A Sidebar on the Krazies

Saint Teresa of Avila

I just finished reading a paper by a graduate student from Boston College describing how Saint Teresa of Avila was able to escape the limitations normally placed on women in sixteenth century Spain and write her phenomenal corpus of the Spiritual Life.  Teresa had everything stacked against her.  She was a woman in one of the most misogynist cultures of the Christian west.  She was not only a woman, but had a Jewish bloodline that made her doubly suspect to the Inquisition.  She was writing at the time where the Spanish Church, keenly sensitive to the threat Protestantism posed in Northern Europe, had a social paranoia Iover the Alumbrados, a movement heavily dominated by women, who were practicing and teaching mystic practices  without proper Church oversight.  Indeed, the Church had grown exceptionally fearful of mysticism even among the clergy.  (And this is ironic because 16^th century Spain was a hotbed of Spirituality with not only Teresa and John of the Cross, but Ignatius Loyola, Peter of Alcantra, Francis Borgia, Juan de Avila, and others.) 

Teresa beat the system by using its own rules and without directly confronting it.  Don’t get me wrong, Teresa had confrontative skills to beat the band, but it was not her usual method.  Her life of profound contemplative prayer endowed her with sufficient confidence to go about her mission by remaining anchored in the security of her knowing herself exceptionally well and trusting in God’s providence.  Her skills at patient understanding and prayer did not simply extend to her overcoming the limitations the Church would normally have placed on her—and did try at times to place on her—but also governed her human relationships.  As a young nun, and visiting with her sister for reasons of health, Teresa encountered a priest who she describes as being “enchanted” (literally, as in the use of a magic talisman) by a local woman who then had become his mistress.  Teresa did not admonish him, scold him, declaim him to the bishop, or shame him in front of his parishioners.  She befriended him, even allowing him to fall in love with her, until he got to the point where he could break the spell.  Indeed, while severe with herself, Teresa was a woman of immense patience with others, a patience that was the fruit of contemplative prayer.  In contemplative prayer we learn to see the world and all whom it holds (including ourselves) with the eyes of God.  It greatly colors our perception. 

The author of this paper speaks how in her contemplative life Teresa overcame the sort of binary relationships that dominate our culture: rich, poor; people of color, whites; liberals, conservatives; women, men.  Her method was to move away from the tension created by the binary relationship and introduce Christ as the third party in the relationship.   How did Christ the other? And then, by means of contemplative prayer, to let aside her own vision to see with the eyes of Christ.   The eyes of God are filled with compassionate love for every one of his creatures.  Why do we have to come into conflict when Christ offers us the potential of reconciliation?

When I returned to my writing , I thought back to Pius V and his Bull, Regnans in Excelcis, excommunicating and deposing Elizabeth.  Elizabeth was giving Catholicism in England a discrete modus vivendi.   Her Catholic subjects could be loyal to her and still good Catholics.  But no, Pius had to speak up for “The Truth.” The only problem is if it were God’s Truth it would have been a reconciling Truth and not a dividing one.  Some people are like that.  Teresa and Pius are both saints; Teresa is a Doctor of the Church, an honor not given to Pius.  Both lived holy lives; only one has been found to be an exemplary teacher of the Church’s Truth—and it isn’t the one who was Pope;  it was the Jewish Lady from Avila.

I think this is what gets me going about the Katholic Krazies.  We have a few on the posting horizon, namely one with the blog “Pope Francis the Destroyer” and the other being the infamous “Mundabor”   whom any number of you keep writing me about, who just cannot think beyond what they perceive to be truth.  (Notice the lack of the capital there.)  All who agree with them—and there don’t seem to be many—are “right”  and all with whom they disagree (most notably Pope Francis) are on the short rode to hell. 

I have read that the etymology of the word “devil” comes via the French diable from the Latin diabolus and the Greek diabolos.  Diabolos in turn comes from two Greek words, dia and bollein: dia means “apart;” bollein means to “hurl” or to “force.”   The devil is the one who divides, who undermines God’s plan of bringing all creation into One in Christ.   (Some dictionaries list dia as “across,” but across not in the static sense of distance but in the more dynamic sense of separation and division.  I am not a fan of literal translation because it doesn’t show one how people of another language actually used the language in every day speech, but to satisfy the devotees of Liturgiam authenticam, a very literal translation of dia bolein would be “to throw across” in terms of a person who hurls insults or slanders “across” at someone else.)  

The acrimonious tones of some of these katholic krazies, and here I don’t mean just the krazier-than-thous like Mundabor and his ilk but a lot of the run of the mill krazies as well) reminds me of the tragedy when twenty years ago or so Cardinal Bernadin established the “Common Ground Initiative” to open dialogue among Catholics of different ideas and perceptions in an effort to establish what we could agree on instead of focusing on that about which we disagree with each other.  He was stabbed in the back by two of his fellow Cardinals, that paragon of Sheparding, Cardinal Law and the grandmotherly old Cardinal Hickey, then of Washington.  It was a lost opportunity for harmony and reconciliation.  And the American Church has paid over and over for this cardinalatial evil.

In the same way a distinguishing mark of the Katholic Krazies today is their opposition to Interreligious and Ecumenical Dialogue.  Lines of division must be drawn in the sand, they insist, to defend and affirm “the truth” against the “heresies” of all with whom they disagree: Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, President Obama, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sister Joan Chittester—the list just goes on and on.  But what if the truth they want to affirm isn’t the real truth?  If it is a message of division it is the devil’s truth, not God’s. 

Teresa of Avila, in her day, knew nothing of Ecumenism.  She fretted about all the “Lutherans in hell” by which she meant Calvinists, but didn’t know the difference.  Prejudice, even among the saints, is like that—an expression of ignorance.  But even there it wasn’t judgment she was passing but a compassionate concern for souls she feared were or would be lost.  The lack of “Truth” in others caused her pain, not self-affirming pride. 

I have studied (and taught) Christian mysticism for thirty years.  One thing that I have learned is that there is no deep authentic relationship with God that does not produce compassion as its chief fruit.  Indeed, as I tell my students, the only infallible sign of God’s Grace in the soul is the increase of charity.  Individually and collectively we must pursue the path of compassion—it is God’s path to bring all Creation into One in Christ.    

Why They Are Afraid of Pope Francis 15

Bishop Bernard McQuaid--19th century architect

of American Catholic Isolationism.  Like they say,

a picture is worth ten thousand words--not the

faithful kept behind the fence. 

WASHINGTON — Shortly before leaving the Capitol for the holiday recess, Senate Democrats gathered behind closed doors to lay out an agenda for 2014. When the majority leader, Harry Reid, exhorted colleagues to “deal with the issue of income inequality,” the talk took a spiritual turn.

“You know,” declared Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent, who caucuses with Democrats, “we have a strong ally on our side in this issue — and that is the pope.”

That Mr. Sanders, who is Jewish, would invoke the pope to Mr. Reid, a Mormon, delighted Roman Catholics in the room. (“Bernie! You’re quoting my pope; this is good!” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois recalled thinking.) Beyond interfaith banter, the comment underscored a larger truth: From 4,500 miles away at the Vatican, Pope Francis, who has captivated the world with a message of economic justice and tolerance, has become a presence in Washington’s policy debate.

The above is taken from an article that appeared in the New York Times a few weeks ago and it illustrates why this papacy is a very different papacy than its recent predecessors.  We have a Pope that isn’t playing in the intramural league.  This papacy is not nitpicking over internal issues like liturgical translations or nuns not being appropriately veiled.  It isn’t simply that this pope doesn’t think that we should stop “obsessing” over same-sex relationships or contraception, but he has taken the Church back out onto the court for serious game with the big boys.  When President Obama visits the Vatican in March it won’t be for the genteel sit-down and photo-op that it was with Pope Benedict.  This Pope is saying something that Mr. Obama (and Mr. Hollande, and Mr. Putin, and Mr. Peres, and Ms. Merkel, and other world leaders) are very interested in.  We’re back in the game now that we have stopped the navel-gazing and remembered our mission to announce the Kingdom of God.  But this is alarming to certain factions within the Church, and the American Church in particular, who are anxious to restore the ghetto mentality that pervaded American Catholicism from the final quarter of the nineteenth-century to the Second Vatican Council when the opened windows in Rome blew a wind strong enough to knock down the isolationist walls that had been carefully constructed by generations of American clergy who were terrified of the world outside the boundaries of the Church.  In the famous words of Bishop McQuaid of Rochester (1823-1909), one of the chief architects of the isolationist policy of the American Church:  “If the walls are not high enough, they must be raised; if they are not strong enough, they must be strengthened…”  When a pro-choice Jewish senator cites the Pope for policy support to a pro-choice Mormon senator—you know those walls aren’t standing anymore.  And this means that Catholics have to deal with the reality of a very non-Catholic world out there.  We can’t stay in our own enclave cheering each other on in our own in-house competitions and refusing to play ball with people who do not accept our basic premises.

Twenty years ago Cardinal Bernardin tried to stem the re-ghettoization of American Catholicism with his appeal for the Catholic Common Ground Initiative.  He was crushed by his fellow Cardinals Bernard Law and James Hickey who were determined that isolationism was the best policy for American Catholicism.  The complex ambiguities of Pope John Paul II’s papacy allowed the narrow vision of Hickey and Law to prevail and it led the American Church into a long cold dark night of increasing irrelevance.  With Cardinal Law the “kingmaker” of American bishops we were given a hierarchy that can only be described as masturbatory in its ecclesial leadership--  Francis George, Raymond Burke, Edwin O’Brien, William Lori, Michael Sheridan,  Edward Egan, John Myers, Edward Slattery, Charles Chaput, Joseph Martino, Fabian Bruskewitz, Thomas Olmstead, John McCormack, Richard Lennon, Thomas Tobin, to mention a few.  It didn’t get better with the rise in Roman influence of Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke and a new generation of bishops who lack vision such as, among others, Robert Finn, Salvatore Cordileone, Thomas Paprocki, Kevin Rhoades, Frank Dewane, and David O’Connell.  This is not to say that there have not been good bishops—and some very good bishops—over the last twenty-five years—but that the balance of power tipped to men who tried to re-fortify the American Church against the larger society.  I have no doubt that this was done in good faith but the results have been disastrous.  The Church not only retreated into a cultural isolationism—losing credibility among many of the more intellectual faithful in the process—but gained a reputation for being intellectually closed and negative in tone.  As one priest often said in his homilies “everyone knows what the Church is against; no one can articulate what it is for—and that is a disastrous position from which to evangelize.” 

Pope Francis has changed all that but to the consternation of those who favor ecclesial isolationism.  It should not be surprising that these same people favor a cultural isolationism that wants to preserve American Catholicism from the rich diversity that its membership reflects.  Their idea of church buildings is the retro appeal of a 1930’s “Chicago basilica style.”  Music is limited to organ accompaniment and Latin libretto.  Religious art is of the pre-Raphaelite revival.  Prayers are found in the Enchiridion or to be said on beads.  Mariachi bands, gospel choirs, and dance have no place. The politics follow with anti-immigrant bias and an identification of Catholicism with what might be called “Spellman Capitalism” in honor of the Cardinal Archbishop of New York who vigorously supported the “military industrial complex” in its war to defend American economic hegemony.  But that is not where Pope Francis is.  Here he is giving his weapons to those closet Marxists who call themselves “Democrats” and overturning all that we Americans hold dear in our dream that any red-blooded American boy can claw his way to the top, earning 230 times what the slaves who toil in his industry earn.  What would Jesus say?  

New Sheriff, New Rules, Missing: One Red Hat

 Father Robert Nugent, SDS, died last week at the age of 76.  Father Nugent had been the founder—along with Sister Jeannine Gramick—of New Ways Ministries, one of the first and most effective ministries to Gay, Lesbian, and transgendered Catholics.  New Ways Ministries set its agenda for opening a dialogue between the LGBT community and the Church so that the hierarchy could have a better understanding of the complex issues and questions facing Catholics with same-sex attraction, but in doing so did not “lay down the law” in terms as black and white as some thought should be.  (This was, of course, before the “Who am I to judge” approach of our current Pope.)  in their open approach, Father Nugent and Sister Jeannine attracted the particular ire of the late Cardinal James Hickey, then Archbishop of Washington.  His Eminence could be, and most often was, totally irrational at the mention of either name—Father Nugent or Sister Jeannine—or at any reference to New Ways Ministries.   

As an example of his irrationality when it came to New Ways Ministries, in 1998—shortly after the homophobic murder of Matthew Shepherd—several Catholic organizations published an advertisement in The New York Times calling for an end to hate crimes against LGBT persons.  Pax Christi USA was one of these organizations.  New Ways Ministry was another.  Many priests and religious signed the advertisement.  Among them were Father Bruce Bavinger SJ—pastor of St Aloysius Gonzaga Church in Washington DC—and Father Larry Madden SJ, pastor of Holy Trinity in Georgetown.  Cardinal Hickey called their Jesuit provincial and insisted that the provincial make both priests swear an oath that they would never again support any statement sponsored by New Ways Ministry.  Now remember, New Ways Ministry was only one of several sponsors of this advertisement which only called for an end to hate crimes.  Reputable Catholic groups had co-sponsored this petition and the list of signees included many leading Catholics.  The advertisement in no way undermined the moral teaching of the Church on sexuality issues.  That did not matter to Cardinal Hickey—any association, no matter how remote, with New Ways Ministry was enough to get you on His Eminence’s fecal roster. 

In 1999 Cardinal Hickey used his influence to persuade then Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith to issue a “Notification Regarding Sister Jeannine Gramick SSND and Father Robert Nugent SDS” which made it clear that New Ways Ministry was not—at least as it had been reported by Cardinal Hickey to the CDF—consistent with the Church’s moral teaching.  This began a persecution of Father Nugent and Sister Grammick.  Sister Jeannine’s Order, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, were pressured into dismissing her.  Fortunately a more stalwart group, the Sisters of Loretto, took her as a transfer.  Father Nugent was forced into abandoning any ministry whatsoever to persons with same-sex attraction.  So much for searching out the sheep that was lost.

I will not say that Cardinal Hickey was a bad man or even a bad priest.  Granted, his priests found him cold and distant but he actually was just a strong introvert with very poor interpersonal skills.  He was a “company man” who could not understand the Church’s mission of proclaiming the Gospel except in the model of maintaining the ecclesiastical institutions and their power.  To his great credit, he recognized the unique gifts of Capuchin friar Sean O’Malley and advanced O’Malley’s career.  Nevertheless, he can be considered as one of the darker blots on the roster of men chosen to shepherd the Church in the United States.  If it were only the unjust ways in which he acted against Nugent and Gramick, his autocratic ways could perhaps be attributed to a personal antipathy, but his treatment of fellow Cardinal, Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, reveals a most despicable side, a pathology of fear, that impelled the Cardinal to dogmatically fortify his opinions rather than to advance the cause of the Gospel.  When Cardinal Bernardin established the Catholic Common Ground Initiative in 1996 Cardinal Hickey and Cardinal Law—another and darker blot on the history of the Church in the United States—then Archbishop of Boston, publicly attacked Cardinal Bernardin and united their voices and power to do their best to sink his project of opening dialogue with disaffected communities within the Church to discover how the Church in the United States could avoid the polarization and culture wars that were threatening to eat away its vitality.  Hickey and Law made it absolutely clear that in their scheme of things there is no room for dialogue.  Their way or the highway.  They ignited the very firestorm Cardinal Bernardin was trying to avoid from engulfing American Catholicism.  We were privileged to watch he fate of Cardinal Law who, like Lucifer, has fallen like a star from the heavens. Cardinal Hickey went to his grave—actually his mausoleum in the rear of Saint Matthew’s Cathedral—in October 2004, just short of four years after his retirement from the See of Washington at the age of 80.     

While Sean O’Malley is a testimony to the better angels of Cardinal Hickey’s nature, there was—as I pointed out—another side to the man and to that side, another protégé.  His Eminence had a most peculiar relationship with Father William Lori.  I have written elsewhere about Lori—now Archbishop of Baltimore—but perhaps the most telling is the final paragraph of my August 18, 2012 entry on the late Monsignor Ralph Beiting, one of the most outstanding Christians I have met in my lifetime.  Father Beiting, a priest of the diocese of Covington, was for his entire life an outstanding servant of the poorest Americans in Appalachia.  Lori had begun his studies for the priesthood in that same Diocese but as a student, transferred to Washington “because there is no upward mobility in Covington.”  He found that upward mobility in the favor of Cardinal Hickey who appointed Lori as his secretary and kept him close by his side.  Lori, for his part, fawned over the Cardinal in ways that others who were present found nauseating.  It paid off.  Hickey had Lori named one of his auxiliary bishops and before his death was able to secure for him the Diocese of Bridgeport. 

Archbishop Lori, by all accounts, was expected to get a Cardinal’s hat in this upcoming consistory.  Baltimore is the oldest See in the Church of the United States In the last fifty years, each Archbishop of Baltimore but one were named Cardinals.  Moreover, Lori’s enjoys the patronage of Carl Anderson, Supreme Grand Poobah of the Knights of Columbus and generous dispenser of funds to the Vatican and to various conservative causes.  Anderson used his influence to have Lori promoted to Baltimore.  Pope Francis may pay for his decision not to give Lori his coveted hat, but he has sent a significant signal that there are new rules to the game.  I hope for Archbishop Lori’s sake, that he can learn to play by those rules and be the sort of bishop Francis is calling for.  While I have never liked Archbishop Lori, I would like to see Baltimore to have a wise and good Shepherd at its head. And, for that matter, I would like to see each bishop, including Archbishop Lori, be the sort of Bishop Pope Francis seems to want for our Church.

A Contemporary Reflection on the Becket Controversy

The shrine in Canterbury

Cathedral that marks the

place of Becket's martyrdom

 The posting on Becket raises a contemporary question that perhaps should give us some thought.  Catholic University School of Theology and Religious Education Professor of Moral Theology and Ethics, Dr. John Grabowski, concluded his class on Christian Marriage this past week with a thought attributed to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.  Cardinal George reportedly said that he expects to die in his bed but he expects his successor to die in prison and his successor to die a martyr.   Professor Grabowski’s point is, of course, that the Catholic Church and American society are on a collision course which will require Catholics of twenty to thirty years hence to face a choice between martyrdom and apostasy.  Dr. Grabowski is not the only Catholic voice—nor is Cardinal George—to raise this possibility.  And while I find the prophecy glum, even morbid, I do not think it is an impossibility.  My only objection is that if we are to die for our faith, let us make sure that it is the Truth of Jesus Christ and his Gospel that is the price of our blood.
Becket died a martyr—but for what principle?  He did not die for the Gospel nor for faith in Jesus Christ.  He did not die in defense of the Trinity or the Real Presence.  He did not die protecting his virginity or defending the poor.  Becket died defending the “right” of the Church to shelter its clergy from due process of the King’s justice.  He died to preserve clerical privilege.  At the time this was thought to be a legitimate reason for his canonization.  At the time many agreed with Becket that the Church should protect its clergy from the King’s Law.  Today, of course, no one believes that.  Only an eccentric of institutionalization quality would claim that a priest or religious who had broken the criminal law should not be tried in a criminal court and punished in the same manner as a member of the laity guilty of the same crime.  We can only judge Becket’s integrity by the standards of his day, but at the same time we cannot judge him to have been right in attempting the shield the clergy from due process of law. 
So what will be the reason that the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago of 2055 will be required to shed his blood?  Will it be his defense of the Eucharist?  Will it be his defense of the Trinity?  Will it be his refusal to deny the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection of Christ?  Most likely not.   It may be his attempts in some way to interfere physically with the continued slaughter of the unborn, a trespass perhaps on an abortion facility or an attempt to physically bar a woman from entering a clinic.  That would probably bring an imprisonment.  Perhaps he will shoot an abortion provider or bomb a clinic.  That would conceivably bring a death penalty.  It may be his refusal to accord the rights bestowed by the civil law to people of same-sex orientation or his attempts to block the rites of the civil law to the same.  Perhaps he will incite hate crimes against LGBT people from his cathedral pulpit.  That would bring imprisonment.  Perhaps he will engage in some act of mortal violence against the LGBT community—that could bring a death penalty.  Perhaps it will be an act of treason to overturn our Constitution and the rights it grants our citizens in favor of a set of rights limited to Catholic moral principles.  I think all this is highly unlikely.  It is not impossible, of course, but it is unlikely.  What is likely and seemingly more and more so with each new wave of seminary graduates—the people that Professor Grabowski is teaching by the way—is that we will have a clergy (and eventually a hierarchy) that is determined to force praxis based on Catholic doctrine on the larger population.  Shrill voices in the Catholic community are demanding that the laws of our land be written to reflect Catholic moral teaching regardless of the fact that these principles are not shared by the majority of the population.  And so if the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago in 2055 is put to death for our “faith” the question historians in the future will ask is—should he have been attempting to force Catholic doctrine on society or has he exceeded the mandate Christ has given to his Church?    
This has, I believe, been our mistake for the past forty years or more.  We want the law to reflect and enforce our religious beliefs.  Christ never gave us a mission to change laws.  He has given us a mission to change hearts.  And in our misguided zeal to force the law to conform to our values, we have in fact alienated hearts from the truth. 
Twenty years ago Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago called for “common ground.”  We need, he said, to sit down with those with whom we disagree and discover on what we agree before polarizing over those points of disagreement.  I believe that conversation with those who defend a woman’s “right to choose” would have opened our ears and hearts to the plight of women who find themselves “trapped” in an “inconvenient” pregnancy.  That does not mean that we would end up embracing abortion policies—it means that we would have to wrestle with how do we effectively help women not to be held back from realizing their potential and striving for their happiness when they find themselves in a problematic pregnancy.  Would there be anything wrong with looking for strategies that would help women?  Frankly we need to hear the stories of women who do not know where to turn.  At the same time such a conversation would have permitted us raise the perspective of the unborn child and his or her future.  My own experience of conversations about abortion is that while I am talking about a child, my interlocutor is speaking about a woman.  In other words, we are not even on the same topic.  Conversations open the path to changing hearts.  It is not done overnight but we would certainly have made more progress in preserving the lives of the unborn than we have with our posters of aborted babies and our rant-chants in front of abortion mills.  Of course Cardinal Law of Boston—you remember the fellow who wanted to protect his priests from criminal law though no Becket he—and Cardinal Hickey of Washington beat the drums of hysteria to make sure that no dialogue ever happened. 
I think we are facing the same question and challenges about same-sex unions.  Frankly we need to sit down and have honest conversations with men and women whose sexual orientation leads them to become emotionally bonded with members of their own sex.  I think we have serious questions and even challenges for their positions.  But I also think we have much to learn in order that some of our preconceptions can evolve from reflecting bias to being based in experience.  Experienced confessors and spiritual directors are discovering that the issues of sin and grace are not as black and white as some think.  As we discover the physiological elements of same-sex bonding our moral theology is faced with new questions we had not asked before.    
If we continue to claim the privilege of writing the laws to reflect our religious beliefs we will turn our society against us—and rightfully so.  I say “rightfully so” because we are not being faithful to Christ and to his mission.  Any use of power by the Church over those who do not freely subscribe to its doctrines is an abuse of power. And it is not martyrdom when you bring down the roof on your own head.  

The Papal Posse: White Hats, Black Hats, Red Hats continued

Cardinal O'Malley leads today's inter-

faith service at Holy Cross Cathedral

Boston for victims of the Boston

Marathon Bombing. President Obama

is in the pulpit speaking his message

to the assembled congregtion. 

In our last post we looked at four of the eight Cardinals Pope Francis has appointed for the Reform of the Roman Curia.  In this post we will look at the next four. 
Cardinal Reinhard Marx is the 59 year old Archbishop of Munich und Freising in Germany—a post held previously by Josef Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus.  Cardinal Marx is chair of the German  Bishops’ Conference Commission on Social Issues.  In the Curia he serves on the Congregation for Catholic Education, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. He is also President of the Bishops Conferences of the European Union.  He holds a doctorate in theology from the Ruhr University Bochum.  German doctorates are probably the most academically sound degrees in the entire academic world, but Bochum is, by European (and even American) standards a new university without an established heritage.  Typical to German universities it houses distinct faculties both in Protestant and Catholic theologies and it hasn’t yet had the opportunity to earn the sort of reputation for excellence as Tubingen, Freiburg, Mainz, or Munich.  Cardinal Marx would be slightly right of center in his theology but socially progressive.  In 2008, playing on his name, he published a book:  Das Kapital: A Plea For Man which subjects free market capitalism to the critique of Catholic Social Ethics.   Capitalism is judged and found wanting.  However Marx goes no further in his critique than the papal magisterium which has found capitalism to be rooted in materialism, the same heresy from which springs Marxism.     
Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya is the 73 year old Archbishop of Kinshasa in the Congo.  He studied in Rome at the Urbaniana and the Pontifical Biblical Institute and in Jerusalem at the Pontifical Biblical Institute.  He is a disciple of the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the Jesuit biblical scholar and former archbishop of Milan who before his death last year opined that the Church “is 200 years behind the times.”  Monsengwo Pasinya is co-President of Pax Christi International.  He is a member of the Congregations for Catholic Education and Evangelization of Peoples, and the Pontifical Councils for Justice and Peace, Culture, and Social Communications.  In seeing the connection between the Social Order and Justice, Peace, and Christian Spirituality, he is a sort of Catholic Desmond Tutu.  He is probably the most progressive member of this commission. 
 Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, SDB, is the 70 year old Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.  A member of the Salesians of Don Bosco he would normally be presumed to be a team-player of Cardinal Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, a fellow Salesian who has used his powerful post to plant members of his religious order in key positions throughout the Church, a sort of Salesian mafia.  Nevertheless, Rodriguez Maradiaga took on (unsuccessfully, unfortunately) Bertone over the shameful treatment the Secretary of State handed out to the former Secretary of Caritas International, Lesley-Anne Knight (see entry for February 16, 2012).   Various sources connected to Caritas—of which Rodriguez Maradiaga is President—say he is his own man. 
Like many Salesians, Rodriguez Maradiaga is incredibly over-educated.  He holds Doctorates in Philosophy, Theology, and Moral Theology.  He also holds a diploma in clinical psychology and psychotherapy and is a classically trained pianist.  He speaks at least six languages.  Named an auxiliary bishop of Tegucigalpa in 1978 he became Archbishop of the same diocese in 1993 and was named a Cardinal in 2001.  In addition to his responsibilities with Caritas International, Rodriguez Maradiaga is a member of the Congregation for Catholic Education.    He is probably the sharpest member of this commission which is a distinction given the high quality of his colleagues.  He works very well with laity and doesn’t suffer from the misogyny that afflicts many of the prelates whom he is being sent to investigate.  No liberal in American terms, he is one of the more progressive members of this commission.
Sean Patrick O’Malley is the 68 year old Archbishop of Boston and the only U.S. member of this commission.  Born near Pittsburgh PA, O’Malley professed first vows as a Capuchin Franciscan at the age of 21.  Five years later he was ordained a priest.  Cardinal O’Malley holds a Masters in Religious Education and a Doctorate in Spanish and Portuguese Literature from the Catholic University in Washington DC.  He briefly taught at Catholic University before becoming Vicar for Hispanic Ministry in the Archdiocese of Washington.  He brought incredible organizational skills to this ministry, opening centers offering legal and medical assistance to immigrants and starting a Spanish language Catholic newspaper.  The late Cardinal James Hickey, when Archbishop of Washington, took O’Malley under his wing as a protégé.  O’Malley managed to work closely with Hickey while maintaining his integrity,  no small feat given Hickey’s unholy alliance with Cardinal Law.  Undoubtedly his Franciscan spirituality is what has kept O’Malley focused on the Church’s mission to the poor while other protégé’s of Hickey’s have drunk the careerism Kool-Aid.    In 1984 O’Malley was named coadjutor bishop of Saint Thomas in the American Virgin Islands and succeeded to the see the following year.  In 1992 he was moved to the Fall River MA diocese where his ability to speak Portuguese was a great pastoral asset.  While there he did a remarkable job of handling the sex-abuse crisis in his diocese.  In 2002 he was sent to the Diocese of Palm Beach to clean up the scandal there where the two previous bishops themselves had been named in charges of misconduct.   Given his reputation he was a natural choice for the Boston Archdiocese where the arrogance of Cardinal Law, then Archbishop, in refusing to respond responsibly to charges against numbers of his clergy led to a total loss of credibility in the Church.  While O’Malley did heroic work in addressing the cleanup of the sex-abuse crisis, the need to close numbers of schools and parishes because of financial difficulties and personnel shortages has made O’Malley less than popular among many Catholics.  Conservatives have been further outraged by the Cardinal’s presiding over the funeral of the late Senator Ted Kennedy and his welcome to President Obama to the Cathedral for the Kennedy Funeral and then for the Interfaith Service marking the tragedy of the Boston Marathon Bombing.  O’Malley is somewhat right of center—you don’t get to be a Cardinal ordinarily if you are too left wing—but his personal integrity and apparent spiritual depth raises him above the ideological divide to be one of the most admired prelates in America.  He also is a possible key ally in giving the sisters of LCWR a fair hearing in the halls of a reformed Curia.  
Next time: how this all ties together for the job at hand.

Inaugural Weekend IV

Cardinal Law, champion

of Common Ground

Well, the inauguration is over and it is time for the President and his administration to move forward—a point I think he well made in his inaugural address.  And he received an important inaugural gift from the Pope last week when the Vatican came out strongly behind his efforts to impose some rationality over access to fire arms.  Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the “papal press secretary,” editorialized in both print and radio supporting the President’s desire to ban assault weapons and “to limit firearms that are making society pay an unacceptable price in terms of massacres and senseless deaths.” 
Of course Father Lombardi, while a Jesuit and may think he is infallible, is not the Pope and does not share magisterial authority.  But then one must understand how the Vatican uses different spokespersons at various levels.  When the Pope speaks it is a matter of teaching to be received.  When a curial official such as a Cardinal or Archbishop who heads one of the Vatican dicasteries speaks, it is a rule—at least if the prelate is speaking in the area where his dicsastery has authority. (Cardinal Law has no such office and Cardinal Burke tends to run at the mouth about any subject that pecks its ways across his somewhat limited intellectual capacity.)  So when the Pope wants to give an opinion on a current matter without binding the faithful, it falls to Father Lombardi.  In other words, he is speaking for the Pope but in a way that does not bind the faithful.  Would that he spoke more often permitting others, including Benedict, to stand in holy silence.  I think we would all do well if we were more often given things to think about and less often directives to follow, but then I foolishly think that most of us can make morally responsible choices.          
In any event, Father Lombardi went on to say that it would be rash to think that the elimination of firearms alone would prevent tragedies such as the Newtown Connecticut massacre, but at the same time he insisted that while such massacres are carried out by people who are deranged by hatred or anger, in the final analysis the victims are killed by guns.  So yes, while people kill people one can also say that guns kill people.  That does make sense to me. 
This call to limit access to guns fits into the long-time policy of the Vatican for disarmament and for bans on the “production, commerce, and contraband of all types of arms;” and the accusation that the weapons industry is fueled by “enormous economic and power interests.”  Ya think?
So here is some common ground between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration.  Of course going back to the days when those giants of moral integrity, Cardinals Law and Hickey, savaged the eminent Cardinal Bernardin, the Katholic Krazies have had no use for common ground.  Hopefully Father Lombardi’s endorsement will prod some of our more audacious prelates to speak up in support of strong gun control laws but they will face the wrath of those who always agree with the Vatican as long as the Vatican agrees with them. 
Tomorrow marks 40 years of Roe v Wade.  Because of the inaugural services being delayed a day, the annual March for Life has been delayed until Friday, January 25^th.  I hope the March is a strong witness for Life in a culture that is fast devolving into the “culture of death.”  But I think Father Lombardi’s editorials seal the deal, that to be pro-life you must also be in favor of some measure of gun- control. It is not enough to be anti-abortion to be pro-life.  There must be a consistency in the ethic of life for one to truly embrace the Catholic commitment to a culture of life.