sacred in the ars celebrandi, before the smoke of Satan completely pervades the whole Church. Thanks be to God, we have Pope Benedict XVI: his Mass and his liturgical style are an example of correctness and dignity..."

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Rome: Gender Neutral Baptismal Formulas Invalid

By Hugh McNichol
Pewsitter.com

Vatican City - Feb 29, 2008 - The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a correction today and, in simple terms, reaffirmed the Trinitarian formula that constitutes a valid baptism in the Catholic Church.

Responding to a formal inquiry about using modified forms of the Baptismal Rite that replace the Father, Son and Holy Spirit with other descriptions such as Creator, Liberator and Sanctifier the Holy See simply stated that Baptisms that were conducted without proper Trinitarian form were...simply invalid.

Additionally the Holy See through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith also affirmed that the form to be used in the administration of Catholic Baptism is, "in forma absoluta."

Clearly this declaration by the Congregation with the approbation of the Holy Father shows the Church's desire to eliminate the rise of feminism within the celebration and completion of our sacramental mysteries. Hinting further this point was not based upon anti-feminist sentiments; the Holy See indicated that the proper form for the celebration of Baptism is scripturally reinforced in Matthew's Gospel, with the mandate to baptize in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This is certainly a setback to pro-feminist supporters in the Catholic Church that believe all of our sacramental and liturgical expressions should be gender neutral. Thank God that the Holy See is making true gender identification easily tangible with the restoration of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Now perhaps we can get past all of the politically correct, inclusive nonsense and acknowledge the true masculine gender identity of God as Father, Jesus as Man and Son and without any defamation acknowledge Mary as Mother.

END

*And from CNS:

"'I think if you are over the age of 45 to 50 you have nothing to fear' regarding the validity of baptisms, said Father Tom Weinandy, a Capuchin Franciscan who is executive director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Doctrine. Those in the younger generation shouldn't 'have a huge amount of fear' either, he added."

"If the baptism is invalid, so are the other sacraments the person may have received, such as matrimony. 'If you are not validly baptized,' and thus not validly married, 'a person needs to get rebaptized and remarried,' explained Father Weinandy."

• Rome: Gender Neutral Baptismal Formulas Invalid
• U.S. Officials: Vatican Statement Clarifies Validity of Baptisms
• Congregation For the Doctrine of the Faith: Responses to Questions Proposed
  
• Are Riance and Woody Really Baptized?
• Feminist Formula Makes Baptism Invalid, Vatican Rules