Posted in May, 2008
All the women that have been ordained as priests in the Roman Catholic Church were excommunicated this week, along with the bishops who ordained them. The general decree “On the Delict of Attempted Sacred Ordination of a Woman” was published on May 30, 2008 on the front page of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. It states that the decree “comes into force immediately.”
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by an American, Cardinal William Levada, 71, has decisively decreed the ordination of women is invalid, and affirms that “he who shall have attempted to confirm holy orders on a woman, as well as the woman who may have attempted to receive Holy Orders, incurs a ‘latae sententiae’ excommunication,’ that is, an automatic excommunication.
In an interview with Vatican Radio, Archbishop Angelo Amato said the reason for the text is the existence of instances of the ordination of women in some regions of the world. The decree underlines that the ordination of women to the priesthood is invalid or null, and that “only baptized men can be ordained validly.”
The Church reaffirms this exclusively for a “unique fundamental reason,” the archbishop explained. “The Church does not feel authorized to change the will of its founder, Jesus Christ.”
In 1994, Pope John Paul II issued the apostolic letter, On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone,” in which he stated that the priesthood “has in the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone.” He added, “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgement is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”
“I think the reason they’re doing this,” said Rev. Tom Reese of the Woodstock Theological Center of Georgetown University, “is that they’ve realized there is more and more support among Catholics for ordaining women.”
The news just depresses me. The Church can change its stance on slavery, the environment, Jews, the position of the earth and the sun, indigenous people, the welfare of working people and other issues, but won’t budge on priesthood. I’m not sure how they can argue the same rationale, and change some things but not others.
When I hear news like that, faith has to sustain my relationship with my church since logic and emotion cannot.
The week brought more bad news on excommunications with the decision by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith confirming a December 15, 2005 declaration from the St. Louis archbishop that the board of directors of the St. Stanislaus Kostka Corporation and the priest they hired are excommunicated. The priest involved is Father Marek Bozek.
However it evolved and ended up, the dispute began with the issues of accountability of money and property. The laity wanted a voice in decision-making. The priest stood up for his parishioners and supported them in their concerns with the Archdiocese.
It doesn’t appear to me the Archdiocese of St. Louis made a good faith attempt to sit down with the parish leadership and try to work things out. Instead, there was a leaden response, then emotions and rhetoric got out of control, the Archdiocese responded with threats, and the worst happened - a separation, a “schism.”
I feel for all my fellow Catholics who were excommunicated this week. I will remember them every week by receiving communion for them.
I also feel for whatever pain was in the hearts of Cardinal Levada and Archbishop Burke. I hope that pain stays with them, to eventually inspire some future reflection and compassion. I will remember them in my prayers as well.
Two best-selling authors have accused the Vatican of blacklisting them in Italy after they discovered secret documents that suggest a 17th century pope had funded the Protestant hero William III (William of Orange).
Rita Monaldi and her husband, Francesco Sorti, have sold more than a million copies of their historical novel Imprimatur. The novel tells the story of Atto Melani, an Italian castrato, probable lover of nobleman Mattias de’Medici, and spy at the court of King Louis XIV of France.
Imprimatur was dropped by its Italian publisher, Mondadori, despite reaching No. 4 on the bestseller list on its release in 2002. Mondadori decided not to reprint the book because of pressure from the Vatican, Sorti said.
Mondadori, which is owned by media magnate and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, refused to comment.
The authors said they found documents from a papal envoy discussing the “large sums” that William III owed Pope Innocent XI. Documents from Innocent’s family records show the Holy See sent 150,000 scudi (about $7.5 million today) to William via an intermediary.
“When we found the documents we had already started to write the book, but we decided to include the discovery as part of the storyline,” Monaldi said.
The documents appear to indicate that Pope Innocent XI bankrolled William of Orange in order to help him defeat the French under Louis XIV, whom he hated. Innocent stood by as Catholic king, James II of England as overthrown. He did nothing to aid him because of James’ support of Louis XIV in matters of collecting revenues from church properties.
With James II gone, England was firmly established as a protestant nation; and the Catholics in Ireland were dispossessed and eventually descimated by protestant overlords.
The revelation by the book that Innocent XI supported a heretic and enemy of the church to carry out a personal vendetta–and to collect the debt of his family’s money–embarassed the Vatican and derailed his case for canonization once again.
Pope Benedict sent a message of freedom to participants at the 97th “Deutscher Katholikentag.” This event, organized by German laity, gathered some 500,000 people in Osnabruck, Germany this past week.
Commenting on the theme chosen for the meeting - “He brought me out into a broad place,” a line from Psalm 18 - Benedict wrote that “no small number of people today…are afraid the faith may limit their lives, that they may be constrained in the web of the Church’s commitments and teachings, and that they will no longer be free to move in the ‘broad space’ of modern life and thought.” He went on to add: “…only when our lives have reached the heart of God will they have found that ‘broad space’ for which we were created. A life without God does not become freer and broader. Human beings are destined for the infinite.”
There is an echo of his words in Dorothy Day’s spiritual autobiography, The Long Loneliness. We get an immediate impression of the peace and happiness that preceded her conversion to Catholicism:
“I have been passing through some years of fret and strife, beauty and ugliness, days and even weeks of sadness and despair, but seldom has there been the quiet beauty and happiness I have now. I thought all those years I had freedom, but now I feel that I had neither real freedom nor even a sense of freedom.”
I think Benedict and Day are both right: we will find true freedom in scripture, within the sacraments and in God. But how do you find a way to freedom–that is, discerning the will of God for you and living it every day? What “broad place” are we being welcomed into?
Thomas Merton’s prayer - “Don’t Know Where I’m Going” comforts and strengthens me in that discernment:
“My Lord, God, I have no idea where I am going
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But, I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always,
though I may seem to be lost in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
My pastor said something very wise and comforting about God’s will in one of his sermons. He said: if God wants us to do something other than what we’re doing, He’ll let us know, like He did to St. Paul.
John O’Donohue was an Irish poet, author and Catholic scholar who lived in the solitude of a cottage in the west of Ireland and spoke Gaelic as his daily language. His acclaimed writings reveal an original thinker rooted in a blend of Irish heritage, German philosophy, western theology, and an intimate relationship with the ancient, luminous landscape of his home.
He spoke of mystery, wildness, our human yearning for “home,” and our sense of exile from the denuded, soulless, and empty landscapes of our time. He often returned to the scouring experience of loss, which he believed paradoxically opened us to growth.
For 19 years he served as a parish priest in the west of Ireland, but always felt the urge to write, as well as a mounting tension between Irish Catholicism’s traditional stance and his own liberal position. In a radio interview long after leaving the priesthood, he spoke of ministering to people in the parish: “I was trying to refine their fingers…so that they could undo so much of the false netting crippling their own spirits.”
With degrees in philosophy and English literature, and a Ph.D. in philosophical theology from the University of Tubingen in Germany, O’Donohue was one of the most articulate voices of living Celtic Christianity and wisdom, and the beauty of Christian mysticism.
He is the author of two collections of poetry, Echoes of Memory and Conamara Blues; and several books, including the international bestsellers Anam Cara (Soul Friend) and Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Yearning to Belong.
“This hunger to belong is the echo and reverberation of your invisible and eternal heritage. You are from somewhere else, where you were known, embraced and sheltered. This is also the secret root from which all longing grows. Something in you knows, perhaps remembers, that eternal belonging liberates longing into its surest and most potent creativity.”
As many as 29 parishes in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis have used lay preachers at Mass during the past 25 years. In January, however, Archbishop Harry Flynn instructed pastors to discontinue the practice. He gave his retirement date of May 2, 2008 as the time by which parishes should develop a “pastoral plan” to end lay preaching at Mass.
In his January letter to pastors, Archbishop Flynn referenced the 2004 Vatican instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum, which called eucharistic lay preaching - a non-ordained person reflecting on the Gospel reading at the place in Mass usually reserved for a homily by a priest or deacon - a liturgical abuse.
Many lay preachers have expressed “enormous grief and anger” over the directive to stop the practice, said Patricia Hughes Baumer, who co-founded the lay preaching training organization Partners in Preaching with her husband, Fred, in 1997.
Proponents of lay preaching argue that canon law allows the practice and that both the congregation and pastors benefit from hearing Gospel reflections from diverse voices.
Archbishop Flynn told the local diocesan paper that he moved to formally eliminate lay preaching in his diocese after he became aware that the number of parishes with lay preachers was far larger than he realized.
For parishioners accustomed to hearing lay people preach on the Gospel, and for the lay preachers themselves, understanding and accepting this change has proven difficult.
Ruth Hunt, 52, a parishioner at St. Joseph in New Hope, MN, has been preaching for 13 years. When she first heard that lay preaching would end in her parish, she was filled with a very deep sadness and a sense of loss. The response of many St. Joseph’s parishioners was similar, she said.
Frank Schweigert, 57, preaches at St. Francis Cabrini. He grew up in rural Wisconsin where his father sometimes preached in the absence of a priest. He sees lay preaching tied into the Archdiocese’s Evangelization Initiative and lay people’s “ownership of the Gospel.”
After Vatican II encouraged greater participation of the lay faithful in the Mass, some pastors across the nation began to invite their parishioners to preach during the liturgy. Lay preaching differs from a homily, which is reserved for a priest or deacon.
Even if a parish had three full-time priests it would benefit from lay preachers, said Father Bob Hazel, a retired priest of the archdiocese. When he became pastor of St. Joseph nine years ago, he inherited its lay preaching tradition.
“A good part of preaching is to witness to one’s faith - we’re not just up there to give catechism,” Father Hazel said. “Lay preachers can witness to their faith in terms of the difficulty, the problems in the business world, work-a-day world, and in families, and priests just can’t do that in the same way.”
Lay preaching also brings a woman’s perspective to the Gospels, Baumer said. “The suppression of lay preaching is simultaneously the suppression of female voices, because no matter how God has gifted a lay woman…to break open the Word, the community will not have access to that word as it gathers on Sunday,” she said.
Was the banning of lay preaching by Archbishop Flynn a parting gift to his successor, the more conservative John Nienstedt; or, is the trend toward “liturgical purity” part of an effort to undermine the growing democratization of the Church?
Ellen DeGeneres, 50, and Portia de Rossi, 36, seem to think so.
As gay couples celebrate their newfound right to marry in California, opposition groups, including a few from our own dear Mother Church, will rally to fight the ruling. Many will struggle with this question: Is homosexuality natural?
Nature seems to think so. Same-sex sex, including one-night-stands, oral sex, mutual masturabation, parental relationships, bonded couples, serial monogamy, and multiple couplings have been observed in about 1,500 animal species, including bottlenose dolphins, bonobo chimpanzees, American bison, giraffes, gray whales, walrus, Kob antelopes, Japanese macaques, and–how could I leave them out–penguins and seagulls.
Here’s a description of a female-female Kob antelope encounter: “On average, females mount with other females a couple of times an hour during mating season. Homosexual mounting encompasses almost 9% of all sexual activities within these hoofed mammals in the wild. While courting, the pursuer slides up behind a pal and raises her foreleg, touching the other female between her legs. This leggy foreplay ultimately leads to mounting.”
Makes sense to me!
“Not every sexual act has a reproductive function,” said Janet Mann, a biologist at Georgetown University who studies dolphins (homosexual behavior is very common in these marine mammals.) “That’s true of humans and non-humans.”
Some scientists have proposed being gay may serve its own evolutionary purpose.
“It could be a way that you strengthen bonds–that’s one hypothesis,” Mann told Live Science. “Another is that it could be practice for heterosexual sex. Bottlenose dolphin calves mount each other a lot. That might benefit them later on.”
Marlene Zuk, a biologist at the University of California, Riverside, suggested that gay individuals contribute to the gene pool of their community by nurturing their relatives’ young without diverting resources by having their own offspring.
The one thing that does seem to be exclusive to humans is homophobia.
“It’s a very interesting question as to why anybody ever cares,” Mann said. “There are different theories about why people find it threatening. Some think it disrupts male bonds, like you’re not playing for the right team. The funny thing is people say homosexuality is unnatural, that nonhumans don’t engage in homosexual behavior, but that’s not true. Then they’ll say it’s base and animalistic.”
Humans resistance to the idea of homosexuality extends even to research in behavior in animals. Scientists who study the topic are often accused of trying to forward an agenda, and their work can come under greater scrutiny than that of their colleagues who study other topics, Mann said. “It’s kind of a shame because I think that probably is a reason why people don’t look at it more,” Mann said. “That’s probably why we haven’t gotten further. You would think that we’d know more than we do by now.”
Instead of “fish on Friday” we’ll enjoy “film on Friday” courtesy of You Tube. Clips might be funny, outrageous, silly, strange or provovative.
That We Would Be Heard includes the love story of two Catholic lesbians who went to a retreat looking for peace, and came away with one another. One of the women, Molly, speaks out about the church:
“I don’t understand how the church can continue to close their ears to the stories and the lives and the experience of people who are gay and lesbian and bisexual.”
See the video here.
Jason Berry, the renowned Catholic journalist who wrote a groundbreaking investigative report on a priest abuser in New Orleans in 1985, hoped that his findings would lead to reform in the Catholic church. He made his book, Vows of Silence, into a film. It’s now available on DVD.
It chronicles the history of Father Marcial Maciel, who won the favor of Pope John Paul II despite years of pedophilia accusations. The greatest fundraiser of the modern church, Maciel founded the Legionnaires of Christ, a religious order with a $650 million dollar budget and history of controversial tactics.
The film tracks 1998 abuse charges against Maciel filed with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. The Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, tried to abort the case. In 2004, with Pope John Paul dying, Ratzinger takes action.
Vows of Silence documents the church’s coverup as well as Maciel’s predatory trail of seeking out and abusing young men and youths aspiring to the priesthood. While John Paul II refused to investigate the allegations, then Cardinal Ratzinger took up the investigation. Unfortunately, he didn’t follow through, citing Maciel’s age.
Berry interviewed former members of the order and used the Maciel saga as a metaphor for the larger sex abuse crisis in the Catholic church. Berry rightly points out that the real culprit in the priest sex abuse crisis are the bishops who are not held accountable for their refusal to act against priests who abuse children and teenagers.
Former Legionary and 1984 Marquette alumnus, Christopher Kuzne, said Legionary members who were victims of sexual abuse didn’t readily come forward because initiation into the order required them to vow they would not speak against superiors and report any who did. Kuzne said rumors suggest that Pope Benedict eradicated that vow, but there has been no public statement from the Vatican or the order.
Back when I lived in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, my Congressional representative was a young man with a good future. His name was Vito Fossella, and he was known as a staunch family values conservative. He voted against gay marriage and for posting the Ten Commandments in public places. Fossella and his wife had three children. She was a stay-at-home mom, and they were communicants at St. Clare’s Church on Staten Island. Staten Island is home to many socially conservative Catholics, so Fossella was a perfect fit.
On May 1, 2008, he was arrested for drunk driving, and his life totally unraveled. It turns out he was on the way to visit his second family. 
Fossella had fathered a three-year-old daughter with Laura Fay, a former Air Force colonel The Republican congressman was a regular visitor to Fay’s tidy townhouse - taking strolls around the Alexandria, VA neighborhood with his second family like any other dad in apple-pie America.
Fossella met the mother of his love child during a Congressional junket. She isn’t a stranger to adultery herself–her first husband divorced her for running around; with the second they both had outside affairs.
Now, let’s examine his record on preserving “the sanctity of marriage.”
In 2004, Fossella voted for the Marriage Protection Act, which essentially would have prevented courts from striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act. That bill passed the House by a vote of 233-194 and later died in the Senate.
Later in the same month in 2004, , Fossella voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have amended the U.S. Constitution to explicitly ban marriages for same-sex couples in any part of the United States. It would have been the first time that discrimination was to be enshrined in the Constitution. That bill passed the House by a vote of 236-187 and later died in the Senate.
In 2006, Fossella voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment, make it the third time he chose to stand up and firmly deny same-sex couples the thousands of rights and protections that come with a federal and state marriage license.
I find it interesting that Fossella had such strong feelings about an institution that apparently didn’t have much meaning to him in the end.
“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.
