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.”
Yesterday was a day of quotable quotes by fellow Catholics and would-be Catholics.
Vatican: In a move that caught just about everyone off guard, the Vatican said yesterday it would make it easier for conservative Anglicans uncomfortable with women priests, openly gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions to re-join the Roman Catholic Church. Anglicans would be able to “enter into full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony,” said Cardinal William J. Levada, the perfect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at a news conference announcing the decision. “The unity of the church does not require a uniformity that ignores cultural diversity, as the history of Christianity shows,” he said.
“I don’t want to be a Roman Catholic,” said Martyn Minns, an Anglican bishop from Fairfax, Virginia. “There was a Reformation, remember.” 
“Not all Anglo-Catholics can accept certain teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, nor do they believe that they must first convert to Rome in order to be truly catholic Christians,” said the Rev. Jack Leo Iker of Fort Worth, Texas.
Your Censor Librorum says: I don’t think more than a handful of Anglican bishops, priests and congregations will take advantage of the Vatican’s new “Apostolic Constitution” to join the Roman Catholic Church. Bishops have big egos, and they will be nothing but small potatoes in the Church, because a lot of them are married. The big upside to this for liberal Catholics is the issue of a married priesthood. Why make an exception for Episcopalians, but not Catholics–Catholic priests, former priests and parishioners are going to ask. This latest Vatican outreach to bolster the fold with more conservatives is going to end up as a big pain in the neck for U.S. and other Roman Catholic bishops.
Sports: ESPN analyst and Ex-Met general manager, Steve Phillips, had a fling with a 22-year-old production assistant named Brooke Hundley over the summer. He dumped her. She got mad and wrote to his wife. The New York Post published her letter. “…he enjoys being with me,” Brooke wrote to Marni Phillips, “because I have more of a passion and drive to really do something with my life. And that you’re making him go to mass and therapy despite the fact that he doesn’t believe it will save your marriage, but he doesn’t want to lose hs kids.”
She went on..“I’m not telling you all of this to hurt you in any way, but simply to show you that I am a real person in his life and that I care deeply about his happiness. I was raised Catholic too and while I know our faith dissuades divorce, it also respects it with regards to infidelity because people should have the opportunity to be with the whomever makes them happy and can give them what they need.” 
The finale is the worst: “I may be only 22, but I’m not stupid, and I hope you can understand we never wanted you to find out this way. I want you to meet me and I want to tell you anything you may want to know, my cell number is xxxxx, check the phone records you can see I’m not lying and to top it off Steve has a big birthmark on his crotch right above his penis and one on his left inner thigh, so you know I’m not being fake.”
Your Censor Librorum says: I hope Mrs. Phillips can see a way to speak to her husband again after she’s finished beating him to a pulp. As for Miss Hundley, where did you hear the Church “respects” infidelity if a married person finds someone on the side to fill an unmet emotional or sexual need? I must have missed that one in my pre-Cana conference.
American Idol: Adam Lambert is an American Idol runner-up who came out of the closet after the season ended. But a recent Details magazine shoot had Lambert in a steamy embrace, kissing a lingerie model who shed her bikini. “Women know he’s gay, but they are still crazy about him. He’s no Liberace,” said Details editor-in-chief, Dan Peres. “To put him with a beautiful female model felt absolutely right.” 
Lambert told the magazine, “I like kissing women sometimes. Women are pretty. It doesn’t mean I’m necessarily sleeping with them.”
Your Censor Liborum Says: This sounds like Rock Hudson.
Mob Guy: A confessed Gambino family gunman, Robert Mormando, had a surprise for everyone in a Brooklyn courtroom on Monday. He told the judge he was gay.
Mormando, 44, was being sentenced for his part in the 2003 shooting of a bagel store owner, who was wounded in his driveway.
A divorced father of two, Mr. Mormando was born and raised in Ozone Park, Queens, a neighborhood long associated with former don, John Gotti.
Complicating matters, Mr. Mormando had a close personal friendship with Richard G. Gotti, John Gotti’s nephew. Richard Gotti is currently in prison on a federal racketeering charge. While there is no suggestion that the friendship was anything more than that, the mere fact an “avowed” gay man was once “inseparable” from a member of the Gotti family is “an intolerable stain on their name,” said a person who has knowledge of the case.
Indeed, that kind of “stain” can get you killed if you’re mobbed up. In 1992, John D’Amato,a former boss in the DeCavalcante crime family, was murdered by an underling when, after an argument, D’Amato’s girlfriend told his cronies he was gay.
Anthony Capo, a former soldier for the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante family, which is often described as the real-life “Sopranos,” said he killed John “Johnny Boy” D’Amato after finding out about his secret life.
“Nobody’s gonna respect us if we have a gay homosexual boss sitting down discussing La Cosa Nostra business,” Capo told jurors in Manhattan federal court. “She told me John D’Amato and her were going to sex clubs in the city, swapping partners and John was engaging in homosexual activity,” he said. 
Your Censor Liborum Says: This guy must have been absolutely nuts to come out in court. Didn’t he watch the Sopranos?
Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, warned that “spiritual toxic waste” is being exported to Africa by the First World. 
During his address last week to the Second Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops, he said: “The Holy Father, in his homily during the Inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, pointed out, with a very incisive expression, how the First World ‘is exporting its toxic waste’ to Africa and other developing countries. One of these poisons is the so-called gender theory, which, heavily disguised, is starting to infiltrate associations, governments and even some ecclesial environments on the African continent, judging from what the Pontifical Council for the Family tells us.”
Cardinal Antonelli noted that people working for “various international institutions and organizations” start from real problems that must be “dutifully resolved.” Among these, the cardinal noted injustice and violence against women, infant mortality, malnutrition and famine, and problems of housing and work.
But, he lamented, “They propose solutions based on values of equality, health and liberty: sacrosanct concepts, but rendered ambiguous by the new anthropological meanings that are given to them.”
“For example,” the cardinal explained, “equality of people no longer just means equal dignity and access to fundamental human rights; but also the irrelevance of the natural differences between men and women, the uniformity of all individuals, as though they were sexually undifferentiated, and therefore the equality of all sexual orientations and behavior: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transsexual, polymorphous. Each individual has the right to practice–and change, should they wish–their choices in line with their drives, desires and preferences.”
During the January 2009 World Annual Meeting of Families in Mexico City, Cardinal Antonelli did offer an option: “the homosexual experience must stay within the confines of a private relation, a relation between friends.”
In other words, keep things quiet and private. No scandal. Society should not be shaken. This must have been his mantra as bishop of Florence.
Shortly before he became head of Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Antonelli had to deal with an ugly sexual abuse case in his diocese–serious enough (meaning it had hit the newspapers and the city criminal justice department) for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to send a special envoy to investigate.
20 women accused Fr. Lelio Cantini, 82, of having raped them when they were minors, from ages 12 to 17. The alleged victims wrote to the Pope, asking due punishment for the abuser. Confronted by their testimony, church authorities first transferred the priest to another parish, and then, out of the diocese. 
Cardinal Antonelli admitted that the Church had settled the matter in secret after the accusations reached the Vatican.
But Fr. Cantini had never been disciplined. The priest admitted he coerced girls and teenagers in his parish to have sex. The rapes occured between 1973 and 1987.
After the investigative process, where the accusations were proved to be true, on April 2, 2007, Cardinal Antonelli issued the punishment for the priest: Fr. Cantini was barred from saying Mass and ordered to contribute a portion of his income to charity for a period of five years. In addition, for the first year, he was ordered to recite a psalm each day for a year begging for pardon over the sins he committed.
In case you are wondering, it’s Psalm 51 – the one that begins, “Have mercy upon me, O God … Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity.”
Growing up in the pre-Vatican II church, I can tell you Cardinal Antonelli would have had a big line in front of his confessional as the “easy penance” guy!
So, all of this is a little confusing as to what “values” the good cardinal is promoting, except for the value of silence.
During Pope Benedict XVI’s recent trip to the Czech Republic, the pope emphasized that Europe had been deeply shaped by its Christian roots. Invoking his own background as an academic, he warned the Czech academic community against allowing a modern-day preoccupation with reason to cancel out faith. 
“What will happen if our culture builds itself only on fashionable arguments, with little reference to a genuine historical intellectual tradition, or on the viewpoints that are most vociferously promoted and most heavily funded,” he asked.
In another address to Czech academics in Prague, the pope inveighed against the perils of relativism. He also underlined the need to mend “the breach between science and religion.”
Some young Christians said they felt alienated by the pope’s “moral absolutism” who appeared more intent on preserving the church’s traditions than an adapting to modern times.
“A pope’s visit should energize all Christians,” said Daniel Barton, 25, a youth leader in the country’s largest protestant denomination, “but I find his social conservatism quite ridiculous.”
“The Vatican and this pope have been absolutizing the traditions of the past without thinking of the reasoning behind these rules, which is what Jesus was fighting against.”
The very week that he returned, an editor of Zenit, a news agency specializing in coverage of the Holy Father, life in the Holy See, and events of interest to the Church, published an interview with Jesuit Fr. James V. Schall, a professor of political philosophy at Georgetown University in Washinton, DC. Fr. Schall is also the author of The Mind that is Catholic: Philosophical and Political Essays. The book was published by Catholic University of America Press in November 2008. The book explores the habits of being that allow one to use the tools of faith and reason to explore all things seen and unseen. 
“It is characteristic of the Catholic mind,” states Fr. Schall, “to insist that all that is knowable and considered by us in our reflections on reality. ”
“It was Aristotle who warned us that the reason we do not accept the truth even when it is presented to us is because we do not really want to know it. Knowing it would force us to change our ways. If we do not want to change our ways, we will invent a “theory” whereby we can live without the truth.”
“The ‘primary’ source of the Catholic mind is reality itself,” said Fr. Schall, “including the reality of revelation.” “The source of our knowledge,” he goes on to say, “is not a book but experience of being and living, an experience that will often include those whose lives are already touched by grace.” 
Pope Benedict XVI is an intellectual, an academician who happens to be pope. A bookish man, and probably the most conservation and ecologically-minded pontiff we have ever had, you would think he would be open to nature being a source of revelation of God and humanity–but he is not. He is stiffly fixated on homosexual sex and relationships as unnatural.
In his December 2008 address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration, the Pope himself described behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations as “a destruction of God’s work”.
He said the Roman Catholic Church had a duty to “protect man from the destruction of himself” and urged respect for the “nature of the human being as man and woman.”
The pontiff added: “The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.”
Can lived experience can be an instrument of God’s revelation? If so, what is God saying about the increasing openness and acceptance of loving gay and lesbian relationships and commitments? That is something for the Catholic Mind, including the Holy Father’s, to grapple with–not dismiss out-of-hand as a product of relativism.
I hope he picks up this book.
I spent part of Friday afternoon poking around in an old marine salvage store in town. Along with time-crusted anchors, portholes sporting blistered paint, antique lanterns and knives, and leather bracelets sailors used to wear when they mended sails, the store has a selection of old books. That’s where I head first. 
A title caught my eye, “The Wreck on the Half-Moon Reef.” It was written by Hugh Edwards, the Australian diver who found the wreck in 1966. The book was published in 1970.
I pulled it off the shelf and opened it to read the jacket. The book was the account of the wreck of the 38-gun Dutch East Indiaman Zeewyk in 1727 on the savage reefs around the Abrolhos Islands. “The lookout thought that the surf on the Half-Moon Reef was ‘moonlight.’ The result was a quick death for some, a slow death for others, and the torture and execution of two youths for the ‘stupid sin’ of sodomy.”
It’s rare a nautical history includes a full chapter describing a sodomy trial and execution. I bought the book.
Chapter 12, The Stupid Sin, begins: “The two sodomy-accused boys were doomed from the moment that the eager informants burst into the officers’ tent with the news.” The youths, it seems that they were not older than their mid to late teens at the most, had been accused of a homosexual act. The “stupid sin” as the Dutch called it.
One of the officers, Adriaan van der Grafee, kept a journal during the voyage and recorded their trial and punishment.
“December 1st, 1727: At eight o’clock in the morning the Petty Officers enter our tent and ask to see the Skipper, and inform him that two hands named Adriaen Spoor from St. Maertensdyck, and Pieter Engels, from Ghent, both boys, were found yesterday committing together the abominable sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.”
The boys were spotted by several others having sex in broad daylight, around 3 o’clock in the afternoon according to the account.
The white-faced boys were brought to the officers’ tent, “But they were not willing to make a confession. Wherefore we placed burning fuses between all their fingers. But being obstinate they would no more confess. So upon due consideration we resolved with the entire Council and consent of the Common Hands, to place these men apart on one of the northernmost islands.”
Marooning, death by exposure or drowning. That is what the verdict meant.
The youths were rowed across to one of the tiny cays at the north-eastern corner of the island group, about eleven miles away from the wrecked Half-Moon, and set on separate islands. The boat, with an official party of two petty officers, a boatswain and six unnamed seaman, then put about and left them to die.
The place they were left is known today as the Mangrove Islands. Hugh Edwards describes them: “Mere nodules of coral slates and spikey bushes raised four feet above the surrounding reefs. There is no water on them. No food, Deep channels run between islets and if they youths could not swim they would have been prisoners, each on his own rock until they died from sun and thirst, or went mad with despair and flung themselves in the water. In any event, death must have overtaken them within a day or two.”
Van der Graeff does not record in his diary whether the two boys were left any provisions when they were tumbled ashore, nor does he mention any conversation or pleas for mercy.
“In the case of the boys,” Edwards opined, “emphasis was placed, on sentencing them, in the brazen nature of unnatural sexual intercourse in broad daylight. Perhaps it was the flagrant nature of the indiscretion that enraged their shipmates.”
Despite the harsh punishments of the time, homosexual relations aboard ships were well-known.
Edwards notes that Engels previously appeared to be the object of bullying and persecution by some Zeewyk crewmen. He says, “it is interesting to note the modern psychological belief that those who are most condemnatory of sexual deviation are often those who sense the desire for such deviation in themselves.”
Whether out of shame or conscience, the incident is never mentioned again in van der Graeff’s journal, and the islands where the youths were marooned were not noted on the maps.
Edwards describes a sad postscript to the event: “More than a century later, in 1844, one of the party who had gone to the Abrolhos from the recently established Swan River colony to survey for guano and a fishing industry, laid his groundsheet down in darkness on the Mangrove Islands, and after a wretchedly uncomfortable night got up gumbling in the morning to find he had slept on a human skeleton. It may have been the pathetic remains of Adriaen Spoor or Pieter Engels.”
After I finished the chapter I closed the book and thought of those poor boys. How horrible to imagine them left to die, alone, on a barren ledge of rock. Each knew he was going to die, and had several days to think about it, and how they had been abandoned without mercy or pity.
The author, probably unintentionally, had several rich metaphors in his story: two youths, punished for their audacity in having sex in the daylight; each consigned to an island to die alone. Some of their tormentors and judges were men who, while expressing fear of the Lord’s punishment on their society for the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, really wanted the lads dead and gone to kill their fears of homosexual desire and possibly cover their own involvement.
The best, though was the Dutch expression of homosexual sex as “the stupid sin.” It is a stupid sin. It is stupid, how much time is spent on it, obsessing about it, to the point of murder.
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.
The megalomanic bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania, stepped down on August 31, 2009. Even the Pope had enough. 
Ordinary Catholics had expressed their opinion on his leadership: the Diocese of Scranton’s annual fundraiser fell $274,000 short of its $5.3 million goal–the first time in the two decades since the establishment of the annual drive the diocese did not reach its goal.
Critics of the bishop’s management of the diocese – including his ongoing efforts to consolidate schools and churches – say at least part of the fundraiser’s shortfall was caused by parishioners who withheld donations out of protest.
Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Bishop Joseph F. Martino, 63, from the pastoral governance of the Diocese of Scranton for “health reasons.”
Watch a video of the press conference here.
At the press conference, Martino himself alluded to the divisions his style had brought to the diocese, and the toll it had taken on him mentally and physically: “For some time now there has not been a clear consensus among the clergy and people of the diocese of Scranton regarding my pastoral initiatives or my way of governance. This development has caused me great sorrow, resulting in bouts of insomnia and, at times, a crippling physical fatigue.”
“I seek forgiveness from anyone whm I may not have served adequately as bishop, due to my human limitations,” Martino said, adding later, “As the song says, you have to know when to hold them and when to fold them. And I think it’s time to move on.”
This controversial bishop, who gained national prominence for his strident pro-life advocacy and aggressive criticism of pro-choice Democratic politicians, was still more than a decade away from reaching the Church’s automatic retirement age of 75. Martino’s abrupt resignation, along with the fact he was not reassigned to another post within the Church–but ushered to a rural retreat center–has some church insiders suggesting that the highly unusual move was far from voluntary–and quite possibly the work of a Vatican that has been decidedly less openly critical of the Obama Administration. Church insiders also say Martino had worn out his welcome with his brother bishops in the U.S., as he began to totter dangerously over the line of separation of Church and State with his demagogue pronouncements on his Catholic teaching.
Martino’s departure came just weeks after the Archbishop of Santa Fe became the first Church leader to speak out publicly about the increasingly political behavior of a small minority of bishops within the conference. Archbishop Michael Sheehan told the National Catholic Reporter on August 12 that he spoke out during the bishops’ meeting in June, arguing that they risked “isolat(ing) ourselves from the rest of America by our strong views on abortion and the other things. We need to be building bridges, not burning them.”
From the start of his six-year tenure in Scranton, Martino alienated many with his abrasive style. He frequently clashed with the local Catholic universities–including the Jesuit-run University of Scranton–and was dismissive of their ruling bodies, arguing as bishop he would not heed their advice.
Martino seemed to take special pleasure in catigating institutions and individuals that he felt were failing to represent Catholic values.
Last February, Martino blasted another local college, Misericordia University, for inviting Keith Boykin, an openly-gay author, Clinton administration staffer and Harvard Law classmate of President Obama, to speak on campus. The university, run by the Sisters of Mercy, was “seriously failing in maintaining its Catholic identity,” Martino charged. He also sought to close down the institution’s program on diversity. 
Also in February, Martino sent a letter to the leaders of three Irish-American organizations threatening to close St. Peter’s Cathedral in Scranton during St. Patrick’s Day celebrations if groups “honor pro-abortion officials” by inviting them to speak or otherwise be honored during events in which the church might be involved. Ultimately, the Mass was held, but not before he again threatened to shut the cathedral if members of the local Catholic teachers’ union were invited to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Bishop Martino refused to recognize the union.
During the 2008 presidential campaign Bishop Martino focused particular attention on vice presidental nominee Joseph Biden, the Scranton’s native son and Catholic Democrat. The bishop declared that Biden would be denied Communion if he tried to receive it at any church in the diocese, which covers the northeast corner of the state. “I will be truly vigilant on this point,” said Martino. And he warned his parishioners there would be dire consequences for supporting Biden and the Democratic ticket. In October, just prior to the election, Martino directed that a letter be read at all Sunday Masses, charging that a vote for a pro-choice politician was the same as supporting “homicide.”
Bishop Martino also called on priests and Eucharistic Ministers to act on their own to deny Communion–the central element of Catholic belief and worship–to any public officials “who persist in support for abortion and other intrinsic evils.”
One of major incidents contributing to Martino’s downfall came when he showed up unannounced as a voter-education forum at a Honesdale parish. Martino took the microphone and proceeded to criticize the organizers for discussing a comprehensive election guide, “Faithful Citizenship,” endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, instead of the letter he had drafted for the diocese on abortion.
When a nun at the forum reminded Martino that Faithful Citizenship had been prepared and endorsed by the entire bishops’ conference Martino responded, “No USCCB document is relevant in this diocese. The USCCB doesn’t speak for me,” he declared. “The only relevant document…is my letter. There is one teacher in this diocese, and these points are not debatable.”
Such comments didn’t endear him to the parishioners who organized the forum, or to his immediate superior, Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali. As the head of the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities, Rigali is just as opposed to abortion as Martino. But he is a much more politic figure. 
Many think Martino finally overstepped this spring when he started training his sights on Bob Casey, Jr., the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania and a staunchly pro-life Catholic. Casey’s late father, the former governor of Pennsylvania, is still revered by Catholics for speaking out against the Democratic Party’s support for abortion rights. Bu that didn’t stop Martino from sending Casey letters–also issued as press releases from the Diocesan office–warning the sentor that his oppostion to abortion was insufficient. In one such letter, Martino wrote that Casey “persist(s) formally in cooperating with the evil brought about by this hideous and unncessary (abortion) policy” and suggested that the senator could be denied Communion in the Scranton diocese.
The situation came to a head this spring, when King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, PA invited Senator Casey to speak at its commencement ceremony. Objecting to Casey’s vote to confirm former Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius (a Catholic who supports abortion rights) as Secretary for Health and Human Services, Martino said it was “sad and disappointing” that the college chose to honor a Democrat who could not “muster the courage” to oppose “the pro-abortion agenda.”
Two days before Casey’s address at King’s College, Cardinal Rigali issued a statement “applauding” the senator for introducing legislation to promote policies that encourage women facing unplanned pregnancies to carry their babies to term. In the highly ritualized world of Church communication, the Cardinal’s announcement was akin to a public smackdown of Martino. One month later, Martino was summoned to Rome, and submitted his resignation. It was formally accepted in July, and he was out by the end of August.
During his farewell press conference, Martino was unapologetic. “I did what my mother told me to do,” Martino said. “She would also say, ‘Well, you do the right thing.’ And my conscience is clear.” He said he wasn’t trying to become a rallying point for the most vociferous foes of abortion, but he defended them saying they are often too readily dismissed by the media and even within the church because of their “passion.”
He praised vocal pro-lifers as “very dear to the Lord” because of their outspokenness, and said “bishops should encourage” them as they try to “overturn a profound cancer in our society, this sin, frankly, of murdering 50 million people (referring to the number of abortions since Roe v. Wade in 1973). I think we have become quite blase about that, and that scares me very much.”
“By the world’s standards perhaps I have not been successful here,” Martino concluded. “But I did what I thought was right.”
Clearly, not everyone agreed with that self-assessment.
The bishop’s high-profile controversy, and reports of low morale among the diocese’s parishioners and priests, did not go unnoticed around the country and in Rome, church observers say.
“It’s not the people who left the church that bothers Rome,” said Joseph K. Grieboski, a Scranton native and founder and president of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute on Religion and Public Policy. “It’s the people who stayed and are disaffected.
“People who are going to leave are going to leave no matter what, and the bishop became an excuse. It’s the people who stayed and said, ‘I stayed despite him,’ that’s what bothered Rome and that’s what bothered his fellow bishops.”
A few days ago, Pope Benedict XVI asked the Italian Bishops’ Conference for an “assessment” after the editor of its newspaper, Avvenire, was accused by another publication of homosexual behavior and harassment.
“His Holiness has asked for information and an assessment of the current situation,” said a statement posted last week on the website of the bishops’ group, which publishes the daily Avvenire.
Yesterday, Dino Boffo, director of the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire, resigned–ostensibly in the wake of a tumultuous feud with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. 
The row erupted after Boffo ran a series of stories in Avvenire that criticized the immigration policies and personal life of the prime minister.
Letters from readers complained that a Roman Catholic newspaper had a moral duty to denounce divorce, consorting with teenage girls, naked poolside parties and the prime minister being caught on tape telling a prostitute to wait for him in “Putin’s bed” while he showered.
Boffo, the editor, began to weigh in. “People have understood the unease, the mortification, the suffering this arrogant neglect of sobriety has caused the Catholic Church,” Boffo wrote last month.
Under cover of a paper owned by his brother, Paolo Berusconi, the prime minister retaliated.
Under a front page banner headline, Il Giornale, ran an article accusing Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian Bishops Conference, of running a “moralistic campaign” against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, 72. The article went on to scrutinize Dino Boffo, 57, Avvenire‘s top editor, claiming he had a homosexual affair and had accepted a plea bargain in 2004 for harassing the wife of his lover.
The Il Giornale article openly admitted that the article was in response to Boffo’s criticisms of Berlusconi’s private life, and called Boffo a hypocrite.
In a statement, Mr. Boffo described the report as an “absurd” attempt to smear his reputation. Mr. Boffo described himself as “the first victim” in the 2001 harassment case. He didn’t elaborate on the matter.
After the story appeared, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State and deputy to Pope Benedict XVI, telephoned Mr. Boffo to offer his “solidarity.”
He was joined by Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, the Archbishop of Milan, who said he had offered Mr. Boffo his “esteem and gratitude.”
Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the head of the bishops conference, described the attack on Mr. Boffo as “disgusting.”
Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, former secretary to the late Pope John Paul II and now Archbishop of Krakow in Poland, said it was “the first time a Catholic paper has been attacked with such violence.” He added that he was “very worried by the moral decadence into which Italy is sliding because of the behavior of certain important political leaders.”
Il Giornale ‘s attack escalated when another editorial aimed at the Catholic Church itself, mocking not just the “hypocrisy” of sexually active priests with “weak flesh,” but even the “Mitteleuropean” accent of Pope Benedict XVI, a German.
Earlier in the week Il Giornale reported how Dino Boffo had been successfully sued by a woman who claimed that he had tried to steal her husband from her in 2001. The matter, which involved a couple from Terni, near Perugia, was settled out of court in 2004 with Boffo agreeing to pay a small fine. The article claimed Boffo had been listed by police in document as a gay man “noted for this kind of activity.” (It’s not clear–harassment or chasing married men??)
The story dragged in the Italian goverment with Robert Maroni, the Interior Minister, was forced to telephone Mr. Boffo to assure him no such police document existed.
Officials said the alleged police document appeared in reality to be an “anonymous letter” sent to Italian bishops earlier this year.
Prime Minister Berlusconi and his allies had hoped to patch up his relationship with the Catholic Church after months of articles linking Berlusconi with teenage models and “spicy” parties. He denied he paid for sex after an Italian prostitute went public with claims that she slept with Mr. Berlusconi at his residence in Rome.
“Gossip isn’t enough to crucify someone,” Vittorio Feltri, the editor of Il Giornale wrote.
In April, the premier’s wife announced plans for a divorce, accusing him of “consorting with minors.”
“I’ve never had ‘relations’ with minors and have never organized ‘spicy parties,’ retorted Berlusconi. “I’ve simply taken part in engaging dinners which were absolutely in line with morality and elegance. And I’ve never knowingly invited anyone to my house who was not a serious person,” the premier told Il Giornale.
After photos of scantily clad guests and a naked man partying at his Sardinian home were published, Berlusconi then found himself embroiled in an escort scandal when Patizia D’Addario claimed she and other women were paid by Bari businessman Gianpaolo Tarantini to attend parties at the premier’s residences. 
Berlusconi admitted that he was “no saint” after the left-leaning daily La Repubblica and sister weekly Espresso posted audio takes and transcripts that it alleges are of conversations between the premier and a call girl on their websites.
Friends of the prime minister warned him he is wadding into dangerous waters with the church that could harm him politically. Many Italians care about what candidates have its normally implicit support. The church generally supports candidates on the right, like Mr. Berlusconi, making the current confrontation that much more unusual and significant.
But Berlusconi’s popularity has started to drop in the polls, and he appears deeply worried about further damage, especially from moderate Catholic voters. This week he announced he was bringing defamation lawsuits against several publications that have been critical of him, part of what his critics and allies alike worry is a dangerous trend toward treating any criticism as disloyal and possibily illegal. (Hmmmm…does this sound familiar in some Church circles??!!)
As part of an effort to mend relations with the Vatican, Mr. Berlusconi had planned to attend a high profile religious service and dine with the Vatican’s No. 2 official when the Holy See issued a statement withdrawing the dinner invitation. The statement also said that Mr. Berlusconi wouldn’t attend the service, known as the “Perdonanza,” or the annual day of pardon for sins. 
Mr. Berlusconi’s plans to attend the Perdonanza was seen by the Italian public as a gesture in the direction of atonement.
The service was established in the 13th century by Pope Celestine V, who decreed that anyone who entered the basilica on August 28 and 29 could receive a plenary indulgence–if they have already confessed to their sins in private and taken Communion.
In its statement, the Vatican said Mr. Berlusconi’s dinner plans with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who officiated Friday’s service, was called off partly out of concern that the meeting woul be “exploited.” The Vatican official said the Holy See didn’t want to be viewed as giving a “benediction” to Mr. Berlusconi’s political positions and his personal life.
The situation become more complicated and shaded when Gian Maria Vian, editor of the Vatican’s semi-official daily, L’Osservatore Romano, didn’t speak out on behalf of Boffo in an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Courier della Sera. 
Vian restated the decision of the Holy See’s newspaper not to write about Berlusconi’s private life because the paper is international and is not designed to cover controversies in Italian politics.
Vian further expressed his opinion that some recent editorials in Avenire were exaggerated when, for example, one article compared the government’s position on immigration to that of the Italian administratin prior to the Holocaust.
The comments of Vian were interpreted as constituting a point of contention between the Vatican newspaper and the Italian Bishops’ Conference. Benedict XVI sought to dispel any ideas of a rift by personally calling Cardinal Bagnasco, president of the conference, and affirming his esteem for the episcopal body.
Both in articles published in Avvenire,as well as in the letter to Cardinal Bagnasco tendering his resignation, Boffo, who is married, insists on his innocence and states that Il Giornale‘s accusations are not true.
He thanked the Church for its support, but aded that it “has better things to do than strenuously defend one person, even if unfairly targeted.”
Boffo said he believes the attacks against him are due to the fact that Avvenire is a voice that is independent of “secular power.” He asks, “What future of liberty and responsibility will there be for our information?”
Cardinal Bagnasco expressed in a communique gratitude to Boffo “for the commitment shown over many years with competence, rigor and passion, in fulfilling such a precious assignment for the life of the Church and of Italian society.”
The cardinal also expressed his “closeness and support” to the former director. 
Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco was in the news a few years ago when he claimed that permitting gay marriages was merely the beginning of slippery slope. “Why then say ‘no’ to incest? Why say ‘no’ to the pedophile party in Holland?” he asked.
Draw your own conclusions.
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.” 
Last week a masked gunman killed two and wounded 15 at a gay youth center in Tel Aviv. As protesters mourned the victims and condemned the homophobic sentiment assumed to be behind the attack, police hunted for the assailant, whom many believe to be a member of the Orthodox Jewish community.
The Orthodox have clashed with Israeli gay and lesbian Jews over civil rights. “While Judaism is a religion of peace and tolerance, without strict adherence to the commandments of the Torah – which speaks strongly and unambiguously on this issue – we cease to be the “light unto the nations” G-d commands us to be,” said one Orthodox statement on a gay pride march.
Knowing how strictly traditionalist Christians, Jews and Muslims feel about gays and homosexuality, I thought I would check out the Buddhists; specifically the Dalai Lama, who seems to have become an international spokesman for Tibetan liberation and cultural survival, and a universal spiritual icon for peace and justice. 
My 25-year-old son is quite taken with him and his philosophies on inner calm, the practice of meditation, compassion, and peaceful living. I have not delved into his teachings, but he seemed to me to be a jolly, joyful, earnest and indeed, holy spiritual leader and man.
Imagine my shock, then, to discover the Dalai Lama doesn’t sound one whit different than the most conservative Vatican bureaucrat, bishop, fundamentalist preacher or orthodox rabbi when it comes to gay and lesbian sex.
“A gay couple came to see me,” he said during an interview, “seeking my support and blessing. I had to explain our teachings. Another lady introduced another woman as her wife – astonishing. It is the same with a husband and wife using certain sexual practices. Using the other two holes is wrong.”
“A Western friend asked me what harm there could be between consenting adults having oral sex, if they enjoyed it,” the Dalai Lama continued, warming to his theme. “But the purpose of sex is reproduction, according to Buddhism. The other holes don’t create life. I don’t mind – but I can’t condone this way of life.”
Although he says that no real love between people can be condemned and that any discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation must end, the Dalai Lama nevertheless persists in considering the natural expressions of gay and lesbian physical love as “wrong,” “unwholesome,” a “bad action,” and as “vices.”
In an interview with the French magazine Dimanche, the Dalai Lama says of gay and lesbian sexuality:
“It’s part of what we Buddhists call “bad sexual conduct. Sexual organs were created for reproduction between the male element and the female element–and everything that deviates from that is not acceptable from a Buddhist point of view.”
In the same interview, he specifically said he was “for” (heterosexual) sex with condoms or the pill. That is, it’s fine for heterosexuals to have non-procreative, recreational sex–as long as it doesn’t involve foreplay with other areas of the body.
A Newsweek article on the Dalai Lama entitled “Lama to the Globe” stated that, “Although he has affirmed the dignity and rights of gays and lesbians, he has condemned homosexual acts as contrary to Buddhist ethics.”
Sound familiar? Pope Benedict XVI expresses the same kind of “support” for gay people.
When respected lesbian educator and Claremont College professor Lourdes Arguelles asked the Dalai Lama when and where the Buddha gave teachings on inappropriate organs to use during sex, the Dalai Lama honestly replied, “I don’t know.”
The Catholic church is covered, since all sex outside marriage is a sin. Period. However, what does it say about oral sex for couples married in the faith?
I googled “catholic church teaching on oral sex” and found this little gem: “The Morality of Oral Sex Within Marriage.”
Here’s an excerpt: “Naturally, one would first look to the Catechism of the Catholic Church for a definitive answer to the question. (After all, it seems to talk about everything else Catholics should and should not do…) The Catechism does not speak of oral sex by name, but it talks about offenses against chastity and names lust and masturbation as two of these offenses. The Catechism states that lust “is [a] disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.”
“..the Church clearly teaches that oral sex is wrong when a couple chooses to separate the act from sexual intercourse and merely achieve orgasm(s). However, what happens when a married couple wishes to use oral sex as a means of foreplay? This is where language and wording becomes tricky… for would this action be called oral sex, or oral stimulation? In the case of foreplay before sexual intercourse, the act is more properly called oral stimulation. By engaging in this activity, the couple wishes to promote orgasm during the intercourse that follows.“
So, this puts Catholics united in sacramental marriage one step ahead of Buddhists when it comes to oral sex. It’s “morally acceptable” so long as its a warm up to intercourse… without birth control, of course. Buddhists are OK on birth control, but no fooling around with the wrong “holes.”
