"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence and toughness multiples toughness in a descending spiral of destruction."  -- Dr. Martin Luther King

 

***

The following article, from America magazine, appears in its entirety at

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=12856

 

The Christian and Bin Laden

It was natural to feel elation over news that the reign of terror and mayhem managed by Osama bin Laden was coming to an end. The jubilant crowds that gathered spontaneously across the United States expressed just such emotions. But the Christian heart recoils from celebrating the death of a fellow human being, no matter how evil. ...

 

***

 

The Catholic Church's Worst Enemy Resides in the Vatican

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-catholic-churchs-worst-enemy-resides-in-the-vatican-20110508-1ee71.html

***

 

Hans Küng suggests that only radical reform can save the Catholic Church

http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-05/theologian-kung-says-only-radical-reforms-can-save-catholic-church

 

***

The following article was written by Tom Roberts, and may, therefore, have appeared in NCR.

 

Poll: Phoenix Catholics side with hospital

 

Catholics in the Phoenix diocese overwhelmingly side with St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center and Mercy Sr. Margaret Mary McBride in their handling of a case involving a severely ill pregnant woman, according to a recent survey.


Of the 651 Catholics in the diocese who were polled, 72 percent said that when they first heard of the case, they favored the action recommended by McBride; 13 percent favored the action taken by Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who declared that McBride had excommunicated herself; and 16 percent didn't know whom they favored. McBride was a member of the hospital ethics committee that recommended that the pregnancy be terminated in order to save the life of the mother.


According to the hospital, the fetus was dying as a result of the mother's illness, and the mother would have died had the action not been taken.


Olmsted said the hospital had engaged in a direct abortion when the procedure was performed in November 2009. The case attracted national and international attention when the bishop declared in May 2010 that McBride had been automatically excommunicated for her consent to an abortion and then in December when he announced that the hospital could no longer call itself Catholic.


St. Joseph's maintained that because the mother suffered from pulmonary hypertension, a condition made worse by the pregnancy, the chance of survival for both the woman and the fetus was approaching zero. "Consistent with our values of dignity and justice, if we are presented with a situation in which a pregnancy threatens a woman's life, our first priority is to save both patients. If that is not possible we will always save the life we can save, and that is what we did in this case," hospital president Linda Hunt said in a statement.


According to the survey, the bishop's pronouncement not only failed to persuade Catholics that the procedure was morally wrong, it also had little effect on Catholics' perception of the nature of the hospital. Seventy-seven percent of those polled said they believed that St. Joseph's is still a Catholic hospital; 12 percent said they didn't think it was a Catholic hospital any longer; and 11 percent said they didn't know.


The survey, conducted April 18-26, was designed by William D'Antonio, fellow at the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington. The telephone poll was managed by the Knowledge Networks Field Department. Knowledge Networks is a survey organization that maintains a vast pool of people representative of the U.S. population, and of a wide range of characteristics within that population, who have previously agreed to be surveyed. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent. ...

 

***

This article appeared in TIME magazine, and was credited to the Associated Press.

 

Fired Bishop Calls Rome Authoritarian

 

Community members rallied around Bishop William Morris of the Toowoomba diocese, west of Brisbane [Australia], and eight priests signed a letter of support for the popular parish leader, calling his removal disrespectful.

 

The Vatican confirmed in a statement Monday that Morris had been "removed from pastoral care," an unusually strong move by Vatican standards. Generally, church leaders who are being ousted are asked to resign, with the Vatican later announcing the pope has accepted their resignations.

 

Morris said he was removed because of a letter he wrote to his parish in 2006 in which he suggested that the church could help solve the problem of priest shortages by considering ordaining women and married men.

 

Benedict, as did his just-beatified predecessor, John Paul II, has staunchly upheld Vatican teaching that only celibate men can be ordained in the Roman Catholic church, although married men in the Latin rite church loyal to the pontiff can become priests.

 

On Tuesday, Morris said he hadn't meant to advocate the idea that women and married men should be priests, but simply wanted the church to keep an open mind on the matter. In an open letter to his parish this weekend, Morris said a handful of people unhappy with his leadership used his 2006 comments as a basis for complaint to the Vatican, which then launched an investigation.

 

Although not angry over his removal, Morris said he was "sad" the Vatican had not given him or his parishioners a voice in the matter.

 

"There's a creeping centralism in the church at the moment that everything is going to centralization and there's a creeping authoritarianism," he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. "I think in many ways local bishops have been sidelined." ...

 

***

Vinnie Nauheimer authored the following article.

 

Another Day of Infamy at the Vatican

 

Is the Catholic Church so starved for saints that they have to rush the process through to canonize John Paul II? There was a time when the church canonized children who gave their lives in defense of their innocence. Now, they rush to canonize a man who did nothing to stop priests and bishops who stole that innocence from children. Has the moral compass of the Roman Catholic Church swung that far around? Sadly, the obvious answer is a definitive yes.

 

How must the sainted children who gave up their lives protecting their virtue feel as they look down from heaven at the impending sacrilege of canonizing Pope John Paul II? Children like St. Agnes of Rome who at age 12 or 13 was ordered to sacrifice to pagan gods and lose her virginity by rape. She declined and paid the ultimate price. Then there is St. Belina, A peasant girl who died in defense of her virginity when threatened with rape by the feudal lord of her district. The most famous of all children saints is Saint Maria Goretti. A farm hand tried to rape the girl who fought, yelled that it was a sin, and was stabbed fourteen times for refusing to sin and went so far as to protect her virginity with her life. Does it strike anyone how terribly wrong this is? How anyone could place John Paul II in the company of these children is both incomprehensible and the height of hypocrisy.


 Incomprehensible is the fact that a New Hampshire legislator referred to a Catholic Bishop, John McCormack, as a “pedophile pimp” and the world knew immediately what he meant by that comment. The bishop had the unmitigated gall to pretend to be concerned about society’s most vulnerable! For those who are not familiar with Bishop McCormack, he worked for the notorious Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston infamy and has been steeped in accusations regarding covering up and moving offending priests to new parishes without warning the parishioners of the danger they posed. 


 Benedict XVI has beatified the pope who whisked Cardinal Law out of Boston. According to some accounts, Law left Boston just hours before he was to be subpoenaed to answer for his dismal failure to protect the children of Catholic families in the Boston Archdiocese. After Law tendered his resignation, John Paul II appointed Law to a post in Rome. Not any position, but John Paul II put the disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law in charge of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, with the title of Archpriest. This was a sacrilegious act of the highest order on the part of John Paul II. Pulling the protector of sexually abusing priests out of Boston to evade civil law is one thing, but to name that same man to oversee the largest Basilica in Rome dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God, is affront to all that is holy. 


 Sainted children who died protecting their innocence pray for the soul of John Paul II for he does not deserve to be on the same platform with you.


 The blasphemy of that appointment by John Paul II is compounded when one takes into account the special relationship that Mary, Mother of God has with children. Mary’s visitations on Earth have mostly been to children. She is the Mother of God and therefore in the eyes of the church: mother to the children of the church. When one considers the vile nature of sexual abuse of children, it is not difficult to imagine the pain and agony inflicted on the mothers of victims. The Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore was twice defiled by John Paul II. Once for placing vermin like Cardinal Law in the position of caretaker and twice for the insult because all Mary stands for is repudiated by the presence of Cardinal Law in the basilica dedicated to her holy motherhood.
 One could wish that this was the only grievous error of John Paul II, but sadly, it is not. The list of his accommodations to those who have abused children is lengthy. Who can forget his incredulous statement about clergy abuse in 2002 when instead of ridding the church of priests who abused children, he called it a mystery of evil, mysterium iniquitatis thereby laying the blame on the evil in the world (Satan) and failing to recognize the evil within his own church. A scapegoat was offered which was homosexual priests, however the homosexual priests accounted for neither the abuse to females nor pedophilia. More importantly, it never addressed why bishops had forsaken Scripture, Canon Law and the Catechism by covering up for abusing priests and allowing them to remain in the priesthood. 


 Along with the above statement, Pope John Paul II wrote, “People need to know that there is no room in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young.” By any standard this was an excellent condemnation. Sadly, the statement turned out to be mere words that never had the weight of the office put behind them. In fact, these words turned out to be a monstrous hypocrisy as the appointment of Cardinal Law just a few months later would prove.


 Then there is the equally infamous case of Fr. Marcial Maciel and his Legionaries of Christ which predated the appointment of Cardinal Law. John Paul II consistently refused to acknowledge the mounting accusations against Fr. Maciel. Those accusations have now been verified and the body of evidence uncovered has become proof positive of the warped, insidious and demonic nature of Fr. Maciel. How ironic that once the Vatican looked for collaborating evidence of the accusations made in the 1990’s, when JP II was pope, that they found it plus more than they bargained for. 


 Is this the stuff that saints are made of?


 Nobody is denying the good that John Paul II did. The lives of most men are made up of good and bad things. In the end, we all hope that the good we’ve done outweighs the bad. However, one thing is conclusive: John Paul II’s response to the rape, sodomization and molestation of children around the world by priests, bishops and religious was abysmal. The most vulnerable population of the church, the children, were sacrificed for the sake of the reputation of the church. This was a grievous omission that should disqualify him from the process of sainthood.


His error was compounded by appointing Cardinal Law to preside the largest basilica in Rome dedicated to the Blessed Mother. Does that make JP II an evil man? No, but maybe it speaks to what he really was: A man with all strengths and weaknesses of man. 


 Does it make him a saint? Not by the standards of the sainted children who gave their lives for their beliefs. In an irony that boggles the imagination, the man who did not have the courage, convictions or will to rid the church of either child abusing priests or those who protected them is to be elevated to a level equal to the sainted children who forfeited their lives rather than be violated. Compared to them, John Paul II’s measure comes up short.
 

 

***

Any other group experiencing a similar hemorrhage of members would call for an all out inquisition (Oops! Sorry.) Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese, former editor of America magazine, wrote the following article, excerpted here.

 

The hidden exodus: Catholics becoming Protestants

 

The number of people who have left the Catholic church is huge.

 

We all have heard stories about why people leave. Parents share stories about their children. Academics talk about their students. Everyone has a friend who has left.

 

While personal experience can be helpful, social science research forces us to look beyond our circle of acquaintances to see what is going on in the whole church.

 

The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life has put hard numbers on the anecdotal evidence: One out of every 10 Americans is an ex-Catholic. If they were a separate denomination, they would be the third-largest denomination in the United States, after Catholics and Baptists. One of three people who were raised Catholic no longer identifies as Catholic.

 

Any other institution that lost one-third of its members would want to know why. But the U.S. bishops have never devoted any time at their national meetings to discussing the exodus. Nor have they spent a dime trying to find out why it is happening.

 

Thankfully, although the U.S. bishops have not supported research on people who have left the church, the Pew Center has.

 

Pew’s data shows that those leaving the church are not homogenous. They can be divided into two major groups: those who become unaffiliated and those who become Protestant. Almost half of those leaving the church become unaffiliated and almost half become Protestant. Only about 10 percent of ex-Catholics join non-Christian religions. This article will focus on Catholics who have become Protestant. I am not saying that those who become unaffiliated are not important; I am leaving that discussion to another time.

 

Why do people leave the Catholic church to become Protestant? Liberal Catholics will tell you that Catholics are leaving because they disagree with the church’s teaching on birth control, women priests, divorce, the bishops’ interference in American politics, etc. Conservatives blame Vatican II, liberal priests and nuns, a permissive culture and the church’s social justice agenda.

One of the reasons there is such disagreement is that we tend to think that everyone leaves for the same reason our friends, relatives and acquaintances have left. We fail to recognize that different people leave for different reasons. People who leave to join Protestant churches do so for different reasons than those who become unaffiliated. People who become evangelicals are different from Catholics who become members of mainline churches.

 

The principal reasons given by people who leave the church to become Protestant are that their “spiritual needs were not being met” in the Catholic church (71 percent) and they “found a religion they like more” (70 percent). Eighty-one percent of respondents say they joined their new church because they enjoy the religious service and style of worship of their new faith.

 

In other words, the Catholic church has failed to deliver what people consider fundamental products of religion: spiritual sustenance and a good worship service. And before conservatives blame the new liturgy, only 11 percent of those leaving complained that Catholicism had drifted too far from traditional practices such as the Latin Mass.

 

Dissatisfaction with how the church deals with spiritual needs and worship services dwarfs any disagreements over specific doctrines. While half of those who became Protestants say they left because they stopped believing in Catholic teaching, specific questions get much lower responses. Only 23 percent said they left because of the church’s teaching on abortion and homosexuality; only 23 percent because of the church’s teaching on divorce; only 21 percent because of the rule that priests cannot marry; only 16 percent because of the church’s teaching on birth control; only 16 percent because of the way the church treats women; only 11 percent because they were unhappy with the teachings on poverty, war and the death penalty.

The data shows that disagreement over specific doctrines is not the main reason Catholics become Protestants. We also have lots of survey data showing that many Catholics who stay disagree with specific church teachings. Despite what theologians and bishops think, doctrine is not that important either to those who become Protestant or to those who stay Catholic.

People are not becoming Protestants because they disagree with specific Catholic teachings; people are leaving because the church does not meet their spiritual needs and they find Protestant worship service better.

 

Nor are the people becoming Protestants lazy or lax Christians. In fact, they attend worship services at a higher rate than those who remain Catholic. While 42 percent of Catholics who stay attend services weekly, 63 percent of Catholics who become Protestants go to church every week. That is a 21 percentage-point difference.

 

Catholics who became Protestant also claim to have a stronger faith now than when they were children or teenagers. Seventy-one percent say their faith is “very strong,” while only 35 percent and 22 percent reported that their faith was very strong when they were children and teenagers, respectively. On the other hand, only 46 percent of those who are still Catholic report their faith as “very strong” today as an adult.

 

Thus, both as believers and as worshipers, Catholics who become Protestants are statistically better Christians than those who stay Catholic. We are losing the best, not the worst.

 

... The Catholic church is hemorrhaging members. It needs to acknowledge this and do more to understand why. Only if we acknowledge the exodus and understand it will we be in a position to do something about it.


Email Tony

 Home Page/Links/Articles/