Benedict XVI and Empire

The New York Times notes that with instant communication nowadays such as the internet and blogs the Vatican got caught by surprise at how the whole world turned on it in fierce criticism. Especially Germany.

That is only a small part of it. Remember throughout the centuries emperors, kings and princes enforced compliance with the church. When force was no longer fashionable secular leaders were happy to spin for the church in exchange for support. That unique guy Angelo Roncalli explicitly set out to change that noting how secular rulers unduly influenced the church.

Lacking the old means the restorationist papacies that followed John XXIII latched on to automotons such as LC, Opus Dei, who vowed unquestioned obedience. In exchange Rome overlooked their obvious deficiencies. Couple that with the appointment of vastly incompetent but LOYAL bishops who wooed wealthy far rightists with attention and honors.

So Rome is more directly responsible for the scandals that ensued. So much was overlooked as long as their was no overt resistance or disobedience.

Empire continues to attempt to dominate. It is a horror or whore. But it is our whore. We must push for its reform not sentimentalize into inaction.













http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,605945,00.html

Should Pope Benedict Resign?

From the whispers in the Loggia.

http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2009/02/communication-breakdown-vatican-edition.html

"As frustrated as the pope may be about the continuing debate, at least one Vatican insider thinks Benedict may even consider turning in his resignation. Father Eberhard von Gemmingen, head of the German language staff at Radio Vatican, said the pope “has his back to the wall,” in comments to German radio. “As I know the pope,” he said, “then it is certainly possible that he has thought to himself: ‘At some point I might have to step down so that the papacy is respected.’”
Horrifying is when children are abused and the poor do not have the gospel preached to them.
We should feel for all that are in pain. But too much pain has come from this peritus turned dogmatist. Nobody wanted the job more than Joe R. The truth is he has been very heartless with many in the church. Over orthodoxy not orthopraxy. He is finding there is more accountability as pope. No more wondering whether it is he or John Paul.

I find it something how you believe he is the best for the job. Maybe all of us long consciously to re-enter the womb of the hierarchy.

He should resign and let the bishops be bishops of the people. Not automotons of Rome.

Votf calls on Bishops to resign

Here is Votf’s latest call for specific bishops resignation:

“We call on those leaders who failed to protect the well-being of our children by knowingly and secretly transferring predator priests from parish to parish without informing the laity to resign their current office or position of authority on or before June 30th, 2009.

It is our position that in cases where bishops, despite the weight of evidence against them, refuse to resign their offices, Pope Benedict XVI should request their resignations. As examples, we cite five current bishops where records from public documents, court testimony, and multiple survivor accounts clearly indicate “culpable negligence … with harm to another …” and thus have a clear obligation to the Body of Christ to resign: Cardinal Francis George, Cardinal Roger Mahony, Bishop William F. Murphy, Bishop John B. McCormack, and Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk. In addition, Cardinal Bernard Law should resign from all ecclesial positions he currently holds in Rome.”

Here is the documentation. http://www.votf.org/resignation.pdf

For the complete press release.
http://www.votf.org/Press/pressrelease/010709.html

Erie Benedictines: Standing by Joan Chittister

Erie Benedictines: Why we said no to the Vatican demand
August 2001


In this press statement, Benedictine Sr. Christine Vladimiroff, prioress of
Joan Chittister’s Erie, Pa., community, explained their deliberations with the
Vatican. For more background, visit www.eriebenedictines.com
For the past three months I have been in deliberations with Vatican officials
regarding Sister Joan Chittister’s participation in the Women’s Ordination
Worldwide First International Conference, June 29 to July 1, Dublin, Ireland.
The Vatican believed her participation to be in opposition to its decree
(Ordinatio Sacerdotalis) that priestly ordination will never be conferred on
women in the Roman Catholic Church and must, therefore, never be discussed.
The Vatican ordered me to prohibit Sister Joan from attending the conference
where she is a main speaker.
I spent many hours discussing the issue with Sister Joan and traveled to Rome
to dialogue about it with Vatican officials. I sought the advice of bishops,
religious leaders, canonists, other prioresses, and most importantly, my
religious community, the Benedictine Sisters of Erie. I spent many hours in
communal and personal prayer.
After much deliberation and prayer, I concluded that I would decline the
request of the Vatican. It is out of the Benedictine, or monastic, tradition
of obedience that I formed my decision. There is a fundamental difference in
the understanding of obedience in the monastic tradition and that which is
being used by the Vatican. Benedictine authority and obedience are achieved
through dialogue between a member and her prioress in a spirit of
co-responsibility, always in the context of community. The role of the
prioress in a Benedictine community is to be a center of unity and a guide in
the seeking of God. While lived in community, it is the individual member who
does the seeking.
Sister Joan Chittister, who has lived the monastic life with faith and
fidelity for 50 years, must make her own decision based on her sense of
Church, her monastic profession and her own personal integrity. I do not see
her participation in this conference as “a source of scandal to the faithful”
as the Vatican alleges. I think the faithful can be scandalized when honest
attempts to discuss questions of import to the church are forbidden.
I presented my decision to the community and read the letter that I was
sending to the Vatican. 127 members of 128 eligible members of the Benedictine
Sisters of Erie freely supported this decision by each signing her name to
that letter. Sister Joan addressed the Dublin conference with the blessing of
the Benedictine Sisters of Erie.
My decision should in no way indicate a lack of communion with the Church. I
am trying to remain faithful to the role of the 1500-year-old monastic
tradition within the larger Church. We trace our tradition to the early Desert
Fathers and Mothers of the fourth century who lived on the margin of society
in order to be a prayerful and questioning presence to both church and
society. Benedictine communities of men and women were never intended to be
part of the hierarchical or clerical status of the Church, but to stand apart
from this structure and offer a different voice. Only if we do this can we
live the gift that we are for the Church. Only in this way can we be faithful
to the gift that women have within the Church.
© 2001, Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pa.

Pax Christi finds Christ's little ones.

Report and photos from December 2-5 delegation to Haiti
Patrick Cashio, Pax Christi USA national staff, went to Haiti December 2-5 to meet with Pax Christi Haii leadership, document their program in Cite Soleil and shoot video and take photos of their program. We will be posting video in the weeks to come, but currently have posted this short report on the delegation and photos from the trip.

The great Jesuit theologian, Ignacio Ellacuria (one of the Jesuits killed in the 1989 University of Central America massacre in El Salvador) said
that the truest understanding of reality comes from "coproanalysis" (literally the study of feces), a medical term he employed as a metaphor for understanding the true health of a society based on the "waste" of civilization--namely examining the status of the poor and discarded of the world to really gauge the health of our world. So imagine a city by the sea built for about 200,000 people--but with 3,000,000 crammed into it. Imagine the trash that piles up. Imagine the overwhelming smell of human excrement and trash flowing through the slums. Imagine people selling everything imaginable--from fruit to cell phones--on every crowded corner. Imagine UN soldiers patrolling your streets armed and ready to "keep peace." Imagine people that have been threatened, killed, or forced into working in sweatshops. Imagine a people that are so proud of their independence but the history and presence of political violence subjects them to a humiliatingly handicapped municipal infrastructure. This is the feces of the west. This is the feces of the U.S. This is the feces of power. This is the feces of capitalism.

Pax Christi Haiti has an impressive and ambitious program focused in Cite Soleil (Sun City), one of the poorest slums in the capital city Port-au-Prince. About 18 months ago after two years of extreme violence and gang wars in Cite Soleil, Junior St. Vil and Daniel Tillias, Pax Christi Haiti's executive and program directors, decided that if a culture of peace was to be cultivated in Haiti, it must start in Cite Soleil. Their program now has about 85 kids representing about 75% of the neighborhoods in Cite Soleil.

The kids come as a package of needs. Most of these kids need to be fed. Money and resources are scarce for many of these families and anywhere that kids can eat is well worth it. Tuition help is also a crucial need for keeping these kids in school. Pax Christi Haiti's soccer program provides them with an outlet and a space to practice non-violence with themselves and others.

With a very small room, one fluorescent desk lamp, one table, one dry erase board, one full book case, and one chalk board, the children of Cite Soleil try and do their homework and wait patiently for a meal that may or may not be provided for them today. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday the teams have soccer practice and usually always get fed. On Sunday morning, the directors lead a peace and nonviolence workshop for the teams and any other kids that show up. The hope is that through modeling new behaviors for kids a culture of peacefulness and reconciliation will spring up around the other children in Cite Soleil. Also this program hopes to redefine for Port-au-Prince and Haiti what kind of children and people can come from the poorest slum in their country.

Here is a quick message from Daniel Tillias, the program director, shortly after my return from Haiti:

"Again thank you very much for this time spent among us that gave us hope that our work will have more voice and more resources for the cause of peace. I feel bad that you could not be in the yesterday game with the category of 13 years old. This was so great to see these angels playing for their neighborhood in a spirit that reflects the philosophy that we try teaching them. We won the game, but the best victory for me is that these kids are happy and they feel confidence in a staff that can lead them to something more positive in their future than what they have experienced in the past."

http://www.paxchristiusa.org/news_Events_more.asp?id=1492

What about the Conscience of the Vatican?

VOTF’s Janet Hauter posted the following response to a recent article in the Daily Herald Chicago NW Suburban edition.

“In a recent quote from The secretary of state for the Vatican, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, I read the following: "The world's financial crisis is the result of greed and an example of what happens when God, basic rights and the common good are ignored." I have only one question: Does this same standard apply to the greatest current scandal in the history of the Catholic Church (where lies, deceits, cover-ups, significant settlements to avoid total disclosure of personnel files and enabling acts of pedophile protection occurred in lieu of protecting our vulnerable children)?

The "good cardinal" is quick to point out our country's flaws but has he examined his organization's conscience recently? “

Vatican Quick to Condemn Slow to Protect Children

Lay group calls Bourgeois move a 'scandal'

By Tom Roberts
Published:
November 26, 2008
Calling the impending excommunication of Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois “the true scandal,” the Boston-based lay group, Voice of the Faithful, has written the pope’s representative in the United States asking that the Vatican reconsider the case.

Bourgeois, best known for his peace activism and as a critic of U.S. military policy in Latin America, concelebrated at the ordination of a woman in August in Kentucky. He was notified in a letter dated October 21 that he had 30 days to recant his position or face excommunication.

“How scandalous that the Catholic Church can move so rapidly when its authority is challenged, yet the same church has failed, after years of disclosures, to remove even one of the many American bishops who secretly and repeatedly enabled pedophilic predator priests to abuse Catholic children,” the group said in its letter to the papal nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Sambi.

At another point, Voice of the Faithful, formed in the wake of the sex abuse scandal that surfaced in Boston in 2002, compares Bourgeois to Chicago Cardinal Francis George. “Fr. Bourgeois has been a widely respected champion of justice, but when he speaks his conscience on a sensitive issue, he incurs the church’s ultimate penalty. Cardinal George, who acknowledged protecting child abusers … is today president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.”

Bourgeois has maintained that he views the ordination of women as a matter of justice within the church and consistently asks how men can determine that the call women feel to priesthood is not legitimate.

“The speed of this action stands in vivd contrast to the action of the holy See on what we regard as a far more damaging problem: public action on numerous priests accused of sexual abuse,” wrote Dan Bartley, Voice of the Faithful president. “Nearly 5,000 Catholic priests have abused more than 12,000 young people . Most of these priests, and the bishops who protected them, still remain active.”

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