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All Catholic commentary from September 2005
Farewell, Church of England?
"The whole institution is like a psychotic kindergarten." That's the Rev'd Peter Mullen, lamenting the state of his own Church of England in the New Criterion. Here's a glimpse of his experience at a clergy conference in Oxford: Then the Bishop came on and told us that at the laughably...
problem? what problem?
The long-promised apostolic visitation of seminaries is about to begin. Your Uncle Di is worried that it won't work. Others are worried that it will: The Vatican is set to inspect U.S. Catholic seminaries and theology schools for the first time in two decades, addressing issues key to the...
deeper underground
Our Olympic hosts put on another display of freedom of religion, Maoist style. More than 10,000 faithful from both the official and the underground Catholic Church gathered on August 27 at a church in Luojiang (near Fu'an, some 1,500 km from Beijing) to take part in the funeral of Mgr James...
endgame
[Dr. Bryant King] explained that management at the hospital decided to selectively withold food and water from patients. Doctors are being forced to decide who gets to live and who will starve to death. Grim reading from the NOLA Weblog about New Orleans hospitals, including first-hand accounts...
when is taking another's property not theft?
If you were in New Orleans today, in desperate circumstances, and it was impossible to buy food for your children, would it be sinful to take food from an abandoned house or store? Here's a paragraph from the Catechism: 2408: The seventh commandment forbids theft, that is, usurping...
Recreational Discussion Among Catholics?
I’ve been wondering lately whether there is any interest in recreational discussion among the supporters of CatholicCulture.org. Several years ago, when we went by the name of PetersNet, we sponsored discussion forums for members on a variety of Catholic topics, and a number of other Catholic web...
what Esau bought with his birthright
"The weakness of all utopias," said G.K. Chesterton, "is this: that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones." Kenneth Minogue asks whether the loss of the sense of sin has resulted in a shift...
Did we pay Al Capone's lawyers?
If you've reached the conclusion that no one could possibly be more ham-handed than the US bishops have been in responding to sex-abuse allegations, maybe it's time for you to visit the Diocese of Ferns, in Ireland. In Ferns, the complaints have been getting louder for several years now....
welcome to controlled conception
Down the ever more slippery slope. A Stanford technocrat envisions a world of cheerfully sterile women, coupling on impulse and reproducing on schedule: Carl Djerassi designed the first oral contraceptive 50 years ago, but now the "father of the pill" says conception -- not contraception -- is...
chewing the carpet
In his fervor to diss the just-deceased Rehnquist, Harvard Law School personality Alan Dershowitz lost the plot, as the transcript provided by James Taranto makes clear: And I think the Rehnquist court was never the Rehnquist court. He moved more toward the center as he became chief justice and...
to whom it may concern
Patrick Sweeney links to the NoGod Blog so we can see what the heathen are doing in the wake of Katrina. American Atheists recommend donating to the Red Cross, United Way, the Humane Society of the United States ("Our winged and four-legged friends need help, too!"), and Network for Good -- not...
The Roberts Squeeze
With Stakes Raised, Democrats Seek More Background on Nominee -- Boston Globe headline. More background? His high school civics exams? Depositions from the nuns who taught him the Apostles' Creed? Laryngoscopy photos? "Before the Senate acts on John Roberts's new nomination, we should know...
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Word from Washington is that Cardinal McCarrick told priests that his resignation has been declined by Pope Benedict, and he's likely to remain for another couple of years. Uncle Di's valet is removing all sharp objects from his desk. Probably a good...
sundered hearts
Who gets three-year-old Nigel, his biological or his psychological mum? They've grown apart. Australian courts are determining which end of the turkey baster constitutes chief-caregiverhood, while the child in question, presumably, is committing Andrew Sullivan's Virtually Normal to memory....
Bouyer
Carl Olson points to an interesting obituary of French theologian Louis Bouyer by Jean-Robert...
back to basics
"Is President Bush to blame for hurricane Katrina?" That's the question we've been asked in an internet poll. Unless the CIA has discovered a way to manufacture tropical storms, it's a foolish question. We can debate back and forth about how well the government-- at various levels--...
Scripture in the Church: Community and Authority
In my last column I explained the immense difficulties which plague Scriptural interpretation when the Bible is considered in a vacuum. So great are these difficulties that, with only the text to go by, it is impossible to know whether the Bible is even the inspired word of God. Thus when...
ecclesia de eucharistia
Former NCR editor Arthur Jones reminisces about old times. I was editor when Pope John Paul II made his first U.S. visit. With all bases covered, I told one photographer -- he was Jewish, I believe -- where he'd be in the best position to get the up-close facial I needed of the pope.The photog...
Feel the communion!
The American Catholic Church is an excrescence of the Old Catholic schism of the 19th century (bisexual camel swallowers who choked on the gnat of Pastor Aeternus). Today they've got impressively contemporary calluses on their doctrinal tonsils, as evidenced by St. Fechin's Ecumenical Apostolic...
condoms up the wazungu?
Douglas Sylva at The Fact Is says that "foreign AIDS advisors" are mis-representing and sabotaging Uganda's abstinence-based anti-AIDS program out of ideological motives: Abstinence and fidelity were responsible for the success in Uganda, and AIDS may now increase because Western institutions...
Ted, again
Katrina has landed the Dems with the most windfall political capital they've enjoyed since the day Monica Lewinsky claimed to have written the "talking points." Comfortable Catholic communicant Ted Kennedy is spending his bit in the sacred cause of abortion, by straining to transfer some of the...
the wrong man for the job
Back in June 2002, at the Dallas bishops' meeting, abuse victim Michael Bland delivered an "impact statement" to the assembly. Molested as a youth by a Servite priest, he entered the Servites himself, got ordained, eventually denounced his abuser and left the order and the priesthood. Following...
reprise
Father Mark's dogma-free wedding factory mentioned below (for fifty bucks extra he'll attend your reception) put me in mind of a favorite passage from John Updike's novel Roger's Version (1986), concerning the antics of students and faculty at Harvard Divinity School. And Ed Snea (two...
O'Brien on the Visitation
An article in the National Catholic Register reports on an interview with the coordinator of the Apostolic Visitation of seminaries, Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, in which he gives his views on the admission of homosexuals to seminaries. As such, O'Brien's opinions on the matter are of no special...
argument #631,544 against John Roberts
Not being incompetent, slothful, improvident, or unfortunate, he hasn't experienced the effects of incompetence, sloth, improvidence, or misfortune. Dare we trust such a man with the...
watch me act natural
Attagirl, Pia! Pia de Solenni exposes the bogus crisis of conscience prompting the FDA's Susan Wood to resign in a carefully stage-managed protest of the Plan B non-decision. If Wood is so committed to not playing politics, why is she being represented by the activist PR firm DDB Issues &...
renewal pays off
How many priestly ordinations did the Archdiocese of Dublin have this year? Zero. That's right, folks. This year was "the first in the history of the diocese," according to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, "that we have not had a priestly ordination." Of course we have to take into...
and baby makes three-point-five
More designer genes in the UK. UK scientists have won permission to create a human embryo that will have genetic material from two mothers. The Newcastle University team will transfer genetic material created when an egg and sperm fuse into another woman's egg. The groundbreaking work aims...
the anti-democracy caucus
"Today Tom Reilly threw the entire gay community in front of the bus at the altar of his political aspirations." That's Arline Isaacson of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, talking about the state's Attorney General. 'We are stunned and horrified by the cowardly nature of this...
the tolerance game
Late-night harassment calls. Rocks through the front window. Slashed tires. Anyone who's been on the front lines of the political battle on same-sex marriage knows that there is a very nasty edge to the gay-rights movement. So when a couple of gay activists promise to list the names and home...
Kissling versus Religious Progressives
Arch-pro-abort Frances Kissling has an extraordinarily interesting article posted on her CFFC site (click the "Conscience" link on the top bar, then on Kissling's "A Cautionary Tale"). It deserves a careful reading by pro-lifers, not only because she lays out some unexpected fault lines in the...
"Teacher, bid my government divide the inheritance with me."
And the multitude asked him: "What then shall we do?" And he answered them, "He who has two coats, lobby the government to set up a program for him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise." Or words to that effect. Compare Luke 3:11. Does a nation's government have a moral...
when the price is right
If you haven't already thrown out today's paper, open the entertainment section and count how many movie ads depict -- together, within the same montage -- a firearm and an incompletely-costumed young woman. The Weekend Arts section of this morning's New York Times has four. This core-sampling...
the party you wish to speak to is unavailable at this time
Touchstone's David Mills has some on-target words about in-yo-face literary atheism: And there is also the fact that atheism has its uses for any fallen human being. I've read enough about the lives of some of these writers to suspect that they would find real belief in God, or even facing the...
The Case of the Nimble Obispo
Argentinian Bishop Juan Carlos Maccarone resigned in mid-August after a video emerged showing his Excellency celebrating diversity with a companion described by the L.A. Times as a "23-year-old part-time cabbie, cellular phone salesman and money changer." Maccarone's excuse? He was framed. ...
Spokane Case Should Have No Effect on L.A.
Says who? The Archdiocese of Los...
spermless embryos are here
So long, dad. Scotland takes the next step (from the U.K. Telegraph): Human embryos have been created in Britain without using sperm for the first time. The "virgin conception" embryos, which mark a new way to grow a woman's cells and tissues for a vast range of treatments, were revealed by...
heads they win, tails we lose
First, the good news. A Catholic college, wonder of wonders, seems to remember its ecclesial and spiritual purpose to the extent of disinviting a Planned Parenthood rep from a three-day conference on science and life issues. Two panelists invited to attend an ethics conference at [Helena,...
let him be unto thee as an heathen man
I detect the faintest note of disappointment in Amy Welborn's reaction to Arthur Jones's latest. Worth a...
Says al Qaida: "No more Mr. Nice Guy."
"And this time, don't count on us demonstrating restraint or compassion," says the message said to be from al Qaida. We weren't counting on it. Not today. Not "this time" or any other...
ever to excel
OK, maybe Boston College doesn't score big with Ex Corde Ecclesiae fans, but when the Princeton Review speaks, you get action: After five years of being ranked as homophobic by the Princeton Review, Boston College is off the "Alternative lifestyle not an alternative (low acceptance of gay...
Spiritual direction with a dowsing rod
If you live near Regina, Saskatchewan, you might be interested in the unique offerings of the John Paul II Center, "the adult education and renewal facility for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina." On September 17, for a mere $35, you can hear Sr. Theresa Feist, OSU, talk on "Making the...
Snowed under in New Orleans
Disaster brings out the best and the worst in people. We have heard numerous stories of heroic generosity and perseverance by the souls of New Orleans, and then we read this: If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose. And at night I prayed to God to have mercy on my soul. Thus...
when a bishop must obey
Did you ever daydream about telling American bishops what to do, and having them obey you? Dream on. There's only one person on earth who can tell the US bishops what to do. No, I don't mean the Pope. They ignore him all the time. (Has Ex Corde Ecclesiae been implemented in your diocese? Are...
the confession of a non-compliant bishop
Bless me, Ms. Kettelkamp, for I am non-compliant. It has been one year since my last audit. I accuse myself of the following failures in my polices, procedures, and protocols: Last year I winked at the auditors and asked, “If you accept my check can we say that we did even though we...
Scripture and the Receptive Soul:
Reading the Bible Right
In my last two columns I attempted to demonstrate that Scripture retains its inherent dignity and usefulness for salvation only in the Church. Even within the Church, however, not all will read Scripture profitably. Some, as St. Peter warns, will twist it to their own destruction (2 Pet 3:16). To...
déja vu
Hearkening back to the Bork confirmation hearings of 1987, many of us will remember the spectacle of Senator Kennedy -- when it was his turn to conduct the interrogation -- squinting at the notes passed to him by his young staffers and stumbling through technical legal questions he obviously...
the feminist connection at the US bishops' conference
A few days ago I mentioned the no-nonsense edit handed down by Teresa Kettelkamp, the executive director of the USCCB Office of Child and Youth Protection, who tells all American bishops what they must do-- and do it now! Teresa Kettelkamp, who came to the USCCB from the Illinois State Police,...
Oh, good!
Just in time, the US bishops' conference has issued a statement on hurricane Katrina. They're against it. They've appointed a committee. Who'd have...
in Allah's name we pray
At Catholic University, a Catholic archbishop ends a public meeting this way: In the name of Allah, the merciful and compassionate God, we pray. Amen. It isn't the first time, apparently. Earlier in his remarks, Cardinal McCarrick told his distinguished guest: "I asked Allah, the...
why stop with the seminaries?
A homosexual priest (who asked the Chicago Sun Times not to disclose his identity) thinks it's a terrible mistake to investigate American seminaries for evidence of homosexual influence. Why stop at seminaries? Why not deacons, priests, bishops, archbishops and cardinals? Are they going to be...
Feedback on Recreational Discussion
We’ve received 102 responses so far on the question I raised recently about whether CatholicCulture.org should sponsor recreational discussion forums. These responses were uniformly articulate and often profound. I benefited considerably from the exchange. In this first comment, however, I will...
what Roberts might have said
Ace Catholic baiter, Senator Charles Schumer, in one of many moments of exasperation during his interrogation of Judge John Roberts, found no solace in metaphor: SCHUMER: You agree we should be finding out your philosophy and method of legal reasoning, modesty, stability, but when we try to...
who writes your stuff?
Thus Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, speaking September 12 in Lyons at an interfaith conference sponsored by the St. Egidio community: We have now, as perhaps never before in my lifetime, the chance to build a spiritual humanism of peace in which all our religions can see the best of...
Sometimes you catch them when they are talking about something else
Buried in this article about the Vatican evaluation of seminaries, you will find this intruiguing admission from Rev. James Wehner, rector of St. Paul Seminary in East Carnegie; an admission not usually heard when the subject is women's ordination or church attendance: "Eighty percent of the...
straw men in science class
George Johnson is easily frightened. Assigned to review a book by the Dalai Lama for the New York Times, Johnson worried about the subtitle: "The Convergence of Science and Spirituality." Spirituality is about the ineffable and unprovable, science about the physical world of demonstrable...
Dual Parenting Action
There are a lot of social reasons why well-constructed families are important to our society. Research shows that poverty rates and criminal behavior among children in families with unmarried parents are likely to grow astronomically. However, in the United States federal and state governments are...
polemics, anyone?
America magazine wants to build up a culture of life. Nuanced, naturally. And let's not be "polemical" about it, the America editorial exhorts us. Other people (you know, those unsubtle pro-lifers) might resort to "sloganeering and sound bites," but not Jesuit magazine editors. To be fair,...
one year ago today
Trying to call up yesterday's CWN headlines, I accidentally reached the stories from this date last year, and guess what I found: Cardinal Sodano was at the UN, endorsing a big new campaign to eliminate world poverty. But wait, you might say: Didn't Cardinal Sodano go to the UN to endorse a...
speed-reading the Word of God
In the beginning... Amen. There it is: Revelation. The Bible, from beginning to end. Of course I've left out a few details. If you want to explore the ellipsis-- if you feel the need for a slightly expanded version of the Sacred Scripture, an Anglican divine has just the book for...
tainted money
One Mexican bishop evidently takes George Washington Carver's attitude toward tainted money. 'Taint enough of...
Philadelphia story
Where have we heard this before? In a lengthy, combative answer to a scathing grand-jury report, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia argues that the criticism of its response to clerical abuse is unfair, because: only a small percentage of priests molested children sexual abuse was a problem in...
If this is Thursday, it must be...
"To protect themselves from negative publicity or expensive lawsuits while keeping abusive priests active the cardinals and their aides hid the priests' crimes from parishioners, police and the general public," the prosecutor reported. "Archdiocese leaders have endangered and harmed children...
better late...
Mark this one down for the archives. A staff official of the US bishops' conference has criticized Sen. Ted Kennedy by...
a new meaning of "pro-choice"
The LA Times has a fascinating commentary on the abortion issue by David Gelernter. He believes abortion should be legal, but acknowledges that the Supreme Cour trampled on democratic process in Roe v. Wade, in "one of the grossest power grabs American democracy ever faced." He explains: "The...
bombing the ban
"I feel like a Jew in Berlin in the 1930's," said a 48-year-old gay priest who has spent 18 years in a religious order. He said he was considering donning a pink triangle -- the symbol used by the Nazis -- and getting heterosexual priests and members of the laity to wear the triangles as a...
you can sleep a bit easier tonight
World peace. International development. Migration. Foreign Aid. International debt. Disaster relief. Yup; our bishops (God bless them) covered all the bases. There are reports that they even talked about religious affairs....
another resignation in Boston?
There's a big story here, and we haven't heard half of it. If the Boston Herald report is accurate, Father Walter Cuenin is resigning as pastor-- presumably under heavy pressure from the Archdiocese of Boston. The interesting question is why this didn't happen long, long ago. For years...
no reason to worry, folks
On September 9, in the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, we read this: Parishioners in the Archdiocese need have no fear that their parish churches, schools and athletic facilities will be taken from them and sold to compensate victims. In the first place, according to Cardinal...
Well he said yes, didn't he?
Jasper, Indiana. A suspended Roman Catholic priest accused of molesting a mentally disabled 19-year-old man told police the contact was consensual, according to court records obtained before a judge issued a gag order in the case. Consensual. I guess it's all right then. What's important...
cadaveric fetal tissue -- and you
Princeton's Professor Robbie George has an article in the Weekly Standard in which he hits us with some alarming news on how close "fetal farming" is to becoming reality: Up to now, embryonic stem cell advocates have claimed that they are only interested in stem cells harvested from embryos at...
taking money under false premises
Father Walter Cuenin has been forced to resign his parish assignment, but he has not lost his public-relations capacity. Both the Boston Globe and the rival Herald offer entirely sympathetic coverage for a pastor who was evidently caught taking thousands of dollars from his parish. (Ah, but...
Ex Oprah Operata?
The Church one of its ministers termed a psychotic kindergarten has stabbed itself with yet another plastic picnic fork in its desperate bid for attention. This time it's a chap who, at age 33, got surgically reconfigured from Colin to Sarah and was ordained a priest. The usual objections were...
assurances
The New York Times delivers another catechetical instruction on the formation of the gay sub-culture in the priesthood: Homosexual men are socialized differently," he (a seminarian) said . "We have spent our whole lives living and working with other men. We've been on the same school teams,...
Pointing, guessing, and self-reporting
Bishop George H. Niederauer of Salt Lake City wonders how seminaries could enforce a policy that bars homosexual men. Absent self-reporting, the bishop questions how a seminary determines that a person is homosexual. "What are you going to do? Look and guess?" The bishop has a point....
women might get ideas
Wait! Wait! Wait! You're getting it all wrong! We enlisted millions of women as combat troops in the Sexual Revolution through a brilliant recruiting campaign. We talked about "equality" and "empowerment" and "liberation," when the real goal was to make more women available to satisfy men's...
knight to queen's bishop four. check?
St. Louis's Aquinas Institute has a reputation as a notoriously gay-friendly theological seminary and, as it happens, is among the first to undergo the scrutiny of the Apostolic Visitation. Its Professor of Moral Theology Fr. Charles Bouchard, O.P., attempts to steal a march on the inspectors by...
a clear strong voice for strong clear clarity
Father Paul Lininger, OFM Conv, executive director for the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, writes to reassure the heads of American men's religious orders that he is hard at work, responding to the news that the Vatican might say that homosexuals don't belong in seminaries. It is our...
Religion 101: Why All Faiths Are Not the Same
Within a week in mid-August I received several rather aggressive emails which made strong claims about God. For example, one warned against joining the conspiracy of Pope Benedict XVI to cover up the third secret of Fatima, which was the revelation that “Mary is God.” Another objected to the...
so who decides?
Pro-abort Amy Sullivan has any interesting article in the Boston Globe explaining how NARAL and NOW imperil the future of abortion by harming the electability of Democrats. I'd like to pick up on one phrase mentioned in passing: The issue, for people like me, isn't certitude -- we don't...
the girls that done gone and went
I've decided to stop cooking and let the kids nuke potpies for dinner.You go, girl!I made my husband clean the whole house.You go, girl!I stopped dating losers and got myself inseminated.You go, girl -- and here's a groundbreaking study to prove you're doing the little shaver a world of...
the episcopal perspective
Perhaps a little historical background will help put some recent controversies in a more balanced perspective. In an e-mail of six years past, the Very Reverend Reginald M. Cawcutt, Auxiliary Bishop (now emeritus) of Cape Town, South Africa, calmly discusses the prospect of a Vatican Instruction...
20,000 leagues under the Summa
Yesterday was the World Day of Tourism. And you were just sitting at home? Shame on you! Still, if you were reading a good book-- say, something by Jules Verne-- then all is not lost. Because as the theme for the World Day of Tourism (how come everything has to have a theme these days?), the...
winging it
Rich Leonardi lists the things he learned at a "First Reconciliation Parents' Meeting" at his Archdiocese of Cincinnati parish, all courtesy of the parish Director of Religious Education: 1. Penance was "not a separate sacrament" during the NT era. 2. Priests are "ordained by the people." 3....
true love
Bishop McManus of the Worcester Diocese has leaned into a journalistic thrashing that we can hope he will survive. The press is giving decidedly unsympathetic description of his sermons at a Westborough MA parish last weekend, that stated in no uncertain terms that he was not about to flee...
a highly scientific survey
Obtuseness, or academic harlotry? Either way it's not a compliment. The NCR reports on the results of a survey of Catholic beliefs "performed by the research team of William V. D'Antonio, Dean Hoge, James Davidson and Mary Gautier," which it claims was "funded by the Louisville Institute, by a...
old things and new
Released during last summer's presidential campaign, the cartoon Hydra above is compounded of Justices Antonin Scalia, William Rehnquist, and an eerily Polynesian version of Clarence Thomas. Appearances to the contrary, it did not issue from the Ku Klux Klan, or the Aryan Nation, or the...
Katrina, Kennedy and School Vouchers
Last week Senator Edward Kennedy killed a proposal by President Bush which would have given victims of Hurricane Katrina up to $7,500 per student to use in the schools of their choice. The proposal was significant because 25% of students in the region affected by Katrina attend private schools,...
progress
Pittsburgh priests -- thinking Catholics -- have been brainstorming about the clergy crisis and come up with some innovative,"outside the box" ideas for RENEWAL: "Our feelings [center?] around the need to bring discussion about optional celibacy, and the possibility of ordaining married men to...
how bishops are made
Kudos to Mark Mossa, for noticing this gem in the Code of Canon Law (332 §1): If he does not have the episcopal character, he is immediately to be ordained Bishop. As Mossa explains, Canon 332 treats of the election of a Pope, and stipulates that, in the case where the man elected is not...
Condition Red
The New York Times's Laurie Goodstein is reporting that leaders of U.S. men's religious orders plan to travel to Rome to protest the Doomsday Doc: Responding to reports that the Vatican may be close to releasing a directive to exclude most gay candidates from entering the priesthood, leaders of...
a grim prediction
The 5th plenary meeting of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee will be held in Beijing October 8- 11, the AsiaNews service reports. Why do I mention this? Because very often, right before an important meeting of Communist Party officials, there is a round-up of dissidents,...
1 + 1 = ??
For your weekend homework assignment, explain why this is not likely to happen in your community. Keep in mind that, as you write, Christian activists in Massachusets will be circulating a petition to amend that state's constitution, so that the document would define marriage explicitly as a...
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