Showing posts with label Vatican. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vatican. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 06, 2019

Day 1 of Lent: Oy veh!


In case you were wondering how Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, was going around here. . . .

So far, I've punted on Mass and have resorted to trolling the pope on Twitter. Maybe for Lent this year, I'll give up being even cursorily diplomatic.

Don't make me be fed up. You wouldn't like me when I'm fed up.

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Gates of Hell 1, Catholic Church 0


The Catholic Church -- the institutional church, at least -- in this country is finished. The gates of hell, we are assured by scripture, will not prevail against the church everywhere, but they have here.

I say this after reading a "little" story from Pennsylvania uncovered in today's grand jury report on the spiritual, ethical and legal cesspool that is the Catholic Church there. The entire document is here. Maybe you have the stomach to tackle it in its immensity -- I do not.

But this one snippet from a massive global scandal and sacrilege is instructive. A huge story begins to just become a jumble of factoids and statistics, but the horror is best appreciated in looking at just one thing.

JUST ONE destroyed life. Sorry, make that two . . . because abortion. Just one mutilated soul. Just one sociopathic prelate.

This, from Diocese of Scranton in the 1980s, is just one in an unbelievably long parade of horror from just one American state since World War II. Here is the account from the local newspaper today, the Times Leader:

You can be assured that what the grand jury -- various grand juries over recent years -- uncovered in Pennsylvania will likewise pop up out of the clerical swamp in every diocese from sea to shining sea.

You also can be assured that most of our shepherds are wolves in chasubles and mitres.

I feel as if I should have more to say about this, something eloquent, profound and original. I don't.

Perhaps it's the cynicism I've clung to for the last 16 years as a coping mechanism. It's not ideal, but it seems to work for me and keeps me somewhere within Christianity instead of screaming "F*ck you!" as I storm out the door into . . . what? Nothingness?

Yeah, probably nothingness. And then the pointy-hatted motherf*ckers could notch yet another lost soul onto their liturgical staffs.

And yes, I just said "pointy-hatted motherf*ckers." The great scandal of American clericalist Catholicism is that all the "right" faithful will be a lot more scandalized by my phraseology than by priests raping young boys and girls, homosexual brothels disguised as Catholic seminaries and "princes of the church" aiding and abetting all of the above.

If you are offended, go say a rosary for my damnable soul . . . on the grave of an abuse victim who killed himself or herself after the misplaced shame and the unceasing torment became too much to bear.


Some of us will remain Catholic in the wake of this filth. I don't know which -- the jury's still out for most of us, I suspect. But I do know this: Whichever way we find to keep the faith, such as it is and assuming we do, it will not be the way we have kept it in the past. At all.

The collapse of the institutional church will follow the collapse of the hierarchy's reputation and credibility, a process begun in earnest in 2002 and finally completed today with the Pennsylvania grand jury's scathing 900-page report. The collapse of that credibility flowed out of the collapse of episcopal integrity, the visible sign of God-knows-how-many collapsed episcopal souls.

May God have precisely as much mercy on them as they showed their flocks.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013

The red dawn of a new day? Oy veh.


We Americans think "the social gospel" is just fine.

Just so long as it stays where it belongs -- between 30 and 33 A.D. The Bible talks about things from long ago in the Holy Land, allowing us plenty of time and distance to reframe both message and Messenger a bit more to our liking.

We can deal with that. Things were simpler then -- it was before Obamacare.

But if you really want to see the fit hit the shan, start preaching and teaching -- and, Dow Jones forbid, living -- "the social gospel" today . . . which is to say living "the gospel" today, because Christianity isn't an à la carte deal, it's a combination plate. That combination plate gave "orthodox" Judaism gas in 33 A.D., it gave the Romans gas for 280 years, give or take, and it gives everybody gas today.

Particularly, Pope Francis' renewed emphasis on "the social gospel" -- you know, "blessed are the poor" and "the meek shall inherit the land" -- has a whole lot of "orthodox" Catholics in a toot. The latest blow-up comes in the wake of a couple of American speeches given by one of Francis' trusted advisers, Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras.

There was, for one, writer and editor John Zmirak on Rod Dreher's American Conservative blog:
Cardinal Maradiaga’s vision of the future of the Catholic Church is really a yellowed snapshot of the past—of the recent past of the Anglican church, which has buried the clear and consistent doctrines of Christianity, in favor of social activism on behalf of foolish and counterproductive policies. The result was predictable; it became spiritually irrelevant, a decorative tassel hanging from the left wing of public opinion, while its most fervent believers split off to found new churches that actually taught the Gospel, or decamped for Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy. If the Catholic Church follows its lead, to the point where it throws infallibility into question, the same thing will happen. Expect a torrent of converts to the Orthodox Church—made up of the most active, fervent, believing, Catholics.

As a North American who is grateful for the relative religious and economic freedom that produced a successful country, I reject the Marxian bromides being offered by men whose countries have never known such freedom. Amidst all Maradiaga’s rhetoric about Gospel solidarity with the poor, I smell more than whiff of brimstone, of a national and regional envy that has no clue how to lift up the impoverished, but would happily settle for tearing down the prosperous.
WHAT WAS the pope just saying about the dangers of ideology? And what exactly prompted such a furious reaction?

Stuff like this: 
The Church is not the hierarchy, but the people of God. “The People of God” is, for the Council, the all-encompassing reality of the Church that goes back to the basic and the common stuff of our ecclesial condition; namely, our condition as believers. And that is a condition shared by us all. The hierarchy has no purpose in itself and for itself, but only in reference and subordination to the community. The function of the hierarchy is redefined in reference to Jesus as Suffering Servant, not as “Pantocrator” (lord and emperor of this world); only from the perspective of someone crucified by the powers of this world it is possible to found, and to explain, the authority of the Church. The hierarchy is a ministry (diakonia = service) that requires lowering ourselves to the condition of servants. To take that place (the place of weakness and poverty) is her own, her very own responsibility.
ME, I was thinking "About damned time!" 

I also was thinking "This model either would have made the Scandals a lot less likely, or it would have enabled lay Catholics to deal with them a lot more effectively -- through less clericalism and more ass kicking." But that's just me. I'm a Bad Catholic who can digest clericalism and humorless scolds on the religious right no better than I can soulless Marty Haugen ditties during Mass or cheap-gracers on the liturgical left.

If I were just smarter and holier, I would have been able to discern the Red Menace lurking beneath the surface of passages like this from the cardinal's Dallas address:
There is no possible reform of the Church without a return to Jesus. The Church only has a future and can only consider herself great by humbly trying to follow Jesus. To discern what constitutes abuse or infidelity within the Church we have no other measure but the Gospel. Many of the traditions established in the Church could lead her to a veritable self-imprisonment. The truth will set us free, humility will give us wings and will open new horizons for us.
If the Church seeks to follow Jesus, all she has to do is to continue telling the world what happened to Jesus, proclaiming His teachings and His life. Jesus was not a sovereign of this world, He was not rich, but instead He lived as a poor villager, He proclaimed his program – the Kingdom of God—and the great of this world (Roman Empire and Synagogue together) persecuted and eliminated Him. His sentence to die on the cross, outside the city, is the clearest evidence yet that He did not want to ingratiate himself with the powers of this world. Shattered by their power, He is the Suffering Servant, an image of innumerable other servants, defeated by the ones who rule and call themselves “lords;” but it was He, poor, silenced, and humiliated, who was designated by his Father as His Beloved Child and whom God Himself resurrected on the third day.
THE MAN even referenced that noted pinko, Blessed John Paul II:
In contemporary pontifical magisterium, we have two significant benchmarks: John Paul II’s 1990 Encyclical Redemptoris Missio, and the apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, from the same pontiff, in 2001. “In Redemptoris Missio, the Pope teaches us that the Church is a mission. It is not that she has a mission, like she has other traits; she is herself a mission. Everything in the Church should be weighted and measured in regard to the mission of converting the world.” 
And in Novo Millennio Ineunte, Blessed John Paul II challenges the Church at the end of the Great Jubilee of the year 2000, to leave behind the shallow waters of maintaining the institution and travel to the deep waters of evangelization. That is what Jesus tells his disciples in Chapter 12 of Luke, adding: “Duc in altum, put out into the deep.” [Luke 5: 4] This means that the Church will convert the world not by argument, but by example. There is no doubt that doctrinal argument is important, but people will be attracted by the humanity of Christians, those who live by the faith, who live in a human way, who irradiate the joy of living, the consistency in their behavior.
FOR WHAT it's worth, my wife and I are converts to the Catholic faith. No one argued us into the church; a number of people loved us into it.

Meantime, the Rev. Dwight Longenecker worries that the gospel will get lost in a sea of "social work." Because, obviously, all you need isn't love. Or something like that.
I am not so much worried about what Cardinal Maradiaga said, but what he left unsaid.
And there the Church, in humble company, helps making life intelligible and dignified, making it a community of equals, without castes or classes; without rich or poor; without impositions or anathemas. Her foremost goal is to care for the penultimate (hunger, housing, clothing, shoes, health, education…) to be then able to care for the ultimate, those problems that rob us of sleep after work (our finiteness, our solitude before death, the meaning of life, pain, and evil…). The answer the Church gives to the “penultimate” will entitle her to speak about the “ultimate.” For that reason, the Church must show herself as a Samaritan on earth – so she can some day partake of the eternal goods.
Really? The Church’s foremost goal is to provide housing, shoes, health and education? Surely the church’s foremost goal is the salvation of souls. To be sure we must be engaged in feeding the poor, but in his talk on the New Evangelization the Cardinal does not mention the salvation of souls or the spiritual work of the church or the sacraments at all. Is he simply a social worker dressed in red, and does the red indicate more of his political opinion than his status as a cardinal?

REALLY? What part of "the answer the Church gives to the 'penultimate' will entitle her to speak about the 'ultimate'" is unclear?

Again, I am a convert. I was "penultimated" into the Catholic Church. After all, God meets you where you are, not where He thinks you need to be. Where you need to be is a process -- one lasting a lifetime.

By the way, I only can assume that the good father's cheap shot about Maradiaga being a "social worker dressed in red" or maybe just a Red, period, was for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls. I've seen stranger things done -- in all sincerity -- for the sake of kingdom come.

Ideology takes the invitation that is the Christian gospel and makes it into a hammer. Ideology takes suffering souls and turns them into nails -- into the proverbial Them.

Ideology say: Us, we so holy.

I'M NOT sure how much the cardinal's American trip told us about what direction the Catholic Church is headed. I fear the collective cerebral hemorrhage we're seeing so early in Francis' pontificate tells us a lot about the Catholic right.

"Cafeteria Catholicism," alas, is a bipartisan thing. And the cafeteria is getting crowded.

Friday, June 18, 2010

They were too on a mission from God!


Well Jesus, Mary and Joseph! We coulda told you that oh . . . 30 years ago.

That said, I give two thumbs up to the Vatican's proclaiming The Blues Brothers a classic.
A Catholic classic.

ABC NEWS brings us the story live from Bob's Country Bunker in Kokomo, Ind.:
This week, the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano devoted no fewer than five articles to "The Blues Brothers," anointing it as a film with a Catholic message.

"The evidence is not lacking in a work where details certainly are not casual," wrote editor Gian Maria Vian, according to a translation from The Tablet newspaper.

He cited examples of a photo of Pope John Paul II on the set, characters like Sister Mary Stigmata, and other religious touches to support his argument. The storyline follows the Blues Brothers as they attempt to raise money for a church-run orphanage where they grew up.

All this in a movie where Jake Blues, played by John Belushi, declares, "Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ! I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT!"

The Blues Brothers joins a lofty list of Vatican-acclaimed films, including "The Ten Commandments," "The Passion of The Christ," and "It's a Wonderful Life."
OF COURSE, some Catholic quarters are horrified, as was the U.S. bishops' film office back in 1980. Moral rigorism always has run strong in the American church, and there will be no plain white toast and whole fried chickens in the lunchroom at the Legion of Christ-owned National Catholic Register:

The movie and its music are “memorable”, concludes Vian, and adds: “According to the facts, [it’s] Catholic.” Elsewhere in the paper, a full page article describes the film as a “masterpiece”, “incredibly shrewd” and “full of ideas.”

All quite interesting – but whether this is really something that should court so much attention in L’Osservatore Romano which many see (incorrectly) as the Vatican’s official mouthpiece, is open to question.

Vian is a friendly, hard-working and well-meaning editor who has done much good for the publication, but his enthusiasm to regularly bring pop culture into the ‘Vatican’s newspaper’ may be all right in Italy, but to an increasing number it appears to trivialize the Vatican and, ultimately, the Church.

While movie and music reviews can rightly be a popular feature of many Catholic newspapers, many, myself included, feel L’Osservatore Romano is different and should instead be devoting its pages to more spiritual and lofty matters related to the faith.

OR, AS MY BOSS at a Catholic radio station once said to me as she objected to a bar of "Jingle Bells" in a recorded holiday ID, "Christmas is not fun." (Unsurprisingly, she belonged to Regnum Christi, the lay arm of the Legion of Christ, an order which has had troubles far surpassing the Vatican newspaper's "nonspiritual" embrace of pop culture.)

Think about that. "Christmas is not fun."

Obviously, for some Catholics, neither are the movies.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Tips for the conscientious Catholic

This is offensive:


This is what the Church thinks is proper fare for cathedral museums:


Does everybody have all that straight? Uhhhhhhhhh, perhaps "straight" was a poor choice of words.

It used to be that "abomination of desolation" was just another scary Biblical phrase.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

The smoke of Satan. . . .

Sancte Michael Archangele,
defende nos in proelio.
contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.
Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur:
tuque, Princeps militiae coelestis,
Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,
qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo,
divina virtute, in infernum detrude.
Amen.

This could have been my first NC-17 post if I had embedded the video depicting what's being exhibited at the Dommuseum in Vienna. That smutty "art" is being exhibited in some European museum isn't, in itself, exceptional.

What's exceptional is when smutty art -- including depictions of the Last Supper as a homosexual orgy and a naked Roman soldier performing a sex act on the crucified Christ -- is the focus of an exhibit at the art museum of the Catholic cathedral of St. Stephen. Well, it used to be exceptional -- back when the faithful still recited the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel at the end of every Mass.

From United Press International:

The Dommuseum in Vienna, the art gallery attached to the historic Catholic cathedral of St. Stephen, is running an exhibition of works by a self-avowed Marxist atheist, titled "Religion, Flesh and Power," that includes depictions of explicit homosexual sex acts. Prominent among the works is a rendition of the Last Supper with Christ and His Apostles depicted as homosexuals engaged in an orgy.

Another work depicts Christ on the cross without a face but with uncovered genitals. The Last Supper rendition is displayed in a prominent place near the entrance to the exhibition,
LifeSiteNews.com reported Wednesday.

Dommuseum Director Bernhard Böhler said visitors asked "in a more or less emotional way" why the Apostles are depicted copulating. According to the director, the artist responded, "There were no women around."

AND AT THE DOMMUSEUM, one might suppose there are no actual Christians around. Next door to the cathedral. Literally under the nose of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. Who needs to redecorate his museum with a can of lighter fluid and a match.

It is said that Pope Leo XIII composed the prayer to St. Michael in 1896 after receiving a vision of how Satan would attack the Church for roughly 100 years, beginning in the 20th century. I think we've been getting a damned good idea of why Leo XIII went as pale as a corpse and rushed to his office to compose the prayer, which he ordered recited after every Catholic Mass.

That practice ended in 1965, after the Second Vatican Council's revision of the liturgy.

Oops.

If Muslims get apoplectic about cartoons of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, Christians have every cause to get three times more exercised over this blasphemy aimed at God Himself. God will deal with the Marxist, atheist artist, Vienna's Alfred Hrdlicka.

Pope Benedict XVI needs to deal with Schönborn, the prelate who allowed this sacrilege -- this scandal -- on his watch, at his cathedral, in its art museum.

Now.


HAT TIP:
Crunchy Con.