Posted in category "Faith"
Everything That Rises Must Converge is a story in Flannery O’Connor’s book of the same name. It is a tale of nostalgia, prejudice, relationships, superiority, resentment, and ultimately, the space between people who perceive the same thing differently. 
The title is a quotation from Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who imagined an “omega point” at which the “rising” or evolving human being would meet God.
I see the rising as a metaphor describing the struggle, debate and entanglement of the many different strands and tendrils of thought, belief, and action over what it means to be Catholic. And, at the end, where the distances close as we all meet in God.
The debate over Catholic identity has exposed two extremes in Catholicism: what author and scholar George Weigel calls “Catholic lite,” meaning a form of faith sold out to seclarism; and what analyst and correspondent John L. Allen, Jr. terms “Taliban Catholicism,” meaning an angry expression of Catholicism that knows only how to excoriate and condemn.
In recent days there has been a very public exchange between Thomas J. Tobin, Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, and Sen. Patrick Kennedy, D-Rhode Island, over the senator’s support of an amendment to the health care bill before Congress. The amendment addresses public financing of abortions.
In a letter published in the diocesan paper and on their website, Bishop Tobin wrote to Senator Kennedy saying, “For the moment I’d like to set aside the discussion of health care reform, as important and relevant as it is, and focus on one statement contained in your letter of October 29, 2009, in which you write, “The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” That sentence certainly caught my attention and deserves a public response, lest it go unchallenged and lead others to believe it’s true. And it raises an important question: What does it mean to be a Catholic?” 
“Although I wouldn’t choose those particular words, when someone rejects the teachings of the Church, especially on a grave matter, a life-and-death issue like abortion, it certainly does diminish their ecclesial communion, their unity with the Church. This principle is based on the Sacred Scripture and Tradition of the Church and is made more explicit in recent documents.”
“But let’s get down to a more practical question; let’s approach it this way: What does it mean, really, to be a Catholic? After all, being a Catholic has to mean something, right?”
“Well, in simple terms – and here I refer only to those more visible, structural elements of Church membership – being a Catholic means that you’re part of a faith community that possesses a clearly defined authority and doctrine, obligations and expectations. It means that you believe and accept the teachings of the Church, especially on essential matters of faith and morals; that you belong to a local Catholic community, a parish; that you attend Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments regularly; that you support the Church, personally, publicly, spiritually and financially.”
“In your letter you say that you “embrace your faith.” Terrific. But if you don’t fulfill the basic requirements of membership, what is it exactly that makes you a Catholic? Your baptism as an infant? Your family ties? Your cultural heritage?”
I cannot fault the bishop in the points he raises about being a Catholic and the questions he poses to Senator Kennedy publicly. In his role as teacher and pastor he should do so.
However, what I am uncomfortable is the reduction of anyone’s Catholic identity to one issue – abortion. It seems to me that “pro-life” Catholics –bishops included–need to have the same unwavering commitment to feeding, clothing, housing and educating children and young adults; and keeping them out of wars and death row prison sentences.
In a 2006 study by Elizabeth Oldmixon and William Hudson – When Church Teachings and Republican Ideology Collide: The Perspectives of Catholic Republicans in the House of Representatives, a sampling of Catholic Republicans justified not supporting Catholic Social Teaching by seeing its application to most domestic social issues as less authoritative than Church moral teachings on issues like abortion.
On March 10, 2006, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a “Statement on Responsibilities of Catholics in Public Life.” The bishops were very firm and unqualified in their oppositionto abortion, but their remarks were not limited to this one issue.
“Our faith has an integral unity,” they said, “that calls Catholics to defend human life and human dignity whenever they are threatened. A priority for the poor, the protection of family life, the pursuit of justice and the promotion of peace are fundamental priorities of the Catholic moral tradition which cannot be ignored or neglected. We encourage and will continue to work with those in both parties who seek to act on these essential principles in defense of the poor and vulnerable.”
I really liked what Kevin J. Farrell, Bishop of Dallas said in his May 17, 2009 commencement address at the University of Dallas, an independent Catholic University in Irving, Texas. “If and when others may disagree or have a different approach or have a different slant on Catholic teaching or belief, honest debate, not confrontation, true dialogue, where we seek to understand the other, not facile condemnation, should be the overreaching way we move forward together,” he said in his address. 
Bishop Farrell posed the question, “What does it mean to be Catholic enough?” and offered several possible answers: “It means adhering to the magisterium of the church and taking very seriously the length, breadth and depth of Catholic tradition…It means taking very seriously the challenge which theologians in the church have always taken up – to face into and revere the contemporary culture and to relate revelation and our Catholic faith to that culture…It does not mean parroting words and phrases from one or another time and place in the church’s history as though that were the only way to speak of things divine and of things Catholic…It means being a leaven in a society that seeks insight, example and inspiration even as it claims to be postreligion, postchurch and post-Christianity.”
“It means being humble before God and each other, acknowledging that no one of us has all the answers to the question, What does it mean to be Catholic enough? We know well that no one of us can ever have all the answers. No theologian or professor or pope has ever had or ever will have all the answers to what it means to be authentically and fully Catholic.”
I found this interesting interview of Sr. Donna Ryan by Thomas C. Fox in a recent edition of the National Catholic Reporter. Read the whole thing here.
“I think the culture wars have been won,” says Mercy Sr. Donna Ryan. In the 13 years she has served as chaplain to a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Catholics, she has seen growing acceptance of this community by society at large. “It is kind of like the church is becoming the last group in our culture to face this reality,” said Ryan. 
HOPE, the organization she serves in the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri diocese, was recently asked to leave its meeting place in the Cathdral of the Immaculate Conception, but the group carries on, she says, because its members “care about the church and they care for one another.”
The diocese’s ministry to gay and lesbian Catholics has been going on since the 1960s, with few tensions. At first the group was called Dignity and at one point it was told it couldn’t use that name. So they simply began to refer to themselves as “gay and lesbian Catholics.” They met in different parishes.
When I came to the diocese 13 years ago, I was asked to be the group’s chaplain. We invited them to the cathedral. We thought the cathedral should be an umbrella for many different ministries. Soon after the group decided it wanted to call itself – HOPE. We wanted a better symbol to represent ourselves. We designed a logo and picked a scripture reading from Romans about hope. 
At that time we worked very closely with the diocesan structure. Former Bishop (Raymond) Boland was very supportive. We met regularly at the cathedral once a month and had speakers and retreats. After Bishop (Robert) Finn came we were asked to leave the cathdral. So now we meet at a local Jesuit parish.
I am overwhelmed by their love and faithfulness to the church. We meet every month. I keep asking, “What other group of people would regularly spend a Sunday afternoon in a church basement?” They do it because they care about the church and they care for one another. I’ve found their witness very meaningful in my own life. In the end, they struggle with the same things that any couples do; to be faithful in their relationships.
Frequently members of the group hear someting like “You are intrinsically evil.” This is very offensive to them. As a minister I do wonder. I think the beauty of our Catholic tradition is that our sacramental life involves the blessing of the ordinary with rituals and with communal support. I think that anytime two people want to make a commitment to one another, and be faithful and fruitful, and to live generous lives of service, they should be able to. I yearn for a time when we can bless them and support them. In some ways, however, we already do. 
The beautiful thing about the church’s sacramental life is that we have a book of blessings. One of the blessings is for the blending of families. I think there is also a blessing for friendships. Sometimes we have used these prayers to bless and support couples who want to make a commitment. These are very adult people. They are not dependent upon any particular statements by our church for their identity. But because they love the church, some of the statements have been especially hurtful.
They receive messages from society and the church that somehow they are not normal. When you feel that year after year after year, it is often difficult to break free. So as a chaplain I deal with that. Often we have parents who come to the group. Their child is someplace else in the country and they’re struggling to accept this piece of their family’s life. I am so proud that we have this group for parents and children and brothers and sisters to come together. We have these conversations of acceptance.
August 2009: Pope Benedict XVI laicized a Franciscan priest who served as a spiritual advisor to the Marian visionaries in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The pontiff, in a document issued “motu proprio” (on his own initiative), returned Father Tomislav Vlasic to the lay state and dispensed him from his religious vows as a member of the Order of Friars Minor. 
Vlasic was confined to a Franciscan monastery in L’Aquila, Italy, in February 2008 after he refused to cooperate in a Vatican investigation of his activities for suspected heresy and schism.
He was also investigated for “the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspected mysticism, disobedience towards legitimately issued orders and charges contra sextum (against the Sixth Commandment not to commit adultery),” as stated in the interdict signed by Cardinal William J. Levada, perfect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
According to the congregation, all the charges against Vlasic were “in the context of the Medjugorje phenomenon.”
The Medjugorje phenomenon began on June 25, 1981, when six children told a priest they had seen the Virgin on a hillside near their town. Some of the children also claimed to have received ten secrets from Our Lady. 
According to the Medjugorje seers, who currently range in age from 38 to 31 — Marija, Vicka, Ivan, Mirjana, Ivanka, and Jakov — the apparitions of Gospa (as Our Lady is referred to in their native language) are ongoing to this day; 21 years of nonstop messages from Mary, with no end in sight. As one priest who requested anonymity observed, “The Mother of God sounds like a Chatty Cathy doll.” 
Marija, Vicka and Ivan report daily visions from Mary, while others claim to see her at regular intervals; to Mirjana, Our Lady comes on the second of each month and on March 18, Mirjana’s birthday; to Ivanka, on June 25; and to Jakov, on Christmas Day.
The visionaries have received more than 30,000 visits from Mary.
A log of the messages is posted on Medjugorje Web. Here are the latest messages:
July 25, 2009 Medjugorje message of Our Lady to Marija: “Dear Children! May this time be a time of prayer for you. Thank you for having responded to my call.”
Our Lady Queen of Peace of Medjugorje’s August 2, 2009 Message To Mirjana Soldso Given on the Day for Non-Believers: “Dear Children, I am coming, with my Motherly love, to point out the way by which you are to set out, in order that you may be all the more like my Son; and by that, closer to and more pleasing to God. Do not refuse my love. Do not renounce salvation and eternal life for the sake of transience and frivolity of this life. I am coming to lead you and, as a mother, to caution you. Come with me.”
In 1984 Vlasic wrote to Pope John Paul II to say that he was the one “who through divine providence guides the seers of Medjugorje.”
Retired Bishop Pavao Zanic of Mostar-Duvno did not believe the claims of the visionaries and accused Vlasic of creating the phenomenon. The current head of the diocese, Bishop Ratko Peric, said the church “has not accepted, either as supernatural or as Marian, any of the apparitions.”
“As the local bishop, I maintain that regarding the events of Medjugorje, on the basis of the investigations and experience gained thus far throughout these last 25 years, the church has not confirmed a single apparition as authentically being the Madonna,” he said. He then called on the alleged visionaries and “those persons behind the messages to demonstrate ecclesiastical obedience and to cease with these public manifestations and messages in this parish.”
“In this fashion they shall show their necessary adherence to the church, by placing neither private apparitions nor private sayings before the official position of the church,” he said. “Our faith is a serious matter,” he added. “The church is also a serious and responsible institution.”
November 1523: Inquisitor Mariana in Belmonte, Spain orders the punishment of a woman, Francisca la Brava, who claimed she spoke with Our Lady and received tokens from her.
“It is true that I saw Her,” Francisca la Brava said, “and it happened this way;” I got out of bed to urinate, and as it was at night and dark I could not find the door, and so I said, “Help me Our Lady” and “Why can’t I find this door?” And that Our Lady replied saying, “She is helping you,” and “I am Our Lady who sustains you on the face of the earth.” And that She put Her arm on my neck, and as I was naked, Our Lady put the skirt of her dress over my belly and said, “Do not fear, daughter.”
And Francisca la Brava said to her, “Protect me, Our Lady, if it is a devil who has come to deceive me,” and She repeated, “Do not fear, for I am Our Lady.” And Francisca said to Her, “Mother of God, they will not believe that it is you, even though I say I have seen you.” And Our Lady told her, “Then take this candle and a piece of silk and a magnet.”
Five weeks after the alleged apparitions the Inquisitor rendered a decision: “By rights we could have treated her more rigorously, for the above matter was very public and scandalous for the Christian faithful, since she attracted them and induced them to believe in what she said and made known, when it was all vanity and frivolity.”
“But in deference to certain just reasons that move us to mitigate the rigor of the sentence we decree as a punishment to Francisca la Brava and an example to others not to attempt similar things that we condemn her to be put on an ass and given one hundred lashes in public through the accustomed streets of Belmonte naked from the waist up. And that from now on she not say or affirm in public or secretly by word or insinuation the things she said in her confessions or else she will be prosecuted as an impenitent and one who does not believe in or agree with what is in our holy Catholic faith.” 
Frank McCourt, a former New York City schoolteacher who turned his miserable childhood in Limerick, Ireland, into a phenomenally popular, Pulitzer prize -winning memoir, Angela’s Ashes, died on Sunday, July 19, 2009. He was 78 and lived in Manhattan and Roxbury, Conn. 
“When I look back on my childhood,” McCourt said in Angela’s Ashes, “I wonder how I survived it at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”
The book’s hilarious and irreverent chapter on Mr. McCourt’s preparation for First Communion is reminicent of pre-Vatican II lessons on both sides of the pond.
“He tells us we have to know the catechism backwards and forwards,” Mr. McCourt writes. “We have to know the Ten Commandments, Divine and Moral, the Seven Sacraments, the Seven Deadly Sins. We have to know by heart all the prayers, the Hail Mary, the Our Father, the Confiteor, the Apostles’ Creed, the Act of Contrition, the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary…He tells us we’re hopeless, the worst class he’s ever had for First Communion, but as sure as God made little apples he’ll make Catholics of us, he’ll beat the idler out of us and Sanctifying Grace into us.”
The day for First Communion finally arrives. He’s late to church.
“We ran to the church. My mother panted along behind with Michael in her arms. We arrived at the church just in time to see the last of the boys leaving the altar rail where the priest stood with the chalice and the host, glaring at me. Then he placed on my tongue the wafer, the body and blood of Jesus. At last, at last.”
“It’ s on my tongue. I draw it back.”
“It stuck.”
“I had God glued to the roof of my mouth. I could hear the master’s voice. Don’t let that host touch your teeth for it you bite God in two you’ll roast in hell for eternity.”
“I tried to get God down with my tongue but the priest hissed at me, Stop that clucking and get back to your seat.”
“God was good. He melted and I swallowed Him and now, at last, I was a member of the True Church, an official sinner.”
In fact, Frank McCourt ended up to be one of the Church’s principal public antagonists. He delighted in delivering bawdy riffs against what he saw as the church’s hypocrisy, cruelty and joylessness. “I was so angry for so long, I could hardly have a conversation without getting into an argument,” he once said.
Peter Quinn, the novelist and a practicing Catholic, wrote in an email that his friend was neither “contemptuous of believers in general nor Catholics in particular. On a trip we took together in 1998, he went to Mass with me on the Sunday morning that we landed. He respected the fact that I had reached my own peace with the Catholic Church. ‘It’s a good thing,’ he once told me, ‘that you’re raising your kids in the Catholic faith. At least they’ll have a map to follow or throw away. In either case, they’ll know where they are.’”
Mr. McCourt felt it was impossible to fully divorce himself from the church. So when he stood before Pope John Paul II in 2002, accompanying a delegation of 40 mayors from around the world, the little Irish Catholic boy in him took over. He knelt, took the pope’s hand, and kissed his ring.
“I got up and he’s looking at me with his dazzling blue Polish eyes and extraordinary complexion,” Mr. McCourt told the Commonwealth Club of California, “I had a feeling he knew. He knew what a fraud and phony I was. Then I walked away. And I have to admit, as turbulent as my relationship with the church has been (although they don’t know and they don’t care), I was walking on water practically. I was walking on air.”
Oscar Wilde, whose torrid affair with Lord Alfred Douglas scandalized Britain in the 19th century has won an endorsement from the Vatican. 
In a review of a new study, The Portrait of Oscar Wilde by Italian writer Paolo Gulisano, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said that Wilde was much more than “an aesthete and a lover of the ephemeral.”
“What a surprise!” La Repubblica said. “A homosexual icon has been accepted by the Vatican.” Orazio La Rocca, a Vatican watcher, described the book as a bombshell.
The paper added that Wilde was often celebrated by “the gay world” as an example of an artist persecuted because of his homosexuality. But he was also “a man who behind a mask of amorality asked himself what was just and what was mistaken, what was true and what was false.”
Two years ago, some of Wilde’s best known aphorism were included in a book of witticisms for Christians collated by the Vatican’s head of protocol, Father Leonardo Sapienza. The book includes: “I can resist everything except temptation”, and “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
Hardly orthodox Catholic teaching.
Father Sapienza said that he had devoted the lion’s share of Provocations: Aphorisms for an Anti-conformist Christianity to Wilde because he was a “writer who lived perilously and somewhat scandalously but who has left us with some razor-sharp maxims with a moral.”
Father Sapienza said that he wanted to “stimulate a reawakening in certain Catholic circles.” “Our role,” said Fr. Sapienza, “is to be a thorn in the flesh, to move people’s consciences and to tackle what today is the No. 1 enemy of religion–indifference.”
Wilde married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and they had two sons, but in 1891 he began a relationship with the much younger Lord Alfred Douglas. 
In April 1895, Wilde sued Douglas’ father, the Marquis of Queensberry, for libel, after the Marquis had accused him of being a sodomite. Wilde lost, and after salacious details of his private life were revealed during the trial, was arrested and tried for gross indecency. He was sentenced to two years of hard labor in Reading Gaol. 
The way for Wilde’s rehabilitation by the Vatican was paved six years ago by Jesuit theologian, Father Antonio Spadaro. On the centenary of Wilde’s death, he raised eyebrows by praising the “understanding of God’s love” that followed Wilde’s imprisonment in Reading.
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 to a Protestant family but became attracted to Catholicism at Oxford. In 1877 he made the journey to the Vatican for an audience with Pope Pius IX, but declared: “To go over to Rome would be to sacrifice and give up my two great Gods: Money and Ambition.”
During his time in prison he read the works of St. Augustine, Dante and Newman. When he was released in 1897, with his reputation destroyed and in frail health, he moved to Paris. He was received into the Catholic Church shortly before he died, three years later.
L’Osservatore Romano described the writer’s conversion as a “long and difficult path”…”a path which led him to convert to Catholicism, a religion which, as he remarked in one of his more acute and paradoxical aphorisms, was “for saints and sinners alone–for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.”
While researching conservative/ultradox Catholic sites for comments on the recent papal encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, I came across this news item on American Papist:
“Jim Corcoran, the owner of one of Canada’s largest and most lavish spas, has launched a human rights complaint against the Bishop of Peterborough Ontario for refusing him permission to continue to serve as an altar server. 
Corcoran admits that he is homosexual and lives with another homosexual man, but says that he follows the Church’s teaching and lives a chaste lifestyle. According to the Catholic Register, Bishop Nicola De Angelis asked Corcoran to accept his decision that he not serve on the altar based upon the bishops’ desire to avoid public scandal.
Corcoran is seeking monetary damages of $25,000 from the bishop and $20,000 each from 12 parishioners who complained to the bishop about Corcoran and his roommate having been invited by the local priest to serve on the altar at Masses.”
Here’s what the American Papist blogger, Thomas Peters, had to say about the issue:
“The matter is tricky because Corcoran claims to be living chastely with his live-in boyfriend.
If that previous sentence didn’t quite make sense to you, you’re on to something. Corcoran would be an object of scandal if he was a heterosexual man claiming to be living a “chaste lifestyle” with his live-in girlfriend. The fact that he is an open homosexual exacerbates the problem.
As I’ve said before, the homosexual agenda cannot be reconciled to biblical Christianity, and the two movements cannot co-exist peacefully in society (they certainly do not appear to be co-existing well now). This episode, to my mind, is one more case which proves the truth of that claim.”
Another Catholic blogger, Terry Nelson of Abbey Roads, had this to say:
“Corcoran says that he follows the teaching of the Church regarding homosexuality and that he lives a chaste life with his friend:
.
“I’m a chaste homosexual and practise my faith,” he said. While Corcoran does live with another gay man, they are devout Catholics who refrain from sexual activity in accordance with church teaching, he said.
Nothing wrong with that and besides, that is all the Church asks – aside from requiring same-sex attracted people to refrain from promoting the homosexual lifestyle. Which may explain further why the bishop felt it necessary to intervene – I trust the men themselves had no intention of doing that – flaunting their orientation or promoting it – however other parishioners may have understood it differently.
This issue is not a matter of housing or job discrimination, but doctrine and the spiritual care of souls – scandal can drive people away from the Church, as this case may have already done.”
I agree with both these men—scandal has certainly driven many good people away from the Church.
- the scandal of hypocritical bishops and priests, who promise to treat with dignity and respect lesbian and gay Catholics who live in accordance with Church teaching. That is a lie. What they really mean is that homosexuals must live alone and stay in the closet. Otherwise, they are “flaunting” their lifestyle by acknowledging their sexual orientation.
-the scandal of bishops who moved pedophile priests around from parish to parish like a street con man doing a three card monty. Too bad about the kids. A pervert priest is better than a woman priest or married priest.
-the scandal of Pope John Paul II, who should have publicly knocked the biretta off the head of Bernard Cardinal Law to show the whole world he would not tolerate clerical sexual improprieties and abuse…did no such thing. Instead, he expressed his “sadness,” got Law out of the country and protected by Vatican immunity so he wouldn’t be invited to testify at any of the 450+ lawsuits against the Archdiocese. Cardinal Law is now the Archpriest of the Papal Basilica di Santa Marie Maggiore.. JPII was also a big fan of Legionaries of Christ founder, Father Marcial Maciel. Obviously, his interest in comely seminarians and hunky priests didn’t bother the pope. The money and men he brought in cancelled out any whisper of scandal. 
Finally, the scandal of the 12 parishioners of St. Michael’s parish who petitioned the bishop to remove a gay man as an altar server because of who he is. In their mean-spiritedness they did not give him the benefit of doubt when he said he lived in accord with church teaching. I guess expressions like “Christ’s love” and “God’s love” and “remove the log in your own eye” bounce off their righteousness like flies off a screen door.
I will remember Mr. Corcoran in my prayers. And I hope he wins his lawsuits. Better still, I hope he is reinstated as an Eucharistic Minister with apologies from all concerned starting with the bishop.
Read Mr. Corcoran’s account of what happened here.
Read a letter from another parishioner to Mr. Corcoran here.
Read William F. Buckley’s famous article on Bernard Cardinal Law – “Lawless in Boston” here.
Thousands of Irish people have flocked this week to a County Limerick church to pray at the stump of a recently cut willow tree that many observers say has the silhouette of the Virgin Mary. 
The phenomenon at St. Mary’s Church in Rathkeale, population 3,000, harkens back to decades when Catholic devotion and pilgrimages were part of life in rural Ireland.
“People have been crying out for something good to happen. And this is all good for the soul,” said Noel White, who has been supervising a church project to cut down trees in the parish cemetery dangerously overhanging the neighboring school playground.
When one willow was felled near the church entrance Monday, he said, a major branch cracked off and made “a funny shape.” One worker cut through the stump at a near vertical angle, revealing a wooden relief that inspired some to see the Virgin Mary.
“One of the lads said, ‘Look, our Blessed Lady in the tree,” said White. “One of the other lads looked over and actually knelt down and blessed himself, he got such a shock. It was the perfect shape of the figure of Our Lady holding the baby.” 
Anthony Redden was clearing trees when he spotted what his saw had produced from the willow. “There were only two limbs and it’s just the way the grain of the two limbs came out,” he said.
“You can depict what you want out of it. It was another man who noticed it and just said it was the image of Holy Mary. I see it as a grain of a tree.”
Nevertheless, word of mouth brought about 100 people to inspect and pray at the stump that first night. Numbers swelled to several hundred the next night. By Wednesday, more than a thousand came and went as a makeshift shrine of candles, rosaries and miniature statutes of Mary grew.
Fr. Willie Russell, the summer replacement for the regular pastor of St. Mary’s Church, had mixed feelings about the stump. “It’s just a tree. You don’t worship a tree,” Russell said. The priest said he saw no harm in saying Hail Marys at the spot—so long as the faithful don’t actually find themselves praying to the stump itself. “I don’t believe in idolatry. That would be the danger,” he said.
The County Limerick diocese said it viewed the stump with “great skepticism.”
“While we do not wish in any way to detract from the devotion to Our Lady, we would also wish to avoid anything which might lead to superstition,” the diocese said in a statement.
White said he didn’t understand the church’s distinction between its love of statues and this natural discovery. “We pray in front of statues which are marble and chalk. What’s the difference if it’s timber?” he said.
Rathkeale shopkeeper Seamus Hogan is leading a petition drive to deter village authorities from uprooting and removing the stump, as they originally planned to do Wednesday. More than 2,000 people in the Rathkeale area have signed a petition to prevent the removal of the stump. “We won’t be removing the stump,” White said. “We’d remove it at our peril.”
“Nature has a funny way of showing things up and let it be a freak of nature or something else but whatever it is, surely it is a wonderful thing to see so many people coming out to pray, especially young people who have been saying the Rosary in the church for the past few nights,” he added.
The Virgin Mary stump news has prompted comments from wags around the globe. Here are two from New Zealand:
Ian: “Looks like a ten pin bowling pin to me. Clearly I haven’t been spending enough time in church.”
Ness: “How nice to see the Irish returning to their pagan roots after that long Catholic experiment! About time.”
The last time Bishop Gaillot was feted in the United States was at the 1996 Call to Action Conference in Detroit. The title of his address was, “My Option for the Poor.” You can read it here.
After that, I haven’t heard about him. He is a man who deserves never to be forgotten, although that is what Pope John Paul II hoped, when Gaillot was removed from the Diocese of Evreux, France and appointed to an ancient and fictitious see, Partenia.
The See of Partenia, now located in the desert of Algeria, has not existed in reality since the 5th century when it was in Mauritania. But, thanks to the web, Gaillot managed to outwit the Vatican and continues to teach and pastor via the internet as a “virtual bishop.”
“As Partenia does not exist anymore” says Gaillot, “it becomes the symbol of all who feel like non-existing in society or in the Church. It is a huge diocese without borders where the sun never sets.” Travel to Partenia here.
Bishop Gaillot didn’t start off as a radical. Little by little, his contacts with people who came to see him and events to which he chose to respond led him to some unexpected places:
He called on all Catholics to persist in dialog without condemnation so that the church can, as Jesus did, embrace the dispossessed: those marginalized by poverty; those living with AIDS, those in prison, those ostracized for homosexuality; and ultimately, those struggling on the borderlands of their own Christian faith. 
“If we take as our starting point the poor, everything will be renewed – liturgy, catechism, the life of the church. It changes the way we think, pray, our very lifestyle. But if we take as our starting point the Status Quo, we will never be able to catch up with the Good News.”
Gaillot infuriated members of the French Bishops’ Conference and the Vatican with his outspokenness on a number of issues including clerical celibacy, the use of condoms for the prevention of AIDS, ordination of women and married men to the priesthood, and especially, homosexuality.
“The church must be where there is need, and homosexuals have suffered innumerable discriminations. If the church doesn’t free people from oppression, what purpose does it serve?” he asked.
In 1988 Gaillot took the unprecedented step for a Roman Catholic bishop of blessing a homosexual union after the couple requested it in view of their imminent death from AIDS.
He was the only French bishop to participate in the ceremony of the transfer of the ashes of the Abbe Henri-Baptiste Gregoire to the Pantheon, a burial place for “the great men of France.”
Gregoire (1750-1831), a Catholic priest and bishop, was a leading French abolitionist at the turn of the 18th century, a participant in the Revolution of 1789, and a member of its governing assembly.
Gregoire was among the most active deputies of the Assembly, advocated abolishing Negro slavery and granting citizenship to Jews. He objected to some provisions of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, but agreed to swear the oath of allegiance and was the first member of the clergy to take it (1790). Because of this, the hierarchy of the church refused to give him the last sacraments. (Although he was given them by some sympathetic priests in defiance of the ban.)
After these and other “incidents,” Pope John Paul II relieved Bishop Gaillot of his responsibilities as bishop of Evreux on January 13, 1995. After being removed from his office Bishop Gaillot wrote the following statement:
“I had a dream: to be able to accompany the poor, the excluded, the ignored, without having to explain myself or justify myself to the rich, the secure, or the comfortable. To be able to go where distress calls me without having to give advance notice. To be able to show my indignation at destitution, injustice, violence, the sale of weapons, and managed famines without being considered a meddler in politics.”
“I dreamed of being able to live my faith within the church, but also in society, in my time and with my times. I dreamed of the freedom to think and express myself, to debate and criticise, without fear of the guillotine. I dreamed of the being different within the unity of faith, and remaining myself, alone and yet in solidarity with others. Ultimately, I hoped to be able to proclaim a Gospel of freedom without being marginalised.”
What makes a Catholic, a Catholic?
Some people believe an “authentic” Catholic is one who is totally anti-abortion.
Others believe a Catholic identity is found in our social teaching, with its emphasis on justice for the poor, the marginalized, the earth and all creation.
Various Catholic spiritual practices are experiencing a revival: retreats, saying the rosary, fasting and abstinence, parish fish frys during Lent, praying the Liturgy of the Hours, examination of conscience, following the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, and more.
Will venerating the body parts of saints and martyrs make a revival? For centuries a normal part of Catholic life was to revere and make pilgrimages to sacred places holding a skull, vial of blood, finger bones, toe nails or a hank of hair of a long-dead person believe holds a special place in Heaven.
Our holy dead.
This past Sunday was the Feast of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of priests.
Pope Benedict XVI has declared a “Year for Priests” beginning with the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on June 19, 2009. The year will conclude in Rome with an international gathering of priests with the Holy Father on June 19, 2010.
The Pope has declared St. John Vianney the Universal Patron of Priests on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the death of the Curé d’Ars.
The Holy Father isn’t a stranger to St. John Vianney. The book, Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Dead, relates that when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he sequestered himself in his apartment with the heart of Saint Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, patron saint of priests.
Three years ago in 2006 the heart of St. John Vianney traveled from France to Cure of Ars Church in Merrick, NY. More than 5,000 people visited from October 7-9 to pray before his heart, and the pastor expected thousands more before the heart left for a stop in Boston on its way back to France.
The heart and Vianney’s chalice was placed at the front of the altar. People could walk by the relics and pray, or see it during Mass. 
In life, St. John Vianney was a revered 19th-century French clergyman who was said to be blessed with the ability to read the hearts of worshippers. He was widely known to Catholics as the Cure (parish priest) of Ars. He won over the hearts of his villagers by visiting with them, teaching them about God and reconciling people to the Lord in the confessional. It was said he heard confessions 16-18 hours a day. He died in 1859.
When his body was exhumed in 1904 because of his pending beatification, it was found intact.
Fr. Charles Mangano of Cure of Ars Church said there’s a long-standing tradition in the Catholic Church of venerating relics such as the heart of Vianney. But for the uninitiated, he said, think of Elvis Presley.
“People get on eBay and they’ll try to get belongings or artifacts from like Elvis Presley, like people that they idolized, they admired,” the pastor explained. “Because having something of that person, you know, makes you feel close to them.”
He said for Catholics, “having a relic in our presence, it inspires us because this relic is from the body of a person whose body and soul was for God.”
Venerating the remains of saints and martyrs goes back to the earliest days of the Catholic church, said the Rev. Jean-Paul Ruiz, a professor of theology at St. John’s University.
“When we venerate the relics of saints, it puts us in touch with those persons who we believe are still alive beyond the death of their bodies.”
Fr. Mangano said he first saw the heart last year while on a retreat to Ars–inspired because he is a pastor of s church that honors Vianney.
“It’s an actual heart, 3-D, not in any kind of gel or formaldehyde,” he said. “It’s brownish color. When you get really close to it, the center is still pinkish-red. Everything else around it is all like browned with age.”
Some of the people who stood in long lines to see the heart described an overwhelming need to see a real miracle. Others said it was a historic moment. And still others–many seminarians and priests–came to thank the Cure of Ars, patron saint of parish priests, for answering prayers during times they struggled with their vocation or ministry.
“I came here to see a miracle,” said Laura Musto, 46, of St. Mary of the Isle Church in Long Beach, referring to the heart. “And we need miracles in today’s world.”
“I came to see the heart of a saint,” said Maria Gilmore, 82, of Sacred Heart Church in North Merrick. “I thought everyone turned to dust but I guess not.”
“We came here on a mini-pilgrimage to be close to his heart, to have a moment of intimacy with the saint,” said Charlie Gallagher, 23, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Washington who was joined by two classmates, Ted Hegnsuer and Rick Nichols.
“This relic represents who St. John Vianney was and who we aspire to be. When I kneel before the heart, I will ask St. John Vianney to replace my heart with his heart so I can emulate him,” Gallagher told The Long Island Catholic, the newspaper of the Rockeville Centre Diocese.
But when I saw the a picture of the heart in a newspaper, it reminded me of a bear’s heart I saw in the refrigerator of an Indian family member in Alaska. Like most of the people in the village they mostly lived off the land in the traditional ways and and killed a bear for food. The heart was there in case anyone was hungry and wanted a snack.The Vianney relic looked just like the cold, cooked heart on white plate.
I didn’t go see the heart, even though I live about 45 minutes away from Merrick.
I was more morbidly curious to see a mummified heart than faith-filled, so out of respect I passed. Maybe if it was another body part, like a finger bone, I could have coped. Or, if I went with other people I knew I could justify the visit like a modern day Canterbury Tales pilgrimage. We could have all shared our stories of faith and doubt and sin en route.
But I didn’t know any Catholic who wouldn’t have given a “Huh?” response at the offer to go see a saint’s heart on the middle of Long Island.
