“I have a theory that all addiction is, at bottom, a search for God. Think about it: the blackout–a crude form of mystical union; the willingness to sacrifice reputation, family, money, health, one’s very life–a twisted martyrdom. Sometimes I think anyone as drawn as I am to suffering would have to become a Catholic,” King writes.
“Maybe God uses even our illnesses, our compulsions, the defects we can’t fix no matter how hard we try, for the greater good. As for the wounds other people inflict upon us–maybe he uses those most of all.”
King reminds us that “when Christ appeared to his disciples after the Resurrection, he still bore the wounds. One of the things this seems to say is that our suffering counts.”
King articulated the spiritual dimenson of addiction perfectly.
I am still in a quantry if Catholics are drawn to suffering or if we are just accustomed to it; thanks to ever-present crucifixes, tales of saints meeting grusome ends with praise, not screams; and scary stories of the eternal torment and pain of Hell or Purgatory if saving grace slips through our fingers.
Suffering can make us compassionate, but it can also make us cruel and manipulative. Some sufferers use their suffering to lash out at the world and cause pain to other people, especially those close to them.
I am intrigued by her statement that Christ’s wounds survived the Resurrection. Perhaps our wounds help define who we are, both in this world and the next. What comes in through them, as well as what goes out of us.
Manila Archbishop Caudencio Cardinal Rosales scolded members of one parish for allowing gay men dressed as female saints and queens to participate in the Santacruzan processional.
He added the incident prompted him to issue a letter saying that any parish or chapel that will use gays in a procession honoring the Virgin Mary will not be allowed to have Mass.
The Philippines observes the Flores de Mayo festival every May. The highlight of the celebration is the Santacruzan, a procession that features beautifully dressed young women portraying queens and women religious figures from the past.
Santacruzan recalls the search for the Holy Cross by Queen Helena and her newly converted son Emperor Constantine the Great. They found it in Jerusalem and brought it to Rome to joyous thanksgiving.
“We should keep sacred what is sacred,” Cardinal Rosales said as he admonished parishes now to allow gay men to play Saint Helena and other female roles traditionally given to local beauty queens.
“The procession is religious. (But) what the parishes do is organize a parade. That’s an insult to the Blessed Mother. Instead of pious young women, gay men are paraded, which makes (the procession) ridiculous,” he added.
Danton Remoto, a professor at Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University, and head of the LGBT rights group, Ang Ladlad, said many gay participants were low-income people who had spent for expensive gowns they would wear in the procession “out of the goodness and love in their hearts for the Virgin Mary.”
Remoto went on to say “In the eyes of God, everyone is equal. Some of these gay men have saved a lot of money for their gowns and they were doing it because they believed in the Virgin Mary. They need understanding, not condemnation.” “There is really no intention to malign the Catholic Church,” he added.
Cardinal Rosales dismissed the charges of discrimination against individuals with “homosexual inclinations.” “I’m not angry at gay men. But, I am against what they’re actually doing.”
What’s that, I wonder? Having sex with each other, or dressing up as the Virgin Mary and St. Helena and parading down the main street? The Cardinal wasn’t specific about what he was against.
I have mixed feelings about cross-dressing gay men participating in the procession:
Can’t we have religious events in which the leading female roles are limited to women? It seems to me to be arrogant and disrespectful for these men to assume women should step aside for them to participate–especially if it is to turn a religious procession into a drag show.
However, I also feel that if these men are compelled by faith to witness to the roles these female figures played in their religion, then I feel they should be welcomed to participate as such.
The Most Rev. Geoffrey James Robinson, former Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, Australia, will be making a stop near my home during his upcoming book tour. I want to go meet him, buy the book, shake his hand and thank him. I also want to be in the presence of someone whose faith is so important–so pure and strong–that they will face anything to proclaim it. To me, that will be the closest I’ll probably ever get to someone who is like the old-time saints.
Bishop Robinson headed the Australian bishops’ committee that developed guidelines and procedures for dealing with clergy sex abuse. He retired in 2004 when, he said, the burden of his “profound reservations” about the church he loved became too strong to be ignored. Actually, what he found, and the response of the church to the sex abuse crisis, made him sick.
In November 2007 he emerged from retirement to promote his new book, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus Christ,” and to demand a better church.
Robinson says the church–especially the hierarchy in Rome–must tackle the twin problems of sex abuse and power.
In the book, he writes that the church has not confronted the sex abuse crisis; it’s simply managing it. He blames the late John Paul II, in particular, for failing to exercise the leadership demanded by the sex abuse crisis, allowing it instead to ravage the church.
He criticizes the church’s teaching on sex and sexuality, which are based on offences against God, as outmoded and inadequate. He suggests a sexuality morality based on human relationships.
Bishop Robinson told the National Catholic Reporter that he sees a fractured church with a major division between the “proclaimers of certainties and the seekers after truth,” with the proclaimers of certainties seeming to be in the favored position.
“This has left many people feeling a sense of alienation, of being marginalized, of no longer quite belonging to the church that had given them much of their sense of belonging, meaning and direction throughout their lives.”
“In writing the book I became aware that I was writing a book for these people, that I was trying to tell them that there is a church for them and that it is fully in accord with the mind of Jesus. I was telling them that there are basic certainties, but there is also abundant room for search, for taking personal responsibility and growing through that process to become all we are capable of being, all God wants us to be.”
“I became aware that it was important for many that there should be a bishop saying these things. At moments I felt that the needs of these many people were so great that it is perhaps true that I have never been more of a shepherd. I have never been more justified in carrying around a pastoral staff than I have in this.”
25 years before he was named bishop of Belleville in southern Illinois, Fr. Edward K. Braxton wrote a book titled The Wisdom Community: A Framework and a Program for Renewing Communication and Understanding Between Priests, Bishops, Theologians and the People in the Pews.
Bishop Braxton needs to sit down and reread his book. Right now.
The pastoral crisis in Belleville, where communication has broken down during the three years of Braxton’s leadership, is such that on April 17, the third day of Pope Benedict XVI’s U.S. visit, a quarter-page ad appeared in USA Today asking the pope to remove Braxton. The ad was written and paid for by Frank S. Ladner, 81, a Catholic philanthropist from Lawrenceville, Illinois.
A few weeks earlier, 46 Belleville priests, representing about half of the active diocesan priests, took the unusual step of signing a letter of no-confidence, urging Braxton to resign.
In the March 14th statement, the priests said that “because of the bishops lack of cooperation, consultation, accountability and transparency, it is the judgement of a great number of the presbyterate that he has lost his moral authority to lead and govern our diocese.”
In February the regional superior of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, an order that has served in Belleville for 138 years, wrote to the papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, urging him to “use all the power of your office to create a moment of change.” Citing “an unraveling of both trust and hope,” Sr. Jen Renz, the regional superior, said, “The climate of secrecy that surrounds committee meetings and actions within the diocese must end.”
In his defense, it appears Bishop Braxton wasn’t welcome in Belleville. Appointed by a dying Pope John Paul II, there was no consultation of anyone in the diocese, so there was a pot of resentment from the start. It would have taken someone with considerable people skills to overcome this rocky beginning, and Braxton doesn’t appear to have a lot of political or management smarts.
He has been accused of being monarchial. This could be just a slap by detractors. However, one small action seems to illustrate the point very well. 
Kelly Casey of Belleville noted that Braxton brought the old, ornate president’s chair out of the cathedral museum when he came, reinstalled it in the sanctuary and raised its height twice to better express his episcopal dignity. It’s the sort of thing that turns people off, said Casey.
Ann Hartner, a leader of FOSIL (Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity), a church reform group critical of Braxton, said she hoped the priests’ bold action would inspire priests in other dioceses to take action against tyrannical bishops. “In a sense, we hope Braxton stays,” she said. “He’s empowered us to take ownership.”
The Catholic church, if nothing else, is a believer in fresh starts. One is needed in Belleville.
There was a major push this past Lent for people to go to confession, now called the milder, “Sacrament of Reconciliation.” I’m not sure how many people followed through on this appeal, since the concepts of sin and priestly authority to forgive it have lost so much credibility in the last four decades, especially from the sex abuse crisis of the 90s, and the uncovering of the hypocrisy of so many influential religious figures.
In a survey released on April 13th by CARA, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, only 2% of Catholics said they participate in the Sacrament of Reconciliation once a month or more; and 45% say they never make a sacramental confession. 62% of Catholics agree “somewhat” or “strongly” with the statement, “I can be a good Catholic without celebrating the sacrament of reconciliation at least once a year.”
One of the reasons I hesitated in going to confession is that I wondered if the promotion of this sacrament now was primarily a push to restore power and authority to priests. The other is that I was unsure of the sacrament itself–surely it can’t be the same recital of mortal and venial sins we did as kids. It had to be deeper, more adult–an event, a circumstance of life, belief or time we kept silent in the face of abuse or injustice that makes us feel alone and unloved, or ashamed, or sad or angry. But how to approach this reconciliation was never articulated.
If people think they have to confess using birth control, or getting a divorce and remarrying, or making love with a member of their own sex within a commited relationship or without; then the light on the confessional door will remain off. People are not going to give up loving relationships or sex. These two things are the barriers for many Catholics to enter a confessional–because they cannot reconcile themselves to living without love, and human warmth and intimacy.
Bishop George Lucas of Springfield, Illinois authored a pastoral letter on the sacrament of reconciliation that I found to be gentle and sincere. I appreciated him touching directly on the the hurts and estrangement that sex abuse victims, women who have had abortions, divorced and remarried people, women who feel barred from priestly ministry, and what gay and lesbian Catholics, hear and feel from their church.
His is not a positive message of hope by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a hand of welcome. We don’t have to accept what he has to say as truth, or strive for change less, but I believe when a hand is extended in a genuine wish for contact, we should take the risk and extend ours, too. 
The entire pastoral letter is worth reading. His specific comments on gay and lesbian Catholics follow:
“Homosexual persons may feel that there is no place for them in the Catholic Church. Church teaching about homosexual orientation and practices may seem harsh, particularly as voices in modern culture wrongly portray those teachings as designed to deprive persons of their rights. I want any homosexual person to know that the Catholic Church supports your human dignity, wants to accept you as a full member and offers you the same share in the life of God’s grace enjoyed by all the baptised.”
“It is my responsbility to affirm the teaching of Jesus that calls each of us to live chastely, according to our state in life. The call to chaste living is challenging for many in our culture. It can be a particular challenge for persons with a homosexual orientation who cannot look forward to a chaste sexual partnership within the context of married life.”
“This challenge is not experienced only within the Catholic community. We see other Christian communities suffering fracture because of the struggle to be true to Gospel teaching, to preserve the traditional teaching of God’s design for marriage and to respect the true human rights of all. In the face of these challenges, I offer my prayful acceptance and support to homosexual persons who wish to live as full members of the church. I offer my encouragment as well to count on the grace of God to sustain your desire to come to full stature in Christ.”
Young Women & Catholicism is a blog by two young Catholic women at Harvard Divinity School “who think women our age (18-35) have something important to say about Catholicism.”
“Our hope is that women from a range of perspectives and backgrounds will grapple with questions about Catholic identity in their writing–growing up Catholic, racial and ethnic identity intertwined with Catholic identity, Catholic relationship with the body, Catholic feminism, Catholic activism, coming out in Catholicism, Catholic-inspired art.”
I hope their “anthology of memoirs” ultimately helps them to build a good, strong network of future theologians, writers, activists, parish leaders; and maybe even someday, women priests.
It isn’t necessary for members of this group to be friends or like everyone the same, but treat each other as respected colleagues, as individual women who are bringing their own unique contribution to Catholic faith, thought and practice to the world.
I also pray that unlike some Catholic womens’ groups I have been involved with, the members can challenge one another: hold differing opinions, speak passionately, and be forgiven for a heated word or indiscretion. In other words, welcome and value diversity.
“From today on, my cathedral will be the country,” Fernando Lugo declared when he resigned from the priesthood in December 2006. The Vatican, irritated by the public gesture, says Lugo remains a priest and is barred by canon law from seeking public office.
But this former bishop ran for the office of president of Paraguay. And won. His slogan: “Lugo has heart.” His personal warmth and religious background stirred hope in many Paraguayans seeking change.
The election last Sunday was only the 4th time that Paraguayans have gone to the polls to elect a president since the fall of the dictator Alfredo Stroessner in 1989. Stroessner ruled Paraguay, a country of seven million people, for almost 35 years, leaving a legacy of corruption and one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere.
The Colorado Party, which supported Stroessner and ran a woman candidate against Lugo, had been in power longer than any other political party in the world - almost 60 years.
The 56-year-old Lugo has never held elective office, but he comes from a middle-class family of political activists. Three of his brothers were tortured during the Stroessner dictatorship for being political activists.
Supporters say Lugo radiates a priest-like sense of honesty. He vows to fight corruption, impose long-delayed agrarian reform to benefit the landless and renegotiate hydroelectric deals with neighboring Brazil and Argentina to fund education and other neglected social needs.
Lugo refused to be characterized as a leftist or anything other than a deeply religious crusader who fights for the little guy. He takes inspiration from liberation theology, a movement championing the downtrodden but assailed by the Vatican for Marxist influences.
“I have taken a preferential option for the poor, and many interpret that as meaning I am a leftist,” Lugo said. “But I believe I am in the center. My beliefs are against confrontation and violence.”
Lugo did stints as a schoolteacher and missionary before becoming a rural bishop known for both his political activism and conciliatory skills. He says he opted to seek office after more than 100,000 people signed a petition urging him to run. On the campaign trail, he still sports his priestly sandals.
Lugo says he remains a devout Catholic who takes Communion each Sunday and finds succor in his faith. “The church has shown me how the poor live in this country. That inspires me to work on behalf of this class that is so demeaned, so abandoned, so forgotten.”
I’m happy for Paraguay, but I wish he was running for president in the U.S. He has the right stuff - priorities and humanity.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy hasn’t acted on the nomination of Federal District Judge Robert Conrad of Charlotte, NC, to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. President Bush nominated Conrad for the position on July 17, 2007. 
In 1999, when Conrad was a prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Western North Carolina, he went after a group of nuns who opposed the death penalty. In a letter to the editor printed in the Catholic Dossier, he referred to Sister Helen Prejean as a “church-hating nun” and said her book was merely “liberal drivel.”
Conrad attacked Planned Parenthood in a Charlotte Observer Op-Ed titled “Planned Parenthood: A Radical, Pro-Abortion Fringe Group.” In the article he claimed “Planned Parenthood knowingly kills unborn babies, not fetuses, as a method of ‘post-conception’ contraception, and to them that’s OK.”
“His statements make me wonder,” Leahy said, “whether any person going before Judge Conrad in a case involving reproductive rights, or indeed any issues relating to personal privacy, will feel their arguments have been fairly heard.”
Sen. Leahy and Judge Conrad are both Catholic.
Dan Barry is a reporter for the NY Times. His regular columns included “About New York” and “This Land.” His book, Pull Me Up, is a memoir of growing up an an Irish-American family in Long Island, and his struggle as an adult with cancer.
Barry wrote a wonderful article for the Times that appeared just before Pope Benedict’s visit. “The View from My Pew” beautifully articulates what many American Catholics feel about their faith and themselves. I especially loved his description of himself as “the classic stumbling, grumbling, trying-to-sort-it-all-out American Catholic.”
Sister Jeannine Gramick of New Ways Ministry once told me the story about a chance meeting with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger during a flight to Germany. He had an empty seat next to his, and Sr. Jeannine, ever bold and resourceful, seized the opportunity and sat down next to him. She introduced herself, and he said with a smile and twinkle in his eye, “Oh, sister, I have known you for 20 years.” “I’m sure he was referring,” Jeannine said, “to the length of time my file in the Vatican had been accumulating.”
Jeannine was surprised by the man. He was gracious and gentle-spoken, and listened to whay she had to say. He asked questions. But Jeannine felt as she was speaking to him that Cardinal Ratzinger had already made up his mind about lesbian and gay Catholics and ministry to us. He wasn’t open to change about what he believed to be true and necessary.
In an April 17, 2008 article in Newsday, Sr. Jeannine told senior editor Carol Eisenberg that her impression of Pope Benedict is that “he comes from a worldview that sees truth as fixed and unchanging, and nothing you can say or do will change that truth.”
“The world that he and other members of the Vatican most fear is change. They cannot accept a dynamic worldview that sees truth as something we search for and something the Spirit is constantly revealing to us if we would just open our hearts and minds.”
Cardinal Ratzinger as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith–the Vatican’s chief theological enforcer–had some pretty fixed ideas on how to handle dissent and alternative ways of thinking. He cracked down.
Much of the debate on homosexuality and women’s ordination became “secular” because discussion and theological exploration and exchange wasn’t permitted in church venues. It’s ironic the Vatican decries a secularization it helped to create!
The discussion of gay and lesbian issues in the Church has always been faith-based. Some Catholics hear “Church teaching” as the starting and ending point of this topic. Other groups of Catholics focus more on Jesus’ example of challenge to religious authorities.
I guess if I had five minutes with Pope Benedict, I would ask him–as a scholar–does he believe in the limit of knowledge? What is the relationship between faith and knowledge? And then, with my minute or two left, I would ask him–as a Catholic–does he believe the Holy Spirit works in the mystery of the human heart?
