Posted in March, 2009
Archbishop Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, issued an apology this week to “my brother bishops” for statements he made on a videotape by Randall Terry, the former head of Operation Rescue. In Burke’s statement of apology he said that Terry and some of his associates had visited him in Rome and asked to videotape an interview “to share with pro-life workers for the purpose of their encouragement.” The interview was conducted on March 2, 2009. 
Terry said he conducted the 12-minute interview as part of his campaign to persuade the church to oust American bishops who allow pro-choice backers to receive Communion.
But instead of private showings to supporters, Terry played the interview for reporters on March 25 at the National Press Club. He also put the tape on his website, A Humble Plea. You can see it here.
Terry traveled to Rome with a delegation of anti-abortion activists to ask Vatican officials to remove U.S. bishops they felt were not doing enough to stop abortions. “One of the reasons we are here is to specifically request the transfer of Bishop Loverde of Arlington, VA and Archbishop Wuerl of Washington, DC,” Terry was quoted as saying at the time. Archbishop Wuerl is currently head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Obviously, Terry would like to see these bishops removed, and have in their place bishops who would refuse Communion to any elected representative or government official involved in any capacity to allow legalized abortion.
Other U.S. prelates singled out by Randall for “rejecting church teachings” were Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony and the former Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
In the tape, Burke called on parishioners to pressure reluctant bishops to withhold Communion from Catholic politicians who back legalized abortion. Burke said the failure of some bishops to stand up by withholding Communion is “weakening the faith of everyone.” He said, “It’s giving the impression that it must be morally correct to support procured abortion.”
Burke also went one step further, agreeing with Terry that voting for Barak Obama for president was a “form of cooperation” with “evil” and the Catholics who did so need to bear the moral responsibility for their action. “Well, your vote is either a vote to put someone in office who will do what is right and just, or someone who won’t.” He went on to say “we can’t be content with the fact that some 55% (of Catholics) – or whatever it is – who for whatever reason, supported this anti-life program.” He urged Catholics in the United States to let the president know abortion ”is the number one issue.”
Archbishop Burke should know the dangers of taping someone to forward an agenda for church politics. After all, he used the sneaky, undercover taping of Sr. Louise Lears at a Roman Catholic Womenpriests ordination at a St. Louis synagogne to impose the penalty of interdict on Lears, forcing her out of her ministry at a local parish, and barring her from Communion.
Burke denied that he gave the interview as the Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, but only as “a Bishop from the United States to encourage those in the respect life apostolate.” He went on to add:” I was never informed that the videotape would be used as part of a campaign of severe criticism of certain fellow bishops regarding the application of Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law.” 
After viewing the tape and reading the transcript, I’m not sure exactly what Archbishop Burke is sorry for, since he appears to genuinely believe in everything he said.
But ultimately, like any schoolyard bully, Archbishop Burke finds it easier to beat up a few religious and laity rather than go up against his “brother bishops.” They might be able to hit back.
He should be sorry he lost his nerve at the moment it counted, and backed down from a face-off on Canon 915. That would have taken some courage and conviction, since there is no guarantee Archbishop Burke would have prevailed.
Better to do things the sneaky way….with letter-writing campaigns, character assassinations, flyers left on the windshields of cars, and YouTube videos.
Hey, after all, what counts is that it is being done in the cause of the #1 moral concern.
In a March 10, 2009 interview on the Albany radio station Talk 1300, Edward Cardinal Egan, head of the Archdiocese of New York, suggested the Catholic Church would sooner or later have to consider whether to allow priests to marry.
“I think that it’s going to be discussed; it’s a perfectly legitimate discussion,” Cardinal Egan said, replying to a question from the host, Frederic Dicker, about whether the church’s shortage of priests might spur such a change. “I think it has to be looked at. And I’m not so sure it wouldn’t be a good idea to decide on the basis of geography and culture to make an across-the-board determination.” At another point he said: “Is it a closed issue? No. That’s not a dogmatic stand.”
Egan noted that priests in the Maronite and Melchite churches are allowed to be married with “no problem at all.”
Catholic news media, and conversative pundits especially, were in a spin over the cardinal’s remarks. What did he mean?
Were his words a parting gift to reformers? A matter-of-fact response by a canon lawyer–which the cardinal is–to a question involving church law? Or was it aimed at his successor – Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan - who in 2003 soundly rebuffed a discussion by priests in his diocese on the question of celibacy.
Some conservatives dismissed what the cardinal had to say as the comments of a man speaking, as one put it, “above his pay grade.” But many advocates of church reform, who have long considered Cardinal Egan a conservative, said his remarks were surprisingly encouraging, albeit a little late in the day. The cardinal, 76, officially retires on April 15th.
The Rev. Richard Vega, president of the National Federation of Priests Councils. which is affiliated with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said such words from a top American prelate, whatever his intent, would “put an issue on the table that a lot of people thought was off the table.” He added: “I think he breathed new life into the hopes of a lot of people.”
One of those people is Sr. Christine Schenk, executive director of FutureChurch, a group promoting the ordination of women and an end to the celibacy rule. “It would have been nice if he had said this five years ago,” she said. “But coming from Egan, I think it is a sign that the conversation is ripening. He’s not the poster child for progressivism. I think it shows we are much closer to having this issue addressed by the Vatican than most people realize.” 
Many church experts said Cardinal Egan’s comments were surprising not so much in their content, but in his willingness to say them in publicly.
“In a sense, what he said was obvious,” said Rev. Thomas J. Reese, Jeusit author and former editor of the moderately liberal Catholic magazine America. “But not many cardinals do that. It was kind of brave of him to say what everybody’s been thinking. It’s interesting that he said it as he was leaving.”
Wondering why English food was so awful in the 1960s set Delia Smith off on a quest to learn about it and educate people in how to cook their traditional dishes, a mission that, for the past 33 years, has made her Britain’s favorite cook. Her first book was How to Cheat at Cooking (1971) and the following year she started writing a column in the Evening Standard. From the start, hers has been a practical and inspirational approach to cooking healthy, delicious food. 
Delia Smith, 67, is also known for her spiritual books. Her first two religious books, A Feast for Lent and A Feast for Advent (both published in 1983), are readings and reflections for these seasons. In 1988 Delia took on the much larger challenge of writing a full-length book on prayer, A Journey into God.
Faith has been part of Delia’s life from childhood. “My mother would put me to bed too early, when I could hear that all the other children were still up, so I was awake and bored. One night, she gave me a picture of Jesus with the children of the world, and taught me to say the Our Father. That is when I started with silence and stillness–there was this need in me even then for the spirit.” When she was 22, she became a Catholic after being taken to Mass by a friend.
Each day, as well as attending Mass, Delia carves out a half an hour in the morning and a half an hour in the late afternoon for absolute quiet. “We all have a need sometimes to be by ourselves and be still. I know that making that sort of commitment can be very difficult, so what I suggest is that you build it up gradually, over years. Start with 20 minutes a day. How do you know when 20 minutes has passed? The simplest way is a kitchen timer!”
Her new venture with Cafod (the official overseas development and relief agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales), all started with an interview last year on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Her latest book, Delia’s How to Cheat on Cooking, had just come out and she was doing an interview to promote it.
“Answering one of their questions, I admitted I was confused about the ethics of food miles and planet warming and carbon emissions. I said that I had stopped buying vegetables that had travelled long distance, but then I had started worrying about what was happening to growers in places like Kenya if there was no longer any overseas markets for their produce.”
Her on-air confession that she didn’t have an answer to this dilemma made headlines in the national press, but also promoted a call to her office from Cafod, offering to guide her through their research on this sensitive issue. From that call a relationship blossomed. “Cafod contacted me,” Delia explains, “and said they had some scientists who were experts on the question of food miles, so I went and spent a day at the Cafod offices and had a very productive time.”
This meeting led her to offer her services to the charity. Cafod came back with a suggestion that she lead their Lenten programme, which she accepted. “I wasn’t at all sure about it,” she admits. “There wasn’t going to be much space on the website to explain what I felt, and with anything having to do with religion you run the risk of being misunderstood. But you have to think what being is a Christian is all about. And if we think being misunderstood is bad, what is that next to what happened to Christ? If there is a reason why I have agreed to do this, it’s because he did it. He coped with ridicule and misunderstanding every day.”
The theme of her Lenten programme is not Kenyan beans, or even the development issues usually associated with Cafod and its work of supporting people in need around the globe. It is something more specifically spiritual and revealing of Delia’s own approach to faith. On the charity’s website she is urging the benefits of making a daily commitment to stillness and silence. “Lent is the perfect time to make a commitment to spending serious one-to-one time in God’s presence,” she wrote in her introductory reflection.
“As I have got older I have become more aware of the simplicity of our faith,” comments Delia on her motivation for proposing this Lenten exercise. “If Jesus has said, ‘there’s only one thing needed,’ we cannot grow as Christians without incorporating that ‘one thing’ into our daily lives and take his words utterly seriously.”
“Throughout the gospels Jesus spends time alone, away from the pressures of life to be ‘with’ his Father. How can any of his followers not understand their own need for this, faced with the challenges of life today?”
Delia quotes the example of Jesus’ visit to the sisters Martha and Mary. Martha (who sounds like a Delia type of person) is busy making supper and doing housework, while Mary sits at the feet of Jesus, hanging on to his every word. But when Martha gets annoyed and tells her sister to help her, Jesus tells her to stop fussing. “You worry and fret about so many things, and yet few are needed–indeed, only one.” That “one thing” Delia believes, is silence and in it, openness to God.
The idea of silent contemplation seems to be having something of a resurgence, including the rising numbers of people called to a monastic lifestyle. Delia thinks that economic crisis may have something to do with it, in the sense that material plenty tends to equate with spiritual poverty, and vice versa. “I think there may be an opening to God right now because the pressures people are under with this recession. They may be realising that materialism can never make you happy in the end.”
Many advocates of silence insist on the need to go much further…to banish worldly thoughts and concerns and find an inner voice. Delia doesn’t agree. “My mind is still making up recipes when I’m silent,” she admits, “but that doesn’t matter. Sister Wendy (Beckett), always tells me that God created our minds to think. We can’t just switch them on and off when we want to. You just have to trust in God that he will be the instigator. He will enable. That’s an important word. Enable. It is a kind of blind trust.”
Delia is contemplating writing more about religion. The attacks by atheists have irked her, in particularly what she sees as their “stupidity” in stating categorically that there isn’t a God. “Their behaviour always makes me think of two ants in a crack in the pavement in front of St Paul’s Cathedral. One asks the other ‘Do you believe in architecture?’ and the other says, ‘No, I don’t.’”
Commonweal’s February 27, 2009 issue had a short piece entitled “The Perfect Sinner” by Harold Bordwell. It was about Max Jacob, a French Jew born in Brittany, who was a painter, poet, novelist, playwright, and critic, who played an important role in the formative years of Cubism as well as in the new directions of modern poetry during the early 20th century. His poetry was made up of an amalgam of Jewish, Breton, Parisian and Roman Catholic elements.
Max Jacob alternated between a wildly bohemian lifestyle and periods of contemplation. He converted to Catholicism in 1915, after experiencing a vision of Christ a few years earlier. But his conversion did not save him from the Gestapo, who rounded him up and took him to Drancy internment camp. He died there of pneumonia on March 5, 1944, two days before he was scheduled to be sent to Auschwitz. He was 68. His body was eventually returned to his home of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire near Orleans. 
Saint-Benoit was the site of a celebrated abbey church. Max Jacob first came to Saint-Benoit in 1921, and stayed there periodically until 1937, when he settled down permanently, living a quietly religious life–early daily Mass, evening prayer, and working as a church guide.
Max Jacob reminds me of David, a “man after God’s own heart.” Sensuous, a sinner, each man experienced periods of prayful contemplation and penitence. But in their full and vivid life each also held God in a loved and honored place.
Max Jacob chose Saint-Benoit to escape his disorderly and worldly life–he was homosexual, he took drugs, he liked to play the clown–and, as his biographer Beatrice Mousli notes, to be nearer to God and away from his temptations that he could never resist in Paris.
It was a very different life than his days in Paris, where his writings and gouache paintings led to friendships with Picasso, Jean Cocteau, anf Guillaume Apollinaire, among others. There were rumors that Jacob was a male lover of Picasso. “Oh, Picasso was absolutely having sex with Max Jacob. And everyone knew!”, said John Richardson, Picasso’s biographer. Even Picasso’s mistress, Fernande Olivier, noted upon first meeting Jacob that the two men were “toujours ensemble.”
In his journals, novelist Julian Green remembers how Max Jacob used to haunt the Cafe Select by night, and then the next morning hurry down the boulevard to Notre-Dame-des-Champs to confess his sins, with the priests hiding behind the church columns but knowing that one of them would eventually have to listen to the same sins they all knew by heart.
Green calls Max Jacob the perfect sinner because he was truly sorry for his sins, which didn’t prevent him from starting all over the next day.
Shortly after A Good Man is Hard to Find was published, a discerning reader in Atlanta wrote to author Flannery O’Connor to tell her she realized that God was the main subject in the short story collection. “You are very kind to write to me and the measure of my appreciation must be to ask you to write to me again. I would like to know who this is who understands my stories,” O’Connor responded in a letter dated July 10, 1955. 
It was the first of 274 letters O’Connor sent to Elizabeth “Betty” Hester, sparking a friendship that would continue until the Flannery O’Connor’s death from lupus in 1964.
Betty Hester, ”an agnostic obsessed with God,”was shy, a flirt, and a chain-smoker with a menagerie of cats who cared for a widowed aunt named Clyde. Although she never published any of her stories, Hester shared her writing with O’Connor. Hester wrote book reviews for the diocesan newspaper, The Bulletin, as did O’Connor.
The early letters center on the two women’s faith. In the course of their correspondence, Hester converted to Catholicism, asking O’Connor to be her sponsor. Flannery tried to help Hester in her understanding of the Catholic faith in hopes of giving Betty some spiritual comfort; but shortly after her baptism, Hester decided to leave the church. That disturbed O’Connor more than Hester’s admission she was a lesbian. 
After much intense correspondence and several visits, Betty insisted on telling Flannery her “history of horror” before the friendship went any further. At 13, Betty had watched her mother commit suicide. The neighbors, believing she was “playacting,” did not intervene. Betty also told O’Connor that she had served in the Air Force in Germany, but was dishonorably discharged for “sexual indiscretion” with a woman.
O’Connor responded to Hester’s revelations with this frank and nonjudgemental note: “Compared to what you have experienced in the way of radical misery, I have never had anything to bear in my life but minor irritations…If in any sense my knowing your burden can make your burden lighter, then I am doubly glad I know it. You were right to tell me, but I’m glad you didn’t tell me until I knew you well. Where you are wrong is in saying that you are the history of horror. The meaning of redemption is precisely that we do not have to be our history, and nothing is plainer to me than that you are not your history.”
Hester and O’Connor remained friends and corresponded until O’Connor’s death. It is through the correspondence with Hester published in The Habit of Being that scholars are able to get a clear view of O’Connor’s thoughts on writing and her Catholic faith. 
In 1998 Hester committed suicide with a hollow-nose bullet aimed at her skull. She died after eating a late afternoon Christmas dinner and playfully mocking her friend, William Sessions, “for taking the Church seriously.” She was 76.
The February 10, 2009 announcement read:
“UTCatholic Launches Gay and Lesbian Group”
The UCC announces the formation of a prayer group for gay and lesbian individuals and those unsure.
To promote an atmosphere of comfort, group meeting times and locations are not publicly announced.
For more information, contact Fr. Ed Koharchik at the link below.
———
The principle behind UT’s University Catholic Center’s founding of a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender support group is that in God’s eyes, we are all the same, reported The Daily Texan, the University of Texas-Austin, school newspaper. Gay Catholic students can come together for discussion, prayer and fellowship. 
“We want to provide a safe place for young people to talk about this issue – how does it fit in with the Catholic Church teachings?” said the Rev. Ed Koharchik, associate director of the center. “Whether one is gay or straight, it’s morally neutral.”
In recent weeks, the center has promoted the support group, whose purpose is to shed light on the “misconstrued teachings of the church,” with respect to non-heterosexual lifestyles, Koharchik said.
“It’s about this group of people and how to stay within the teachings of the church and yet still identify as being of that orientation,” said Michael Jungwith, a graduate student. “It sounds reasonable.”
Koharchik said he hopes to deter Catholics from breaking off their relationship with God due to their sexual orientation. He said he wants community members to know that sexuality is not tied to an individual’s personhood and that linking the two together could “cut off awareness to goodness.”
Koharchik and UT alumna Chelsea Griffo enlisted the support of Bishop Gregory Aymond from the Diocese of Austin to implement the program.
Some students commented via the Daily Texan’s online edition:
“I find it difficult to reconcile my sexuality with my faith..and for this reason my faith suffers. SometimesI ask myself am I putting my sexuality before God…and on the other hand ignoring my sexuality before God. Growing up an realizing your gay is often a difficult task. When I look at my life and look at the lives of other gay people it appears to me that we are a lost community which clings to materialism and sex much easier than heterosexual people..The fact that the church teaches that homosexual acts are evil should not get in my way of finding my true self.” (Brian)
“I can’t speak for all the GLBT Catholics, but by first hand experience I am glad that the church leaders are welcoming us back. After being told so many times that I am going to hell for loving the person I love, I am glad that at least a couple of leaders of the church don’t shun me away. Having been raised Catholic, I have struggled with this most of my life.
Will I really go to hell for being myself? Is being who I am a greater sin than murder or adultery? If God created us in his image, am I a mistake? Could God have possibly made a mistake? I don’t think so or at least I hope not. Truthfully, I don’t know the answers to these questions, and I doubt anyone else can say they do. As holy as people think the pope is, he is not God. The only one who knows is God, and unfortunately for those against me and the GLBT community, the Bible is a book written by man not God.” (anonymous)
I’m sure Fr. Koharchik will have to mouth the party line about living a “chaste lifestyle” in order to keep the program open on Catholic premises; but I hope he facilitates a discussion of the many different contemporary Catholic viewpoints on sex, sexuality, and sexual ethics. He should discuss gay and lesbian Catholic religious figures, notable individuals and saints as role models. Some of these people have been celibate, but many others had active and passionate love lives.
Most of all, the group should be a safe place where the students can talk about their real life experiences, from falling in love, how to handle the hate from their co-religionists because of their sexual orientation, coming out to their Catholic family, and respecting who they are in the face of prejudice–especially from their religion.
My post, New Fr. Marical Maciel Degollado Sex Scandal, prompted a few comments. One came from Greg Krehbiel, who writes the blog, Crowhill Weblog. Mr. Krehbiel wrote, “I don’t think people have yet come to grasp with the real significance of this story. If a manifest fraud like Maciel was able to deceive so many devout, serious people (including the pope!) what does that imply?”
Mr. Krehbiel included a link to his excellent article on Google, “The True Significance of the Fr. Maciel Story.” Some key excerpts:
“Those of us who believed the accusations against Fr. Maciel were scolded and lectured in stern tones from on high, with brows furrowed in anger and the accusing finger wagging. We were told that Fr. Maciel was being persecuted by people who hated the church, but he, saintly fellow, was taking it all in stride, bearing it like Jesus, glad to be a martyr and take his part in the sufferings of Christ.”
“Specifically, what does this story tell us about movements, leaders, followers, charlatans, con artists and enablers of various sorts, and how does that affect our reckoning of the history of the church and the evidences of Christianity? How were so many people, including Pope John Paul II, fooled by this guy?”
“This is not an idle question for Christians, for although it’s certainly true that Fr. Maciel’s sins say nothing directly about the truth of Christianity, they have indirect but important implications for Christian apologetic and epistemology, and I think these implications haven’t been seriously addressed.”
An article to read next to Mr. Krehbiel’s is the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus’s defense of Fr. Maciel, “Feathers of Scandal“ which was published by First Things in March 2002.
Fr. Neuhaus’ withering reflection was inspired by the fallout from a 1997 story in the Hartford Courant, a Connecticut newspaper, that was reprinted in the National Catholic Reporter, “a left-wing tabloid,” Fr. Neuhaus called it. Read the NCR article here. It is about the testimony of several of the men who claimed Fr. Maciel sexually abused them as seminarians, and how the Vatican put a protective wall around the Legionaires founder, refusing to investigate any of their charges.
The Hartford Courant story had been coauthored Gerald Renner, formerly the religion writer for the paper, and Jason Berry, a freelance writer in New Orleans, the author of the books Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children (1992) and Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II (1996).
Here’s what Fr. Neuhaus had to say in Fr. Maciel’s defense:
“I am not neutral about the Legionaries. I have spent time with Fr. Maciel, and he impresses me as a man who combined uncomplicated faith, gentle kindness, military self-discipline, and a relentless determination to do what he believes God has called him to do. They are qualities one would expect of someone who at age twenty-0ne in Mexico vowed to do something great for Christ and his Church, and has been allowed to do it. In the language of the tradition, they are qualities associated with holiness; in his case a virile holiness of tenacious resolve that has been refined in the fires of frequent opposition and misunderstanding.”
“Nonetheless, because I care about the Legion, and because I was outraged by what I suspected as a gross injustice, I decided to go through endless pages of testimony, counter-testimony, legal documents, and other materials related to the Berry/Renner attack on Fr. Maciel. It was not an edifying experience. For Berry/Renner, it is worth noting, the case of Fr. Maciel is not all that important in itself, but it serves another purpose. ‘To many,’ they write in the recent NCR article, ‘the case against Maciel is important because it tests the Vatican’s resolve to pursue charges related to sexual misconduct at the highest levels of the Church.’ The ‘many’ includes, first of all, Berry and Renner. That is clearly the reason for the latest re-raking of the muck of their 1997 article. They report nothing substantially new in the allegations themselves; the only new thing is that the Vatican has again considered the charges and found them without merit. A cardinal in whom I have unbounded confidence and who has been involved in the case tells me that the charges are ‘pure invention, without the slightest foundation.’”
“It counts as evidence that Fr. Maciel unqualifiedly and totally denies the charges. It counts as evidence that priests in the Legion whom I know very well and who, over many years, have a detailed knowledge of Fr. Maciel and the Legion say that the charges are diametrically opposed to everything they know for certain. It counts as evidence that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and others who have looked into the matter say that the charges are completely without merit. It counts as evidence that Pope John Paul II, who almost certainly is aware of the charges, has strongly, consistently, and publicly praised Fr. Maciel and the Legion. Much of what we know we take on trust. I trust these people. The suggestion that they are either deliberately deceiving or duped is totally implausible.” (My emphasis) 
A last point from Mr. Krehbiel’s article: “Christianity was spread by personal testimony. There was no Wall Street Journal or–God forbid–New York Times to verify the information. People believed the Christian testimony because they respected the lifestyle of the people they heard it from.
This is an important equation that lies at the root and foundation of Christianity–i.e., the fact that you live a decent life makes me want to believe what you say about God.”
“The church risks becoming a sect. Many Catholics no longer expect anything from this pope. It’s very sad,” Kung said in an interview published by the French newspaper Le Monde on February 24, 2009. 
Fr. Kung noted that one of the four traditionalist bishops whose excommunication was lifted by the pope minimized the Holocaust, igniting widespread criticism. The pope’s misjudgement on such an important issue, Kung said, reflected his own isolation.
“Benedict XVI has always lived in an ecclesial environment. He has not traveled much. He’s always remained closed in the Vatican–which is quite similar to how the Kremlin was at one time–where he is safe from criticism,” Fr. Kung said.
Kung went on to way that in his nearly four years in office the pope has shown a lack of pastoral courage and a lack of awareness of the “profound crisis” in the church. He suggested the pope could make several important gestures:
–Allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion in some circumstances.
–Take steps to “correct” the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae and allow the use of birth control in some cases.
–Abolish the rule of priestly celibacy in the Latin-rite church.
–Institute a new way of electing bishops with the involvement of local Catholics.
Fr. Kung said it would be helpful to call a third Vatican council to deal with these and other issues.
Read the Le Monde interview here.
Fr. Kung’s interview provoked some responses that were humorous…or ironic. Here are the best from the web..
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, told Vatican Radio he was “hurt” by reading the interview, and contended that the accusations were “unproven, generic affirmations.”
Cardinal Sodano went on to say “Fraternal criticism has always been possible in the church, from the times of Sts. Peter and Paul. Bitter criticism, on the other hand, especially when it’s so broad, does not contribute to the unity of the church, for which Pope Benedict is working so hard.”
From the blog, Bilgrimage: “Benedict has the reputation for being a great intellectual; yet who more than he has shut down the intellectual life of the Catholic Church, turning it into a sect for the brain-dead.”
From the blog, Enlightened Catholicism: “I expect the blunders will continue unless he decides to launch real reform of the way the church is run. Even in the Vatican you can’t just rely on the Holy Spirit.”
My thanks to the Joseph S. O’Leary homepage, for the above quotes and this rousing call to action: “I suspect in the coming months we will see more initiatives coming from both the laity and clergy calling for real and sustainable change in how Catholicism conducts its business. It will be coming from people who also really love this Church, even the ones who have left in frustration. It’s way past time for these voices to be heard. The conservative wing of this Church has had their say for the last forty years. The results have been disastrous in the West and placing the blame for these results on those who hae left is rather self serving.” 
